Momentum Beats Motivation, 4 Years of Cathy Smith Coaching

Show Notes

Welcome to Small Business Talk. Episode 333. Today we are going to talk about motivation and momentum. Cathy Smith Coaching is turning four. I cannot believe it. And that has been some motivation but lots of momentum.

How My Coaching Business Found Its True Focus

So when I first started coaching, I didn’t want to do marketing. I didn’t want to do business coaching. I wanted to do something different because that’s where I’d been. I’d been stuck in the marketing. I’d been stuck in the business of doing business and helping other people do business as well. So I thought with my coaching, I would like to do something else. And I did for year I went off and I helped Ladies in Transition and it was just amazing. We had some great results. We did some really great things with some amazing clients.

And it was wonderful to start to hone my coaching skills. Yes, in the beginning I was definitely a method coach and I followed my instruction sheets to the letter. I had my coaching questions. And as I became more confident, I had more practice, more repetition, more momentum. I was able to get more confident in my skills. And then the university side added that maybe I should go back to doing marketing.

Maybe I should go back to doing business and business coaching in particular. And in the second year, that’s what happened. We did a slight transition and went back to doing marketing coaching and marketing coaching specifically for coaches. And the momentum started to build. And then I realized that my brand didn’t quite match.

So in the third year, we rebranded still Cathy Smith Coaching, but just changing the colours and changing the professionalism because what had been a lovely hat and fluffy and fitted the women in transition perfectly no longer fitted the business image.

So it grew over time and so did that momentum. And that’s sometimes where you have to start, isn’t it? Sometimes it is that willpower that pulls you along, that desire.

Consistency Creates Momentum

Just like going on a holiday, when you are going on vacation, you’ve got to get something done by the end of the week. The day, the month before you go. So that momentum really does kick and the motivation as well to pull you along. Often for many people, it’s those small steps done regularly and repeated that really makes the difference.

That is what I find with established coaches with some great results and they might be in their first, second or third year, sometimes even longer. And now it’s starting to win. One thing that they quite often realize is they are not keeping in touch with their database. They are not following up on their networks and keeping those relationships alive.

Sometimes, it’s not just about that big burst of inspiration. It’s those small steps that happen all the time because, as we know, there’s only 3% of people at any one time that are ready to buy. So we have to keep making sure that we are nurturing the rest of the 97%. And yes, some of those will never buy from me and that’s okay.

Self Trust Beats Motivation

So sometimes we have to do it when we maybe don’t feel like it. Sometimes we just have to push through. And then other times we need to step back and give ourselves that self care. and go, okay, this is not the right day to be doing a podcast episode or to be doing whatever it is. But we need to be true to our self, don’t we?

But how often do we not trust our self? So we put it in our diary and then we just move it. I’ve been doing a whole series on goal sticking, of making sure that we are getting those trust little checks as we go along and putting it in our diary and honouring it.

And then I did accountability with that change. So what happens when you are not trusting yourself? So go back and check out those in their back catalog. And then you will be able to see where we are going with those as well. Because that momentum is really important. And motivation sometimes is just not enough. So when we are at the mercy of our feelings, we can’t just decide not to do it.

Small Systems, Big Momentum

What is it that you need to do? Do you do it once a month or weekly perhaps? Sometimes, it’s about batching. It’s about doing it ahead of time. But if you do have that inspiration and you want to get ahead, then do it. That can help your momentum too. If you have done one, maybe you could do two or maybe you could do three right. Getting that ahead of time can make such a difference.

So when you do have those times that you are maybe not feeling quite up to it, you can actually stop and go, okay, I’m ahead. I don’t need to do that. But remember, don’t let that be an excuse to get behind again, keeping the momentum and the motivation up is a really great thing.

So momentum is not a personal trait. It’s about setting those foundations in place and getting them so that you can make it happen. Like I mentioned about batching. It can be a system too, about what is your system for doing that? Do you do it all in one day? On the beginning of the month and have it so that it runs at? What is it that you can do to build that system? Because you never know. Things do break from time to time. So checking it, the great thing to do as well, and then building this small unit size little building blocks the weekly, the daily, and then making sure that you’ve kept an eye on those big goals so that you have broken them down to be able to do that, and finishing, making sure that you have not got a whole desk full of half finished projects.

Focus on One Big Rock at a Time

So with that in mind, you do need to know what the finish line is, don’t you? You need to know what that project is, what that goal is, and what you are trying to achieve. So I quite little thing to do is to just pick one outcome for the week. What is it that you were going to achieve today?

Another exercise I’ve done recently was the Big Rocks. It is about your to do list. Letting you down, making sure that you’ve got your big rocks. So what is the big rock that you need to do for the year, for the quarter? And then breaking that down into what do you need to do for the month, the week, and then just picking one at a time and making sure that you are doing it and taking it off.

Check out the episode about Big Rocks Theory here.

Time Limits Create Focus and Progress

Making sure that you are doing that one at a time and then set those reminders. I like the Pomodoro technique, which is I set my timer for 50 minutes and then after 50 minutes, I’ve got ten minutes at the end of the hour so I can do my steps.

I can get a drink, I can get a cup of tea. Sometimes I just set it and then start again. Other times I might go for a quick little ten minute walk. So getting those structured blocks so that you’ve only got a certain amount of time to do it. You can always use two blocks if you’ve got something bigger, but it really gets you focus because you’ve got that set amount of time.

They often say the more time you give yourself, you will expand into it. So start making those boundaries and constraints can make a real difference. And then creating those visible wins. So you do task in 15 minutes. Yay! So what is a reward that you can do? It might be getting up and moving around. It could be something more tangible.

It could be you can’t have money today until you have done it. Whatever works for you. And just thinking about how that you can reward yourself and saying what you doing during the day, because then you can say, I know what I’ve done today at a to do list with tick boxes can also be another reward. That 50 minutes I did that task stick.

Let Momentum Lead the Way

Tweak your approach. Amplify that work and if it didn’t, maybe change it. So the lesson is to keep things moving along. Think about the small steps. Get the small steps to get that momentum. And that will definitely help with your motivation as well. Because quite often we say we don’t know what we can do until we’ve done it. So sometimes getting stuck in the how can be a real problem.

Can’t we build confidence as we go along? Generally not the other way around, but there’s lots of things that we can do to start inspiring ourselves. And it could be colour coding. It could be tick boxes. Whatever works for you to start getting that inspiration going so that you can get that motivation to get the momentum back quite often.

And the other way around, isn’t it? You get the momentum before you get the motivation. So just working out what works for you and checking those times too. Don’t try to do the hardest thing when it’s not a good time. It’s quite often good to do it first because then it’s done. But sometimes that can be a little bit difficult if you are not a first up kind of person.

Visibility Creates Opportunity

Make sure that you are keeping on track and doing those tasks and being visible. Because if you are not visible, people don’t know that you are there. And that also make it more difficult to give you opportunities. Visibility is really important. So making sure that you are getting out there so people know and it doesn’t have to be social media. There are many, many other ways to do it. Social media is great and it’s free, so you might as well use it. But if that’s not your jam, then definitely use your database because that’s important.