My grandmother used to tell us "Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves". Of course, she was referring to being mindful of finances. I want to take it a step further.
The reason this advice is so sound is that it encourages the recipient to focus on the activity, not the outcome.
I used to work with sales teams on what we called revenue generation programmes. These programmes would last two to three months. The goal was to work with teams to help them get new clients.
I rarely spoke about progress to the revenue target. I would only speak about revenue targets at the start of the project, and in management meetings.
What I would speak about relentlessly were activity targets.
If saving pennies takes care of pounds, having meetings and making calls takes care of sales. So I always wanted my teams to focus exclusively on those activities day to day. Because if you do enough activity, the results have to follow.
The one simple activity
This focus on activity can go further still though. It isn't just for sales. It is for everything.
And here is the activity.
The activity that, if you focus on that, the rest will take care of itself.
Show up.
That's it.
Taking the first step
By showing up, day in, day out, you will get to where you want to go. Because in doing so you are taking the first step on a longer journey. That journey cannot begin until you take that first step.
I'm not even talking about physically, on location. What I mean by showing up can be as simple as getting up when you intended to, and not snoozing for another 30 minutes.
It means sitting at the desk and starting to work when you don't feel like it.
It means showing up to that video meeting you considered to be a waste of time.
It means putting your first article out there when you're scared to do so.
It means speaking up in a room full of strangers.
Showing up every day is how you make progress happen.
Sounds too simple?
The ultimate control
Wayne Gretzky has famously said, "You miss one hundred percent of the shots you never take".
This is why showing up is so key - it is you, taking a shot. In sales, anyone who claims to have a 100% success rate is probably stretching the truth. The same is true in business, and in life. Much as we might like to believe it, we are imperfect (for more on that, click here).
We do not succeed all of the time, and very often, a failure is not our fault, or our doing. The causes of things not going our way are beyond our control.
But showing up is.
Our ability to decide to show up (or not) is the ultimate control. We may make up reasons or excuses. But whether we show up for the commitments we have in our life is ultimately up to us.
Some of the best things in my life came from showing up without any great expectation of what could come from them. Some of the biggest challenges in my life came from showing up to things of which I had very high expectations.
Marathon, not sprint
To make this work though, you do have to show up consistently. It is a numbers game.
Showing up once does not guarantee a result. But not showing up at all does guarantee a failure.
Consistently showing up means that, sooner or later, something will happen. It has to. The law of averages says that if you are in the game long enough, and enough times, opportunities start to happen.
So, what is something you've been meaning to show up for?