You are driving to work and it hits you! Eureka you have a business idea and after 10 min of intense brainstorming with yourself, you tell yourself “shit it could work!” So you scratch down a few ideas but you are already running late for a meeting but you promise to get back to it in the evening. The day goes by and you are driving back home with that idea stuck in your head. You are so excited; you need to share your vision with your wife, best friend, roommate, etc.. And of course instead of working on your big idea, you wind up fantasizing about how rich and successful this idea could make you. Next morning, some shit pops up at work and you are under enormous pressure all day long only to find yourself exhausted when you get back home. But you’ll work on your idea when the weekend comes so everything is fine. You think to yourself that you are done with this job and you are going to live your life on your own terms pretty soon but deep inside you don’t really (I mean REALLY) believe it either. The week passes and you have a big party to attend on Friday night and spend half of your Saturday sobering up.

I could continue but I’m sure you know where this is going, right? You are never going to do shit for this baby idea because you let yourself get caught by your daily,” more important” problems.

That was me until my last big idea. After the story above had happened to me so many times I told myself “how can I make sure this idea doesn’t die like all the others?” So this time I acted differently. I materialized the idea on the very first day. In other words, before going to bed that day I had a first prototype of my product. Here is a picture of my very first prototype!

Very first version of prototype

Next day I had already something to show to my friend and family. All of a sudden it felt more real! That feeling only pushed me to improve my prototype, which I did on the second day. I called off my usual Friday night out to make sure I would be 100% fresh and dedicated to making the prototype better. Here is a picture of the latest version of the prototype. Notice any change???

Latest version of prototype

It felt that the more I worked on it, the more I felt like improving it. Then I came across a cool term for what I was experiencing: MOMENTUM. In physics momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. So if physical momentum = velocity x mass, then business momentum = productivity x motivation. For example if your motivation is very low (1 out of 10) but you manage to be very productive (10 out of 10), your momentum will be 10. But look what happens when your motivation goes slightly up (2 out of 10) you momentum jumps to 20!

Believe me momentum is key. Momentum is going to be your best friend in your entrepreneurial journey. Momentum is a bit like Brad Pitt in fight club. Momentum is the guy who isn’t afraid to do what’s best for you when you feel completely shitless and powerless. Momentum is the guy who gave me the confidence to quit my job without a glimpse of doubt that I was not doing the right thing.

Momentum will literally change you like a drug alters your senses. It will make you feel confident in ways you have never imagined. So when you feel like you don’t have the strength nor confidence to quit your job and live your life, focus on nurturing your relationship with momentum and somehow, it will do the job for you. All you need to do is make sure momentum stays around.

Gary