The Art of Consistency: Navigating Life's Thousand Molehills

But where people get this whole thing wrong is I feel like they feel like it's one mountain, one large mountain. If I can just be consistent and get over this one large mountain, or if I can just climb fast enough to get over this mountain, I don't even have to be consistent. I just have to get past this mountain. And life is not one large mountain. It's a thousand molehills. And so this idea of being able to be consistent over a thousand mole hills, Slow, small, steady steps. I'm gonna say that again. It's not a fast paced run up the mountain and you're a winner. It's a slow, small, steady steps over a thousand molehills that actually get you to success, to money, to happiness. Like all of that is on the other side of the consistency that you've put into place.

Welcome back to beyond the Defaults. I'm your host, Liz Moorhead, and as always, I am joined by the one and only George B. Thomas. This week we are diving into a topic that may make you scratch your head at first and go, how are we going to talk for a whole, what, 30, 45 minutes about this topic? And that topic is consistency. But trust me, it's a little bit more nuanced than you might think at first. George, how did you feel going into today's conversation? This was one, I know that keenly interested you on Liz.

I woke up, I was super excited. As a matter of fact, I showed up 30 minutes early for the podcast recording and I was like, let's go, where's Liz at? And then I looked at my calendar, was like, crap, this isn't till 7:30. Like I still have some time. But it, it's funny because I think I'm so excited I had a chance to unpack. Why are you so excited? Like, why are you raring to go about this? And it's because if I look back at what's happened in my life and many others, and just the kind of research and understanding of consistency, it's a superpower that I don't believe gets the light shined on it enough that when you harness it, when you understand what it is, when you figure out how to implement in your personal and professional life, it's an absolute game changer. And it honestly is the thing that I can point back to that makes me different than most.

Well, let's go back in the time machine. Let's start with a moment where maybe you hadn't learned your lessons around consistency just yet. Can you take us back to a moment in your life where you were maybe inconsistent or not quite firing on all cylinders from that regard, where you expected different results.

Yeah, there's. It's funny, there's a ton of times in my life that I can point back to that I would call myself sporadic, have an idea, think it was cool, go for it, and then it would just fizzle out. And I think this is probably the major problem of maybe the, you know, my 20s through my 30s, potentially, or early 30s, is that I was so dang sporadic. I would have a plan A and a plan B and a plan C. And if that didn't work, I'd go to plan M. And you're just jumping all over the place and you're. You're not drawing a line, you're not focused, you're not hitting the same spot or over and over and over again. I'll unpack that a little bit more as we go. But one of the things that I always go back to and wonder is when I started what I would call my first business, a business that was called Graphics for Worship, and we literally designed images and videos for churches to use for their worship music and their sermons and stuff like that. And if I would have stayed consistency, if I would have learned this superpower, if I wouldn't have been so sporadic, I've often wondered, where the heck would that business be today in the understanding how large multimedia has gotten in church services? Now, you know, I can't go back, I can't redo it, but it is definitely a time where I was like, I'm going to do all of the things. And by the way, this is a disease that I know that I have, because even when I was going to start the latest business, George B. Thomas llc, and kind of go into the agency world, originally, Liz, I was like, I'm going to do podcasting, I'm going to do video editing, I'm going to do HubSpot. I'm going to do it all. And then finally I was like, yeah, I'm not going to be able to be consistent on that. And understanding the key power of the last 10 to 12 years has been the consistency in a certain thing. I almost, like, did a really bad move, but again, was able to, like, right the ship and be like, no, if you're going to be consistent, you have to focus and you have to think long term. And again, hitting something in the same spot, thinking long term, having focus. These are all things that will probably continue to unpack as we talk about being consistent in your Life. But at the end of the day, Liz, I could probably come up with about 27 more stories where George was sporadic and stupid.

Okay, well, this is where I'm going to call you out. Were you really stupid?

I wasn't stupid, but it's just like, if I could wave a magic wand, I would go back to, like, when I was 24, 25. And I rarely ever say that, by the way, when those. When those conversations come up, you're at the bar, you're on a back porch with your friends. Oh, if I could go back. I usually say I wouldn't go back. But on this conversation today, if I could go back and wave a magic wand, I would tell young George, bro, consistency is the key. Here is the key. Learn everything about how to be consistent. Learn everything about what consistency is. Learn how to leverage it for your life. So not stupid, Liz, but aloof, maybe unknowing of its power. It kind of goes hand in hand with, like, people don't really pay attention to. You know, if you're thinking about finances, there is a thing of, like, diminishing returns, and there's a thing of, like, you've got enough money that it just starts making money for you. Right? Consistency in the things that we choose to do. They'll just start making the money for us. And I don't mean actual money, but they'll start doing the thing for us that we're actually trying to achieve once we get into the rhythm, the rhyme of the thing.

It's so interesting to hear you say that. My brain is going in about three different directions, but I want to stay here for this particular moment because I'm really hung up on this idea of this being the one thing where you would actually go back in time. Because what I'm immediately thinking is, well, George, could we even be sitting here this. Having today's conversation had you not learned those lessons?

No, we wouldn't be sitting here. If I wouldn't have, at a certain point, realized the power of consistency, we would not be sitting here. I would not have the brand I have. I would not have the life I have. There'd be a different life, there'd be a different direction. But quite literally where I am today, I go back to a couple of things. My consistency in educating myself day in, day out, having this mindset or mentality in my business, because I know there's listeners that are going to listen to this that have no clue what in the world HubSpot is. But in my business, becoming the best at HubSpot the software, the methodology, sales, marketing, service operations. And consistently, every day going into what was the HubSpot Academy, or still is the HubSpot Academy on the same side, output, right? Consistent output. Doing a podcast consistently every week, week, week, do another one, another episode, you know, 272 episodes of the Hubcast. Just video tutorials, right? I'm talking professional right now. Video tutorials, a tutorial a day, three a week, you know, seven a month, whatever. It is like consistently putting out this consistent churn of educating yourself and then educating others and creating content consistently. The brand that it's built, the business that it's allowed me to create, the life that that is allowing me to live. The stages that it's actually now putting me on and going around the world and speaking. It's so powerful. But, but here's the thing. I don't want the listeners just to think that it's about professional consistency because I personally, back in the day in 2020, when the world was starting to fall apart, I consistently started to go for a walk a day and then two walks a day and then three walks a day. And so like one walk a day isn't anything, right? One tutorial is useless, but if you do a thousand tutorials, it becomes a thing. If you do three walks a day for seven months, you lose £79. That's the thing. Here's what I, what I why I think people have a hard time with this topic and understanding that's a superpower, is that the power of consistency is easily measured over long term, but almost impossible to measure short term. And so many of us, especially when we're stuck in the default or trying to get out of it, are looking for those short term wins and are less focused on the long term journey that we have to take to get to those things.

How do you make a decision about what in your life you're going to be consistent with? Because one of the things that you and I have talked about in previous episodes is the fact that we are humans with fine finite capacities, energies. We cannot be everything to everyone, nor should we be, nor should we want to. So what are the ways in which you determine in what areas of your life are you going to show up consistently? How do you choose what to say no to?

Yeah, so first of all, let me be real honest. I suck at saying no. I just fundamentally suck at saying no. Because, yeah, I do, but, but that's because I default on the other side of this, where I'm trying to turn ideas around so much so quickly I try to give all ideas the room to breathe. I don't want them to be smothered. I am willing to almost try anything now. There's a difference between trying everything and being sporadic and trying everything to look for the micro winds to add fuel to the fire. And that's something that I've always said through my life, personally, professionally, is like, find where there's fire and pour gasoline on it. So when we started to do a podcast and three months later we went to an event and people were like, the podcast is awesome. It was like, okay, I need to be consistent about this. This needs to become important in my life. I need to set up strategies, calendars, ideation time around this thing. That needs to be important. It is showing that it's working. When I started doing a walk a day, I lost 2 pounds, 5 pounds. Holy crap. What would happen if I did two walks? Let me pour gasoline on this fire. Holy mackerel, look what's happened to my body. Let me. What if I did three walks? Right. And so it's literally trying a bunch of things, giving your ideas room to grow or fail. Don't care about the failures, look at what's winning and then run in those directions. And the good thing too is for me, fundamentally, and I have to say this because probably not everybody listening to this roles like this, but I'm always kind of doing or leaning into what I'm passionate about anyway. So if I'm passionate about it and I'm generating a bunch of ideas through kind of the content or strategic, you know, mill, if you will. And I see some that people are like, yeah, we like that, we love this. But then it's very easy for me, like, hey, I was already passionate about this. Let me just go ahead and dive even deeper and keep on rocking and rolling.

I want to needle on something here that you were just talking about, particularly with the walking thing. Yeah, I love this idea of like, okay, I'm going to pour gasoline on it. But is there a point where something is sustainable in the short term but not in the long term? Like, how do you find that balance of, oh, I'm going to do this, I'm going to keep doing this, I'm going to do it more and more.

And more and more.

But sometimes what can happen is you can reach an inflection point where you just stop doing it entirely.

Well. Or you do it too much.

Yeah.

And that's the thing. There is a side of consistency that you have to realize. And I think I'm honestly learning this right now is there's like this idea of diminishing returns. If I went for four walks, would I really get any more benefit if I just would have gone for two?

Right?

Maybe not. Right? And so what I think sometimes, Liz, is when I started to do three walks, it became such a time suck that now, which, by the way, I'm not still doing the walks. But let's be again, completely authentic, transparent, open. I beat myself up on a daily basis that I don't step out of my office and at least go for one or two walks for the last year. And I mask it or hide it under the fact that you're starting a business, bro. Do you got to be like hustling and you got it, you know, you could be doing something instead of that walk. And I know, I know in my brain it's fundamentally bull crap, but I want to get back to those walks. So why I say I'm. I think I'm learning this right now is as we kind of approach this consistency conversation and I started to investigate, you know, diminishing returns and what that equals. I'm like, George, it was cool, but you were kind of, again, I'm going to use the S word, you were kind of being stupid. You probably could have done two walks, but you took it to a level that you think it can't be done where you're at right now. So how about you just get consistent with one walk and make that happen or two 30 minute walks instead of one hour or two one hour walks, like, how can you make it happen? And so this to kind of dive into what your question for me, where my brain goes, is it should be something that is sustainable. And if it isn't sustainable, it doesn't mean that you kill it, it just means that you need to modify it. And unfortunately, what I did is I killed it when I should have modified it because, hey, did I lose 79 pounds? Yes. Have I gained some of that back? Absolutely. And it drives me nuts because I know I have the power to do it. But again, I let life get in the way. And so many of us let life get in the way. And we don't modify, right? We don't manufacture the opportunity, we don't set the time, and we just need to set the time again. Part of all of this, beyond your default, is it's your life, design it instead of it being designed for you. And what's fun is I love that we're having this conversation because it's forcing me to Understand, this is one area where you were designing, but you set the pen or pencil down and you let the other pieces of your life kind of take over. And I think this is really important because part of what we might end up talking about here is this idea of how do you stay consistent in all the things that you want to do? And what are all the things you want to do as far as, like, professional, personal, spiritual, financial? And how do you create some type of rubrics or matrix of like, okay, these are the things that I need to pay attention to. Now, I can pay attention to all of them, or I can't pay attention to all of them, but if I can do every other week, it's this and every other week, it's that. That's still consistency, by the way. Once a month, on every day that you choose to do it is consistency. Like, that's the other part of this is when most people hear the word consistency, I think they think that I've got to do a daily grind each and every day, and then after 30 years, it'll be like, no, no, no. It's just consistency in whatever shape or form you decide to put it in.

How do you manage moments where you and someone else don't have the same definition of consistency? Because you and I have both dealt in other areas of our life. Moments where it's like, oh, oh, no, we don't have a shared definition.

Yeah, it's interesting. When you asked me that question, my first response is, I don't necessarily know if consistency is a team sport. Now, there might be places in your life, like if you're married or, you know, you've got team workers that are part of whatever's happening, then being consistent, it's maybe a little bit of a team sport, especially if somebody's relying on you, like if they're waiting for you to get them something so that they can do your job. And your inconsistency is actually causing friction in the organization. Okay, consistency is a team sport. But very much where I go is if you are being consistent in yourself, and if consistency is a route that you are plugging in and you're like, this is going to be me. That last thing that I just mentioned seldom happens because you're. Listen, the way that I've seen this happen is when you start to be consistent, you start to pull away from the pack. And it's really amazing how little you have to be consistent to beat the other people that you aren't necessarily even trying to beat, but you just Fundamentally beat them. Because all of a sudden you have a method to your madness, a rhythm to your rhyme, if you will. And so I feel like when you are focused on consistency, whether it be daily, whether it be weekly, whether it be monthly, at some point, like I've proven in this podcast, people are going to fall off. Imagine if there was somebody that was trying to do the same thing I was doing, but they kept doing the two or three hour walks. Fundamentally, they would be way ahead of me right now. Why? Because they would have thousands of hours of walking that I don't have. Think about the podcast or the tutorials. If I stop and somebody continues at the rate in which I was doing it, what would happen? Their brand, their ability to create their own business, their ability to become whoever they wanted to become would become way easier for them, maybe a little bit more difficult for me. Why? Because they have thousands of hours that they've put into it that now maybe I haven't. So that's the thing. I feel like consistency, if I can correlate it to something physical that people might understand, it's like putting money in the bank and then realizing at some point you're gonna be able to withdraw this consistent effort that you put towards the things that you've deemed important in your life.

What do you think most people get wrong about consistency?

Here's the mindset is that many people think, because when I'm having this conversation, it's consistency to equal success, or consistency in my case, to equal significance. And then success comes out of significance. But where people get this whole thing wrong is I feel like they feel like it's one mountain, one large mountain. If I can just be consistent and get over this one large mountain, or if I can just climb fast enough to get over this mountain, I don't even have to be consistent. I just have to get to pass this mountain. And life is not one large mountain. It's a thousand molehills. And so this idea of being able to be consistent over a thousand molehills, slow, small, steady steps. I must say that again, it's not a fast paced run up the mountain and you're a winner. It's a slow, small, steady steps over a thousand molehills that actually get you to success, to money, to happiness. Like all of that is on the other side of the consistency that you've put into place.

What are some of the questions you would encourage our listeners to ask themselves if they are struggling with consistency in their life? And before you answer, I want to break this up into two categories. Because I think there are two ways in which we've discussed today that people can struggle with consistency. One is understanding where, with what, with whom, and when they should be consistent. So figuring out what those priority areas are. And two, the actual act of being consistent, the actual act of showing up.

So a couple questions that I've had to ask myself is the first one is why? Like, why am I not able to be consistent in this? And you got to be completely honest with yourself. I freaking hate it. I'm not consistent with it because I hate it. I don't want to get up early. I don't want to go outside. I don't want to. Like, it could be raining. God, can it be raining? I don't want to go for a walk today. Like, I'm giving a really dumb example there.

Well, I can give a different example if it's helpful.

Oh, well, yeah, go for it.

One of the things I struggled with for a long time, and it's something that I still struggle with, is fear. People can really get in their head about things like, why don't I show up consistently? And if I sit there and I sit there and I stare at the thing that's in the pit of my belly, it's like, because I'm afraid I'm going to screw it up.

Yeah. I'm not built that way.

I know some of our listeners might be.

Yeah, yeah. So first of all, we should probably have an episode on fear. Just saying, because I don't think we've actually climbed that mountain yet. I don't think we've talked about fear. The relationship that I've had to build or unpack with fear. I too. There was a day where I was. I would. I was a fear baby. Like, I was just afraid of, like, jacking anything up. Now I'd much rather try anything and be like, okay, it didn't work, whatever. And I mean literally that, like, it didn't work. Move on. So we should probably do an episode on fear. But to go back to your thing, when you're asking yourself why that might be one of the answers. I'm afraid. I'm afraid I might fail. It might be that you hate the thing. It might be that you don't know enough of the thing. What I found fundamentally for myself, though is many times it was because I hadn't simplified the process. I hadn't simplified what was once complex. Let's go back to the walking for a second and the losing weight. Over a seventh month period. I got up and I walked at the same time every day, in the morning, at lunch, and in the evening. But there's another side piece to this is that there's always people will talk about the amount that you move and the amount that you put in your mouth, the amount that you eat that side of it. Walking, by the way, walking is real simple. You get up, you put one foot in front of the other, and you're walking. The difficult side is the food side of this. And so I researched, like, for me, it was about getting rid of inflammation because of having rheumatoid arthritis. And walking was the fact that I needed to move more to keep the, you know, know, joints limbered up and that kind of stuff. But I researched, and I literally found, like, three to four things that I could eat that was healthy for me that wouldn't cause inflammation. And guess what? I just consistently ate those things. I didn't eat other things. I made it so there was three to four things that I would put in my mouth, and I was walking, you know, two to three times a day for an hour each time. It's real simple. It wasn't complex. I didn't have to go to the gym. I didn't have to learn how to use all the machines. I had to learn how to put earbuds in, press play on my phone, and walk, and then pick out of the refrigerator one of four things to put in my mouth occasionally during the day. So when you're thinking about what are you trying to be consistent on, what are all the damn moving parts, and how can you remove, like, 32 of them, even for content creation? Liz, I'm sitting here doing this podcast with you in what might be considered a home studio, because I realize if I got three cameras, a teleprompter, obs, streamyard, if I got the right tools and I build the right process, I can create more content than anybody because I'm not tearing down, I'm not setting up, I'm not going to a different room. I've removed all complexity, AKA removed all excuses to where it's like a flip of a switch and go, so whatever you're trying to be consistent in, how can you make it a flip of a switch and just go, how do.

You keep yourself moving forward on the days where you do not want to be consistent?

It's hard. It's hard. I. I think there's a. A happy mix of a couple things. One, I think documenting where you're trying to go and putting it where you can see it on A daily basis reminds you, hey, this is where I'm trying to get to. If I'm gonna try to get here, I need to have these things. I literally had a whiteboard that had every month for, like, 10 months forward with the amount that I wanted to weigh, written by the month. And then, like, I would write down what I had actually received. So there was literally a visual thing that was keeping me consistent. I also think accountability. I would go live on Facebook back in these days, and I would talk on Facebook and show people that I was walking because it was my way of having a digital accountability partner. Right. So visually being able to see it, having some type of accountability partner. But also I think there's a healthy dose of having a fire in your belly. It's a fire in your belly that you're tired of being something or being someone or not being something or being someone that you want to be. And if you can tap into that fire in your belly have triggers. You wake up in the morning, and these are the first three things that you want to think of. Because, you know, if you think about these three things, it's going to be the dominoes that make you do the other 5, 10, 17 things that you need to do during that day to reach where you're trying to go. But I also think that that fire in the belly is. Is a deeper conversation. I had to fundamentally start in all of the things that we've talked about today, start believing in myself that I could achieve them. And by the way, when I started to lose weight, I literally realized I had finally figured out a way to slay the one demon that I had not been able to previously slay, and that was watch what was going in my mouth and move my body more. It had always been an issue for me. Now it's still an issue for me because I walked away from the dragon. I quit the fight so many times. That's what we do is we fight the dragon, we fight the demon, we get past the thing that we never thought we would get past, and we go, victory. Let me sit down. Take a break for a minute. That's the thing. An object in motion always stays in motion. My biggest regret on anything is that I stop it. So, for instance, if you Google beyond your default, you'll find graphics for this podcast from about four years ago. I did maybe four episodes, and I stopped. Imagine where we'd be if I would have continued to consistently create content about beyond your default four years ago versus what, two, three months now? We've been Doing this, like, dang it, why did I stop?

So, honestly, thank you, George, for not being consistent. My selfish plot is going to say, good, good.

I hear you. Right. I. I do hear you. And that's fun and funny. I love that.

I know what you're saying.

Yeah, you see what I'm saying? Like, again, there's life principles that, they sound random, but if you grab a hold of these life principles and really start to diagnose them from the angles of the life that you're trying to build, they just absolutely make sense. An object in motion always stays in motion, AKA be consistent in the that you're doing, and you will arrive somewhere on the day that you're supposed to arrive there.

What's the part of consistency that you're still struggling with right now? What's that battle that you're currently fighting?

So I had said earlier, it's about long term focus. It's funny, I want to break that apart because I think the part that I have always struggled with is that it's actually long term and focus, not long term focus. There's a difference in that. By the way, the realization that it's going to take a while. And by the way, I'm fine with that piece of it. The part that I still battle with is the focus. And in the focus, the priorities part. I feel like for a lot of my life I've been trying to chop down trees, spiritually, mentally, physically, professionally, personally, relationships. But so many times I've tried to like hit the tree in a thousand different places instead of just consistently hitting the tree in one spot. And that's how you chop down a tree, by the way, other. Other than if you have a chainsaw, change us, make it real easy. But let's just stick with the analogy that we have an axe. Yeah, chainsaws aside, let's stick with the analogy that we have an axe. You have to hit the same spot in the amount of times to take a big enough chunk out of it to make that tree drop. And so it really is about focus, the aim that you're trying to do. It's also about the tree, the priority in which trees you're trying to drop first. I struggle with that. As. As a testament, this whole podcast episode. When starting a business, what are the two things that I have been the least consistent on that historically were the things I was most consistent on and that have been driving me absolutely nuts. I was consistent on educating myself at HubSpot Academy. Now, have I still been educating myself during this last year? Year and a half. Yes, I have a master's degree in how to start a fricking business. Cool. But I still battle with the fact that I'm not in HubSpot Academy, educating myself on the business side of this. That the other thing. Sales, marketing, service operations. HubSpot, Right? I'm reading or listening to audible less than I ever have, which drives me nuts. In all honesty, I'm reading my Bible less than I ever have drives me nuts. But I'm also walking less and I'm eating wrong more than I ever have. Because I feel like starting a business was this giant red oak or red tree or, you know, like this massive monster tree that I was like, well, let me go ahead and stop chopping down these other trees because I need to come over here. And I over indexed. I believe, fundamentally for me, I believe I over indexed. And so this podcast episode and getting ready for it has helped me unpack a lot of things of like, dude, maybe, maybe it looks like this, Maybe it should be this way. Maybe you need to diversify your portfolio in your 1% better, everyday mindset that you have to answer your question. Focus and the prioritization of where to focus is something that I still struggle with, with consistency.

If somebody listening to this right now, who is struggling with consistency in their life in some way could only remember one bit of wisdom from today's episode, what would it be and why?

I think if we start to unpack the power of little things, right? And it's. It's kind of going back to the mountain. But don't think about the mountain. Just think about when you accumulate a bunch of little things, it becomes something substantial. There's a video out there that you can Google or search or maybe we'll even put in the show notes of, like, Will Smith, the actor, talking about his dad's shop, and he breaks down this wall and him and his brother have to build this wall. Well, the idea here is they. They didn't just, like, throw up a wall, right? They built it one brick at a time. They accumulated a bunch of little things to create the wall. So instead of your focus being, I need to consistently build this wall, your focus should be, I need to consistently lay this one brick. And that's the thing I would figure out. What is the micro thing, the habit that you need to form to implement the action that you need to do that. When you do that 20, 50, 100 times, it builds the thing that you're trying to actually achieve. So quit trying to be consistent about building A brand just do a piece of content a week or two pieces of content a week or a piece of content a day, or whatever it is for you to build your brand. It could be video, it could be audio, it could be content, it could be none of what I just mentioned. You're on your own journey. But whatever you're trying to be consistent in, how do you break it down to its simplest form, the piece, the habit, the action. And how do you then set the time in which you want to do those actions and the time in which you want to end up with the end goal? Because here's the thing, we have no clue when we start to do these little things, the speed in which we'll actually reach the thing that we wanted to reach. Because it'll be quicker than you ever expected on this little things thing. Here's, here's the fun part about this. I got a buddy and he has the saying and at first I was like, bro, that's a cute saying. And then I realized the power in the saying and the reason I'm going to bring this up is because I think everybody listening to this needs to know. It's about the accumulation of little things, one brick to build a wall. But it's also the training, your mind and your body and your like knee jerk reactions around this whole process that you're going to be going through is that how you do little things is how you do all things. And that saying right there, if you unpack that how you do little things is how you do all things. Those who have little and treat it right will treat it right when they get much. I'm not going to go too biblical into that, but there's a whole bunch of references that we could go down right?

And so yeah, that one in my core.

So pay attention to how you're doing little things because how you do those little things when the consistency pays off. And now you're on the main stages, you're playing in the big game. You've been brought up to the big leagues. You now have the little things, the fundamentals that it's like it's just there. You don't have to think about it, you just do it because you remember every brick you laid.