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BNI & The Power of One
BNI 843: Business Matters 128 - Just Be Consistent
00:17:05
In this week's Business Matters we discuss the importance of consistency and setting goals along the way
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- [00:25]
A
Welcome back to Business Matters, part of BNI Power of One. Tim Roberts with me, Michael Martin. How are we doing?
- [00:34]
B
Good morning.
- [00:35]
A
Are.
- [00:35]
B
Are we live from the cruise ship and.
- [00:37]
A
Yeah, right now, pre recording. Yeah, that'd be amazing. Imagine trying to line up that timeline and with like cruise ship wi fi. That'd be kind of crazy.
- [00:49]
B
Yeah.
- [00:50]
A
Yep. Yeah. As you're hearing this, I will be. I don't even know where I'll be. Probably in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or not in the middle, Sailing around Japan somewhere. Yeah, pretty excited about that. We talked about that in the last one. You know what I realized today? And I thought the interesting topic, we do all kinds of stuff on like goal setting and all that kind of stuff, but I realized today because I was looking at the podcast, I had just done a couple episodes for bni, the official BNI podcast, last week. So I don't. I think we talked about how I'm kind of like co hosting that a little bit from time to time. Yeah, I think I've done like four or five episodes for it now. Just recorded a couple more and it just got me thinking because I set that like, silly goal, if you will, to get the most episodes out of BNI podcasts and be the first one to hit a thousand episodes, which is, you know, it's like a self goal, doesn't mean anything. No metal at the end of the day. I talked to Ivan about it. He's like, oh yeah, you'll kill me. He doesn't know. Give two flying whatevers about it. But, you know. And so I was looking at it today, I was like, oh man, by the end of the year, if we stay consistent with it, which is always key, I think he's going to be right around 940 episodes and we should be right around 910ish episodes at the end of this year, which means we will pass him for the most episodes first quarter 2026, and we will hit a thousand episodes at some point, maybe second quarter or third quarter 2026, which means we'll accomplish that goal I set years ago, a couple years ago, about first to a thousand and all that kind of stuff. And even though I'm cheating for him, meaning I'm like helping him, I'm recording some of the podcasts and we've never done rebroadcast of any of our episodes, so there's always that part too. But anyways, I was thinking about how that is such a meaningless goal in the grand scheme of like, again, there's no prize there's no recognition, there's no nothing there. But it's not meaningless because that's the goal that has kept me. And you could argue not perfectly, but consistent in doing these was just that long term vision of like, okay, I want to be the first to a thousand. In order to be the first to a thousand, we got to do two to three episodes a week for two or three years to try to catch up because we were so far behind. And, and so just the importance of doing that, you know, we talk about all these, you know, goal setting and strategy session and everything else. I do believe the fundamental key to success in anything is consistency. Yeah, just keep doing it, you know, I mean, and you see it all the time. Whether it's in business or fitness or whatever. The ones who achieve it are the ones who like just keep doing it. Even when they don't want to.
- [03:53]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly, especially when you don't want to. And I, I think we've always stressed, you know, the consistency of, you know, reviewing your business, the consistency of setting proper goals and reassessing those, being consistent in those factors, but then also being consistent and taking action to, you know, go after those things. It, you're right, you have to be consistent. And you know, it's always like the, the things that end up providing the best rewards are usually the hardest things you're gonna do.
- [04:24]
A
Yeah.
- [04:24]
B
And it's easy to not do those things or do them inconsistently. And so you're, you know, you're right. If, if you can consistently engage those ABCs, you'll end up better for the effort than if you didn't do anything at all.
- [04:44]
A
Yeah. And it's also just, you know, sticking to the place. So BNI is a great example of this. Like the ones who have the most success in B9, when you look back, are the ones who have been putting in the time each weekend meetings one to ones each weekend meetings one to ones for a long period of time. Right. There was no, just like, get rich, I'm gonna try this for a year type of thing. Same thing with fitness, the people who go to the gym and in and out every day or whatever consistently through it.
- [05:10]
B
Yeah.
- [05:11]
A
And even in bni, in the business side of it, I've had a lot of people, you know, we've had really great success, if you will, the last few years. We've had tremendous growth in my regions and I have these people coming and talking and, you know, how are you doing and what are you doing here? And it's like I tell them it's like, guys, it's. It's all the same stuff I told you five years ago, six years ago, seven years ago, when I was national director. All the same. All I'm doing is what I told you guys we should be doing. We've just been doing it for this long. Like, you didn't. Maybe you didn't implement it eight years ago or last year or two years ago. Now you want to implement it because you're seeing the end result of. Yeah, but we've been doing this for three or four years, this method, you know, with certain things, and now we've got the pipeline, so it's going to be really hard for you to catch up. It was no secret. It was just we stuck to that and we didn't get distracted by, you know, the blinding. The shiny object syndrome, right? They're like, oh, squirrel. Kind of like, oh, let's try this and let's try that and let's try this. We, like, we just been consistent in our method and is paying the dividends with it. And I think that's just true across the board. And if you need to. I don't know, maybe. Maybe it helps people listen. Be like, set a. Set a goal that's not like a. That seems meaningless or stupid maybe, right? Set a goal of, like, I'm just gonna. Instead of setting a goal of I need to lose 10 pounds, set a goal of, can you go to the gym five days a week for five straight weeks or something like that that, you know, isn't necessarily, like, sim. I'm gonna get to a thousand episodes. Great. What happens there? I don't know. Nothing. Like, I just keep going.
- [06:49]
B
I just set one for myself yesterday, so I totally get it. And yesterday I was. I was down in my basement, and I'm looking at my beautiful, beautiful exercise bike that I've yet to get on, and I'm like, all right, dummy, you got to get on this thing. So I've committed to starting towards the end of this week of getting on it every day for 40 to 45 minutes.
- [07:21]
A
Okay.
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B
And the reason why I'm delaying it is because I'm. I've got obligations today, and then I'm actually heading out on a.
- [07:27]
A
On a.
- [07:28]
B
On a deep sea fishing charter tomorrow.
- [07:31]
A
Are you. That's cool. I want to do that. I haven't done that since I was like, 10 years old.
- [07:35]
B
I haven't done it forever.
- [07:37]
A
Where are you going? Out of.
- [07:38]
B
Out of Salisbury.
- [07:40]
A
Very cool. What kind of fish are you guys gonna. We're on a tangent now, but that's all right. You're listening.
- [07:43]
B
I think it's stripers. So my, my goal is to be consistently catching stripers tomorrow. But, but, you know, so I, I kind of set this thing like, you know, I got, I just got to do it. I got to stop looking at the damn thing and I got to just start doing it, you know, every morning, very consistently.
- [08:02]
A
Now, do you think there's a goal that you could set of like, instead of time, like miles and then just, you know, how fast?
- [08:09]
B
No, I'm gonna set time first because I think to like, it's just getting on the bike and making sure I start.
- [08:15]
A
Yeah.
- [08:16]
B
And I can get the miles when I start getting my legs back under me.
- [08:20]
A
Yep, yep.
- [08:21]
B
Yeah. And I think, you know, but that's my goal. Right. Get on, do the time and then, you know, because the nice thing about it is that 40, 45 minutes is basically I can listen to a couple of podcasts. So that's kind of my thing. It was like, just get to work.
- [08:37]
A
Your way up to I'm gonna bike for an entire Joe Rogan podcast or.
- [08:40]
B
Some, something like that. Some, like two or three hours marathon or something. I don't, I don't really know. Or, you know, an entire season of been binge watching something on Apple tv. I don't really know. But I want to just get on the bike and make sure I'm using it and strengthen up my legs. So that's kind of like first step. So it's interesting, but I have to be consistent. But I literally did this yesterday morning. I know we didn't even talk about it off air. I was like, you know, I gotta use this bike. I, I, you know, spent the money on it. It's just been sitting here and, you know, it looks so beautiful. It's brand new. Literally, get on it.
- [09:16]
A
Yeah, I don't know. I just, I was like, When I look back, I was like, I don't think I would have done as many ep, I promise you. I know that there's no way. So as we said, when you're hearing this, I'm on a cruise. I've pre recorded like two weeks out to make sure that the episodes were consistent because when I didn't. And that's happened, it still happens. It's happened this year. People know when I was traveling before, I was like, listen, we've been inconsistent with the blog. It actually like eats at me a little bit now where it's like, yeah, you know, I don't make money off this. You and I don't make. There's no advertising, there's no dollars, there's no nothing. There's no obligation to do it at all. Like, we could stop tomorrow and just be like, oh, well, too bad. Yeah, but we don't. And I don't. And a huge part of it has just been this, like, I'm going to play a game to be the first to a thousand. And I'm not doing it where like again, like, oh, Well, I have 840something episodes. Let's just take 200 of them. Rebroadcast. I'm like, no, I don't want to do it that way. I want to do a thousand unique original episodes. Yes. Episodes. And that has been enough to drive me to, you know, get here the day before I go on this crazy vacation with my family and pre record four or five episodes because I want them to be out, to be like on pace to catch that kind of thing. And I think if, you know, in business there's ways you can look at stuff like that, fitness, there's ways you can look at stuff like that. And it just is a matter of like, the ones who really achieve anything are the ones who just stick to it. Yeah.
- [10:47]
B
And I, and I think it's, it's, you know, it's a lot of people use the gym example because you're training your body, but what you've really done first is if you be consistent with it, you've trained, you've, you've trained your mind.
- [10:58]
A
Yeah.
- [10:59]
B
That it's okay to be consistent with it. You've trained your mind to act in a, in a more disciplined manner. And I think, you know, in business it's, it's kind of the same thing. And listen, we're not talking about it because, you know, we never have these problems. We have these problems all the time. And, and you know, I'm always addressing it, the consistency, because my mind starts to wander, you know, and I have all the great ideas and I want to do this and I want to do that and my mind kind of wanders and I didn't follow through. You know, it wasn't consistent in the application of it. And yesterday I got into something besides the bike and I was just feeling this mood of I'm going to start knocking things out like that are on my to do list. And I just started going, going and I took everything down the road. And I think in your business, if you can get yourself to be in a position where I'm going to consistently, every day do at least one thing to make the business move forward.
- [11:53]
A
Yep.
- [11:54]
B
That's above and beyond like the normal routine of the business operations. I'm going to do something to make go forward. If you do that, you will also end up mentoring and inspiring your team to always be in this mindset of consistently doing something every day to move the business forward. It doesn't have to be big things. They can be little things.
- [12:14]
A
What is the 1%? What's the. If you do 1% a day, what's the actual return at the end of the year? Do you remember? I forget what it like.
- [12:27]
B
Kind of like calculating compound interest.
- [12:29]
A
Right. Like if you do 1% a day better or more at the end of the year, it's not 100%, it's like 300 and something percent.
- [12:38]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [12:39]
A
Because it compounds up.
- [12:41]
B
It's a huge amount. That's the power of compound interest. So interest in your time, it's not just about money.
- [12:47]
A
Right.
- [12:47]
B
It's interest in your time and investment in what you're doing. And so it is if you can just do one small thing, you know, those small things add up real fast if you can consistently do them. And we, you know, we've always talked about it. Like, I remember early on in this podcast, we were talking about getting into a routine.
- [13:04]
A
Yep. Right.
- [13:05]
B
You're a business owner, so you gotta sleep, you gotta eat, you gotta have time to like, pay the bills, do your paperwork, do your invoicing. I mean, that was a big one we talked about. People don't, especially in small businesses, tend not to invoice right away.
- [13:18]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [13:19]
B
And then, you know, if things get kind of past and be behind and, you know, but if you can get yourself into a routine, like write down a time schedule and then stick to it and be consistent with it, you'll find that all that stuff tends to get easier.
- [13:33]
A
I mean, even use, like, I do all the bookkeeping for our, our businesses. And because I do it every day, I never have an issue. And then I talk to friends who like, try to do it once a month or once a quarter or it's become such a nightmare and they're like, I can't do all this. I gotta hire somebody. It's like, you really don't. I mean, you should, if you're not capable of doing it, don't want to do it, don't have the skill set for whatever, hire somebody who will do it every day for you because it's just way better. But yeah, even that, just like simple little things. Like, it takes me a little bit of time each day versus hours at a time at the end of the month, or crazy hours at the end of a quarter or at the end, worse. I see people do it like the tax time, and it's like, oh, I don't know how you're functioning right now.
- [14:17]
B
Yeah, they do it at tax time and they're. And they're just spending days and weeks trying to things out. And if they had just been keeping up with it all along, it would have been a whole lot less time, more efficient, and they would have been able to spend that extra time on other things that either are important to the business or important to their personal life. And. Yeah, but that's. Consistency is key.
- [14:37]
A
Yeah. And just in time. It's just the investment of time. I look back now and it's like, I look at it in two ways. One is, I think this episode is like 843. 844. Somewhere around there. That's quite a bit of like, yeah. Podcasts. But there were years gaps where we didn't do anything. Like, when I was the national director, I literally went three years without recording.
- [15:01]
B
Yeah.
- [15:01]
A
And, yeah. Times when we were doing one a week, and even that one a week was super inconsistent. And so you could go back and be like, man, if I had just been doing this the whole time, we would have a couple thousand episodes.
- [15:14]
B
Yeah.
- [15:15]
A
So you could look at it that way and been like, oh, the what if? But now it's also. Yeah. I don't know. I just found it interesting. I was like, this goal that nobody literally. There's not a single person besides me that gives two shits about this goal. It does not matter to anybody. And like, at the end of the day, there's no celebration. There's no medal, there's no. Nothing that just. Just keeps going. But if I didn't have that, we would not be at 8:44.
- [15:41]
B
Right.
- [15:41]
A
I know. I know that for a fact. And so. I don't know, I just thought it was like, hey, you know, think about where you need to be on certain things, wherever it is, personal life, fitness, business, whatever. And can those little things set a meaningless goal that only matters to you and use it and as a motivation.
- [15:58]
B
Have a goal and have consistent action to go after it.
- [16:01]
A
Right. Yeah, but even, like, have a goal of activity. Right. Because I think most people said he's like, all right, I want to, you know, whatever, make a million bucks or the business needs to do this. But, like, what's the activity that will drive it and have some kind of.
- [16:12]
B
What are you gonna do?
- [16:13]
A
Yeah, how many one to ones can you do? You know, I mean a week. And just be consistent at it. Your results will be far better than what you may be seeing now. So. All right, my man. I thought it was interesting. Hopefully it was for you. We love feedback. Go to bnipowerone.com, leave comments, leave topics, leave questions, those kind of things that you want us to discuss. We definitely will do that. And leave us a review. Apple podcast, Spotify, however you're finding it.
- [16:40]
B
Mike, we'll see you when you get back from your Asian vacation.
- [16:43]
A
See you then, bud.