Small wins create momentum, and momentum builds companies. Big leaps are rare, but daily micro-victories stack up and move you forward far more reliably than motivation ever will.

If you’ve ever tried to build something from scratch, you’ll know motivation is a fair-weather friend. It shows up on day one, gives a dramatic speech, and then vanishes the moment things get dull. Momentum, though? Momentum sticks around. It’s the dependable workhorse of progress. It’s the quiet, boring engine that actually gets you where you’re going.

Founders love the idea of big leaps. Huge launches. Game-changing partnerships. The one deal that will “transform everything”. But most companies aren’t built on those moments. They’re built on dozens of small wins. The kind nobody notices. The kind you don’t bother posting about. The kind that happen on a Tuesday afternoon when you’d rather be anywhere else.

In the Navy, we were taught that big missions succeed because thousands of tiny things happen correctly in the background. A valve tightened. A log updated. A call made. Each one insignificant alone. But stack a hundred of them together and suddenly you’re a ship that can cross an ocean. Early-stage companies work exactly the same way.

Small wins matter because they create motion. Finish one task and the next becomes easier. Close one tiny customer and you feel brave enough to talk to the next. Fix one annoying bug and suddenly the product feels less embarrassing. It’s a chain reaction that doesn’t rely on willpower. It relies on physics. Bodies in motion and all that.

The trick is learning to spot these wins. Celebrate them quietly. Use them shamelessly. Build a culture that doesn’t wait for motivation to appear but relies on momentum to carry everyone forward. Big leaps are great when they happen, but they’re unpredictable. Small wins are right there, every day, waiting to be picked up.

If you want to build something that lasts, stop chasing fireworks. Light a hundred matches instead.

This may actually be fairly common, but I enjoy recording all the smaller admin tasks I need to get done, usually before 9am, just so that at 0905am, I can tick them all off and start the day knowing that even though minor, progress has been made already - probably quite silly…

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