Let focus make you famous — Kelford Labs Daily

The cost of fame is usually fortune.

Roblox, one of the most popular video games of all time, spent over $200 million more than they made last quarter.

Mr. Beast’s productions cost more than they make, he has to take hundreds of millions in investment from VCs to grow his brands, and he’s said in interviews that he’s ‘mentally dying’ from the stress.

Coca-Cola and Nike (aside from a brief pandemic slump) spend more on advertising every single year, not less. Shein and Temu are two of the biggest advertisers on Meta’s platforms (collectively spending billions a year on ads), not the recipients of viral, organic attention.

And that LinkedInfluencer you can’t escape, with the million followers, has to spend all day, every day, doing nothing but post on LinkedIn (or pay someone else to).

It’s tempting to think that fame brings fortune, but it costs it instead.

But there’s another way to pay it. It doesn’t have to be paid in cash, or time.

If we’re willing to forgo massive, mainstream, everyone-knows-our-name attention, the cost can be paid in focus.

I’m not the first to call focus a cost, to call it a sacrifice, to call it the most difficult decision you’ll have to make.

Because it is. It’s a real, meaningful cost.

But it’s the price we pay to get noticed. To have our ideal customers recognize that we’re the best option for them because we’re the only option so powerfully focused on what they need most.

What they value most.

We can try to do everything for everyone, and we can spend millions on advertising it all.

Or we can save our money and spend our energy instead: On focusing what we do, and who we do it for.

So that those ideal customers tell others, and they tell even more.

Over and over, until we’re famous among the people we want to work with.

Because we focused.

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