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Most people think success is about big leaps, but what if I told you that improving by just 1% every day could make you 37 times more better in a year? That's something we're going to be talking about today on the Call Her Creator podcast, powered by Stan. I'm your host, Kaitlyn Rhodes, and I'm so glad that you guys are here and that you're listening today. If this is your first time, I'd love for you to download this podcast. Leave me a review on Spotify or Apple, but I've got some really good stuff for us to talk about today. And typically I'm here giving you guys business advice specifically on like sales and email marketing and Instagram growth. But I personally have been struggling lately with feeling like, sorry for myself, I guess I don't know if that's even the word, but I had this life changing moment about two weeks ago, just about micro wins and how we don't always have to be running for that finish line, but more so enjoying where we're at right now and making these small wins so that they build up to the big wins. And so today I'm going to help you guys understand that too. I hope that I can inspire someone with this story. I'm going to get really vulnerable with you guys. Some of this stuff I probably shouldn't even share with y'all, but I'm going to do it anyways because that's how we grow and I feel like I've grown a lot in these past two weeks when with what I've learned. So I can't wait to share this information with you guys. So let's just get into it. Okay? So it's super cliche to say, but success isn't built overnight, right? It's a game of consistency, it's small improvements and it's the long term vision. What I'm going to walk you guys through today, not only is my story, which I hope encourages you, but I also feel like, especially if this isn't your first rodeo, like you've probably been where I've been and you might even be like, hey, I've got some really good feedback for her. Send me a DM if you have some after you're listening to all of this. But what I'm going to do is tell you guys about this 1% rule and hopefully change your own mindset. And again, for those of you it's not your first rodeo, hopefully I can change your mindset too with what I'm about to share with y'all. This is backed by science and it's, it's inspiring, but it's also just like, wow. Movement. Whenever I talk about this stuff, you're going to be like, oh, my God, she's right. Why haven't I looked at it this way? So, just a little backstory. January was a little bit quiet for me. My social media agency, typically we are so busy, we're drowning, but we lost a client and then leads were just super silent in January. I. I don't know about y'all, which most of y'all will agree with me, but if, like, one thing goes wrong in your business, you completely spiral and you're thinking like, oh, my God, I'm burning it to the ground. We're dissolving everything. This is the end. Doom, doom, doom. So that's exactly where I've been the last two weeks. But don't worry, things have changed around for me. We actually, this week, we have so many sales calls that me and Darby don't know what to do with ourselves. Knock on wood. That it stays that way. And I'm so very grateful, but I had to change my mindset for this all to happen. So we'll talk about that in a little bit. But let me, let me start by. Before I talk about the 1% rule, we're going to talk about a couple of things. We're going to talk about the 1% rule, how to apply it to your life, how you should play the long game. And then we're even going to talk about, like, there's this. It's not secret, but I was listening to a podcast this morning and she talks about how it. Usually she. She was basically saying she wants you to look at things like, as your 10 year plan instead of, you know, most of us are like, what? Where do you see yourself in a year? Where you see yourself in three years? She's more. So where do you see yourself in 10 years? And I was like, oh, my gosh, you're right. Ten years, it really does take that long. And if I think about it with you guys, I started social marketing queen 10 years ago. It's. It'll be 11 years this March. So almost 11. But 10 years ago, I started all of this, guys. Like, some people will look at my Instagram account and think, like, oh, she went viral and got so successful in like a year or two. No, this took years in the making. I started off with Social Marketing Queen on Instagram in 2014. I was posting random things on my Instagram account. I think I had, like, 800 followers. That wasn't really moving the needle for me. And then I started blogging. I had a blog in 2014, it was a marketing blog. And then I had my first baby. And then the mother, mother was born, which was my mommy blog, where I talked about like attachment parenting and breastfeeding and all that good stuff. But when I meet people now, they think that I just had this quick success and I'm like, no, I didn't. I started a long time ago doing all of this stuff. I can't teach you in one day what I know because it's taken me over 10 years to learn all of this. I've got really under my belt. I'm over 15 years in the business, in the social media world, but starting my own thing, being that entrepreneur, that all started 11 years ago. So I just want you guys to know that it, it doesn't happen overnight, it takes years. So what you need to do is instead of, you know, waiting to hit that 10 year mark and that 10 year finish line, you have to do little things now and celebrate those little things now because they will snowball into that. So the way to do all of that is called the power of the 1% rule. The 1% rule is a simple but powerful principle. And it goes like this. If you improve by just 1% every day, you'll be 37 times better in a year. 37 times better. Now y'all probably like, what's the math on that? Because at first I was like, how does that equal 37, 37 times? So I asked ChatGPT to do the math for me on that. And basically it's if you start at one and you improve 1% daily, you multiply your progress by 1.01 each day. So over 365 days, that's 37.78. So that's, that's how you're 37 times better. But get this, if you decline by 1% daily 0.99 times 365, you end up at just 0.03, which, which is essentially zero progress. So you don't wanna go backwards, you only wanna go forward, right? So small improvements, small wins, those are what are going to lead to that massive transformation for all of us. Small declines lead to stagnation failure, but those small improvements will lead to massive transformations. So just to kind of put that 1% rule in action and give you guys some real life examples, I wrote some down for you. So there's a couple we're gonna go through first, if you're like fitness and health and you want to improve 1%. If you were to do one extra pushup per day, by the end of the year, you could be doing 365 more pushups than you ever imagined. If you cut just 100 calories a day over time, that would lead to significant weight loss without drastic diets. So again, little small micro wins, maybe business and social media growth you're trying to improve there. Posting one more valuable piece of content per week results in 52. Two new opportunities to grow your audience over a year. 52. Just posting once a week, engaging. With just five extra people per day on Instagram, that would add up to 1,825 new connections every year. Again, these small things are equaling out these huge transformations. Skill building, personal development. Maybe you read just 10 pages a day. That means that you could finish a 300 page book every single month. That's 12 books each year. That's my personal goal. I am a super duper bookworm. Love it. Self help, please. I actually just got the book the five Types of Wealth and it's already changing my life. I'm only on chapter two, but it's, it's more so focused on. It's not just about money that makes you happy. That's not what makes your life wealthy. It's other things like time with family and, and your health and all this stuff. So check that book out if you haven't. So amazing. But I myself, I would love to start reading 12 books a year. Think about how smart I will be next year if I do all of that. So it's just little things like that have huge, huge, huge improvements. Also, if you wanted to be a book writer, I even calculated if you were, if you were to write one paragraph per day, you could have a full book done by the end of the year. So if that does not inspire you, I don't know what will. Now, the power of these small daily actions. The most, most people aim for huge overnight success. Overnight changes, people going viral. And it's, it's sad but I mean it can happen. It's happened to a lot of people. And those people are very, very lucky. But they're the minority. They're not. It's not normal. It's not normal for people to go viral overnight and then be millionaires. And I feel like living in social media sometimes I feel like that's what I should be doing. But at the end of the day, like again, that's minority. That's a small percentage of people that, that's going to happen to you gotta be super duper lucky for that to happen. And I don't exactly want to just be lucky, I want to work for it. So most people aim for that huge overnight change, but big success comes from those small consistent efforts. And I put those small consistent efforts in every single day. Guys, I am posting to Instagram, I'm doing cold email outreach to businesses. I'm over on LinkedIn, I'm writing blogs on Influence Marketing Studio. I'm doing market research to see what kind of offers I could be offering. Like, I do the little things every single day. There's not one day that goes by that I'm not doing something for this business. I try my best to take off on the weekends, but I'm still posting on the weekends. Not very healthy what I do. So don't take what I do and make it yours. I tend to find self worth and success in my achievement. So that's something I'm going to work on. But it is true though, is what I'm getting at is that these small little things that I'm doing, they will help me over time. Just like me starting that Instagram 10 years ago. Look where I am now. I'm social media coach that teaches about Instagram. So those little things have helped me. Most people give up too soon because they don't see immediate results. And that's why so many people on Instagram, you know, they give up because they're not going viral or they're not growing their followers fast enough. But successful people trust the process and they stay consistent. And if this was your sign, if you needed to hear this today, let me say this one more time. Most people give up way too soon because they don't see immediate results. Successful people trust the process and they stay consistent. Think of success as like this rolling snowball, right? So at first it's small, but as you keep pushing, it grows bigger and faster until it just becomes unstoppable. And that could be you if you just put in the work. So how to apply this 1% rule to your life? There's three, four things I'm going to tell you to do. So first is you're going to pick one area of your life to improve. If you try to do this to all areas of your life, it could be hard not saying that it can't be done because you know, I'm over here thinking like, how can I improve my business? But then there's other ideas in here like health and mindset. Like there's you could probably pick two or three if you wanted, if you're overachiever. But let's just say for now, your homework today is just to pick one. Decide if you want to improve your business, improve your health, improve your mindset, improve your skills, whatever it is, okay? Like, make a mental note right now. Pull out your phone's app, pull out the notes on your phone. Write down that area that you want to improve. Number two is you're going to commit to a tiny, manageable daily improvement. For that. Okay, so an example of this, say you want to improve your health. An example of this could be drinking an extra glass of water a day. Not hard. It's just something you have to remember to do and stay consistent with. Maybe you want to increase engagement on Instagram. So you're gonna start engaging with three more people every day, every week. Just you decide. I want you guys to try to do it per day if you really wanna see good improvement. But if you can only handle a week, that's fine. You're still improving. Maybe you wanna write a book. So you're gonna write a hundred words every day. Number three, you're gonna track your progress to stay motivated. And this is where you can get a habit tracker. There's apps out there for that. Or you can get a handy dandy journal. I just got a journal from Walmart the other day, and I've been writing down my own micro wins every day so that I can look back in a year and say, wow, look at all of this you accomplished, Caitlin. Cause sometimes, you know, when we aim for those big goals and we don't reach them, we think we just failed. But if you look at it, you didn't fail. You look at the other things you accomplished. For me, like last year, I was able to hire on a new employee. That's a huge accomplishment for me. One of my main goals was, like, you know, grow 500,000 followers. I didn't hit that. But if I look back at the other things I grew my team, I launched my podcast last year. My email subscribers grew by the thousands. Like, there's little things that, if I look back, I can be so proud of myself for, but I just forget to celebrate those little wins. So now I've got a journal. I'm going to start writing in it daily. And then after the end of the month, I'll put like, a summary of what I did that month so that at the end of the year, I can almost have, like a party celebration for myself celebrating these little small micro wins. That I had. The best part about all of this is that you're playing the long game. So most people won't stick with anything long enough to see compounding results. But if you stay consistent with all this, you could be miles ahead of the competition in just a year. Imagine five years. Imagine 10 years. You're going to be so far ahead it's not even funny. But you have to be able to put in the work. Speaking of years, you know, we're talking about getting ahead in a few years, the 10 year mark. So the way that the 10 year mark is broken up, there's a myth of instant success, why most things don't take off until year three. Okay, so what that means is most people think that you're going to have instant success in the first year, but it actually takes three years for you to even start seeing results, which is crazy. So there's seasons, right, of a successful business or career. So year one through three is the foundation building, struggles, trial and error. I can tell you I'm right there right now, like, since I started Influence Marketing Studio, I'm on. This will be year four for me for Influence Marketing Studio. I've gotten through the struggles, the trial and error. Now I'm in year four, which is the next season, year four or five, which is growth and momentum, which I would say I'm on the cusp. I don't have that momentum that I want, but I am growing year every year. Like my husband reminds me, he looks at my finances year by year with the agency and he's like, you're growing. Like most startups don't have the growth that you have. I just, I'm so hard on myself and I set the bar so high that it's hard for me to understand that it's worth celebrating what I've grown so far. So year one through three, foundation building struggles, trial, error, year four through five, growth and momentum. Then there's year six through 10, and that's where it's mastery and scaling your business. So quitting too soon is really honestly the biggest mistake you could make. You've got. I want y'all to write this down, really, years one through 10, you've got 10 years that you need to be able to put into this business that you want to build. Before you ever come at me and say, oh, I start a new business and it failed, like, okay, well how long, how long did you try to do it? We have to remember that small wins lead to big successes. Success isn't about that finish line. It's about winning the day. Okay. It's about doing things today that your future self will thank you for. I know that sounds so cliche, but all the signs on the wall right now, for me, it's all I've been hearing this past week, is just micro wins. Keep going. Win the day. Celebrate the little things. Some of my simple wins that I've had, my micro wins is what I'm calling them. I looked back at my journal for last week. One of them, they're small. They're small wins, but they're big in the big grand scheme of things. So the first one was, I got to have a slow morning with my daughter. I got to take her to the local coffee shop, get her a chocolate muffin for breakfast. I got to have coffee. We got to look at the local Heartland magazine where there was an ad for my agency in there. She saw me in that ad, and her eyes lit up like I was the coolest mom in the entire world. And that was a huge win for me. It was a micro win, but in my heart, it was a huge win. Like, five years ago, I was working a 9 to 5. I couldn't have taken her to the coffee shop and sat down with her like that. I wouldn't have been in Heartland magazine with my team. She wouldn't have seen me and thought I was cool. So that was a huge one for me, but that was one of my micro wins. And then Friday, I got to participate in a career fair for my local community college in Okeechobee. And they're like, not only did I get to meet potential clients that I could possibly work with in the future, but I also just got to inspire young minds. There was fifth graders, ninth graders, tenth graders, eighth graders. And I got to talk to them about social media, and I got to remind them, like, hey, whatever's happening to you right now in your life, you can make a better life for yourself in the future if you want. You are in charge of your future. And it felt so good and empowering to be able to pour into these young minds. So that was another one for me. And then lastly, someone mentioned me in an Instagram story, someone that they find inspiring and that you should follow on Instagram. And that was huge to me. Little things like that fill up my cup. So those were my three micro wins. Now, listen, some of those micro wins are big wins in the scheme of things, but if your micro win is that you got out of bed today and you posted something, that's huge, don't Feel like you have to have these crazy wins of someone posting you on their stories. That that doesn't have to be your win. Your win can be little things. You might go on a walk today and you don't ever work out. So huge. I went walking this morning. I work out maybe twice a week and when I say workout I go to pilates or yoga. So those were again big wins for me. But they were a part of my micro wins for my journal. So you have to think about those little things. Those daily small wins are what are going to help you make that giant leap at the end of the day. So the problem with only focusing on big goals is one, they feel overwhelming, which then leads to procrastination. You can't control exactly when success will happen and then if you don't see your results fast enough, you feel discouraged. So that's where the power of small wins comes in and that's where you can create momentum and make you feel accomplished. You can rewire your brain to seek progress instead of perfection. Plus they compound over time into massive results. If this hasn't motivated you by now, I don't know what will because I'm already over here feeling empowered again just by talking about all of this out loud. All right, so some examples of small wins that can create big success. Growing your business. Posting once today, you're helping build brand awareness. Engaging with a potential client today that's a possible future sale. Sending an email today that is strengthening your audience trust, personal growth, Maybe you wrote one paragraph today. Guess what? You're gonna have a book in a year. Maybe you did one five minute workout today. Guess what? Your body is going to be so much stronger in a year. One act of kindness today, better relationships and mental well being for you and whoever that person was be present in this process. Guys, most people only show up when things are exciting and that can't be how it be. That can't be how it be. That can't be what happens. The the true success comes from showing up in the boring and the hard in the slow seasons too. Don't focus only on your outcomes. You gotta focus on showing up daily. Showing up today, how can I make today a win and then repeat it tomorrow? Every morning when you wake up, how can I make today a win? My final thought for all of this, if you win the day, then you can win your life, right? So your future success is built in your daily habits. The compound effect of small wins will lead you to massive results. If you can focus on winning today, you're going to wake up one day and realize you've built the life that you've wanted. Powerful. All right, so if you're serious about building long term success on Instagram, I'd love for you guys to check out my Reels membership. You can currently get inside for only 12 bucks for your first month. Head over to the show links and use code Love and you'll get inside with us. I am helping people grow their Instagram accounts and make better video. Or if you just need someone to handle your social media, there's. There's social media management inside of there too. I'd love to help you shine online on Instagram, but I hope you love today's episode. Please leave me a review. If you found it inspiring, let me know your story. Send me a DM over on Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. Until next time. I will see you guys later.