Business Bytes: The November Project and the value of ‘just showing up’

“JUST show up,” exhorted Bojan Mandaric, “just show up”.

The November Project began as two mates – Bojan and his university friend Brogan Graham – who wanted to stick to a training schedule and, perhaps, become “morning people” at the same time.

Bojan said: “There was just two of us – I was driving him, he was driving me.”

It began as a Google Doc with the title “November Project”, for the two of them to plan their training knowing that if they didn’t get out of bed and get to the meeting the other would be stood around getting cold. Failure to train wasn’t just missing a session, it was letting a mate down.

“There’s no ‘kind-of tired’, there’s no ‘I’m sore’,” said Brogan.

Then they decided to see if anyone else wanted to join in, and from there it took off.

“It was a word-of-mouth thing, it was a social media thing. One person showed up and we were ecstatic.”

“Then a dozen people showed up and we were freaked out,” added Brogan Graham. “It kept building.”

The November Project grew to more than 20 cities in America and four years on it is still going, getting people to meet at 6.30am for a group workout.

All from deciding to “just show up” and committing to being there.