Rekindle the Fire and Keep Showing Up in Your Business Be clear on what fuels your drive.
By Juliette Stapleton Edited by Heather Wilkerson
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The life of an entrepreneur is not all roses and Lamborghinis. In fact, many of us experience feelings of being stuck, burnout or feeling disconnected at some point during our journey. When it happens, our marketing suffers tremendously. Feeling aligned with your mission is paramount. Showing up and being consistently visible gets you more leads and clients. As soon as we stop showing up in our marketing, the negative effects start within mere weeks.
If this happens, the best thing to do is go back to the drawing board. Don't start from scratch, but work hard to pull yourself out of the darkness. These tips will help you re-ignite your drive and fuel your visibility.
Related: How to Spot Entrepreneurial Burnout Before It's Too Late
Block time to do inner work
Stepping back and taking a break doesn't feel like an option sometimes, but it can always be arranged. We often forget who we are and why we started our businesses. Routine takes over and we lose the sense of joy. Take a break. Slow down. Dedicate time to self-care and use meditation and journaling to take mental chatter out of your head. Organize your thoughts and feelings on paper.
Working with some brilliant mindset coaches, I have learned to always look at the intelligence behind whatever is holding me back. I know that it is trying to keep me safe and protect me. I try to inspect closely what thoughts and beliefs I have around an issue and try to look into my past and see if perhaps something happened during my early childhood or my formative years that may have contributed to my feelings. I follow a set of forgiveness exercises to be able to let go of old perceptions and help me feel stronger getting back into the driver's seat in my life and my business.
Be clear on what fuels your drive
I was very surprised when I realized that a huge cause of my marketing paralyzes was a lack of clarity in what I love doing. I needed to understand what energizes me versus what drains and frustrates me in my business. As long as that clarity was missing, everything seemed overwhelming and I struggled to make more difficult decisions around the tactics I should be using in my marketing. To clear the confusion, I created a table with three columns. I started by listing all the activities I hated spending time on or dealing with in my business. The list was long, but it felt really good to see the tasks and know that I can decide not to take some of them on board and delegate what was necessary to keep the business running.
I filled the middle column with activities and tasks I'm good at, but don't bring me much joy. I permitted myself not to use any of these tasks as my main marketing tools. As an example, I can deliver good training, but I hate preparing slides. I feel so much better coaching people and supporting them directly than creating a webinar-style training. By adding pre-planned training sessions and webinars into my "Do Not Love" column, I allowed myself not to use webinar training as a marketing tactic. I understood the energy won't be the same as jumping on a free group coaching call, where I am in my element and can ooze contagious confidence.
Related: The 8 Psychological Truths of Entrepreneurship
Finally, I identified the activities that I love so much, I could almost lose myself in them. This list gave me a clear picture of what activities will work for my lead generation. This was the clarity I needed to confidently package my offer into a container that was high-touch and easy to deliver, and I felt great about raising my pricing to reflect the value it will deliver to my clients.
Writing down a list of tasks that drain you is an amazing tool for mental clarity. It is easier for humans to focus on the negative and we can then work backward towards the good stuff that supercharges us perfectly.
Focus less on wanting more
When you focus on wanting something you do not have all you get is more emptiness. Let it linger for a while and it starts merging into your identity. Not having what you want becomes who you are and how you live. It affects your self-esteem. It shows in your energy when it comes to marketing and serving your existing clients. That energy is palpable. It acts as a repellent and affects how people perceive you. In marketing, how our audience perceives us is key to our success. We are drawn to creators, leaders and doers. We subconsciously try to avoid those who ooze pessimism and victim mindset.
Stop wanting your results and start focusing on creating them! Depending on your personality and what works best for you, you may want to set a deadline. Personally, I didn't set a deadline. I focused on planning and immediately implementing smaller daily activities around my goal without a timeline looming. I love the element of surprise when suddenly I feel in the flow and start seeing invitations and opportunities opening up for me. Taking this step removes the paralysis so effectively, it feels as if your business not only gets back on track but is elevated to a whole new level.
It's this feeling that we often refer to as "the drive" and it feels good when it returns to you.
