We’ve all heard the story of the tortoise and the hair. The message: slow and steady wins the race. And in a lot of ways, it’s excellent advice.
However, most people take the role of the hare and go all out guns blazing only to fizzle out shortly thereafter.
Maybe you’ve done it too. Perhaps you’ve gone to a seminar and come back with a big list of changes you’re going to make to improve your business.
Maybe you’ve stuck to them for a week or two but slowly but surely, those changes didn’t stick and you and your employees all went back to the way things, mainting the status quo.
The reason is due to the fact that making big changes is very uncomfortable for most people and we tend to want to return to what we knew. So we end up sabotaging ourselves and returning to what we’re comfortable with.
To make big, lasting changes, the real trick is to make small ones.
Let me explain.
Let’s say your goal is to increase the profits of your business (isn’t that what we’re all aiming for?)
If you could make a 1% improvement in your business’s bottom line profits each day – just 1% will make your business grow by a factor of 37 in a year – that’s right 37x more than it makes right now.
For those who want to see the math, here’s how it works (if you’ve every done compounding interest, it’s the same).
1*(1+1%)^365=37.78
Making a 1% improvement is doable, right? If your website was getting 100 visitors a day, then all you need to do is get one more.
You can try increasing your website by 1%, can’t you?
Maybe you want to increase the conversion rate of your website. Instead of converting 1 in 100, see if you can convert 1.01 in 100 people.
Can you make yourself 1% more productive?
These small changes will add up over time in a big way. Instead of looking for the big and scary changes, look for the small and easy improvements to make.
You’re probably more likely to get your employees on board with this too as you’re not asking too much of them or overwhelming them with what sound like “unreasonable” demands. Just ask them to come up with one small thing that would help them do their job just a little better.
Success in business and in your personal life really can be just a small change away because once you make one small improvement; it’s easy to make another one. You just need to remember to keep making them. Keep looking for little improvements you can make.
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