Hello, and welcome to the Big IDEA!

I'd like to take just a few minutes and talk about something that is absolutely critical in this or any other business that you want to start.

In Internet marketing, FOCUS becomes absolutely critical because it's very easy for the large number of things that are possible to distract you. There are so many ways to make money online – so many profitable niches, so many variations on the theme...

Frankly, there are a lot of bright and shiny objects on the Internet that can take your attention, your FOCUS away from what it should be on.

The mere fact that we use social media as one of the ways to communicate with our communities can be a distraction. You can lose hours on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ just watching what your friends are doing, and replying to fun comments or posts. YouTube has hundreds of thousands of hours of video that are quite entertaining. Some are even educational, and can teach you a lot about your new business online, but even these may not be what you need to FOCUS on at this moment.

One of the best acronyms I've seen that uses the word FOCUS is Follow One Course Until Successful, or Follow One Course Until Success. This is so true. When I began in Internet marketing, it was very easy for me to get distracted and unFOCUSed to the point where I was paying attention to things that were not yielding fruit, in other words, I was chasing a lot of rainbows.

If we are going to Follow One Course Until Success, we need a strategy.

For our coaching moment today, I'd like to teach you something that has helped me and hundreds of others through this process. It's two simple questions that I used coaching soccer for many years...

This is the first strategy, the first technique, the very first thing I taught any player that played for me. Early on, I learned that players can become easily distracted from their primary mission on the soccer field.

This applies in any sport – basketball, football, baseball, rugby... There are so many things going on during a sport, so many things to capture your attention, and sometimes even lulls in activity that can leave you looking around for something to do.

So, I created two questions, two very specific questions that I could teach the players to ask themselves after every transition in play. I taught the players that after every pass, every time they received the ball, every time a goal was scored or shot was taken, any time the ball went out of bounds, at literally any moment in time, they were to ask themselves these two questions:

“Where am I?" and "What should I be doing?"

In soccer, these questions serve the player well – when a pass is  made, asking “Where am I?" and "What should I be doing?" helps the player understand their position on the field and how they should be moving to support the attack or to help in the defense. When a throw in or a free kick was taken, asking these questions help the player know where to be on the pitch and how to best help the team. As the strikers sprint forward for an attack, the questions allowed the supporting players to be in position to accomplish the primary mission – scoring a goal.

In Internet marketing, where a successful online business is your goal, these questions help you regain FOCUS on what you should specifically be doing toward that goal.

When your goal is to create your simple, targeted website, you should not spend your time looking at Facebook. When it's time to create your follow-up messages in your auto responder, you shouldn't be reading e-mails. And, when your goal is to learn a new skill, it is no time to be watching a webinar that is not specific to that skill.

So, remember, constantly ask yourself these questions “Where am I?" and "What should I be doing?"

Ignore the bright, shiny objects, the distractions that keep you from your objective. Remember to choose a course and FOCUS, Follow One Course Until Success.

With that in mind, have you discovered your Passion? Knowing this is critical to our discussion in next week’s Big IDEA!

I hope these tips are helpful to you. I'd love to hear your comments, and just below this article you’ll see a place where you can leave your thoughts.

Until next week!

Kindest regards,

Greg