It isn’t uncommon for a company to have core values, but at Hughes Marino, we take inspiration a step further with “HM-isms”—meaningful phrases that we’ve collected over the years from our teammates themselves and from positive influences from leaders around the world. These HM-isms are designed to inspire, motivate and provide valuable life lessons across all aspects of our days, both professionally and personally. As a team that is constantly on the lookout for new inspiration, this ever-growing list has also evolved into an important aspect of our culture that we’ve been building since we first opened our doors over a decade ago. We discuss these HM-isms throughout the year during all-team meetings and when onboarding new teammates, as they are part of everyday conversations in our offices. Our design team even creates vibrant, fun, typographic designs to showcase them around our offices!
When we shared our HM-isms publicly in 2019, the feedback we received was powerful. This year, we wanted to highlight some of our favorite HM-isms in hopes to dive a little deeper on a concept and provide ample time to reflect and apply the HM-ism to our daily lives. This time, we are focusing on renowned author James Clear’s concept of “1 Percent Better,” which we adopted as one of our HM-isms in 2024.
If you’re unfamiliar with James Clear, we highly recommend you read his worldwide bestselling book, Atomic Habits, which also happens to be a favorite read of our Executive team and company as a whole. According to Hughes Marino Founder Jason Hughes, “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime book that has invaluable daily application, and can have a compound effect on living a successful life, from our health and relationships, to finances and business success. If you read it and apply these concepts, I 1000% believe it will change your life for the better.” Talk about a powerful endorsement!
The Concept of 1 Percent Better
According to Clear on the concept of marginal gains, “Improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable—sometimes it isn’t even noticeable—but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.”
Read Jason’s article, Six Takeaways From James Clear’s Atomic Habits for Getting 1% Better Daily, for his own take on this life-changing concept.
How to Apply this HM-ism
So often we find ourselves setting our sights on the ultimate end result—hitting our goal weight, winning the big account, reaching the pinnacle of success in our career—that we lose sight in the fact that we need to perfect the daily little practices in our lives to actually reach the end results that we desire. In a fast-paced world with social media, constant distractions and instant gratification, it’s easy to lose interest after a few weeks of effort with little to no visible improvement. But by focusing on improving our daily systems, and having a mindset shift of gradual, 1percent improvement, we can develop consistent habits that can last a lifetime.
Take our health for example—it’s not enough to name a goal weight we want to reach, then half-heartedly go to the gym when we feel like it and occasionally eat better. We must implement systems to actively develop healthy habits that will become second nature to us. Implementing incremental daily habits like hitting 10K steps a day, developing a consistent gym schedule and opting for natural instead of processed foods can lead to monumental outcomes, including reaching your target weight, which is just one of the many beneficial byproducts of focusing on being 1% better in managing our health.
These habits can apply to all other aspects of life, and can differ based on careers, goals and life situations. If you want to be 1 percent better in business (in a broad sense), you can read or listen to a chapter a day on a business aspect you are wanting to improve, take public speaking courses, set daily activity goals that done consistently over time will result in growing your business and nurture relationships that will help you succeed. The list goes on and on, but one thing remains: if we can shift our minds to applying these practices in a focused, disciplined way without being discouraged by non-instant results, we can hit our goals—and even better, develop habits that will last a lifetime.
What area will you be focusing on this quarter to get 1 percent better?
Have thoughts on how you will apply this HM-ism? Please share with us by emailing enjourthejourney@hughesmarino.com. We would love to see how you implement this powerful concept and adopted concept!
