Taking the time to create habits in your daily activities will support the growth of your business and ensure your longevity in the animal, equine and/or pet-based industry that you love so much. Join Kim and Cara and they discuss three big things you can do to harness the power of better habits in your business.

Resource: https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits

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Welcome to The Business Animal podcast.

Saddle up for a gallop to the top of the animal industry,

where you'll learn how to tame your wild business beast with

tips, techniques, and tools that will take overwhelm to obedience

school, and have you wagging your tail with joy. And now your

hosts, Kim Beer and Cara Taylor Swift.

Hey there business animals. It's Kim with

Be More Business.

And Cara with Fast Horse photography. Good

morning, Kim, what are we talking about today?

Today we're talking about creating good

habits in your business. I love this topic. Because I am a

typical temperament type NFP which means NP, by the way means

that I buy a lot of organizers and yet I am hardly ever

organized.

That is awesome. Well, I love talking

about this topic because I feel like having good habits is like

the only way to free my brain up to do anything like I have to be

able to it some aspect kind of roll around on autopilot by my

habits. I know I interrupted you there, but I just was thinking

about you buying all your planners and your systems and

then not using any of them so,

Yeah, I love to create systems and then not use

them. That's my favorite pastime in life, it's now it does have a

benefit for the other people in my world because other people

take my systems and go ahead and use them and do well. I think a

lot of that, again, we did this episode on temperament. And for

me, one of the things that I run up against is is a lot my

temperament, one the P that kind of rolls with the flow versus

going and doing the things. But my NF never looks at the details

very deeply. It's more of a big picture type of a personality.

And so a lot of habits are in the details. The devil is in the

details when it comes to creating habits. And so

regardless of what I say about habits, I do try to create good

ones in my business. And I can tell you, when I developed good

habits, as as good as I can keep them my business did succeed,

it's been much more successful since I have done that. There's

a couple of resources I'm going to mention right off the top

that I think are really pertinent to this episode,

because I'm going to tell you, these are things I've had to

learn versus have things that come naturally to me. So a lot

of what we're going to talk about today in this episode is

going to come from two sources, both of mine and Cara's

interpretation of those two sources. One of them is a book

called "Atomic Habits" by James clear. And you can find that

online at Jamesclear.com, as well as other places. And then

another book that I have found incredibly useful is called "The

Slight Edge" by Jeff Olson. And the slight edge is also really

good in helping you create good habits in your business. We are

going to distill those two books down today, as well as add our

two cents in to a big three around this particular topic.

Cara, why don't you give everybody the good news on the

three things we're going to talk about to help them build better

habits in their business today.

Okay, so we're going to talk about three

points around creating better habits or good habits in your

business. The first one, which I can totally get behind is make

small changes over time to build the habit. So I love this idea

of being able to do little tiny things to make a difference at

the end of the day. So the second is set yourself up for

success by designing your environment to support your

habit. So we'll talk about that. And then the third one is all

about motivation and willpower. And some of us are better at

that than others. So I'm excited to dig into that part as well.

So the first one is making small changes over

time, build the habit. And I think this is a place where all

of the people who are experts on this topic agree. Now once they

get past this, this sometimes we get into the wild wild west of

concepts about how to keep your habits and and how to maintain

them and how to develop better ones over time. But small

changes are so important. And I know that people give examples.

So for example, if you do one little tiny thing in a day to

move yourself towards creating a better habit, it doesn't mean

much in that day. But, if you do that one tiny thing over a year,

it can mean a substantial change in your life and in your

business, because those little moments add up. And I think if

you were to distill down both Mr. Clear and Mr. Olsen's

philosophies around building habits, I think that both of

them would agree on this particular one. And also really

say it's at the heart of creating good habits in in

anything you do at any point in time in your life. And I find

it's a little bit easier for me to digest if I can do things one

little piece at a time versus rolling in there and trying to

do it all at one time, or not realizing how much it builds up

over time. What do you think Cara?

No 100%, I think a habit like that is

something that's going to ensure your staying power in your

business, I mean, it's gonna give you longevity in the work

because you're slowly over time building the habit that is going

to free up your brain and free up your time and free up your

mind to do the things that you really want to do in your

business. So an example that I have is I have tried to build a

habit that anytime I have to send, this is a really simple

example, but anytime I have to send an email that I've had to

send more than a couple times to somebody to a new client, if

it's not already a template in my CRM, I try to save it as a

template. And when I first started doing that, it wasn't

something that made a huge impact on my day to day in my

business. But six months in or a year in, I realized I wasn't

having to write as many emails every day I was having, oh, this

I've already got one of these, I've already got one of these,

already got one of these, because I started developing

that habit of gathering that over time. And that's that was

me doing that one simple email at a time, it might be one email

a week or one email a day, depending upon what came up. And

now I'm barely having to write fresh new emails to clients.

Because I've already covered the content, you know repetitively.

Another thing, I'm teaching Easton right now about saving,

and he's been wanting to buy video games, and they're kind of

pricey. And so I told him, you know, you get a little allowance

every week, if you do your chores, and what you can do is

you can start putting, like $1 in your piggy bank from your

allowance, and he's, you know, I'm never gonna have enough

money, it's never gonna be enough mom to get the video

game. And the other day, we sat down and counted his money, and

he had enough money for a video game. And so just a great

example about it became a habit every week, he put money in and

it became routine for him. And I was like, well, first of all,

yay, we taught him something. Finally. Second, you know, he

can see the results of that habit, that good habit that I

feel like he has developed now in his life. So yeah, that's

kind of my two cents on that.

I think that the example with Easton is

excellent, because it does show how little tiny steps one baby

step at a time can make a huge, huge difference. And when you

were talking about the writing the emails, I can hear our good

friend Betsy Bird talking in your.

Yeah, she's applauding right now.

Yeah, she's like, she's like just giddily happy

that you took that step and got those things cuz she's a big

proponent of work smarter, not harder.

Automate.

Yeah, automation work smarter, not harder. And I

have to agree with her on that one, I prefer the working

smarter, not harder. Yesterday, we talked with a guest that's

going to be coming on the show that we're excited about

Future guests

You guys will have to wait to hear from her.

But what was fun is while we were on our booking call with

her, I was able to go into the CRM, which I took time to set up

and just drop a tag on her name and baboom she had all of the

guests documentation and the contract and all of that

meticulous stuff that we need to take care of. So it certainly

did help being able to get that done. And we had to do those

things one little baby step at a time in order to get to the

point that it got to be easy. And I think this is true of

anything. You know, over time, I've worked with a nutritionist

and my life as well, that what her suggestion was, is make

those small changes, like choose this instead of that, but you

don't have to do all of it in one day. You don't have to like

completely change your life in order to build a better habit,

you can build it one simple step at a time. So instead of

choosing a Dr Pepper choose a glass of water and or you know

instead of choosing the macaroni and cheese, choose broccoli or

something and I happen to love broccoli so that one actually is

not a hard choice for me. Believe it or not. I'm one of

the weird people in the world that actually dearly loves

broccoli. I eat it several times a week.

You are so weird.

I know it. That's, that's, that's one good

thing. It's one good habit that I have and it comes to that kind

of stuff. But the point is, is creating a good habit when

you're doing it, it comes mindfully, right? Good habits

that we struggle with, those are the ones. Some of us have good

habits naturally. Like, I like the taste of broccoli so I eat

it. It's an easy, it's an easy habit for me to have. But the

ones where you need this particular podcast episode are

those habits that don't come so easy, right, so making one small

change at a time does make a huge difference in in how you

approach it.

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A couple of years ago, before COVID, I was giving out a lot of

lessons for people on how to use their CRM and what I recommended

to the people. And it kind of got kibosh because everybody

sort of quit networking for a little while, and it was based

around that, but 30 minutes every morning to follow up with

your network. So if you just do 30 minutes, every single

morning, over a year, that's a substantial amount of networking

time. And it doesn't feel like a lot out of your day. And then

waboom, you have a really well developed network. Little steps

one at a time. Now, there's another step in this that can

really help you in that setting up your environment for success.

We talked about it with the CRM that Cara and I both gave

examples of if you set your environment up for success,

you're much more likely to have it. But Cara has some really

interesting takes on how to create this environment that's

beneficial for you.

Well, I can't claim them, they came from the

book that you mentioned "Atomic Habits" at the beginning, but

this is kind of my breakdown of them. And I really, really liked

them, actually. So the book mentioned, they call them the

Four Laws of Behavior Change. And I thought this was really

interesting. The first one is make it obvious and set it up so

that it requires no act of thinking. So you know, setting

it up so that you like Kim, she was just like, oh, this is no

problem, I can hop right in, I can do this very quickly, you

know, you get yourself in that process so that I know this is

something I don't necessarily want to do, but I'm going to

make it as easy as possible. And then the next one is make it

attractive. And this one, I kind of have a personal experience. I

don't love editing days where I'm doing nothing but sitting

and I'm having to edit all day long, maybe I'm on a deadline.

So one of the things that I started doing and maybe this is

not a great habit to have, but one of the things I started

doing is that's when I would binge my Netflix or my Hulu

shows and I would sit and edit with my shows on and I could

watch and edit at the same time. So now instead of absolutely

dreading those days I get excited about sitting down and

going through my editing process and getting it done because

that's the day that I get to binge I get to Netflix and binge

I am still working I'm not chilling but it's better than

it's better than just sitting here in silence working and

editing. The next thing is you need to make it as easy as

possible. I struggled here at my house, one of my dogs has pain

issues. He's an older dog and I'm trying to remember make the

habit of giving him his pill every single evening and morning

and I kept his pills like up in this cabinet and I realized that

it's like if it's out of sight, I'm not going to remember it so

I started putting the pill bottle and the pill stuffer

thing that I stick the pill in like the little treat that you

stuffed it in, there right there together and they're right next

to the spot where I feed the dogs and so it's like I just

made it easy like I don't want to think about it now it's so

obvious that this is something that I need to do and I'm not

missing or skipping or anything. And then the last part of this

is make it immediately satisfying. So find some way to

reward yourself or ensure there's some like happy result

for knocking that out or walking through that habit. Yeah, those

are the four those are the four things and I don't know if you

have any good examples you want to share with that that you use

in your life.

oh I do, I have..

Okay i figured you did.

Yes, I definitely have comments about about all of

these things the make it obvious one to me is set the stuff up,

do your CRMs all of those things. I am another person my

entire tarot deck so I do 78 detailed drawings on my iPad.

And I honestly think the reason that the iPad was the tool du

jour for me for creating stuff is because I can sit in front of

the television on the sofa with my comfy blanket and my slippers

on and be able to make my pillow nests,

Get cozy...

and work on it. Because then I would look

forward to it right? If I wasn't as motivated to draw that day

having the thought of oh, I'm going to turn on a show. And you

know, Cara and I were talking before we started recording.

We're so overstimulated with things in our world. Few of us

can sit still and just watch TV. I mean, that's that feels like

kind of uncomfortable

Like your brain needs more stimulation.

Yeah, it's like an uncomfortable activity,

That's really sad.

But why not turn that time into something more

productive. I mean, to be honest, like editing and

drawing, I loved doing that, because I would listen to the

show, I would look up. Now my son got a little irritated when

he would watch TV with me, because then I would be like,

wait a minute, what happened? And then he'd be like, you

really need to pay attention to what's going on. I'm not gonna I

can't always be here to explain to you why that is. And there

were times that I had to watch the episode again, to go, oh,

that's where that happened. So I would miss stuff because I get

lost in my drawing. But it does, it makes it more attractive. And

you know what, there's nothing wrong with using that to be able

to help you get shit done. GSD get shit done. So yeah, making

it attractive, making it fun, making it comfortable, making it

something I know people who listen to music, not everybody's

into watching TV, but they listen to music, and it brings

your energy level up

or audiobooks.

There's a ton of ways. Whatever floats your boat

easy is important. That's a pretty good one. The other one I

That's inspiring.

wanted to talk about was the making it immediately

satisfying. So I listened to a podcast years ago, and I cannot

remember the name of the person who did this had this

suggestion. But as humans, we love the little reward were

started from the time that we're in kindergarten to learn about

getting a gold star. So we like that. And there's a reason,

folks why slot machines make so much money in Vegas or anywhere

else that there's a slot machine. We love to pull the

lever and hear the noise. It is it hits the dopamine centers in

our brain it like whites, all of our nerves on fire. And we

absolutely love that. So when you're thinking of that reward,

the reward can be something monumentally simple that hits

those notes for you. This particular coach on the podcast

recommended that you go to the store and you get yourself a

Yeah, it's a very inspiring thing. And in our

glass, it has to be glass container of some kind, and some

type of an object that small that will make a noise when it

hits the container. My choice in this was a glass canister that

was really pretty and little blue rocks, like they put at the

bottom of aquariums or people will glue on to stuff. And when

I complete a task that I'm trying to build a habit around,

I drop the blue little rock into the container, it makes this

satisfying noise as it goes in. And it lights all of those same

things on fire somatically in my body, and it's like this reward

that I get to move something over there. It's the same reason

a lot of people love to put checkmarks on things. Because

you have that. So it doesn't have to be like oh, I have this

habit. And now my reward is something complicated. It can be

as simple as getting yourself a glass container and some pretty

little bubbly rocks and dropping them in. And then again, this

goes back to number one, you'll see those small changes really

accumulate over time like Easton sighs money grow in his piggy

bank, you get to see what you have accomplished. Fill that

container all of the way up. And then when you have it at the

end, it's important one more story with that. So the touched

by a horse community there was a graduate of that program, and I

think her name is Anna, she's an amazing coach. But when she

first started her practice, what she did was filled up one of

little group, we have 100 Square challenge. I'm showing this to

those containers with match sticks. So it represented the

fire that she wanted to start in her business. So every time that

she worked with a client or talked to a client, she would

Cara we're supposed to do 100 sales conversations, but we have

drop a match stick into a container. And then at her

graduation, I believe it was she presented that to her mentor and

said here's the fire that I'm ready to start. So I found that

absolutely beautiful. So Anna, that was a fantastic idea.

a little page and we put an X on it every single time we have a

sales conversation. And this is a huge reward. I mean, just as

simple as this crazy little paper that sits on my desk and

every time I have a sales conversation, I X off a box and

the goal is to get 100 of them Xed off by July the first. You

know how many of you out there struggle with sales, right? That

is a constant complaint that we hear I'm not good at follow up.

I'm not good at my sales process. I don't know anything

about it. Make it fun. Give yourself a reward for it.

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What you're saying here that I keep picking up on to is don't

put the reward at the end of the goal. Like where the goal is

completed, you should have something there of course, but

you need to be rewarding yourself throughout the process.

Like every little task you complete towards that goal. I

think about it, like when someone's talking about all

right, when I lose the five pounds, I'm gonna go get a new

pair of jeans, but it's like, you know, you've got to, you've

got to reward all of the healthy happy steps that you're taking

every single day, the small changes that you've made every

single day or over time to get to that end result that end

habit. So I think that's the biggest thing that you're

talking about is reward yourself during the process, have a

reason to keep going things that keep you motivated, not just the

big end goal is the reward.

Absolutely. Because to be honest, that's

where habits fail, right? It's they fail in the day to day. And

that's because it doesn't feel in those little tiny changes,

just like Easton saying, I'm never going to make enough money

to be able to buy a video game. And especially when you're

building a new habit that's hard for you, it's really hard to see

that from day one. But if you can watch the accumulation

through a glass canister, or you can watch your I mean, honestly,

glass piggy bank would probably be awesome, because you can see

the change starting to grow up in there and the dollars or

whatever you're putting in it. If you can watch that happen. It

hits those notes for you all along the way. And it makes you

want to come back and do it every single day. The next thing

we want to talk to you about is motivation and willpower.

Because on those days when the blue ball dropping into the

glass canister doesn't seem to be quite cutting it for you

don't beat yourself up about that. Willpower is not always

the thing that you need to call on to get something done. In

other words, it's not a curative effect, in my opinion, and you

lacking that is not always your fault. There's a lot of

distractions, there's a lot of things in the world, there's a

lot of things in your own background that may be trauma

related that are pulling on you and to blame any kind of failure

about creating a new habit on yourself is counterproductive,

in my opinion. What do you think about that, Cara?

Well, this is an area where I think a lot of

people end up beating themselves up. All of this other stuff

aside, if people aren't building habits and getting to a place

where they've got longevity in a project, or they are finishing

things that they set their hopes on. That, a lot of times it

comes down to them feeling like I'm just not motivated, I have

no willpower. And it's another area to feel like a failure like

you've messed up in your life. And I just think that's not the

case. It means that like you said, maybe you have some things

that you need to look at what is making you think it's your

willpower, where is that coming from and do some work around

that and I know we've talked about mindset and that sort of

thing on the show and we've got some other great episodes coming

up. where we talk about mindset, but I just I hate any area where

people are saying to themselves, I failed again, and this is why.

And they're blaming themselves for not being able to, to get to

that place that they want to get to.

Yeah, and I think this is a target rich

environment for that particular attitude. I think there are a

lot of professionals that say, here's the way to whip up your

willpower and your motivation. And that's where I tend to part

ways with a lot of the habit building gurus is because I know

there are things that you can't willpower your way through that

become obstacles in you building this habit. So if you've

listened to this far into this program, you're one of those

people out there in the world that probably struggles with

some habits that you would really like to change or make

better in your business and in your life for that matter. And

change is hard. I don't care who, you know, you can say, oh,

it's easy, you just do this, you just do one little thing over

time. And there's those four things, the four things make it

easier. But folks, when it comes down to it, sometimes all of

that doesn't matter in the moment, because there's a bigger

obstacle that you need to work your way through. And in order

to be able to get to the point where you can get to the Four

Laws of Behavior Change, and where you can start making those

small steps. And it's not your fault if that obstacle is big

enough that you need help, or you need time, to be able to

dismantle it, set it off to the side, and then come back and

tackle this habit that you want to create in your life. And

blaming it all back on you is of no use to you, or any of your

forward progress. And boy, am I ever learning that lesson in my

life. Right in this minute. As I'm sitting here talking about

it, I have things going on in my life where I've run into one of

those gargantuan obstacles that it feels like it's blocking

every single path that I'm on. And I am in the process of

dismantling it one brick at a time. No matter what habits I

have, that I'm trying to build until that obstacle is

dismantled enough, blaming and shaming me for not being able to

create that habit is doing nothing but damage.

I feel that so and I know you and I were

talking yesterday, and we were talking about my type and how I

might have a big goal that sounds like something really

awesome that I'd like to do. But if I can't see a clear path

there, then I write it off sometimes as something that's

unachievable for myself. So for me thinking about it in terms of

the habits around that, and setting the course, you know, it

makes me think one of the quotes in the book that I really liked

are, you know, goals are good for setting the direction, but

systems are the process that leads to the results. And the

systems are the habits that you build. And so for me thinking

about, like, I've got some big things, you know, on my goals

list, sometimes I struggle to see the path there, you know,

and so thinking about those systems that will get me there,

and those habits that I can create to get myself there make

me feel a little better about it.

Yeah, those little small steps, the little

small steps that get you to the place you can be. And for those

of you who do really struggle with depression and own a

business, you know, this is a lifelong fight for me with

depression. And I can tell you back when I was really deeply

depressed at the beginning of creating this business, some

days, all I could get up and do was one small step. And that one

small step did end up leading to something big. And it made me

feel good, it was like I got one small step, just one small step

at a time. And if that one small step is all you can take today,

count it a win, drop your blue bubble in the glass box, and,

you know, enjoy that dopamine hit for a moment. And then if

you need to go do something else and be away from that habit.

There is absolutely positively nothing wrong with that. So

let's normalize, taking care of yourself and making things

positive. I hope people have gotten some good use out of this

episode. The habits that you create in your business really

do move it forward. And another good thing I want to mention to

you guys is that even though I have that gargantuan obstacle in

my way, the fact that I created good habits in my business

before that obstacle came up in my life's path means that I am

able to, without a lot of stress, be able to concentrate

on my obstacle versus worry about everything else that's

going on. So the good habits do pay off even when you have to

break the good habit to go work on something else.

That's it for This episode, we hope you guys

enjoyed it. So the big three Recap, you know, make those

small changes over time to build the habit like we've talked

about set yourself up for success by designing your

environment to support your habit. And three, think about

motivation and willpower, but remind yourself that it's not

your fault oftentimes, and that you know, it's okay if you need

to think about those obstacles that are in your way. And I like

to think about this as when it comes to your animal based

business, the good habits that you create are going to ensure

your staying power, they're going to be what keeps you in

this business long term, there are going to be the things that

pull you through and that free up your brain so that you can do

your very best work and keep you on track. So just keep that in

mind. We hope you guys are all out there today doing something

even if it's something super small in your business to create

that good habit and get to your end game. So that's it if you

guys hop over to Instagram and Facebook, you'll find us at The

Business Animal we would love to hear from you let us know what

you think about this episode.

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