The Key to Business Success is Self-Discipline

Grit, determination, hustle, drive, whatever you want to refer to it as, it all comes down to self-discipline; the ability to control yourself. Whether it’s saying no to dessert or getting your budget done, there’s all kinds of stuff in life and business that take serious self-discipline. We’re human and we like being comfortable. It’s way more comfortable to lay in bed in the morning than it is to get up early to start the day. It’s way more comfortable to scroll through social media than it is to switch over to your bookkeeping software and catch up on your financial documentation. And it’s way more comfortable to learn information than it is to implement it. But self-discipline is also what separates those who fail from those who succeed.

Today we’re talking about one of the most crucial skills you can have as a business owner; self-discipline, specifically self-discipline as it relates to implementation.

It is without a doubt one of the most important factors to building and maintaining a successful business. You can have all the marketing knowledge in the world, but if you don’t have the discipline to take that knowledge and turn it into action over and over again, it doesn’t amount to anything. You can reach for huge audacious goals, but if you don’t have the discipline to get back up and keeping pushing forward when you inevitably get kicked in the face with reality, it doesn’t amount to anything either.

While there are lots of things outside of your control, you are in fact in control of several things within your business. It’s a matter of whether you’re disciplined enough to take action and do the things that need to be done to exert that control.

I want you to look back at some goals you’ve set recently; whether it was a New Year’s goal to take 2021 by storm, especially considering the cluster of crazy that was 2020, or a monthly goal for client numbers, or whatever else. What was the goal you set? How specific were you with it? What deadline did you set for yourself? What were the actions you committed to take to achieve that goal? Then did you actually follow through on those actions?

You see this is where people mess up. You can’t have some generic, arbitrary goal and expect to achieve anything. You have to set a specific, tangible, measurable goal. Like not just ‘I want more clients’ but a specific number with a deadline; ‘I want to average 2 more clients each week for the next month.’ Then you have to determine what actions you’ll take to achieve that very specific goal…will you attend specific marketing events, run a Facebook ad, start a referral campaign, create new networking connections through town…get specific on the actions you’ll take. And. Then. Do. Them.

It’s easy to take in information, say from a video like this, and then just let it fade away as you go about the rest of your day. But the self-discipline to implement what you learn is the key factor. How many classes have you taken, videos have you watched, blogs have you read, and you have all these great ideas of how you could apply it…but you never do? It’s common…like crazy common. We have access to so much information at our fingertips right now in the world, it’s insane. And it’s information overload. We jump from one piece of information to the next. It takes some serious self-discipline to follow through and do something with that information.

 Remember, we like comfort. It’s comfortable to skip these things because it’s the learning part that’s comfortable, the dreaming part that’s comfortable, the ideas of what we could be that are comfortable. But doing them and realizing it’s not as perfect or as easy as we pictured -because it never is – that’s not so comfortable.

Getting the information is only the first step. The most important step – the one that truly shows self-discipline – is what you follow up with, implementation. It’s taking the information you know, solidifying it in your brain and making it apply to your specific situation, and then taking all of that and carrying it out into the real world and doing something with it.

It means absolutely nothing if you leave it all in your head or pieces of scrap paper that get tucked away and forgotten. Start small, create habits of self-discipline, make conscious decisions all day every day to do better, to follow through, to implement what you know to be right. Before you know it, all those small acts of discipline result in major improvements to your business, building a foundation of self-discipline that your entire business can stand on.