So you’re an entrepreneur, and after all that time and effort your business is flourishing. What now? How do you continue motivating yourself to be a top achiever when you’re already successful? How do you prevent yourself from becoming complacent?
Reams have been written about how to motivate yourself when you are failing, but there is scant information about what to do when you are already successful. Why is this important? Why should you be worried about motivating yourself when you’ve already arrived?
Don’t be like Nokia
History is littered with cautionary tales about how once-successful companies or individuals found themselves on the back foot after initial success. Who can forget how the once ubiquitous Nokia brand found itself eating dust as Apple, Android, Samsung and even Huawei took its market share and sprinted ahead?
There is general consensus that Nokia didn’t try to reinvent itself or failed to see which way the market was heading. The decline of Nokia was particularly shocking considering what a complete innovator the Finnish-based company was to begin with.
A September 2013 article by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker reported that “historically, after all, Nokia had been a surprisingly adaptive company, moving in and out of many different businesses – paper, electricity, rubber galoshes.” Yet the once mighty Nokia is now a shadow of its former self.
If it can happen to Nokia it can happen to you. There is an important lesson in this for the individual—complacency is your enemy. There are a host of ways to tackle this as you try to stay on top of your game and ahead of the competition. The key is to find what works for you and to implement it. The worst thing is to do nothing at all. Trying something new and failing at it is better than resting on your laurels.
Your mother was right—make your bed
If you’re wondering where to begin as you try to reinvent yourself and stir up your creative juices, just making your bed could be a start. Big wave surfing legend and successful businessman Laird Hamilton has often stated he is a believer in completing tasks and in an interview with Outside in December 2018, Hamilton says he makes his “bed without fail” everyday as a way to stay motivated.
Photo by Wikimedia Commons
“Admiral William McRaven, a retired Navy SEAL famously explained that a neatly made bed isn’t just about orderliness; completing a task first thing in the morning sets you up to be productive all day. I usually straighten up the kitchen, too, which helps ready my brain for whatever comes next,” Hamilton told Outside.
You’re ahead, but pretend you’re behind
Perhaps the most interesting way to tackle the problem of complacency comes from Berkshire Hathaway CEO and billionaire Warren Buffett. Media company Goalcast reported in February 2018 that Buffett’s advice on how to stay motivated was to pretend you have someone breathing down your neck trying to win the race first. “By maintaining this mindset you force yourself to get up and keep moving,” Buffet said. “Even when you’re already successful, this is a good way to stay restless and competitive.”
A similar approach is one taken by renowned tennis coach and former pro player Brad Gilbert who advises in his bestselling book Winning Ugly to pretend you’re behind when you’re actually ahead. For example, in a tennis match if you were ahead 4-1 in the first, the key to keeping the ascendancy would be to imagine that it was actually your opponent who was ahead. This would dramatically alter the way you approached the points in the coming game and ensure you kept your concentration. This principle can easily be applied to your business.
Ultimately you have to do something and keep doing something to maintain the success you’ve achieved. Your business won’t keep on ticking if you don’t do regular tune-ups or approach challenges in a different way.
Former CEO of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s, Nolan Bushnell, maintains that “the critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something.
“It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.”
- ‘Understanding Motivation’ is one of the workbooks discussed in Evolve’s Peer Group sessions.