“Rest at the end, not in the middle.”
This is a quote from the late Kobe Bryant, which has been my phone lock screen for months now.
Kobe was known for his relentlessness. He was at the gym before anyone else, so he could get in 3 workouts per day instead of the two his competitors did. He was known for sticking around longer than guys who got to the gym hours after him, just to show them who was willing to work hardest (and probably to inspire them a bit).
Kobe also created his alter ago The Black Mamba with performance coach Todd Herman (his book The Alter Ego Effect spells this process out).
Whatever Kobe needed to do to win, he did.
I’ve thought about this quote a lot recently because I spent too long resting in the middle.
Don’t Let Up When You Have Momentum
It’s a common thing that some entrepreneurs do. We push hard for a while, get momentum in our business, and then tell ourselves that we “deserve” a break.
So we let off the gas. We stop pushing as hard, marketing as hard, selling as hard, putting in the hours (not in a toxic “work all the time” way, but in a “putting in the hours to keep growing” way).
I did this on a quarterly basis for YEARS with my last company. I’d push hard, get revenue and leads up, and then say “next quarter, we’re going to maintain and see where we’ve reset the bar to, and then get back to growth in the next quarter.”
In retrospect, I was resting in the middle.
The Truth About Momentum
Here’s the tough reality I learned about momentum:
- It’s hard to get
- It’s easy to lose
- It’s harder than you think to get it back
When I look back on those years, I see so much wasted time.
Say I worked hard January through mid-May, when things slowed down in B2B land. Then I’d chill for a few months, losing momentum on marketing and traffic. Then I’d start working hard again around September, when kids in the US go back to school and people are starting to hire again.
The problem was that I’d start working hard again in September, but I’d lost momentum and didn’t have it back until October, which meant we had about 6 more weeks to really see results through the rest of the year before things slowed down heading into the holidays.
I thought I was working 4 months on, 2-3 months off, and 3 months on again. But really, I regained the momentum for a month, worked 3-ish months, took 2-3 more chill, then had a month to spin things back up, and then realistically 6-8 weeks more of results.
I thought I was working hard for 7 months out of the year, “following the B2B marketing” is what I told myself.
But really, I was getting 5 months of results from hard work, while putting in extra time to get momentum back.
No wonder I burned myself out and the business hit a wall.
How I Do It Now
With EditorNInja, things are different.
I still own business strategy, marketing, and sales. But I have a delivery team that takes things over once I’ve closed the deal and handed them off. I’m still there for support when needed, and for churn and upsells, but I’m pretty hands-off with delivery, which means the business keeps going if I have a sick kid or take a vacation.
I’ve also had space from the last company to see what I did wrong. Now, when we have momentum, I don’t take my foot off the gas. When possible, I double down. More marketing spend, more availability for calls.
I used to be very strict about when I’d do calls and not. In retrospect, this cost us a lot of growth. I told myself that taking any calls over the holidays or while on vacation meant that I wasn’t truly “relaxing.”
The truth is, carving out an hour or two when the kids are napping and my wife is having some alone time can recharge me. I can do a sales call in the afternoon during a ski week, because we skied in the morning and everyone’s tired. I’ve learned that I feel less anxious about things when I do this, in fact.
Don’t get me wrong. I take time for rest. I love our trips and vacations. I simply use my time better and integrate it better.
In fact, I closed a $30k deal while on vacation in France this past summer, just by being willing to check my email and fill out some forms and get approvals from their procurement team. That deal paid for our entire vacation.
Don’t lose momentum when you have it. If you’ve ever had it, you know just how hard you’ve worked to get there. So keep pushing, and make sure you build in times to do things that recharge you. Whether that’s exercise, going to a good dinner with friends, watching your favorite TV show, whatever. All of these things are net-neutral, in my opinion. It’s when we overindulge or tell ourselves that we “deserve it” because we’ve worked hard.
You’re human. You deserve it already. You’re also human and humans are meant to work hard. So do both.