The most important goals you set for yourself as a startup entrepreneur will take time to achieve business stardom.
That's the ugly truth.
At some point, you are going to feel frustrated. Things won't always work at out well. I know this because I've started many startups in the past four years.
And the truth is this: It doesn't take a geeky person to succeed in a business, what it takes is a highly motivated person. If you aren't motivated, you won't be moved to carry the startup where it should go.
Enthusiasm is the fuel of any business. With motivation you aren't depressed when your stats are discouraging, you aren't paranoid when clients don't come, and you aren't moved by the fact that you don't have any business connections.
Am I saying that I was never discouraged or depressed when I started some of my businesses? No. But the difference between those who close business and those who stay is that the latter picked himself up no matter how many times he fell.
I did that a lot of times. You can too, and I can show you how I did mine.
Here are five ways to I used to stay highly motivated and keep going while running my startups. Firstly:
1. Know and Understand Your W.H.Y.
For you to be a successful startup entrepreneur, the number one trait you'll need to develop in your journey as a startup founder is perseverance. And the only way to develop that is to understand why you're in business in the first place.
It's said that when purpose isn't known -- in life or business -- abuse is inevitable.
What's your WHY?
German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche once said, 'He who has a "WHY" can endure any HOW.' Knowing your why is simply knowing the core reasons why you want to achieve the goals you've set out to accomplish.
When you know the core reasons that propelled you into starting a startup, they'll help guide and push you forward even when the zeal to stand and move forward isn't there.
The market may be unfavorable, clients not forthcoming, and lots of negative things may happen along with the aforementioned points, but when you understand why that startup is alive, and why you're the founder and not someone else, when you do, that's when giving up dies as an option.
Research and find out your WHY for starting that business. I always find out what my WHY is. Because I know if I start without it, I'd crash like the rest of the 90% businesses that fail in their first year.
2. Immerse yourself with Inspiring and Uplifting Materials.
Reading biographies and books of successful entrepreneurs and business people can be an excellent source of inspiration and motivation for the rookie startup owner. They helped keep me in check in no small way.
The beauty of inspiring yourself through their biographies and books is to learn what not to do and how to take advantage of unpleasant situations, make tough business decisions and leverage opportunities that others don't see.
When you get updated that much, you'd find that when things around your startup comes to demotivate you, a lot of these men and women's strategies to staying motivated will instantly spring up from within to keep you motivated.
That's exactly what happened to me when I newly started creating businesses.
I was always giving up easily on the startups. It was such a pathetic sight. But I moved passed that by feeding regularly on some of my business mentors' biographies, inspiring books, and their motivational quotes.
That period of starting and closing businesses weren't funny, but by studying these mentors, I found a way to stick to my struggling startup no matter how uphill and downhill the journey got.
3. Make your Startup Flexible From Inception.
There's always a big difference between multi million/billion businesses and small businesses. The former is rigid and can sustain in their journey while the latter can't have rigidity because they're still new in the market.
Being rigid means a business has working sales funnels, ever-growing monthly income and numerous happy clients that enables it stay with one major principle that keeps that business afloat.
A principle that is trade secret, gotten from major researches done by the company over many years and also gotten from lessons learned from failing in numerous verticals in the past.
This rigidity - I'm afraid - can't work for a newly started company. One of the biggest mistakes first-time entrepreneurs make is focusing one business models with no plan to change.
This move brings about massive failures which results in founders of companies being demotivated. Diversify your workplace and make constant flexibility your startup's watchword. If a business model isn't working, switch to another to avoid being demotivated.
Because the only way to stay motivated as a startup founder is to be flexible enough to change a strategy when it's not working out.
4. Track and Measure your Goals.
Studies have shown that improvements in well- being, satisfaction and happiness comes mostly from making and measuring progress towards your goals.
Tracking your goals help you get an overview of your day and to see how productive you have been and how much progress you've made towards your business goals.
Specifically for me, I had a lot of productivity apps on my android phones to track specific business goals I needed to see improvement and excel highly in.
If you don't track everything, you won't know where urgent attention are needed and you might end up wasting sometimes - limited resources - that should have been utilized better.
Put loosely, one of the most effective ways to be motivated is to know your numbers better than anybody. If you don't measure or track these important metrics, you may end up frustrated and think you aren't moving forward - when in reality you're moving forward.
That said, track everything.