You’re riding down a mountain bike trail and up ahead in the middle of the trail is a big rock. What do you do?

Your natural tendency is to focus on the rock to make sure you get around it.

Don’t do it!

The #1 rule in mountain biking is: Don’t focus on the obstacles. Focus on where you want the bike to go and it will follow your lead.

The problem with focusing on the obstacle is that you’re almost guaranteeing that you’ll hit it.

“Where your focus goes, energy flows” – Jim Rohn

In mountain biking, you have to keep your eyes on the trail ahead and let the bike do the work of getting around and over the obstacles.

It’s the same way in business.

Full Systems Ahead!

In my 30 plus years of founding and running a business, I can look back and remember the times when an obstacle came up and I got sidetracked. All my focus would go toward either avoiding the obstacle or getting around it that I missed key events and opportunities that would have propelled the business forward.

In biking, you have to trust the bike to get you over and around the obstacles, in business, it is your systems you trust.

Once I finally put operating procedures and systems in place the business could almost run itself while I temporarily focused on a particular problem.

Don’t let your business get pulled from the path. Trust your systems.