The 30 Day Habit That Increased My Confidence w/ Lauren Najar

What if the breakthrough you're waiting for doesn't require a bigger strategy, but a smaller daily commitment?

Big business goals are exciting, but they often leave entrepreneurs chasing results instead of building the habits that actually create them. In this solo episode, I share why I committed to running 39 miles during my birthday month and how that personal challenge became a great reminder of what consistency can accomplish.

I'm sharing why I believe 30 day sprints are one of the best ways to build confidence, how focusing on daily actions creates momentum, and why simple habits like reaching out to five new people each day can lead to bigger opportunities, stronger relationships, and long term business growth. If you've been setting big goals but struggling to follow through, this episode is for you.

Chapters:

00:25 Why I committed to 39 miles in 30 days

03:00 How keeping promises builds confidence

04:15 The habit that changed my business

06:15 What I learned from running every day

07:45 My next 30 day business challenge

09:00 Daily habits over revenue goals 

10:20 The power of consistent daily actions

11:35 Examples of 30 day business sprints

13:20 Focus on habits, not outcomes

14:10 Your 30 day challenge starts now

This podcast is brought to you in partnership with Liz Chapman & CO

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Business Chaser, your quick pour of strategy, clarity, and momentum. We skip the small talk and get straight to the strategy here in these bite-sized episodes. We're here to help you grow smarter, market better, and chase what matters all in 15 minutes or less. I'm your host, Laura Najar. Tune in and let's chat. Hello, hello, welcome back to Business Over Cocktails. I'm Laura Najar, and I'm going to talk about a most recent thing that I did in my business, and even for me, I guess, that has paid off in dividends and how I truly believe that doing this one thing will help you really jumpstart into anything. So if we haven't met, I'm Laura Najar. I'm the host of this podcast. I'm a business coach, marketing agency owner, an event host. And I host retreats and dinners for women founders. And I launched this podcast back in August of 2025. We are very furiously approaching 100 episodes. So I'm super excited to be with you. This is episode, this is gonna be episode 94. So I'm gonna have a solo episode for episode 100. So look out for that. But this is meant to be very quick. So let me get right to it. So if you follow me on Instagram, and if you don't follow me on Instagram already, my Instagram is at Lauren Najar. That is my main Instagram. And I share a lot about my life, my business, things that I'm doing behind the scenes. A lot of it is authentic to me. There's no performance or anything. So I'm sharing a lot behind the scenes. And in the month of June, I decided that I was going to commit to running 39 miles in the month of June. June is my birthday month. I am huge on birthdays. I love celebrating birthdays. I love my birthday. And I love doing a lot of different things. And this year, it proved to be a milestone birthday in a way. Yes, it's my last year, my 30s. I just turned 39. And 39 was actually the year my mom was first diagnosed with cancer. And it was just an age that I it felt really heavy to reach. And for me, I took on this like this big pressure for this month. And I'm like, okay, well, how do I, how am I going to recognize like where I'm at in life? But also, to be honest, lately I've been struggling a lot with confidence again. And a lot of it is keeping me from going as big as I want. And so what I know to be true is when I keep little promises to myself that I'm not only going to be confident, but I'm going to start saying yes to a lot of other things and shooting my shot at bigger things, so to speak. So I decided on June 1st. So I posted the post on June 1st. And I literally woke up that morning and I'm like, I'm going to run 39 miles to recognize my birthday this month, but it's also going to kill two birds with one stone. Where if I commit and I show up daily for myself unapologetically, I know that I'm going to have a really good month and end up in this month like being like feeling better mentally, physically, emotionally, and just like really proud of myself. And anytime I feel like that is I always go back to where I was November 2024. And I was really struggling with my identity of where I want this business to go. I was, you know, almost a year and a half postpartum. I had returned to work for a year at that moment. And it took me forever to kind of get, not forever. That's not a long time, but it just took me a while to really find my footing again and to decide what I wanted this business to look like and, you know, to stop waiting for opportunities for me, you know, what is this going to look like truly as a mom? So in November 2024, I decided that I was going to start waking up at 5:30 every morning and going to the gym. And it was really hard for me because I sacrificed my mornings with my daughter. And at that moment in her life and my husband's, we were all doing like morning dance parties. And when I was taking a look at our daily schedule, there was no ideal time, like at all, to go to the gym, to work out for myself. You know, my working time is eight to five. And a lot of times I have four calls, three calls, five calls. And outside of that, if I'm having calls, then I don't have any other time to work. Nor then do I have time to work out. So my current schedule, then I cried when I went to the gym. But if I look back and I look at that experience and I see how much I've dedicated myself to going to the gym in the morning when that fit my routine, it was really good for me. And that's one of the one of the many things I credit to having such a huge year in 2025 because of dedicating that time to myself. Now, I have not let go of that. My husband has a new job and he leaves at 5:30 in the morning to commute to the city. He doesn't get home until six. Going to the gym is out of the question most days now. We do have a home gym and I do utilize that. It's nice out. So, you know, what I also miss is running outside when it's nice out. So I decided again, I came to this when I when I look back at that and I see how good that was for me. I decided, like, you know what? I'm just gonna focus and I'm gonna run every single day. It's so good for my mental health. Running it has been so instrumental in my life as a whole. And so I decided that that was gonna be my goal. And just the like FYI, I am a runner. Like I've been running for 15 years. I've done, I want to add it up one day, but I've done countless 5Ks. I do an 8K every year. I've done 10Ks and half marathons and warrior dashes and mud runs and color runs. And I have also done the Chicago half marathon or the Chicago full marathon, I should say. I did it in 2019. So I am a runner, and so this wasn't about like learning to run or anything like losing weight or anything like that. My goal was to be confident at the end of this month. And so here we are. It is July 1st. I finished my last run yesterday. I hit my 39 miles. I ran every single day in June, except for one day where the day before I doubled up because I purposely was like, no, I don't want to run tomorrow. So I ran 2.6 miles the day before. So then I could take a day off the following day. I am proud of myself. And I think my takeaways for that, it was easier, but I also feel mentally stronger. I do feel proud of myself. And it then just like again is a huge reminder that I'm like, oh yeah, okay, like I can dedicate time to doing something consistently and doing it as a sprint. So here we are, July 1st, and I already announced my Instagram stories what my next 30 days are gonna be scheduled around. And that's going to be scheduled around strength training six days a week. I actually went to a yoga class this morning, so it's gonna be a mix of yoga, Pilates, and strength training. That's going to be my focus for July as far as like physicality. But you're here listening to a business episode. So I do want to share. I actually have a business goal this month, and that is for July, I'm going to send five new DMs a day. These are not going to be people I've ever connected with. These are going to be people that are seemingly ideal clients or potential collaboration partners where we have mutual friends, we have, you know, similar businesses. It's not necessarily where I'm going to like, oh, I need to sign five clients because that's not what we do, right? We want to just connect with people. And I'm going to actually keep track of all of those conversations that I'm having. And I actually just launched an accountability group. So by the time you're listening to this, I think it's going to be July 10th. If you still want to join it for the rest of the month, message me on Instagram at Laura Najar. I already have a chat forming with a few people in it. It's it truly is just free. It's free accountability. I'm not coaching you. I'm just doing it for accountability for myself. But I know that doing something like this every single day, you're going to get results. So I love 30-day sprints. I think that when you dedicate yourself, it's, you know, we hear like 21 days make a habit, right? Whether you believe that or not. I believe that anyone can dedicate time to something if it really is important to you. So when we think about like, I think it's always, and this is this is a me thing. So, and I think this is very common as well. But I want you to think about when it comes to business, right? We want to shoot for $10,000 a month. We want to shoot for a $20,000 a month or even more. And we are so focused on that money goal that we aren't developing a habit or a system. And we are just like really forcing it down our throats of like, we need to do this stuff. We need to show up. We need to keep working. And sometimes it's like, why are we working? You're like aimlessly working, right? When in reality, so for instance, my goal this month is to connect with five new people. The possibilities are endless. I don't know what the outcome is going to be. I know that if I dedicate time to send five new DMs this month, I know I'm going to have more conversations. I know I'm going to have more connections. But I'm curious then what that's going to do for my bottom line, what that's going to do for my engagement, what that's going to do for my visibility and the collaboration opportunity. So I'm really curious what that's going to be. And I am going to be tracking that. But I really want you to think about this for a second. So I ran 1.3 miles every single morning. There were days where it rained in the morning. I had to pivot and do it in the evening. There were a lot of mornings where I didn't want to. There were a lot of mornings where, you know, I after I run, I like to walk maybe like a quarter mile at least, if not more, to just to like cool down. Like I hate like running straight to my driveway and going in and like being all sweaty. And then I have to like be around people. And have you ever, by the way, have you ever gone in the shower after like you've sweated and like you're sweating through the shower and then you're still sweaty after you come out of the shower? Like, hate that, right? But sometimes I had to do that because you know, we had somewhere to be, or I slept in and then we had somewhere to be. And, you know, I even did Pilates one morning at 6 a.m. on the beach. And after Pilates, I ran. So I want to just challenge you that showing up consistently means showing up consistently and putting it into your routine. So for me, morning was perfect. I did it around the same time every morning, even on the weekends. If I had a pivot into evenings or afternoons, I definitely did that. That was rare because I had a time in the morning that was my workout time and I definitely did that. So I really want to encourage you to do this for your business. If you want to do it like I am and you want to do a 30-day sprint of sending five DMs because connections and relationships are key into building your business. If you want to turn this into posting content for 30 days straight and see what your results are, if you want to say that you're going to talk about your offer for 30 days straight, please do that and show what the results are going to be. I last year ran a 30-day sales challenge a few times, which I will definitely bring that back soon, where every single day I'm giving you a sales action or lead generation action. And people book calls from this challenge. People sign clients from this challenge. People made money from this challenge. And this challenge I charge, I think like $30. People remind me $37 or $47 I charge for it. And so people definitely got their money's worth, if not 10X it. Because if you focus again every single day, doing one little thing every single day, you're going to hit your goal. So the goal, if like again, the goal in 30 days is not to say I want to make $10,000. The goal is I want to message someone every single day for 30 days. I want to run 1.3 miles. And then at the end of that, that is my goal. Is my goal is to run 1.3 miles every single day and to get to 39 miles. That is a tangible goal. My goal was not to lose weight. My goal was not to like lose 10 pounds or to lower my resting heart rate to, you know, 50 beats per minute. But in reality, all of that happened, right? Like maybe I have less bloat. I haven't really weighed myself. So I don't know that number. But my resting heart rate lowered. I got better sleep. Like there are so many health benefits that came with that along the way that came from this goal. So that's what I really want you to think about is when you want to make money, what are those daily little actions that you need to put in? And I'm challenging you right now, from now until the end of the month or a month from now, right? So like August 10th, what do you want to commit 30 days to right now? I want you to write it down, put it on a post-it, put it on your computer, put it on your phone. I want you to dedicate 30 days of what you're going to do straight up every single day for 30 days without excuses. Do one little task that's going to move the needle forward. And I want you to come back and tell me what that is. Message me at Lauren Najar. And then I want you to give me updates and I want you to tell me what are the benefits that happened throughout that whole month. Because I firmly believe sprints are so good. They're good like injections, but they're also really good for you to master something and really build that confidence within yourself that you are probably lacking at this point that you're not capable of XYZ. It's going to prove to yourself that not only can you show up for yourself, but you can show up for your business and you can make things happen. So I firmly believe in 30-day sprints. I believe that if you dedicate yourself to something for one month, then if you like it, continue it. If it brings you good results, continue it. But I really want to challenge you with that in this podcast episode. So thank you for listening. I'm excited. Please message me. I really want to know if you want to be a part of that. It's going on right now. So like if you're listening to this two months down the road, I probably won't have this anymore. But in the month of July 2026, if you want to be a part of my five DMs a day accountability group, I'm not copying and pasting. We're legit just sending messages. Let me know. Message me on Instagram. I want to hear all of your updates. I'll talk to you soon. That's your quick hit of clarity and momentum for the week. If it sparks something, share it with a friend or tag us in your stories at Business Over Cocktails and or at Lauren Majar. We love seeing what resonates. Don't forget, Mondays are for full-length episodes with rich conversations, and Fridays are the Business Chaser episodes. These are bite sized insights pulled from our guests to keep you inspired and aligned throughout the week. Do you have a question or takeaway? DM us at Business Over Cocktails. We just might feature it in a future episode. Cheers!