The Follow-Through Gap

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Episode 39 and for everybody that doesn't know
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i record usually in 10 episode bricks like
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a psychopath over a couple of hours yeah so
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we're at episode 39 and today we're going somewhere that gets uncomfortable
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fast and we're talking about follow-through not the concept the personal reckoning
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with it because look here's what i've noticed,
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Most business owners don't have an execution problem.
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They're actually really good at that. That's actually what made them their business.
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They have a follow-through identity problem.
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They execute in bursts. They show up strong when motivation's high.
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They post every day for two weeks and then disappear.
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I'm guilty of that. I think we all are sometimes, right?
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They start the outreach campaign and abandon it on day four.
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And launch the idea and pull back before it has time to work and actually be of any benefit.
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And then they wonder why nothing's building traction, right?
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Nothing's building traction because traction requires time in the market.
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And if you keep resetting the clock every time you have a new idea or every
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time you don't think something works after 10 seconds, you're always in a permanent reset mode.
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You're resetting that clock over and over and over.
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And here's the thing about follow through, right, that nobody ever wants to talk about.
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It's not about discipline. It's about identity.
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When you think of yourself as someone who follows through, your behavior shifts.
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When you think of yourself as someone who tries things you're always leaving
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yourself a mental out to leave so if you always say ah I'm going to try this
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tool I'm going to take another shot at it I can do this I'm going to go for
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it you're always going to keep going for it,
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when you systematically tell yourself I'm going to get this done and go to the next step,
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you're programming yourself to follow through you're mentally controlling yourself
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which is what we all should be doing having the greatest control of our minds And in this day and age,
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with everything that's out there, with all the science and technology and ways to live healthy,
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exercising available at every street corner,
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you know, healthy foods are available if you look for them.
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I mean, granted, the world tries to poison us, but like we could live really
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clean, healthy, intellectual lives.
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Following through is just a product of that. When you're just always trying
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shit and always throwing shit on the wall and hoping it sticks, that's desperation.
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That is a mental out. It's the hugest mental out. So let's go to the execute
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phase of RISE today from the RISE framework.
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Because it's, you know, the deepest one.
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Because execution isn't just about doing the task.
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It's about becoming the person who does that task every time.
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Not perfectly, but consistently, right?
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You notice a trend here. It's not about being perfect all the time, guys.
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It's about being consistent and doing things over and over and building it into
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your system of your life.
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The gap between where you are and where you want to be, I'd bet the follow-through
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gap is a bigger piece of that than strategy offers or marketing.
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I bet that's your biggest gap is follow-through. So here's a question today for you.
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In the last 90 days, three months, start of this year, say.
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Last 90 days, what did you commit to publicly or privately that you didn't follow through on?
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Name it. Not to beat yourself up. I'm not trying to do this to make you feel
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like shit. Don't get me wrong here.
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It's to help you identify the problem. Like, what did you say you were going
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to do and it didn't get done? I can tell you for me, I said I was going to rock my podcast into 2026.
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I got busy with other things with work and with other commitments and launching an app.
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And yeah, I haven't posted it for about six weeks. It went dark, maybe a little longer.
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That was me. I didn't follow through. I didn't record.
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You know, and then I did record. And then I, that's a whole other story.
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I did record. And then I lost the SD card I recorded on with my other device.
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And yeah, that one's on me.
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But I didn't bother. Like, I was just like, all right, whatever.
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And then I didn't follow through. I just let it be.
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Right? So for me in the last 90 days, that's something publicly and privately
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I didn't follow through on.
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So, look, I'm giving you an example of real life, my real life.
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But you got to do this. This is to help you identify the pattern of where you don't follow through.
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Because once you start seeing the pattern, you can start breaking it.
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Like for me, it's about too many balls in the air at once.
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Some are eventually going to drop. I'm not a professional juggler,
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but I often believe myself to be.
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And that becomes my problem because there's only so many you can juggle at once.
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Only so many flaming swords I can throw in the air at once and catch without losing a finger.
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And I don't want to lose the finger. so I let the swords drop,
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right? That's not following through. Following through is getting better at
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catching them swords and catch them all.
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So that's where we're here or why we're here.
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So when you think about the pattern, you can break it, right?
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Because one kept commitment is going to change everything.
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If you just keep one commitment to yourself over the next seven days,
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you're going to break the cycle.
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Then you can do another. Then you can do another and another.
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And that's how your identity rebuilds. That's how you turn yourself from being
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the person who tries things to the person who gets shit done and follows through.
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By beating yourself up over and over again. It sounds funny, right?
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It sounds funny. Like, beat the hell out of yourself over and over, guys.
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And if you beat the crap out of yourself enough, you'll eventually affect positive
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change through pure personal abuse.
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Hell, that could have been the episode in 30 seconds or less,
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and I wasted five minutes of your time.
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So, the riff of the episode. You don't think your way into consistency.
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You have to behave your way into it.
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Think about that for a minute. You can't just dream it up. You actually got
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to do the work. You got to follow through.
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So with that, folks, have a wonderful day. I'm Steve Lichtman.
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This was Unfiltered and Unshakeable. Have a great one.