How to Create Forward Motion When You Are Trying to Launch Something

Hey, good morning, everybody. How are you? Chad Thibodeaux. Welcome to another Monday Morning Mentor. I am actually in the airport in Chicago. Took some time this weekend, went on vacation in the New England area. And I'm on my way to speak at an event in Calgary, up in Canada. And I got a really long layover here in Chicago. So I'm going to be doing some teaching and training with you guys today. And then I'm going I'm going to be working with a client this afternoon here in the Chicago area, jump on a plane tonight and off to Calgary for the next couple of days with Speakpreneur. And so thank you guys so much for taking a little bit of time to be with me here on this Monday Morning Mentor. I know today is a holiday and many of you guys are out and about playing and enjoying yourself, and I'm so glad that you're doing that. And maybe you'll be catching this on the replay, and if so, I want to help you guys today with a very important topic. What's In up, Chad? my opinion, one of the most important things that you can do in your life, and that is build momentum. So I've got my slides ready here. I've got everybody ready here. I'm live inside of my Kavu program. So I'm going to just take a 3-second break and let my editor see the gap so they know where to cut the video up. And then we will, we will get started. Here we go. Good morning, everybody. How are you? Chad Thibodeaux, and welcome to another live training. Today, what I want to do is I want to talk with you about momentum, how to create forward motion when you're trying to launch something. You know, I don't know if you're anything like me, but I believe that momentum is a key missing ingredient for so many of us who are trying to get something going, whether it be Yeah. We have a personal goal like losing weight, or we may want to get something off the ground and launch a new business, or we're trying to accomplish something in life. It's really hard to get off the ground unless you get some momentum. But very few entrepreneurs know how to create momentum and create it on purpose. Almost every entrepreneur I coach is trying to get something off the ground. It may be a new business, an offer, a book, an event, a program. Perhaps they're trying to do a workshop. Thank you. Or an idea that could change their future. And the idea is usually not the problem. Very seldom do I run into people saying, you know what, I just, I need to find an idea. Most people have an idea. They have plenty of ideas actually. The problem is, is what happens between having the idea and putting it into motion. And there's a dangerous space between inspiration and execution. And in that space, something that once felt exciting can very easily begin to feel complicated. Something that once felt obvious can very quickly begin to feel uncertain. And something that you could not wait to launch can slowly become something that you're afraid to release. This is why momentum matters. In fact, I think it's The single most important ingredient in any type of launch is building momentum. But momentum is not a personality trait. You have to know that. It's not reserved for people with more confidence. It's not reserved for people with more money or a bigger audience or a better team. Momentum can actually be created, and I want you to remember that. In fact, write that down. Momentum can be created. Momentum can be protected. Momentum can be rebuilt when you lose it. And so today what I wanna do is I wanna just, I'm gonna share my screen with you in a minute, and I wanna show you What destroys momentum. I want to show you how momentum is actually created. And I want to show you how you can use one meaningful win to create the next step. Okay? So, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you here. And I've even got a nice little handy-dandy slide deck for you today, which is pretty cool. And so, what happens when you stop moving? Okay, what happens when you stop moving? The first thing we need to understand is that when you stop moving, your mind does not. The idea does not remain safely parked in the same condition. Your mind keeps working on the idea. The problem is that without momentum, your mind has no new evidence to process, and you start thinking about the idea more than you began working on it. You revisit decisions you already made. You reopen questions that you've already answered. You try to solve problems that you have that have not happened and may never happen. And this is what slows us down. Without momentum, you ask whether the name is right or whether the market is ready or whether the price is too high. Or without momentum, you begin to figure out like, you know, well, maybe it's not priced high enough. Is the timing right? Is the platform good enough? And whether you need to change the entire idea before any Anyone has ever seen it. This is one of the problems without having momentum is we stay sort of stay stuck on the launch pad. And movement gives your mind something real to respond to. Okay, think about that. Movement gives your mind something real to respond to. It reminds me of like when I was trying to train my daughter on how to ride a bike. And she had her little, her little training wheels. And she was there with her cute little hat and she was sitting on the bike with her hands on the handlebars and she was just sitting there. Okay? And she was just paranoid and petrified because she thought that she was going to fall down. And so as long as she was staying stuck, okay, all her mind could do was think about the negative. But Daddy helped her get going. I helped her go forward a little bit. And now what was happening was Her mind had something else to focus on besides the failure. Okay? And so she could focus on going forward and should I turn left and should I turn right and, oh, there's a stick on the ground. Should I go over it? Should I not go over it? So her mind had something else to focus on. And that's the same thing in business and when you're trying to accomplish a goal. When there is no evidence, your imagination fills the gap. Unfortunately, Imagination is not always your friend, okay? Sometimes imagination will create 10 imaginary objections before one real prospect is even given the opportunity to respond. And this is the problem with a lot of people that I coach, is like, because they're stuck in park, okay, and there's no evidence on whether what they're gonna do is gonna work or not work, all their mind does is go to the negative. And that's just what happens as humans. And that is why staying still is not neutral. Staying still changes the way you see the idea. Okay? So don't think that, oh, I'll wait till next week or I'll wait till the week after, because staying still is not neutral. It's actually going in reverse because what's happening is you're beginning to stack the objections. And it's what I call the stuck loop. Okay? It's what I call the stuck loop. Being stuck usually follows a very predictable pattern. Okay, so first, up in the upper left-hand corner here, you know, you overthink. Okay, you overthink, and that's a big deal. Okay, because you conceptualize the same idea again and again and again. Okay, you change the name, you adjust the price, you reorganize the program, you, you look at another platform, you redesign the logo, you rewrite the first paragraph for the 12th time. At some point, all of that thinking begins to feel like productivity, but you can't— you can point to research, you can point to the notes, you can point to the new outline, you can tell yourself that you're being strategic, but you're not getting closer to launching. You're not getting closer to the market, okay? You're only getting deeper inside your own head. And eventually you begin talking yourself out of choices that once felt obvious. Then you start fantasizing about, you know, the what-if scenarios and what if nobody responds or what if the price is wrong. I saw this with someone who was trying to run an event a few months ago, actually just a few weeks ago actually. And as I was talking with him about his event, it was what if, what if, what if, what if, what if. And the what-ifs caused him to change his process and product like 20 times, okay? And then he finally just got the courage to launch, and once he launched, man, I was like, oh my gosh, you were so right. Of course, because what happens is, is when you're stuck and still stuck in one place, you begin to overthink, okay? Those questions may sound intelligent because they're phrased like strategy, but none of them creates evidence. None of them puts the offer in front of a buyer. None of them produces a conversation or an invitation, a sell or result. They only make the I I deal the idea heavier. Okay? And so what happens is we start to overthink. Okay? Then we reconceptualize and then we fantasize about the what-ifs and then we end up taking ourselves out. And this is what happens. This is the pattern that you end up with. And so when someone says they're stuck, this is what I mean by it. They're stuck. They overthink, they're reconceptualizing, they're fantasizing what-ifs and they're taking themselves out. I wonder how many of you guys can relate with that. That's where you're at. But what you have to know is that stillness complicates. The longer you remain still in one spot, the longer you remain still, the more complicated the idea becomes. That sort of sounds backwards, doesn't it? Because we assume that the more time should create more clarity and it never does. Well, sometimes it does, but prep— because preparation does matter. Thoughtfulness does matter. Research does matter. But there's a point where preparation stops improving the idea and starts protecting you from the vulnerability of launching it. And what happens is the questions begin to multiply, the number of possible outcomes begin to grow, and every new opinion introduces another variable. Every new comparison gives you another reason to doubt what you had already decided. And fear begins disguising itself as strategy because the questions sound thoughtful and responsible. And what happens is you begin telling yourself, well, I just need to get a little more clear. You begin telling yourself, well, I just need to see what everybody else is doing. You begin telling yourself, you know, I should probably rebuild the whole thing before I put it out. And soon you're trying to perfect a version of the business that the market has never had the chance to evaluate. And there's a major difference between solving a known problem and trying to eliminate every possible problem before you move on. One is preparation, the other one is avoidance. And you need to have wisdom to know the difference. Am I just preparing? Well, chances are you're probably overprepared. Or are you avoiding? And chances are you're probably avoiding, okay? And so you don't need to do that. So what we learn is right here, like when— oh, forgive me. It's going the wrong direction. I'm going to have to stop this and I don't know why it's going the wrong direction on me here. Let's do this. I apologize about this. We'll edit this out of the final one for you. This is what we wanted right here. Now let me show you here. Okay. So what you have to know is what we were talking about is that stillness complicates things, okay? But movement creates clarity. Okay, it does. It creates clarity. You cannot reason your way into evidence that does not yet exist. You know, you discover whether the name works by saying it to people. You discover whether the promise is clear by watching how people respond. You discover whether the price works by making the offer. You discover whether the workshop is valuable by teaching it. You discover whether the book idea connects by sharing it. Some clarity is only available After movement. I want you to write that down. Some clarity. What happens is when we're stuck in the problem, all we do is think. But when we allow ourselves to move, then we can see the solution. Movement is the key to the solution. If you're looking for an answer to your questions, the quickest way to get that answer is by is by movement. And that's a much better way to do it because action does not eliminate uncertainty, but what it does is it replaces imagined problems with useful information. And that's a much better kind of problem to have. If someone does not understand the offer, you can make the language clearer. And if people show interest but do not buy, You can examine the price, the promise, or the invitation, but if somebody buys and gets a result, well, now you have proof that it actually works. And that's what you're looking for. Does it actually work? Okay? And everybody responds differently. Everybody does. Okay? But every response gives you something real to work with. Okay? And so let's look at momentum. Okay? What is momentum? Momentum is simply forward motion fueled by a series of wins. That's all it is. Forward motion fueled by a series of wins. And every word in that definition matters. First, momentum. That's the forward motion. Not all motion is forward. You can be extraordinarily busy and still avoid the work that moves the business. You can spend all day in email, software design, research, meetings, etc. And you can be moving, but you may not be moving forward. Forward motion is what we're looking for. That means the work is moving the idea toward a meaningful result. Second is the word fueled. Momentum consumes fuel, and fuel is the evidence. A meaningful win produces confidence. Confidence. Confidence increases your willingness to move again. Momentum creates more evidence. The evidence gives you energy for the next action. So it becomes fuel. And so when you take that forward motion and you just step out and do it, well, now your launch is fueled. We ask often what comes first, you know, the motivation or the action? Well, the action typically has to come first and the motivation catches up. And then once the motivation catches up, now momentum takes off. And you're really ready to go. The third win is a series of wins, okay? A series of wins. One dramatic movement creates sustainable— can create sustainable momentum. And sustainable momentum can come from wins that connect to each other. So like you get one small win followed by another small win followed by another small win. Next thing you know, you get this The sustainable momentum. It's like the snowball effect. Once we get that ball going down the hill, it can gather momentum and speed and can catch a lot of its friends on the way down and that snowball gets bigger. Well, the same thing will happen in your business. This is what momentum actually is. It's not simply motivation. Motivation changes with how you feel. Momentum changes with what you can see. Okay. So, let's jump into what we call the big win, the big win myth. Okay, what is the big win myth? Entrepreneurs often expect momentum to arrive after the big win, and they believe that they'll feel momentum after the launch succeeds, or after the room fills, or after the book is published, or after the first 100 customers buy, or after the revenue finally reaches the number that they have in mind. But the big win is usually not the beginning of momentum. Typically, the big win is the result of momentum that was already being built. And so before the room filled, somebody chose the date, somebody named the event, somebody created the promise, somebody made the first invitations, somebody sold the first seat, somebody followed up, somebody delivered enough value that another person talked about it. The visible win was preceded by a series of small wins. And this matters because if you're waiting for the big win to create momentum, well, you're going to be waiting for the final result to provide the fuel required to begin. And you have that order backwards. You do not need a big win to keep going. In fact, I would love for you to just write that down nice and big right on your desk there. You do not need a big win to get moving. You need a meaningful small win that makes the next action easier. That's what you're looking for. Okay? And people are naturally drawn toward what feels new or improved or clearly improving. Momentum allows people to see that something is happening. Progress creates interest. Improvement creates belief. The business begins to feel alive because it's It's beginning to move. I want to jump into something here. These are the 3 laws of momentum that I want you to see. And you do not need the entire business figured out. You do not need enough forward motion to reach the next meaningful win. These are the 3 laws that will help you create the momentum. The first law to give yourself is something to anticipate. You got to give yourself something to anticipate. The second law is to give yourself something to celebrate. Then the third law is to give yourself something to build. Give yourself something to anticipate, give yourself something to celebrate, and give yourself something to build. What happens is anticipation creates the pull. It starts the momentum process. You know what it's like, right, to anticipate something really big? And so I'm really looking forward to going to Italy. Okay. Putting a date on the calendar gives me something to anticipate. Now, this momentum is starting to happen. Celebration converts progress into evidence. Okay, so oh man, I'm looking forward to going to Italy. Gosh, now I put the date on the calendar. Yes, it's coming up on this particular date. Wonderful. And then building creates the next win. Okay, so now I buy my plane tickets or I book a hotel or I invite somebody to come with me. That's getting me that that that new thing. So so anticipation is what pulls it forward. Celebration is what gives evidence and building is what gives momentum to this construction. You anticipate something meaningful. The anticipation gives today's work a destination. You build something tangible. That work produces a win. You recognize and celebrate the win so that it becomes confidence and evidence. Then you use that fuel to anticipate and build the very next thing. And when this cycle is working, movement becomes easier. But... When this cycle is broken, everything begins to feel heavy. Okay, so let's give you— let's look at these laws. We're gonna break them down a little bit. Okay? So law number 1 is anticipate. I want you to give yourself something to look forward to. Okay? Yeah. Anticipation ultimately is not wishful thinking. It's not staring at a vision board and hoping that someday the right opportunity appears. Anticipation is a specific Believable win placed clearly enough in front of you that today's work begins to matter. Okay? I want you to see that. Okay? It is a specific believable win placed clearly enough in front of you that today's work begins to matter. Okay? And that's important. That's important. Okay, what I want you to do is I want you to replace someday with a date. Okay, replace someday with a date because wishful thinking says someday I'll do this. Anticipation places something real on the calendar. Okay, and what I want you to do is I want you to create what's called a launch runway. Okay, so when you're launching your business, I want you to look at it like this. Okay, so the first thing that we're We're gonna do is we're gonna sort of create like a timeline, okay? Because once you have the date, then you're gonna create this runway of other wins. Because we put the date on the calendar, great, we've got it, okay? Now, how are we gonna move to that next stage of momentum? Well, the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna name the offer, okay? We're gonna name the offer, okay? We're gonna set the launch date, okay? Great. We're going to invite some people to join us. You're going to try to sell one, and then you're going to try to deliver one. What this does is this begins building you the momentum timeline that you're looking for. You don't have to do everything at once. You just have to do one thing at a time. Law number 2 is to celebrate. Give yourself something to celebrate. Give yourself something to recognize. Because this recognition right here is ultimately what is celebrated. Because it's very difficult to celebrate the ethereal. It's very easy to celebrate the practical. Anticipation creates a desire to move, but the celebration proves the movement is working. It's not about stopping to congratulate yourself forever. It's the discipline of recognizing progress Before the next problem steals your attention. And so what are we trying to recognize? Well, we're trying to recognize progress. And that's what I want you to see right here. Progress is what we're trying to recognize because progress is forward motion. And remember, momentum is simply forward motion fueled by a series of wins. Okay? So you're going to name the offer, you're going to finish the page, and you're going to make the first sale. And what I want you to do is I want you to stop Stop moving the finish line. Okay, stop. It's not writing for me. Stop moving the finish line. Okay, because if you keep moving the finish line, you're never gonna have an end goal and you're never gonna get momentum. Okay, so you're gonna name the offer, you're gonna finish the landing page or whatever you got to do, and then you're gonna make the first sale. And if making the first sale Is the momentum, that's our goal, that's what we're trying to do, then you can reverse engineer that to see exactly what you have to do. So a launch is a series of wins. I just want to show you this real quick. This is one of the things that I think about like whether my launch is working or not. I like to break this down in like columns. OK. Okay, so like, okay, clarity. Like, do I, do I have clarity on what I'm trying to do? Like, do I understand what I'm trying to do? Okay, great. Have I had a conversation? Okay, you know, have I talked with somebody about it? Okay, because clarity is a win, conversation is a win. Do I think there's interest in what I'm doing? Because if there's interest, then that's a win. Okay, have I made an invitation? That's a win. Have I made a sale? That's a win. Have I helped somebody? That's a win. Anybody get a result, those are wins. What I like to do is I like to put my stuff into a series of wins. If momentum is forward motion fueled by a series of wins, I like to define what are my series of wins. See, sometimes we define what forward motion is but we don't always define what our series of wins are so we never get there. We never hit it and we never get that snowball going down the hill. Down the hill, okay? Now, when you get a win, I want you to practice celebrating, okay? Practice celebrating. Now, celebrating does not mean stopping. It means focusing and patting yourself on the back that you did something meaningful because every meaningful win produces a resource. It gives you confidence. It gives you It gives you energy. It gives you proof. It does something. Don't waste those resources that you get. It reminds me back in the day when we used to play Super Mario Brothers. You would go— little Mario would go running and there were these little coins. It would be so easy to just skip over the coins because we wanted to get the turtle or get a bigger guy or whatever we wanted to do. But every time you gather a coin, it may not seem like that big of a deal, but those coins are adding up. And before you know it, you get enough coins, I think 100 of them, now you get an extra life, right? And so don't waste the little coins. Don't waste the resources that you're gathering along the way. Convert the confidence from one sale into the courage to make another invitation. Convert the attention from one successful post into the next conversation. Convert the result from one client into proof that strengthens the offer, et cetera. Celebration turns activity into evidence and evidence becomes fuel. Law number 3, give yourself something to build. What we're trying to do here is we're looking at construction. At the end of the day, something should exist that did not exist when the day began. Just marinate on that for a second. At the end of today, something should exist that did not exist before the day began. So you have to give yourself something to construct, something to build, because momentum requires construction. And the question is not simply whether you worked. The question is, what did your work produce? Mm-hmm. And this law is especially important for entrepreneurs because there's an endless amount of work available around the business. Okay, I can work 24/7, 365 and never be done. But if I can organize my files or if I can, you know, watch a training that helps me move along or whatever I'm trying to do, okay, if I can identify what my— what I'm trying to build, what I'm trying to construction and what kind of asset I'm creating or what kind of invitation I'm creating, et cetera, then my offer may not be finished, okay, but at least I feel I've got momentum Because I've built something, I've constructed something. It's like a house, right? Like, you know, if I want to build a house, you know, sometimes, oh my gosh, you know, I got to build a house, right? Okay, no, no, no, no. Did you go to Home Depot and buy the stuff? Like, did you lay the foundation? Did you pour some concrete? Did you build a wall? Did you put some insulation in? Did you paint a wall? Whatever. What did you— what existed that at the end of the day that didn't exist Before, before the, the day started. And that's the difference between busy versus building. I want you to see this. All of us are busy. In fact, it's interesting because there's not a, there's not a, a day that goes by when I ask somebody, hey, how you doing? And their reply is busy. Busy, right? Well, I don't want you to be busy. Because there's a difference between working around the business and building the business. Research can support building, but research is not always building. Okay, branding can support the offer. But adjusting a color or creating a logo is not the same as making an invitation. Busywork often feels safer, because it allows you to stay active without becoming visible. And so I don't want you to stay busy. I want you to build. So tonight something exists that did not exist this morning. Okay, this is a big deal for me. Okay, tonight something exists that did not exist this morning. Okay, is my offer clear? Is my landing page complete? Did I get a video Did I deliver a proposal? Did I move the conversation forward? Did a client get a result? Whatever it is, tonight something should exist that did not exist this morning. And the first version does not need to be everything the business will become, but it needs to be the start of something. Deliver the first version before Building the final version. Version 1 only needs to be real enough to produce the next win. That's it. So let me just show you this momentum cycle. So now what I want you to do is I want to show you how we put these 3 layers together. How we put these 3 laws together, excuse me. So anticipation becomes our forward pull. We need that. We need that forward pull. Okay. Building produces the next win, okay? And then celebrating gives us evidence that what we're doing works. And then I want you to rinse and repeat that thing, okay, until your— until your thing is launched, okay? But you have to keep moving forward, okay? You have to keep moving forward. So now I don't want you to leave this training without some goals, okay? Without some goals. I don't want you to have 30 new goals, okay? Because 30 new goals isn't going to create momentum, okay? That will create competition to your attention, okay? What I want you to do is I want you to have a goal by identifying one meaningful win that can create the next one. So like, for instance, so like let's say that we have— We have a goal to have an event. Okay, like let's say we're gonna do a beta event. Okay, then ask yourself, okay, what do I have to anticipate? Okay, so let's look at the beta event. So what do I have to anticipate? So, put a win on the calendar. So, okay. So, let's see. Maybe what do I have to anticipate? Okay. I'm going to put a date on the calendar. Okay? Or I'm going to name it. Okay? Whatever. So now, I've got something to anticipate. What do I have to celebrate? Okay? So, name the progress you've just been discounting. So, identify the evidence. That already exists. Stop calling it only whatever. I'm only doing a beta event or whatever. What I want you to do is I want you to celebrate the fact that you have this. I want you to go public and tell people about it. Then what am I building? What am I building? What do I need to build? Choose one tangible thing that you can complete, share, deliver, test, or sell this week to make this happen. So like here I may give a name or date so now I've got something to anticipate. Now I've named the beta event so now I have something to celebrate or I've told people about it so I have something to celebrate. Then what do I have to build? Maybe I'm going to book the venue. Maybe I need to do the workbook or the slides or whatever. So make a list and what do I have to build and then you get motivated. Building it. Now, the thing with this is, in order to go create the next win, you have to identify an existing win, because when you stop moving, you begin overthinking. So, identify what a win is. What I want is, I want you to have a small win, because momentum is simply forward motion fueled by a series Of small wins, so I want you to go create the next win. Don't wait for the win to happen. Get out there and create it. So hey, I hope this training was helpful for you guys, and I hopefully you guys can hear me. I'm in Chicago in the business center here at the airport, and so but I wanted to get this training out to you because I believe it's important. So many of you guys are stuck, S T U C K, and you need to stop. Being stuck because stuck is not a very fun place to be at because when you're stuck, you overthink, you reconceptualize, you talk, you fantasize the what-ifs, and you talk yourself out, talk yourself out of doing it, and I don't want that to happen.