We set ourselves a 30 day relationship building challenge. Here's what happened.

This episode is a little different.

There's no guest, no external expert, and no tidy list of lessons from someone who's figured it all out. Instead, it's an honest account of something we tried, how it went, and what we'd do differently. Which we think is just as useful as those guest sessions.

A while back, we challenged ourselves to properly implement one of the most common pieces of advice we hear from guests on What One Thing: build your relationships intentionally. Not just networking when you feel like it or reaching out when you need something, but consistently, deliberately, as a regular part of running the business.

So we made it official. Thirty days. Four weekly commitments. And we held each other accountable. At least for a while.

What we committed to

The plan was straightforward. Every week for thirty days, we would each carry out the following actions:

1.    Send five outreach messages to people in our networks, not selling, just connecting.

2.    Have one coffee or Zoom call with someone from our network.

3.    Make an introduction between two people who could benefit from knowing each other.

4.    Follow up with one person we already knew but hadn't spoken to in a while.

5.    Check in with each other to stay accountable.

Simple enough on paper. Funny how that rarely translates to real life.

The first two weeks

If the challenge had ended at day fourteen, we'd have called it a triumph.

The first couple of weeks had real momentum. We were keeping each other accountable, checking in, and giving each other a bit of ribbing when one of us hadn't done something. It worked because it was new, and there were plenty of obvious people to reach out to, and because that early accountability nudge was genuinely motivating.

Hayley: I’ll admit that accountability isn't usually my thing. I’ve always been someone who does things or doesn't, regardless of whether someone's watching. But in those first two weeks, having Phil in my corner did make a difference. It made me act on days I might have let it slide.

Phil: Well, I went in like it was a Toby Carvery. Eyes bigger than my belly, absolutely convinced I could fit it all in. Coffees booked, meetings lined up, outreach flying. It felt brilliant.

Where it fell apart

Week three is where the wheels came off.

Phil: The problem was volume. I'd booked so many coffees and meetings that the travel time alone was eating into my working day. Drive there, an hour and a half, catch up, drive back. Repeat. The thing I found most frustrating, was that I’d booked most of the meetings during a quiet period. By the time they landed in the calendar, I was busy again, plus there would be some rescheduling etc. So I'd essentially ambushed my own busy period with a diary full of good intentions and nowhere near enough hours to honour them.

Hayley: For me, it was a different problem. I started out with easy outreach. The obvious people, the low-hanging fruit, and the reconnections that felt natural. Once that was done, finding the next five people each week started to require real effort, and when life got busier, that effort was the first thing to go.

The accountability dropped from both sides. Someone may or may not have had a holiday. And then, as Hayley put it, it just tinkered off into nothing.

The message that probably sums it up best came from Hayley to Phil somewhere around week three: "Have you given up? This is not part of the deal."

He had given up and even admitted he was the first to break.

What we took from it

Writing this off as a failure would be easy, but not entirely accurate.

From those first two weeks, some great conversations happened. Relationships were genuinely strengthened. Phil managed to connect two people who needed each other, someone with spare office space and someone looking for it, just by being in the right conversation. That kind of thing doesn't happen if you're not out there making the effort and getting to know people.

The intention was right, but the scale let it down.

We basically over-egged the pudding. Set targets based on motivation rather than what is sustainable alongside running a business with staff, clients and everything else that comes with it. When the challenge became a second full-time job on top of the one we already had, it stopped feeling like a growth strategy and started feeling like a chore and a hindrance.

If we get really honest, there's also a question about quality. Not suggesting anyone we reached out to wasn’t good enough. More, were we always reaching out to the right people, the ones where nurturing a deeper relationship with could make a difference? Or were we sometimes just reaching out to tick the box or keep it easy? Volume has a habit of making you sloppy about quality.

The other thing this experiment surfaced is a pattern most business owners will recognise. When things are quiet, you throw everything at activities to build your pipeline. In this instance, outreach and relationship building. It works, things pick up, you get busy, and then all the things that made things pick up get dropped because you’re pushed for time. So things go quiet again. It's the same cycle that happens with marketing, with content, with most of the things that matter for long-term, consistent growth. The challenge is always keeping them going when you don't feel like you have to.

What we'd do differently

S l o w everything down.

The goal should never have been to go all in for thirty days. It should have been to build something small enough that it becomes a habit, something we're still doing six months from now without it feeling like a sprint we're relieved to have finished.

Relationships are the foundation of business, whatever way you dress it up, but good quality connections, found and then nurtured, take time. They don't respond well to being sprinted at. It takes consistency, showing up regularly, being genuinely interested, playing a long game that most people don't have the patience for.

Phil put it well at the end of the conversation. In boxing, you either win or you learn. This one was firmly in the learn column. And the lesson, slow consistency beats rapid growth followed by burnout, is getting printed out and stuck on the wall as a reminder next time we decide to go gung-ho with an idea!

What's next

We could have been put off trying this again, but we're not done with this idea. Far from it.

We're already talking about a three month implementation programme, taking the best advice from What One Thing episodes and embedding it properly, slowly, sustainably, over a longer period than thirty days.

We’ll take what we learned, and make sure the focus is to build an achievable, sustainable habit for the long term.

Watch this space.

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