I had a talk with a friend today.
It was one of those talks where the person goes, “Scrivs, you truly are an asshole. You could’ve said that better.”
And I never disagree with that, but I’d rather deliver what I need to say before it slips my mind.
But this conversation got me thinking about something and I’m not sure I ever realized this before. When working on your business you set certain goals. It’s only natural.
- I want to make $100
- I want to quit my job
- I want 20,000 followers
And along the way, we achieve some of those goals, but there is a big problem. And it doesn’t affect everyone, just some people.
Let me figure out how to explain this. Let’s try a running analogy.
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You decide that you’re going to start running and you want to be able to run a 6-minute mile. Your current time is 15 minutes so you have a long way to go.
So every day you show up and you run. It’s not always fun but you do it.
Eventually, you get the time down to 12 minutes. Amazing!
So you keep on running.
After a while, you check your time and the best you can get to is 11:30. That’s not much better than the 12 minutes.
This doesn’t make sense. You’ve been running consistently. You’ve been showing up. And yet your time isn’t dropping.
The problem is quite simple.
What helped you get to 12 minutes isn’t going to be what helps you get to 9 minutes. You need to run faster which is going to tire you out.
So running faster actually makes you slower for a bit, but eventually, you break through the wall and your time drops again.
But then you get stuck at 9 minutes. Running harder isn’t working because you can only run so hard so what do you need to do?
Someone points out that your running form could be improved so you switch it. For a tiny bit, your times are slower as you get used to your new running form, but once you get it you’re able to run harder and drop your time.
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It’s very easy for us to fall into the thinking that once we achieve some milestone or goal we just have to keep doing EXACTLY the same things we’ve been doing. And sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t.
But the worse thing we can do is to continue to think that if we just keep running it will work out. Sometimes we need to run harder.
Metaphorically this could mean anything:
- Learn how to create better content
- Increase the price of your offers
- Expand to another platform
- Work on networking
But something new has to be introduced or something current has to level up.
And that’s the talk I had with my friend.
What got you here was good enough to get you here but it’s not going to be good enough to get you there.
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The question we need to ask ourselves is if we are stuck in a phase where we think that running at the same pace, in the same way, is going to continue to drop our times. I fall into this trap more than others because I can easily justify why what I’m doing now just requires some patience.
But at some point, I need to step back and be honest. Am I just running at the same pace and expecting different results?
