100% Committed: So Much Easier Than 99%

100% Committed To The Wrong Thing

I used to smoke. I was 100% committed. I spent years cutting down. I’d wait as long as I could for the first cigarette of the day and manage until about lunch time before grabbing my cigarette packet and heading outdoors to alleviate that ‘addict’s itch’. I was so committed to smoking that it was hard work, and I spent every morning of those days feeling like a martyr. I was suffering and so everyone else had to suffer too.

My girls’ used to get ready for school without a word, because it was so easy to end up on the wrong side of me. My friends and colleagues would put off asking me for things (like help!) until after that first puff. In short, I was miserable and it didn’t work anyway. Before long, I was back to lighting a ciggie with my first coffee of the day.

Now that I’m more than 5 years’ smoke-free, when I hear people telling me that they’re cutting down on cigarettes, I want to tell them to save themselves the angst. Cutting down is a con, it doesn’t work. It’s all in or nothing.

And here’s the thing; it’s the same with almost everything else too. The best way to achieve what you want is to go all in. 100% or nothing.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

Contacting Potential New Clients

Commit to contacting 3 potential new coaching clients a day. Whether you coach individuals or businesses, contact 3 new potentials every day. If you contact 3 new clients a day every single business day of the rest of 2018, you’ll have contacted 666 potential new clients by the time 2019 rolls around. Even if you take a month off, and so have just 202 business days in 2017, you’ll still have contacted more than 600 potential new clients this year.

Let’s think about that for a moment. If you contact 600 potential clients this year, even if only 10% of them buy from you, what difference would an increase of 60 clients make to your business?

Another thing to bear in mind is that whilst you may start off with a success rate of 1:10 in terms of turning a potential client into a paying one, you’ll get better at explaining what you do to these potentials; at selling your service. With all that practice, how could you not? By mid-way through 2018, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that 2:10 of the people you speak to become clients. Which moves us from around 60 new clients next year to 90.

What difference would 90 new clients make to your business?

100% In With Blogging and Social Media

I write a blog every week and I have done for more than 3 years now. I talked about blogging for ages before I started and when I did start, I waited for inspiration on a topic to talk about before I wrote anything. I could go for weeks without coming across any topic that I felt was worthy of reading. Then it occurred to me that because ALL of the topics in which I have expertise are of interest to you (dear reader!) I needed to stop intellectualising and just write!

The biggest change in my business came when I decided to blog every week. No exceptions. I usually write my blog on a Sunday evening, when the weekend hustle is done and I have a cup of tea and my thoughts to myself. My girls know not to disturb me for that hour on a Sunday evening. It’s our routine. It’s our habit.

If you decide that you’re going to write a blog, or release a video each day/week/month, or write a LinkedIn article, committing to do it is the hardest part. Once you have drawn that line in the sand, the rest is easy. It just becomes part of what you do. Rather like your morning routine, it is easy; a no-brainer. It becomes a habit.

Making Your Workload A Habit

If you use social media to increase your profile (because dear coach readers, it isn't where you'll find clients) and you keep meaning to post on your social media accounts daily, yet find yourself counting weeks between posting, try upping how many times you’re going to post. Spending 10 minutes with your coffee in the morning and scheduling all of your Facebook posts, or tweets (or whatever your poison is) for the day is easy. Berating yourself on a weekly basis for not doing what you said you were going to do is hard. All in is easier than mostly in. Make it a habit.

The same with contacting your three potential new clients. Just do it. Do it every single day. Pick up that phone and speak.

The thing about habits is that you do them without thinking. They stop being hard and just happen. Habits are 100% in.

As Jack Canfield, author of The Success Principles says '99% is a bitch, 100% is a breeze'