Motivation Tips for Entrepreneurs

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How I Balance Travel with Work

This is my last week in Rote Island. I’ve been so blessed and so grateful to have spent the past four incredible months in Rote.

By the time this airs, I will be in Istanbul, Turkey. I’m visiting one of my best friends there for 10 days, exploring Istanbul, and we’re going to the coast, so going to the Mediterranean and then I will be heading back the UK for a wedding.

It’s going to be a very busy few weeks ahead and every time I travel, instead of feeling like there’s so much going on, I let the excitement and the new adventures to come.

I let all of this energy fuel my content and my business and how I show up for my clients.

I know that for some of you who are maybe traveling full-time and trying to grow your business simultaneously, it can be overwhelming at times, being on the go and just trying to be disciplined.

So I thought this week would be perfect to talk about Motivation Tips for Entrepreneurs!

Staying Motivated In Entrepreneurship

This topic was inspired by one of our dear listeners who submitted the question: 

“How do you stay motivated? Because it’s certainly easier said than done. And then there’s times when discipline needs to overcome motivation because we can’t be motivated all the time. I’d love to hear if you have any actionable motivation tips or even just a bunch of different methods you’ve seen different styles of people and entrepreneurs use.”

First of all, this is an amazing question because it’s something that we all struggle with time and time again, we think that we need to be constantly operating at 110% and that is just not the case.

After working with so many different types of clients and so many different members across all of our communities, I would love to share different tips to see which resonate with you, and hopefully this will ignite some motivation within you.

3 Things You Must Understand About Yourself

Before we dive into the actionable tips, I think what’s really important are three things that we need to understand.

1) Your Working Style

The first thing we need to understand about ourselves is our unique working style.

This reminds me of when I was growing up, going to school, going to university, I noticed that I was just a serial procrastinator.

No matter what I did, I could not get myself to study or to do the project until it was like the last minute and it was always an absolute last minute. (If you resonate check out my chat with procrastination coach here!)

Although it caused so much stress like the night before cramming for an exam, I usually always did really well.

Once I understood that about myself, like I need that pressure in order to just completely cram and then I also get the results that I want.

I started analyzing and internalizing this as I don’t need to spend so much time beforehand if I can just budget out a night or two and get the same result that I want. I was motivated by A+ grades and I was motivated by the pressure.

However, when I looked around me, and let’s even take my partner for example, he does things because he truly loves doing it.

If you tell him to do something that he just doesn’t want to do, no matter what kind of like outcome it gets him, whether it’s an A+, whether it’s some kind of reward, he won’t do it.

You can see that people have different incentives and people work for different reasons.

So you need to understand what your unique working style is. Is it in waves? Is it hustle the night before and you need that pressure? Or do you like feeling like everything is planned out? Do you study way beforehand?

My roommate in college, she was always just so on top of it and she operated at like a steady 80% all the time.

Do you enjoy checking things off of your to-do list every single day and spacing out your action items? Or do you prefer to just get them all done at once?

Be honest with yourself and take note of what your unique working style is because this is really gonna help us map out a unique plan that works for you.

So taking my spurts of energy example as just how I work, this is where I can tap into the discipline because if I rely on always having motivation, I’m guaranteed to fail.

I know that I don’t always have motivation. My motivation very much comes and goes in spurts, and this is where my discipline has to come in so that it can compensate for my lack of motivation inevitably in the future.

What this looks like is, for example, I’m traveling for the next two, three weeks. I have my out of office in place. I’ve blocked off my calendar and I know that I need to start batching my content.

I’m going to be recording three, if not four podcast episodes today because I know that I want to be fully present. It’s impossible to get me to record episodes when I’m traveling or it’s very rare for me.

I won’t say I’ve never done that, but knowing that I wanna be fully present with my friend, fully present when I am reuniting with Ragz’ family, I’m going to let the discipline come into play now so that I can not be motivated for the next few weeks.

Which brings me to the second point that we need to understand about ourselves.

2) Why Don’t You Feel Motivated?

Is there a reason, a recurring reason or reasons why you don’t feel motivated?

Is it because you don’t like the work? Is it because you don’t feel like you need the money and you don’t have that pressure or that incentive? Is it because you often get distracted and your mind races and you don’t know exactly what you want to do right now?

Or is it your time of month maybe in the same phase every month right before you get your period, you just feel like doing nothing? (Check out my tips for syncing your business with your Period cycle.)

Or is it just because you don’t feel like it?

Whatever the reason or reasons are, take note of them because that is how you’re going to tackle them. With each of these reasons, there’s going to be a different way you can handle this lack of motivation.

For me, the most common reason is that I get distracted. There are people I want to see, there’s maybe surf, there’s travel or something is going on.

And if it is a case of distractions, whether it’s travel, whether it’s Instagram reels or TikTok, whatever it is. 

We are going to dive into actionable motivation tips in a little bit but you need to understand why you don’t feel motivated on a recurring basis.

3) Identify Exactly What You DO Need Discipline In

These are the non-negotiables in your business or in your life.

This is when you draw the line of I’ve taken it too far with my lack of motivation and it’s going to look different for everyone.

For example, for me in my business, I record and air new episodes every single Monday. I’ve done this for almost four years. And for me, not having motivation to record a podcast episode just doesn’t fly.

That cannot happen. I need to get myself in front of the microphone, open up my laptop and record.

If I know that I am traveling, I will batch content in advance. So for you, this might look like client projects and deadlines for your clients.

It might look like community engagement. It might look like full support over your mastermind or your groups or whatever it is in your business that you have non-negotiables for.

That is what you need to be disciplined in. Now let’s dive into our actionable motivation tips.

The Eisenhower Matrix

The first exercise that I recommend all of you going through if you are feeling a lack of motivation is draw out your Eisenhower matrix.

Oftentimes we procrastinate or we don’t feel like doing something because either there is so much going on or we don’t know exactly what it is that we need to be doing right now to make the biggest difference.

So the best thing that you can do right now is to organize yourself with the Eisenhower decision matrix.

We are going to draw four different quadrants.

On the left hand side, you’re going to label important as the top quadrants and not important as the bottom quadrants.

And then on the top, the left quadrants are urgent and the right quadrants are not urgent.

So in the first top left quadrant, you have things to do that are urgent and important. Those are what you are always focusing on right now immediately.

Then for all of the things that you list out that are important but not urgent, we can schedule a time in the future to complete them because they’re important. We need to get them done, but it doesn’t have to be right now.

Then on the bottom half of the matrix, everything that you write down in the not important but urgent quadrant, we are going to delegate. So who can do this for you? Whether it’s a VA, a social media manager, a community manager, get help when you need it because it takes things off of your plate.

And then lastly, things that are not important and not urgent, you can eliminate, just forget about them because it does not have to be done.

And what this should leave you with is a clear understanding of all of the action items that are important and urgent. And those are the only ones that you should be focusing on right now.

It should have eliminated 80% at least of all the other tasks because you’ve prioritized ’em as not important for the time being.

Once we know exactly what the few maybe two or three important and urgent tasks are that needs to get done, we want to go back to why exactly those are important for us and our business.

Is it because it gets you more revenue? Is it because it increases client or customer satisfaction? What is the why that is behind all of these important and urgent items once you’ve figured out the why you need to get this done.

So if I was leaving for Istanbul tomorrow and I haven’t recorded an episode yet, I would have record an episode at something really urgent because I don’t want to disappoint my audience, I don’t wanna disappoint my listeners.

And if I were to dig even deeper, it has been a constant in my business for so long that I feel like if I misstep, it’s just going to be a spiral of other missteps in other parts of my business, so I really enjoy this structure.

Knowing that, seeing the gravity in what this could do, then it gives me the motivation to really sit down and get things done right.

So if you know your why, it drives you to get shit done.

Eliminate Distractions

Whatever is distracting you, whether it’s your partner, whether it’s music playing or plans being made, whatever it is, you can always say no and you can shape how the next few hours turn out for you.

It’s all within your control.

You can shape the next few weeks or the next few months or the next few years, like it’s all within your control.

I recommend setting a timer for 20 or 30 minutes where you are just focused on one task or downloading the app called Flora, where you get to grow a little flower in return for not touching your phone for like a specific amount of time.

It’s really cute and I use that sometimes, but find a way for you to eliminate distractions. 

Celebrate Small Wins

And then from there, I want you to celebrate every small win that gets you closer to your goal.

Sometimes I’ll be honest, I don’t want to record. I’ll be like enjoying a really good show and I’m like, ugh the last thing I wanna do now is record, but I will kind of like baby myself into getting in front of my microphone.

Whether that is taking one step away from the couch or even turning off the TV or opening up my laptop for many of my clients, the simple act of opening up a laptop every day that trickles so many other things to be done, it trickles checking and responding to emails.

It trickles checking and responding to dms or giving them inspiration to create content on their social media platform of choice.

Maybe it can be something as simple as opening up your laptop for you.

Celebrate every small win.

Take Care Of Your Holistic Wellbeing

The next actionable tip I have for you is to make sure you are taking care of your holistic wellbeing and environment, your community and who you’re surrounding yourself with.

I’ve seen in a few of my clients in the past that having negative energy around them or having like very lazy unmotivating energy can be really draining.

Whether it’s their roommate or their partners, that internal dialogue can shift to be yours and the narratives that you tell yourself about working, right?

So you wanna make sure your environment is giving off this really positive, inspiring energy that makes you want to get shit done.

Also, take note of your internal environment. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you feeding yourself? Are you living a healthy lifestyle to give you that motivation, because if you’re sleep deprived or if you’re tired, the last thing you’re gonna wanna do is something that your mind deems “work”.

Accountability Partners or Business Coaches

The next tip that does work very well is to find an accountability partner or a business coach and having someone else to help you through the lows, for you to just lean on who understands your business.

It can work wonders for your motivation because you know that you can always take a step forward.

We have accountability partners in the Business Academy and the Digital Nomad Society. So if you’re just looking for someone else to check in or if you are looking for private coaching, you can check out the links in the episode description.

This reminds me of when I took piano lessons as a child every week because I knew I was going in for my Monday lessons that would motivate me to practice piano and improve before then because I was also kind of scared that I wouldn’t be performing up to a certain standard.

Or, fast forward to modern day where it’s not as traumatic.

I take surf lessons and the reason I go surfing in between is because I want to really implement and practice what my coach has taught me, right? So same thing with business.

Every time I get off the phone with my business coach, I am so excited to take action and I don’t feel like I don’t have motivation. There’s just so much of it.

You don’t have to do it by yourself, especially if you’re not always clear on what the next steps are.

Don’t Be Afraid to Take Breaks

The last actionable motivation tip I have for you today is to not be afraid to take breaks for however long you need. Whether it’s a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, or a few months.

Honestly, your business is still going to be there When you come back and if you really, really just need a break from it all. Give yourself permission to take time off.

If you don’t like the work that you’re doing. Then it’s a great time for you to take a vacation or just go look within and see what it is that’s going to drive you to that next level in your life.

Or if you just need a break for a week or two, give yourself permission to take that time off. It’s going to discipline you to know what you need to set in place before you leave, right? Or you’re going to learn some kind of business strategy that allows you to step back in your business and still see it grow while taking time off.

Don’t be afraid to take breaks. Don’t be afraid to refuel and be open to all of the ways that you can learn from doing things differently.

We have members in the Business Academy who disappear for months and then they come back being like, I completely pivoted and I just hit my first 5K month. Magic happens.

Direction is more important than speed and if you would like to join the Business Academy, doors are open until the end of the month and we would love to see you inside.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, it would mean so much if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread The Wanderlover mission to those who need a dose of inspiration today.

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