How do you build discipline when results are delayed?

By Bonnie Harrison

Founder, Swae Travel

It can be really hard when you feel like you’re doing everything you can but still aren't seeing results as quickly as you expected.

I’m the founder of Swae Travel, an Australian brand creating carry-on backpacks and accessories for modern travellers who want to move lighter, smarter, and with less stress. I'm acutely aware of how tough it can be when you’re putting in a huge amount of effort and the results just aren’t showing up as early as you thought they would.

For me, it’s always been about having a really clear end goal that I know I’m working towards, and then breaking that down into smaller, more tangible milestones. That way, you’re not relying on one big moment to validate everything - you’re hitting smaller wins consistently, which really helps keep momentum up.

Building a successful business is a long game. Most of the time, results don’t happen overnight, and there aren’t many shortcuts. Discipline is what carries you through. It’s much harder to build habits around outcomes, because we’re not often in control of them. Instead, I build habits around progress - which is entirely driven by my own discipline and consistency. How I show up, how I execute, and the standard I hold, even when the wins haven't happened yet.

And I’ve seen this play out very directly with Swae. I didn’t just “launch a backpack” - it took almost two years to get to the point where I had a product in front of me ready to sell. It started with shortlisting suppliers, then dozens of calls just to understand who could actually meet our requirements (everything from material quality to minimum order quantities etc.). From there, it was narrowing down the right partners, finalising the design down to a very detailed spec, and then working closely with manufacturers through multiple sample iterations. There were rounds of back and forth refining things that most people would never even notice - weight, structure, materials, layout. Then once we had a final sample, it was locking in the manufacturer, moving into bulk production, managing shipping, quality control, and then finally shooting the product.

All of that happened before there was anything live. No sales, no customers, no external validation - just a massive amount of work behind the scenes.

And the same applies across every part of the business - marketing, PR, digital, SEO, operations, finance etc. 

Every function has a overarching target, but working directly to that every single day just isn't sustainable. The stepping-stone goals are the way to make the task at hand manageable and purposeful. Because I've found that if your expectations don’t account for how much work happens before results show up, losing momentum is inevitable.

For me, it’s always been most challenging when the delay is unavoidable and out of my control. You don’t get a say in how long it takes for Google to index your website, or you can spend countless hours on PR outreach and not get a single reply. In those moments, I come back to whether what I’m doing actually ladders up to the bigger goal, and whether it’s my approach that needs to change. I’ve found it really important to have someone you trust to bounce ideas off, and to keep consuming as much as you can within your space - books, podcasts, social - so you’re constantly exposing yourself to new ways of doing things.

So when it comes to building discipline when results feel delayed, I think it really comes down to this - you have to expect that phase. I actually assume results will take longer than I want them to. It removes the emotion from it. Then it just becomes about whether I can stay consistent, at a hig

h enough standard, for long enough.

Connect With Bonnie

www.swaetravel.com

www.instagram.com/swaetravel