Speaking with long time business owners can sound repetitive. They tell you they have tried to maintain their interest; have kept lists of goals and spend time on marketing in new and more efficient ways.
But their focus is gone. Whether through lack of interest and boredom with what they are doing or flagging motivation, it all amounts to the same thing. The excitement for their business is gone, not just for the products they are selling but the whole idea of running a business at all.
Is there a way to bring that back? Is it possible to stay focused on your business in the long term?
The word focus has several definitions, both as a noun and as a verb but the two most prevalent are being able to “pay particular attention to” and “the center of interest or activity”. Back when your business was shiny and new both of these were easy. Dreams of success and a perfect future filled with everything you could possibly want filled your days and helped you along. You had a new product that you wanted to tell everyone about and one day ran into another as your business grew.
But years afterward, what once was exciting can begin to look a little tarnished and stale. Same old products, the same old business chatter, nothing changes much. How can you turn that around?
The ability to focus is an actual quality. It doesn’t come easily to most. There are actual studies done which show that men’s brains are able to focus more intently on one thing at a time than women’s. However, women are better at collaborating so in the long run, both men and women are wired to run businesses extremely well in their own way.
Being able to focus is something you can practice and through time become better at. It’s a discipline just like other talents and while some are born with a greater ability to focus well on projects, the rest of us can learn to focus through determination and repetition. Don’t feel that you are unsuccessful because your focus on your business is declining. Look into other reasons for your lack of interest. Could it be time to change your business, whether through the types of products or services you sell or the way you sell them? Could it be that you need to slow your pace and spend more time on outside interests? Quite often a lack of recreational time leads to a lack of focus on any type of work, including business ownership.
If you have literally fallen totally out of love with the idea of being a business owner, then it’s time to put your focus elsewhere – on where you interests lay now. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed to give you that motivational push that you need.
Business ownership is a process just like any other. It doesn’t stay stagnant any more than you do. Maybe it’s time for a change, one that you’ll feel excited about focusing on.
© Chris Draper, DemGen Inc. 2014
image courtesy of jrbriggs
