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Momentum Leverage In Business

Momentum build-up and leverage in your business

This has taken a long time to figure out and on the cost of a lot of time and money for mentoring and coaching … and I’m pretty careful to share this because it’s a little more of high-level stuff. But I’m feeling that this is actually going to simplify the thing for owners within the independent car shop industry. The higher you get up the mountain the kind of harder it becomes to gig you bearing.

So, let’s talk about the momentum cycle and leverage and how to kind of gig yourself past may be a downward trend. You got to understand that everything is cyclical in your business and naturally you are going to have flows up and naturally flows down as a consequence of a bunch of circumstances like your efforts, the market, the weather, your spouse … seriously.

The goal of manipulating the momentum cycle is to make sure you’re constantly staying at that point of leverage just before a breakthrough with an upward pull. And any time you let yourself get past that point and feel like you’ve made it and like “look what I’ve done” you start heading down on the momentum cycle. And then you may feel a little bit like a loser, you have a ton of stuff done with little or no result, and then you think “screw that business, I quit”.

 

momentum_graph

And what I’ve found is that you have about 2-4 weeks delay between the lead indicators which is what you do and the lag indicators which are the results coming in from what you do. So you might be posting ads here and there, making phone calls and following up with customers, trying to get declined work back, etc., and you don’t see results… but hang on, there’s a 2-4 week cycle and you got to be patient enough to let all that catch up. But if the delay is longer you can assume that there is an issue with your actions.

So, you get that first result that accelerates the cycle and changes your mindset so you’re feeling that your effort is starting to pay off and then there’s a flood – everything you do works, everything you touch turns to gold, and you’re like a king of the world and no one can stop you, and you have massive confidence. And that is really fuel for pushing forward to the next level.

Here’s the thing – 100% of this feeling, it’s mental, it’s never really reflective of hard reality.

The truth is you are never gonna be in a place where everything you do works… we all know that. You are never gonna be in a place where nothing works… right? But the feeling that you have because you have some results justifying you, is that you have this unstoppable kind of force so your risk tolerance changes. Your attention to what people think about you goes away. You’re willing to do more, you’re willing to work harder and later because you feel like everything you do is paying off. So, if all this is true, Momentum is as much physical as it is mental. The first thing you have to realize is this is hacking and manipulating your mental state and knowing this is something that is going to be your map so nothing can lead you astray.

Here are the Laws of Momentum:

  • You have to build it, it’s not going to naturally occur on its own;
  • Once built, you have to consciously maintain it or it will run out. And here is the great thing about the Momentum – the hardest part is the initial build. So, getting that initial haze going and then once you’ve done it is a lot easier to maintain… for me personally. Once you figure out what you have to do to get to 25k a month it’s a lot easier to figure out how to get to 100k or 200k. So, once you get to that place to build the momentum you’re gonna run up against resistance. And the resistance is really important for you, that’s how you build strength.
  • When you lose momentum, you have to work twice as hard for twice as long to get the results you would if you had momentum;
  • Momentum is science, it’s not a wudu thing, it isn’t something abstract without rhyme or reason;
  • There are things you can do when you have the momentum to keep it, and likewise, things you can do when you’ve lost momentum to get it back. You got to figure out the keys to building it, the keys to maintaining it, and the associated cost of losing it.

I’m gonna break it down on how to scientifically engineer momentum:

Momentum comes from Action and Accurate Thinking, and it is Maintained by your Environment

That’s why creating the right business strategy, taking the right actions, acquiring the right customers, and setting up the right environment is so important. Here you might realize why is that so much talking about picking and choosing work and clients, and pricing all about. The things that you have to do to get that wind in your back and get that pull rather than pushing in terms to create momentum are different than the things that sustain momentum.

You know that you build momentum when there’s a little bit of chaos around and many opportunities. All you have to do is to act. But you cannot live in that place indefinitely because you’re gonna lose your mind and it’s not good.

So, creating momentum is about implementing the things you learn and then maintaining momentum is really about getting to manage the chaos you build. Does this make sense?

And then, think about momentum as another asset just like your smartphone, just like your mail, just like Facebook… A lot of time people see momentum as an asset, so momentum happens to them rather than having to engineer, manage, and leverage momentum. If you don’t honor momentum as an asset it’s gonna work against you, and you’re gonna be feeling like you are suffocating, and you are not gonna know what is going on. So you got to make sure you are aware and you are using it.

Let’s talk about a few momentum killers:

  • Too much talk that isn’t followed by the proper action or implementation, in other words too much dreaming and planning but never doing anything… and that is the majority of people. Always attaching a proper action to whatever your goal is and have the first thing being the first thing is really gonna help you to get momentum as a positive in the wrong things;
  • Wrong action not based on precision or strategy;
  • Unchecked emotions and mental baggage that is not filtered through to align with your end goal. The things you think create actual ripples and outcomes, so you got to be sure that you are not poisoning yourself with emotions that are not setting you up and empowering you to hit your goals;
  • Too much structure and routine – replace complex with simple systems and fragile with antifragile systems.
  • Burnout when you set yourself up with the wrong expectations – usually perception is that things should be further, bigger, easier, etc than they really are;
  • Lack of “the push” – the push is that sensation when you are reaching, and you’re feeling like you’re battling uphill a little bit. When you experience breakthrough the push goes away and if you don’t get yourself into another push you lose momentum. When you aim for your goals you have to do things you’ve never done before and that is the resistance as a part of building momentum. But once you’re there, the level you reached just becomes normal. Learn to love the push and it will make you happy.

Is it ok to lose momentum?… Yes. Because it is important for you to control momentum and at some points, you have to lose a little momentum because if not you can’t really continue in chaos nonstop. You got to build a system while processing the chaos (create assets and streams) so that when you step away your business doesn’t collapse and you don’t lose it all. There are times when you lose momentum and it’s ok as long as you’ve wrapped the systems around the momentum before you step away. And be aware all the time of the cost of losing the momentum.

THE 3 WAYS TO MANIPULATE MOMENTUM

Let’s talk about this a little bit:

  • GOALS – manipulating momentum with greater goals. The goals determine, to a great extent, the turbulence or pushback in your business. Every airplane needs turbulence to fly, so does your business… you need that resistance to get stronger. You don’t want your goals to be exhausting and terrifying all the time but they should require a trade from you. And, your goals are not always meant to be achieved, but they are targets you aim for. When you hit a goal you have to raise it because it means you aim too low. If you don’t really know how to set your goals do an exercise and get to the place where you can see yourself hitting but to the extent of that and go a step further so that you have something to reach for;
  • TRAFFIC/OPPORTUNITY VOLUME – professional fighters know that when you’re about to be punched and you know you can’t avoid it completely, you lean in rather than trying to escape because it reduces the distance from the strike, and therefore, limits the amount of momentum the strike has against you. This is a form of manipulation when you encounter setbacks or difficulty. You are going to have up and down the natural momentum cycle, so try to speed the downward trend to avoid getting stuck and to get to the upward trend faster. When you see yourself going down, instead of taking a break your goal should be to become aggressive and zoom through that downward trend (ex. sort out things that you usually don’t have time to but they are still important for your business, check out new opportunities that might strengthen your budget in the future, etc.). Once you get back to the upward trend take your break.
  • SALES/CONVERSION – sales slumps are inevitable, although greatly diminished with the right coaching/mentoring, inputs, and the right environment. When you’re changing the input (your attitude, the new things you learn, potential investments that you make in the shop, etc.) you’re changing the output. Since sales is a numbers game, when you start heading into the downward trend you want to breeze through as many NO’s as you can to start hitting the YES again. A hack for this is to “grease the chute” to the point where someone has to say YES. Getting a YES is a mental fortitude for you and will help catapult you back into the upward trend. (example: I normally do this for $ but we’re running a promotion now and I really believe we’re gonna make a good business in the future, so let’s do it for $). And then, as the saying goes – SUCCESS BEGINS SUCCESS.

Final words… go read this about five more times cause it condenses 18 months in a multi-million business in about 10-15 min.

If you’re looking to find a fix for your struggle to build momentum, scale, and get ROI in your business, click the link to book a FREE 45-minute Breakthrough Strategy Session at your convenient time.

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Vladislav Gerginov

The Garage Mentor founder and CEO

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