Inhale. Exhale.
You are rolling down the road when you wonder, “If I turn off the engine and quit burning fuel, how far can I coast?”
If your thought is to save fuel, you have made a costly mistake. The fuel you will burn to regain your speed is a lot more fuel than you would have had to burn to maintain your speed.
But you were wondering how far you could coast, so I will answer your question, as asked.
Your ability to coast will be determined by
1: Speed
2: Mass
3: Friction
4: Gravity (Are you coasting uphill, or down?
Advertising is the fuel that energizes the engine of your business.
- Your speed is determined by how heavily you have been advertising.
- Your mass is determined by how long you have been advertising that heavily.
- Friction is the inefficiency of your people to consistently delight your customers.
- Gravity is the resistance of your competitors. How strong or weak are they?
It has been my observation that a roaring business with a lot of momentum can coast for about 6 months before it is obvious that something is wrong. During those 6 months, they will say, “I cut my advertising and nothing changed! I should have done this a long time ago.”
When they finally start advertising again, they are frustrated that it doesn’t seem to be making a difference. Remember what I said about the fuel you will burn to regain your speed will be far more than you would have burned if you had maintained your speed? Payback is hell. Because it’s going to cost them six months of painful fuel inefficiency to regain the momentum they lost during those six months they were lazily picking their nose instead of advertising.
“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
– Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe
Another business owner believes they can build their business to a certain size and then, “just hold what they’ve got.” But that’s not really an option because the physics of mass, friction, and gravity apply to maintaining your currently speed just as surely as they apply to losing and regaining lost momentum.
Businesses inhale and exhale, expand and contract, just like every other living organism. This fantasy of “holding what you’ve got,” neither expanding nor contracting, springs from the misbegotten belief that a business can hold its breath. How long can you do it? I don’t know. Give it a try and we’ll find out.
Remember the business owner who said, “I cut my advertising and nothing changed! I should have done this a long time ago?” The fuel that gave him 6 months of coasting were all the ads that didn’t seem to be producing results during the first six months of brand-building.
Have you ever seen a NASA rocket lift off the launchpad?
Remember the vast amount of fuel that had to be burned to get that rocket to start moving slowly upward? Mass and Gravity are a bitch, whether you are trying to launch a rocket or trying to launch a business. Fuel inefficiency in the early stages of lift-off is just a fact of life.
I’m sorry that I had to be the one to tell you.
Roy H. Williams