Our current day and age is tightly knitted by our consistent schedules to work more, be more efficient, increase our productivity and achieve more by doing so. Through our strive to do more we get so involved in more projects and take on tasks and “to do’s” (one of my former managers in the corporate environment from whom ive learned to remove those “to dos” referred to these as “monkeys” and I could not agree more) as they end up being not so important anyhow.
Regardless of that though, everyone seems to have a side project these days. Ive talked to people engaged in photography, painting, writing, constructing and the list goes on.
I guess we have become so use to diversification that we “dont put all our eggs into one basket”. Reminds me of my Finance Prof at University. So, instead of putting more money into a single stock, you begin seeking out those lesser stocks just for the sake of diversification.
This might work for stocks and other financial investments, but not for investments of your time.
Within the past year or so I have made this mistake of diversification into numerous areas. First, I decided that it would be a good idea to recreate all our online entities, which in the meantime has nearly been completed. The umbrella corporation for all our online properties is The K Lifestyle Group which consists of a record label, a fitness platform, a fashion brand, a social network, and somewhere in-between my personal blog here. I enjoy a good challenge and am grateful for the team behind everything however at some points you reach a mental drain where things just don’t go as you envision them. Diversifying into several properties is a drain on creativity.
After the death of our beagle Money I wanted to do something significant so Renata, Chris and I launched the Verendus Foundation – a non-profit focused at bettering mankind. Alone the paperwork was time consuming however this truely is something I am excited about. My frustration goes into all this diversification that certain areas consume more time than expected, yet I dont give up that easily.
We may think we are good at multi-tasking but it will never be as efficient, productive or successful as it could be when you focus on doing just one thing. When you are clear about what works and what you’re working towards it becomes exponentially simpler to execute on your vision and plan. Hence, my love to the entire KLG team!
This mindset also has an interesting application within the KLG: It’s the nature of our business to have multiple products and brands, so we won’t ever just have the one product/brand. But we have however changed our strategy to double-down on the products & revenue channels where we see most traction & growth. So instead of creating more, we’re just doing more with what we already have.
Avoid the “Jack of all trades, Master of none.”-mantra, as this not only defocuses & complicates your execution, but it most definitely decreases the quality of your work, products, services.
If you’d like to chat to me about this or get advice on something similar, feel free to drop me a line.