Many years ago I was exposed to Rich Schefren during the very first Internet marketing launch he did. I had never heard of the guy before, but suddenly a lot of people I had heard of and respected were recommending him, so I paid some attention.
Rich went mainstream in the Internet marketing world thanks to the success of the Internet Business Manifesto report. To be completely honest, and this really is testament to the power of a strong lead free resource, if it wasn’t for the Manifesto, I would have stopped paying attention. Instead, I went on to join Rich’s Business Growth System, paying him almost $5,000 over the next 12 months.
Every New Business Lacks Momentum
One of the key lessons I learned, and this particularly came from listening in to the questions asked from other student’s of Rich during the live coaching calls with him, was that all businesses suffer from a lack of momentum when they start up. The psychology needed to deal with a lack of momentum in your business is different to what you need to do when your business has momentum, and it’s critical you understand the difference.
If right now you are having difficulty attracting new customers, or even just building a list or getting people to visit your website or blog, then you lack momentum. Momentum is the foundation that allows you to grow your business to the point where you can set up systems to separate yourself from the business.
Without momentum you don’t have cash flow and without cash flow you can’t afford to hire people, or outsource or purchase software that will help your business become more automated. In this situation, if you have no start-up capital to spend, you find yourself doing all the work.
Not only are you required to deliver the product or service you offer, you need to get out there and attract new customers by testing different marketing campaigns. Of course once you attract a customer, then your energy becomes divided, as you need to market less and start delivering. Unfortunately once you make this change, you get cash flow, but since you are no longer focused on marketing, your stream of new customers dries up. Once the current jobs are done, you have to get out and market again.
If you’re constantly in the stop and start loop between finding new customers and delivering to current customers, then you know what it’s like to feel too busy one day, and then struggling the next. You either have too much work and you’re flat out servicing, or your desperate for new leads. There is no happy medium where you have just enough work to be busy, just enough cash flow to keep growing and just enough new customers knocking on your door.
Do You Know Your Strengths?
One of the common problems I see my students face is a lack of strong vision. When you aren’t sure who your target market is, when you don’t know what your unique positioning is, when you’re not clear about what distinct problem you solve or need you meet, then momentum will be difficult to obtain.
Without clarity of purpose, then you send mixed messages and deliver sub-par outcomes. Being the best at one thing, a specialist, a maven in your market, is always the path to maximum profitability. You get the customers who you can best serve. Your customers get the best solution and everything lines up nicely.
What I really liked about Rich’s Business Growth System was his focus on having entrepreneurs find their strengths as a means to move towards a positioning strategy that leads to you dominating. If momentum starts with you, the clearer you are about what you personally need to do and what you should offer to the world, the better.
Once you’ve determined where your core personal points of leverage are (what you are good at and should focus on), everything else unfolds naturally. Most small business grow on the back of a very active entrepreneur attempting to do everything, including what he or she is not good at. This naturally leads to friction, as some parts of the business accelerate much faster than others, resulting in a lag in overall results.
When your largest business constraint is you, figuring out what part of you should be focused on and developed into a core strength, is critical.
In my case, blogging is what I teach and is the foundation of everything I do. The act of blogging, of studying and teaching blogging, serves to strengthen my “blogging muscle”. It’s a strong reinforcing cycle that allows me to constantly innovate and have the “technology” (the knowledge) that leads to me dominating my market.
Look For The Root Cause
If you’re lacking momentum then there’s very likely a mindset issue holding you back.
The reality, from a tactical stand point is that you haven’t taken the action steps necessary to build momentum (do keyword research, set up a PPC campaign, create a blog and landing page, etc), but the underlying reason why you don’t implement the tactical steps is because you lack a strategy to follow.
The strategy is the Roadplan, the Blueprint or the Masterplan (yes, these are the names of my free reports), which gives you the underlying psychology behind the decisions you are going to make that lead to actions you are going to take.
However, and this really is the key, behind the strategy is the mindset you have. Without the mindset you won’t be in a position to develop the strategy. You might “get” how something works, but you will block yourself from executing it correctly.
Everything comes back to how you think. Mindset is the real power and if you’re a devout reader of this blog, then you know what the key is to developing the right mindset:
- Establish awareness so you know what is possible
- Execute so you gain real experience to solidify the awareness you have gained as fact (at least fact in your world)
See this for more: How To Find The Courage To Change By Raising Your Awareness
In other words, discover what you don’t know you need to know, turn it into something you know you need to know, study the bits you do need to know because you have to do it, and then put into action what you just learned.
Right now there’s a very good chance you are oblivious to even knowing what is holding you back from gaining momentum. Until you at least become aware of your problem, you will continually make mistakes or not get results and may be clueless as to why nothing seems to work for you.
Taking a course strong in strategy and mindset, like Rich’s Business Growth System, is exceptionally useful for what I’m talking about now. It doesn’t focus so much on the “shiny objects” part of growing business – in other words the techniques – it looks at the big picture.
Techniques are everywhere and most of them work if they have the right mechanic using them. They can be exciting because they show steps you can take that leads to a result, and they are vital for building a business, however they are rarely the root cause of your lack of momentum. Chances are you don’t need to know how to do more techniques right now, you just need to know they exist.
What’s really important is you learn how you personally fit into your business framework. Discover your strengths, become aware of what things need to be completed based on the business you are building, then find your place in the machine, and start building it. That is the key to building sustainable momentum.
Good luck!
Yaro Starak
Entrepreneur
Yaro, you have an uncanny knack for hitting the nail on the head – the first time!
Keep up the good work!
Excellent post once again. I loved all your free reports, but I didn’t think before how nicely they are named and go together even that they seem separate until you listed them on this article! Perfect naming I’d say – there’s just certain “flow” and continuity with the Roadplan, the Blueprint or the Masterplan!
Great post Yaro! I’m also a student of Rich’s program and he has changed how I think. Just wanna add a few things…
The good thing about mindset is that we can TRAIN our minds to focus on the right things. E.g. The right mindset is the strategic mindset – we should always have the vision for our business in our minds.
So I wrote the vision for my blog and stuck it on the wall facing me at my desk. This way I’m reminded of it everyday. I suggest everyone here to do the same 🙂
Nice work Yaro, after your recommendation i’ve read the manifesto and loved it. Building a buisness should always supersede the quick cash that never seems to last from the latest scams or gimmicks.
You don’t need money for buying software that lets you automate the business. Just use free and open source software instead of proprietary software.
This is an area that needs considerable promotion.
I’m not going to jojn everybody in praising you this time.
It’s easy to say what blocks your momentum when you actually brake through it, but until you do – you just dont know it. It’s just plain old trying and failing method. You can rise your awarness, but you’ll never know if you are right untill you try to brake this obstacle. And no one can tell you what is good or bad for you, becouse everybody is special.
I think this is where a mentor is important, because he can point out what constraints you are facing since he has been through it before. He is coming from the third-person perspective and can see things that you can’t see, and show you how to overcome it.
The point still remains that one is wiser only in hindsight. You win some, you lose some. It is with experience that you get to winning more than losing.
Persistence is needed when a business is first starting up. Most people don’t have the discipline.
Yaro after listening to Rich’s Teleseminar recording and reading the “Entrepreneurial Emergency” I’ve started to learn how to get out of the way of myself! 🙂
Your reference to “friction” is something I can really relate to. Looking for friction points and trying to remove them has been an eye opening exercise to say the very least. 🙂
Rich’s latest video is the next evolution of his message. It’s clear he has learnt more and tidied up his presentation, so you get a real sense of knowing what the steps are.
One thing is for sure. We keep it straight and narrow and decide and growing gradually, things do work out. Some techniques work for some, and others for others. The trick is in keeping abreast of all developments and do one’s best.
Vision and Purpose are ESSENTIAL… without them you are simply wandering aimlessly..
I can’t tell you how many people can’t respond to the simple question of “what do you want” Those are the same individuals who then they complain about not getting the results that they desire.
How hard is it to take some time and decide what you want?
While it isn’t necessary to know exactly where you’re going you have to have some idea.. Having a vision doesn’t mean your life is set in stone but instead sets a solid path for you to walk.
Passion + Vision + Action = Momentum
Momentum = Success
“Discover your strengths, become aware of what things need to be completed based on the business you are building, then find your place in the machine, and start building it. That is the key to building sustainable momentum.”
Very powerful stuff!
Hustle is the key.
Great information Yaro, I don’t know why, but I’m always thinking I’m quite a lazy person, but still I work my butt in getting traffic and writing post till late night, and go to work in the morning with an ugly face.
I’m not sure what I’m doing is really gonna make it but I think may be is my mind that forces me to work late in to the night, sometime I feel tired and go sleep but I will always wake up in the middle of the night to finish my blog post, I just got the mindset that always tell me “hey you better wake up and finish it.”
Is this a “Momentum” of my mind or is it just “Discipline” to finish the work that I have not finish ?
I think that most of us who want to make money blogging start without a written plan or blueprint. Without a clear plan, it is hard to evaluate what is going wrong and what might be the casue. When we are trying to make money blogging or by any other means, it is like any other regular business and without a clear business plan, most people are destined to fail.
Charles makes a good point about the value of a mentor. Avoid common problems by getting help from someone who’s been through it all. A good masterplan helps a lot too. It is far too easy to run around trying to do everything without much focus on what the end result should be.
Yaro, your posts are simply sublime. The mixture of spirituality and down right practicality that you prescribe is unique and utterly stimulating. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the inspiration you are giving to my web endeavours (and other aspects of my being too)
May you be blessed friend, and keep on spreading the light!
Very good advice yaro. I’m trying to keep up my momentum on all my projects while focusing my attention in the right areas.
Thank you Yaro! You are really an inspirational teacher! And I think that there is a huge problem if people start in the blogging world without passion and just for “making money online”. It is so boring when I make a work without passion!
Thanks Yaro… momentum is the hardest thing. Every successful project I’ve had got the momentum going and the rest fell into place.
Loved this post, Yaro. Great as always. As a person in start-up mode, I’m thinking about how to build that pre-launch buzz in time for my official buzz. Mindset is everything.
Looks like instead of planning to do an MBA, I would join Rich Schefren’s course!!!
Yaro’s you are just downloading your brain in this blog. Nice article.
Something we all need to learn to do better, for reals.
Thanks for your posts, they are always full of quality information. I’m just starting out and sometimes I feel so stupid. Nothing seems to make sense and I just keep plodding away. Sometimes I do everything wrong. Occasionally, I have a good day when something will just click and I get it. Sometimes I get a little inspiration- thanks for the newsletters:)
Anyway, it’s all still hard work for me but I’ll keep going. I’ve seen what can be done.
Thanks for inspiring me and showing how it’s done well.
Yaro, first of all another solid Article, like others have said, you do have a true gift for writing, the words just seem to flow right from you. I could easily see you writing a best selling book.
I think evolving yourself is also a key to building sustainable momentum, sometimes while you’ve got that momentum going, it’s hard to increase that momentum, unless you truly evaluate yourself and see how you can improve yourself even further. A person who can be truly honest with themselves is somebody who is going to go far.
Till then,
Jean
The Manifesto is essential reading (Along with Yaro’s Blueprint, of course!)
I’m finding the leap from blogging for pleasure to blogging for income quite a large one, and these resources are an incredible help.
Thanks for the link!
I have noticed that there has been a lack of momentum here at work lately. I think we all just need a break or vacation, heck I would settle for a raise. However we are a small company and really can’t stop working otherwise we will loose business or fall even more behind since our online business is booming.
Any Suggestions?
Does your company have a big enough vision? Are your employees/you involved in your vision? Is it something that excites you and gets you inspired?
A break will work for the short term, but for the long term you might consider automating some of your online business so it’s not so labor intensive and frees up your time so you can take a break. Isn’t that the point of internet business? Having the time and energy to do what you want because alot of it is automated?
I think people tend to be impatient with their business, it really does take a lot to get momentum going, people also tend to thing linearly when things are much more exponential.
Meaning that it may take a while to get going but once it takes off it can really take off.
The same goes for failure, once things start to fail, the whole thing can crash quite quickly.
Usually, the problem of lacking momentum is common with newbies in the net world. Indeed, trying to discover your strength and weakness can be tedious but in the end it will be rewarding especially if you will try to apply it on your business. Aside from that, trying to strengthen your vision can be also useful since you are trying to set your focus on your target.
Thank you for your excellent post. Do you have a lot to learn.
Actually I feel that new business brings more motivation and one should be excited about marketing..
That’s an excellent tips! As a newbie,it motivates me to discover my strengths in order to keep my momentum on every projects that I do and will do in the future.
Motivation is an interesting animal, and when you don’t have momentum it can be very difficult to stay motivated at at times. Simply put, If you don’t keep motivated you won’t be successful. Thanks for putting this information together in one post, I am most definitely going to check out your reports. Great post, thanks 🙂
Really helpful for someone new in the world of blogging. Thank you, Yaro.
Another great post from you Yaro! You are such an inspiration to me especially on internet marketing. I really learn a lot from you. Keep on posting useful techniques and advices for us bloggers…
For the the lack of initial momentum in new businesses can be attributed to several factors, including CASHFLOW (lack of cashflow can really hurt, even the best business), new entry into the market and the resultant need
to build up a client base and then the final one – not having experience, and this hampering your efforts. If you don’t have the experience, consulting the experts is a good way to flatten your learning curve considerably. Admitting that you know nothing is a critical 1st step on the way to ultimate success.
Interesting to point out the difficulty with momentum. Usually, a new entrepreneur would think they can take on the world, without realizing it takes more than enthusiasm to run a business.
Tyrone I would say it is more than just the “newbies” of the internet, this applies to outside of the internet as well, and into the business world, and I would even go as far as saying anything in this world. Even sports players need momentum on their side, momentum is huge in any aspect of life.
-Randy
For some reason I can’t find the outcome and need it for a presentation for an accounting class?
I don’t know if you can so easily list the things that stand between the individual and personal forward momentum.. I think that, on average, we all find ourselves stumbling from time to time for a number of different reasons and they aren’t necessarily so simple to nail down.
Most important is philosophy of our business and know how of the business.