Life often throws fast balls and curve balls at us to see how we will handle them. In this economy most small business owners are faced with tough times, maybe their business has started to suffer lose of revenue and new opportunities seem bleak. The well’s that we were relying on for business and income have started to dry up. Referrals have started to drop off and we can not afford to pursue typical types of advertising, especially when we have not done them before and have no idea what kind of results to expect.
These tougher times often reveal two types of people.
First, those that quit and give up! These type of people can not see the light at the end of the tunnel, they can not see anything but the problems or stresses immediately in-front of them. Instead of asking what can I learn from this or what can I do to improve my situation and make this work in my favor, they only complain, get frustrated and throw their goals and dreams down the drain.
Second, those that see new opportunities and possibilities for the future of their business! These type of people, thrive in the moments that threaten their goals and dreams. They look past the problems and stresses and look for those things that will make the tougher times more successful. For them it is as thought some one has dared them to succeed, even when everyone is failing and when it looks to everyone else like they are failing.
What can be done? How can we change form being part of the first type and focus more on becoming part of the second type of people? And if we are already one of those in the second group, then what can be done to maintain that and find even more opportunities?
I have recently discovered 4 keys that have helped me maintain my focus and find power and motivation in this economy, even when things are hard and times are tough.
You started your business for a reason, there was something, some purpose that drove you to start your business way back in the beginning. The problem that I have found is that we forget what those purposes were. We get so caught up in the day to day grind that makes our business run and survive that we start to lose sight of those dreams and goals that were made up of our purpose for starting our business. Its time to either revisit those purposes or create new ones!
- Surround yourself with people that have the same purpose or goals
For example, I talk to my wife about my goals and dreams, we dream together. I talk to her about the potentials and opportunities of my business and what they mean for us. She is my biggest supporter!
- Find discontent with your current situation
If you are content, or so frustrated that you can not focus on what you need to do to change things then you will find that you wont change anything. Except for the level of your stress. You need to get to a place where you ‘HATE’ your current situation and are willing to do whatever it takes to change it. I do not like the word hate, but it probably does a really good job of explaining the feelings that you need before you are really going to do anything about it.
- Search for a goal that excites you
If you are not excited or can not find anything about your business that excites you then you should consider doing something else! But if there is anything that you can find that will help you become more excited about what you do, then find a goal that will allow you to work towards your excitement everyday.
For example, I love to blog! Writing blog post like this one and others, really excites me! I have a goal to write one blog post a day. It is important to the growth of my business, and it is important to my readers. And most importantly it excites me to write something that could very well inspire or help someone achieve their dreams.
- Visualize the fruits of your goal
Your new goal whether it is daily, weekly or monthly, should bare some kind of visual fruits for you. You should be able to see the end result. You should be able to see the achievements as if they have been completed. See them in detail, see the effect they have on other aspects of your life. Feel the experience as if it has already been achieved.
- Put everything in!!
Once you know what you want and what you have to do to get it, do EVERYTHING that you can to make it a reality. Work harder, work longer, if you have distractions eliminate them! This does NOT MEAN that you ignore your family, it does not mean that you stay at the office every night until midnight. Everything in balance, if you neglect one aspect of your life to focus more on building another then you will quickly find an imbalance that will quickly burn you out. You will find that once you have fixed one problem another will be waiting. That is why I gave you the example before about how I talk to my wife about everything. We work it out together, we make it work together, and our family and marriage is happy and complete.
2. Eliminate Excuses
When you use excuses you are only justifying your failures or providing reasons why you should quit or give up. We all have busy lives we all experience problems and troubles, but when we start to make excuses for the reasons why we can’t do something then we are only excepting our failures. We are defeating ourselves, when we are the one person standing between our dreams and visions we can never expect to succeed.
Instead of focusing on the things that we can not do, or things that we do not want, we have to be focused on the goal and the things that we want to achieve, we need to constantly be focused on our PURPOSE.
There should not be any excuse that is more important then your reason for success. There should be nothing more important to you then your goals and dreams and living your life the way you want.
I have found that my blog, either personal or business has been a great way for me to focus on the positive, to clear my mind of all the negative thoughts that are trying to keep me from my dreams. It is a way to vent, and if it is done right you will find that you feel better, and the people that read your articles feel better! You are not the only on in the world with your problems.
My purpose is my family, my wife and daughter and the future of our family. If there was any excuse bigger then that, it might be said of me that I do not really love them. But because I do love them and know and understand my responsibility as the provider, they motivate me to succeed. There is nothing more important to me then my family! They are my purpose!
3. Develop Incentives
Anyone that has ever worked in Corporate America, knows and understands incentives. In my last J.O.B, I was a sales manager. I managed a team of 12 outbound phone sales reaps, and if you have ever had to spend 8 hours on the phone every day you know how important incentives really are. I learned really quick that the more I could empower my team to get on the phone and crank out their calls the more successful they felt and most of the time the results were outstanding.
It is one thing to give an incentive when the end result is achieved, but it is much more powerful to give incentives that motivate people to do the steps that get them to the end result.
For example: My team had to make at lest 80 dials a day and have a minimum of 2 hours talk time. Our job while on the phone was to pre-qualify sales leads. We were the beginning of a huge sales process for Business Management Software. Most of our dials were cold, meaning know one was expecting our call, we did not know the situation; like what type of software they were already using, and we surely did not know who we needed to talk to. Each call was like jumping into a cold, icy lake in the middle of a Canadian winter. No one was excited about that first leap, and we had to do it 80 times a day minimum. Just because it was a requirement was not enough for them to just willing jump in the icy cold lake, especially when you never know what is under the water, or if you are going to get past the gatekeeper (secretary)! So there were incentives like, the first rep to 50 dials gets to spin the wheel (the wheel had prizes like, money, time off, free lunch..etc). Another might be, the first rep to hit 2hrs of talk time gets to spin the wheel. And when someone was spinning the wheel, everyone stopped working and came to watch. That was a requirement, it was important that we did everything together, good or bad. Seeing someone else win something was sometimes enough of an incentive to get them excited about getting back on the phone. It made it more real, yeah we talk about getting to spin the wheel and win cool prizes, but it is always more real when they actually get to see it!
Find incentives for yourself! What can you do every day to help motivate yourself to complete your simple daily task? That is were it is most important, because when we do the daily grind, we will see results, but when we enjoy doing those daily task, we will find great accomplishment in the completion of every day even if we don’t make that new sale or finish our daily blog post. Being happy and enjoying what we do is more important then achieving the end result! If we can not be happy and enjoy what we do, then accomplishing that goal or achieving the dream will not be as sweet as we would have liked, simple because we are not happy!
4. Cultivate Determination
What does determination mean?
- firmness in purpose; resoluteness
- the controlling or deciding of somethings nature or outcome
- a tendency to move in a fixed direction
Control your own destiny, you have to decide what you want and how you are going to accomplish it, then you take action. And in that action you have to be determined that nothing is going to stop you from accomplishing your purpose and dreams.
The third definition, ‘a tendency to move in a fixed direction’, is so important! Think of it this way, I like to work out, I love to spend lots of time in the gym working on my physical appearance because it makes me feel good! I have this tendency however to do really good at getting to the gym everyday for weeks at lest 4-6 weeks, and then I for some reason with miss a day and that day turns into 2 and then 4 and then the next thing I know it has been 2 to 3 weeks sense I went to the gym. The really hard part about that is all the work I accomplished in those 4-6 weeks of hardcore workouts, has now been undone in the short 2-3 weeks of laziness.
We need our direction to be fixed, to never change! Lets say that after that 6 weeks of hardcore workouts I had reached the goal that I was wanting to accomplish, and then I stopped working out. What is going to happen? I am going to realize in 2 or 3 weeks that I have to start over, and my motivation to do that is going to be very low! I am probably going to be frustrated and my frustration will not motivate me it will stress me out and make me tired, I will have less energy to get up in the morning and go to the gym. Its not a good situation to be in.
It is the same with our business goals, if we stop doing those day to day task that get us to our end result then we will not continue to progress, we will either stay the same or slide backwards.
Be determined to reach your dreams no matter what and be determined to maintain your daily habits and patterns that helped you reach your goals.
REFUSE TO QUIT
Remember this quote, and put it on your wall, “When you see a successful business someone once made a courage’s decision!”
Now that you have the steps and the ideas of what you need to do to make your business or any aspect of your life a success, lets talk about IMPLEMENTATION.
What can you do today to put these steps into action? Sure you can jump on the phone, or start sending some emails, you can go out and bang on doors, but when you are frustrated and unmotivated those things are hard to do! Lets be honest, if those things were easy to do you would be doing them, if you enjoyed them you would do them as often as you could! So lets look for an alternative, something that you could do that would be beneficial and enjoyable. You want something that is going to take as little effort as possible and not cost you a tone of money.
My suggest is start BLOGGING!
Here is why, you need to start visualizing your goals and dreams, you need to start living as if you have already accomplished what you want. You need to write everything done, map out your plan and your goals, and you need people that will hold you accountable. Blogging will provide you with a platform that will give you a way to accomplish all of these things. Like I mentioned before, you are not the only person in the world with your problem, could you imagine what you could accomplish if you could build a community of people with the same goals and dreams and you used your blog to create a mastermind forum. A place to come together and share ideas and success!!!
There are other benefits to using a blog as a way to start motivating yourself to take action. It will become a free form of advertising for your business and you will see that people that would be your potential customers and clients will start to trust you. They will come to you for the problems that they have that your business can solve. Your blog will make it easy for them to trust you!
Blogging Strategy
It is important to always have a blogging strategy no matter what type of blog you are running or what your blogging objectives are. So I have prepared this simple strategy to help you get started with your blog, and this strategy will help you use the 4 steps talked about in this article to start motivating yourself to take action.
Week One;
Week focus – Step one, Find a Purpose
Article allotment – 4 minimum
Article 1
Back to the beginning, or back to the basics. Focus this article on the original ideas that you had when you started your business. What were your dreams and visions at the beginning? What did you want to accomplish when you started your business?
Article 2
Think about where you and your business are today and try to find those things that changed your vision or altered your results.
Article 3
Then recreate your vision, modify your vision or start reliving your original vision by telling the world about it!
Article 4
Write a summery of the weeks articles and the actions you took. Then prepare your audience for next weeks articles on step 2 ‘Eliminate Excuses’.
Week Two;
Week focus – Step two, Eliminate Excuses
Article allotment – 4 minimum
Article 1
Talk about all of the things that you see as excuses as to why you have not reached your goals. Talk about your failures up to your current situation and try to identify your excuses.
Article 2
Talk about the things that you are going to do to eliminate those excuses you have been using.
Article 3
Discuss how the excuses you have been using have effected other aspects of your life. i.e relationships, health, spirituality, family, mental condition…etc..
Article 4
Share your vision. How would it be if you could just snap your fingers and have everything that you dreamed. What would your life be like then?
Week Three;
Week focus – Step three Develop Incentives
Article allotment – 4 minimum
Article 1
Go over your daily task, talk about your business. What you do, and what you would like to do. If there is a service that you would like to start doing talk about it. Just describe your business and what you do.
Article 2
Talk about the things that you don’t like to do. If there is a service that you started offering but don’t like to do. If there is something about running the business that you do not like, talk about, and write about possible solutions to these problems.
Article 3
Find something that will motivate you everyday to make the changes you have talked about in Article 2. How are you going to reward yourself daily? If you have employees, how are you going to motivate them to work harder and smarter?
Article 4
Map out an incentive plan that will last however long you need it to until you reach your end results. Don’t forget about incentives for customer referrals and blog reader incentives.
Week Four;
Week focus – Step 4 Cultivate Determination
Article allotment – 4 minimum
Article 1
Write about the things that have changed from week one to now week four. What during those weeks has helped you become more determined?
Article 2
Write about your determination. Why are you more determined now? What about your purpose is causing you to become more determined?
Article 3
Discuss how you feel…How do you feel about the changes you have made? How do you feel about the progress you have made over the past 4 weeks…
Article 4
Write about the steps you are going to take starting week 5 to maintain your progress…Talk about your new blogging strategy, and talk about the next 6-12 month of your business.
The key to making this blogging option a success is that you write well. You do not need to be a scholar, but it is important that you write so that it is interesting to others. You want people to read it, you want people to be motivated by the things you write.
“If you want to succeed, learn to make adjustments to the way you do things and then try again.”
Best of luck to you and the future of your business!
Chris
August 2009 | Posted in 
