The Power of Consistency For Business Growth

Consistency is your ally to steady growth in creativity, business, and life.

While it may sound unsexy, you know and I know the best laid plans will fail without a dedication to consistency. If you’re running a small business or you’re a solopreneur, the power of consistency for success is particularly relevant. Here’s a few ways that consistency will fuel growth for your business and life.

#1 Your Readership Engagement

I recently had an entrepreneur from my Writing Den bemoan that a provocative and well-conceived blog article was met with crickets. She wondered why. Once we broke down her goals for the piece and about five factors that can influence whether or not readers respond instantly to a blog article, we talked about consistency.

I nudged on her on her long game for blogging (versus seeking immediate reader replies). I told her what Entrepreneur on Fire and podcast maniac John Lee Dumas told me once when I asked him why a well-known colleague’s podcast show didn’t fare so well. Inconsistency. The guy didn’t post a podcast show on a consistent date or day of the week. If your audience doesn’t know when to expect you’ll show up, most of them will give up trying to keep up.

Upon hearing this, she immediately “got it” and committed to not only to publishing consistently but lots of other un-sexy things including:

• using SEO-rich words in headlines,
• writing for the long game,
• shaping opening content more clearly  for readers

These in turn motivated her even more to show up for her readership in even more provocative yet substantial ways.

Two take-aways here:
1. Your consistency in a specific area motivates you. You see your own progress. You prove to yourself you can change a habit and show up for what matters.

2. Your consistency in publishing or broadcasting content builds loyalty over the long term. Consistent creativity serves you – and the people who benefit from your work – for the long game.

If you stay consistent with your content, with what you deliver, and how you deliver it, you also will build your brand loyalty exponentially.

#2 Your Body of Work

The theme of consistency also came up with a client advancing his book and brand. We discussed how it’s time for him to leverage his ample content and re-purpose it into products he can sell. He agreed. Looking back over his consistent weekly output with his blog and his newsletter – despite lots of personal challenges – he said, “Well, somehow, I have actually written and produced every single week!”

Three take-aways here:
1. Again, the consistent output motivated this brand founder. He had a glow of self-admiration, a face of wonder.

2. His consistent output has given him an emerging body of work that can be re-purposed and reshaped in different ways in the coming year. You build your body of work with consistency.

3. This person had extreme constraints on time, energy, cognitive bandwidth this year. The weekly consistency built in constraints on his creativity. If he had had “boundless time,” he might not have been as consistent and, hence, as productive, creative, and impactful this year.

#3 Consistency Is Not Boring

Consistency also came up when I was working with a new apprentice. We have all our team here at TW take Sally Hogshead’s Fascinate Assessment. Sally’s assessment shows accurately how you uniquely captivate your best people or co-workers or customers. One of the advantages that showed up on this particular assessment was TRUST. “It seems accurate,” the apprentice said, “but, well, it also seems kind of boring.”

I knew what she meant. “Pragmatic.” “Punctual.” “Reliable.” These don’t seem sexy. They’re not the “bad boy” or “bad girl” qualities we associate with innovators and creators. The thing is, this person is not boring, and we brought forward some of her more colorful qualities, but what I tried to reiterate to her is that the single most important quality to broadcast for a business is trust.

Think about it: The world is full of uncertainties. Your WiFi goes down, your health insurance gets cancelled accidentally, your car doesn’t start. Sometimes on the same morning, right? When you engage someone for business or entertainment or stimulation, you want someone on the other side you can trust. Yet, sadly, we don’t always have that experience. Business-as-usual leans on stock “customer service” but not consistent “customer/community delight.”

Here’s how you can take action to become more consistent

• Commit to publish a piece of content on one channel at a consistent time every week, every two weeks, or every month. And do it. Watch your readership and influence rise.
• Integrate one regular rhythm to play with for 15 days.
• Tweak one system or habit that will instill trust in your community’s or customers’ experience with you and your brand. (e.g., Be on time. Develop a consistent scheduling system to improve meeting experience. Do what you say you will do.)
• Notice how you can be more consistent this week with how you communicate with your friends and loved ones.