Thursday Thoughts for SMEs: Flex The Muscle. The power of repetition.

Atomic Habits is a great book by James Clear. In my opinion, one of the best bits of advice in it is the idea of habit stacking and incremental change. 

The book suggests that if you want to create major change, start by changing one thing and then add an additional change on top (the idea of stacking). 

A while back I wanted to “Embrace the mornings and their peace”. I knew that the hour between 5am and 6am was quiet in my house (3 young kids) and was a perfect time to set my day up. It happened to also be the hour before I head to the gym or the pool. I am a realist so when confronted with the choice between a 5am wakeup or extra sleep, I knew I would choose sleep. So taking James Clear’s advice I started to make incremental changes. The alarm moved 15 minutes earlier from 6am to 5.45am, I moved my gym gear from the bedroom to the lounge room and I packed the bags the night before. For a number of weeks I did this slowly, moving the alarm earlier and earlier. 

What I found was that by flexing the muscle, I leaned into the routine and it has become a real joy of my day. The stillness of the hour, the darkness and the quiet have become a real joy. I look forward to it. I am joined most mornings by one of my children who is an early riser and we sit together reading our respective books or even a book together. 

In operating a business we forget how transformative flexing the muscle and the power of repetition can be. Often we are confronted in our business with big challenges. Whether that is how to grow or people issues or financial challenges or supply chain or any other of the thousands of issues daily. We too often forget that the very task we do with our eyes closed now took us hundreds of hours to master. 

This is when we need to remember to flex the muscle and repeat. 

If you want to change something in your business, you need to flex that muscle and repeat. Just like being at the gym, or riding a bike or training for a competitive eating competition, we need to flex the muscle often enough so that it becomes second nature. 

If you want to create content - flex the muscle. If you want to get new clients or customers - you need to flex the muscle. If you want to grow your business - you need to flex the muscle. 

Running a business is not a static process. It is dynamic and ever changing with a myriad of different challenges. The more we can do subconsciously, the more brain space we have for the big challenges. This can only happen by flexing the muscle. 

I wanted to grow our @Work subscription client base. In order to do this we need to flex the muscle. We have implemented a BDM, ramped up the direct approach, hosted events, increased our referrer reach out, developed strategies for 2024 and hired key people to facilitate the growth. Whilst it doesn't happen overnight, like all things you train for the results are starting to come. 

In running a business we need to remember to flex the muscle because doing one thing a day towards a goal compounds very quickly over the course of a week, month and year. 

Flex the muscle. Embrace repetition. Eat the elephant, one bite at a time.