I Lost Motivation For My Business.

I've run my business for over 10 years, and every year I have phases where I lose all my motivation. I just walk down to my home office, do the absolute bare minimum, and daydream about burning it all down. One time, I even applied for a 9-5 job.

But each time, I always end up getting my motivation back. It used to seem so random. Until I started writing notes about what caused each slump and how I got out of it.

In this article, I'm going to share the three things I've learned about why we lose our business motivation and how to get it back.

Let's start with reason #1:

1. Expectations

If you've ever done a home renovation, you know it always takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you expect it to.

Entrepreneurship is similar. Except instead of tearing out your old bathroom, you're tearing out all your hopes and dreams.

Here's what happens:

You get excited about a new product, coaching program, marketing channel, whatever. You can see it so clearly in your mind's eye, just like that new bathroom. It's going to be great.

In the Emotional Cycle of Change, this phase is called "uninformed optimism" - you're excited about the benefits but out of touch with the costs.

Then construction starts on the new bathroom. There are dudes in your house just hammering away at the wall and you're like: "Oh, right. It's going to get worse before it gets better."

This phase is called "informed pessimism" - you understood that there would be work involved. In theory. But now it's real. If you want a new bathroom, you've gotta get rid of the old one.

Now there's dust all over your house, no door to close when you pee, and you're left wondering: "Why did I pay people to destroy a perfectly good bathroom?"

This phase is called the Valley of Despair - that low point of motivation where you want to curl up and hide from the world. The product launch flops, the coaching program isn't getting results, your new marketing channel isn't getting you leads. This isn't as easy as you thought it would be.

If you push through the Valley of Despair, just focusing on what you can control, you'll start to see little signs of progress. The new sink arrives. The door gets put back on. It's starting to come together.

This brings us into informed optimism - you've recalibrated your expectations. You see the light at the end of the tunnel. Your motivation starts to increase as you get traction. In business, this often comes in the form of sales. It's easy to feel motivated when you're winning.

Eventually, you reach your goal. It took longer than you thought it would, and the contractor's estimate was way off, but the bathroom looks great.

So, what's the lesson here? Sometimes we lose our business motivation because we're demoralized. If that's where you're at right now, here's what to do:

Avoid the shame spiral

It's easy to get excited about a new project, create unrealistic expectations, and then hit a low point. You feel like a failure and you start to blame yourself. Next thing you know, you're making nachos at 2am to feel better. This is all normal.

The fact that you're in the Valley of Despair doesn't mean you suck, it just means you had the wrong expectations. You thought it was going to be quick, easy, and fun. Instead, it's slow, hard, and painful. And you only compound that pain when you beat yourself up.

One thing that can help is talking to friends and colleagues about how you're feeling. Just telling someone, "I feel like I suck at this and it's not working" can really take a load off. And you may find that you're not alone. Even journaling out your feelings can help you surrender to the process and let go of any unmet expectations.

Stay the course

Once you start the bathroom renovation, do not stop. It may not look like you're making progress, but you've been laying the groundwork to build on. Same thing with your business. By the time you're in the Valley of Despair, you're already halfway through the suffering. You might as well get a reward for it.

A lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake of looking for something new to feel uninformed optimism about. But that's just as silly as deciding to stop your bathroom project halfway through and starting renovations on another room. It never gets easier. You just end up with a bunch of unfinished rooms.

The root of the word passion is passio, which means "suffering." The fact that you're willing to show up each day, even though you don't feel motivated, is actually a sign of passion. You don't hate your business, you just hate working hard without seeing results. You hate the feeling of not winning.

One thing that helps me stay motivated is stacking little wins. Instead of focusing on an external result outside of my control, I try to focus on the process. And I set the bar really low for each day with my to-do list. That way, I get to feel like a success instead of setting the bar high and feeling like I'm not doing enough.

Expect it to suck next time

Once you've gone through this cycle enough times, you start to realize that making changes in your business is uncomfortable. Just like every renovation. You learn to double the estimate that the contractor gives you.

This realization helps in two ways:

1) It makes you more hesitant to take on new projects - which is a good thing.

2) You aren't as caught off guard by the Valley of Despair because you don't start off so optimistic. You avoid what Christine Hassler calls an "expectation hangover."

A couple of years ago, I decided to add YouTube to my content marketing strategy. And I basically told myself, "It's probably going to take 6-12 months before I even figure out what I'm doing, let alone see any results." And that's pretty much what's happened. So I'm not having to let go of expectations that I never created in the first place. I just focus on making one video per week and trying to get better each time. I try to avoid looking at the metrics too much.

All this hard work does take a toll, though. Which brings us to reason #2 why you aren't feeling motivated about your business.

2. Energy

A few years ago, we fostered a 6 year old girl who had experienced a lot of trauma. And I couldn't figure out why my sales had dropped and I had no energy to work on my business. But when I zoomed out, I realized what was happening. We were absorbing her trauma, and now there was a whole new area of life I had added which required energy.

Entrepreneurship already requires a lot of energy. Because there's all the uncertainty and emotional labor involved. A lot of times we only want to give ourselves a break if we've been working crazy hours.

But your business doesn't exist in a vacuum. Any stress you experience outside of the business will effect your energy reserves. If you've been doing a lot of traveling, or parenting, or you have a health thing going on, that's going to impact your overall capacity.

So it's worth asking, "Has something outside of the business changed that might have drained my energy?"

Your system is always going to try and seek balance. When you're not motivated to work on your business, you may become more interested in meditation, or focus on relationships. This is your wiser self trying to put fuel back in the tank. It's not your business's job to give you energy, it's your job to go get energy so you can put it into your business and get money out.

We're seasonal creatures. There are going to be times when we're feeling really energized (summer) and times when we feel low (winter). We can't be always be on. The more we fight the season we're in, the longer it lasts.

Whatever you do, don't start comparing yourself to other entrepreneurs. It will seem like you're behind and everyone is more successful and motivated than you are. Just realize that everything looks bad right now because you're tired.

Which brings us to the recommendations. If you're just tired and that's why you're not motivated, here's what to do:

Take a vacation

This sounds too simple, but it's one of the best ways to get out of a funk. If all you need is a one or two week vacation to get back on track, that's a great trade. Sometimes you don't realize you need a break until you take one.

Again, you might feel like you don't deserve a break because you haven't actually been working that hard. It's easy to take a vacation after a huge launch when you've worked your butt off and made a ton of money. But sometimes you need a break because of factors outside of your business, or because you're working hard on something that hasn't paid off yet.

Remember, business is a marathon, not a sprint. One or two weeks of vacation are not going to destroy your business. You can catch up financially when you get your energy back. And if taking a week off truly isn't possible, you may want to take a look at how you've designed your business. For example, if you meet with clients every week, versus 2-3x per month, it's hard to take a vacation.

Add in things that give you energy

Sometimes you can't just take a vacation when you run out of gas, or you have one scheduled but it's a couple of weeks away. So instead of sitting down at your desk and just staring at the screen all day, you can do things that replenish you instead.

Get a couple hours of good work in and then go work out, read, go see friends. Don't try to work for more time than you have energy to. Because if you do that you're going to end up not feeling productive and you're going to feel like a loser.

One of my former clients, Grace Brodeur, is a procrastination coach. She recommends doing an energy audit. First, you write down all the things that are draining you and you see what you can delete or delegate. Then, you write a list of things that give you energy and make sure to put those on your to-do list.

Schedule "deload” weeks

There's a concept in strength training called deloading. It basically means taking a planned week off or reducing the weight significantly to avoid overtraining. You can apply the same thing to your business.

The key is to take a deload week before you think you need it. Once you get to the point where you're burnt out, it takes a lot longer to recover. I like to schedule a week off once a quarter. I make sure there's an actual trip I'm taking or something else I'm doing instead of working. That way I'm not tempted to work during the deload week. You can do the same thing within a week, for example taking half days on Friday.

The more times you go through this cycle, the more you'll realize that your time and energy are limited. If there is a big thing outside of the business that's going on, you probably won't be able to push so hard at work. And if you're pushing hard on the business, maybe you schedule a week off at the end of that knowing you'll be tired.

Okay, we've covered two of the three reasons why you might not be motivated: expectations and energy. Let's look at the third reason...

3. Evolution

Every relationship goes through the honeymoon phase, what psychologists call "passionate love." All you want to do is think about the other person and spend time with them. Then, after the first year or two, it switches to "compassionate love." You still love the person, but it feels like things have evolved. And they have.

The first phase is all about excitement and desire, while the second phase is more about trust and commitment. A lot of people get thrown off by this change and end up looking for a new partner to feel passionate love with. They eventually end up in the same place a year into the new relationship.

The relationship with your business is similar. You might start to question whether it's the right business just because you're in a different phase. And you might be tempted to make drastic changes where a more subtle change is what's needed.

And this doesn't just happen in the first year or two. A relationship keeps evolving over time. Because each person is continually changing. The goal in a long-term relationship is to grow together. If you were married to your business, and you didn't want to get a divorce, what would you change in order to bring that spark back? 

There's always the possibility that it's time to let go of your business completely. But a lot of times, when we say we've lost passion for our business, we haven't lost passion with the whole thing. There are just certain parts that we're not motivated by anymore.

Which brings us to the first thing you can do if you're feeling bored by your business:

Embrace boredom

What feels like boredom is sometimes just stability. It's not the worst thing in the world to have a stable business. It means you can focus on other parts of your life. You can't do that as much in the start-up phase of your business.

If you're used to being in stressful, toxic relationships…you're going to be thrown off when you get into a healthy one. It's going to feel different. But not necessarily in a bad way.

In a relationship, we sometimes want our partner to meet all of our needs. And we do the same thing with our business - we make it the reason why we feel bored with our life. But your business exists primarily to give you money and a sense of satisfaction. If you want excitement, sometimes it's easier to get it by going snowboarding then by creating unnecessary drama in your business.

Set a new goal

A good question to ask if you're feeling bored with your business is, "Do I actually know what I'm focused on right now?" If you're not working on something that feels fun or exciting to you, you're not going to get that sense of challenge that keeps you engaged at work. And you may be spreading out into the available space (i.e. procrastinating).

It's important not to try to force this, though. Don't just create a new product or service because it looks good on paper if you're heart isn't in it. Sometimes doing nothing and waiting for the right project is better than keeping yourself busy with the wrong stuff.

A good strategy is to follow your curiosity. Another question I love from Grace Brodeur: “Is there something that is piquing your interest but doesn't feel worth it to pursue?” These are often the things that end up leading to exciting new innovations for your business. You just need to give yourself permission to go down a rabbit hole, even if you're not sure how it's going to benefit the business right now.

Hire a coach or take a course

Sometimes we get into a bit of an echo chamber with our businesses. It can be nice to get some structure and skills from a course. If you're just tired or in the valley of despair, maybe you hire a virtual assistant . Or, if you feel like you or your business is evolving, it might be time to hire a coach.

It's sort of like how couples will hire a therapist. Because they want to break old patterns and get some outside perspective. A lot of times, when I'm in a slump, it's because I'm not investing in my business. I'm just trying to maintain the status quo. Or I'm stuck on the same issue and I can't figure it out on my own. There's no shame in getting some outside support.

For example, sometimes I have internal conflicts and fears that keep me stuck. Part of me wants to grow my business, but part of me is scared of that growth. And so I end up in these loops where I'll get really motivated, hit an invisible ceiling, and then go back to what's comfortable until I get bored again. A good coach helps untangle these "competing commitments" so I'm more in touch with the type of business I want.

This Too Shall Pass

Hopefully one of these things resonated with you, or a combination of things. And you can go address them. Just remember...

It's easy to show up for your business when you're feeling motivated. But that's not always going to be the case. It's the days when you don't feel like doing anything that you still need to show up for your business.

It's sort of like parenting - you can't just stop parenting because you don't feel excited about your kids one day. You might not do a perfect job, you may feel like you suck, but you showed up.

It makes me think of this quote from Elizabeth Gilbert: "“You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.”

If you keep showing up, if you stay on the path, I promise that this feeling will eventually pass. Your motivation will come back and you'll forget all about this phase when you weren't motivated.

Until the next time it happens, of course.

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