Momentum

Exercise has always been a part of my life. I was a sprinter as a girl and won many sporting awards throughout primary and secondary school. My love of exercise has continued only these days I’m not a sprinter but happy to take part in exercise classes or walk and jog on my treadmill. It’s more about health and fitness now that I’m in my 50’s, something I took for granted when I was younger. Now I have to work harder to maintain my health, have to watch what I eat, be more consistent with exercise and rest from time to time. Without exercise, I don’t think I would have the energy to do all the things I do. The consequence of taking a break from exercise (because I’m too busy) is that within weeks I lose much of the aerobic fitness I worked so hard to gain. Sure, there are times when that happens and I don’t beat myself up over it but one of the incentives I have for maintaining a regular fitness regime is the thought of how hard it’s going to be to get my fitness back. Having a fitness goal, being committed to it and maintaining consistency creates momentum.

As my business grew randomly, I started to think about momentum and it all came together in one of those epiphanies you get from time to time. The revelation started when I was using an exercise video one day and the instructor said something like “when doing squats or lunges, pause for a moment at the bottom to reduce momentum. When you reduce momentum your muscles have to work harder and you’ll get better results”. Although I’d heard that over and over I didn’t think much of it until I took part in an adventure race about five years ago. It was a team event along part of the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. I was in the run leg which required rock hopping over boulders and small rocks for part of it. It was pretty scary with several people slipping and breaking or spraining their ankles. During the pre-event instructions, the organiser said “Momentum is your friend!” He went on to explain that you will move more quickly and safely over the rocks if you put aside your fear and allow momentum to take over. It required planning your moves several steps ahead of you instead of looking down at your feet watching every step carefully. I didn’t get it when the organiser explained it, it was only when the race started that I quickly realised I would be there all day if I stopped and started trying to pick my way along a safe path. So I gathered my courage, took a leap of faith and felt a great sense of achievement when my part of the race was completed in good time.

Without momentum, everything is much harder including growing your business. So how do you create momentum in your business? If you have a new practice your job is primarily Marketing. If you have five days a week available and only one day is spent billable, you need to spend at least another three on implementing all of your marketing strategies. If you are already full and have started to engage bookkeepers you have to prioritise Marketing AND HR. That might seem bizarre when you are already full, but as you engage bookkeepers you need to be able to feed them consistently otherwise they won’t wait around for long. To create momentum at this level you need to spend at least a day a week on your Marketing strategies (especially meeting with Accountants and networking) AND you need to spend about a day a fortnight on recruiting and training great bookkeepers (more as the work flies in the door). Yes, it’s busy! But it’s the right activity to get you to Black Belt quickly.

What you will find is that creating momentum removes some of the distractions that can take you away from your goals and the need to make as many little decisions along the way. With the route planned and looking ahead instead of down, you won’t need to decide if you will have time to do Marketing this week or what day you need to set aside to implement one of your other marketing strategies. You will have planned a week ahead, made the calls and booked appointments. Often we stop and start with the Marketing based on the amount of time we have available. That will result in your business growth being random and that won’t feed hungry bookkeepers. Not only that, creating momentum is more fun. When you know what your job is, have the tools to get the job done effectively and get busy doing the right activities then you create momentum in your business and that creates its own energy. You will feel it and so will your team.

I have mentored several licensees about momentum and helped them create strategies to achieve that. During the conversations they had similar epiphanies. I hope you do too!