Focus Is a Superpower: How to Know When to Quit or Keep Going

Full breakdown on focus, knowing when to quit, and why failure is a superpower. Full episode [here].

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF_zPUb6utY

You know how you can tell a business is about to stall?

They start saying yes to everything. New product line. New marketing channel. New audience. New partnership that “could be interesting.” They mistake activity for progress and wake up 18 months later wondering why nothing really moved.

There’s a term in software called feature creep. Customers keep asking for one more thing, then another, then another. And before you know it your product tries to do everything and does it all pretty mediocrely. Businesses do the exact same thing to themselves. Nobody tells them to stop. So they don’t.

Nike started as a runner-obsessed shoe company built by a guy who couldn’t stop running. Ben & Jerry’s only made ice cream. The most dominant brands in the world got that way by being almost unreasonably focused on one or two things. Then you look at the ones that blew up in one lane and decided to be in every lane. That’s usually the beginning of the end.

The Audit Nobody Wants to Do

Pull up every sale you made this year. All of them. Then pull up every dollar you spent on marketing.

Here’s what you’re going to find.

Somewhere around 20-30% of your budget is going toward something that drives maybe 2% of your revenue. And a small slice — maybe 10% of your spend — is quietly responsible for 80% of your results.

Most founders see this and do nothing. They keep the underperforming channels running because they already set them up, or because someone on the team is managing it, or because it “might turn around.”

It won’t.

Turn it off. Move that money to the thing that’s already working. Then watch what happens when a proven channel gets real resources behind it instead of splitting the pot twelve ways.

The Part That Actually Hurts

Killing bad ideas is easy. Nobody loses sleep over that.

The real test is killing good ideas. The ones that genuinely could work. The ones you’re kind of excited about. The ones that make sense on paper.

But here’s what I’ve learned — time is the ultimate equalizer. You have a fixed number of hours, dollars, and people. Every good idea you say yes to is stealing oxygen from a great one. And a business full of good ideas that never fully commits to any of them is just a busy business. Busy and growing are not the same thing.

The Takeaway

Focus isn’t a strategy. It’s a survival skill.

The moment you start spreading across every opportunity is the moment you stop being known for anything. And a business that isn’t known for something specific is a business people forget.

Pick the thing. Protect it. Pour everything into it.

That’s not playing small. That’s how you win.

— Leo

Also in this episode: why the sunk cost fallacy quietly destroys businesses, how to separate your identity from your company before it breaks you, trusting your gut over outside noise, and what investors managing billions actually told me they look for in founders — it’s not first-time winners.

Full breakdown on focus, knowing when to quit, and why failure is a superpower. Full episode [here].