Notes:
Startups for the Rest of Us – E500
Pit traps
- Waiting to get started
- Coming out of the gate too hot
Sponsors:
- Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!
- Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation
Transcript :
Charles (00:00):
In this episode of the business of eCommerce, I talk about consistency. This is a business of eCommerce Episode, 130.
Charles (00:14):
Welcome to the business of eCommerce. The show that helps eCommerce retailers start launch and grow their eCommerce business. I’m your host Charles Palleschi, and I’m here today. Talk about Consistency. This is something that this week or last week time of this recording, I listened to an episode. It’s a podcast I’ve been following for hundreds of episodes. Now they do one a week. It’s called startups for the rest of us. It’s by this guy named Rob, another guy named Mike. They talk about SAS. Businesses have been following for many, many, many years. And recently this week, they just hit that 500th episode. And this is making me think about consistency and just how these guys have showed up every week for 500 weeks and recorded. And even top of the episode, some episodes are better, some, a little misses, but they do it every week. I think that consistency speaks a lot.
Charles (01:07):
And I think that’s something that a lot of folks underestimates today’s episode is sponsored by drip, drip it’s of world’s first e-commerce CRM and a tool that I personally use for email marketing and automation. Now, if you’re ever running an eCommerce store, you need to have drip to try. And here’s why drip offers one-click integrations for both Shopify and Magento. There’s robust segmentation, personalization, and revenue dashboards. To give you an overview of how your automation emails are performing. One of my favorite features of drip is the visual workflow builder. It gives you a super easy way to build out your automation rules visually and see the entire process. It lets you get started quickly, but also build very complex automation roles. It’s powerful, but also easy to learn. Unlike a lot of email tools that offer the same type of automation to get a demo of drip today, you can go head over to drip.com/boe.
Charles (01:55):
That’s drip.com/b O E. Now under the show. And I’ve cited them before. On an early episode mentioned that stair step approach. That’s actually originally by Rob look guys on the podcast and it just talks about building businesses kind of in this more incremental way. And I’ll link to that in the show notes. But I think everyone’s checked that out, but the concept of consistency I feel like is very underrated. I’ve read the book atomic habits by James, Claire. I think you should all read that or at least check out James’s Twitter account. He posts very insightful little pieces every few days. And it just talks about over time slowly having these habits that build on top of one another and great example of something like podcasting blogging, any sort of content where the very first time you publish a podcast, publish a blog post.
Charles (02:50):
It doesn’t really do anything, right? Like episode one, not many people, no one followed me. We’ve had the blog first post. No one really checks it out, but if you’re consistent over time, that’s what you start to actually get the wins. Same thing going into the gym. You can go to the gym or run and just going and lifting a waist. Doesn’t actually do anything for you lifting at once. But that building reps, which build sets that build workouts that continue each day, that’s where you start to get that impact. And I think entrepreneurship is very, very, very similar, which this to come pick traps. I see a lot of folks fall into what they don’t do this. And this is total out for the first is people that don’t ever start. They kind of, they wait to stash, right? Where you see this all the time with the gym, right?
Charles (03:44):
When somebody wants to figure out they always set something first. So you have to do the single far shift to this other thing. Folks on a business, our blog, even I have to get the template, right? I have to get my voice. I have to get the logo. I have to do all this preparation podcasts all the time. People just kind of overthink it and they never get started. You would see that this, you don’t actually see it that often just because, you know, they never get started. So you never see them. But I’ve worked at a lot of first time founders see them very often and they’re just waiting, waiting, waiting. And this, they always have this big launch though. It’s delayed at some point in the future and it’s supposed to be in four weeks and it gets pushed out for months and it’s a year.
Charles (04:25):
And at some point they kind of just lose steam. That’s the first con pitfall just stars. Right? And that’s the common, that’s the easiest way to solve that. Right? Just get out there and just do something. It’s not going to be great, but just do it. The second one, the opposite of this is a start, but they come out of the gate way too hot. Right? And what I mean by that is somebody that comes out. They come out sprinting. They say, I’m going to do a podcast three times a week. Right? They’ve never done it ever, but they want to do enough three times from day one and first week they do second week, they do it, but it gets a little shaky. Third week, they miss one by the fourth week, they pretty much quit. Same thing with podcasting. If you’re shooting that you’re going to do two blog posts a week.
Charles (05:07):
I think people underestimate. They’ve never wrote any blog posts before and they just don’t have that writing muscle. Same thing, a gym muscle. You can’t just come out and go six days a week from being a couch potato, you need to start off going one day a week just to set the bar very low and not just because you’re gonna miss, but also because it builds that habit of consistency, right? So, you know, every Monday I’m one of the gym, pretty easy to do that. You know, you’re going to go for half an hour, go do your thing. Come home. You won that week. Same thing. Write one blog post a month. I know it sounds small to begin with, but just do one month to two, you start building this habit, this muscle where now you learn how here’s, how we publish. Here’s how we put the the headline together.
Charles (05:58):
Here’s how we come up with the creative, has how we get the imagery and those little things that first time around you underestimate how much work that will take and just how much muscle that you kind of have to build to get that working. So I think set your bar half of what do you think it’s going to be out of the gaze if you’ve never done it before, just because you think you can do multiple of these, but it’s going to be very challenging and it’s a lot easier to go up and it’s a lot less mental impact on you saying, Hey, you know, we weren’t doing, we were going to the gym once a week and now we’re going to the gym twice. You feel like a winner, but if you say, Hey, we’re going to do six times a week. And now we ain’t went once.
Charles (06:36):
It’s kind of this negative cycle, right? So you want to come out of the gate just positive and just build and build. And I think consistency is what builds the longterm impact of these businesses. Blogging, podcasting, anything, right? Even your, even your paid channels, just come out and just do something small, see something, see a win. You just want to put any one point up on the board to see things moving forward. And I think a lot of people underestimate that you see these habits every day. I mentioned before on the show, something like brushing your teeth, right? Any one day that you do that, it doesn’t actually do anything for you, but it’s that consistency over time with a snowball starts to build the blog set, to get bigger. The podcast has to get bigger. You start to get better at it, which gets it larger.
Charles (07:27):
And as you get better, it gets larger. And as your audience gets larger, you do more of it. It starts paying for itself. And that starts a positive cycle and things just get better and better. So I think kind of the takeaways here is always just get started. Don’t wait, get started something small right now, but on the flip side, get cited something small, right? Don’t come out of the gate too strong, too hot, come out, slow, do something. That’s going to build very positive impact and get better over time and just realize this is definitely a definitely, definitely a marathon. Okay. When you talk about consistency, don’t sprint, come out with a marathon mentality. When I go slow out of the gate and we’re going to just go for a long burn and same thing, 500 episodes on my podcast and congratulations to them.
Charles (08:21):
That’s one of those things. They just did it over years and years and years. So realize this could be 10 years and this week you’re feeling good, but there’s gonna be some week that you’re not feeling good. You know, he didn’t sleep that well, be silly to get up and just do it. And those are the times when that consistency really helps you. That muscle of I’ve been doing it for 50 weeks, a hundred weeks. I’ll just write that blog post I’ll just sit down at the keyboard, I’ll get it done. And I think consistency is very underrated. So hope that helps you. If you liked this episode, please share with a friend. It really helps us grow. And I hope you tune back in next week. Thanks. Talk to you soon.
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