If you have worked harder for someone else than you have in your own business, you’re not alone. I’ve heard this self-limiting habit from many of my clients. It shows up in many ways, including procrastinating, not following up, or not following through. 

So how do you build unstoppable momentum when you just feel like being lazy?  

There are two secrets critical to building unstoppable momentum: 

The first is clarity. As a small business owner, you are wearing many different hats and it’s impossible, not to mention ineffective, to try to keep it all in your head. Stop trying to remember it all and get clear by outlining your: 

• Preferred Client. When you know your client’s habits and are familiar with their hangouts, it makes it simple to know where to network. You’ll immediately notice if where you’re networking is the most effective.
• Goals. Goals are broad and describe a general direction. Establish 3-5 goals each year setting at least one stretch goal each year. Many entrepreneurs set too many goals and end up confused on their direction. Keeping it to 3-5 manageable goals will help keep you clear. 
• Objectives. Objectives are more narrow and specific. They support each goal and can be measured. 
• Timeframes. Remember to set a timeframe. The more you set a timeframe, the more likely it gets done. 

Share your plan with others. When you blog or mention to your clients that you have an event coming up in a few months, it lights a fire and gets you committed to that future action. 

The second secret is consistency. If you don’t consistently keep in touch with your client base, you’re missing an important part of building unstoppable momentum.

When you deliver consistent high-value messages, your prospects will see you as the go-to expert in your field. As you consistently provide information-rich topics, your prospects begin to look forward to your messages. 

Consistent marketing creates a rhythm. The rhythm leads to an expectation from your clients. When you meet that expectation you’ve created, it cultivates trust over time with your prospects. Creating an ongoing system for staying in touch is a critical component in creative unstoppable momentum in your business. 

Notice other areas in your business where you can create cadence. If you belong to a networking group and that networking group meets a certain date of the week, you’ve already started that rhythm. Now, start plugging in your other marketing strategies onto your calendar. 

Once you regularly apply your marketing tactics, you’ll notice a synergy start to take place. Before you know it, you are getting your message out in a really harmonious way – on your way to building unstoppable momentum. 

What are strategies, tactics or systems you have developed to build momentum in your life? 

Your business model describes how your business creates, captures, and delivers value. There are key ingredients that go into its development, including purpose, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, and operational processes and policies.

While there are many factors that go into developing your business model, there is one key ingredient often overlooked by entrepreneurs: Your Inner Entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs often try to execute a business model that worked for someone else but become easily frustrated when it doesn’t work for them. After hours of trying to execute their model, they wonder why their results aren’t the same. Despite implementing many tactics, the entrepreneur becomes discouraged, worn out, and exasperated.

This dynamic happens when the entrepreneur does not consider how they are naturally hardwired and how their hardwiring impacts the execution of that model. Hardwiring is natural to who you are. It is present just underneath the surface. It determines how you give and receive information and one of the filters through which you see the world. If you have taken any number of behavior-based tools, such as DISC or Meyers Briggs, you probably have some insight into your natural hardwiring.

When working with my clients, one of the first steps is to help them understand their unique hardwiring. After explaining components that make up a person’s hardwiring during a recent 3-day intensive live event, one of my clients approached me. With a big grin on his face, he remarked that what he learned in just one hour explained why he and his brother didn’t connect on many things for the last 50 years. He now had a brand new insight and adjusted the way he delivered information so he could communicate much more effectively.

Another entrepreneur had a business where he fixed computers. As you can imagine, it was very detailed work. However, this entrepreneur loved the part of his job where he hunted down the next business deal. He was consistently energized by that kind of activity. So when he came back to his business and was working on the detailed parts of his business, he often procrastinated. He also had to summon up a lot of energy to perform this detail and routine work. It was no wonder that he had a hard time staying focused and his results suffered. He was trying to execute a business model that was not congruent with his hard wiring (part of his Inner Entrepreneur). To a person who is energized by new ideas and needs to be consistently challenged, the execution of the routine part of his business model was boring to him yielding less-than-favorable financial results.

The activities that energized him were a clue to aligning his natural hardwiring and the execution of his business model. Once he created awareness of how his natural hardwiring influenced his execution of that model, he made a few modifications.

He shifted the way he worked and created a crew of people who enjoyed the detailed work, but didn’t like hunting down new business as much as he did. Armed with this new perspective, he built a compatible business model that worked for him, utilized his crew’s innate hardwiring and strengths, and better served his clients.

One small change to your business model and how you execute that model can be the difference between standing still or utilizing your innate strengths to build a business that works!

When visiting my parents one bright sunny weekend, I noticed that my mother had a beautiful plant with purple flowers resting on her window sill.  As I was admiring her plant, a hummingbird approached the window desperately trying to reach these flowers.  He must have tried three or four times each time banging his beak against the window.  I thought he must have learned his lesson when he flew away to pause on a nearby wire.  As he darted his head back and forth, he shook off his frustration but looked completely confused as to what just happened. Instead of flying away, the tenacious little hummingbird flew in again, banging his beak against the window, in a frantic attempt to break through and reach the flowers. 

It got me thinking about the concept of invisible constraints or barriers many small business owners experience in today’s marketplace.  It’s kind of like the hummingbird who tried the same approach over and over expecting different results.  It also reminded me of the elephants at the circus that are tied down to a small stake.  It seems almost silly to believe anyone would think this would actually prevent an elephant from breaking free, but the conditioning comes years earlier when they are young and their feet are secured with a chain.  Their attempts to free themselves are so painful, and, as they get older, they never try again.  That experience imprinted this invisible constraint. 

The hummingbird and elephant parallel the marketing problems of small business owners who limit themselves by what they have done in the past instead of looking at a new way of connecting with their ideal clients.  Just like the hummingbird who tries the same approach or the elephant that remains apathetic, you may be affected by invisible constraints that you are unable to see, but are acting as a window blocking you from reaching your goals.

When I first meet with my clients, one of the things we review is their tactics for attracting clients.  I hear the usual responses, including advertising, marketing, networking, and contacting their existing clients.  When they mention that they are always busy, but they are not seeing the results, we dig a little deeper.  While we drill down to specifics like marketing frequency, business systems, marketing systems, stay-in-touch systems and sales funnels, we start to chip away at how connected, streamlined, and effective these tactics are for them.  As they review these tactics, I usually hear how this or that won’t work and other limitations. Once they hear themselves aloud, they start to realize that they are like that hummingbird hitting that invisible window.  When they let go of the self-limiting mindset, emotional barriers, apathy, ego, or bad habits that are getting in the way of a new or different approach, they create innovative ideas and solutions.

After working together, they almost always realize the very first step to breaking through their invisible barrier is when they became self aware.  Creating awareness of the basic infrastructure where you think and act in the world is especially important. When you create that kind of awareness about how you’re naturally hardwired and the way you think about things, there is a fundamental internal shift in your ability to think and act beyond existing limits or views.  You begin to open up to a different way of problem solving.

When one of my clients had a mental block on where to look for a specialized resource for one of her projects, she used a coaching question I often used with her, which is “where in your life could you find the answer right now?”   The question is based on the premise that everything you need is in your life right now.  As she thought more about it, she realized that her resource was right in front of her the entire time.  She found the person in a volunteer group she belonged to.  She was trying to look everywhere other than the existing resources that were in her life at the moment.  She also realized that she tried to do everything herself (a throwback from times where she couldn’t ask for help because she felt she had to do it all alone).  With this new found awareness, she began to also think about other aspects of her life and business breaking through some of her self-imposed limitations.

Often times, if you are unaware of your framework that you base your thinking and decision making, you overlook that which is right in front of you.  Once you become aware of that framework, it’s almost as if an invisible window is lifted and the solution appears.  A mindset shift can be one of the most powerful marketing strategies to attracting more clients with less effort.

The inspiring entrepreneur, Henry Ford, once said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, either way you’re right.” He was on to something. We all have untapped potential, but it is often blocked by our conditioning.

One of the first steps to jump starting your momentum is to look at where this conditioning originates. Your conditioning is part of what I refer to as your inner entrepreneur. Your inner entrepreneur is the inner workings of your subconscious mind and your natural hardwiring. It is always at play, but isn’t always playing positively for us. If you only pay attention to the external and neglect your inner entrepreneur, you will work harder than you need to for years.

Often times, stories we tell ourselves or experiences we’ve had keep us from moving ahead. These stories come in forms of excuses giving us reasons why we do what we do, rationalizations and even justifications. On a global scale, many people use the rationale of a bad economy and then continue with self-limiting thinking or habits that align with the bad economy. (I can relate because early on in my business I had the same thoughts. When I changed my way of thinking, my actions changed and so did my desired results.)

So when a client wondered why “nobody wanted to do business with her” it was the perfect opportunity to dig deeper. It turns out that when my client met with a prospect, there were actually three things she was telling herself. “Nobody wants to do business with me,” “This new approach is not going to work – my business is different,” and “Nothing is working.” As it turned out, her body posture also reflected her thoughts. She often slouched and didn’t project a confident image.

Once she changed the dialog in her head, she was more open to doing things differently. She started to stand a little taller. Once she started to project that confidence, she signed on more clients. It was almost as if she just hit the “on” button to her light switch. She became more open to opportunities, she had more business growth ideas, and she reorganized her business bringing in multiple income streams and more options for people to work with her. Her thoughts had a systemic impact on her entire business.

Researchers have even found that our brains are conditioned to produce habitual behaviors and ways of thinking. You can get into a habit of thinking you won’t have enough business. Your actions will follow your thoughts. Your current habitual actions you take or don’t take are based on your current subconscious programming.

The good news is that if you’re not achieving the results you want, you can change the results you want to manifest into your life today. To break free of conditioned ways of thinking and behaving, you must recondition and reprogram your brain. You must change your thoughts about those events that keep you from moving ahead. To get started, there are three simple methods to access your subconscious mind. These three methods are visualization, affirmations, and behavior modification.

1. Visualization. Visualization is a process of forming a mental image of your desired future. When you visualize your desired future, you are drawn toward actually fulfilling what you visualize. With repetition, the system of visualization helps you to train your brain to access your untapped potential. I use this process daily. When I was writing my book, I visualized it on the Best Sellers List. Almost effortlessly, new resources and people came into my life. Each one had a tip or something they learned about becoming a best seller. Each day I wrote more of the book, created a plan, and worked the plan. My book that I had visualized rising to the Best Sellers List indeed rose to the Best Sellers List.

2. Affirmations. Affirmations are a clear statement declaring a belief. Affirmations are almost always going on. However, when they are left in default mode, the affirmations are many times not positive. Become intentional about what you want to affirm to yourself. Repeat affirmations frequently and with emotion as if they are already true or have already occurred. This will give clarity to your projected outcome. Focus on what you want to occur or invite into your life.

3. Behavior Modification. Behavioral modification is simply the process of changing behavior. One of the success principles to making new modifications stick is to develop a process or new habit. When you develop a new process and reward yourself for sticking to the process, you’re more likely to make the new habits last. As any athlete knows, you get better at your craft with time and repetition. Consistency and repetition will give you results. But if you’re consistently playing solitaire instead of marketing your business, you’ll want to break that self-sabotaging habit fast. Instead, substitute that behavior with a new one. Schedule an appointment on your calendar to network or market your business when you might have been playing video games. Remember to reward yourself when you’ve changed the behavior and continue repeating it. Over time, you will recondition your brain and produce new business-building habitual behaviors.

Remember to find the optimal part of your day to practice these simple strategies that exercise your inner entrepreneur. When you implement these approaches every day, you’ll begin to change your inner game and, once again, regain your momentum.