Tips On How To Stay Motivated When Starting Your Business
Entrepreneurship is not an easy journey – regardless if you’re in it full-time or part-time like me. It requires lots of dedication, sacrifice, and hard work which can be especially tough for women since often times we’re also juggling a career, children, and a household too. This is why as women, we have to learn how to pick ourselves up when things don’t go as planned in our business and learn how to stay motivated in spite of.
Here are some tips women can use to stay motivated, even when you’re just starting out in your side-hustle alongside your full-time career.
Have A Plan
You can have the best ideas in the world and be the most creative in your industry but one thing is certain. Without a solid plan, your ideas are probably not going very far. It isn’t enough to have great ideas. You need to set aside time to develop a strategy and a plan.
Do you have a business plan? A business plan is your roadmap to staying focused on your long term vision and goals. Even though figuring out your side hustle is a lot of trial and error at first, a well thought out business plan keeps you on track as you are testing out your offers and laying the foundation for your business. Remember, you side hustle is a business – so treat it as such. It’s so easy to get side-tracked on all of the new strategies, tools, and gimmicks out there. Not mention, as a side hustleher your time is limited so having a business plan helps you stay on course for your business while you’re also working towards your career goals.
Work Life Balance
As a side hustler, you have to be able to strike a balance between your career, business, and home life which can be a challenge at times. For example, there may be times when you have to stay late at the office to finish up a project or meet a deadline, take your kid to afterschool practice, and prepare to launch your next product. This isn’t meant to scare you because all of these things CAN be done. You just need to manage expectations, prioritize your commitments, and set a realistic schedule for yourself. By keeping these things in mind you can strike the right balance between career, side hustle, and home life.
And don’t forget to allow yourself time to rest, disconnect from the outside world, and reset so that you recover and give yourself room for new ideas and bursts of inspiration.
Mindset
If you’re new to entrepreneurship, you’ll need to adopt an entrepreneur’s mindset. And the quicker you do that, the quicker you’ll start to see success. People think that it’s money, super unique ideas, or your circle of influence that sets apart successful side hustlers from those that stay stuck. But I’ve found that isn’t true at all. Want to know what sets apart successful side hustlers from the wannabes that stay stuck?
A positive attitude and mindset. Without those two things, you’ll constantly be battling yourself – and that’s exhausting.
- You’ll allow yourself to believe your ideas are no good
- You’ll be convinced that you aren’t smart enough
- You’ll always think that someone else does it (whatever “it” is) better
Soon you’ll have talked yourself right out of moving forward on your side hustle goals while you’re watching on the sidelines as others are achieving theirs. But a simple attitude & mindset shift can change that.
Ongoing Learning
When you’re first starting out, you find out really quickly that there is so much to learn. Embrace it and accept it. The online world changes quickly so there will always be a new tool or strategy to learn about it. The thing to remember is to not try to learn everything at once. Focus on learning about what’s in front of your right now and putting the other stuff on your “future learning list”. Otherwise, you’ll it’s easy to get caught up in an endless learning cycle without much action to show for it.
My tip for someone who is just starting out is to focus on learning about what you’re actually working on RIGHT NOW so that you can put what you’re learning into action RIGHT NOW. Everything else is not a “never”, just not a “now”.
Like Minded Community
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it’s super important for you to spend time with like minded people. Surrounding yourself with people with a scarcity mentality or people who don’t take risks to go after their goals can quickly lead to failure. A lot of times, these people have good intentions but they just don’t understand the entrepreneurial mindset. They may even try to tell you that you can’t juggle a career and a business which is certainly not true. You don’t want that to feed into your subconscious mind so be careful about who you spend your time with.
There are lots of places to meet like-minded people. It can range from in-person networking events to online social networks. The sooner you find “your people” the better off you’ll be. Surrounding yourself with people who are on a similar path as you will help you see your goals more clearly and even encourage you to keep moving even if it gets tough. I’ve met some really good business buddies and mastermind partners inside of Facebook groups! So it works.
Just don’t get caught up in seeking approval and other people’s opinions for every decision you make. Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut!
I hope you have enjoyed these tips on how to stay motivated when you’re just starting your side hustle.
Free Daily Intentions Planning Sheet
Treva Marshall is a Systems Strategist and Tech Genius who has a passion for helping ambitious women who want to make a positive impact through their small businesses. She enjoys teaching women who feel overwhelmed with client work how to leverage tech and systems to streamline their processes and develop automated systems that save them time and create a high-touch client experience.
