I'm only going to say this once.

I'm only going to tell you this once.

Are you listening?

Okay…

That first sentence is complete garbage…

It almost never works in the business world.

(or when getting my 4-year-old son to do something)

"I'm only going to tell you this once" is one of those ridiculous lines that just seems to roll off the tongue of every generation.

I get why people say it. I've used the same line many times.

The times when I’ve said it, I wanted people to pay attention to what I was about to say so I didn’t have to keep repeating myself.

I was short on time, completely stretched to the limit and looking for the easy way out.

By making the words scarce like they're not going to be repeated, you hope that others will listen up and act.

It wasn't a good display of leadership where you seek enrollment, or try to get others to actually want to do the thing first.

It was just bad management.

An unreasonable request.

Especially today.

People have busy lives.

Work is more hectic now than ever.

Complexity and change is often crippling.

And things are moving faster than any previous year.

As a leader in a company, you've got to get comfortable repeating yourself.

Not only do you need to be cool with it, but you've gotta learn to love it and practice it with serious discipline.

Repeating your:

• Values
• Standards
• Objectives
• Behaviours
• Expectations
• Business direction

The further I go in business, the more I realise winning is about doing simple things really well over and over and over again until it becomes a habit and part of your culture.

There are no magic pills.

(trust me I’ve spent time looking)

The cold hard truth is, if you want ideas to stick, you need to REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT.

Politicians and speechwriters figured this out a long time ago.

Picking simple, sticky ideas and one-liners, and then hanging their whole campaign on it to align voters.

There’s real power in doing a version of this inside your business.

And I never gave this enough weight in the past.

It meant that as we grew, it was harder to align the team on standards and direction.

The more people that you add to the team, the more interpretation happens and you get varying results.

It wasn't until a business coach entered my world and pointed this out to me that I finally gave it the time it needed.

On the first day we met he mentioned that the job of the Founder is to:

REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT

PREDICT PREDICT PREDICT

DELEGATE DELEGATE DELEGATE

Except... I forgot it.

I literally had to keep going back to my notes and find it.

But the good news is, he kept repeating it to me.

And I started to use those reminders to repeat really important things to my team.

Looking back to the themes and ideas that worked the best this past year, they all had a sticky one-liner attached to them that I continued to repeat over and over again.

Everyone on the team ‘got it’ and knew what good looked like.

Repeating myself to death created a movement towards a kick-arse outcome.

It’s such a simple idea but incredibly powerful if you can stick to it.

I guess that’s like everything in business.

There are no fast-forward buttons.

The quickest way to get results is to madly simplify, and then repeat key ideas over and over again to your team, your customers and yourself.

Anyone who has the discipline to do it gets ahead at scale.

Putting This Into Action:

Start to think about key programs of work you want the team to focus on.

Or values and cultural changes you want to make to get everyone more aligned.

Or that training program that will increase knowledge and boost parts of your business.

Or a completely new direction in the future.

Discuss them with your team, write about them, meet about them, ask questions, interview customers, share feedback, and continue to repeat yourself about the standards, ideas and outcomes you’re shooting for.

You can’t overdo it here.

You’ll get sick of repeating yourself long before others get sick of hearing them and you see results from them.

So stay at it for way longer than you think.

It's simple things like that we often overlook these days.

I hope it helps you.

Have a great week.