Reward Yourself!

What's On My Mind

How does everyone reward themselves for incremental progress?

That's a question that popped up in our Open Q&A session this week in our GrowBIG Accelerator community.

What people shared stretched my thinking.

First: here's why this is important.

Dr Teresa Amabile of Harvard's research shows that the most successful -- and the happiest -- people in the world reward themselves for incremental progress.

That's particularly important in business development where so much of the outcome is outside of our control.

And, it takes so many steps for something big to happen, we can't just celebreate the big win.

We need to celebrate every step of the way.

Here are some examples of the ways our GrowBIG Accelerator members celebrate:

5 minute writing recapping the day's progress
Daily 10-minute team Zoom meeting where each person shares a BD success from the day before
Slack or Microsoft Teams channel with "ring the bell" icon for any incremental success
Self time to "give yourself the license" to do whatever you're craving: some quiet time, a long run, or whatever you feel like you've put off while you've been so busy serving others

My favorite, though, was from a rainmaker I really admire, Hannah. She's absolutely crushing her goals, focusing on incremental progress each week.

Last week she spoiled herself with a top tier facial.

But the best part was how she did it.

She let her team know she was going to be celebrating the fact they got 3 tough MITs (Most Important Things for BD) done that week.

She asked for the entire group not to ping each other during that time so they could all do something special for themselves.

Think about that.

She rewarded herself and the team for what they could control
She gave herself something lacking: time for herself.
She scaled the reward to the level of effort. A 5- or 10-minute reward works for a day's effort, maybe an hour for a week's

But I think taking some time for herself had an even bigger impact on her team.

It said so much:

BD is important.
BD is hard.
We need to reward ourselves for doing we can control.

Celebrating incremental progress.

Look. I'm taking a moment to celebrate. And you can too.

She's not just an amazing rainmaker.

She's a leader.

What To Revisit

What's Coming Up

We're almost done with a new complimentary course on Winning More Virtual Meetings.

It's turning out even better than I expected with videos, worksheets and more.

I can't wait to share it with you next week!

What's Making Me Smile

I ran across this quote lately and just loved it:

Do one thing every day that scares you.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Boy, does that apply to business development.

Reach out to the person that went dormant. Circle back to that client that didn't hire you and offer some help. Lean in and confidently talk about your fees.

Do something like that every day all week long. Make progress.

Then schedule that facial.

What's Worth Lingering On

I'm amazed by how few teams and individuals celebrate the big deal getting done, but don't celebrate the 100s of steps it took to get there.

Celebrating the little things is fun.

Celebrating what's in our control helps us do more of it.

Celebrating across our teams creates a winning team mentality.

How can you celebrate more of the small successes, fueling you and your team up to go back at it again every single day?

Now, that's worth lingering on.

Hit reply and let me know what you come up with!