Category Archives: Momentum

How To Start Something – Anything

3.11.15It doesn’t matter when we start, it doesn’t matter where we start, all that matters is that we start. -Simon Sinek

Last week we discussed the importance of performing your business’s first quarterly review in 2015.  Most likely you were pleasantly surprised by some of the results and disappointed with others.  And now you are probably a little stuck on where to begin to correct the areas where you fell short.

Sinek tells us that it doesn’t matter where you start.  What matters is that you start.  Starting something is the place where many people are hesitant.  They are plagued with doubt; the specter of failing again looms over them like a dark cloud.  I do think it’s good that you question yourself.  Although the questioning can last way too long and become the reason not to start something.  Lingering in self-doubt is your clue to begin doing something now.

Instead of failure being the be all and end all of your business, it is the beginning of creating newly, of coming up with brand new answers to the questions you have.  If you can flip failure into telling you what doesn’t work, you are free to discover what does work.  And how else would you know if it works unless you get busy and try it out?  By starting something—anything—you will learn something new about your business.  You will be engaged; you will move forward.  The inertia will disappear; it will become the energy of forward momentum.

In order to start something, first you need to say that you are going to do it, whatever it is.  Put in a “by when date” and also a measurement of the result that you intend to produce.  Then tell someone, one of your circle of people who are the cheerleaders for your success.  You know who they are: the ones who, after you talk with them, you feel lifted, energized, ready for the next challenge.

By following those steps, you will start something.  And it will be great whether it flops or is a success.  Either way you will be moving.  That certainly beats the alternative.

 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

 

The Four Simple Principles Behind Making Your Good Idea Successful

Blog 62514First they ignore you.  Then they ridicule you.  And then they attack you and want to burn you.  And then they build monuments to you.

Nicholas Klein, Trade Unionist

What do you think?  Seems right on doesn’t it?  Apply it to your own entrepreneurial innovations.  Is your experience similar?  But who is the “they”?  Most often it is just you mocking yourself.

And what is your monument?  Profit probably—not a concrete monolith in some park.

What does it take to go from a dream to reality?  Who do you have to be in order to persevere and go through the stages necessary to achieve your monumental profit?

There are several stages—the first is formulation, putting together the idea.  This is the most fun stage, creating something new where anything goes.  There are entrepreneurs who get stuck in this stage.  It can become an endless cycle of getting ready to get ready.  This is the pitfall of this stage.

The next stage is concentration—taking the idea and putting in the hard work needed to make it a reality.  Concentration meaning putting all of your attention on implementing your idea.  Concentration is hard work.  Usually, this stage is when entrepreneurs give up.  You have your doubts and sometimes you believe your doubts.  Here’s a tip: if you know it’s hard and you are concentrating on making something happen, then you can go forward.  We usually think its “weak” to say something is hard.  It’s NOT weak.  If you see it’s hard as an observation not a sentence to fail, you will be able stay with the process.

Following concentration is momentum.  In momentum, people start thinking your idea as valid and they want to work with you.  This is the time when you are building at a rapid pace and are beginning to see the finish line.  You will still refine your idea and enhance it.  However, the slog slowly becomes a jog, then a race to the finish.

In the final stage you reach stability.  You have successfully launched your product.  You are making a profit.  Your monument has been built.  Congratulations.

Of course, you are not finished, after all, you are an entrepreneur and have another idea.  This one is better than the last.  You go back to concentration.

In the spaces below, please comment about your experience in going through these stages.  Do you have more stages to add to the conversation?  I look forward to hearing from you!