Walt Disney Disagreed...

Newsletter · Oct 13, 2024

🍩 Fresh from Sunday Doughnuts. A new batch lands in your inbox every week. Subscribe free →

An entrepreneur's recipe for sweet success

3.33 min Read

How often have you heard “You need to focus on ONE thing” ?

There’s even a book called The One Thing. It’s actually a pretty good book but the title says it all.

One focus, one thing, one path to success.

I’m paraphrasing, but the general idea is that in order to get really good at something, you can’t spread yourself thin with a bunch of things that distract you from your ultimate goal…

You’ve heard that before right?

Well, Walt disagreed and so do I.

And as Chris Koerner says

“Chase shiny objects, compounding doesn’t care.”

I believe that success can be found at both ends of the spectrum.

Your focus doesn’t have to be singular.

What we see from Walt’s illustration is the vision of several enterprises that all come together to form the portfolio of the a Disney empire.

Some might say that each section on its own should require its own 100% focus and “all in”.

But Walt saw the bigger picture.

And that’s what I want to impart you with today. The bigger picture.

If you see opportunity in something, figure out how that can integrate into what you’re already doing or the direction you want to go.

The end result might not be completely clear to you right now, but the skills, experience, network, lessons and partnerships you develop along the way will help you find that clarity.

Here’s a real life example of what I’m building and from the outside could appear scattered, but from inside “the work site”, its just piecing together the empire.

I’m sharing this not as a “look at me”, but instead as an example of what doing a lot of things looks like and how it all ties in to the bigger picture. Most of these ventures are not putting money in my pocket right now, but it’s all part of a larger vision.

Storage portfolio:

We aren’t taking any distributions at this point, but we’re making progress and learning lessons. We are dialing in our operations and working to become better operators for further acquisitions.

Business acquisitions:

Having been in this world and in the storage game, it led me to other business acquisitions. I’m in a self funded search with two other business partners to find a business to acquire outside of storage. Looking heavily in the accounting space currently.

Lawn Care:

As accounting firms are going to get busy real soon with tax season, we’ll run a cold outreach sequence for off market firms, but shift our attention to a business that already exists. One of my business partners owns and operates a lawn care service and we are looking to invest and help him grow.

This will look like dialing in SOPs, hiring more employees, expanding services and acquiring other smaller lawn care services in surrounding areas.

Robby talks about his business here in our first episode

Cleaning Service:

An opportunity came up with with a former employee who needs some work and was looking at starting a cleaning service. She doesn’t want to be the boss, just clean and have a flexible schedule with her kids.

We have done a fair amount of research on that business in the past and know the hardest part is staffing. But now we have a trusted employee.

We’re still ironing it out, but the goal is to start this up with just her and grow organically, reinvesting as much as we can.

Bookkeeping:

My wife runs a bookkeeping company and we saw an opportunity with the need for live bookkeeping training for smaller companies that don’t need the full monthly service. So we launched that in a weekend and were playing it out. Testing, adjusting, repeat.

Here’s what this looks like

Newsletter:

I’m a strong believer in building an email list as early as possible.

The goal with this is to provide as much value as I possibly can about the inter-workings and blueprint of the entrepreneurial journey from someone actively within it.

I might not be “there” yet, but I’m “in it” and I’ll give you all the tips and tricks along the way.

Podcast:

Out of the passion for writing this newsletter can the origin of the podcast. This works in a few ways.

I want to discover the HOW behind successful entrepreneurs and share that
Having a platform like a podcast to “interview someone” on gets us in the the door. It’s a way to connect with people that I’d otherwise not be able to connect with. Total life hack
Through these connections, the possibilities are endless.

Yes, it’s a ton. But each pursuit has a purpose.

If you’re a singular focus kind of person, cool. More power to you. I respect that.

But for those of you that are drawn to those shiny objects from time to time, don’t feel bad. In fact, lean into it and play it out.

See if it’s a worthy piece of the empire you’re trying to build.

If it ends up not working. Ditch it. Take the lessons, put them in your tool kit and move on to the next.

If theres is any person that understands the need to talk things out and process through ideas and ventures, it's me. I'm always an email away if you want to process through it with someone.

Until next time...

Stay in the fight,

My best tweet of the week:

@kevinasrx

I WROTE THIS BEFORE THE MARATHON

(scroll down for the “after thoughts”)

I run, but I’ve never really considered my self a “runner”.

That’s always been part of the training, but never much past 5k for years.

Those of you that CrossFit know what I mean

The last few years…

https://x.com/i/web/status/1842644742036713775

12:15 PM • Oct 5, 2024 ↗

My favorite tweet of the week:

@mattragland

Screw it 🔩

I recorded a quick tutorial about how to turn your handwriting into a custom font ✍️

This takes less than 30 minutes and adds a very unique and personal touch to presentations, videos, notes, and much more 🤩

People said I could sell this, but I think it's so cool…

https://x.com/i/web/status/1841924482275115243

12:33 PM • Oct 3, 2024 ↗