Success Stacking: My Process To Build Momentum

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Welcome to the show. I'm Ryan Dannemoran. This is capitalism dot com. Hey, I'm going to share with you an exercise today that I do with my clients, with our customers, specifically to build up momentum. As entrepreneurs, we kind of thrive on momentum. When we feel like the momentum is going against us, we tend to get lonely and depressed. Or maybe I'm projecting onto you, this isn't anything that's happened to me ever. But when you've got momentum on your side, you feel like you can conquer the friggin world, you can do anything. You've got the golden touch. Everything that you touch is going to work. We are momentum creatures. So as entrepreneurs, when we're in a rut or when we're going through a hard time, one little, little tiny speck of momentum can sometimes pull us out of a period of procrastination and feeling stuck and feeling like things are never going to work out. So I have a process that I go through myself and that I put through a lot of our clients and customers. And I have tested this across the board with people that we've invested in inside of the Capitalism Fund. I do it myself. I've tested it with some of our higher end students inside of the Capitalism incubator. And I have done it on coaching calls inside of the 1% across the board. I get messages from people who say that this was really helpful for them if they were feeling stuck or unmotivated or that they were procrastinating. And I call this exercise success stacking. Now, the kind of secret is in the name. We're going to stack successes on top of one another in order to build up some momentum. But we're not just going to do it by saying what we can do for what we could do or what might work or what we're going to do in the future. We start this process by going into the past to see where there is already momentum and then we're going to carry that forward. The reason we do it this way and the reason why this is so effective is because our brains are telling us a story all of the time. Our brains are telling us a story that we're stuck, that we're not getting the results that we want, that it's never going to work, that we're going to end up miserable failures, et cetera, et cetera. But that is a perception based on things that it's pulling from the past and things that it's making up about the future. Basically what the brain is doing is it is pulling pieces of evidence from the past into the present and then casting a fake vision for the future. And that is actually how the brain creates this movie that is in our brain about where we are and where we're going to be in the future. So if you feel like you're not getting the results that you want, or if you feel like you should be further ahead, just know that that is the brain's way of pulling from the past and pulling from its reference point into the present and then interpreting that. So, for example, something that I noticed about myself when I was about 24, 25 years old, was that I only hung out with people who were 10 years older than me and way more successful than me. Now, this was great for driving me into growth and keeping motivated, but it made me lose touch with how far I had come. We tend to measure our results based on where we are now compared to where we would like to be. This creates this giant mountain of unworthiness because we are constantly climbing a new mountain and looking up at the top, we wondering why the goal posts have moved. But if we stop and we look at how far we've come, we can actually see there's a lot of progress. We can see there's a lot of momentum towards the outcomes that we desire. So we're going to combine where there's already momentum from the past and combine it with where we want to go in the future in order to create this success stacking principle. Okay, so what you're going to need to do, this is something to write on. And this works best if you are writing it rather than typing it. And what we're going to do is we're going to take a piece of paper and we're going to divide it simply into three columns. So that's two lines down the middle of the page so that we've got two columns. Pretty darn simple. If you can't do that, you're not ready for the next part of the exercise. On the far left column, we're going to write the past 12 months. So past 12. And in the middle column, we're going to write past 90 days. And then in the final column, the third column, we'll write next 90 days.

So you can see where this is going. We have past 12 on the left, past 90 in the middle, and next 90 all the way to the right. And what we're going to do in this exercise is we are going to borrow from the past to see where there is momentum, where there is progress, and then we're going to bring that into the future. And I have had people reach out to me privately, sent me text messages or emails saying I was in a really tough spot when we did that exercise. I, I didn't want to do that exercise. You forced me to finish it, and I'm really glad you did. This entire process only takes about five, maybe 10 minutes. And I can promise you that you will want to quit at about minute one and a half. You may not believe me right now, but we're going to hit a resistance point after about 90 seconds of this exercise and you're going to want to quit. I'm going to tell you that upfront, so that when you hit the resistance point, when you hit the period of you wanting to quit, just know that I warned you. Everyone goes through this process. And I will tell you that if you go through that little resistance point where you want to quit, if you get past it, that's where all the good stuff is. So rather than hit the resistance point and say, I want to quit this, give me five minutes. And if you get through that resistance point, celebrate it. Just say, hey, I'm at that risk. This point. It means that all the good stuff that happens on the other side of this is going to be really, really good. That's where all the good stuff is, because it's all this surface level stuff that will come up at first, but the really good, meaty stuff that will give you the momentum and the perspective that you're looking for is going to be after you hit that, and once you do the first part of this exercise for 90 seconds, then you're going to go, and then the good stuff will happen. So you will hate me for about 30 seconds and then you're going to love me after about five minutes. We're going to start this exercise in the middle column. And in the middle column, we are going to write down at least 10 things that we can think of that were progress from the last 90 days. Now, you're going to say in your mind there's been no progress and there's certainly not 10 things that I'm going to write down. Mr. Capitalism man, your brain will say that. And that's why I say you're going to hit resistance after you get all the surface level stuff out, but then you're going to start coming up with a really good stuff. So I'll just do an example with you right now. What progress, what momentum has happened in the last 90 days. And here's a little preview. You will forget how much got done in the last 90 days. So, for example, I know that it was just 90 days ago that we published this follow up sequence called the road to 1 million@capitalism.com that didn't even exist yet and it already has 2,000 subscribers to it. I mean, that's, that's pretty good. In the last 90 days, we launched a program at Capitalism called the Grind, which is really, really good. We're really proud of it. And it didn't exist 90 days ago. We also launched a new continuity offer in last 90 days. I forgot that was less than 90 days ago. I started getting up a lot earlier in the last 90 days and as part of that, I've really fixed my sleep. You know, I'm not going to say what it was, but I kicked a habit that I wanted to kick. I was.

Too dependent on something that I didn't want to be dependent on.

And that was less than 90 days ago. It feels like a long ass time ago, but it was actually just 90 days ago.

Okay, so I just listed five and now I want to quit. So I hit my own resistance point, which means that the stuff that comes up next is going to be the really good stuff.

Okay, so here's one. I was able to take two full weeks off a year ago. That would have been absolutely insane to think that Ryan could take two full weeks off and it not harm the company. That is actually a huge amount of progress.

I built this podcast studio with my own hands that was actually really enjoyable.

I didn't think I was going to enjoy that, but I didn't know what else to do because I was taking time off and I actually really enjoyed this process.

I think my mental health is in a much better place than it was. I've been making that a priority. It required me to slow down in business a little bit, but kind of slowing down so that I can go faster later.

Okay, so I'm at 8 and I'm really digging for two more right now.

You know, this is kind of a reframe on things, but we had. We had kind of a down month in business last month and we were still profitable. Wait a minute, that's not true. Oh, you know what I just realized? See, this is why you go through the resistance. I totally forgot Capcon was in the last 90 days. We had the best Capcon we've ever had in my entire life, in my career. That was 30 days ago at the time of this recording. Yeah, well, I totally ignored that one. That was like the biggest event of the year for Us. And in combination with that, there is a project that we're launching with one of the people who spoke at Capcon, and that is getting really, really close. So that's 10. Wow. See, my brain wasn't thinking about the fact that I had all of these wins or that I had a win as big as Capcon in the last 90 days. My brain was looking for the next problem. Our brains are constantly looking for the problem that's in front of us, not building a story about the long term progress of things. So after you have a big win like I had 30 days ago, my brain has already forgotten about it. My brain is already looking at all of the problems rather than looking for all of the good things that are coming out of that experience, because we see the short term problems that are right in front of us rather than looking at the long term good things that are happening. Good news takes time. Bad news happens in a moment. And so what gets our attention, all the bad news that's happening 247 rather than the good news that is happening slowly in the background. So I had this big win 30 days ago. A bunch of relationships came out of that, a bunch of opportunities came out of that. And here I was. It took me until the ninth thing on my list after building a follow up sequence for me to be able to get to the really good stuff. Okay, so if I look at these 10 things that I wrote down, has there been progress? Has there been momentum in the last 90 days? Well, I can read that. I fixed my sleep, I kicked a habit, I took two full weeks off, I built a podcast studio, I've been taking care of my mental health. I launched a new program, launched a new follow up sequence. I got 2000 subs, I had the best event of my life. And we're launching a new project with somebody who was on stage that, I mean, that was all the last 90 days. Okay, you can see where this exercise is going. We're now all of a sudden we see some momentum and we've just been telling ourselves a story that we were stuck, a story that there was no momentum, a story that we're never going to get to where we want to go. Okay, so now we go to the left column and this section you're going to do on your own. But this is where we take the exact same thing, this exact same process. The 10 things that come to mind about pieces of progress that happened in the last year. The reason why we do this second is because there's bigger stuff from a larger sample Size. So if we look at the last 12 months instead of the last 90 days, we can find bigger stuff. So, for example, a year ago, it's coming to mind that I launched an NFT project that has been really successful. I believe we launched that in June or July of last year. So that was less than a year ago. And I'm really proud of what has already happened in that group. And there's still two and a half more years of that group where it's basically a mastermind group where we rent Airbnb together and we do investment deals together and stuff like that. We have two and a half more years of that. It has already been successful. And that happened just a year ago. We started building our search engine optimization@capitalism.com and our traffic has more than 10x in that time. I mean, that's, that's pretty cool. We recast division for our programs and for our content. Okay, that's good. We've been profitable 11 of the last 12 months. That's really good. So that's an example of some of the things that are coming up for me in the last 12 months. And you'll hit your resistance point just like you hit it in the first 90 days. And once you get through it, all the really good stuff is what's going to come out. What you'll be left with at the end of this part of the exercise is you'll be able to see a little bit of the broader story of the progress that has happened in the last 12 months and the last 90 days. Now, this doesn't mean that it wasn't hard or that you didn't go through some difficult times or there weren't setbacks. But you can look at this and say, okay, there's been some progress, some good stuff has happened. Maybe I'm still not where I want to be. Maybe things haven't gone exactly how I wanted them to. Maybe I'm not making the money that I wanted to be making. But there has been some progress. And this is what I came up with in the last five minutes. Okay, based on that, what would be really great to happen in the next 90 days? Knowing that there has been progress, that there has been macro wins and some short term momentum in the last 90 days. What are some things that I could stack over the next 90 days? And we're going to write down five to 10 things that we would love to create in the next 90 days that might be starting a new habit, or it might be getting in shape, or it might be accomplishing a certain monetary goal, or it might be completing a project. But writing down five to 10 things that you would love to see happen in the next 90 days gets you to take some of that momentum that has been borrowed from the past and now forecast it into the future so that you feel a little bit more fueled to do the actions that are going to lead you to that outcome. So I'm gonna write down five of my own right now. Okay, so I wrote down five things that I would love to create in the next 90 days. And I'm gonna have you do one more thing after I redo my list. So I wrote down I could add 20 new members to my NFT community. I could get our front end offer to 20 sales per day, cross 150,000 subscribers on YouTube. I'm at about 1:30 right now. Work out four times a week, something that I have slacked on a little bit and do one great thing, create one great memory with each of my kids. Okay, so these are all things that could happen in the next 90 days. There's a non zero chance that not all of them will happen in the next 90 days. So what we often do is we make this long list of goals and we might get one of them or two of them, but we don't get all 10 or all five. And then we beat ourselves up for the lack of momentum that we're not getting because we're focused on what we didn't accomplish. So instead of that, this is your dream list. Now that you're feeling a little bit of momentum, if you could only do two of these things, what would you love to see on your next wins list from the last 90 days? Which of these would be the most meaningful for you to have accomplished 90 days from now? So for me, it might be crossing 150,000 on YouTube and getting our front end offer to 20 sales per day. So I circled those two things here on my list and now I might say, okay, what do I need to prioritize this week? What do I need to do this month? What action steps do I need to put on the calendar in order for me to have more momentum towards these things? Oftentimes when we're not feeling momentum and we're just feeling stuck, we come up with this story about the fact that there's no momentum. We don't know what to do. We don't know how we're going to get to where we want to go. But after you do this exercise, if you're like most people, you'll be feeling more energy than when you started the exercise. And so you'll feel just a little bit clearer about what steps you need to take and you'll have a little bit more focus about which things you need to prioritize in the next week. And so we do this two step success stacking practice where we borrow from the past and then we prioritize what's important in the future and schedule what action items we can take in order to create more momentum. Reason I made this video for you is because I work with clients and customers who feel like they're stuck. But from the outside we can see their progress. Whether it's a company that I've invested in and I put capital into, I can see that founder making progress. But they're in their own way because they're playing this game about where they should be and what they should have done. Or it's a company that I'm advising or that we are helping inside of one of our programs. They're beating their head against the wall wondering why they're not getting anywhere, but they're getting somewhere. Sometimes just reframing your focus and reframing where you're putting your attention, like I'm getting nowhere and I'm progressing nowhere versus oh, all this stuff has happened and more is going to happen in the future can change your entire emotional state. If you change your emotional state, you'll change the actions that you take. And if you change the actions that you take, you change the outcomes that you get. I hope you find this exercise valuable. I would encourage you to take five minutes and do it one time and see if you feel more energized or less energized after you do this. If you are like every other person that I've done this with, you'll say you'll leave more energized, clearer and more motivated coming out of this exercise. Even if you were feeling really hopeless and stuck leading up to it. I'm Ryan Daniel Brand with capitalism.com I hope you found this valuable. See you next time.

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