Denise Gosnell

A success ritual is when you tie your goals to a regular ritual, where you can succeed automatically, without needing a lot of willpower. For example, if your goal is to write a book, you might create a success ritual of writing 250 words per day.

That number is small enough that it is achievable. But if you do that consistently, you can look up in 4 months and have yourself a finished manuscript ready for final editing.

As another example, suppose your goal is to lose 1-2 pounds per month. You could develop a success ritual of 15-20 minutes per day of movement. “Movement” is generic enough that it can be done whether you are traveling or not, whether it is sunny or rainy, or whether it is hot or cold outside.

Look at your goals and see which ones you can make happen automatically if you just tied them to a daily or regular ritual.

The key in setting success rituals is to pick something that (1) you can easily do no matter what so it is “excuse-proof,” and (2) will add up over time to the desired result. We know this sounds incredibly simple, but this simple principle can change your life if you actually put it into action.

If you want to have the best results with success rituals, we recommend you have at least a morning success ritual after you wake up and a bedtime success ritual before you go to bed.

Some examples of morning success rituals might be exercise/movement, meditation, planning out your day, where some evening success rituals might be no technology before bed or making sure you get 7-8 hours of sleep per night.

Success rituals can be added anytime you want to have a consistent routine that adds up to real results. Success rituals can also be used for automating the achievement of your goals, like the weekly team meeting we discussed in the prior hack.

Establishing your own success rituals will ultimately add up to achieving your overall desired outcome before you know it.   

Growth Hack #9: Implement Standard Operating Procedures

A great way to give yourself incredible freedom is to clone yourself and what you know so others can carry that out even when you aren’t working.

Of course, other team members will also have a lot of knowledge that should be captured too, so it is important to capture this information and put it down in writing. The vast knowledge that you and your team have are an incredibly valuable intellectual asset of the company.

The best way to capture this knowledge is through standard operating procedures that document the ways certain tasks are performed. That is the 9^th hack we are going to cover now.

So many entrepreneurs do not have written policies and procedures.  And others that do have some procedures in place still have a long way to go to grasp the benefit of this growth hack.

The best way to free yourself from the trenches of the business is to have detailed procedures for every aspect of the business so you and everyone else can be replaced.

Here is what I recommend to help you get standard operating procedures created for yourself:

Any time you find yourself training or explaining to your team, record it and ask that the team member to put it into a draft procedure.

Pick the most critical activities in the company that you and other team members do, and have those drafts created first.

Update the draft procedures each time that activity or task is being performed.

Consider blocking off 2-3 days with some of your key team members with the sole purpose of creating draft procedures for the company’s most critical operations.

In terms of the actual format of the policies and procedures, I recommend something like the following:

Create procedures for the following categories of your business (which are the same categories that a business in any industry can use):

A. Marketing / Client Attraction

B. Sales / Client Enrollment

C. Delivery of Client Work

D. Team

E. Office Environment

F. Money / Business Metrics

If you are saving these files on your hard drive or an online drive, consider using a naming scheme that starts with letters, so they sort alphabetically on your computer hard drive.

Also, consider using a naming format similar to the below to make it easier to insert new procedures over time.

A. Marketing – Client Attraction

A1 Keep in Touch Strategy

A1.1 Print & Email Newsletters

A1.2 Periodic Gifts or Articles Mailed to Clients

A1.3 Birthday Cards & Holiday Gifts to Clients

Include a header and change log at the top of each procedure document, to track details about who created it, the purpose of the procedure, when it was last updated, and by whom.