In last week’s Entrepreneur University, Josh commented about being motivated to become an entrepreneur.
I wanted to continue on that theme today and connect with Laura Yeates. Laura runs Inspired Life Coaching and today shares with us the 5 things you should avoid if you want to stay motivated:
“Do you have peaks and troughs in your levels of motivation? What do you think the top 5 motivation killers are? What would change in your business if your motivation levels were at 100% all of the time?
Today I want to share with you the secrets of keeping high on motivation. As a business owner I have been through the ups and downs of starting up my own business from scratch. I have worked with Small Business Owners and intrapreneurs – those people that work as an entrepreneur within a business. I have worked with them through business start up to year one and beyond. We all know year one is supposed to be the toughest in business. But what happens when year one ends – are you not allowed to have bad days anymore?
Top 5 Motivation Killers
It’s easy to think of what your top 5 are – we all have them. Look at the list below and then consider how many of them you have and what others there are for you. I would be interested to hear from you if you come up with some different topics. For each motivation killer there is a solution – read on.
Getting a Knockback
We all know how it feels to hear when you have just won a contract. You feel like punching the air! The opposite of that is the knockback. It comes in many shapes and sizes. Perhaps you’ve had a day of cold calling and nothing good has come of it. Maybe the contract you had counted on this month went to your competitor at the last minute. It makes you feel down and the mind chatter gets going ‘You didn’t do this right’, ‘You idiot, if you had spent an hour longer getting the service part right…’ the list goes on.
• Control the mind chatter – stop yourself talking yourself down and find something good to say to yourself. If you can’t say anything nice then don’t say anything at all!
• Learn from it and move on. Don’t allow it to become a bad day or a bad week just a bad 30 minutes.
• Take a 10 minute break. Get outside and walk. Clear your head and come back to it.
• Focus on the last positive thing that happened and wallow in how that felt.
• Think about the next thing you are working on that will give you that feeling and get on to it now.
A quiet period
You’ve had three weeks of non stop activity. Have you ever noticed that the more you have on the more you do? Then it goes quiet – what’s going on? One day passes, then two and you start to get inactive and down. Your motivation dies and you stagnate, procrastinate and hide in passive marketing. You stop getting out of the house/office – it’s a downward spiral.
• Number one – do something. Immediately. Now. Anything at all that will get things moving again.
• Make the things you hate doing top priority every day. Hate cold calling? Do it first and save the other things for later. Far better that than to have it hanging over your head all day.
• Active Marketing. This means speaking to people. Not emailing, not sending letters but actually speaking. The more active you are, the better you feel and the busier your business will be.
Don’t know where you are heading?
When you don’t know why you are doing something, what it means to your business there is little motivation to do it. If you don’t have performance goals that are set in line with your end goal how will you know you are going in the right direction. How will you know you are succeeding? How do you feel good about what you do every day?
• Have you got a marketing plan? A business plan? Do they sound like huge tasks to you? They don’t have to be. Spend 2 hours putting together a plan and some deadlines.
• Use Outlook – print out the next month and put in some deadlines.
• It’s 90% about the ‘why’ and 10% about the ‘how’ when it comes to achieving goals. Make sure the ‘why’ is there and the ‘how’ will become easy.
Pain and Pleasure
Motivation is all about either moving away from pain or towards pleasure. Why would you be motivated if you have nothing to lose or nothing to gain?
• Identify what you will gain by doing whatever it is and what you will lose if you don’t.
• Everything you say yes to involves saying no to something else. What are you saying no to when you say yes to procrastination?
Fear of Failure
The biggest stumbling block to doing what we should is fear of failing. We don’t do so many things because we might fail. ‘I’ll look stupid and it will damage my reputation’ Sound familiar? How will you know if you will fail if you don’t try?
• Find a mentor – someone who has been there and done it. It will give you the proof you need to know that it works.
• Stop preparing presentations that may never get used. Get out there and find the opportunity and then prepare.
• Feel the fear and do it anyway.”
Is there a topic you would like to learn more about for the next Entrepreneur University? Leave a comment below and we’ll try to find an expert to discuss your topic!
Evan Carmichael
What I’ve learnt through all my previous experiences is to keep my expectations low, high expectations are the biggest menace for motivation, expecting lesser rewards won’t necessarily make you achieve less, it just prepares you for the worst result.
A way I like to stay motivated is by attending entrepreneur club meetings on college campuses. Many colleges have entrepreneur clubs who are always looking for speakers as well. By talking to eager students about your passion you’ll automatically become more motivated. This is because you’re sharing and motivating your audience about your experiences and if you do a great job your audience will return the favor by motivating you.
Great post. I couldn’t agree more on the mentor point. Every entrepreneur should have one and it’s amazing at how willing and helpful they are. It’s like “paying it forward” everyone needs help and most everyone is eager to give it later on.
I love the thoughts. I would say that one of our goals should be to move from motivation to inspiration. Motivation only lasts so long. To maintain a proper mindset to get you through tough times, I would also recommend meditation or a some type of similar morning routine to get your day started right and allow you to control what your mind gives attention to.
These are some great suggestions. I think most of us have stumbled upon at least one (or all in my case!) of these issues at some point. The other key for me is setting BIG dreams! I know that Ferrari may be far off, but sometimes it is a far better motivator for me than the short term, smaller goals.
Thanks for the ideas.
My motivation secret is my other entrepreneur friends. If I am feeling down or having a low point in my business, I get on my webtop and access the social networking sites I am connected with. I read about the great things they are doing and it’s an instant kick in the pants!
Excellent post. I really think another way a motivation block can come is when a large problem arises. Problems can allow you to go either way; be extremely motivated or discouraged. Sometimes too much time can be spent on looking for a solution, and nothing comes up. It might be that you have to take a totally different approach or start all over but whatever it is running into a problem is something that all entrepreneurs must face and it is those who can become motivated by them are the ones that make it.
I find that reading about how others’ have found success is a huge motivation. Fortune Mag and Inc both run articles that do this – http://everythingworthknowing.com/startups/inspiration/
Evan,
Thanks for the mention in the article. Right now, I am in college and just interested in entrepreneurship; I am contemplating business ideas, although nothing is too serious because school and work are very time consuming.
Anyways, I believe the key is to stay patient and to avoid fearing failure. This brings up one of my favorite quotes: “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” I think too often people hold back because of failure. At the end of the day, failure is a learning experience, and good businesses need to take risks, at points.
Furthermore, although there are these motivation killers out there, I encourage peeople to sit back and think about what they are doing. Entrepreneurs should be passionate about what they do. Therefore, if you are truly passionate and thoroughly enjoy what you do, a momentary sit-back-and-relax will help get the motivation flowing again.
Josh, I love the quote “what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail”. No entrepreneur is completely reckless–but go out and give it a shot while you’re young. You’ve got nothing to lose!
Great reminder. Three main things I learned for sure when I became entrepreneur myself were;
If the pleasure at the end of the line is greater than the immediate pain, act despite of fear no matter what.
Everything takes place into a conversation, this is how you get to create. Nothing happens in a monologue. It’s just the same ideas over, over and over again expressed with different words.
Put yourself in uncomfortable position so you can expand your comfort zone and grow.
A lot of those principles and gems of wisdom for entrepreneurs are contained in 2 little books I love, written by Paul Arden; “It’s not about how good you are, it’s about how good you want to be” and “Whatever you think, think the opposite”.
I would recommend those little essential bibles to any entrepreneurs.
Cheers!
Love this articles, because I was on that mood when I was working as a Sales Engineer.Now I am entrepreneur running my own company first to second months I was not making a dollar at my blog after 6 months finally I make few dollars, but the track and path that I study almost a year, is really a good education for me to breach new strategy to monetize my blogs.Being motivated and stay focus, to be honest it’s not easy, especially when your in this business.I continue my path to motivate myself everyday that one day I’ll score.We only live once to play this game, so no more feeling frustrated, down, lazy, distraction etc.Good post I really enjoy it