Finding it tough to stay on track as you develop your business? Well, there are a few effective strategies you can follow on how to stay motivated as you build your own business.
More than 50% of all new businesses fail during their first year.
That was the claim that sent ripples of fear and uncertainty among aspiring business owners.
While that might have held true before, the new generation of entrepreneurs today is grittier.
So despite the probability that the business they are building will soon be among the unsuccessful 50%, they still take their chances and stay motivated.
They open their businesses and take it from there, all the while conscious of what looks like the inevitable.
But that 50% borderline is now officially outdated.
Recent research suggests that only 20% of businesses fail in their first year.
If you look at our second paragraph, you’ll see one strong qualifying verb: Fail.
What accounts for this failure is often rooted in what new business owners have not seen or done.
It never accounted for one crucial factor that brings grit to the forefront: the importance of motivation in business.
It has been discovered that grit is the element of success.
But for grit to show up, motivation levels should be exceptional.
For motivation levels to be exceptional, the desire to achieve something should be strong.
So the question right now is, if you are a business owner – new, returning, or a veteran – are you motivated enough?
If so, how do you stay motivated?
If not, what can you do?
These thirteen strategies on how to stay motivated as you build your business may help you.
Have A Higher Purpose
One of the motivation strategies out there involves knowing your higher purpose.
Why do you feel the need for your business to grow or to succeed?
What if you’ve already achieved the level of growth you’ve always wanted?
Would you stop?
Look back on your inner purpose and discover your greater purpose.
Take it from the known CEOs that you see. For most of them, taking their business to exceptional heights is merely a means to a greater end.
For one, most of them want to leave a worthy legacy by helping disadvantaged nations.
Some of them are involved in global pursuits like preventing climate change.
Some of them want to inspire other people to keep brilliance alive.
While some just want to keep people employed.
So ask yourself: what’s your higher purpose?
What ends would you want to achieve by using your business as a means?
Think about it and you’ll feel differently.
When you realize that your business is meant for something more that’s when you’ll look at it in a very different way and stay motivated as you build it further.
See Beyond Your Business
Seeing beyond your business as you build it, is yet one of the known strategies of staying motivated.
Go back to your higher purpose and ask yourself, ‘am I simply building a business, or am I building a dream?’ ‘If I stop now, what potential opportunities would I be taking away with me?’
Realize that you will never run out of tough times.
They will come to you every day.
That traffic jam this morning?
It surely tested your patience.
But if you’ve also played around the idea that one day, your business can help ease the flow of traffic, then you’re seeing beyond your business!
Stick to doing what you’re doing now; continue to innovate and figure out how to empower and strengthen your business offering in order to stay in the market.
Develop A Growth Mindset
Test your mindset by reflecting on these questions.
First, do you believe that your talents or your intelligence are fixed traits?
Second, do you believe that your talents or your intelligence alone will create success?
Third, do you spend time proving how talented or how intelligent you are?
Now, reflect on this next set of questions.
First, do you believe that your talents and your intelligence can be starting points towards success?
Second, are you dissatisfied that you’re simply smart or talented?
Third, do you believe that you can be more talented and get more intelligent?
Which set of questions have you answered positively?
The first set characterizes a fixed mindset.
A fixed mindset does not tell you how to build a business.
The second set is the opposite.
It characterizes the growth mindset where through dedication and effort, growth is possible.
So you need to be careful about the kind of mindset that you adopt.
More often, it’s your mindset that affects your ability to be motivated as you build your business.
On one hand, a fixed mindset is limiting.
On the other hand, a growth mindset frees you.
It opens one key to succeeding: the love of learning.
Appreciate Your Journey
They say fortune favors the bold, and it’s actually the bold ones who have the best stories to tell afterward.
Look at Thomas Edison.
It took him a thousand tries before he lit a light bulb.
He didn’t stop when he reached the 999th try.
He just went on.
Later, because of his patience and success, he felt that he could finally deliver a dose of now-accepted wisdom.
He said that he didn’t fail 1,000 times. He just took 1,000 steps to succeed in his invention.
Imagine how it must have felt for Edison to have looked back at his journey now that a billion light bulbs are lighting up almost every home.
Imagine how it will feel for you if it were you in his place.
That’s the feeling of appreciating your business journey and staying motivated as you build it.
When you appreciate your journey, you look back not with a sense of fear but with a sense of accomplishment.
You know that experience has taught you a valuable lesson even if it didn’t yield you success.
But in a way, it actually did: it made your wiser.
Proactively Seek For Motivation
On some days, you may wake up fully prepared to give your best.
On some, you may simply wake up.
Motivation is like a roller coaster.
The level may go up and down.
On those days that you feel de-motivated, don’t get carried away.
In as much as motivation should come from the inside, there are times when you need to find it on the outside.
How?
First, spend time with people who motivate you especially as you build your business.
This isn’t easy because it can happen that the people closest to you are the ones who are discouraging you.
So if you can’t find motivating people in your immediate surroundings, go somewhere else.
You may find the motivation you need in the eyes of a dedicated employee, a friend who’s brutally honest with you, or a customer who compliments you.
As you go your way, check that article about how to stay motivated on the business website you’re following.
Then, check what’s new on that podcast channel you’ve subscribed to.
If you’re not satisfied, search for motivational content online.
You’ll find some there.
Build Your Business Connections
A motivated entrepreneur places importance on networking as he builds his business.
Business networking actually does more than get you to know other people.
It also goes beyond the notion that if you need something, you can ask; or if you need a referral, you can tap someone in the back.
Building your business connection goes far beyond business ends especially as you need to stay motivated.
It gives you the opportunity to get to know like-minded people.
For sure, a couple of people in your business network started their business from sand and stone.
These are the people you ought to talk to.
For sure, some of the people in your network have managed to make their business thrive.
That’s even if it took them years to break through.
For sure, some of the people in your network are going through tough times just like you.
And for sure, some of the people in your network are more talented, more intelligent, and more experienced than you.
Build a network of diverse people.
You’ll realize that you’re not in it simply for the business benefits.
You’re also in it because of the stories that will motivate you to work harder as you build your business.
Exercise Your Mind And Your Body
Did you know that mega CEOs like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson meditate and do physical exercises daily, and in the early hours of the morning?
They also make it a point to get decent hours of sleep.
Yes, you might think that they can afford such a routine because they’ve already reached the height of their successes.
But you’re wrong.
If you’re building your business, you ought to keep the one instrument that can make that happen in good condition: your body.
A healthy body most likely contributes to a healthy mind.
If your body is in pain, your mind is not fully functional.
So what can you do?
At best, be productive and be efficient so that you’ll have time to stay in shape.
There is always time despite your reasons.
Complement your physical and mental fitness with a healthy diet.
Research justifies the positive connection between food, physical health, and mental functions.
When you’re feeling great it is easier to think great and achieve something great.
Develop Encouraging Habits
Habits are repetitive behaviors.
So it goes on to follow that if you keep on repeating de-motivating habits, you get directly proportional results.
Of course, you can’t change your habits overnight.
But a motivated entrepreneur building his business knows that change has to happen now.
Developing encouraging habits requires three things.
First, having a clear vision of what you want to achieve.
Second, aligning your actions to that goal.
And third, developing repetitive behaviors that progress to natural actions in pursuit of the goal.
The above-mentioned things are highly achievable in theory.
But for you to stay motivated to build your business, you must be motivated to change your ways.
So reflect on this question now: are your current habits helping you achieve your goal?
If not, what will you do about it?
This is the rule: everything that you do – in one way or another – ought to bring you closer to your goal.
So if you feel that you’re getting farther away from it, perhaps you’re doing something that’s not helpful at all.
What would that or those be?
Be honest; only you know the answer.
Indulge Yourself In Your Previous Successes
A recall is one of the ways to stay motivated.
If you ever get to the point where you think that you can’t go any further, look back at your previous successes.
One thing is certain for all of us whose lives have improved: we won’t be where we are now if not for the small victories we’ve had in the past.
When you relive your previous successes, four things may happen.
First, you’ll feel the familiar joy of winning – of having achieved something.
Second, you’ll get an image of yourself and how you were back then versus how you are now.
Third, you’ll get to relive a challenging story or period in your life when you were trying to achieve something.
And fourth, you’ll think seriously about what your previous experience has taught you.
If you’re still here, your collective experiences have taught you one thing: how to be resilient.
Resilience is a result of appreciating your journey – good or bad.
It’s when you remind yourself what your past has taught you that you’ll win something back: your business motivation.
With that, you’ll be compelled to take action.
And all it took for you was to revisit a chapter in your life.
Adopt A New Approach And Acquire A New Skill
If you get used to doing things the same way daily, you’ll end up creating a routine.
If you commit to your routine long enough, you might end up getting bored, and when you get bored, you’ll likely lose your motivation.
Seeking to do something differently is one of the ways to stay motivated as you build your business.
To do that, go back to the fundamental questions: ‘Why do I need to do this?’ ‘Is there any other way to do it while achieving my desired result?’
Be inventive.
Shake things up.
In the process of renewing your approach to growth, you may discover that you need to learn something new.
So while smart business owners know that one key to efficiency is through delegation, it doesn’t mean that you stop learning new skills altogether.
So by all means, educate yourself.
That thing you’re trying to learn may not only help you discover a new approach.
It may also help you do your higher-level tasks more efficiently in the long run.
Besides, that new skill can be added to your existing stock of skills.
Be Accountable
Being accountable for yourself is challenging.
But, being accountable to someone else is not.
So find yourself an accountability partner.
This is a person who understands and who believes in what you’re trying to achieve.
On your end, you’ll feel that you’re not having a go at this alone.
You have someone who walks with you.
Often, accountability partners become your brutal conscience.
They almost always manage to point out that you haven’t done something or that you’ve done something that is below the expected standards.
Receiving honest feedback from your accountability partner is not supposed to bring you down.
That is if you’re committed to achieving growth in your business.
So all in all, being accountable to someone other than yourself gives you an extra push to go for it.
Don’t Forget That You’re Still Running A Business
It is easy to focus on the psychological, mental, or emotional side of things when you’re thinking about staying motivated.
But with the idea of staying motivated in order to achieve growth, you must not forget one thing: that you’re still running a business.
This means that you shouldn’t lose track of the tangible and market-based factors that keep your business afloat.
Do not ignore things such as looking at your cash flow, competition, customers, sales, etc.
After all, the tangible aspects of how to build a business can be justified by numbers.
Staying on top of your business serves to keep your focus on a realistic level.
For example, if you notice that your sales are going down, you must drill down to the bottom of it.
By uncovering the cause, you can implement strategies to recover your sales.
In doing so, you’re engaging in the practical and hands-on aspect of growing your business.
You just have to be there and make sure that things are running smoothly.
When everything is working just fine, you’ll be motivated to seek ways to make things better.
How To Stay Motivated As You Build Your Own Business Infographic
Take Breaks
We mentioned that you need to be focusing on your goals.
But you also need to be aware of when your business is taking over your life.
If your daily hours are all spent in and on your business, you’re ignoring the one who keeps things running: you.
There are times when you need to take a well-deserved time off.
And by time off, we mean getting out of your business suit and actually putting on something casual.
Don’t forget about the things that you love to do.
When was the last time you strolled by the beach?
What good books have you read recently (business books not counted)?
When was the last time you had dinner at your favorite restaurant?
Check on the things that you might have missed in your life because you were busy.
When you keep a balance across all of the important aspects of your life, you won’t feel like you’re running out of battery power.
In fact, you’ll feel that you’re getting the charge that you need in order to keep focusing on your goals.
The importance of motivation in business has been highlighted time and time again.
But the idea that you need it in order to grow your business makes it all the more important.
The strategies presented above are only some of the many ways that you can employ in order to keep yourself going.
Have there been times you lacked the motivation to continue with your business?
We’d love for you to share your experience!
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