"I have also learned that being focused means saying “No” a lot more. I used to have a big problem with no. People would invite me to grab coffee with them and I would always say yes without thinking about how that would impact my day."
Good Morning Folks,
Behold the power of the Internet where anyone with coding skills and a great idea can change the course of business and its results.
A case in point is the story of Morgan and Daina Linton, the husband/wife team who founded Fashion Metric to banish ill-fitting clothes.
Anyone who’s ever ordered clothes online knows that getting an item that fits is by all means hit and miss. Fashion Metric is a self-described “virtual tailor” SaaS startup that provides consumers with a way to automatically find out if an article of clothing will fit their body without having to try it on.
“We’ve built software that acts as a virtual tailor,” Daina Linton said.
Fashion Metric’s technology also offers online retailers an added benefit of minimizing returns, which makes sense since the majority of those returns would happen because something didn’t fit correctly. The startup has raised under $1 million in funding from Mark Cuban, BazaarVoice founder Brett Hurt, and the former chairman and CEO of Neiman Marcus.
But putting the "start" in startup was a long, painful process until the couple discovered the POWER of FOCUS. Morgan explained in his blog this week:
Over the last two years I’ve learned a lot about the power of focus. Rewind three years ago and I was a guy who had a lot of “projects” going on all the time. When people asked what I did I would usually say, “My full time job is at Sonos but I also run a lot of websites, broker domain names, build software to appraise website sales, speak at conferences, oh and I write books.”
I thought this sounded impressive, I was wrong.
Fast forward to today and I have no projects, I am completely focused on Fashion Metric, and that focus has been incredibly valuable both for our company and our lives. While I still write this blog I see writing as something that I have always planned to do forever, I see it as my creative outlet and I spend no more than twenty minutes a day on it.
Both Daina and I spend all day, every day focused on Fashion Metric. We’re up at around 6AM, are usually at work before 8AM and it’s rare for us to leave before 7PM. We don’t do this because we have to, we do it because we absolutely love it, this has been our dream and we know we couldn’t do what we are doing now without incredible focus.
I have also learned that being focused means saying “No” a lot more. I used to have a big problem with no. People would invite me to grab coffee with them and I would always say yes without thinking about how that would impact my day. Everything my friends did I wanted to do with them. Now I’ve learned that I can’t say yes to everything and still maintain the level of focus that I need, I had to get better at saying no. The good news is, true friends will understand and those who aren’t might not.
It’s an amazing transformation I’ve gone through over the last three years and an incredibly realization that you (or at least for me) can’t have a day job and do a bunch of “projects” without spreading yourself too thin and not giving enough focus to something that really matters. I can understand why the old adage “do what you love” still rings true today because when you focus and do what you truly enjoy all those projects disappear and life, while more intense than ever, becomes more fulfilling.
So ask yourself, “Am I that person who is doing a million projects?” And if that is you imagine what you could accomplish with a bit more focus.Have a GREAT WEEKEND!
Chief Happiness Officer
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"Do one thing every day that scares you"
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Middle: Morgan and Daina Linton via Laura Lorek, Silicon Hills News
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