I’m a huge football fan, especially college football (like many in the South), but I love the NFL too. As a Vols fan, I recently wrote an article about how much I hate Nick Saban…although I respect him greatly for his success and approach. Another guy I really like is Dabo Swinney, who just beat Saban and his Alabama team in the college football championship.  Swinney is enjoying tremendous success, but seems to take a more joyous approach in his coaching. I noticed at halftime of the championship game this week, Swinney said something like the following:

“Ain’t nothin’ less important than the score at halftime.”

Very wise. That saying goes not just for football but life in general. I can relate to this idea looking back on the mistakes I have made in my own life, both professionally as well as personally. I wrote an article a few months back detailing mistakes I made with Work Media a few years back. I won’t go into the details again (you can read the article here) but long story short: when Work Media was beginning to be successful (halftime), I began to get very distracted. Rather than continuing to focus on what had gotten us to that point, my mind started wandering as I thought about all these other businesses I wanted to start and things I wanted to do – everything except what I should have been focused on, which was to keep growing our main business.

I put way too much importance on that halftime score rather than making sure that we had the winning score at the end of the game. I hope you are not making the same mistake.

Focus on one thing. “One” is the key to success. I say that is I am again working in multiple businesses. The difference this time is that I am not forgetting where I make my money, which is providing Internet marketing services to help small businesses be more successful. That concept marries nicely to my other business ventures. So even if I am working on a business that hasn’t yet generated much income, I am still doing what I do – Internet marketing. My first time around I was way more scattered than that, venturing into space where I had no business going.

So that is the lesson today. Don’t worry about the halftime score. If you have not been successful, ignore the score and focus on one play at a time. If you have been successful…same thing. Pretend that the score is zero to zero, keep your head down and keep working.

As for when the game is over, sometimes in life it is not as easy to know as it is in an actual football game when the clock winds down. Maybe it’s when you sell your business. Maybe it’s when you have enough money to retire. That’s something you have to decide for yourself. But if you feel like the game’s not over, then it’s not over.

Ain’t nothin’ less important than the score at halftime.