The other day I was working out at the gym, and, this being the second week of January, noticed how packed it was. I had to fight to get on a treadmill and wait my turn for other machines! I realized the time of year, and told myself to wait a couple weeks and it will go back to normal.

Why do so many have the resolution to start, but so few have the stamina to continue? As I thought about this business that I’ve started, it is a very similar mentality to fitness. Many people start companies, but not everyone has the resilience and stamina to keep going.

This was one of the biggest lessons that I learned with my most recent business that I started, and the reason for its success was not necessarily good marketing, great product-market fit, great brand etc etc. No, it was the mindset to keep persevering through the inevitable hard times that come. We had moments of pure elation, for instance, the morning I checked my Shopify sales and saw a $90k day (normally it was a couple thousand) — we happened to get mentioned prominently in a segment on the Today Show! Wow, I thought, this is it, this is the breakthrough that we need. Zoom past a few weeks later, we were back to ‘normal’. And other days there are major setbacks, like when inventory gets stuck in China, or a wholesale deal falls through, or getting bad reviews from an important editorial, the list goes on. The biggest thing is to keep chugging along; celebrate the small wins, don’t get too down on the losses, and keep pushing forward. Before you know it, a year later, you grew 50%, and the next year another 50%, and so on. Then you look back, wow we hit six figures! As time passes, you hit the next milestone, seven figures; and then charge forward to the next one.

If I get ahead of myself and expect a seven figure business as soon as possible, I will likely get disappointed, de-motivated and want to give up. Instead, if I think about it in terms of incremental growth and improvements, over time, we will make significant progress up that mountain.

Now, with this new business, I do have aspirations for a seven-figure operation, but over time. That certainly may be the end goal, but I understand this is a marathon, not a sprint. We need to get our first 100 users first, later our first 1000, and much later perhaps our first 10,000, and so on. It will take grinding, ingenuity, many pivots and approaches to hit each milestone. But with grit and perseverance, not willing to give up and keep charging ahead, we will indeed get there. I can’t work out every day for an hour, I’d get burned out. But, I can work out 15 minutes every other day to start, and actually succeed, and then build from there. I just need to work out on a consistent basis, and over time, I will see results and get stronger.

WHAT I WORKED ON TODAY:

• Populating the Circle discussion forum account and set up for go live
• Set up a sub-domain for this forum
• Connected my bank and credit card to my Fresh Books account so we can keep track of expenses seamlessly
• Issued my first invoice for a consulting gig (used Chat gpt to come up with an SOW template)
• Signed on with a Business Coach (more details on this later)