Starting a business takes a lot out of you. When you first start there is a burst of adrenaline. You have the drive to change the world or at least to change your own world. You can run on that fuel for a while, but it’s not sustainable in the long-term. You have to find other sources of motivation that can fuel your desire.
I wouldn’t say that my desire has ever left me with GBW. I kind of stumbled into the business in the first place, but I have had those shots of adrenaline over the years. You get a flurry of new clients and you’re excited. But then things go dry for a little while and you’re wondering if it’s all over. The key for those two situations is to keep things tempered. Don’t get too up when things are good and don’t get too down when things are down.
That’s one key to keeping a steady level of motivation, but there are other ways to do it as well. Here are a few that work for me and that seem to work well for others. I hope they can work for you if you’re lacking a little motivation with your startup or with your mature company.
1. Revisit The Company Vision
This is a big one. The company vision is where you see the company going in the future. Most of the time this won’t change, but it’s easy to lose sight of it every few months as you work and work on the little things in the business.
I’ve found that it happens to me – you get pulled in all these different directions each day working just to get through the day. You’re keeping clients and customers happy and it’s a fight sometimes just to get to the next day with everything still kind of working.
But it’s at these times that it’s good to look back on the overall country vision. You can see the reason you started the business in the first place and see where you want to go. You can get that motivation back by looking at the big picture.
2. Reassess Your Personal Motivations
Life can change every few months. Things can change in your personal life and it’s good to reassess where you are personally and make sure your motivations are good as they used to be or if you need to make changes.
Maybe in the past you’ve had time to dive into work full steam ahead. Maybe now you’ve met someone or maybe you’ve had a child. That can change your motivations and if you’re still working all the time it’s going to make you lose the motivation to work.
That doesn’t mean that you have to stop working. You just need to know where your motivations are. Redo your priorities if you need to and start working on what really matters in your business.
Sometimes just realigning your priorities and identifying the new motivations in your life or rediscovering your past motivations can get you back on the right track to making the business a success.
3. Cut Back On The Number Of Tasks
When you’re working on the business it’s good to look at all the things you’re doing and figure out if all of them are necessary. I’ve touched on this before and most recently in last Friday’s post.
In business, there are always going to be opportunities, but it’s hard for a business to try to do everything. And I don’t think that’s really the best way to go. You can’t do it all so look at the number of tasks your business is doing and look for places to cut.
The big story in the business world is how Steve jobs came back to Apple in the late ’90s and cut back on everything the company was doing. he realigned the focus and the company rose back to prominence.
You can do the same for your business even if you’re a startup. Focus on the one or maybe a handful of things you can do really well and cut out the rest.
4. Assess Your Business Tasks
When you’re trying to make your business a success and it becomes a success you’re going to see a growth in the number of tasks you’re doing. It’s happened at GBW. It didn’t happen fast, but early on I was doing the majority of the writing myself. Slowly, we started adding more clients and I was writing more than I could handle. It wasn’t sustainable.
So I had to cut back on the writing I was doing to focus on the business side of things. This involved delegation. That took a lot of work to get new writers on board and on par with the procedures and everything, but that short-term investment has been well worth it in the long run.
Now I’m looking at unloading more tasks. I can see that things are backing up once again and it’s wearing me out. I’m still doing good, but I don’t want to reach the burnout stage again.
Delegating those tasks keeps me motivated on the business. I can focus on the big picture, which is my real motivation.
5. Assess Your Client Situation
Sometimes your clients might be wearing you down. They could be great clients, but if they’re wearing you down and taking up all your time maybe it’s time to look at the relationship.
This one depends on how your company is structured, but if you’re not getting what you need from your biggest clients then you might have to assess the situation and maybe even tell the client that you can’t work for them anymore. If they’re causing burnout it will sap your motivation. It will take away from other things you could be doing.
It’s scary and it’s a risk, but if you move on from one client you open yourself up for better clients and a better situation overall for yourself and for the business.
Conclusion
Motivation is a big thing for any business. As the CEO and the leader it’s especially your job to make sure that you’re motivated because how you act every day trickles down to the rest of the team. Hopefully the items and thoughts above can help you if you’ve lost your motivation. I know they’ve helped me over the past couple years.