No matter how much passion you have for your business, you’ll experience moments of feeling overwhelmed, under-motivated, frustrated, confused, unappreciated, and unsure.
Yep. You won’t absolutely 100% love every moment as a solopreneur. Anyone who tells you they do is exaggerating.
There’s no shame in admitting you don’t adore your journey in self-employment 24/7 all 365 days of the year. But when working full time in your business, you’ve got to push through the difficult moments so you can deliver the level of quality your clients expect from you.
Even when the honeymoon is over and you’re not outright feeling the love, you’ve got to dig deep and find it. At the very least, you need find something in your work and your status as solopreneur that will give you an attitude adjustment and incentive to dive in and produce.
Take a little break—if only for a day or a weekend. Heck, even an hour or a few minutes can make a difference. Mental and physical separation can do wonders for us. Researchers have found that even short breaks can significantly improve our ability to focus on our tasks for longer periods.
Take a few minutes to reflect on what you have to be thankful for. Making a living doing what you’re best at. Clients who appreciate you. A complimentary email that brightened your day. According to Psychology Today, an attitude of gratitude benefits us in a big way:
“Studies show that we can deliberately cultivate gratitude, and can increase our well-being and happiness by doing so. In addition, grateful thinking—and especially expression of it to others—is associated with increased levels of energy, optimism, and empathy.”
If your desk or your computer files are in disarray, work can become far more difficult to manage. And if you’ve let work pile up, you’ll start to feel overwhelmed and disenchanted. Some attention to time management can help you avoid these snafus. Check out this post and video by Catherine Morgan for some pointers on getting stuff done.
If you’re feeling under-motivated when working on certain projects or when working with certain clients, it could be you’re feeling your work is undervalued. You might consider reviewing and revising rates to customers who you’ve been giving the same rates for several years in a row. Especially if you brought them in on rates much, much lower than what you’re charging now to new clients.
If you do, it’s important to do it rationally and tactfully. After all, they’re your loyal customers and you don’t want to lose them over a few dollars. Be careful to thank them for their continued business and explain that while you’ve been happy to give them a discounted rate you now need to make some small adjustments. You might even share what the “market rate” is for the kind of work you’ve been doing. Even if you won’t take them in full to your current rates, raising their rates a small degree might make you feel fairly compensated and more enthusiastic. At the same time, it likely won’t put too much of a hurting on their bottom line.
Having just said what I did about raising rates and preserving customers in the process, you might (in some cases) do better by cutting a few low-paying or high-maintenance customers loose. You’ll likely find it more lucrative to spend the time and energy wasted on them finding higher paying, more cooperative clients. Realize you may decrease your revenue at first. But after you find better clients to fill the void, you’ll be better off.
Check out entrepreneur Rachel Strella’s blog post How To Know When It’s Time To Fire A Client for more insight about situations where saying goodbye is the right move.
If you’re not feeling all warm and cozy about your business, take a moment to think about why. Most likely you’ve still got that fire burning; you just need to rekindle it. I hope these tips will help you do just that!
Chime in here! How do you rediscover your passion for your business during times of “meh”?
Did you like this post? If yes, please subscribe to receive future posts via email or in your RSS feed!
By Dawn Mentzer
Another Insatiable Solopreneur™ post
I view my role as more than an independent contractor for hire — I become a part of your team. You’ll find that I dig into the details to understand what’s important to you — and your customers. I embrace collaboration, communicate openly, and craft content to help you achieve your marketing and business goals. Read More...
hi Dawn,
Thanks a lot for your amzing blog content! Where did you get this brilliant tips from ?
Hi Jim! Thanks for your kind comment. I just shared some of what I’ve learned along the way. 🙂 Anything you could add to the list?