Atlanta Reminded Me That Motion and Momentum Are Not the Same Thing

Spending time in Atlanta, Georgia gave me a different business lesson than some of my other travels.

Atlanta feels like a city in motion. Business, entertainment, media, real estate, hospitality, transportation, you can feel people building things.

And it made me think about something I see constantly with entrepreneurs, including myself at different stages of my career.

We become incredibly good at being busy.

Calls all day. Emails. Meetings. Flights. Employees needing answers. Proposals going out. Clients calling. Problems being solved. New opportunities showing up.

You can finish a 14-hour day completely exhausted and feel like you accomplished a tremendous amount.

But there's a question I've started asking myself more often:

Did today create motion, or did it create momentum?

They're not the same.

And understanding the difference can completely change the way you run your business.

Motion Keeps You Busy. Momentum Makes Tomorrow Easier.

Answering 50 emails is motion.

Creating a system that eliminates 20 of those emails next week is momentum.

Closing one sale is motion.

Building a referral relationship that sends you customers for the next five years is momentum.

Personally fixing a client problem is motion.

Changing the process so the problem doesn't happen again is momentum.

Making money today is important.

Building something that continues producing value after today's work is finished is different.

That's leverage.

The longer I've been in business, the more interested I've become in work that keeps working after I'm done working.

Ask One Question About Everything You Do

Here's a simple test I've been thinking about:

Will this still be valuable 12 months from now?

Some work has to be temporary.

Invoices need to be paid.

Customers need responses.

Problems need solving.

But if everything you do disappears the moment you stop doing it, you haven't created much leverage.

Compare that with:

A great employee you trained.

A sales process you documented.

A relationship you've developed.

A piece of content people continue finding.

A customer who keeps referring business.

A strong reputation.

A database you've built.

A profitable advertising funnel.

A process that saves your company 20 hours every month.

Those things continue producing value.

That's the kind of work I want more of.

Every Business Has a Momentum Ratio

I think owners should actually measure this.

Look at your calendar from last week.

Take the hours you worked and separate them into two buckets:

Maintenance: Work required to keep the current business operating.

Momentum: Work that makes the future business more valuable, efficient or capable.

You might discover that you worked 60 hours but only five were spent building the future.

That's a problem.

Because eventually maintenance expands to consume every hour you give it.

There will always be another email.

Another meeting.

Another problem.

Another request.

You have to intentionally protect time for momentum.

Build Assets, Not Just Income

This is one of the biggest changes in how I think about business.

When you're starting out, you naturally focus on income.

You need customers.

You need revenue.

You need cash.

Nothing wrong with that.

But eventually, the question needs to evolve from:

“How much money did we make?”

to:

“What did we build?”

Because revenue resets.

January starts at zero.

February starts again.

But assets accumulate.

And I'm not only talking about buildings or investments.

A trained team is an asset.

A recognized brand is an asset.

A strong email database is an asset.

Search visibility is an asset.

A documented sales process is an asset.

Client relationships are assets.

Intellectual property is an asset.

A reputation for keeping your word is an enormous asset.

Income pays you once. Assets have the potential to keep paying you.

That's why two companies with identical revenue can actually be worth completely different amounts.

One has simply created a job for the owner.

The other has built infrastructure.

Stop Solving the Same Problem Twice

This may be one of the most valuable habits an entrepreneur can develop.

When something goes wrong, don't only fix it.

Ask:

“What would have to change so I never have to solve this exact problem again?”

Customer didn't receive something?

Fix the customer issue.

Then fix the process.

Employee misunderstood instructions?

Clarify the instructions.

Then ask why they were ambiguous.

Lead wasn't followed up?

Call the lead.

Then determine why your system allowed the lead to disappear.

Invoice wasn't collected?

Collect it.

Then examine the billing process.

The first fix gets you through today.

The second fix improves the company.

That's momentum.

The Most Expensive Sentence in Business

There's one sentence I think quietly costs companies millions of dollars:

“That's just how we do it.”

I've heard versions of it everywhere.

Why do we have this meeting?

That's how we've always done it.

Why does the owner approve this?

That's how we do it.

Why do we still pay for this?

We've always had it.

Why does this take seven steps?

That's the process.

History can explain a process.

It shouldn't automatically justify it.

Every few months, I think businesses should deliberately challenge something that's considered normal.

Not because change is always better.

Because unquestioned repetition is expensive.

Your Calendar Is Making Investments

I've become much more conscious of this as Flores Marketing Firm has grown and as I've traveled more.

Time is capital.

Every hour you spend is effectively an investment decision.

If I spend three hours in a meeting that could have been handled in 20 minutes, I didn't only lose three hours.

I lost whatever else those three hours could have produced.

That's the hidden cost entrepreneurs don't calculate.

So when I look at my calendar, I increasingly ask:

What return should this hour create?

Not necessarily financial return.

Maybe the return is strengthening a relationship.

Maybe it's time with family.

Maybe it's learning.

Maybe it's thinking.

Maybe it's helping somebody.

Maybe it's rest.

Those are legitimate returns too.

The problem is when the answer is:

“I don't really know. It's just on my calendar.”

That's when something needs to change.

Protect Your Thinking Time

This is something I think ambitious people dramatically underestimate.

Some of my better ideas haven't happened while staring at my computer.

They've happened traveling.

Driving.

Walking through a new city.

Sitting somewhere unfamiliar.

Having conversations with people outside my normal circle.

There's value in temporarily getting away from the environment where you're constantly reacting.

When every minute is filled with incoming information, there isn't much room for original thought.

So protect some empty space.

You don't have to call it meditation.

You don't need a productivity app.

Just create periods where nobody is asking you anything.

Then think.

What are we building?

What's becoming harder than it should be?

What opportunity are we overlooking?

What am I continuing because I'm afraid to change it?

Where should this company be three years from now?

Those questions rarely get answered between notifications.

Don't Let Your Ambition Become a Treadmill

This may be the bigger lesson.

Entrepreneurs are strange people.

We achieve something we once desperately wanted and, within about five minutes, create a bigger goal.

I've done it.

You hit a revenue number.

Now there's another number.

Get the office.

Now you want another location.

Build the team.

Now expand.

There is nothing wrong with ambition.

I hope I'm ambitious for the rest of my life.

But there should be moments where you recognize:

I'm currently living inside something I used to pray for.

That's important.

Because momentum without gratitude eventually becomes a treadmill.

You keep moving faster without ever feeling like you've arrived anywhere.

Atlanta Made Me Think About Direction

That's what I took away from my time here.

Movement is everywhere.

But movement by itself isn't impressive.

Direction matters.

The same is true in business.

Don't judge your week by how tired you are.

Don't judge your company by how many meetings happened.

Don't judge progress solely by how much activity you can create.

Ask better questions.

What did we build this week that will still matter next year?

What problem did we permanently eliminate?

What relationship became stronger?

What system became better?

What asset became more valuable?

What did I do that makes tomorrow easier?

That's momentum.

And if you can consistently build a business where today's work makes tomorrow more valuable, eventually something incredible happens.

You stop pushing every part of the company forward yourself.

What you've built begins carrying some of the weight.

That's when business starts becoming something bigger than a job.

That's when effort begins compounding.

And that's when all that motion finally starts taking you somewhere.

Writing from Atlanta, Georgia.

— Corey Flores
Founder, Flores Marketing Firm