The power of “doing the work”

The singer Adele is very well known, not my favourite music, but her achievements have been spectacular and is obviously very popular.

A story at the height of her fame says a lot, when preparing for her Las Vegas residency, she was asked how much she would be practicing, after all, “she knew all the songs very well” and she is already at the top of her game.

Her reply was “100 hours per song”, which averaged a total of 2400 hours of preparation for the entire show “just to get it right”..

The lesson is that even someone at the top of her game, at world class level, still prepares for shows more intensely than probably anyone else in their field.

Her talent is huge, but the consistency of her performances and reviews of her shows are only so good due to the faultless preparation (and her accompanying band of course), she never skips “the hard yards”..

When I first began my business, 500 thousand businesses on average started per year, BUT 500 thousand businesses also folded every year too, the lesson was humbling.

Everyone does their best first year of business, but what happens in year 3 if you are lucky to be still doing it?

If you are in year 10, year 20  or more even in business, chances are you have followed some of Adele’s advice of constantly trying to get better, constantly refining your craft, taking absolutely nothing for granted and ALWAYS trying to get better.

Whilst others in business  for 5 minutes may concentrate on their latest leased new car to somehow “impress people”, the best way to survive in business is to constantly invest in your craft and constantly look to refine it, until your value to others becomes undeniable.

Whatever you want to be good at, putting the work in relentlessly is vital, but it’s also vital you become better through practice, being prepared to learn all the time, accept your never know it all and you are humble enough to learn well off others, who may be doing it much better than you are currently, the best in every field are life-long learners, and perform their craft in service of others, and always without any ego.

Tues 16th April

Hope keeps us going, and pessimism keeps us drowning in despair, we must keep making a choice.

We must always have hope, because that’s what always keeps us going, no matter how much pessimism threatens to overtake our lives.

Hope encourages us to take action today, when perhaps we wouldn’t have. We tend to do things when we think there may be a strong chance of a good payoff for taking action and making the effort.

Hope makes us do a workout, when there maybe others in our lives are saying “what’s the point”! We know what works best for us.

Hope makes shop for good healthy food, when some of our friends are living on takeaways and processed foods. We know how much better our body performs on quality food as fuel.

Hope makes us not drink in the week especially, when some of our friends may encourage us to think its the only way to avoid stress. We know alcohol only adds to stress, adds to anxiety levels and worry, and solves nothing. There’s a time and a place, and drinking in the week is a bad habit to get into end of story.

Hope is essential because it keeps our sense of purpose strong, and keeps us from quitting when obstacles come up from time to time, stay hopeful, keep taking action and be determined to stay the course no matter what. 

14th April 2025

Great start at the new programme today, there was a lot to take in but everyone that came in approached the task with a fantastic attitude. I will shout a lot first day as we have a lot to learn and absorb, but it’s all for the good of the collective at the gym.

Yes you will be stiff tomorrow, yes you will struggle at times, but we are exactly the gym that does NOT go through the motions and 100% of the time there’s a lot more than you think going on at any one time..

If you have started to see strange looking protocols on the gym, they are recovery protocols for individuals at the gym going through their OWN programme due to their needs to recover from ailments and often serious injury, please understand that, and each stage of their recovery is important.

Here’s the beauty of the gym, we have ALL SORTS of people at the gym each on their own journey, at very different stages and all sorts of different abilities.

The MAIN point is that we help EVERYONE reach their goals and to do that takes many thought processes going on at the same time, many often decided when one path doesn’t work, and we instantly have to come up with another solution that WILL work.

There is always a plan in pace, but we have to read and react when challenges arise, being willing to try another way when the path we thought would work hits a roadblock.

Monday is off to a strong start, be prepared to work and keep rising to the huge challenges that await you.