KEY POINTS:
Here's a little secret.
After five hours at the Auckland Home Show checking out the latest trends and making contacts left, right and centre, I sneaked off to go shopping.
As I checked out the stock of my favourite clothes store, I wondered what some of the incredibly focused investors I know would have done when they left. They'd most likely be off to a quiet spot to order and file all the paperwork they picked up, to make notes and to create a plan of action.
More than one of them was on the phone to me the next day as if just to prove the point. It's that focus that helps make them successful.
Focused investors have strategies and plans. They don't just follow this year's fad or whatever has caught their attention this week.
There's even a book called The Power of Focus, written by Jack Canfield, author of the hugely popular Chicken Soup series of books. Canfield says, as do many other authors and investment gurus, that people who focus on what they want, prosper. "Those who don't, struggle," he says.
When it comes to investment, using your brain to be focused can be more important than knowing what to invest in. It ensures that whatever path you take, you can focus on it for as long as it is financially beneficial. Investment guru Dolf de Roos is oft quoted saying: "The most valuable piece of real estate is the top six inches of your head, give or take an inch or two, situated between your right ear and your left ear, for what you create in that space will ultimately determine your wealth."
Focus comes on a macro level and micro level. On the macro level, it may involve focusing on one or two investment strategies rather than trying to be a jack-of-all-trades or jump on whatever's the latest bandwagon. On a micro level, it's keeping your eye on the ball, each and every day.
Kenina Court is one of those people who do both well. As well as running her own accountancy practice, she owns a manufacturing business, has bought scores of investment properties and is developing a commercial property site along with her husband.
Getting that focus is something that some people do for themselves.
Court said in her case the seeds were sown at school because she had to work so hard to even get B and C grades.
Then, in 1999, she and her husband did a year-long mentoring programme with property investment guru De Roos.
"Our goal at that time was to purchase 10 properties in 10 years. It seemed huge and audacious at the time," says Court. "Well, we did six properties in six months and haven't looked back since." Court said, as a result, the couple developed focus and clear goals.
Likewise Lisa Dudson, director of MoneyTV, financial planner and serial property investor, knew by the time she was 16 or 17 that she wanted to be in business. This helped her focus on her goals from an early age.
There are numerous approaches to overcoming the barriers that hold investors back.
Dudson says where she can't work with a client through a blockage that is stopping them investing effectively, she may send them to seminars, a life coach, psychotherapist or to a self-development programme, such as Avatar. Each, of course, will say that their approach is best. The reality is that it's horses for courses.
At Landmark Education, says Anne-Marie Brown, until recently centre manager in Auckland, once students have done the foundation course, there are a number of advanced study options they can choose which help them free themselves from their pasts.
"You have your focus taken away by your past and you don't focus on what is possible," says Brown.
She says when it comes to money, people get hamstrung by sayings such as "money is the root of all evil" and as a result can't focus.
Life coach Clive Littin, of Clive Littin & Associates, says he works with people to create focus using a four-step programme that involves HAVING a clear idea of what they want, HOLDING on to that idea by writing it down and reading it every day, getting SUPPORT to ensure they carry through and WATCHING it happen.
"Without focus you won't achieve your goals," says Littin.
