Join a gym they said, get a great physique, get muscles. They didn’t say how long it would take.

This article first appeared on the Digital Leadership Associates blog HERE

If only life was that simple – we could turn up at the gym, walk around a bit, go home and then admire ourselves in the mirror. Getting in shape at the gym takes time and effort. A 45g bar of milk chocolate will take a man 21 minutes to ‘run off’ and a woman 28. That’s a proper run at a decent pace.

Eight months ago, I started Yoga, I’d tried Pilates before but Yoga, in my local gyms, is dominated by women – it’s a tough environment for a man to break into! I’m no weakling but boy! I struggled. A down dog left my arms and shoulders aching, my plank left a lot to be desired and as for a Chaturanga – it was embarrassing.

Now, when my diary permits, first thing every day I attend Yoga or Pilates – I persevered and although I still have stupidly tight hamstrings and a back that refuses to rotate, I hold my own. Some mornings, I wake up and think it would be so much easier to stay in bed another half hour, forget going to the gym and just log

 on to start my day. No one would care, the Yoga class wouldn’t say ‘Oh no, Phil’s not here, we can’t do this without him, lets all go home’. And then when I next turn up everyone doesn’t rush up to me asking where I was and if I’m OK. Life isn’t like that.

I think we can all agree that to get any benefit from an activity you have to put in the work – unless, here comes the but, you just want to stay as you are. My Mother doesn’t read my posts so I can share a story – for many years she will admit she was overweight but had a growing list of reasons why she was unable change. Then, her first grandson announced he was getting married – come the ceremony, there was my slim mother in her new outfit. She just needed a good reason to make the change.

My reason for Yoga? For me, getting older was no longer an excuse for not looking after myself – I wanted to feel better. I’m in the best shape I’ve been in for years (OK, a couple of decades). I no longer drink, but I’ll save that for another blog.

Sales Navigator/LinkedIn and social selling only come into their own when you put in the effort. If I only went to one Yoga class a week, I would most probably be in the same shape I was in eight months ago. Very early on, I was aware of the results I could achieve if I put a bit more work in. Now my average weekly activity bar is set high. You need to raise your Sales Navigator and LinkedIn ‘bar’ to get the social selling penny dropping for you. It’s all very simple but it’s not easy, just like my early morning classes.

Maybe you are waiting for your very own ‘grandsons wedding’ moment – a reason to act before it’s too late. Maybe it could be a new CEO, CMO or Sales VP joining your company and demanding that employees hit a high average level of activity and performance on Sales Navigator and LinkedIn. Or maybe – prepare yourself – you stop making excuses and get on with it. Not being active on social isn’t a calculated business choice it’s downright lazy.

Sales Navigator and LinkedIn are where the clever people go to prospect. It’s not picking up a telephone and wasting hours trying to make your 70 calls a day. I’ll go as far as saying that anyone that says cold calling is better than social is saying it because they haven’t bothered to try or just find it easier to keep reeling out limp excuses as to why it won’t work for them.

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