Here it is half of the year is finished. How many of you after these several months working day and night to achieve those goals you set in January to create a new service, introduce a new product or even design a new business model – all at once find all the drive that brought the initial motivation and excitement has melted away, the steam has run out, the place you are in is comfortable and the dream world has slipped out from under?
This is the wakeup call. You must reawaken the drive and motivation, you must motivate yourself! Once you accept that your ongoing success must come from you, you can build a comprehensive program that will keep you moving forward. You are the catalyst for your business, you must press on, you cannot afford to stand still.
Going it alone during some of the tough times can knock you flat. What is the toughest situation you’ve encountered in your business? Did you make it through? Did you step back, learn from it and use the learning to move on? How often do you let yourself go down that dark road and beat yourself up when things don’t turn out according to “plan”? As you entered this Quarter have you checked your plan? Success comes from doing the simple things consistently.
As entrepreneurs we have a unique makeup that keeps us going. John Gartner, a practicing psychologist at Johns Hopkins University Medical School argues that an often-overlooked temperament–hypomania–may be responsible for some entrepreneurs’ strengths as well as their flaws.
Gartner, in his book The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America, theorizes that there are so many hypomanics–and so many entrepreneurs–in the U.S. because our country’s national character rose on waves of immigration. “We’re a self-selected population,” he says. “Immigrants have unusual ambition, energy, drive, and risk tolerance, which lets them take a chance on moving for a better opportunity. These are biologically based temperament traits. If you seed an entire continent with them, you’re going to get a nation of entrepreneurs.”
Check your plan, weekly, monthly, quarterly and make adjustments, help catch what is or isn’t working. Your metrics will tell you. Every time (you) begin to measure and keep track of it, that “thing” begins to improve and move in the direction you want.” Start to apply this idea and you will feel and be more in control of your business in a very dramatic way.
The Challenge:
Stop and look at your goals, are you on track, what actions need more focus?