0:00
/
0:00
Transcript

Momentum drives small and big wins

Do not prioritise no-action over crappy-start. The fact is no one wins on day 1. A big win is made of incremental small wins. What's this got to do with momentum? Let's find out.

👋 Hola! Welcome to Out of Singapore. This is Shan and I write every Sunday on business and marketing. Most of this (no all of this), is my personal experience that I go through.

If you notice my blog has moved from the zero-to-one to growth stories. The past two years have been transformational. I was an anti-starting-a-startup person till mid-2021. By end of 2021, I decided to take the plunge in the startup world with Entrepreneur First. The next 14-16 months were tumultuous at best. That period reshaped me - in every possible way from mind to body. I did something that I felt would be embarrassing but instead I felt proud. I quit my startup, and instead chose to work with another business. Fast forward to 2024, and the new business is doing decently fine (can do lot better, but it will reach there with time). If I had to give credit to a framework or strategy, it would be “building a momentum” in everything we did. I did face pushbacks, ridicule and questions, but somewhere I survived (and thrived).

Let’s structure today’s write up this way -

  1. What do I mean by momentum?

  2. How does momentum works in the favour of building a business?

  3. How did I build momentum in the past two years?

After reading this, if you feel I have missed somethings (could be anything, really), please reply to this email. Or write to me. Y’ll know I am reachable.

Now, let’s start.

#1 What is momentum?

When something is in motion, it is in momentum. It is moving. If something is moving, it has momentum. If you are not doing something, not moving, not acting - you got zero momentum. Thinking about something does not build momentum. Thinking + doing something + doing something more builds momentum.

a sleigh with the number 1r on it
Building momentum

The higher the speed, the higher the degree of momentum. Meaning if you take more actions, then it has more momentum. The degree of momentum matters. But first, building a momentum matters.

Let’s give you some examples of what is momentum and what is not.

First, these are examples of no or zero momentum -

  1. “I want to travel to Paris next year”

  2. “I want to start a new social media page for Yoga”

  3. “I want to start a business in 3-5 years time”

  4. “I want to scale the business to 2 million USD a year”

  5. “I want to launch a pet-care business”

These are the examples of having momentum -

  1. “I booked my flights for Paris trip next year”

  2. “I have created a social media page for Yoga and started posting consistently”

  3. “I have registered, made a business plan and reached out to clients”

  4. “I have started new product lines and 3 new marketing channels”

  5. “I have identified the initial product line and signed a lease for a retail space” (Why do I assume pet-care should be an offline business?)

Loading...

Having momentum is not easy. It needs you to really move. Momentum brings along a key problem - Friction. You will start facing the rocks that stop you flowing like a river. For example, you register a business entity but then realise how expensive it is to just register a business. You start a social media page but then realise how competitive it is. You decide to scale the revenues but realise marketing is expensive and buying new inventory needs cash upfront, which you may not have. Increasing momentum every single day is as critical as building the initial momentum.

a pink bunny wearing sunglasses is holding a sign that says energizer and says just keep going and going .

To anyone thinking - “The friction won’t come if you had a business plan”. I call it complete trash. Yes please make a business plan and think through your execution. But be rest assured, you will not be able to stick to it and it may never work. The real business plan evolves with the ecosystem - the clients, the market and you.

#2 How does momentum help?

woody and buzz lightyear from toy story standing next to each other with the words data data everywhere above them

Here are some ways momentum helps -

  1. It provides data to act - you can make incremental changes and evolve. The website will throw errors or consumers will complain about checkout not working. If you are creating a social media business, you see which posts are doing better than others. You will learn what’s not working, and act.

  2. Your prospective consumer starts watching. The more supportive ones will bite and make a purchase. The careful ones will continue to watch and buy later. More than 50% of my first 6 months customers, still buy from us. New customers have told that they were watching us, and waited and finally got convinced to buy from us. Humans take time to make a decision, and hence we have to show momentum.

  3. It provides real learnings, not imaginations. It separates opinions from reality. It cuts all bullshit. Stop listening to those YouTube tutorials, they won’t teach you much. Momentum will be a better teacher. Better than your mentor as well.

  4. It takes time to perfect. If you start moving today, you will have made 100 changes in one year. Possibly a 1000 changes. A year later, your project will be entirely different from when you started.

  5. You stay invested. You feel invested. It gives you reason to improve.

  6. You win over naysayers. Because you will have a few customers who will love for who you are. It gives you reason to continue going.

  7. Degree of momentum shows scale and initiates recommendation. The more the speed of changes, the higher the perceived scale. Imagine you launch 100 ads in 60 days, consumers will go crazy and talk to their friends about you. If you post a 100 reels in 30 days, again the ones who are watching you will start recommending. Even platforms like Instagram and TikTok value momentum over perfect content. It shows the world you are working hard and the friction comes down.

Loading...

#3 How did I build momentum in past 2 years?

Two year ago, I had nothing to lose. I was at my lowest - no money, no jobs, no idea of future. Yes, I knew I could go back to my last job and take whatever option was given. But that was a bigger loss for my future.

So I decided to act, no matter what. The worst is that I will be where I was and go down as one of the worst entrepreneurs possible. That wasn’t a bad outcome.

Instead, here is what I did -

  1. Prioritise action against quality - Our website was bad, social media was pathetic, creator outreach was lacking direction, and packaging was basic. One of my friends said - the packaging looks so shady that he won’t buy. That did not deter me. I just kept setting everything up - new products, website, TikTok shop, marketplace shops, social media, affiliate marketing, Facebook ads, and Reddit organic marketing. My only limitation at that time was money and the right talent.

  2. Analyse and make incremental changes - My base is in numbers. I like looking at every kind of data to make decision. For website, I would watch the session recordings, drop off point. Social media was majorly followers and views (social media has been a black box for me - I am working on it now). Performance marketing was entirely numbers driven - we improved our AOV, website design and conversion based on learnings from numbers. Though I haven’t figured out everything yet.
    By the way, you need to to make sense of data. Some data has to be ignored as well. How do you do that? Take a call and see the reaction.

  3. Prioritise channels - My north star metric for first 12 months was revenue. No branding, and no awareness. Anything that drove revenue up, it got money (I call it investment). After revenue, it was ROI. After decent scale of revenue came in, I would cut down on everything unprofitable.
    TikTok and Shopee were high scale channels. All my efforts and investment moved towards these two channels. We did everything possible on the channels to scale. Initially not profitable. Then I changed the cost structure to also make them profitable. Essentially when the scale plateaued, ROI became important metric.

  4. Force action - The problem of moving fast is that your team won’t agree and will feel pushed too much. Did I care? Yes. Does it mean we don’t act? No. Acknowledge the issue but force action if needed. If some people cannot fit in, they are not right fit for the business. If internal teams cannot do it, find alternative external parties to do it. I always maintain an alternative remote work force ready when needed.

  5. Don’t care for the final result. Action and learnings are more important than the final outcome. None of my expected targets have met, but every time we have moved to a better place. I wanted to hit 100K monthly revenue in Feb 2024. We reached there in May 2024. Almost 3 months late. Is that bad? Not really.
    Right now social media has become a new war zone in terms of action. I am enjoying it. Next will be distribution.

Hmmm, did you get my point?


Thanks for reading again. Please like and share this post if you found it helpful. This is the 83rd post, another 17 to reach 100. Wuhoo 😁

I finally started making short TikTok videos centered around this newsletter. Least to say, I am enjoying it.

I was in Chiang Mai this weekend and just returned. The entire main post was written in the peace and quiet of the Nimman neighbourhood in Chiang Mai. I was there for a Longevity Conference as a speaker. After my session got over on Friday evening, it was time to take my much deserved break. I should have slept more. 😁

How did you like Heize’s song recommendation last week?

Jisoo demonstrates my feelings at Chiang Mai

a woman is sitting in a chair with her hands in the air and a necklace around her neck .

Hahah, isn’t she perfect?

Okay that’s it for today. Rest well tonight and have a great week ahead! Cheers 🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛

Discussion about this podcast