Finding Your Slight Edge
By: Sara Payne, Magnify Missions Coach
Email: sara@magnifymissions.com
Several years ago, when my husband, Ryan, and I were in the beginning stages of our dating relationship, we decided to do exercise challenges. We were dating long distance, and it seemed like a fun way to try to be fit and do something together. I found some 30 day challenges that had you build up a little more endurance/reps each day until you reached the final goal on day 30. They seemed doable and so we tried out various challenges for a good 4 to 5 months. We would call each other up, set a timer and then while we did something crazy like a 5 minute plank, Ryan would find funny Dad jokes and read them to me. It was a good way to connect and I liked that we were doing something active together despite being in different cities.
Giving Up
At the start of 2024, a decade later and eight years into marriage, we decided to revitalize our 30 day challenges and build onto a new one each month. I got about 4 months into it, and then suddenly it started to not be fun. I had wanted it to be something we did together, but I found myself missing nights or doing them on my own because of our different schedules with me at home and Ryan on the road. Often I would get to the end of the day and find that my husband had already done his exercises. So then I felt behind or defeated. We have a toddler now, and my husband travels a third of the month, so by the time I had a moment to myself it pretty much felt like drudgery to do the exercises. I am sure you can understand that after a day of solo parenting and then making dinner, giving our daughter a bath, getting her ready for bed, getting her into bed, cleaning up the dishes, and taking my own shower I had pretty much lost all steam or motivation to do my exercises. I faithfully do exercises at our local YMCA 3-4 times a week, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t exercising at all. It was just this extra add-on I had committed to doing that felt like a huge pain. I already dread getting ready for bed because of how long it all takes and this was not helping. I gave up and tried to ignore the fact that my husband was still doing them faithfully. I was about 9 months into 2024 and 4 months into giving up on this commitment, when I began reading The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.
Becoming the 5%
I was struck by the simplicity of the message, but in a way that made me rethink my approach to not only my exercises but lots of tasks in my life. Early on in the book, he writes, “ Only 5 percent - 1 in 20 - achieve the level of success and fulfillment they hope for. The other 95 percent either fail or fall short. The only difference is the slight edge. The secret to the 5 percent’s success is always in mundane, easy things that anyone could do.” It started making me think, how can I simplify this whole exercise routine and keep doing it? I decided to try a 20-20-20 option. I thought, “I can do anything for 1 minute each day.” So I changed my approach to 20 squats, 20 push-ups, and 20 crunches. It immediately felt less overwhelming and more doable. There was also a certain momentum that started to build every time I would complete the task. I still encountered some of my normal drudgery, but I liked that I was building onto my success each day. Each time I did those exercises, it was a deposit in my success bank and after a month I was starting to notice the results. As Olson notes, “Simple daily disciplines - little productive actions, repeated consistently over time - add up to the difference between failure and success.” I started thinking about how to get our people to become the 5% who are successful. When we’re talking about kingdom work the stakes are higher, and the outcomes have eternal ramifications. Burnout and failing mean lives aren’t transformed, and as believers we can’t have that approach. It’s the little repeated behaviors that actually build the wins. People look for the quick fix or the magic pill, but that doesn’t build sustainability. We need to think about the solutions being long term and integrated into the fabric of the work, not short term behaviors or initiatives.
Diets vs. Disciplines
I don’t really like the word “diet” because to me it communicates a temporary change. I prefer the word habits and disciplines because they are about lifestyle change. Olson notes, “No genuine success in life is instant. Life is not a clickable link.” It’s always surprising to me that so many people start to exercise with a vengeance and don’t change their eating habits. Somehow they are surprised that they are working out more, but they are not seeing the results. It’s all a numbers game. It’s not hard to figure out, but it’s not necessarily fun. It requires a little inconvenience, a little time, and consistency. This is true when it comes to growing a business or ministry. Some of the habits or disciplines it takes to be successful are often mundane or don’t produce results quickly. We’ve worked with a lot of people who like to go for what we call “the next shiny thing”. They are in the trenches of the work doing what they know they’ve been called to do, but then another idea presents itself. It seems more exciting and attractive than the daily grind they are currently in or it seems to offer a quicker answer to their situation. They want to drop everything and start working on that. The reality is if you’re spending all of your energy on filling this one bucket and then you shift gears to fill this next bucket, you are going to slow down your progress in filling any buckets at all.
Capturing a Vision and Setting Big Goals
In our work with missionaries and entrepreneurs we find that coming up with a game plan or what we call a strategic plan provides a solid jumpstart to becoming the 5% that is successful. We have our people dream about the future (3 years ahead), set some big but achievable goals, and identify their next steps. Everyone leaves a workshop with clarity on what to do after they leave. The dreaming is exciting but the goal setting is where the dream starts to become a reality. It’s where people see that this is actually possible, and that it’s going to take some work. They can’t coast, and they don’t have time to waste. There’s something powerful about putting the dream on paper and looking at how to start reaching it over the course of the next year. If you’re looking to start or grow a ministry or business, starting with some dreaming and then setting some goals for the next year is a solid beginning. My blog, The Power of Perspective, outlines this idea and gives you a great tool to dream for the future. Here’s a sample of the kind of vision and goals we help our participants identify in a workshop.
Breaking it Down into Benchmarks
After the goals are set, then we encourage people to outline their goals across quarters. It’s both exciting and overwhelming to have those goals, so we help them break it down so it’s less daunting. Olson writes, “No success is immediate, no collapse is sudden. They are both the result of the slight edge accruing momentum over time.” We’ve seen that success begins with breaking down the larger goals into manageable pieces or what we call benchmarks. The other key part to this is giving it a deadline. Without numbers and deadlines the goals are vague, and it’s easy to keep pushing them off.
For example when we’re looking at goals, we reflect on these questions:
What does it look like to break each goal down across 4 quarters?
What goals make the most sense in Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4?
What’s my first priority?
What’s going to give me the most momentum to start?
What goals require outside help/other people on my team?
What goals require new learning/training?
Below is a sample of what this process can look like. We take the initial goal and break that down across quarters. Then, it gets broken down into a month by month process. Finding 72 new donors is a big task, but finding 6 new donors each month feels much more manageable. Broken down even further I’m now looking at finding 1-2 each week. Now this goal is doable and achievable and it just got a whole lot easier because I’m not stacking it all in one month. In The Slight Edge Olson writes, “If you add just 1 percent of anything - skill, knowledge, effort - per day, in a year it will have more than tripled. But you have to start with the 1 percent.” I may come up short in one month and then make up for it in the next. Either way, the numbers and the deadlines help me clearly see if and how I’m making progress. If I break it down in this way, it’s not going to be a surprise when I get to the end of the year.
Helping People Find Their Slight Edge (Habits)
We just finished up a workshop in January, and as I reflect on the wins from that time, I realize that what we’re doing is actually helping people discover their own slight edge. We work with a variety of people who are in all lines of work and ministry so there’s no one answer that fits everyone’s needs. It’s really about coming alongside each person and discovering the steps and habits that will propel their work forward for their benefit and God’s glory. Take a look at this example below to see how this process plays out. I’ve pulled from the benchmarks listed earlier and am focusing on tackling the first one. In this scenario, I need 18 new donors by the end of this quarter, which means 6 each month. If I break down my month, then I need to come up with 1-2 every week. “According to sales data, it takes around 6 to 8 calls on average to secure a new customer” (Google AI Overview). This means that to acquire the goal of 6 new donors by the end of the month, there would need to be anywhere from 36-48 phone conversations. This is a daunting prospect especially if you don’t like talking on the phone. Instead we break this benchmark into a habit. As you can see in the chart below, if I make just 2 calls every day, by the end of the week I should have acquired at least one new donor and possibly 2 based on the stats. If I make this my habit every day during the work week, then I will easily achieve my goal of 6 new donors every month. This is much more doable than getting to the end of the month with my list of 36-48 names and powering through all of those conversations. Making it a habit means it's just a part of your daily work routine.
One group we work with, sets the same donor goal every year. There’s never a point where they say, we’re done raising support. Each year they have the same goal and they have a set amount of support services they work to hit. This creates sustainability and allows them to do even more good work for the Kingdom. According to Olson, “People on the success curve are pulled by the future. People on the failure curve are pulled by the past.” Those daily habits can at times feel like drudgery or even mundane, but they aren’t the end goal. Looking at the possibilities of what can be accomplished in the future and seeing how God is calling each participant to work and build for His kingdom purposes helps build the momentum. The end goal isn’t donors - the end goal is the work is funded so more people experience the love of Jesus.
Accountability
Coaching is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to actually getting the work done. This is where you see what habits people are developing or letting drop. The benefit of coaching is that someone is checking in on you and your progress every month. We believe the best approach is to coach on personal growth and ministry/business growth. They are interconnected and if one fails so does the other. Psalm 127 says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.” We can’t neglect our walk with Jesus in order to build a successful ministry or business. It’s similar to the exercise and nutrition relationship I mentioned earlier. They are codependent on one another in regards to a person’s well being. If one is neglected the other suffers or fails. We meet with our people twice a month, and what happens between those 2 weeks either propels them forward or leaves them in the same place they were the week before. Olson writes, “There are two kinds of habits: those that serve you and those that don’t.” Part of the process is looking at how time is being spent or what habits are serving the cause or taking away from it. This is where time blocking and mapping out your ideal week are crucial. The next steps or little habits we identify in the prior session aren’t life-changing or mind blowing, but they require consistency and action. Sometimes it’s just about helping our people land on the step or habit to begin with. A lot of coaching is also just about reminding people of what they already said they were going to do or checking in to see that they did it. There’s also something helpful about creating a space where people can safely process. They get a chance to lay down all of the pieces and someone else is there to help them prioritize and gain clarity. You’re also helping to remind them that this work is about the Father’s work in and through them. We help encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ to keep up with their habits because there’s more to it than what they can currently see. 2 Corinthians 4:18 says, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Having this eternal perspective gives purpose to the work, and our slight edge habits help us get it done.
If you’re looking for a tool to help you achieve your own slight edge results download our free resource, Finding Your Slight Edge.
Sara Payne is first and foremost a beloved child of God. She likes to surround herself with people who love Jesus, be out in nature, work out, cook, and drink delicious cups of coffee. She is married to Ryan, an amazing man who loves Jesus, and also is (in her opinion) a rock star with a band called Attaboy. They have one beautiful little girl named Isabella, who is a joy and delight! Sara’s first job after college was as a missionary serving overseas in Budapest, Hungary. She then transitioned into being a full time English teacher in a PBL school on the south side of Indianapolis, IN. There her mission field was high school students. After getting married, she worked for Magnify Learning as a Branding Manager and PBL facilitator. Since becoming a mama, she now works for Magnify Missions where she is able to combine her love of missions and teaching to serve and coach missionaries and Christian entrepreneurs around the world.
