What I wanted to jump into today are all the reasons your business isn’t working. 

So, if you are someone who is trying to build an online business, who’s trying to get clients, who’s trying to make an impact, but it just feels like something isn’t working…well, that is exactly what we’re going to be discussing today: the 4 areas that are going to lead you to success in your business or are going to keep your business from being successful. 

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4 KEY PILLARS OF MOTIVATION

This was actually born out of a conversation I had with one of my clients. I asked her to pick from the following 4 words the things that didn’t feel good right now:

1. Direction

2. Joy

3. Purpose

4. Results

And, what that gave me was the area of business that we needed to focus on so that everything else could fall into place for her. 

What I realized was that these 4 areas are really the 4 key pillars of motivation, of business. 

If you want your business to work, you have to take action. It’s not a coincidence that the most successful people are action-takers. And these are the 4 areas that are going to motivate you to do just that or are going to keep your business from being successful.

1) YOU HAVE A LACK OF DIRECTION

A lot of people just want to make money so they can have financial freedom and live their ideal lifestyle. 

These are not bad goals, however, those being your only goals in business can be really detrimental to your strategy because when you don’t know where you want to grow your business too, it’s really difficult to create a strategy to get there. 

It’s like jumping in the car and starting to drive without any idea of where it is you want or need to go until at some point you get frustrated with driving around in circles.

When you don’t have direction in your business, you can’t implement a strategy to get there. 

The money will only motivate you for so long, so you need to know where you want to take your business, you need to know what you want your business to look like 5 years from now.

“This is what I want my business to grow to, this is what I want my business to stand for, this is what I want my business to grow too 5 years from now.”

Now, this can all change. If you choose a direction now, it doesn’t mean you can’t pivot it in a year’s time. But, the type of business you’re creating now is going to be based on the type of business you want to become. 

Another big reason why peoples businesses don’t work is a lack of strategy. 

Now, remember, direction comes first and strategy comes second. You want to reverse engineer where you’re going, but you have to have strategies. You can’t just guess your way through this. 

And, there are 3 different strategies that you have to have to be a successful business:

You have to have a validated product.

So many people make the assumption that people need what they’re selling because they thought it was a good idea. Honestly, this is such a bad strategy. Even I do beta-rounds of the new products I create.

So, do yourself a favour and make sure you have a direction and a validated product that is leading you in that direction.

You have to have an awareness strategy.

I can’t tell you how many people do not have a way for people to find them and just expect that they are just going to stumble upon them and buy from them.

If you don’t have a way for new eye-balls to find you and your business, it’s going to be really difficult for you to consistently grow and succeed. You have to have a way for people to find you.

Often, that looks like a rich content platform: A YouTube channel, blog, or a podcast. But you still have to go to the effort that you’re optimizing your content. You have to do what you can to get your message out in front of new people.

In the first 2 years of your business, your awareness strategy is THE most important. You have to get known.

You have to have a sales strategy.

If you don’t know how to get a client into your business, your business will never grow. It’s as simple as that.

Is it going to work every time? Of course not. But, you need to have a methodology or funnel in place to actually convert someone into being a paying client. It’s so important that you know how to sell to your audience! If you are constantly guessing, you will never get to a point where your business is consistently growing and thriving.

So, learn about sales, learn about funnels, learn about conversions, but, honestly, you have to put in the work. You have to know these things if you want to make your online business work.

2) YOU ARE LACKING JOY IN THE JOURNEY

I know that for so many people, this is the case. If you do not have fun on the journey, on the action side of things, the results don’t even matter. 

So many people just want to hit those 10k months, they just want to get to that 6-figure-year, but they don’t understand just how fleeting the joy of those moments are.

I can tell you from personal experience. For so long I wanted to get that silver plaque from YouTube (for 100k subscribers). I just wanted it so badly as a token of the efforts I had put into my channel. And then, honestly, when I got it I was excited of course and it now proudly hangs on my wall, but it doesn’t feel nearly as great as the joy I get from actually creating videos, from thinking of new ideas, from finding new ways to edit. That is so much more enjoyable to me than actually achieving the result.

You really need to be building your business in a way that you find fun and enjoyable. If you’re doing things that you think you need to be doing, because some guru on the internet told you so, rather than what feels good, what feels fun, it’s going to be REALLY hard for you to stay consistent.

I promise you, if you just “grind it out” until you hit that goal, it is going to be so underwhelming when you get there.

Also, if you find yourself naturally procrastinating all the time and you find yourself dreading sitting down to create a piece of content, you need to reassess your strategy. 

If you hate making YouTube videos, don’t make YouTube videos just because someone told you it was a good idea. It’s not worth it. There are other ways
. 

You have to make sure the journey is joyful. This is business, it has to be fun! What’s the point, otherwise?

3) YOUR BUSINESS IS LACKING PURPOSE

Like I said before, sometimes money just isn’t enough. 

If you’re going to be in business, you have to have a purpose. 

Tony Robbins talks about the 6 human needs, one of which is actually the need for significance. Basically, we need to feel like we are making a positive impact in the lives of others in order to feel fulfilled. 

There are of course exceptions to this but, for the most part, most human beings in their life want to know they’re making a difference.

When you know you are working towards something bigger than yourself, bigger than your business, it is so much more motivating for you to take action. 

It’s sustainable motivation, rather than external motivation. That’s what we’re going for here because that’s what’s long-lasting.

That constant feeling of fulfilment lasts forever.

So, you have to make sure that your business is on purpose, that you’re doing something that is contributing. 

And, honestly, this is like a two-fold benefit: Not only is your business making a difference going to help motivate you sustainably, but when your business is making a difference in the lives of others, it means that it’s solving a problem. And, as I said in the beginning, your business has to solve a problem.

4) THE RESULTS

A lot of people are getting demotivated in their business and stop taking action because of a lack of results.

I’ve given a few ways for you to create results: validate your product, make sure you have an awareness strategy, and make sure you know how to attain customers and clients. 

However, results are what I like to call, a variable goal. You can set yourself the goal of getting 5 new clients a month and do 90% of the work to get there, but there’s still 10% that is out of your control.

So, in order for you to feel like you are achieving those results, you need to change your perspective. 

I have recently stopped focusing on outcome-based results and have shifted to, what I like to call, fixed goals. Fixed goals are process-based goals and results. 

It’s like changing your goal of losing 2 kilos, to instead working out 5 days a week. That is a goal that is 100% in your control.

What I think a lot of people are doing is focusing on outcome-based results, and allowing themselves to make it mean something about themselves when they don’t achieve those. And, yet it was never 100% in your control.

What you need to be doing is focusing on the actions you can take. 

Really making sure that when you look at your results that you are not associating meaning to things that you do not have any control over. 

If you set yourself fixed goals and then don’t take action on those goals, THAT’S when you can sit down and really get to the bottom of why not? And, how can I improve for next month?

It’s about focusing on what you can do and the actions you can take, and allowing the results to fall into place. 

If you haven’t already, be sure to join us in the Game Changer community on Facebook or on Instagram – @erinmayhenry.

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