It’s not about the tigers and the bears

A little while ago, a colleague of mine came back from a conference. It was a good conference, apparently. But then, he should know. The last one he went on, he came back with a great story that became the blog post “are you a cat or a dog?”

When I asked him what he had learned there this time, he replied “it’s not about the tigers and the bears, so don’t worry about them.”

Tiger by Koshyk

Bear by Marshmallow

“What on earth are you talking about?” I asked him.

“Forget, the tigers and bears,” he said. “I’ve got something else to tell you.”

“What’s that, then?” I asked, feeling confused.

“As you’re going through a project,” he said, “there are always things that you do as a matter of course.”

“Of course,” I quipped.

“Yes,” he frowned. “As a matter of course.” He paused a moment. “Each time you call a client, you might say hello and ask them how they are. You might tell them something about yourself. You might engage with them. Or you might not.”

“OK…” I wondered where this was going.

“And while you’re on the project, you might choose to make yourself accessible to people or you might choose to put them through to voicemail when they call. You might decide to email someone most of the time because they’re really annoying to talk to in person. You might copy in not enough people on your round-robin emails or you might copy in too many.”

“So what’s the point?” I asked, feeling like I was about to be ambushed, Seth Godin style.

“It’s the little things that irritate clients and make the move on without telling you,” he said triumphantly. “It’s not the tigers and the bears, like I told you.”

I groaned. Ambushed.

“Like tigers and bears, you’ll see the big problems with clients coming miles down the road. If you mess something up you’ll know about it because they’ll maul you. It’s the little things, like regular human contact and the personal touch that clients miss. And they won’t tell you they’re missing until it’s too late.”

Ouch.

OK, so what does that mean for The Garage Gym Online readers?

Tigers and bears are the big issues that we see coming and know we need to do something about:

Binge drinking
Eating fast food
Aligning training with our goals
Getting enough sleep
Getting enough recovery
Eating the right amount of calories

But it’s often the little, everyday or unsexy things that we need to keep our eye on. Those can be things that make a big difference in the long run:

Shoulder and hip mobility
Sitting too much
Eating that biscuit with our morning coffee
Slouching on the bus in the morning
Not doing ab work (because squats are enough, right?)
Deadlifting without warming up properly
Spending an hour on the internet before bed (it’s research!)

There must be lots of little things that we overlook because we’re too busy keeping a weather eye out for the tigers and bears. What do you think?

Chris Beardsley's Garage Gym