Re-Ignite the Passion in Your Business

Think about when you first started your business - the excitement you felt and how it ignited the fire that drove you to take the first step in your business. As businesses progress, oftentimes, owners can become overwhelmed with the day-to-day processes and leading a team. This feeling of drowning can make it easy to forget the passion that once compelled you to begin your business in the first place.

Losing your passion for your business can manifest in a few different ways. Ask yourself:

• Do you wake up excited about your work?
• Are you putting off important tasks out of sheer procrastination? Or, are you taking on too many tasks?
• Do you know your team members and are you actively building relationships with them?
• Is your business growing, or is it remaining stagnant in its progress?
  

These are tell-tell signs that you’ve lost your passion for your business. Once you no longer find joy in what you do, it can trickle down to negatively affect your business. Next, you may find your team members exhibiting a lack of drive or care in their work, leading to poor performance and retention rates. Then, your customers leave your business unsatisfied and unwilling to return because of the poor performance of the staff.

When you put all the work and investment into your business, the last thing you want is for it to fail. This is why you have to take the time to recognize the fire that drives you, or that once drove you, and reignite it so that your business can achieve spectacular results. Most importantly, you can stop being overwhelmed with the day-to-day aspects of your business and find joy in what you do.

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‍Why are you overwhelmed?

Well, it's because you’re too busy trying to control EVERYTHING. In addition to managing the business, you’re doing the marketing, talking to clients, shipping and everything that is involved in the success is your business. You have to let go of the need to control every detail of your business. In reality, you can’t control everything, issues will always come up and that’s part of having a business. If you’re wasting your time controlling it, it will only lead you to exhaustion. You have to designate tasks and responsibilities to your team or you will burn out.

Consider this: 80% of businesses that begin this year will fail in five years. The number one factor contributing to those failures is burnout. Exhaustion and excessive stress leave them feeling emotionally and financially drained, and unable to meet the demands of their business. For more information on how to avoid working too much, visit this article here.

As the owner, your main responsibility should be to guide the goals and vision of the team. You set the tone and the direction of the business and lead the employees to success. If you are juggling so many hats that you lose sight of this, you cannot lead your team successfully.

If you alone are juggling every aspect of your business, you’re going to drop a few balls along the way. Tasks get put off and forgotten about, and you make mistakes along the way.

Let’s take a look at the Cycle of Business.

In the diagram, the owner takes care of the team, so that the team can take care of the customers, and then the customers can take care of the business. The key is to create systems and processes within your team that will make your business run more efficiently. These systems and processes will create great employees and lead to the retention of these great employees.

Stop feeling like you have to control every aspect of your business. As an owner, the only thing you should be concerned about is taking the next step in your business, achieving the goals that you set out, and growing your business to the point that it runs effectively and efficiently without you micro-managing.

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Re-igniting Your Passion

When you first began your business, what were the things that made you excited? Was it the creativity that you got to utilize and put forth? Was it the people you got to work with? Was it the aspect of putting forth new, innovative ideas and services into the market? What was it that made you passionate?

These aspects are what drove you to begin your business and gave you the joy and satisfaction to continue forth in your journey. These can be things that you are passionate about in your life that you’ve crafted your business around. Specifying what they are will help you to pinpoint what areas you need to be developing to continue having that passion at the root of your business.

Now, think about what aspects of your work you don’t like. What are the things that you dread most about your work or that you simply don’t like to do? These things can prevent you from fully enjoying your business, and drown out your passion, making it the last priority against the plethora of responsibilities.

What if you can free yourself of some of the things that you dread about work? As we discussed previously, you need to utilize your team members in ways that they can take more responsibility off of your plate. This frees you up to focus on the big picture and lead the team as opposed to managing tasks.

You should also consider outsourcing tasks that are administrative such as bookkeeping, answering phone calls, and updating calendars to an assistant. Designate tasks such as design, promotion, and communication to a marketing professional who can handle things such as promotional materials, emails, and social media.

This is why it is also important to know your current team members. You have to take the time to understand their background, assess their strengths and weaknesses and know what path they’re on. Then you can give them work that best suits their skill set. You need to ensure the relationship between yourself and your team is one where everyone is working towards a common goal. Take them alongside you and lead them so that you can take some of the burdens off of your shoulders.

Consider automating some of your tasks. Things such as e-newsletters, customer database management, and transferring phone calls can all be automated, freeing you up from repetitive tasks that waste your day. There are many online programs and software that can assist you in this.

Also, think about your values and how you define your work. List the five to ten values that you created when you first began your business. Have you strayed from some of these values, or, have they changed in some way? These values are what guide you and your company and if you have fallen off-track with some of them you need to think of ways that you can re-direct your business towards them. You may also need to change or add new values to set the direction that you want your company to go in.

Lastly, consider your work habits. Are you on the hustle and grind mentality - putting in the extra hours and working up to 18 hours a day? When you have this mentality, it is easy to lose your passion amidst everything. Try to avoid this - you need to give yourself time to rest and recharge so that you can be fully focused on guiding the vision of your business. If you are burned out, the team will soon follow, leaving your business to suffer. Read more about saving time, energy, and money in this article.

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Change Your Perspective

The truth is, when we pursue our passion and make a business out of it, after a while, the fun and excitement go away. We become bogged down with the logistics of running a business and we forget the reason that we started, or we just no longer enjoy it. Sometimes, you have to look at your business from a fresh perspective.

Consider ways that you can refresh aspects of your business. What parts of your business do you not like or that can be improved upon? Target specific areas that you can focus on that will make you think about your business in a new way. You can change your target market and meet a whole new group of people in ways you’ve never done before. Or, you can diversify your product selection to create more options and add more exciting pieces. What are some needs in the market that are currently being met that your business can address? This gives you the opportunity to look at your business with fresh eyes and feel the enthusiasm that you once felt. You can also address issues that have laid dormant.

Don’t sit back and simply accept the things about your business that you don’t like, especially if it gets in the way of the joy you should have for your business. Change them and improve them, starting with yourself. This is not only good for you but it’s great for your business too because these changes lead to growth in your business. And, if your business isn’t growing, it is dying.