Fundamentals Are the Unicorns

There’s this night where you can’t sleep. You turn on the TV and land on one of those exercise commercials. They show these videos of super fit people doing super fit activities. They show you some before photos of the former fatty who turned into this muscular stud. You think to yourself that maybe you could do that, too. You could be a super fit guy who does super fit things.

What’s the pathway to get there?

Some will suggest 90 days. Some will even say 15 minutes a day. The reality is, both are probably right to some extent—however, read the fine print.

Ninety days and then you continue for another 90 days and then you are hooked. Or, it’s 15 minutes a day for the rest of your life.

I am a realist. I can look at my pillow shaped belly and know that the only way to turn that pillow into a washboard would be to commit to something for the rest of my life. That’s the way success happens. Not overnight; not in 15 minutes; but over the course of a lifetime.

We are conditioned to hunt for the amazing overnight success story. But, those don’t exist. No matter how much we hunt for unicorns, they won’t appear. Even for lottery winners who flush all that cash down the train because overnight success didn’t prepare them for all of this new money.

In business; in hiring; in weight loss; in client management; and in results—patience is certainly a virtue, but committing to the same fundamental over a forever time period can eventually set you up for ultimate success.

Say you want to buy a franchise. You think it’s going to change your life. You think it’s going to make you all the money in the world. Look at a franchise’s foundation. What is its unicorn? Following the system to a “T” consistently over a very long time and scaling the success into multiple locations. Think that happens overnight?

Those who win in losing weight don’t do so by burying that DVD in the nightstand—it’s those who put that DVD in day after day after day; start watching what they eat; and remain committed to the consistency of the foundation.

Fundamentals are clearly our life’s unicorn.