Farming One Crop, or Multiple Crops For success which is better?

Have you ever felt that school was a waste of time?  Have you ever been lost in a subject to the point you didn't know the time or even the day?  How can it be that you absorb some things very well, and others topics of education can be so uninteresting that you have to work just to stay awake?

The reality is simple, and the truth isn't easy.  As humans we are hard wired to have an interest in certain things.  Those interests create the desire to learn more.  No interest, no desire.  Great teachers create interest first, lessons second.  Boring lecturers spew out lessons and hope you can force or fake interest.

Technical schools and apprentice programs used to be the way of life, but corporations found these a bit too risky and pushed the responsibility to the government, which by the way gladly accepted.  The problem was instead of allowing people to find an interesting path and become great at it, we were all lined up on boring roads and received somewhat generic educations.  This is why the greatest technical companies like Hewlett-Packard, Bell Telephone (AT&T), Edison Electric and Apple were created by those that stepped out of the system and created their own learning path.  They stayed interested.

So what does this have to do with Farming and Success?  Much like school, life and business offer us a variety of ways to grow and succeed.   The two Steve's of Apple, Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard, along with Mr. Bell and even Mr. Edison all showed us a different way to build success outside of the halls of education.

Ironically, farmers figured this out long before industrialization, and the lesson is one worth looking at.

In my coaching life, focus is a major element of my work.  I spend a lot of hours with clients getting them to simplify and focus on a small number of important tasks and goals instead of giant, endless to do lists that are really just busy work to avoid the hard work that needs to be done.

Lately I have been called a hypocrite more than once.  Besides coaching, I still fly, train our internet marketing staff, and am involved in real estate as an investor, trainer and agent.  So the question I get is "How can you claim focus is so important when you have so many irons in the fire?"

To start with, I don't look at these like irons in the fire.  I look at them like a farm.  You can build one giant farm with one crop.  As long as that crop does good, you will do great.  The better you do the more land you can buy and the better you get at knowing how to get the most money from that crop per acre.  You get the best prices on seeds, pesticides and labor because of the economy of scale and your ability to buy in quantity.

You can also build a farm that has several smaller crops of higher margin.  By learning how to grow crops that help each other in pest prevention, soil conservation and nutrient usage, you can also create a great farm.  You can never compete against the single crop neighbor on a price basis, and when the economy turns south, you might be in a riskier position. However, the single crop master farmer has to worry about a single shift ending his business.  What if he grows sugar cane, and the government decides to tax sugar 100% because it causes health problems.  He could be out of business overnight because you can't just change to tobacco in a day or even a month.

Starting a multi crop farm takes a different kind of focus.  You must have a big picture of what you are trying to do overall, for instance create an organic farm, or a farm store.  You must also focus on each crop one at a time until you learn them so each are a small success.  Your sugar might only yield 80% as much per acre, but your higher quality can yield equal or higher profits per acre.  Think Tiffany's.

When I sit down to write, I am a writer.  When I go to the studio to act, I am an actor.  I don't bring Real Estate to the studio, and I don't practice acting during open houses or when I am flying jets.  When I fly jets, I look and act like a pilot.  When I am in the Real Estate office working, training or attending a meeting, I look like a professional full time Realtor.

As I built my life, I did it in stages.  I worked at flying jets until I was highly proficient and only need a few hours each month to maintain my skills.  Then I could start classes for Real Estate.  I worked at that as an investor for years and know have my methods down to simple checklists.  I can evaluate an investment in less than 15 minutes.

Finally I could start acting classes and work at adding acting to my skill and income sets.  Writing is really just an extension of my experience just like coaching is, but I still take classes to be better at both of them as well.

I would probably make a little more money if I just picked on, and did it all of the time.  I am very fortunate to have started on my first path very early, and having stuck with it, was able to move on to the next with plenty of time on my life clock left.

In Flying will I ever be Bob Hoover?  Nope.
In Real Estate Investing will I be Donald Trump? Nope.
In Acting will I be Tom Cruise or John Travolta or even Scott Baio? Nope.
In Writing will I be Steven King? Nope.

Can I do quite well at all of them individually so that the income and lifestyle add up to something like they live?  Yes, and that is the life I designed for myself.

Because I built my life this way on purpose, I don't work at any one job.  In fact I don't work at any of my jobs.  They are all fun.  I am doing now almost exactly what I want to do when I am "retired".  It doesn't get any better than that.

So it doesn't matter which type of business or life you want to build, a single faceted super sized business/life or a multifaceted business/life.  As long as you pick one, do it with purpose and take the time to develop each facet or perfect the single face of your business, success can be achieved either way.  As long as there is a destination or goal to focus on you can do it.  No destination, no focus, no achieving the goal.

As you head into the weekend, really take a look at what you want.  A single mission business or do you want to do something more?  I like getting small and medium checks daily from all kinds of sources.  Some people need steady checks on the first and fifteenth, and others can do with one or two really big checks a year.  What do you want?

You can start with a single business like real estate investing and turn it into a 100 Million Dollar empire like Dean Graziosi did and then the checks don't matter as much.  Success really is that simple, it just isn't easy.