Do you want to enhance motivation for you and your team? There are all sorts of different things that contribute to entrepreneurial success in a range of different ways. A range of different degrees – including a broad selection of highly specific technical considerations.
These will be particular to your business and the industry you’re operating within.
But while handling things like supply chains and ensuring that you have the right projections and market research at hand.
Motivation will ensure that you are conducting your professional operations as smoothly and effectively as possible is important.
Therefore, some of the most important determinants of entrepreneurial success have to do with how you manage your own mindset, attitude, time, and temperament.
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What is Motivation?
“Motivation” is a term used to describe a number of different things. For example, being driven, focused, interested, and committed.
In an entrepreneurial context, being highly motivated means that you expect to be more resilient against challenges and stumbling blocks. And you are also being more optimistic, creative, and consistent.
So, how can you enhance motivation as an entrepreneur?
Here are some inspiring suggestions to enhance your motivation today!
Make Your Team More Motivated by Facilitating and Fostering Connections
Fostering interconnectedness and a sense of community among your employees or team can massively increase the amount of motivation present in the entrepreneurial venture in general. It can affect your own sense of motivation and purpose directly as well.
With the assistance of a program such as Motivosity, it’s possible to significantly facilitate communication and networking among members of your team or business initiative. It helps to try and make everyone as friendly and as invested in the same goals and targets as possible.
But, what if you don’t have a permanent office location and a team of full-time employees?
This situation is more common if you are only working with freelancers or remote or part-time employees. As, by default, these people will tend to be less directly invested in the business.
Therefore they are less connected to you and anyone else who might be working on the same projects.
A greater sense of connection between team members can significantly improve synergy between individuals.
It can increase efficiency and clarity of purpose on professional projects and can lead to a more motivated and upbeat atmosphere in general.
Ensure That You Do What You Find Meaningful to Enhance Motivation
Perhaps the most important point for anyone striving to increase their motivation as an entrepreneur is to pursue things that seem meaningful.
While every entrepreneur needs to be attentive to market demand and the changing nature of customer expectations, simply chasing every trend in order to try and capitalize on what seems like a potentially profitable niche this week, can easily lead to a sense of purposelessness and cynicism within the business.
But if you are directly taking steps to structure the business in a way that feels authentically meaningful to you, you can turn up to work each day believing in the value of what you are trying to do.
Hence, your motivation will be innately greater. The odds are much better that you will be able to consistently develop your business in a positive and effective manner.
A big part of marketing a business is getting prospective customers to believe in the product or service you are offering. If you don’t believe in it yourself, the only two options are to be insincere and exploitative on the one hand or to be ineffective on the other hand.
You should maintain a good sense of what you want your business to be, and what kind of things you want to do with it. Then strive diligently to maintain that sense of meaning over time.
Set Small Targets to Work Towards on a Regular Basis
Having certain goals and targets in place is a great way of keeping yourself motivated, and of giving yourself a relatively clear sense of what it is you are working towards at any given time.
Goals that are highly ambitious, and are set at some point in the future, can “backfire” and reduce motivation rather than boost it.
Largely, because these sorts of ambitious goals tend not to give much positive feedback along the way. These goals can cause feelings of dissatisfaction and underperformance until achieved.
While it is important to have a big picture sense of the direction you want to head in, setting yourself small targets to work towards on a regular basis can be a very good idea. It is a means of setting up achievable milestones that feel within reach. Those offer direct positive feedback on a routine basis.
The specific nature of these small targets can vary, ranging from things like completing a phase of a new project launch every couple of weeks, to sending out a certain number of marketing emails or newsletters each week.
Consider things like a leaderboard, or small prizes in order to help heighten the sense of accomplishment and enhance motivation.
Ensure That You Take Adequate Care of Your Personal Well-Being
At first glance, personal well-being may seem far away from entrepreneurial success with motivation. Remember, It’s the same “you” that’s working on your business and is living out the rest of your life as well.
Exhaustion will only take away your motivation.
Generally speaking, taking steps to ensure that you’re getting enough restful sleep each night, while also keeping yourself well-fed, and nurturing meaningful interpersonal relationships with your loved ones, will put you in a much more positive and optimistic mindset. This will enhance motivation in your entrepreneurial life.
Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs put themselves in essentially the opposite situation – and lose all balance in their lives as well. All for the sake of pursuing more and more progress within their businesses.
This, however, has the capacity to lead to a range of personal problems including exhaustion and burnout.
When taking the best care of your personal well-being, you will be actively developing and supporting these pillars of motivation.
There are, of course, other benefits for your entrepreneurial life of taking care of your personal well-being, too. You are likely to be significantly more “on the ball”.
More focused, more creative, and more energized to do your best work will enhance motivation.
Hence, if you are taking care of your well-being and are safeguarding a proper sense of balance in your life.
Be Mindful About Structuring Your Workspace to Enhance Motivation
The layout of your working environment is a major contributing factor to how motivated you feel.
If your “office” is a gloomy and disorganized place, you will likely not feel very driven, motivated, or “professional”. And this will naturally tend to result in less professional confidence, lower overall quality of work, and reduced productivity.
With many entrepreneurs working out of their homes, this becomes an even more negative and pressing issue. Home offices are not motivating to most.
For example, the presence of colleagues and managers to ensure that you stay on task, instead of allowing your attention to drift, and causing you to spend hours on social media instead.
As an entrepreneur, therefore, you need to be extra mindful about structuring your workspace to enhance motivation.
For starters, ensure that it is as tidy and well organized as possible. Then, make sure that the office furniture you’re using helps to put you into the right state of mind. You might even want to consider motivational posters and ornaments to enhance the effect of motivation.
Play to your Personal Strengths and Interests to Enhance Motivation
Playing to your personal strength and interests within the context of your business can significantly boost your motivation. It aligns your daily efforts with things that you already like, and are good at.
This means getting more comfortable with the idea of outsourcing elements of your business that aren’t your area of competence. For example, contacting a managed IT solutions company to handle web-related matters.
Your Take on Enhanced Motivation
How are you enhancing motivation for yourself and your team? I’d love to know more in the comments below!
She has 30+ years of experience in marketing/advertising with 12 years of experience in content marketing, social media, blogging, and SEO.
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Hey Lisa,
You are spot on with “playing to your strengths”. My entire business started off just by doing that (although I didn’t know how to say it so eloquently).
It’s been 18 years since I’ve been on my own — a single-person business, doing everything by the thread. But that’s the way I always liked it.
For the first few years, there was no room for “lack of motivation” since I had to prove myself, I had bills to pay, and I was really getting too far off the “Job market”. The next few years, let’s just say the moment kept pushing me ahead (regardless of what I think….
Strange, but it wasn’t until recent times that I am now more motivated to create products, get off the parallel hamster wheel of “freelancing/agency” thing, and to really “help and connect”.
As for enhanced motivation? It’s ever so elusive, moody, and fidgety. I am still trying to find it somewhere within me.
Ash
Hi Lisa,
Great article! As an entrepreneur myself, I constantly struggle with finding motivation. The tips you shared will definitely help me remain motivated, and allow me to help my team as well. I also agree that setting small targets will be a better way and will give a more fulfilling sense to the whole team, but I often struggle with this. Do you have any tips that can help me with over-expecting? If you do have some insights, do let me know.
Hi John, thank you. Set your expectations a little lower or in small doses? I think over-expecting BIG results could set you back. I know that used to happen to me. Now I know not every day will be full of upsells and greater traffic. Business is like life, with its ups and downs but you do want to strive for more of the ups for sure! I hope that helps you, John! For example, set a goal to leave 5 comments a day on blog posts. Don’t look at the big picture of doing it for a month or a year. Otherwise, you would never get started.