I learned a big lesson from this…

Coach Sall

Last week I won an award and became Entrepreneur of the Month at my local business meeting, and it made me think of you.

The award was for doing exactly what I tell all of you to do and to celebrate, and that is showing up.

I’d shown up for 17 days on the trot (now 24) for the business equivalent of a 30-minute workout.

But I confess, it felt weird to win an award for what felt like not much, (I even feel weird about including the pic in this email!) and that taught me a valuable lesson. When I went home to tell the other half, I felt it was going to be hard to explain, but of course, it wasn’t. He got it straight away.

That’s the thing about showing up for something. Everyone else gets it, but for you, no matter how much effort it took, it might not feel like an achievement.

That’s because we are often results focussed. We are conditioned to believe something only has value when we get the result.

Not only is this flawed thinking, but we would never apply it to someone else. We would always be celebratory of someone else showing up regardless of their results. Because we want them to keep going…

Because nothing happens until you show up.

The most surprising part of this experience was all the entrepreneurs in the room (some of them very successful and seasoned business owners) wanted to know how I’d done it!

They wanted to know the secret sauce to showing up. (More on that next week in Part 2 😉)

Building a business is just like getting fit and healthy. It takes time, commitment, and focus.

All sorts of things push in front of that time, there is always something that needs fixing, looking at, or demands your attention in some way.

It’s very easy to get distracted by the things that happen every day, and those things can stop you doing the most important thing that helps you develop a strong and healthy business…

or a Strong, healthy mind and body.

Showing up for your commitments is the most important achievement of all. Celebrating showing up is the way you keep your motivation to show up.

What’s the lesson? Don’t set the bar so high before you celebrate. Think about the one thing that makes a difference, start there and keep showing up.

This is me, with Greg and Claire, my fellow entrepreneurs that run the Nottingham Entrepreneur’s Circle meeting.