Inch by Inch

I am going to disappoint you all now….

Success and fame doesn’t happen overnight.. FACT!

Its all about the small micro actions or as Al Pacino said in Any Given Sunday it’s the Inches

Here it is the speech that makes the hairs stand up on your neck… 

“I don’t know what to say, really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives. All comes down to today.

Either, we heal as a team, or we are going to crumble. Inch by inch, play by play. Till we’re finished. We are in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light.

We can climb outta hell… one inch at a time.

Now I can’t do it for you, I’m too old. I look around, I see these young faces and I think, I mean, I’ve made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh, I’ve pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who’s ever loved me. And lately, I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror.

You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that’s… that’s… that’s a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out life’s this game of inches, so is football.

Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second.

On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches that’s gonna make the f%#&@! difference between WINNING and LOSING, between LIVING and DYING!

I’ll tell you this, in any fight it’s the guy whose willing to die whose gonna win that inch. And I know, if I’m gonna have any life anymore it’s because I’m still willing to fight and die for that inch, because that’s what living is, the six inches in front of your face. Now I can’t make you do it. You’ve got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think you going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team, because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him. That’s a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That’s football guys, that’s all it is.”

_{oneinchatatime, 2010. Al Pacino "Inches" Speech, Any Given Sunday (1999). Available at: <https://youtu.be/_b7bgtu2O4E>} 

I think we all take for granted the fact that things don't happen overnight the phrase of the 10 year overnight success is the reality, now don't get me wrong there are certain caveats to this.

Ryan's world is a good example of that whereby he is 8 years old, and he's earning 10s of millions of dollars on YouTube.  He isn’t a 10 year overnight success like most people are, and I do think that there are a small percentage bucking the trend slightly at the moment.

We have to take small micro actions, or inches as it says in the quote, to get us to where we want to be. Everyone's too quick to want the result straight away, when everything has to be done progressively.

Its about taking the little wins, improving by 1% Every single day.

That’s what makes a difference.

If you have this mindset that you are going to knock out the park and get everything done quicker that anyone eg, get a six pack within six weeks or get your business to £1million turnover within the first year. In a way you maybe fooling yourself. I get setting big goals but not unachievable goals as these can have a negative impact.

Imagine setting a goal of £1million turnover and only hitting £100k, how will you feel.. deflated probably.

I'm nearly 15 years in business now and I haven't got this business to where it needs to be, that’s because everything in business is not linear.

It can be and usually is a roller coaster ride. But you've got to celebrate the small wins and you've got to do things in stages and you have to have a plan for these individual stages. Otherwise, you are just fumbling your way through everything you do.

This is why I come back to Everything should happen in micro actions.

Here is a real example of this was 12 months ago, I made a commitment to posting every day on Instagram. Now, bar for a handful of days here and there. For whatever reason, and I'm not going to make excuses for it. I just didn't post.

I have posted consistently every single day and I'm now starting to reap the benefits already, a lot of business now comes in from Instagram. And that was all about micro actions.

Now don't get me wrong, nothing really happened for the first six months and then you kind of hit a tipping point and that could be at any point in that journey. We're now going to start to work on LinkedIn. That's the next platform where we're going to consistently post every single day.

I have made a huge commitment to write what's on my mind and what I think will help other people read in every single day and we will post on our blog on the mind money website.

I'm not expecting anything to happen for at least 12 months and you might think 12 months is a long time.

You have just got to be consistent and I guarantee you if you are consistent results will come.

They say the only guarantees in life are death and taxes which is very true.

I'm going to put my head on the block and say actually if you're consistent with something, whether that be eating healthy, exercising, social media, business I mean consistent all the time. And you turn up every single day and you are consistent and committed to improving.

I can guarantee you will get results.

So there's now three guarantees in life, “taxes, death and being consistent”.