🏆 SHOPIFY 1% WINS: What Actually WILL Kill Your Business

Good morning, one percenters. Thanks for joining me today for another 1% Shopify win. And for those maybe if this is your first time ever listening, these little short episodes are designed to be a 1% thought or idea. To help you improve 1%, and that might be personally, that might be your Shopify business.

Of course, the show is all related about e-commerce and Shopify, and the whole premise behind it is if you improve 1% a day for a year. So by the end of the year, you will have improved 37X. That's right. 1% compounded per day grows 3,700% by the end of the year. So that's the whole purpose of these. And let's get into today's, because today is one that is really near and dear to my heart.

It's actually a bit more of a personal 1% experience that, that I've gone through. And here's what it is. I think that no matter all the tactics that we talk about Facebook advertising, Google adwords, homepage optimizations, menu optimizations, landing page, the offer, whatever, all the stuff that we've been talking about, that all matters, but everything falls apart, if you as an individual fall apart and. I experience this sometimes where, I, I can't say that I've ever had a, like a breakdown per se, but I've definitely had days where and sometimes multiple days in the stretch where I feel not motivated. I feel not creative, not inspired, and I.

I, I procrastinate. I don't wanna do what I need to do. I am I'm just not my normal self. And what that does is that affects every area of my business. Like if I'm not my excited, amazing person that I often am. But let's face it, we all have our days. And so that sounds very self-confident. But you know what I, I, I think I generally am a positive.

Person who sees the world in a certain way. And I'm, I'm pretty creative and I I think that's been a big part of what's made me who I am. But some days I'm not like that. And my company and my work suffer because of it. And so it doesn't matter if I'm doing things right, if at the core I am, I'm not motivated, it falls apart and probably more businesses fail

because of the founder losing interest and losing motivation and not being motivated. And, you know, it, it's probably more important than any other factor that we talk about on these shows. And so, sometimes, and actually this happened a couple weeks ago, I started to feel not motivated and very tired.

And I still like, I love what I do. It's not that I don't love what I do, but I wake up in the morning and sometimes you just, stare at your screen and you let the world tell you what to do. Like you open your email and you just kind of mindlessly answer emails and do what needs to get done, but you're not creating, you're not building something.

And so I've noticed in life that. Often when I feel like this, when I think back to the past few weeks of what my personal life has looked like, it's often very consistent. I'm often not eating well. I'm often not sleeping well. I'm not exercising, and I'm not taking time for mindfulness .

I kind of view these four things as the pillars, the foundation that you build on top of. Even though I felt very tired and not motivated, I told myself I need to, I mean, I go to the gym. I try to go as much as possible, but sometimes I'll go a couple weeks without going. Life is busy. That's an easy rut to get into. And so I just told myself, I know you're tired, but you just have to go to the gym. You have to go to the gym to get energy, which sounds backwards because you go to the gym and you expel energy and you use energy. So how does that give you more energy? But it just does. I promise you it does.

For me, that's the first step is if I'm not exercising, then I'm not eating well. And then I'm not sleeping well and then I'm not being mindful. It's kind of like this might be different for different people. Maybe some people they need to start eating well first. I just, for me, once I am being physical and exercising, I am more aware of what I'm eating and more aware of my sleep.

And I'm more aware of being mindful. And so when I exercise, I almost always have, I know this, some people say never have your phone with you, but like my mind just goes a mile a minute. Like I have so many ideas that I have to stop and quickly write, take a note down, and then continue because I don't know what it is.

The blood is moving. There's things happening. You're exercising, you're getting more oxygen. But I have so many ideas while I'm at the gym, not when I'm sitting at my desk mindlessly answering emails and just going plunk, sitting in front of it and like, okay, what I gotta do today? Open my emails, see what I need to answer.

In fact, I actually think you should not answer email until 12 o'clock. Be very intentional about your mornings. That actually, that's gonna be a whole nother. Episode because I, there's a lot, a lot I wanna say about that. But but the first thing is, is I am more creative and inspired when I'm exercising.

So that's foundation one. Foundation two is what I eat and I am by no means a picture of perfect health. And this is not at all to say that. Don't there's definitely better people you can follow for eating perfect. But I try pretty good to eat healthy, but there are times where I don't carve out time to to make proper food.

And I will, I, we work from home. We're a remote company, and I will run to the kitchen and I'll eat whatever's there. And often when you're in a rush, you don't. Make a healthy choice. And so I'll eat the I'll eat bread or a muffin or a, I don't know whatever's like the fastest, easiest thing to grab versus making a salad or chicken or some vegetables or something else that takes a little bit more effort, but will be much better for me in the long run.

And so, but once I am going to the gym, I notice that I am more inspired to eat well too. And then, sleep is also a huge factor of all of this as well, too. I need minimum seven hours of sleep, or this all falls apart as well. Sleep is such an important thing, like you can do everything right. You can read every book about

personal development and e-commerce and everything you need to know to grow your business. But if you're not sleeping well, eating well, exercising, you're just not gonna be motivated to, you're gonna, you will find ways to procrastinate during the day. All those micro distractions, every 10 minutes, looking at your phone, looking at social media, opening up another tab.

Checking email, I would say is a micro distraction for sure. We tell ourself it's part of work, but it's it's a micro distraction and when you don't manage it properly, but the more tired you are, the more these micro distractions pop up. And the length of time that you can focus on something is like four to five minutes before you have to check your phone.

Or get, get a dopamine hit of some sort. But when you have proper sleep, proper nutrition, proper exercise, you'll start to notice that, you can focus on a task for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 50 minutes, it gets, it goes higher and higher, and all of a sudden. You might get hours that you're focusing on a task before you get distracted, and that's where you actually really get into flow this state of flow where you lose sense of time and you're working on something and you just are in a zone that you don't even, you don't even, you forget.

Your surroundings. You forget about social media or whatever your distraction is. You forget about email, you forget about everything else. And you actually lose a, a bit of a sense of time because you're in what's called a state of flow. And all of that starts with the foundation that the four pillars that everything is built on top of.

And then the last one is, I say mindfulness, but this, I think means something different for everyone. For some people it's, they need to meditate every morning. They need to be quiet and alone and clear their mind of all thoughts, and that is a great practice. I, I personally, um, don't do that. And but I, you know, it's something I would actually love to learn more about and do.

For me, it's creating space for thoughts. That is what something that I find. The healthy a healthy, mindful thing that I need to do. And so sometimes that's when I take my dog for a walk. Sometimes that's when I drive in the car I will just turn off the radio and I'll just think this is kinda why you often have creative thoughts when you're in the shower.

Because when you're in the shower, you can't listen to anything. You can't have your phone in your hand, you can't be distracted. It's just you and your thoughts. And it's often where you think about things you wanna do or you're inspired about something or some problem that you've been trying to solve for the last couple days.

You, you somehow just think of a solution when you're in the shower. And that's often because your mind is clear at that point. And so the goal is how do you create more of those moments where your mind is clear? So for me it's often going for a walk with my thoughts or going for a drive and not listening to anything.

And as much as I love putting on a podcast and learning something new, and that's just like, I, I, I love that. I know that I need time with my thoughts. Some days, every day, actually not some days. And so when I am not at my best and I'm not doing my best work. I always look back at these four things and I would challenge you right now to look at, if you feel that you're just not motivated today, you today, you're not inspired to be great.

You're not like, how do I be better? How do I make this big? How do I make this awesome? What would this look like if it were easy? How could I go bigger? Like these are like the thoughts that we should be having as humans. Like we should be thinking about striving for greatness, but some days we don't.

Some days we just. I try to think, how can I have a nap today? How can I go curl up in a ball? How can I avoid everything I need to do? How can I distract myself and soothe myself with social media? And, I've been there. And when I feel like that, I look back at my habits and these pillars and I look, am I exercising?

Am I eating well? Am I getting enough sleep? Seven hours minimum. And I, and am I creating my mindfulness space? And the answer is always no. Always no. And when I have days where I feel so inspired and ready to take on the world, take on challenges, I entered states of flow While I'm working, I look back and yeah, I've been exercising.

I got great sleep last night. I've been eating healthy and I've been giving my mind space to be mindful. I look back on when I'm feeling those great moments, and I'm like, yes, I have, I checks all the boxes. And so my thing today is for you is those are the four, what do you, four legs of a chair, four legs of a table, four pillars, whatever you wanna call them, but that everything is built on.

And sometimes, as much as this show is about tips and tricks and tactics and strategies for growing your Shopify store. Sometimes it all comes down to us. Sometimes it's none of that matters if we don't take care of the four legs that it's all built on. It's your foundation. So I just wanted to share that.

That has been something that has been very, very important to me. And I'm realizing more in life that I need to take care of those four things. Otherwise, everything else everything else collapses to be honest. So hopefully this inspires some of you to reflect on that. Think about that. And I challenge you to take care of each one of those legs and then see how that affects your business.

I know it'll make an impact. Okay. Lastly if this made an impact on you, and if you are sitting there nodding and agreeing that Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I think when I'm not motivated, I, that is what it is. If you found any advice in this leave. Leave a five star review for us it would mean a ton.

Uh, we're really trying to grow our reviews and, uh, if you leave a comment with the review, we will post it on our website and email me [jay] at [shopify1percent.com]. That's Shopify, the number one and percent spelled out  [jay] at [shopify1percent.com]. . Email me and I will make sure you get a 1Percenter t-shirt.

Thank you so much. If you do, make sure you hit subscribe, so every time there's a new episode, you get notified and keep kicking butt everyone. I'll see you on the next episode.