Joanne Hession, author of “Don’t Get a Job, Build a Business” and Enda McNulty, former All Ireland winner with Armagh and founder of Motiv8 speak to Ian about maintaining motivation.
Joanne Hession’s Notes:
Maintaining Motivation & The Will To Succeed
When going into business for yourself, beware of giving yourself a job; working long hours at high risk for relatively poor pay. Yes, you will have to work hard, but your role is also to work on the business rather than just in it. Too many business owners get completely waylaid working all the hours possible in their business. They have simply created a job for themselves – and usually a poor one (with no holidays, poor pay, no exit plan etc). This can be incredibly demotivating and often entrepreneurs wonder why their hard work is not paying off. To maintain your motivation and the will to succeed, I’d suggest that start-ups should focus on getting a few things under the three “Os” right to keep up their motivation and keep driving forward:
The three Os which will be easy to remember are:
- Ourselves
- Our Organisation
- Others around you
We can then chat about:
1. Ourselves
a. Getting the basics right – being fit for business
b. It’s All About FOCUS - Helping yourself to Focus
- Audit your day
- Limit the To Do list
- Check out and/or disappear
- Take charge of Technology
- Forget Multitasking
- Outsource where you can
c. Get as much as possible into routine/habits
d. Keep learning
2. Our Organisation
a. Have a vision, break it into manageable weekly/monthly goals
b. Build a Dashboard for your business – use KPIs
c. Celebrate successes
3. Others around you – In my view really great business people get the “people” thing right
a. Your team – hire well; communicate, communicate, communicate and share
b. Have an Entrepreneur Buddy, (or Sounding Board/mentor as discussed in week 3 mentoring) The benefits of an Entrepreneur Buddy can be discussed further here
c. Networking – addressed Week 7
