I’ve always been a huge fan of improving things little by little over time to get a better result in life and business
If you work the numbers… if you improve things just 2% per month (your number of leads, your revenue, productivity, your weight, etc.), by the end of the year you’ll see a 24% improvement. That’s huge!
Just 2% per month. That’s easy. Right?
But, sometimes incremental improvement is going to drive your business (and your sanity) into the ground.
Sometimes always going for consistent small improvements is just chasing unicorns that may take way too long to come to be.
I had this same situation happen to me recently that reminded me that consistent incremental improvement isn’t always what you should be focused on.
My company Carrot is growing at a good clip revenue wise. We’re valued into the millions and we’re providing the best product in the industry in what we do. We’re proud of what we’re doing and the small incremental growth we’ve had this past 3 years has gotten us here.
But to hit our goals in the timeline we’ve laid out, that incremental growth may not get us there.
We’ve got to make some big moves.
About a year or so ago out of the blue a large company in our industry reached out to us to potentially partner with them in a strategic way.
After weeks of bouncing emails back and forth and things taking too long… I finally got them on the phone and said… “Hey, give me 2 hours next week in your office and I’ll fly down so we can hammer this out in person”.
They were really impressed and immediately said “yes” and before I knew it I had tickets booked to fly down to their headquarters to get this deal done.
It was all on my dime. There was no guarantee the deal would ever be struck…
… but here’s the lesson I learned (and why I invested $1k+ to go down there for just 36 hours including travel time).
Sometimes when you need to make things happen, those small incremental improvements aren’t going to get you there.
Sometimes you have to make BIG moves.
Sometimes those BIG moves may never come to fruition and may be big ol fat unicorns that will never happen.
But you can’t change the growth pattern in you as a person or your company without every now and then taking a risk and betting on some BIG moves.
This one deal had the potential to put us in front of 2k+ qualified buyers of our product per month.
PER MONTH.
So for us to get where we wanted to go, this one big move could be all we need.
At the time we knew if it happened, great. It would be a banner year. If it didn’t, we’d keep moving forward improving revenues and customer growth each month like we’d been doing until the next “big move” opportunity came up.
I’m not gonna tell you what happened there, that can be a story for another time… but…
Your life, your business, your whatever can’t be full of nothing but steady incremental growth. That’s going to kill you. A competitor who isn’t afraid to make those big moves will come in and swoop your momentum in the industry out from under you in an instant if you’re afraid to take those chances and go after big shifts in your strategy.
So, look at what you’re doing in your business and your life right now.
I mean it.
This isn’t just about business. What big moves can you make right now personally to “level up” your trajectory – to crush your health and fitness, mindset, income, or spiritual goals?
If you’re reading this article and don’t plan to put any of it to action or take any of it to heart, I urge you to think long and hard about the kind of life you want to have vs. the kind of life you’re going to have if you don’t make some big moves soon.
Sometimes that 1 big move can get you further along in your business and life than 2 years worth of incremental improvements.