The last few months have been really exciting for Spreedly – signups have accelerated, we’ve had a constant stream of great conversations with existing and potential clients, and new client-facing and back-end improvements have rolled out at an accelerating pace. Each week still has its lows as well as its highs, but the latter are starting to outnumber the former at an increasing rate.

With that, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it took to get to this point – it was no easy road, and I understand more than ever why so few of us manage to start a successful business. But while it might be hard, building momentum is also much simpler than I ever realized before I got to this point. As a matter of fact, part of the reason so few do it is that it is so simple. You have one task, and you must do it every day:

Make your business system a little bit better.

Note the system – it’s not about making the business better right now, it’s about making the business better in a year. And that’s why it’s so hard to do – it involves delayed gratification, and most would-be entrepreneurs have long ago quit by the time their “overnight success” train would’ve pulled into the station.

There’s more to be said about business systems, incremental improvement, and the years of work that engender an overnight success, but for now I’d encourage you to just think about one thing every day:

“In what small way can I improve my business system today?”