As an entrepreneur, I’ve had mornings when I feel in love with my work, and that same afternoon I’m questioning everything and wonder if I should change everything.
And you may not know this, but that’s actually normal. Despite what we think, nobody is 100% on their game every single day, even when their business is going strong, like mine is.
There’s not a week that goes by when business owners don’t question why they’re doing what they’re doing. This is a natural feeling to have when you’re doing one of the hardest ‘jobs’ in the world.
Being an entrepreneur is not for the meek. No siree!
It requires fortitude, determination and hustle. You’ve heard me say or write that a hundred times over!
You are responsible (and hopefully your virtual or physical team supporting you) for the success of your business, and nobody else.
Every single moving part comes under your guidance and leadership, and there are days when you just suck at that, and days when you excel.
So the question is,
How do you stay inspired and motivated day in and day out to achieve gold winning business success?
Well, I like to take a lesson from the pros, the best of the best, and for the past two weeks this was easier than ever.
When you turned on the TV, checked your Facebook Newsfeed, or looked at what’s trending on Twitter, you couldn’t help but be swept up in the excitement of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
It’s completely inspiring to watch these athletes, at the top of their game, striving to win the ultimate prize of their career – Olympic Gold.
To think that every competitor has trained day in and day out for close to four years just to qualify is quite incredible.
And it’s incredible to know that, in an instant, their pursuit for a gold medal could be lost.
That’s what makes it so fascinating to watch; they’ve poured blood, sweat and tears into their daily training and shown an unprecedented commitment and dedication to their chosen event, without any certainty of success.
I think this is a lesson most of us entrepreneurs could learn and benefit from, especially if we applied this Olympian mindset and approach to our own small businesses.
Their moments of glory are short lived, and the difference between them winning gold and making a podium finish is the countless days they got up early to put in the real work.
I decided to break down the seven steps Olympic athletes take on their journey that we can apply to ourselves, and pull some nuggets from the wisdom of successful entrepreneurs from my $100 Change series.
1. Mindset is an Attitude
If you’re heading to the Olympics, you generally have one thing on your mind – to achieve your best performance ever, which results in you winning a gold medal.
These athletes have a grand vision for what they want to achieve and focus on it daily. Many do this by writing down their vision and breaking it down into goals. Those goals become daily and weekly actions.
**“No one is ever going to achieve the results you want in your life but you. ~ Pam Brossman”
I use the Five Minute Journal that I keep by my bed, or in my suitcase, and write these things down each morning:
3 things I’m grateful for- 3 reasons why today is going to be amazing
- 2 affirmations for the day
Then at night I open my journal and I write down:
- 3 amazing things that happened today
- 2 things that could have gone better
It takes less than 5 minutes total for the whole day and sets the intention for how I want my day to look, feel and be.
It surprises me, when I come back to it at night, how many of the things I wrote down have come true, in some shape or form.
Note: The two things that could have gone better are actually written as positive statements such as: “I am drinking 2L of water and going to bed before 11pm” rather than “I need to drink more water and get to bed earlier.”
This is the difference with athletes over us mere mortals. They focus on what they’re capable of and what they’re going to do differently to get the results they want.
As Pam Brossman says in her daily prompt in my $100 Change series:
“I rate my day out of 10. My goal is to beat my previous score every day. I call it forward thinking and it allows me to stay focused on what I have achieved and want to achieve going forward.”
Lesson: Choose your winning attitude daily (and check out the fiveminutejournal.com)
2. One Step at a Time
If you were heading to Olympics in four years’ time and looked at how much work you needed to do to get there, it would likely seem overwhelming.
This is why you set your sights on that end goal, but you take daily steps to achieve it, training daily to increase the areas you need to improve upon, and taking days to rest up when you need.
The same applies to us entrepreneurs. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a super successful business. It actually comes from consistent nurturing and daily actions towards your goals – one step at a time, in other words.
As Benny Hsu at Get Busy Living said:
“When we have goals, research has shown that we get excited at the beginning and end of a project. When the end is near, we’re excited to almost be finished.
The middle part is where motivation is lost. Motivation is U-shaped. That’s the do or die point for any goal. For myself, I knew what the next steps were but felt overwhelmed with how much there was left.
Instead, I focus on doing just one thing at a time when it came to building and releasing my mobile apps. It’s clichéd, but very effective.? Click to tweet this
I had to just force myself to get it done otherwise I knew I’d regret quitting half- way.”
Lesson: Don’t be a quitter. Just take it one step at a time and you win your gold.
3. Reframe and be Victorious
When was the last time you celebrated something you did really well?
I’d wager that you don’t do this often enough, and instead you focus on your ever growing to-do list and what you haven’t yet achieved.
Well, I’d like you to change that up right now and start seeing yourself as a winner on a weekly, if not daily, basis.
If you want to succeed in life, you have to back yourself and believe in your abilities.
“Every step is a step towards your vision. Focus on small victories. Treat every small victory like you just won the Super Bowl.” ~ Lewis Howes. Click to tweet this
As Lewis suggests, we need to get excited, have fun, and feel alive with every victory.
“This gives me the feeling of success nearly every day and helps build momentum for achieving any goal.”
The best way to do this is to reward yourself for your efforts and milestones regularly. Have a little party, even if it’s just you and some dance music at home.
Or, treat yourself to a 30-minute massage to congratulate yourself on winning that client, completing that blog post, packaging up that new service, or writing that new copy on your sales page.
As entrepreneurs, we are waaaaay too hard on ourselves and forget to look at how far we’ve come. This is a deadly cycle where you constantly come from a place of lack and ‘not enough’.
**“I am like a pitbull for the positive. I realize what I focus on consciously or subconsciously is what shows up in my life.” ~ Karla Lightfoot
As Karla says: “I take baby steps towards my big goals, and a few leaps here and there. No matter what, I celebrate, laugh, dance and partay over every single WIN, and that alone continues to propel me forward!”
Lesson: Celebrate the small victories along the way as life (and your business) is a journey, not a destination.
4. Get in a Daily Flow
One thing you’ll notice about these Olympic athletes is their commitment to prioritizing training daily.
Watching them on the TV coverage, I learned that one of the female Giant Slalom champions is a full time Sous Chef.
You kind of tend to forget that very few of these people are paid professionals. They all have lives and jobs and businesses to deal with, but they show up every day to craft their skill and improve their performance.
We could learn a lot from them. How often do you get stuck in a routine of just doing what you always do, rather than setting aside time to learn a new skill, or brush up on existing ones?
- If not, then I suggest you take a good hour this weekend to plan out a calendar that works for you most days, and allows you to get into a daily flow and routine to optimize your performance.Do you set aside time to read books and blogs that expand your thinking and help give you a better perspective for your business?
- Do you schedule out time daily to get in your exercise and make it a priority?
- Do you start with your MIA – most important actions of the day – and do nothing else until you’ve got them done and dusted?
As Marianne Cantwell of free-range-humans.com says:
- Set a deadline. The more crazy and audacious the better.
- Tell everyone it’s happening. No holding back.
- And then, don’t give yourself an option to back out.
I mean, if you’re jogging in the park, it’s easy to stop after 5 minutes and say, “I lost momentum.”
If you’re running away from a pissed off lion with a napkin tied around its mane, well, you aren’t likely to say, “Hold on, I think I’m getting demotivated with this running, let’s stop and revise our strategic plan and life goals.”
No way – you’d just run!
Bottom line: If you are in a position to say you’re losing momentum, honey, your stakes just aren’t high enough. Raise them. Tweet this gem now
So, pre-sell places on that course… and only THEN write it. If you’re going to go back to 30 people and tell them the event is off because you ‘lost momentum’… heck, you’re braver than me.
You don’t have to be brave to keep up momentum, you just have to outsmart the most procrastinatey part of yourself.
5. Always Keep the End in Mind
If you were training for an event happening in four years’ time from now, you might feel that’s a big ask to keep pushing towards, day-in and day-out.
So along with that daily flow that you’re going to set up for yourself, you do have to come back to your vision of why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Every step you take in business should be towards your vision; that painted picture you’ve created for yourself. See mine here for inspiration.
As Kent Healy from maxims4mavericks.com states:
1) I always keep the end in mind. That means having a clear vision about WHY I am doing something.? Click to tweet this
The feeling and emotion from this end goal is highly motivating for me.
I break the goal down into smaller milestones that allow me to avoid mental overwhelm as well as show my progress.
I put deadlines on my tasks. I work with a timer on my desk so once I’ve targeted my next goal/task I allocate a limited amount of time to get it done. This helps me defeat procrastination.
6. Go to the Edge
To win a gold medal, you have to push the limits of your performance and go beyond what you think you’re capable of.
As you come off the ski jump, soaring through the air, you need to pull on all your strength and grace to make the perfect landing and take out the gold.
These Olympians are constantly battling their own fears and inner demons, and pushing aside previous defeats or failures to focus on the present moment, and what they can achieve.You need to pull on all your determination and visualization techniques when you feel your legs burning, and your lungs busting and you think you don’t’ have enough left in you to finish the Cross Country Skiing event.
As entrepreneurs, if we want to be the best, if we truly want to make an impact and create a million dollar business, we have to be prepared to go to the very edge, and even beyond to achieve our wildest dreams.
As Dave Ursillo points out:
“Fear is not something to avoid, but something to pursue. Finding your fear is a perfect indicator of ‘the edge’ of all you know, and shows you the path that you need to take to evolve, change and grow.
Fear reveals the border or line of the goal, dream, vision or project that truly matters to you on a deep and soulful level (otherwise, there’d be no fear, just indifference).” Click to tweet this
You conquer fear by heading head-first into it with a bit of defiance, reckless abandon, total detachment and by being firmly rooted in what you believe.
For me, I find great comfort in knowing my work is on behalf of others and hope to inspire, reinvigorate, and just generally give to people on the widest possible level that I can achieve.
That element of giving is a core value of mine, and because of that I feel extremely motivated to act, even in the face of fear.
Why do you do what you do? Look deeply. Examine your roots. Explore your values.
From this place of gratitude and giving, fear just becomes a simple line that you willingly cross to get further and go farther, every day.”
So how do you go for gold?
If you take anything away from this, here’s the recap for you to put into action:
- No one is ever going to achieve the results you want in your life but you, so own it.
- Take baby steps forward, and a few giant leaps from time to time to achieve your ?goal.
- Then treat every small victory like you just won the Super Bowl and remember to ?celebrate.
- Find the best of the best of the best and model exactly what they’re doing, but stay ?true to being you.
- Focus consciously or subconsciously on the positive to have it show up in your ?life.
Now go get your gold medal!
I am blogging on behalf of Visa Business and received compensation for my time from Visa for sharing my views in this post, but the views expressed here are solely mine, not Visa’s. Visit https://facebook.com/visasmallbiz to take a look at the reinvented Facebook Page: Well Sourced by Visa Business. The Page serves as a space where small business owners can access educational resources, read success stories from other business owners, engage with peers, and find tips to help businesses run more efficiently. Every month, the Page will introduce a new theme that will focus on a topic important to a small business owner’s success. For additional tips and advice, and information about Visa’s small business solutions, follow @VisaSmallBiz and visit https://visa.com/business.