How To Gain Momentum in Business (and Life)

But when most businesses start experiencing growth, they celebrate and get comfortable, which makes them lose the headway they’ve gained.

How can you create systems and lead a team that is built to grow?

In this episode, Chris shares how you can develop a team and company that can handle your forward momentum.

He explains why you need to reward your employees with things that don’t include taking time away from work, the exact guidelines you need to keep in mind, and how to establish systems that act as pillars to support your growth.

Tune in to find out how you can gain and keep momentum in your business and every other area of your life.

Growing anything in life, especially a business, is all about momentum.

In this Episode:

• How to know it’s time to end a partnership with a team member who can’t handle momentum in your business
• Why celebrating is the worst thing you can do after experiencing a growth spurt
• The exact guidelines you need to follow when your business starts gaining momentum
• How to build effective systems that will support your growth
• The best ways to reward your team when they hit their targets that don’t include taking time away from your business

Find out exactly what aspect of your company is the current weak link that, if fixed, will help you scale faster and more successfully.

Go to BuiltToGrowReview.com and see insights on how to fix everything that might be out of whack and holding your back — for free.

Enjoy the show? Check out the most popular episodes of Built to Grow!

• How to Start and Grow Your First 8 Figure Company
• How to Stay Focused on What Really Drives Growth
• Avoid These Culture Killers

Transcript:

Business is all about momentum. When we’re starting a business, there will always be some people who keep moving forward. Then there’s always gonna be some people who freeze. Now to keep your company growing, you can’t work with people who freeze.

When we employ somebody, we don’t know if they’re going to be a mover and a shaker. Or if they’re going to freeze when their department starts growing rapidly in a couple of months. Now when I go into a company, whether it’s as a partner or as an owner or as an investor, we start putting systems in place. We start moving people into the right directions and companies grow rapidly when we do that. Some employees, and even some partners, freeze or they self-sabotage themselves. When that happens, your job as the owner is to cut those ties.

Bad partnerships need to be stopped before they become an anchor in your growth. When an employee doesn’t work out, they’ve got to find someplace else where they’re going to be happier. Sometimes that means firing them so that they can become, you know, better at someplace else. Otherwise, they will become a virus that infects the rest of your team.

What You Need to Do When Momentum Begins

But let’s take that to the next step, because even your best team members, the A players in your company, the leadership team, and maybe even you, can mess up the momentum in your business sometimes. Let me give you an example of that. When a big target is hit, what’s the very first thing that most team members want to do? They want to celebrate, or they want to be rewarded with time off. But when momentum begins, it is not the time to celebrate and sit on your laurels.

When momentum begins, that’s the time to buckle down and keep moving forward. Think of momentum kind of like the gasoline being thrown on a fire. We need to keep that momentum going. We need to keep fueling that fire. When we do, it keeps getting hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter.

Most companies, no matter what size, slow down and they relax when the momentum begins. And that’s why growth only comes in spurts for them. They grow and then they celebrate and, while they’re celebrating, somebody else overtakes them. Now they need a new growth spurt. And if they’re really good at what they do, they’re going to find one, right? That’s not unheard of and they’ll grow again. But after they feel comfortable, they’re going to celebrate and they’re going to lose that head start again.

Right off the top of my head, I can think of three giant companies that went bankrupt because of this. And it’s not the size of the company because all companies are run by individuals. It’s the individuals in the company that we need to keep moving forward.

Remove the People Who Can’t Keep Up with the Momentum

And as we find people who can’t keep moving forward during times of momentum, immediately, we need to know who cannot move forward with us so that we can get them off our team so that we can keep moving to the next level. Let me give you the guidelines behind all this: Every time you get momentum in business or any success at all, you need to focus on sales and then systems and then people and then profits in that order.

Every growth spurt of sales must be backed at least by basic systems, meaning that we grow, and then as we’re growing, grow, grow, grow, we build systems inside of our company to support that growth so that we can keep growing. And the systems are kind of like pillars that support our past growth and make us organized enough to handle more growth. And once a system is put into place, it’s handed off to a person on our team or a department in our organization who takes ownership of that system.

I did a video detailing capacity versus capabilities and if you haven’t seen that, you should totally watch that because I’ve shared with you one of the easiest rules of growth, which is how to balance your capacity. I mean, the amount of sales you have, and your capabilities, which is your team and your systems and your technologies. In short, your capabilities are your ability to effectively handle the sales and then support your growth.

It’s All About Momentum

The fact is that most companies, or most people inside of companies, hit plateaus because after every single win, instead of building systems that support their new growth, they take a break because the product or the brand or whatever it is is taking off and they think they deserve a break because they worked so hard. But growing anything in life, especially a business, is all about momentum. That’s gotta be a mantra for you.

And when you understand that momentum is not the end goal, it’s actually the starting point, it’s a time to buckle down and to focus and to push even harder. When you do that, the real growth, the consistent ongoing growth and the fun really begins.

And you might fight me on this and that’s totally okay. I mean, you might think, heck, my team worked their asses off, they deserve a break so they can come back and work even more engaged. I get it. That’s fair. You could think that way. I’m a firm believer in rewarding my teams and myself when we hit big targets, but leaders always want more growth. And when you allow people to keep winning because they keep growing, then what you’re gonna find is that your people are far more driven both, now and in the future. And they keep coming up with new ways to grow.

Look for Ways to Reward Your Team

So we always need you to look for ways to reward your team and yourself in ways that drive more growth and the keep momentum in hyperdrive. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

Last year we had a tailor come into our office and make custom shirts for everybody. That was something cool, right? That’s something that most of them don’t do or can’t do for themselves, but it’s a big reward. They loved it and they felt more confidence wearing those shirts. The confidence definitely had a positive impact on our numbers. Then two years ago we rewarded people with stand up desks and ergonomic chairs and a custom-designed office space, which everybody loved because they each got to personalize their space and it made every one of the more healthy and more productive in their work. Now, nobody needed extra vacation time or downtime after they hit their targets.

You see, they see every single day the rewards that they achieved and they’re reminded that big win that they have and they’re stronger because of it because we chose the right kind of rewards.

What kind of cool rewards have you given out? Think about this for a second. Or what kind of rewards have you gotten? If you have a great way to reward your team or ways that you would like to be rewarded that don’t take time away from work, but rather they add to your growth, then tell me in the comments section below. I mean I really want to know what kind of things do you like to be rewarded with? What kind of things have you rewarded your team with that have really worked well, that didn’t take away from your company, didn’t take away from their time working, but it actually added to your growth? Because listen, we all want a company that’s built to grow.