Have you ever wondered why certain people seem to be an icon of success and other people don’t seem to make any progress towards their goals? Do you ever wonder what separates these two groups of people? Have you noticed how it seems like it’s going to be impossible to catch up to the icons of success?
So, what is it that makes these people the way they are? It comes down to this: MOMENTUM. It’s much harder to stop or catch up to a moving object than it is to compete with somebody who starts at the same time that you do.
One of the biggest secrets of bloggers/entrepreneurs who are more successful than you are is that they have been doing it longer. That’s why their traffic grows much faster than the blogger who is just starting out. They hit momentum. In the startup world this is known as the hockey stick of growth. Professional athletes are quite similar to entrepreneurs in that sense. The secret of professional athletes is that they have never stopped perfecting their craft. At a certain point they achieve mastery of the basics and from that point their progress accelerates rapidly. Again, they hit momentum. The secret of people who make lots of money is that they know how to do it, so over time it becomes easier and easier and as a result their ability to make more money with less effort increases.
If you have read Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers, then you know that it takes roughly 10,000 hours to achieve mastery of your craft. Think about it this way. Let’s say there’s something you want to learn or get better at. If you practice every single day, there will be a point when something just clicks. From that point on things will become very easy. Basically you will find yourself in what I call “the zone.” Once you are in the zone the rate at which you progress will increase dramatically. Compare that to somebody who is just a beginner but doing the exact same activity. It’s going to take that person much longer to make the same progress that it takes the person who has achieved mastery of the basics.
The reason for this is that you have started to really understand the basics and now you can start to push the limits of what you are capable of. That’s why it’s extremely difficult for the average person to catch up to somebody who started a sport such as snowboarding, skiing, surfing, etc when they were a kid. They hit that accelerator and once they did catching up to them became impossible.
One thing you have to be careful of is becoming a victim of your own success. If you hit momentum, this is not the time to sit back and relax. When you’re in that “momentum” phase of your business that’s when you really want to start pushing your own limits because you’ll accomplish so much more. If your business is a moving car, then STEP ON THE GAS PEDAL
Srinivas Rao is the author of the Skool of Life where he’s busy turning surf sessions into life lessons. He’s also the host and co-founder of BlogcastFM and the editor in chief of Flightster.
