Momentum carries your business forward, even when you take your foot off the gas.
The Grasp of Growth
I’ve been building my writing business for several months now. Every day I get up early and stay up late working on projects, pitching new clients, connecting with fellow creatives and honing my website and LinkedIn profile.
Building a writing business takes hard work to get started. You constantly worry that, if you stop for even just a few hours, your business will come screeching to a halt. Even after you’ve built some traction in your business, it can still be hard to close your laptop, shut down your email and just breathe for a few days.
My brother got married last weekend in Michigan in a beautiful outdoor ceremony on Friday evening. It had been a while since many of our friends and family gathered so it was an exciting week (and sometimes stressful…you know how weddings can be) of celebration and reunion. Yet, I still struggled with setting my writing business aside for even just a few days while I traveled and celebrated.
I read and listen to a lot of entrepreneurial stories. I hear successful business people like Elon Musk talk about putting in hundred-hour weeks, staying up all night and ignoring personal hygiene, fitness, and connection to build their businesses. I see how it consumes them, takes over their lives and sometimes destroys them. I’ve always thought “That will never be me. I won’t let something command that much of my time.” But I get it now. When you care so deeply about something that you pour yourself wholeheartedly into its success it becomes nearly impossible to stop–even just for a little while.
Momentum Moves Your Writing Business
Entrepreneurs struggle with work-life balance because they don’t understand the principle of momentum.
Momentum is mass in motion. When an object starts moving it requires less energy to maintain or increase its speed and more energy to stop or slow it down. An object’s momentum is determined by multiplying its mass by its velocity. The bigger and faster the object, the more difficult it is to stop. (It turns out I’m still a little bit of a physics nerd… this is the second physics principle I’ve referenced this month.)
Momentum will keep your business moving forward even when you take your foot off the gas. Once you build enough momentum in your writing business you’ll still have work, you’ll still find new clients and you’ll still be seen as a valuable writer even when you take a few business days off for vacation.
It takes a lot of energy to get your writing business moving. You need momentum and you can build it in two ways–size and speed.
Mass Builds Momentum
Your business will build momentum by increasing its size. When you first start your writing business it will be small. That’s just the nature of it, you know? You have no clients, only one employee (ehem… you), and, if you’re like me, only a few hours a day to dedicate to its growth.
Landing your first few regular clients will do wonders for your momentum. You don’t have to spend as much time searching for new clients and can instead focus on creating content that makes your current clients happy. You have more control over your workload and your income when you have regular work. Now, instead of writing email proposals or browsing freelance hiring websites you spend your time writing words that actually get you paid. Growing your business’ size makes you more efficient and allows you more time to breathe throughout the week.
Bigger isn’t always better
You do need to be strategic in how you increase your business size, though. Building the wrong way will only slow your momentum rather than increase it. Focus on growing vertically rather than horizontally. Establish your credibility and build your client list within one focused industry vertical before you even consider expanding to offer more services to your clients.
For instance, if you are a blog writer, don’t offer email marketing, paid ad consultation, brand development, and web development on your service list before you’ve established yourself as a reliable blog writer. Doing so will only confuse your customers and spread your attention and expertise across too many services, keeping you from developing your blog writing skills.
Cut out extras and focus on your One Thing
I had to make this decision when I started my content writing business. Before it launched, I invested in a Facebook ads course to learn another potential service that I could offer clients. However, once I tested my writing abilities and started seeing growth at Wallis Creative I decided to put Facebook ads on the back burner while I focused on building my reputation as an expert writer.
Making tough decisions like this will keep your business lean and focused while building momentum through growth.
Velocity Builds Momentum
Velocity builds your writing business’ momentum by increasing your content output and client acquisition. The hardest part of starting a writing business (or any business, really) is taking that first step. We are much more likely to stay still and do nothing because we don’t want to give our business that initial burst of energy to get us moving. Building momentum through velocity requires more energy to go from 0 to 1 than from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on. That’s because you have no momentum. However, once you start, it becomes much easier to grow from there.
The more clients you land, the faster you land clients
There is good news, though! Being small in size makes it easier to grow in speed. You don’t have the pressure of landing a $50,000 client in your first month. As a new writing business, you can land a $100 client or a $1,000 client instead. Small jobs are much easier to land for new writing businesses and, after you land a few clients, you’ll notice something incredible–clients start coming to you. Once that happens you can be much more selective in who you work with and for what price. You’re building momentum through velocity.
The more you write, the fast you’ll write
As you continue to write, both for clients and for yourselves, you’ll boost your momentum through velocity in another way–writing speed. Being a fast writer will help you create more content, land more clients and make more money. After all, you have a very limited number of hours to work on your writing business every day. You better make the most of it!
If you’re new to regular writing you might notice one glaring problem–it takes you forever to write just a few paragraphs. How will you ever be able to write enough to make a living as a professional writer?
Hang in there! The more you write, the faster you’ll write. Once you learn to write faster, it will be much easier to build momentum for your writing business.
Wrapping Up
Building a writing business takes a lot of hard work and dedication. In the beginning, you’ll spend hours and hours working on your business to see just a little bit of progress. That’s because new businesses take massive amounts of energy to build the momentum needed to keep things rolling.
But once you put that effort in and begin growing your business’ size and velocity you’ll find a really cool thing happening–your momentum will allow you to step away for a bit without your business crashing and burning. At first, it may be only a couple of days, but that’s usually all you need to refresh and prepare yourself to keep pushing your business forward. If you keep building, you may be able to walk away for even longer, allowing your team (if building a team is your thing!) to care for your clients and create your content while you’re gone.
What steps are you taking to build momentum for your writing business? Share some love for your fellow writers by leaving a comment here to share your momentum building tips and tricks!