This morning, I asked a group on a coaching call to share their wins from the week. The room went quiet, then split two ways.
Some were smashing it, and said nothing – like doing well was something to downplay rather than name out loud. Others hadn’t hit the number they wanted yet, and apologised before they’d even answered, as if a smaller win didn’t count.
Neither reaction was really about the dollar figure. It was about what we’ve decided counts as a win in the first place.
We love the exciting stuff in business. The big client win. The new idea. The unexpected opportunity. The launch that gets everyone talking.
But the businesses that grow sustainably are usually built through a whole lot of things that are decidedly unexciting. The daily discipline of doing what matters, even when something more immediately rewarding is competing for your attention.
I call it the battle between the joy of distraction and the delayed gratification of discipline.
Distraction promises an immediate reward – chasing a shiny new opportunity, checking another notification, avoiding the conversation you know you need to have. Discipline rarely arrives with fireworks or applause, because it asks you to keep showing up for the small things that might not deliver an immediate result. And yet those are usually the things that make the biggest difference over time.
Health works this way. You don’t build strength through one spectacular workout, but through the daily decision to move your body. Revenue works the same way – it grows when you consistently fill the funnel, nurture relationships, follow up, make the offer. Positioning is no different. Authority is built through the repeated discipline of showing up in a way that reflects who you are, what you believe, and the value you actually bring.
So how do you get better at choosing discipline when distraction is so tempting?
Get clear on your goal, your why, and your plan.
Discipline becomes much easier when you know what you’re working towards and why it matters. If you want growth, be specific about what growth actually means to you – more profit, a particular calibre of client, more space in your calendar – then identify the small, repeatable actions that get you there. Without a clear plan, it’s easy to mistake being busy for making progress.
Remove the temptation.
Take ownership of the distractions you know are likely to pull you off track. If notifications interrupt your thinking, turn them off while you work. If you keep avoiding business development, block the time and protect it. You don’t need to rely on willpower every minute of the day when you can design your environment to make the right action easier.
Notice the small stuff.
Back to this morning’s coaching call – once we actually talked it through, the real wins for most of the room weren’t in the revenue column at all. Finally, the landing page went live. Finally, the website got rebuilt instead of sitting there half-finished. Finally, the LinkedIn profile got rewritten properly instead of one line tweaked six months ago. Finally, a conversation got started that hadn’t gone anywhere yet, but wouldn’t even exist a month earlier.
Those are the things that had been sitting on the “get round to it eventually” list. And the moment they finally get done, they will unlock whatever comes next.
Be kind to yourself when distraction wins anyway.
There will be days when it does. The important thing isn’t turning one lapse into a reason to abandon the whole plan – it’s noticing what happened, learning from it, and beginning again.
I’ve been running my own business for sixteen years now, and it’s still the boring stuff that makes the actual difference. The discipline of getting an email out every week, even when nothing dramatic has happened to write about. The time I protect for thinking, not just doing. The outreach and the networking, the conversations I start before I make any ask. None of it feels exciting on the day. All of it is why the business still works sixteen years later.
Successful businesses aren’t built on excitement alone. They’re built on the small, sometimes boring decisions that compound into something brilliant.
Next week, I’m running the Elevate Online Business Growth Immersion – a working session to lock in your strategy for the final quarter of the year with other women doing exactly this kind of unglamorous, compounding work. It’s normally client-only, but I’ve had so many of you ask about it that I’m opening ten spots to my email list. Reply SEPT and I’ll send you the details.
What’s the one boring thing you already know would move the needle, if you just kept showing up for it?
Janine x