10,000 Small Steps to Success

“You know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It’s 25 hits. Twenty-five hits in 500 at-bats is 50 points, OK? There’s six months in a season. That’s about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week, just one, a gork, a ground ball — a ground ball with eyes! — you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week and you’re in Yankee Stadium.” – Bull Durham

My father was the head trader of a major pension fund for 47 years. He would spend days looking for the right trade. In that time, a hundred brokers, all looking for that killer commission, would offer their best tips of the day. He knew to say no.

He knew to wait.

He knew to buy that stock valued at $30, but trading, for no justifiable reason, at $19. When it hit $21, just as everybody started to talk about its imminent return to $30, he would sell.

I used to laugh at him. Everybody used to laugh at him.

He never cared. He never blinked. To him, it was an 11% windfall in just two weeks.

In an act of fatherly love, he would take a moment to explain it to me:

“On their own, these ‘nickels and dimes’ aren’t worth much. But over time they accumulate.”

Then he looked at me and smiled,

“and they compound.”

My father taught me the importance of patience and how to collect nickels and dimes.

A Lifetime of Small Movement Takes You Places

Take math for example, if you multiply 1 by 1, 365 times, you get 1. If I am one person and do nothing to improve, I am still 1.

What if you do something small?

💪It could be walking for 10 minutes a day.

💪It could be waking up 15 minutes earlier.

💪It could be dedicating 30 minutes to learning a new skill.

💪Reading ten pages of any book

💪Once an evening a week, networking.

💪At least one meal a week focused on quality time with your spouse or a child

Pennies add up. 1 times 1.01 is 1.02.

Multiply one by 1% 100 times, and you don’t get 2.

You get 2.7.

Multiply one by 1.01 125 times, and you get 3.5.

Every time you add extra, the increase itself increases at an increasing rate.

That’s the power of compounding.

After a year, those 10 minutes of walking result in two and a half days of constant movement. Waking up just a tad earlier gives you an extra 91 waking hours to do with as you please. If you dedicate half an hour a day to a skill, you will have the ability of an entry-level front-end web developer. By the way, a front end developer can make over $100,000, not counting projects on the side and the eCommerce sites he creates for his personal use.

How many people will you meet, networking once a week for ten years? How many memories will your children have of you if you dedicate an hour a week, fifty hours a year, of persoanl time with them?

Small Steps Make the Initial One Easy

The hardest part about anything is the first step. It can be working, running, or any project. Taking that initial movement from dreaming to doing is usually the most labor-intensive.

The advantage here is that your first step is just like all of them: Small.

This is important. The older we get, the harder it is to try something new. In our age of head-spinning technology constantly changing the rules, we might be relearning the latest mobile device when we’re in our 80s.

As we enter a recession, many of us might have to change careers. Some of us might start our own business. There may be a few who are set to retire.

Each direction will be a new one that demands we take a first step forward.

If you can set out a plan of constant increments, the first step should be nice and easy – just like the next one and the one after.

Everybody can become an expert. You will get there no matter how late in the game you start.

My good friend started working out at the ripe young age of 39. He could barely lift the bar, let alone put any plates on the ends.

He went to the gym four times a week, never more than 30 minutes. After a year, he put a 45-pound plate on each end. After two years, he could bench press his own weight.

He never did anything radical. He just kept going and enjoyed steady increments.

David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his family, millions of sunflowers, and Matilda, our local camel. David’s Israeli startup, Center Stage Marketing, is a lean marketing agency for startups and small businesses that creates and promotes SEO-optimized ROI-driven content to the right audience on your website and LinkedIn to make your business the star of the show.