How does your motivation impact your business?
It’s been tough this last 18 months, and sometimes all we crave is a duvet day. Can you relate? Have you wanted to switch off your laptop, silence your phone, and disappear?
As business owners, it’s not that easy to walk away. You are the start, middle, and continuation of your work. I’m sure many of you had to take a sick day at one point or another when employed, but as an entrepreneur, you have to keep going through any challenge – sickness or otherwise.
According to the Health and Safety Executive, stress, depression, or anxiety accounted for 17.9 million days lost due to work-related ill health. Taking a day off due to illness as a solopreneur has a significant impact on business. How many of you power through those illnesses, so your work doesn’t suffer? How many of you have been impacted by Covid?
Starting and running your own business can be a stressful affair. You are accountable for every aspect of your company, from sales and marketing to stock and accounts. Staying healthy, physically and mentally, is a full-time job in itself! This is where motivation plays its part.
You will hear me talk about finding the right balance all the time. I work incredibly hard to bring the Woman Who Achieves Awards and Academy to my community, including everything I do behind the scenes. But you will also see me visiting Coventry City Football Club for match days, spending time with my friends, walking my dog, and taking holidays to recharge my batteries.
The work/life balance is a hot topic on social media and in the news, and rightly so. Without that balance, you will never achieve your personal and professional goals.
Why is motivation so important?
In the same way that illness impacts your business, so too does loneliness. You need to be focused, determined, resilient, and disciplined, but as a solopreneur, you have no one to keep you accountable.
Staying motivated gives you the strength and strategies to navigate the choppy waters of entrepreneurship.
Motivation is key to coping with your ever-changing environment and the challenges you face – and we are all fully aware of how quickly life can change! Those changes need to be corrected or faced head-on, and that’s where motivation becomes a powerful resource.
How can you stay motivated as a business owner?
Motivation is vital for goal setting, creativity, and developing your talents and skills as a woman in business. Here are my favourite motivational tools:
Any entrepreneur should be able to tell you the reason they ventured into becoming a small business owner. Knowing and understanding your WHY is key to running a successful enterprise and essential for motivation.
Remembering your WHY enables you to see your business as a whole and stay focused. It lets you make wise choices because you understand and appreciate the story behind your brand.
Celebrate the small wins
You may have a big goal that you’re striving for, but to remain motivated, you must celebrate the smaller wins.
“The great victory, which appears so simple today, was the result of a series of small victories that went unnoticed.” Paulo Coelho
Acknowledging the smaller steps gives you the drive and determination to keep going. The more you celebrate, the more connected you become to your venture and feel better about yourself.
Why not start a scrapbook where you can keep a log of all your wins. Fill it with the testimonials you receive, photographs from events you attended like the Woman Who Achieves Awards, or a list of publications you have written. Make it personal and refer to it often.
Tracking small wins motivates you to achieve the bigger ones.
Don’t forget to reward yourself too. It might be a coffee with friends, new stationery, or a day at the seaside. Your choice of reward is up to you.
Find your community
When I founded Woman Who, it was so I could bring together women in business and build a strong community. The friendships, collaborations, and networking opportunities that have developed warm my heart.
As a solopreneur, it’s far too easy to get sucked into isolation, but finding a community of like-minded women who understand the necessary hard work can be life-changing.
The Woman Who Achieves Academy is a place to learn, feel supported, and grow. It’s a place to get visible through opportunities created especially for you, to achieve and be the best you can be in your business, to power up your brand, get visible, and learn to be an inspirational keynote speaker.
I wanted to create a community that fast-tracked group learning, provided valuable mentoring and support to help you power up your brand, grow yourself, your business, and get visible.
“Joining The Woman Who Achieves Academy has been, by far, the best business decision I made for a very long time! The Academy is home to a motivated group of business women, ready to support each other, who bring their particular skills and knowledge to the group to benefit the community. Sandra is everything you’d expect: a wonderful business role model for us all, and a genuinely caring and warm human being, who shares her knowledge and ideas for our betterment.
In short, The Woman Who Achieves Academy is a safe place for the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and even problems, and it also has a social aspect which is much needed right now, in the Autumn of 2020! I’d wholeheartedly recommend you join us!” Andrea de Gabriel, Portrait Photography
Running a business is tough, but it also reaps incredible rewards. Hopefully, by using these motivational tools, you will feel more connected and inspired in your business.
I would love to hear more about the motivational tools and techniques you use in your business, so feel free to join the Woman Who Achieves Facebook Group and tell me.
What next?
Being part of a large membership or academy is the perfect way to stay motivated or reach out for support when that motivation wobbles. As I mentioned at the start of this post, we all have those days when we crave a duvet day. While it’s natural to feel this way occasionally, it’s also valuable to know you have an entire community willing and able to help you through.
If you’re interested in joining the growing community of businesswomen, you can join the Academy here or find out more here.
