Nick: Young Entrepreneur Lifestyle, Episode #3.
Hello, and welcome to the Young Entrepreneur Lifestyle podcast, a show where we help you build a life and a business on your terms. I’m your host, Nick Palkowski, and in each episode, we’ll be learning from mentor, speaker, and serial entrepreneur, Peter Voogd.
Peter, thank you for joining us on this episode of the podcast.
Peter: I’m happy to be here, Nick.
Nick: Peter, I am really excited to talk about our topic today of momentum breakers.
Peter: Me, too. It’s something that has made a profound difference in my life and a lot of people I work with lives and businesses as well.
Nick: When we’re talking about momentum breakers, what do you actually mean?
Peter: Here’s what people don’t understand or think about. There’s things that are happening to you that have happened the past couple years that are killing your momentum. So my question is, what has killed your momentum in the past?
Let’s think about it, Nick. When things are going well and when things are rocking, you have momentum. Something ruins it, and the problem is people don’t identify that, so every year, the same things are killing their momentum.
What I like to do for people that I work with and for everyone that’s listening to this is I want you to think past the last 12 months. What are the two or three top things that have killed your momentum? It can be your motivation, it can be your circle of influence, it can be the grass is greener syndrome where you always think something is better than you’re doing now – I don’t know, it could be sleeping in.
Does that make sense, Nick, what I’m talking about? It’s the things that have hurt your momentum in the past.
Nick: Yeah. And why is it so important to identify? Why is momentum really such a big thing that we need to have in our lives?
Peter: Good question. Well, I learned a quote a while back, and I live by it. The two scariest things in life and business, and especially entrepreneurship – so if you’re listening, wanting to build your lifestyle, the scariest thing is momentum. The second scariest thing is lack of momentum.
So why we talk about this, Nick, is because if you have lack of momentum, it’s extremely hard to get motivated to get out of bed, to stay focused, to work late, to wake up early. But if you can take care of those distractions and momentum breakers before they come up and put prevention plans in place, there’s no limit to how big you can build your momentum and you become more consistent. Does that make sense?
Nick: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. How would someone – so, they sit down, they identify maybe a couple of the top things that have killed their momentum in the past, but how do they actually go about creating a plan, like you said, to stop those things from killing their momentum?
Peter: Yeah, good question. First you have to ask yourself, what’s killing your momentum and productivity? Then, write it down. And let me give you some examples. Distractions, social media, your notifications, multitasking, your environment, lack of planning or priorities, procrastination, sleep – I don’t know, but they have to figure out what their top three are, and then they need to figure out how to take care of that before it comes up. The first step is really being aware of that. So they need to make a plan on how to take care of that.
So let’s do, for example, for you – you probably didn’t know you were going to get coached. So in the last year or two, Nick, let’s just be honest. Is there anything you can think of that might have killed any of your momentum? Something specific?
Nick: I’m trying to think specifically, but more generally, it’s just getting kind of caught up in multiple projects and jumping from one to another.
Peter: So multitasking, kind of like having your focus in different areas?
Nick: Exactly.
Peter: So what have you done since then to make sure that doesn’t happen again? Or have you done anything?
Nick: Excellent question. I’ve set up some – basically systems and really elaborate task lists for every single project that I have, so that way, I kind of have everything systematized so I know what steps need to happen in order to move that project forward.
Peter: Perfect. And do you think you could put in some more thought and maybe create another one or two action steps that would make sure that when things were going well and you had momentum, you didn’t go back to your old habits? Do you think you can create one or two more prevention plans for that?
Nick: Oh, definitely.
Peter: So that’s what I mean. I can’t come up with the action steps for them, Nick. They have to pull it out of themselves by just becoming aware. Just the fact of becoming aware is going to put them ahead of most people, because most people, when you look at their years, this year is the same as last year, or sometimes worse. Few people grow every single year.
I was fortunate enough to grow after the age of 22 every single year until now, because I became aware of where I was losing momentum. And then I said, okay, that’s not happening again.
When you do that, the same things don’t stop you like they did before. If someone doesn’t know what’s killing their momentum and they’re not aware of it, what do you think keeps happening year after year?
Nick: Yeah, they keep getting – that same thing keeps popping up and it keeps killing their momentum over and over and over again.
Peter: And that’s it. One thing that I really want to get across is we’re going to seek out distractions when we become overwhelmed. So if you’re overwhelmed, you’re going to find a way to get distracted, right? You’re going to find a way.
So that’s why you have to kill these distractions before they come up. Figure out your momentum killers and the distractions, and then create a prevention plan so you don’t get distracted again.
So here’s another example – cell phones. Turn off all your notifications.
Nick: Oh, yeah.
Peter: That’s killing your productivity. If you want to not have good income and you want to be not producing amazing work, get distracted all the time.
There’s something called being in the ‘zone’, and it takes 18 to 23 minutes to get in the zone, Nick. Now, when you’re in the zone, like athletes, you are three times more productive, and you’re doing things that normally you wouldn’t because you have momentum. Do you know what I’m talking about when I say in the ‘zone’?
Nick: I know exactly what you’re talking about. Along that same line, I have to tell you about this book. I’ve been waiting for it to come for weeks now, and it came yesterday. I’m already done with the first chapter. It’s called, The Rise of Superman. You’re definitely going to want to check that book out. Like I said, I’m only through the first chapter, but I think it’s going to be awesome. I’m super excited for it.
Peter: Cool. I’ll check it out, definitely.
So, in the zone. If you want to really work at your productive best, try to get in the zone as much as you can. But here’s what happens. Most entrepreneurs, when they’re focused in the zone and they get a distraction or someone interrupts them or their phone rings or they get a notification or they check Facebook, when you get distracted, it takes 20 minutes to get back in the zone.
Most people are never operating in the zone or at their peak. So turn off notifications. When you’re doing work, when you’re planning a meeting, when you’re talking to somebody, put your phone away. Have it on silent. Anyone that actually knows me knows I never – I don’t think I’ve answered my phone to a random number for like four years.
Nick: Oh, yeah. I never do that, either.
Peter: I’m not joking. Four years.
Nick: Yeah, I never do it either. It was so funny, just before we recorded this episode, we were talking about how we both basically put our cell phones on ‘do not disturb’ or completely off for most of the entire day.
Peter: Yeah, exactly. You don’t want other people running your agenda, you know what I mean? You don’t want other people controlling your schedule. You want to be ultimately in control of your schedule, lifestyle, and your business, not anybody else. So, have phone calls on your own time. Call people back when you want to call them back. Of course, make it prompt if it’s important, but don’t get run by your distractions because either you’re running your days or your days are running you.
What I want to get across before we end this is when you take care of your distractions before they come up and when you have a plan to interrupt your interruptions, your plans will never be interrupted again. So, that’s the key to kind of killing your – not having your momentum broken and staying focused on what matters and getting in the zone versus being distracted all the time.
Nick: Awesome. I love it. So, Peter, what do we have coming up on the next episode of the podcast?
Peter: Thanks for asking, Nick. I’m excited. The next episode is going to be very powerful, and it’s going to be talking about how to master your craft versus having information overload. Our society is really going through overwhelming complexity right now, and there’s so much information. I’m going to teach people how to simplify and really dissect the right information that’ll make the biggest difference in their life and business. So I’m excited for that.
Nick: Thank you for tuning into this episode of the podcast. I’m so glad you could be here. Like Peter was saying, it’s time for you to take control of your life. Are you running your days, or are your days running you? Put into action the plan that Peter laid out to stop those momentum killers in your life. Create some sort of prevention plan. Do that. Be sure to do that this week. Take the steps that you need to take to move yourself towards that life and that business that you’ve always dreamed of.
Before we wrap up this episode of the podcast, I just have a few quick announcements. First of all, if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please go subscribe and rate the podcast on iTunes. That would truly help us out. You can go to and be taken right to the iTunes page.
If you have a question for the podcast that you’d like Peter to answer live on the show, all you have to do is go to youngentrepreneurlifestyle.com/question, and you’ll be taken to a page where you can leave a voicemail message for us and we’ll answer it on an upcoming show.
Lastly, if you want access to all the resources from this episode, just simply go to youngentrepreneurlifestyle.com/003 for Episode #3, and let us know how you’re taking action to prevent momentum killers from entering your life.
Until next time, go out and take action.