Episode 106: Tough Love & Real Talk: Why Consistency Alone Won’t Get You Results

In this no-nonsense episode, we dive deep into the truth about consistency in business. While consistency is often touted as the key to success, it’s not the only thing that matters. In fact, without the right strategy, systems, and focus, consistency can sometimes just lead to spinning your wheels. Tune in for a dose of tough love as we break down why simply showing up every day isn’t enough and what you need to do to actually move the needle in your business.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why consistency alone isn’t the magic bullet for business growth.
• The difference between consistent effort and productive effort.
• How to identify if you’re stuck in a cycle of busy work.
• The key strategies and systems that amplify consistency for real progress.
• How to set yourself up for success by focusing on what really matters.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode where we chat with Danny Levy, a master strategist who’s helped countless entrepreneurs create systems that actually work. Danny’s going to drop some serious knowledge on how to optimize your business systems to maximize results – you won’t want to miss it!

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Read the full transcript of this episode below:

 

Lynn Howard

Hey, I’m Lynn.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

And I’m Amanda. Welcome to the Pursuit of Badasserie, the podcast. We are coming up towards the end of 2024.

We’re not quite there yet, but it feels like we’re getting closer and closer with every single day. And today we’re going to talk about a rather controversial topic, a topic that gets a little bit of pushback or a lot of pushback in some cases.

And that’s a little bit around putting in the work. So complaining about not getting the results from the work you didn’t do.

So as we come towards the end of Q4, what are you complaining about that hasn’t been completed? What results did you not get this year?

And let’s take an honest look at whether or not we did the work to get those results.

Lynn Howard

Dun, Yeah, don’t complain about the work. The results for the work you didn’t do. One of my favorites. You know, it’s interesting.

It seems like we have this conversation with clients or prospects quite often. And even with ourselves, we’ve had to call ourselves out on this as well.

To say, okay, you wanted X, but what were the outcomes? questions, what were the one, two, threes that you did?

What was the time commitment? What was the energy commitment? What was the effort commitment behind that? And it’s a hard reality check.

You know, when you’re not hitting your numbers, where you’re not making the progress, where you’re when you even when you are, maybe you are, are moving it.

But maybe it’s busy work, right? So it’s not even just like not doing action, because action doesn’t mean productive.

We have it. Another thing here too is recently I’ve had few conversations and been experiencing people that it wasn’t they weren’t the right people to have the conversation with is that everything’s a big deal.

Everything is just so much work about what they’re doing. They’re doing all the things in their mind, but really

It all the things aren’t happening. So that means the result is that they’re not getting as far as what they could.

They’re not getting as many, I mean, we were just talking about signups. they’re not just people are getting as many signups as they wanted.

They’re not getting as much, you know, a lot of people do this and you know this very well in the fitness, like side of things, like they’re not slimming out because they’re still sneaking cookies in the middle of the night or whatever, like it’s just it’s mind boggling to me when you actually sit back instead of complaining and analyze why you’re not quite where you want to be or where you need to be and the cause and effect and take responsibility for that.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

And I think what you just said, you just hit it on the head, take responsibility and accountability for what you actually put in.

And it’s so true and I am absolutely guilty of this. We have had conversations around this many times where you feel

like you did so much stuff, like, why are we not getting there? Why are we not getting there? And then when you actually are honest, truly honest, with the actual effort you put in, and those action steps you put in towards that final goal, they come up short.

And that’s really what’s happening when you’re taking that serious honest look and take responsibility, take accountability for your actions in the world.

You’ll see how it changes and how that ripple effect comes around. And yeah, we see it in fitness, we see it all sorts of things.

And you touched on earlier and like doing all these things, like, I’m doing all this stuff, I’m doing all the things, but are you?

Are you? And I know this is a big joke. I think I made it last year. think I make it all the time.

You have so much to do and you had time to send me 37 memes on Instagram. And I’m not throwing shade here because I absolutely will get overwhelmed and I will use an Instagram meme as a way to give myself a minute and I will do it.

But I won’t use that. an excuse saying that I couldn’t get it done if I also did that. If you have time to be completely come up on every Netflix show that exists in the world, then you probably didn’t spend as much time doing XYZ as you thought you did.

If you took 17 vacations and there’s nothing wrong with that, I’m just saying be responsible, be accountable to your actions.

you took 17 vacations and you’re wondering why you didn’t hit your savings goal by the end of the year, well, then you have to think about how you prioritize your spending over the year.

And there’s lots of things that come in and to play with this. But ultimately, it’s taking responsibility, taking accountability for things, really looking honestly at your prioritization over the year.

Because as you say all the time, Lynn, just because a hamster is moving in a wheel and there’s lots of motion happening there, doesn’t mean you’re getting anywhere.

Hamster’s not going across Tour de France there. He’s still pedaling away on his little wheel in his little cage with nothing actually getting accomplished.

Lynn Howard

It is terrible decision.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

but it takes some serious introspection and really looking at the hard truth and I will 100% readily admit that I did this a lot.

When I was particular when I was in my solo-preneur world and I had everything on my shoulders and it’s all me and I never asked for help because I never asked for help for anybody for anything.

And then I would wonder why I wasn’t getting as far and it was because I wasn’t taking responsibility for my actions and I wasn’t taking a really true full look at what I was doing to progress my business towards the goals I had set for myself.

Because there’s lots of ways to progress your business but the work you put in directly reflects the end of the year.

Like how much you can’t complain about the results you didn’t get from the work you didn’t do. So I’m just going to flat out say I want everyone if you look at your goal sheep and you look back for whether it’s our news or a goal you set in January look back.

If you’re not where you want to be those are even still your goals. number one. But if you’re not where you want to be, why?

What was the real reason? And there’s always reason. It’s not just the world is against me and X, Y is victim victim.

There’s a reason and there’s a responsibility and a role that you played in that. So what’s the role and how can we improve on?

It’s not to wallow in yourself pity. It’s to learn from your own past mistakes, and to see where we can improve and get better and ultimately change the way we do business, even if it’s just with ourselves.

Lynn Howard

Yeah, you know, when you’re talking, I’m thinking of another quote I use all the time that my coach used to say, you practice how you play, you play how you practice.

And if you’re not setting the scene for success, you know, and I think we see it a lot more than other maybe fractions just because of the work we do, also with ourselves.

But with the work that we do with others, and consulting and accountability, sometimes coaching. And, you know, we have all these

clients, excuse me, who are setting these goals and having, you know, dreams, the hopes and all this, but they’re not setting the scene for success.

They’re not because results are tied to the actions that we do, and inaction is an action as well. A bad choice is an action as well.

So if you’re, if you’re really, really not setting the scene appropriately and being focused on actions that are driving you towards the results that you want on a conscious level, you’re absolutely setting yourself up for failure.

you can have all the right intentions in the world. You can want it so bad, but that does not create the results.

It is the absolute like the intentional actions that are being put in in the right direction. Another thing is the mindset around it, you know so many people Like get this mindset around things around busy And we’ve we’ve spoke around it a lot.

We can’t say in the words busy. However, Because like people are like well I’m busy. I’m this I’m that yeah, well, you know just the other day I had thirteen meetings thirteen meetings in one day literally felt like a week and I would say that that was a pretty Full I didn’t cancel the 13th.

just couldn’t I didn’t have enough. I did not have the capacity It was super late at night, but I wouldn’t I would not say that I was busy Like I was super efficient.

was super actually super productive that day Which not always with that many meetings am I but I would not say that I’m busy and I also had the mindset of okay like I’m bento boxing these out like this was because of this this was because of this this was because because of this this is in You know, this is the type of meaning that I need to

know up for and it I think it’s really important with our mindset and the way that we look at things and the way that we take responsibility we should be taking responsibility for our stuff and not for others and not for the things that other people do for us.

Even if there are employees or partners that’s on that like because otherwise we get into this mindset where we have to control everything we have everything kind of what you were saying like we have everything on our plate and even though we might like the word busy or we don’t use that word busy like it can absolutely stagnate us in a mental capacity even if we’re putting in the actions to be able to hit those results that we want and it’s you know I love I love the human psyche and I love watching people that I know and that I don’t know that I’m super close with and not so close with and how they navigate this and yeah and when we have those hard conversations I literally just have

one yesterday with one of my clients and say, okay, where are you guys at with your with yourself? What have we put into place that you have not put into action?

I cannot do it for you. You have to do it and you guys need to have a hard honest conversation with what you want next year and even have a conversation if you want to still continue with this business because if you are not, if you continue to do what you did this year, you’re going to continue to not get results.

It’s crazy.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

It is crazy and it’s also really tough love. It’s really hard to hear someone and I know because the first time I don’t know if was you over the first person to tell me or if I told myself, I don’t really remember, but it’s really hard to have somebody call you out on your on your .

Regardless of what the is and when it comes down to looking at your efficiency over the year, looking at your productivity, looking at how you handle

Your priorities, how you handle your responsibilities, it can be a really horrible hard time, a hard feeling to look back and realize that you were the one holding yourself back, that it wasn’t all these other extenuating circumstances that were the reason why you aren’t where you want to be, it was 100% you, that you dropped the ball on your own goals, and that’s why you aren’t where you want to be.

And that’s a tough pill to swallow, no matter how self-aware you are, no matter how open to criticism you are, it’s a really tough pill to swallow when you realize you’re not holding yourself back.

Yeah, I probably was one of the first external people who said that to you for sure.

Lynn Howard

I mean, but that’s one thing I love about our partnership is that we’ve always been able to be really, we’re not each others.

I mean, we are each other’s hype people, but not in detriment. We will be when it needs to be, but we’re also that tough level.

up in that heart like call each other out when it also needs to be and I think that that’s we’re I hate to use the phrase lucky that we have that because it’s not that something we don’t put work into it but we also have a very because of the type of people that we are we’re able to absolutely have that dynamic as well and as we put work into that so there’s a little bit of like yeah we are lucky but at the same time we put in a lot of work you know there’s um there’s a few things around uh that don’t expect because we don’t want this to be a vest to you about like a scold vest to you because there are some things that you can look at first of all is look at your efforts right so efforts were everything that we just said were the intentional was that in the forward kind of movement that you needed um were those actions put in alignment with the goals and the results the

consistency of it. And I just read a post today, a really good friend posted it. And it was like consistency.

I can’t remember it fully, but the the the idea of it was consistency is consistency isn’t about doing it all the time.

It’s about the doing it, but having agility when you need agility. Doing consistency is about showing up in the way that you need to show up at that time.

And you are maybe spread super thin. So it’s not always about like copy paste, copy paste, copy paste, copy paste, copy paste.

It is about the ducks and leaves that come with life and ability to be agile. But that consistency, because things happen, know, when passes, you’re you have a big client that you lose or big client that you gain.

It could be positive or negative. And so it really is like having that consistency. best way that you can in one way in business to help you keep consistency and you hear me and I talk about this all the time or SOPs and fundamentals and foundations.

Once you have those structured it’s really easy to stay consistent.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

Absolutely I was just having a conversation with someone today about SOPs but you know one thing I also and we talked about I don’t remember which podcast it was that we discussed it on but I know we’ve discussed it on the podcast about finding that consistency and one of the things I say a lot about what kind of consistency is on the negative side because we all know that I love to to bring up the negatives is that you can consistent when you when you’re doing the wrong things you can get consistently good at doing the wrong things that makes your business worse.

You’re only making your business worse and worse. So one thing we recommend you do if you’re if you’re not quite sure where to start or what what what habits you might have make a list like a a task journey

almost like what you would do for a food journal. down everything that you’re doing. Ideally for a week at least to really kind of see what your patterns are.

How long is taking you to do X, Z? How much time are you spending in this task? How much time are you wasting when you suddenly look up and it’s been three hours and you’ve been doing scrolling?

Because if you’re not doing the right things, you’re consistently getting better at getting work. And we want you to get better and to recognize what it is.

And it’s not always easy to see, because particularly when you have all the things you’re doing so much, you’re you’re constantly in motion.

the hamster on a wheel. You might not see all the things that you’re doing. And so if you can write it down and look back and be like, oh yeah, I do spend seven hours doing that one thing where I could probably hire a VA and they could do it in 30 minutes because it takes me long to do it because I’m not quite sure how to do it or whatever it is.

can look at those large patterns. You can see the gaps in what you’re doing and you can work to start creating.

get more effective action rather than just being that hamster in a wheel over and over again. So that’s one tip, just to kind of see you’re not sure where you’re wasting time, you’re not sure what’s happening in your schedule and what’s what motions you’re putting in, but that aren’t really getting any full action, write it down, take a look, look, honestly, know, write down when you have that handful of M&Ms at two in the morning, it’s just like a food journal, you’re writing down those things that you don’t really think about that by the end of the day, you’ve kind of forgotten.

But as you if you write it as you go, you’ll be able to look back and see patterns that might surprise you when it comes to your productivity and it comes to the all the motion you’re putting in because there’s a lot that business owners do, nobody can say that there isn’t a ridiculous amount of stuff we do over the course of the day and there’s always room for improvement and there’s room for more efficiency, there’s room for more productivity, there’s room to make changes that can ultimately with consistent change and with small movements, over time can make huge differences in your business and in your sanity by

end of the year?

Lynn Howard

No, absolutely. know, to add to what you just said, and I know you’ve also heard if you’ve listened to our podcast, I know I’ve also used this example before, is that on top of that, what Amanda just told you to do, to do a tracker to see what your efficiency is like, your consistencies, right, and your efficiencies.

And so then you analyze it, like, is an alignment to the bigger purpose, but also you bento box it.

And I had this client one time who was like super overwhelmed by all the meetings that she was doing in a day, and she would bucket them into the one to one bucket.

And when I made her do this, like, I actually, we were able to break this down on one of our calls, and I was like, okay, let’s look at your schedules.

pulled up her schedule. like, okay, went meeting by meeting. Is this a sales meeting? Is this a get-to-know meeting?

Is this a prospect meeting? Is this just a casual meeting? And essentially what we did is we really were able to see, like,

like how many sales meetings she had, how many current client meetings she had, be able to bend to box it.

And why that was benefit is because she thought she was doing all this effort to build her business, but she wasn’t because she was exhausted at the results, lack of results she was getting.

And so, and this is not just with meetings, this is with all of your efforts. When you bend to box it and have a really honest, honest, honest, honest, look at it and take accountable for like those actions, accountability for those actions.

Like you’re able to shift your mindset, but also your energy because a lot of times people are complaining like, I’ve done all this stuff.

Yeah, you’ve done a lot of things and not seeing that they aren’t efforts that needed to be done, but because you’re putting everything in one pile, you can’t recognize the actual efforts that you’ve done for the what you want.

right? So a few more things pointers is like kind of going on that is actually get really clear on like the data stuff right?

So versus like the mindset and the idea or the thought or the dreams make decisions based on data. So exactly what Amanda just told you to do that gives you raw data and really what your week or two weeks are so you can make changes.

Look at your your goals and like analyze break it like a reverse engineer breaking it down and you know how much time is actually going to take?

Is that in your calendar? It’s it’s committing to the process versus the results I think is what I’m getting at and a lot of times people are sold into the results but they’re not committed into the process and some feel that they are.

But maybe they’re not doing it in the right alignment of the direction that they need to go. Some have never even thought of it in that way, and it makes it disconnected.

But those that are getting results, or honest, because sometimes you’re still going to get the results. Amanda and I have had many things where we have put in the work, we’ve actually rolled up our slaves or teams rolled the slaves, and we didn’t hit the numbers that we wanted to.

And then we analyzed, we’re like, okay, where did we drop the ball? And actually, this last year, 2024, like we had some really successful launches, and we had some not so successful launches.

And then we were able to be really honest, like the disconnect wise, even though it felt like we were going through the process.

And so it is absolutely committing to the process, like 100%, not letting other things, other businesses, other people distract you from that commitment to the process.

us that you are because one foot in is not helping anybody the other foot like if you think about it when you are in a canoe and you have one foot in your canoe and everybody’s paddling but one foot out it’s it’s dragging you back it’s like holding you back it’s it’s not streamlining you and you know Amanda and I have struggled with this personally because we both have other businesses we have other things going on and we’ve had to have power conversations with each other and ourselves about like we need to like be committed or like do something different with certain aspects of our business and so it’s not even just those that aren’t getting the results that need to have these conversations with themselves even those that are getting the results need to have these conversations with themselves because they could get better results it could be in less time it could be in less effort or more fruitful if you will at the end or higher return on investment ROI um but yeah stop

playing about the results. Don’t expect results and stop complaining about what you didn’t get for the results you didn’t put in or the work that you didn’t put in.

It’s just like in sync.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

Yes, and this is the time of year that we hear this kind of conversation, these kinds of thoughts coming up a lot.

Not just with business owners, but just what we said, fitness things, all sorts of things can revolve around this idea of being upset that you didn’t get the results when you didn’t put in the work.

And it’s not always the work of the work isn’t always so easy to understand because there’s a lot of work you can put in that really isn’t the true work.

You can do busy work all day long. I can do 400 million social media posts and I can complain over and over.

Oh, I need to build my social media. need to build my social media. Well, maybe you just need to sell better than the people you currently have rather than trying to

do an action that isn’t getting you anywhere or trying to sell something when you can’t even sell to the people you have.

So there’s lots of things that aren’t really necessarily putting in the right work. So even if you are getting some kinds of results, as Lyn said, you could be getting better results.

If you really take a second to analyze the work that you’re putting in, is it the right work? We don’t want you guys to work forever for nothing for just ho-hum results.

We want you to put in the work that you love and get the results that you love. want both sides of that.

don’t think there’s anybody in the world who doesn’t want that kind of result. So this is your tough love, reality check, wake-up call, end of Q4, 2024.

Don’t get upset for the results. You didn’t get for the work you didn’t do. It’s time to take a look at what you’ve done this year, what are the actions you put in, what are the steps that you are putting in right now to get those results and be honest with what you’re doing.

Because the only person you’re hurting is yourself.

Lynn Howard

Yeah. Dig the surface level efforts of which you’ve been doing and really look like, yeah, have you truly been putting in the work?

Would you be proud of that if you really were looking at it through a different lens? And yeah, I love this.

I mean, we say this all I say, but I know I say it. It like I love it and it’s a bit jarring sometimes to when you say it to clients, but at the end of the day, it’s truth.

It’s coming from love. You hired me to help you. So I’m not your yes person. I’m going to call you out on it.

You’re not putting in the work. If this podcast resonated with you or if you know somebody else who needs to hear this and get a swift kick in their touch.

Please hit subscribe and forward this on to your friend or friends that need to hear this anytime of the year because we want you to be successful.

We want you to hit those markers and those goals and those KPIs. However, it does take effort. It does take the right action.

It does take consistency. It does take ownership and accountability and honesty and a few other things. But yeah, so share, like, comment, all the good stuff, all the good stuff.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

All right, my friends. Until next time, get after it.