How To Grow Your Business USIng The 1% Rule

Some years ago, I did a business transformation consult for a man who owned a hugely profitable local sporting goods store based in upstate New York.

His company predominantly specialized in fly fishing, but they also sold a variety of winter sporting goods such as ice skates, snowshoes, ice fishing tackle etc. - which helped ensure sales year-round.

His store had been family-owned for two generations and had managed to carve out an exceptional reputation for their extensive knowledge of fly fishing.

Avid fly fishermen used to come from as far away as 300 miles to visit the store and stock up on their summer fly fishing supplies. I'm not sure if you know much about the fly fishing industry - but as a niche, fly fisherman tend to verge on the ultra-obsessive. It's not unusual to spend thousands of dollars on a new rod or reel (to add to their already sizable collection). Their "fly" collection (the lures they use) can easily number in the hundreds, and at every possible opportunity, they'll spend hours and hours, sometimes in waist-deep water icy cold water in pursuit of their fish.

The owner, now the son, had bought the store from his father a year earlier and wanted to grow their brand by opening an online store, expanding the community of fly fishermen and opening additional retail locations.

In other words, he had big plans to grow the business. The problem was that he had been taken advantage of by another marketing agency who had convinced him to start pouring money into digital advertising to build their "brand awareness," which, as an aside, should never ever be the goal of a marketing campaign (I talk a lot more about this in my book The Client Stampede). In addition, he was on the verge of signing a lease on a new retail location and was in the process of trying to get an e-commerce store created. Unfortunately, his Director of Marketing had just resigned, and he and his team were left in the dark, with a hot marketing mess of half executed projects and no real plan or direction.

As part of the Business Transformation Consult, I created a marketing roadmap for him that prioritized each of the projects that would get him to his end goal and broke each project down into small steps. He hired our team to refresh his company's branding and rebuild their website and e-commerce store, but wanted his own team to do the implementation of the remaining projects - which is always a good idea when it's possible. The thing was that in order for his team to be able to do this successfully, as non of them were marketers, it had to be broken down into simple, actionable steps. 

So we created a Marketing Plan for his team that was based around the 1% Rule - which is about as simple and as actionable as it gets, but also extremely powerful. The 1% Rule is simply this - focus on growing your business by 1% every day, and compounded, means your business gets 3,800% better each year.

Sir Dave Brailsford, former performance director of British Cycling, revolutionized cycling using this theory.

Brailsford believed that if you make a 1% improvement in a host of tiny areas, the cumulative benefits would be extraordinary. This 1% rule has been credited for catapultingthe British cycling team from a mediocre performer to 16 gold medals over two Olympics and seven Tour de France wins in eight years.

As an example, Dave had the floors of the team truck painted pristine white to spot dust on the floor because even the slightest amount of dust could potentially impair bike maintenance.

This act alone wasn't enough to win a race or make any more than a borderline gain, but when added to a host of other small improvements, it made all the difference.

And so it was with this businesses' marketing. They wanted to grow - but they wanted to do it using their own team's labor as much as possible. So, in addition to creating a month-by-month marketing plan for the business, we created a 6-month plan worth of micro-tasks that could be executed - one per day, creating a 1% improvement each day. Once the staff understood the 1% rule, they were excited about getting it done, and it started to become a part of the company's culture. The staff even started identifying their own additional 1% improvement tasks that they took the initiative with to implement. Within 3 months, revenue jumped by 25% and by the end of the year with the addition of the e-Commerce store, revenue doubled. The next year it doubled again, and again the next year and again the year after - for the fourth year in a row.

So, what are the 1% improvements that you can start making to your business to grow it, starting today? If you're stuck for ideas, then grab a copy of the Client Stampede and take a highlighter, and within the first two chapters, you'll have so many ideas you might not want to read any further! When 1% compounds every day, it doubles every 72 days! Compounding tiny excellence is what creates big breakthroughs for your business.