I’ve had a couple of days of real self-reflection, and I wanted to highlight something that I mentioned last week because it’s such a powerful concept.
I shot a Facebook live video last week about the incredible effects of compounding, and what “skipping a day” means to the end result. If you missed it, you can watch it here.
So anyway, I’m a speaker at a live SFM event in London this weekend, and I’m doing a talk about how to achieve quick success in entrepreneurship in the digital space when you’re starting from scratch.
What I was really surprised about (And this was the whole reason I was self-reflecting) is how totally calm I am about the whole thing.
This does relate to you as well by the way, so bear with me here…
It’s my first big speaking event and I’ve got a 30 minute slot. 6 months ago, I was literally just starting out in this space. I had no clue what I was doing, in fact I was even terrified of the idea of showing my face on a live webinar in case I looked stupid!
6 months later, I’m about to talk on stage in front of hundreds of people that want to learn from me and I’m not even scared. How?
The answer, is this radical concept of compounding. Taking small, consistent actions that push us outside of our comfort zones every day.
Each action on it’s own is fairly insignificant. One action might be learning how to create an email list. Another might be joining a webinar and asking a question live. Another might be offering to share something that you learnt with someone else who’s starting out with you.
But when you combine these small, insignificant actions day by day, suddenly a few months have rolled past and you realize that you’re absolutely MILES ahead of where you started out.
But how do we do it?
The first secret is action, and the second secret is consistency. If you’re willing to take just a very small first step today, then tomorrow, then the next day, and so on… There’s literally nothing that you can’t achieve. The tallest mountains are climbed one step at a time.
It’s so easy to completely talk ourselves out of even starting because we think the end result is so far away, so “what’s the point in even bothering”. We procrastinate, we put it off, we say we’ll start “someday”, but of course “someday” never comes.
We have to take one small action right now, to start the ball rolling. Then tomorrow, then the next day, and so on. Momentum starts to build very quickly, believe me.
If someone had said to me 6 months ago that I’d be speaking on stage in London in 6 months, I’d have probably died of fear.
That would have seemed so ridiculously far-fetched to me, it would have been really easy to not even bother starting. I could have just given up before I even began.
But I haven’t done anything monumental, I haven’t gone through some sort of crazy metamorphosis and emerged as a “titan of public speaking”… I’ve literally just taken small actions every day to push myself a little outside of my comfort zone.
The way I see it, is that the time’s going to pass anyway. So we might as well use it to do things that will get us closer to where we want to get to.
Speak to you soon, have a good week.
Dan
Dan Holloway - Founder of Scrap the 9 to 5 Ltd
SFM Elite & DEA Black Member of the SFM/DEA
