Staying Motivated as an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is a liberating journey that highlights the emancipation of being an employee, but it is also work-heavy. And the natural accessories that come along with this position of leadership can quickly result in regret and remorse for choosing a path so heavily ridden with high levels of responsibility and stress. When discouraging moments do arise, how can a new business owner find enough strength to push through and see beyond the temporary circumstances? What keeps an entrepreneur motivated?

Track your progress

It is easy to point out all the things that are going wrong in your business. In those moments however, it is useful to remind yourself of  your accomplishments up to the point of your fatigue. This helps motivate entrepreneurs by identifying and categorizing attainable and realistic goals in comparison to goals that might take a little longer to accomplish and are better off as long-term ambitions.  Tracking your progress is not an exercise that should be reserved solely for moments of demotivation. Instead, implement this practice at the very start of your business and do weekly or monthly checks to see how far you’ve come and how much farther you have to go. This tangible tool will motivate you, on a regular basis, to work hard in order to see your business attain and surpass each level of success you envision for your company.

Reflect on the beginning

Why did you want to become an entrepreneur? Some individuals only have to recall a single experience whereby sitting at a cubicle at a dead-end job, with a boss who was not interested in accelerating the company while simultaneously suppressing the ideas of employees, posed a far greater challenge. Reflecting on previous experiences of “occupational prison” can jolt you back into your purpose and motivate you to keep going. Other individuals initially begin their entrepreneurial pursuit in the hopes that they can give their families better lives. If that was your starting point, talk to your loved ones and rediscover what their goals and aspirations are. Then, ask yourself if your contribution to their goals and dreams will be fulfilled working for yourself or working for someone else. The idea here is simple: when you reconnect with your origin stories, you can reconnect with the motivation that initially allowed you to start a business in the first place.

Join Networking groups

Mingling with likeminded people is perhaps one of the easiest ways to stay motivated as a business owner. Stepping away from your computer screen to listen and share ideas with others, sparks your own creativity and forces you to think about where your business is currently, and how you can make it better. Further, the sharing of similar experiences reassures you that a lack of motivation is a part of the discourse of entrepreneurship. Your peers have been through and may be going through the same things and you may benefit from their coping strategies. Socializing with a group of successful people who had the courage to stand alone and start a business can give you the mental push you need to move forward with confidence.

Make positive affirmations a part of everyday discourse

In business, you get out what you put in. Feed your mind with positive affirmations daily. It may sound silly, but it works. Some entrepreneurs have mantras that they recite on a daily basis. Others keep inspirational words in a frame on their desk as a screensaver on their computer. Whether you say these things out loud to yourself, write them down daily, or read them in silence, they are healthy for your mind and motivation. The more positive you are about your business, the less the negative shortcomings will affect you. They will occur, but their impact will motivate rather than discourage you.

If you’ve been feeling demotivated lately, try one or a combination of these methods and see how your behaviour changes. Share some of your motivation tactics below to encourage fellow readers.

Which Comes First: Happiness Or Success?

We all know the paradox of the chicken and the egg—historically, one must have preceded the other. Drawing on Darwin’s theory of evolution, we can surmise that the familiar chicken must have evolved in phases, first from reptile to bird through natural selection, and then from wild pheasant to domesticated fowl through artificial selection. So the first “chicken” probably hatched from an egg laid by a pheasant-like animal that wasn’t quite a chicken. But then, what distinguishes a chicken from a not-quite-chicken? It’s all very complicated.

Happiness and success are also strongly correlated, and at first glance, the question of which occurs first would seem to pose a similar intellectual challenge. In fact, much academic literature supports the presence of a causal relationship that may seem counter-intuitive: happiness promotes success, but success doesn’t necessarily promote happiness.

Why is this? And what are the implications of this relationship for the way we organize our personal and professional lives?

The evidence

 

In his bestseller The Happiness Advantage and in his popular 2011 TED Talk, positive psychology expert Shawn Achor draws on his own extensive research—including case studies at Harvard University and in the private sector—to argue that happiness is a catalyst for success in both academic and professional endeavours. He also alludes to a growing body of knowledge in the fields of neuroscience and positive psychology that buttress this conclusion.

An explanation Achor offers for the failure of measurable success to consistently induce happiness, is the problem of moving goalposts. Once we reach a particular goal, we tend to immediately adopt a more ambitious one. While goal-setting and ambition are generally desirable traits, aspirations can become unhealthy if we view them from a glass-half-empty perspective, don’t take time to acknowledge our achievements, and constantly berate ourselves over a perceived failure to attain “real” success. To paraphrase Achor, by framing happiness as a product of success, we indefinitely push both happiness and success beyond our cognitive horizon. And in turn, the absence of life satisfaction here and now can actually hamper our future prospects.

Tips for boosting your day-to-day positivity

•  Show gratitude to the people who contribute meaningfully to your life, including colleagues, friends, and loved ones. Reflect on your accomplishments with pride, and  take time (3-5 minutes) to actively appreciate the positives. Try making a daily journal entry of three things for which you are grateful. Over time, this exercise will train your mind to seek out opportunities rather than dwell on hazards.

•  Keep calm and manage your schedule so as to mitigate stress. Chip away at long-term projects incrementally to avoid procrastination-induced deadline anxiety. Focus on conserving energy throughout the workday, so that you keep some in reserve for recreational activities, quality time with friends and family, and hobbies while you’re away from the office. When stress shows up (and it occasionally will), embrace the challenge and think about how great you’ll feel once you’ve conquered it.

•  Be kind to others. This is a win-win: agents and recipients of compassion both tend to experience higher levels of life satisfaction. Random acts of kindness, which could be as simple as sending a brief e-mail to show appreciation for the efforts of an employee or co-worker, can make an enduring beneficial impact on the culture of your workplace.

•  Clear your head. Sometimes in order to refocus, we need to temporarily un-focus. If you experience a feeling of stagnation at work, try stepping away for a while and enjoying a pleasurable activity. Upon your return, you may be pleasantly surprised by the ease with which your work flows, and by the new insights and creativity your mind generates.

•  Eat healthy, balanced meals and allocate enough time for them that you avoid constantly “eating on the run”. Feelings of burnout, irritability, and energy lapses are often at least partly attributable to inadequate nutrition.

How to Keep (For Real) Your Professional New Year’s Resolutions

The standard tale of the unfulfilled new year’s resolution—an ambitious goal that one articulates, commits to, and promptly abandons—has become a cultural cliché in our society. In fact, many fitness professionals joke that January is the busiest month of the year at the gym, whereas February usually brings a normal volume of customers. Regardless of the area in which we see room for self-improvement, thinking of a new year’s resolution is one thing; actually following through is another.

What is true of personal goals is equally true of professional ones—setting a work-related resolution is easy, but actually fulfilling our ambitions requires commitment, perseverance, and consistency.

Friends and colleagues can hold you accountable.

“Will power” needn’t merely be a matter of individual steel and grit; you can enlist the help of others

to hold you accountable for your commitments. If your goal is to keep yourself in better physical shape this year, try joining a running group or scheduling exercise sessions with a friend. If you have particular professional ambitions—such as finishing a project ahead of a fixed deadline—announce them to your colleagues, staff, and anyone else who will listen. Although most people won’t go out of their way to remind you of your shortcomings, the desire to avoid the shame of breaking a public promise can be a powerful motivator.

Set manageable targets.

If you have an ambitious, long-term goal, you may find yourself daunted by the thought of what you need to do in order to reach the finish line, and the massive amount of effort and commitment involved. Instead of approaching a challenge this way, you may instead find it helpful to identify intermediate landmarks.

For instance, if your office is disorganized and you’d like to rectify that, don’t allow the scariness of tidying up an entire room to overwhelm you; aim to keep a corner of your desk clear of clutter, then another corner, etc.

Create a roadmap for yourself, including a clear understanding of the process involved in reaching your final goal, and reward yourself as you surpass each milestone. Of course, you can expect that some days will be easier than others, but remember that even slight progress toward your desired outcome is better than none.

Foster new habits.

As human beings, we all tend to be creatures of habit. This partly explains why committing to a new year’s resolution is so difficult; unless we continue a particular activity long enough to cultivate a new habit, we easily slip back into familiar, comfortable patterns of behaviour. Our habits are like molds that shape our personal characteristics and abilities, and it takes time and dedication to restructure those molds. But fortunately, it can be done.

In the quest to develop new habits, planning and intentionality are valuable allies. Establish your intentions, write them down, and commit them to memory. To help manage your time, set temporal boundaries for yourself—for instance, “I will check my e-mail inbox at 11:00 a.m., but no sooner, and I will finish with that task by 11:20.” Personally, I find it helpful to work in segments of 20-30 minutes, and time myself with a stopwatch.

Don’t let a slight shortfall deter you.

Even after an honest effort, you may find that you’ve fallen short of your new year’s resolution. But don’t let that disappointment dissuade you from setting ambitious goals and pursuing the professional success you desire. Even if you don’t quite attain your goals this time, you will learn valuable lessons that will help you in your next attempt.

Can Meditation Help You Leave Stress Behind?

At some point in your life, you may have asked yourself the question “Should I take up meditation?” There really is no right or wrong answer. For many people, meditation is an effective stress reliever and aid to productivity, concentration, and personal contentment. Others, having attempted meditation, still fail to see what all the hype is about. The only way to find out which camp you fall into is to give it a try.

Meditation is a skill.

Like all skills, it can be acquired, cultivated, and eventually more-or-less mastered. But you won’t become an expert overnight. Finally, as with all other skills, consistency and discipline are key: your progress is more likely to be noticeable and beneficial if you practice diligently.

The goal is to release tension, and quiet your mind.

If you’ve seen the second film in the Star Wars series, The Empire Strikes Back, you will recall the Millennium Falcon’s perilous voyage through an asteroid field, with Imperial fighters hot on its tail. Commander Han Solo and his passengers manage to evade their pursuers and navigate a slew of hurtling boulders suspended in the vacuum of space, only to find themselves engulfed inside a giant carnivorous worm disguised as a cave.

The asteroid field is analogous to an overloaded mind, deluged with thoughts, distractions, and stressors, and generally unable to function at its full capacity. Busy people are often haunted by the spectre of opportunity costs—the notion that they could or should be doing something more productive at this very moment, and the irritation of knowing that, try as they might, they simply can’t perform five complex tasks at once. If you’ve experienced these feelings, you know how challenging it can be to escape the mental asteroid field, and regain your focus and composure. An effective round of meditation can help to quiet your mind by redirecting your attention toward a single objective.

Start with a simple breathing meditation.

Begin by finding a relatively quiet space, and seat yourself comfortably in a balanced position, with your back straight but not rigid. A straight spine, with your chin facing forward rather than drooping down, is important in order to avoiding lethargy or sluggishness during and after a meditation session.

Next, close your eyes. Search out tense areas of your body with your mind, and give them permission to relax. Direct your focus toward your breathing. Inhale deeply through your nose and exhale fully, imagining all the while that the air entering your respiratory tract is cool, pure, relaxing fuel, while the air that exits your body is hot, tension-filled exhaust. I find it helpful to pretend that oxygen is filling my body all the way up to the peak of my forehead. I then release 100% of the breath stored within me, all the way down to the pit of my stomach.

 Feel the sensation in your nostrils as air flows in and out. Concentrate on this as you relax, and gradually settle into a natural, comfortable respiratory pattern. An array of thoughts will probably enter your mind at this stage; this is perfectly normal. Gently direct your attention back toward your lungs and nostrils, and resist the temptation of allowing your mind to wander far off course. Continue this exercise for about 10 minutes, or until your focus settles singularly on your breathing, your brain quietens, and you feel ready to resume your day.

Potential benefits.

Meditation yields different results for different people. If you commit to a 10- to 15-minute session daily, you may find that your overall stress level declines, your concentration improves, and your relations with others become smoother and more amicable. Over the long term, diminished stress and strife and greater personal contentment can promote improved physical health and career longevity too. In any event, there is no harm in trying.

How to Acquire a New Skill

We are blessed to live in an extraordinary epoch of human history. At our fingertips is a repository of information (the internet) that most of our ancestors could scarcely have imagined. On the other hand, ours in an era in which the aptitudes demanded by employers and businesses is in near-constant flux. The ability to adapt and acquire new skills is a necessity for anyone who aspires to get ahead in the modern economy.

But the benefits of acquiring a new skill extend far beyond the professional realm. By picking up a new hobby, learning a new language, or mastering a new technique, you can broaden your social circle and increase your understanding of the world. You may even stand a better chance of avoiding dementia later in life.

At first, the task of learning something new will often seem daunting. However, if you approach the challenge the right way, the process needn’t be all that complicated.

•  Break it down.

This is one of the most important pieces of advice for anyone who faces a seemingly enormous endeavour. Many big projects comprise a series of smaller, discrete components, each of which may be completed with relative ease.

•  Baby steps.

This point flows naturally from the last. Once you have deconstructed a major endeavour into a series of constituent parts, set a reasonable pace for yourself as you work toward completing each one. If your object is to learn a foreign language, or how to encode computer software, limit yourself to a lesson or two every day. Don’t concern yourself too much with the destination; focus instead on the process, and on mastering the specific baby step you’re taking right now.

•  Modeling.

Can you think of a person who excels at the skill you’re attempting to cultivate? What does that individual do very well? What are her habits? How did she get so good?

The practice of inheriting aptitudes by observation and emulation, also known as modeling, is a pattern of behaviour common to both humans and animals. Children practice a form of modeling instinctively when they learn to speak, read, write, and recognize important features of their environment. When striving to gain a new skill, it helps to think like a child (where modeling is concerned, at least).

•  Be patient.

Few skills can be acquired overnight, and everyone learns at her own pace. By placing undue pressure on yourself to develop a skill rapidly, you will risk sapping the fun out of the activity. This is counterproductive; your brain won’t build new neural pathways as effectively if you allow yourself to become frustrated or distracted by “If only” thoughts. Take your time, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes in the course of learning.

•  Be disciplined.

Set aside a certain amount of time each day for the acquisition of the desired skill. Make a habit of it, and stick to the plan. Even if you can spare no more than ten minutes per day for the activity in question, you will find that your progress, albeit slow, will be positive and fairly constant. However, if you neglect to exercise the proper mental (or physical) muscles for a while, rust will start to form, and you may experience setbacks in the learning process.

•  Look forward, and occasionally...back.

While it’s obviously important to have a goal in mind and “keep your eyes on the prize,” it can be very gratifying to occasionally reflect on the progress you’ve made so far. This can be particularly heartening in those moments when you feel you’re struggling. After all, there’s little point in giving up if you’re already halfway to your goal.

Are Tradeshows Worth the Investment?

It's a safe bet that no matter what type of industry you're in there will be at least one tradeshow that will be applicable for your business. The question then becomes do you attend as a "visitor" or a "vendor"?

Obviously, being a visitor will be less costly and still give you the opportunity to network but it might not be a productive as being a vendor with a booth. Would that kind of investment be worth the effort? Here are some tips to help you focus on determining if your tradeshow sales efforts will provide a viable return on your investment.

The first step is to factor in all of your costs and expenses. These would include:

Floor space costs: What will you be charged by the organizers for booth space?

Exhibit costs: If this is your first time at a trade show you'll be building a booth from scratch. How much that will cost depends on the size and design elements.

Labour costs: When you bring your booth to the tradeshow there may be union workers standing by to assemble it or you may require your own staff for set up/take down.

Marketing: You need to advertise in trade magazines and the tradeshow catalog to let visitors know where your booth will be, as well as having marketing collateral at your booth.

Giveaways: What will you give away at your booth? Every visitor should leave with something that has your company logo, web address and contact info.

Booth hosts: Will you and your employees be manning the booth or will you have to hire local hosts? Or both?

Travel and entertaining: It's going to cost you something to get to the tradeshow, plus added costs for accommodations and food. You'll also want to include money for entertaining: drinks and meals for potential clients.

Contingency: On top of all those costs add another 15% to 25% to your budget as a contingency line item in case of extra expenses, which there will always be!

Set Your Goals

Now that you know what your hard costs are, what are your goals for the trade show? Do you need to land a certain amount of new clients? Are you setting up pre-orders for products? If this is a consumer show and you'll be selling your product directly out of your booth, then you should have targets for each day. Whatever those numbers are, you have to be realistic. It might be hard to gauge if this is a new type of trade show, but if you're setting up a booth at something like Comic Con in San Diego then you know you're going to have a lot of foot traffic!

Once you have those goals set, make sure your booth staff is aware of those and check in every hour to make sure they're hitting those goals. If not, you might need to ramp up the promotions and get your staff out on the floor.

There are no guarantees with a tradeshow. However, if you've attended as a visitor in the past then you know what works and what doesn't. Put those principles to the test in your own campaign.

How to Use Failure to Your Advantage

The word "failure" has negative connotations. It is hard to think of anything positive when discussing failures. Yet, many business leaders will tell you that failure is not the end of the world, nor is it only negative. While a business failure certainly implies setback, it also leaves the door open for improvement, change and opportunity.

American business leaders have embraced the opportunities presented by failures while Canadians lag behind in this respect. The inability or unwillingness to compete is a common denominator of many Canadian business disasters. One of the first lessons to be learned from a business failure is not to cut back but, rather, to dive into the marketplace and compete with all your might. Learn from failure and allow it to be the catalyst that is your driving force. In California's Silicon Valley, business has embraced the concept of "failing well." You made good decisions but circumstances were beyond your control. If you are good at what you do, you'll eventually succeed. In Canada, the opposite is more common. If your business attempt failed, you'll have a very tough time securing capital for another venture.

Failure in business can be one of your greatest teachers. Successful corporate leaders have learned from their mistakes and impart that wisdom to their employees as well. By sharing this wisdom with one's staff, it carries the message that even the boss is not perfect. Moreover, it encourages staff to also learn from their mistakes. Every successful mega-company started small and did not achieve greatness overnight. When your staff appreciates the growing pains of a company, they can become part of the driving force to continue propelling the business forward.

This doesn't mean that one should create a culture that focuses on failure. Just the opposite is true. A business environment should strive for success. Ultimately, that is the goal that we wish to achieve. However, every successful path has setbacks and failures. Learn to appreciate that none of us is perfect and we can learn something new everyday. The only way to avoid failure is to stop trying to achieve. Use every setback to your advantage and ultimately you will win.

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Do I Need a Business Plan?

A business plan sounds like a complex study. In some cases, it may be. But, the question is asked if every business truly requires a business plan?

The answer to that question is "yes", more often than not. A viable business, rather small or large, should make use of a well-designed business plan at some point in time.

Starting at the time when the business is still but an idea, a business plan is an excellent way to organize ideas. It allows you to create a filing system in which the various cogs and wheels begin to come together into a working machine. Long before you begin actually getting the idea off the ground, your business plan allows you to draw a picture of your idea – so to speak – and stand back to take a look if there are any mistakes or problems. Also, none of us are perfect. Especially if we are dealing with a complex idea such as a new business, it is best to have others review our concepts. Your business plan is an excellent way to allow others to help you develop your thoughts and use their feedback to improve what you have begun.

As your business begins taking shape, you will need the business plan to help interest possible investors. Your bank may wish to see the plan when you begin discussing credit with them. Perhaps you have decided to take in a partner. The business plan will be dissected at your meeting. The business plan is the blueprint of your business. It should accurately describe the concept. It will discuss the goals, milestones, financing, cash flow, staffing, and virtually every aspect of your business. It is the theoretical side of the entity. Also, a good business plan should be updated as the business begins operating, especially in relation to financial projections.

Invest the time to write a proper business plan. It is an investment that will have a guaranteed positive return.

Here is some business plan software to get you started.

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