Starting a company is glamorized. TechCrunch and LinkedIn give readers a false sense of reality that success comes overnight. The truth is, successful companies take 7-10+ years to build, filled with a lot of ups and downs and struggles. Many of those companies announce big funding rounds have actually been working towards it for years.
How do founders stay motivated through the rollercoaster? How can you stay passionate about solving the same problem for so many years?
Coaches and mentors will all say that you have to be so passionate about the problem you’re solving that you can’t imagine doing anything else. This is ideal! However, new technologies take a very long time to develop and it can feel like you’re spinning your wheels and seeing little progress. The expectation to move fast and break things sometimes is not the reality.
It’s natural to question your motivation to do something when there are so many problems to solve, and so many things to work on. It is totally normal to recommit to the vision, and recommit to it often.
My advice is to be patient, trust (and enjoy!) the process and simply, keep going.
Here are my tips to stay motivated when the rollercoaster takes a dive:
- Look at how far you’ve come
- When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I think…what was I doing on this day a year ago? What were the problems I was facing? It’s eye-opening to think about those problems that I now think are easy to solve, and then I can think, “OK, a year from now, I will find this challenge much easier” and it helps me push through.
- Set (micro-) goals
- Set specific, achievable goals. I say micro-goals because sometimes we need something that we can achieve in the next hour or day to stay motivated. Setting micro-goals on the way to the big goal is a way to make it feel less overwhelming.
- Positive self-talk
- When thoughts get into your head like “I’m bad at…” or “I can’t”, replace them with “I’m working on…” and “I can try” instead.
- Find a support group
- Talking to people at the same stage as you is humbling. They are all experiencing the same problems and can empathize, give good advice
- Celebrating the small wins
- Oftentimes we are working so long towards a goal, that when we achieve it we move on to the next goal and forget to celebrate. Take the time to celebrate! Stop work and plan a celebration. Let everyone know how amazing it is that you got there.
- Find mentors
- Find people you admire and talk to them often. When times are tough, I ask to talk to my mentors weekly to inject energy into the business
- Surround yourself with positive people
- Haters gonna hate…let them hate somewhere far away from you
- Exercise
- This one really resonates for me. If I can get up every day and do my hard workout, I can solve the hard problems at work
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