A little while ago I saw a post by James Smith, an online personal trainer who happens to be one of my favorite people to follow on Instagram. He was showing some statistics and the trajectory of his following since starting his account in 2014. Now, he has well over a million followers.  But first, he posted every day for 4 years, before he reached 10,000k followers. From there, both his influence as well as his business success increased exponentially.

10 years. Not years full of sporadic, intermittent effort, but of consistent, daily work. Much of the first half of those 10 years didn’t see a whole lot of return. James explained in the post that he spent much of that time investing without any kind of reward or payoff. He simply knew he needed more reps to get better, before seeing the kind of long-term results he wanted. 

Do we have that kind of patience? The kind of patience that makes room for not days, weeks, months, but YEARS of hard work and consistency with little to no return? 

I’ll be honest, I get frustrated with certain aspects of my business. I’d like it to grow faster than it is, but the reality is I’m still in my first year of working for myself full-time.

I started sharing my story publicly in July 2017. Similarly to James, I posted every single day, for 5 years, before seeing any real progress (most of my following has come since 2021). 

Instagram is a very small part of life, but what I like most about it is that it documents the progress and work otherwise easily forgotten when I’m focusing on the “big picture” moments.

In July 2017, I had been boxing for almost 3 years, but had never thrown a kick in my life.

I spent most of 2017 and 2018 improving my kickboxing skills – I looked like Bambi when I started.

In 2019 I picked up my first barbell. To give context to just how new I was to weightlifting, someone said “benchpress” and I said “what’s that?” They had to show me how to put clips on the bar.

In 2020, I got a running blade, and started running for the first time in my life, at the age of 28.

I started CrossFit in January 2021.

I’m a different person than I was in 2017, and I’d like to think it’s for the better. I’m strong mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I’ve grown in ways I never imagined I would.

And it’s been 8 years of developing into that person and athlete, and I’ve stayed consistent throughout all of it. Eight years of showing up to put in intentional work, nearly every day.

You; me; we – are not meant to quit. If you are in a place of feeling frustrated by lack of outward progress or payoff. All we need to do is stay consistent and keep showing up to work hard.

It’s not that you’ve failed. You just haven’t put in enough reps yet. Keep going, friend. ❤️