How to stay motivated when running your business

A very wise old person once said “If you don’t know where you are heading, how do you know when you’ve got there?”

Sounds obvious doesn’t it…but, it’s something that’s so often overlooked. Since running Exceptional Thinking, I’ve met countless business owners who are not quite sure where their business is heading. Sure, most of them would like more clients or more money, but I’m talking about longer-term goals - where do they see the business in a year’s time; five year’s time?

Many of these business owners feel de-motivated by their business and some of them are even thinking about giving it up and closing the business down. Others don’t want to give the business up, but just find that they are just going through the motions each day with no real purpose for the business. Setting a big long-term goal can often help you re-focus and get you excited about running the business again.

Now, like you, I’ve been to the workshops and the networking events where I’ve been told to write down where I want to take the business, but often I’ve come away from there, with good intentions, meaning to do it, but never quite getting around to it, or sometimes I’ve half heartedly written something down at the event, but never really quite meant it.

But, there’s lots of good evidence to say that if you set goals, focus on what you want to achieve and write them down, chances are you’ll achieve them. That’s why start-ups are 90% likely to survive the first 18 months of business if they’ve written a business plan.

About six months after starting Exceptional Thinking, having written a business plan, I found that I’d achieved everything I set out to do in a much shorter space of time than I’d thought possible, and I was left floundering for a while because I didn’t have a goal for the business.

So, I decided to re-focus where I wanted to be and remember looking back on my business plan to check what I’d written in there. I was astounded to find that the numbers in my cashflow (which I’d more or less made up and wildly exaggerated) were bang on to the money in my bank account – the power of focus!

Now, am I suggesting that you go out tomorrow and write a business plan? Not at all – business plans absolutely have a purpose, but are mostly only needed if you’re looking to get finance or feel that your business needs to completely re-focus on what’s going on both on the inside and on the outside.

What I am suggesting though is that you spend some time (perhaps while you’re waiting for a meeting; sat on a train or out walking the dog) really thinking about where you want your business to be in the future – where do you see it in ten year’s time?

You see, once you have a goal in place that you really believe in and you are determined to achieve, the chances are so much greater that you will.

You’ll end up being more focused in your business, love coming into work and want to really drive it forward.

Three tips to help you write your goals:

1. It’s easy to come up with a goal that you are likely to achieve in your business anyway (for instance, if you were just about to finish your website, you could write a goal saying “finish my website”) – try to stretch your business further than that into something you would like to do, but had maybe written off as being impossible to achieve. Remember your goal is for 10 years time, not for the immediate future.

2. Try not to put blocks in the way of writing your goals – it’s sometimes easy to say “I can’t do that because…” Instead, imagine you’ve got a magic wand and you’ve got the money, staff, resources and whatever else you need to achieve your dream.

3. Work backwards – write your 10 year goal for your business, then write where you need to be in 5 years to achieve this goal, and then where you need to be in 3 years, 1 year and 6 months from now in order to help you achieve it.

Exceptional Thinking can be contacted on 0845 644 9371 or email on info@exceptionalthinking.co.uk

How to stay motivated when running your business - To learn more about this author, visit Helen Dowling's Website.

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