Stay inspired as a small business owner
What gets you up in the morning? What makes you excited? What project brings a smile across your face when you’re finished? What is the heartbeat that moves you forward?
As a business owner it is so easy to get overly busy with business. There are so many things to do every day. Emails to answer, articles to read, invoices to send, clients to serve, meetings to plan and tons of other to-dos.
How do you get inspired when there is just so much to do?
Over the past ten years we have done a lot of business. We have attended a lot of meetings and checked off millions of boxes on the to-do list. We have stayed inspired by focusing on who we are, avoiding the distractions and taking time for ourselves just to breathe.
Stay Focused on who you are
It seems that with success you start to have new opportunities to consider. Many of these opportunities are great, but many of them can actually pull us away from what we love.
When we first started our company, we were doing any project that would pay the bills. This meant you would start to take on projects that you didn’t want to do, but you didn’t want to pass up. That is not inspiring, but it is doing what is required to survive.
As we grew we began to focus on the items that are actually creating a profit and start to trim off the distractions that are causing you to lose money. To stay inspired with the heart of design and the work that we truly love we have had to let go of some services that we did but were not part of who we were.
What if you have side services that are making you money, but you hate? If you truly hate them, drop them. Another option is to bring on someone else who can take on the distraction projects allowing you to focus on the work that you love to do.
This can be as simple as hiring a bookkeeper, like Taylor Made Bookkeeping, who can manage your books for you, or a marketing firm to completely manage your marketing for you like us. This frees you up to do what you love to do and what truly inspires you.
Cut the chaos and distractions
Another killer of inspiration is extra stress with all its chaos and distractions. There could be some services or products on your list that make you money, but they also cause you a lot of stress. Yet somehow, we feel that we must hang onto these things that are not paying off mentally.
We are giving you permission to let go of those odd services that are the most stressful that do not tie into your love and inspiration.
We have many small digital services that we could have done, such as installing anti-virus on client’s computers and performing IT, but its not what gets us up in the morning. We love designing websites, so we said no and directed them to others who could help. Another side project was scanning digital photos and converting VHS tapes to digital. At one point we bought a couple of conversion machines, but we quickly realized it wasn’t our idea of a good time. So now we pass all our requests onto Silver Frame Productions and we don’t have to deal with the stress of these random projects that don’t align with our core inspiration. That is their inspiration, not ours.
Take time to breathe
It is hard to be inspired when you don’t allow yourself time to be inspired.
It is far to easy to be overwhelmed with all the things that need to be done every day or every week.
Put it into your schedule. Some YOU time where you work on the projects that are the reason you do what you do. For me that might be custom coding and styling. For you it may be looking at fabric, exploring architecture, writing a poem or arranging flowers. Block in that time so that you can be refreshed and keep moving forward.
In the end stay true to yourself.
Chase your dreams.
Our greatest inspirations come from within and those closest to us.
Take the time to find new heroes, new places, new sensations.
And share that inspiration with the world.