Consistency Is a Cheat Code

I've spent the last few years building products, and one thing I am beginning to understand is that building a company rarely feels like building a company.

Most days, it feels like solving a problem.

Something isn't working. Fix it.

A user doesn't understand something. Make it clearer.

A process works for ten people but breaks when a hundred people arrive. Change it.

An assumption turns out to be wrong. Learn from it.

Something you thought would work doesn't. Try something else.

Then come back tomorrow.

When I think about the companies I want to build, the vision can be enormous. There are products I want to take into different markets, technologies I want to build, people I want to serve and problems I want to solve.

Looking at the entire thing at once can be overwhelming.

But I've learned that I don't have to build the entire company today.

I have to solve the problem in front of me today.

Then I have to show up tomorrow.

I've started to think of consistency as a cheat code.

Not because consistency makes difficult things easy.

It doesn't.

Consistency changes the size of the problem you have to solve today.

You don't have to lose all the weight today

Building Fitness Space made this clearer to me.

Someone might join Fitness Space wanting to lose 10, 20 or 30 kilograms.

That's a real ambition. But it's also a terrible daily task.

You cannot wake up in the morning and "lose 30 kilograms."

So what can you do?

You can make a healthier decision.

You can drink your water.

You can complete today's workout.

You can walk.

You can pay attention to what you eat and how much of it you eat.

You can make today's meal better than it might otherwise have been.

Then you can wake up tomorrow and do it again.

One of the things we learned while building Fitness Space is that information is often not the biggest problem.

People generally know that physical activity is good for them. They know that what they eat matters. They know that consistently making healthier choices will probably move them closer to where they want to be.

The difficult part is doing it repeatedly.

Knowing and doing are different things.

And doing something once and doing it consistently are different things too.

That insight increasingly influenced how we thought about Fitness Space.

Instead of allowing someone's entire attention to sit on the final number on the scale, we became interested in the behaviours that happen before the scale changes.

What did you do today?

Did you move?

Did you exercise?

Did you make a healthier food decision?

Did you complete the small actions that are within your control?

This thinking eventually influenced how we approached things like daily activities and Health Score.

The outcome matters.

But outcomes are usually built from behaviours.

And behaviours can be repeated.

Money taught me the same lesson

Then I started seeing the same pattern somewhere completely different.

Money.

A person wants to save ₦1 million.

Depending on what that person earns, ₦1 million can feel impossibly far away.

And telling someone to "save more money" isn't particularly useful.

The more interesting question is:

What can you save consistently?

This is one of the ideas behind Ajo.cash.

Traditional ajo has always understood something important about saving. You don't necessarily wait until you suddenly have a large amount of money before you begin.

You contribute.

Then you contribute again.

And again.

The amounts that look small in isolation begin to mean something different when repetition and time enter the equation.

This becomes particularly important for people whose income or cash flow may not fit neatly into the way conventional savings products are designed or marketed.

Someone may not have a large amount to lock away at once.

But perhaps they can save a smaller amount regularly.

₦1,000 doesn't look like wealth.

Neither does ₦2,000.

One contribution can feel almost insignificant compared with the financial goal someone is trying to reach.

But that's the trap.

We look at the small action and compare it with the enormous destination instead of asking what happens when the action is repeated.

Small amounts stop being small when they are given enough time to accumulate.

And I realised I had seen this before.

A healthy body, savings and a company

Fitness Space and Ajo.cash are very different products.

One deals with health.

The other deals with money.

But both forced me to think about the relationship between ambition and repetition.

And eventually I realised that I was living the same lesson while building them.

A Fitness Space user might want to lose 20 kilograms.

An Ajo.cash user might want to save ₦1 million.

I want to build companies capable of serving large numbers of people and solving meaningful problems.

All three ambitions can feel enormous when viewed from the beginning.

But none of us has to achieve the entire ambition today.

The Fitness Space user needs to make today's healthier decisions.

The Ajo.cash user needs to make today's contribution.

I need to solve today's problem.

Then we all have to come back tomorrow.

Companies compound too

We usually talk about compounding in relation to money.

I think companies compound as well.

One conversation with a user.

One bug fixed.

One assumption tested.

One process improved.

One feature shipped.

One difficult decision made.

One mistake understood.

One new person brought into the team.

One problem solved.

None of those things looks particularly impressive on its own.

One user conversation doesn't look like a technology company.

One healthy meal doesn't look like weight loss.

One small deposit doesn't look like financial security.

That's because we have a tendency to judge small actions individually.

Consistency asks us to judge them collectively.

Repeat the right actions for long enough and something that once looked impossibly large begins to take shape.

Of course, repetition alone isn't enough.

You can consistently do the wrong thing.

A founder can spend three years building something nobody wants and call it persistence.

Consistency has to be accompanied by learning.

Sometimes showing up tomorrow means continuing what worked today.

Sometimes it means admitting yesterday's approach was wrong and changing it.

The point isn't to repeat every action.

The point is to keep returning to the problem.

Solve the next problem

When you're building a company, there is always another problem.

I used to think that was something you eventually escaped.

Solve enough problems and perhaps you arrive at some point where everything works.

I'm less convinced of that now.

The problems simply change.

When you have ten users, you have ten-user problems.

When you have a thousand, you have thousand-user problems.

When the product changes, new problems appear.

When the team grows, you inherit another category of problems.

When you enter another market, things you thought you understood become questions again.

Perhaps building isn't about reaching a point where there are no more problems.

Perhaps building is about becoming the kind of person and organisation capable of solving the next one.

That requires showing up.

Again.

And again.

And again.

That's the cheat code

Building Fitness Space taught me that people don't become healthier because they made one perfect decision.

Ajo.cash reminds me that meaningful savings don't necessarily begin with meaningful-looking amounts.

And building both has taught me that companies aren't usually created through one extraordinary day of work.

Progress accumulates.

A better meal.

Another walk.

Another workout.

Another contribution.

Another customer conversation.

Another problem solved.

There is something liberating about that.

I don't have to carry the weight of the finished company every morning.

Someone trying to lose weight doesn't have to carry the weight of the entire journey today.

Someone trying to save doesn't have to possess the entire amount they're working towards.

We only have to deal with today's part.

Then give time something to work with.

Lose the weight one decision at a time.

Build the savings one contribution at a time.

Build the company one problem at a time.

Consistency is a cheat code.

Not because it makes the work easy.

Because it turns enormous ambitions into repeatable actions.

Show up.

Do today's work.

Then come back tomorrow.