I recently stumbled upon this quote from Greek philosopher Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

I don’t usually seek out quotes and I’m honestly not into philosophy either.

Yes, I enjoy a good philosophical quandary on The Good Place, but I pretty much glossed over the subject in school (each and every time).

When I randomly happened upon it, I immediately loved the quote. And was equally surprised by the source.

What struck was how true it rang for me.

As a business coach, I see this very scenario play out all too frequently.

A client is dreaming of wild success and feels that if she just gets her packages 100% right, success will follow

Or, if she takes a specific certification course, that’ll be the thing that takes her business from zero to sixty in 5 seconds.

But, business success isn’t something that just happens like that.

It isn’t one thing that you “get right”.

You don’t wake up one morning, figure out the formula for your perfect opt-in sequence and voila – instant success.

It isn’t simply being featured on the #1 Apple podcast in your category.

It doesn’t happen just by hiring the perfect assistant.

And as much as I love project management software, signing up for Asana isn’t going to take you down the road of success alone.

Stop telling yourself that if you just write this “perfect” blog post, it’ll all click into place.

Or, if I just had that one perfect client, it would all “finally work”.

No.  

Successful businesses are built on a series of small, almost invisible-to-the-outside steps.

The steps are repeated, over and over again. And they compound upon one another, too.

And yes, it’s super unsexy much of the time.

But along the way, you create the habit of how to run your business, how to delight clients, how to empower your team, how to do scary things that you’ve never done before.

When you think about it like that, it seems so much less scary and pressure-packed.

You don’t have just one shot to make it work.

Each day, you commit and recommit to your dream and take one step in that direction.

Take a moment to ponder… Am I wishing for success on one act alone or incrementally building the habit of being a confident, successful business owner?

Bonus points for sharing your answer with me below.

 

 

Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash