This week we are doing the ol' switcheroo and I am stoked to share an episode from Lauren's podcast on my podcast. In this episode, Lauren talks all about how to keep going which is episode 2 of a 3 part series that she did on how to get started, how to keep going, and how to finish - an area that a lot of us creatives need a little help in. And as I share Lauren's episode on this podcast, Lauren is interviewing me over on her podcast! Once you’ve binged this episode, head on over to the Making Good podcast to listen to that one!
As a creative, you know how exciting it feels to have a new idea, right?
It’s intoxicating. It’s a rush. It’s why a lot of us do what we do.
But what happens when that initial high wears off? How do you keep going when the exciting idea becomes a project, a commitment, a responsibility?
In this episode, Lauren Tilden is going to tell us just that.
Lauren is a marketing coach for small business owners who struggle with showing up consistently to market their business and is also the host of the podcast, Making Good, which is on a mission to help small businesses do better marketing so they can make a bigger living impact on the world.
This week we are doing the ol' switcheroo and I am stoked to share an episode from Lauren's podcast on my podcast.
In this episode, Lauren talks all about how to keep going which is episode 2 of a 3 part series that she did on how to get started, how to keep going, and how to finish - an area that a lot of us creatives need a little help in.
And as I share Lauren's episode on this podcast, Lauren is interviewing me over on her podcast! Once you’ve binged this episode, head on over to the Making Good podcast to listen to that one!
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Where you can find and connect with Lauren Tilden:
Website: laurentilden.co
Podcast: Making Good
Instagram: instagram.com/laurentilden
YouTube: youtube.com/@lauren.tilden
Listen to my episode on the Making Good podcast!
No more staring at a blank page. Download Lauren's free workbook with 100 content ideas designed to help you connect with your ideal customer - 100 Content Prompts: makinggoodpodcast.com/100prompts.
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Read the accompanying blog post.
Tag me on Instagram @makerandmoxie and let me know you're listening.
And sign up to the Moxie Musings newsletter for more goodness like this.
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Want to support the show & help me make the world a more creative place one brand at a time? You can pop something in my tip jar here. Any amount is appreciated, as is sharing the episodes or recommending the show to your creative friends!
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WE ARE DOING THE OL' SWITCHEROO ON BRAND YOUR PASSION TODAY WHERE WE'RE SHARING WITH YOU AN EPISODE FROM LAUREN TILDEN'S MAKING GOOD PODCAST. ENJOY!
Welcome back to Making Good, the podcast for small businesses who want to make a big impact. I am your host, Lauren Tilden, and this is episode 222. Today's episode is so important and I am so excited to share it with you because my friend. Keeping going is everything. Keeping going or being consistent is what separates the folks who meet their goals from everyone else.
This is good news because it means we don't have to be special, we just need to show up every day consistently. So today is part two of a three-part series here on the podcast. Part one was about getting started, part two. Today is about keeping going and the final episode coming out soon, we'll be part three, how to finish.
So if you wanna start with part one, how to get started, go check out episode 217, and then come back here afterwards for part two, how to keep going. So let's get started.
First, let's do a quick recap of what we talked about in part one. So in part one, we dove deep into the challenge of starting, taking that all-important first step toward achieving our dreams and goals.
We explored why starting can be so daunting. Spoiler alert, a lot of this is related to fear. And I shared a bunch of strategies for overcoming that initial hurdle and getting started. So we listened to that episode we implemented. Now we are rocking and rolling. We've gotten started. But now what? How do we keep the momentum going?
How do we keep showing up and not falling off the wagon? How do we remain consistent?
So that is what today's episode is all about, how to keep going, because let's be honest, consistently showing up for your business day in and day out is where the real magic happens. First, a little check-in if the word consistency makes you cringe a little bit because you struggle with consistency and you might have a less than stellar track record of following through same, you are in good company.
I have what feels like a lifetime of starting things, sticking with it for a couple of days or weeks, and then simply not continuing for most of my life. I would have never considered myself a consistent person, but in the last couple of years, I've come across some strategies that work when it comes to consistency.
Using what I'm going to share with you today, I've done things like show up consistently with a podcast episode every single week for over 200 weeks straight. I've also released a daily podcast episode in my membership program for two years. That is hundreds of episodes. If you're keeping track, this massive consistency has led to some pretty huge and exciting impacts on my life.
For example, it brought you into my world. Hello. It has also led to some new revenue streams and opportunities that I only would have dreamed of a few years ago. But like I said, I'm not someone who has always been consistent. I have dropped more balls and fallen off more plans than I could ever begin to count.
So if that is you are in good company. And I know that what I have to share with you can work for you too. So first of all, I want to make sure that we're on the same page about how critical it is to keep going and to be consistent. Here's the truth. Every quote-unquote success story you look at was only possible because someone kept going.
Even when they had a challenge, even when they got stuck, even when they didn't feel like it, they kept going anyway. So I want you to keep that mindset top of mind when it comes to getting into the strategies about how critical consistency is.
Okay, so let's talk about strategy number one for consistency, and that is to drop perfectionism.
Here's something that it took me way too long to figure out. Consistency doesn't have to be perfect. Saying it out loud sounds so obvious now to me, but this was a revelation. If you want to post on Instagram consistently four days a week and you miss a couple of days a month, that is still consistent.
You're still showing up most of the time according to your plan. If you want to go for a 30-minute walk every single day and you miss, on average, one day a week, that is still consistent. Here's what used to happen to me. I would set out a plan for what I wanted to be doing consistently. Let's say I wanted to send a marketing email every single week and I'd feel good and I would show up consistently for a few weeks and then inevitably something would come up and I would miss a week.
And at that point, my all-or-nothing thinking would kick in and my brain would say something like that's it. You missed this week. So you are all-or-nothing anymore. Let's just throw in the towel and quit. And I would quit. Oh my gosh, it makes no sense to me, but that's what I would do. Our brains are very silly sometimes.
Consistency does not require 100 percent perfect adherence to your plan. It just requires sticking with the plan most of the time. So if you're sticking with your plan, let's say 80 percent of the time, you can let yourself consider that consistent and keep going. Strategy number two is don't break the chain.
This is a concept that James writes about in his book, atomic habits, which we did a book club episode about. If you're interested, we will link to that in the show notes. AtomAtomic Habits is going to come up a few more times in this episode. So you may want to just pick up a copy already. And if you haven't read it yet, it is so good, but back to don't break the chain.
This concept is very simple. Basically you pick a habit or an action that you want to do every single day, and then you create some kind of visual tracker or c,alendar so that you have it visibly displayed for every day that you accomplish that task. You put an X in the box or you fill it in, put a star sticker, or whatever it is to visually show that you did it that day.
In the beginning, this isn't that motivating, but imagine you have 40 days consistently of performing that task every single day. The idea of breaking that chain becomes a very unpleasant thought. We just naturally want that chain sometimes also called a streak to keep going. So if you have a task that you would like to start doing consistently, create a habit tracker so that you can visibly mark that task off every single day and start to see that chain get longer and longer over time.
My take on this is that they don't break the chain strategy is probably the most effective for tasks that are relatively easy and not that time-intensive to do. So for example, to me running seven miles would be hard. So if my option was to run seven miles or break the chain, I would probably choose to just break the chain.
I'm just being honest. But if my option was to go for a 20-minute walk or break the chain, I would do the walk because it's easy. Strategy number three is to build accountability. So let's talk about what I think could be the most magical, powerful tool there is when it comes to consistency and accountability.
As I mentioned, I have a long track record of dropping the ball when it comes to showing up consistently, but there's a big caveat here. I struggle with consistency when I'm the only person involved or the only person who knows about my deadline, where I've never struggled with consistency, where there were other people involved, If I say I'm going to do something for you or submit something to you by a certain date, trust me, I'm going to do it.
However, if the only person who knows about that deadline is me, the odds that I meet that deadline go down significantly accountability with other people, dramatically increases my ability to show up consistently. And it's true, not just for me, but for many folks that I work with too, I suspect it might be true for you too.
So I like to talk about three main types of accountability that you can build into your tasks. First accountability with your peers. So this would be about getting in the community with other small business owners, committing to your goals together, and then checking in with one another. Second accountability with your audience and your customers.
I also use accountability with my online followers and customers. For example, I often talk about the fact that this podcast comes out on Tuesdays, so I know that you're expecting it on Tuesdays and I pull out all the stops to make that happen. I've built accountability with my customers in many ways, for example, I give them an expectation of when they can expect products to ship or for making that happen.
I've committed to a podcast episode every single day because I know that people expect it and I don't want to let them down. I make it happen. Finally, accountability with your team. So if you have a team that you work with, even just an assistant or some kind of part-time help, you can use accountability with them.
For example, if you know that your team members waiting for something from you and you're paying them in the meantime, you're going to have a pretty good incentive to get them what they need so that they can do their job. Because I've seen what an enormous game-changer accountability can be. It is a huge part of the work I do with small business owners now.
My membership program, Making Good Happen, has a built-in way to track accountability with your peers through the community as well as a tracker and our deep work sessions. So if you're interested in some extra accountability, check out Making Good Happen. It is at making good happen. co. Okay, strategy number four is to make it easy.
This is another tip from that James Clear book I mentioned, Atomic Habits. And this is all about ease. One of the biggest takeaways from this book that I've been thinking about for years now is that if there's something you want to make sure gets done, make it easy. This one seems so obvious that I feel like you might be rolling your eyes but this is worth noodling on a little bit.
For example, if you want to create a habit of writing every single day, don't start by committing to two hours of writing every day right off the bat. Start by making it easy, committing to ten minutes a day, for example, because that is so much more likely to happen. You can always build up over time, but making the task manageable and easy when you start is going to strongly improve the likelihood that you will complete this habit day after day and remain consistent.
So whatever it is that you want to keep doing consistently, ask yourself this powerful question. How could I make this easy? Strategy number five is to make it fun. One of my big takeaways from the book Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal. And that's the book we did on a recent episode of Making Good Book Club, again, Feel Good Productivity.
So one of my big takeaways from that book is this, we don't need Making Good Book Club things that we enjoy, and it's easy to be consistent in doing the things we enjoy. Think about it. If you like to play video games, you don't need to hype yourself up to get motivated to go play. You just go do it because you enjoy it.
We can apply this to consistency in a pretty clever way by simply asking ourselves, how could we do the things that we need to do? How can we make those things consistently fun? For example, if you love listening to a specific podcast and you want to consistently paint a new watercolor painting every week, maybe you save those podcast episodes to listen to while you're painting watercolour each week.
If you want to write a blog post every week, maybe you make a date with yourself to write that at your favourite coffee shop every week. Ask yourself what would make this fun. What would make this feel just a little bit better? Strategy number six is to put it in your calendar short and sweet one here because it's so simple.
But you will be so much more likely to follow through with doing a task if it is on your calendar if it has time reserved for it. So for anything you've decided that you want to do and to show up for consistently, make sure it has a spot in your calendar. For example, if you want to post on Instagram three times per week, add enough time each week into your calendar and save that time for those posts.
If you want to send a marketing email every Friday, book enough time, this is 90 minutes for me to write that before Friday. If you want to launch your new website by April 1st, break that whole project down into all of the tasks that need to be done, and then add each of those tests to your calendar.
This is how things get done. Strategy number seven, create the right conditions. It is a lot easier to be consistent if when you sit down to work, you can easily get and stay focused, but not all conditions are created equal. And chances are that there are some conditions that you will find it easier to focus in and get your work done.
For me, I do my best, most focused work early in the morning. I also need my handy focus music in my ears to keep me in the zone. I use a tool called focus at will, but you can search for other focus music for free on YouTube. Have fun! I'm able to work productively at my desk or my kitchen table, not from my bed as much as I wish I could.
The idea here is to think about the times that you've been productive and in the zone, and then ask yourself what conditions were in place. Where were you? What time was that? Who was around? What were you listening to? And then try to create those conditions as often as possible. Finally, strategy number eight is to create a simple, no matter what consistency plan.
It is probably not a realistic expectation to feel like we need to be 100 percent consistent with absolutely everything we do all the time. That's just not feasible. Given the fact that we have limited time and bandwidth and more than that, it's not a very kind way to treat ourselves. What if 100 percent consistency in all areas of our lives, all of the time, we want to be a little bit easier on ourselves?
I want to convince you to permit yourself to aim for consistency all around but to have just a few things that you are 1000 percent committed to. These are the things that you know are most important to your business results and growth, and then for everything else, you give yourself a break when life happens.
I call this no matter what consistency, and I only have a few things on my no matter what consistency list for me, the things that I do, no matter what podcast episodes come out every Tuesday, my marketing emails come out every Friday, the private podcast episodes for making good happen. I have little mini-episodes that come out every single weekday, Monday through Friday for members of my program.
And then the content and programming for making good happen. Does this mean that these are the only things that I do? No, most of the time, there are quite a few other things that are happening consistently, but these are the things that rain or shine. I nearly always make happen because they are my, no matter what consistency tasks.
So to sum up today's episode, I hope I've convinced you that consistency is the secret sauce inconsistent some concrete strategies for how to keep going. As a recap, the strategies that we talked about were number one, drop perfectionism. Number two, don't break the chain. Number three, build in consistency.
Number four, make it easy. Number five, make it fun. Number six, put it on your calendar. Number seven, create the right conditions. And number eight, make a no matter what consistency plan. I hope this has given you some good food for thought when it comes to consistency and how to keep going. And I really can't emphasise this enough.
If you want to be seriously inspired and also learn a lot about the power of small, simple actions done consistently over time, please read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. Just an atom is the smallest unit of matter that everything in the world is comprised of, an atomic habit refers to the small, easy actions that when we do them consistently over time result in some pretty huge results.
There's a reason this book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for half a decade. Read Atomic Habits. You will not regret it.
So now we have wrapped up part one, how to get started. That was episode two 17 and part two in this episode, how to keep going. Stay tuned for part three, how to finish coming so soon.
Be sure you're subscribed to the podcast. So it shows up for you automatically in your app when it comes out. You can find the show notes from this episode at Moning a good podcast. com slash two, two, two. So what do you think about consistency? Are you inspired DM me on Instagram at Lauren Tilden. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful to have your support.
Here are three ways that you can give back to making good. First, I'd be honoured for you to leave a rating and review and your favourite podcast player. And don't forget to subscribe and follow. Second, if you have a friend that you think would enjoy the podcast, send them the link today's episode is making a good podcast.
com slash two, two, two. And finally, take a screenshot of your podcast player while you're listening to the episode and tag me on social media at Lauren Tilden. I would love to connect with you and cheer you on. This episode was produced and edited by Corinne Monaco of Just Peachy Illustration. Thank you for being here and for focusing on making a difference with your small business.
Talk to you next time.