How to keep your momentum going after your first launch
The first successes as a business owner are some of the sweetest. You’ve had your first launch or perhaps you created your first course. After that initial project or two is successfully out there, you may find yourself wondering how to match the success you created. Or, if your launch didn’t turn out as expected, how to maintain a positive attitude and keep the momentum going.
Luckily, you’ve already completed the most challenging part: getting started. Now it’s a matter of maintaining and growing. Whether that’s through creating another course, taking on clients as a coach, or gearing up for your next launch.
Whatever the following move in your business is, it’s imperative to observe your mindset. You’ve got to make sure self-doubt and limiting beliefs don’t subconsciously slow you down. You can prevent that by incorporating these research-backed methods of training your brain. Keep taking steps forward with gusto.
You’re the CEO
As an entrepreneur, there’s a beautiful cycle of ideation. You create something from an idea and offer it up to your audience or potential customers. Then you come back to the start of a blank page for your next endeavor.
As you return to that first step in the cycle, overwhelm and self doubt are common deterrents to motivation for entrepreneurs. Especially when it comes to planning the next project. But the planning phase is imperative to keeping your launch momentum going. It can be done with ease or it can be a challenge depending on your mindset.
Fixed versus growth
In Carole Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she explains there are two types of mindsets we shift between. There is the “fixed mindset” and the “growth mindset.” The fixed mindset is when we believe that we’re born with certain gifts and skills. That our potential is fixed or already determined.
The “growth mindset” states that new skills, abilities, and even identities (such as recognizing ourselves as CEOs of our own businesses) can be obtained through practice and persistence. It’s with this understanding that you can choose which mindset to have. Use it to understand how to view your next project as a creator. This begins by observing what limitations or doubts might be surfacing with the idea of your next launch.
Reframe and the rest will follow
For example, perhaps you’re wondering how you’re going to figure out all the technical aspects of creating video content for your course. In a fixed mindset, this could be viewed as a huge hurdle, so you lose momentum or stop altogether.
However, if you reframe this to be viewed through a growth mindset, you see this as a learning opportunity in which you get to uncover the videographer side of yourself. You know that, (while maybe not becoming a professional) you’ll learn the necessary skills to film the content for your course.
Once you have identified what doubts or challenges are coming up, notice if you’re viewing these challenges through a fixed or growth mindset. You can then reframe them, and write them down to help them stick. This will allow you to go from “I’m dreading writing copy for my next launch because it’s not my strong suit” to “I am a copywriter for my business.”
Bonus points if you speak your reframes out loud each morning in the mirror—this will really help retrain your brain to be in a growth mindset.
You’ve already passed the most important part: getting started. Now you’re ready to dive into other ways to transform your business. We have a free “coaching checklist” to help you maintain and grow your efforts.
Time to celebrate
Recognizing the progress you’re making is essential to keep momentum and motivation going. The best part of being an entrepreneur is relishing in a successful course creation or launch. But the other parts that are arguably less glamorous—such as answering emails and consistently engaging on social media—are just as important and also deserve to be celebrated.
These actions are slowly chipping away at the block of marble that is your business. These tasks can sometimes feel unrewarding because a “big” win may not directly result from them. However, it’s beneficial for your mindset to celebrate any win. According to the Harvard Business Review, even just keeping track of your progress will boost momentum to help you achieve your goals.
Write down when you get increased engagement on a post, even if it’s minor. Record a few details about that email you received explaining how helpful your course is. You can even recognize yourself for simply checking your business email on a day that you felt tired—every win counts.
Pivoting the F-word
Another side of entrepreneurship—and the big old “F-word”— is “failure.” Maybe you’ve already experienced this in some way: a launch is delayed, sales of your course didn’t meet your initial goal, you had a typo on social media. Labeling these situations as failures (which oftentimes leads you to feel bad and embrace a negative mindset) is a surefire way to slow your momentum down. Instead, you can reframe these inevitable missteps into an opportunity for growth and increased motivation.
When failure occurs, the first step is to acknowledge it and notice how it made you feel. It’s perfectly normal for emotions to arise when plans don’t unfold the way you intended them to, so observe what comes up here. The next step is to reflect. Create a T-chart and write down everything that wasn’t ideal on the left side. On the right side, write what you learned from each “failure.” It could be a tweak for next time or even just a moment to reframe and reset.
The significant part is seeing the learning opportunities and taking away actionable changes you can make in the future. Failure is really just information about what works and what doesn’t work, and seeing it as such will mean you can use it as motivation for your next project.
Having a fixed mindset, chugging along without celebrating every win, and being defeated by failure are common ways to slow the roll in your business. Once you reframe them and harness their strength, they actually create powerful means of increasing momentum and growth.