In the uncharted territory of owning your own business, you may find yourself becoming demotivated or asking yourself the question, “Why am I even doing this?”. Don’t sweat it, we’ve all been there. Even in our short tenure as business owners, there have been times where we felt demotivated and frankly, wanted to give up. The road to successful entrepreneurship is a slow process, but quitting won’t speed it up. The objective is to stay motivated so that each day you get up and continue to work toward your dream. So when those days come that you find yourself down in the dumps, here is some advice on how to remotivate yourself back on the road to success:

Meeting other business owners in your community is like “business owner therapy”. Not only is it a good idea to play an active role in your community, but local business owners are most likely going through/ have gone through the same things that you are experiencing. The natural conversation will help ease your stress and add an extra pep in your step because you feel like you are not in this alone. Try joining your local chamber of commerce, finding a local meetup for business owners, or starting a group for neighboring businesses. Wherever it is, find your community of business owners and build relationships with them. It really makes a world of difference in our attitude and motivation when we attend our chamber meeting on Wednesday mornings. BONUS: Other business owners will have tips and tricks or referrals that you may not have ever found on your own!

It can be really demotivating as a business owner when something does not go the way you planned. As an owner, there is more pressure on you for things to run smoothly, especially since you cannot just “clock out” at 5 pm. Through our time as business owners, we have experienced many ups, and many downs and the one thing we can say in hindsight is that each time we felt like something was going wrong, it turned out even better than before. In one instance, we lost a big client. We were both devastated and felt really low for ending up in this situation. We sulked for a minuted and then realized no one is going to fix this, except us. Now that we no longer had this big client, we had time to work even harder at bringing in more business. And that is exactly what we did. We turned a situation that could have derailed all of our motivation, and channeled it into making our company even better. We know this is easier said than done, but if you keep working hard through the hurdles, you’ll end up better than when you began.

We are all guilty of losing sight of why we are entrepreneurs in the first place. This usually happens when the day-to-day tasks start to become overwhelming. This is also when you are most likely the most demotivated. You are a business owner for a reason and if you do not remember that reason each day when running your company, you can start losing your love for it. So what is your reason? Do you want to build a legacy to pass on to your children? Do you want to create something amazing? Are you solving a problem you are passionate about? Whatever the reason may be, you must remind yourself of it every single day. This will help you get through the difficult days and it will make your easy ones all that much better.