When it comes to entrepreneurship, success often hinges on two primary factors: motivation and discipline. While both play integral roles in propelling your business forward, they do so in different ways, making it essential to recognize the nuances of how each works and is put into practice. This understanding may help you better navigate the complex landscape of business ownership and achieve your goals more efficiently.
Motivation is the spark that propels entrepreneurs forward in their initial ideas and inspiration. It’s the reason they have to act in the first place—the why behind what they’re doing. This drive can stem from numerous sources, be it your passion for your trade, your ambition to create a rewarding business, or your desire to make a difference in the world. Whatever your objective, you feel an enthusiasm to pursue it with the expectation of a positive outcome, which helps keep your eye on the prize in the process.
Because of this, motivation is often characterized by feelings of excitement, optimism, and eagerness to take action. However, these feelings can fluctuate greatly depending on your circumstances. You may have additional bursts of enthusiasm when you hit a major sales goal or receive positive feedback from your peers and clients, but you may also be discouraged by the inevitable challenges you will face in your journey. Factors such as low sales numbers or missed deals may dampen your zeal and reduce your motivation—and, consequently, your effort—over time. That’s why relying solely on this factor to drive productivity and progress may lead to inconsistency in your actions, ultimately hindering your long-term success.
In contrast, discipline is the unwavering commitment to consistent action, regardless of external circumstances or emotional reactions. In other words, it’s your ability to adhere to a set of principles, routines, and habits that facilitate progress toward your goals, even when your motivation may have faded.
Naturally, discipline requires a great deal of self-control, perseverance, and resilience to help you get through the boring or difficult tasks along with any setbacks, whether big or small. This involves prioritizing long-term objectives over short-term gratification and being willing to endure discomfort or adversity in your pursuit of success. You have to be intentional with your actions and dedicated to doing what needs to be done each day. Entrepreneurs who cultivate this level of discipline can establish more productive regimens that help them not only manage their time more effectively but also overcome obstacles with greater determination.
While discipline may not always evoke the same level of excitement as motivation, it serves as a reliable foundation for sustainable growth and achievement. By not putting your actions at the whim of the highs and lows that come with motivation, you can cultivate better behaviors to help you remain focused and maintain steadier progress toward your long-term goals no matter the difficulties.
Though they may seem at opposite ends, motivation and discipline go hand in hand: the former provides the initial impetus for you to pursue your business goals and dreams, while the latter gives you the resilience to continue the journey in the face of any adversity. That’s why it’s essential to find the right balance between the two. Start by fully examining what’s motivating you to pursue your path. If you don’t have a clearly defined vision, you can’t understand what you’re working toward and, thus, can’t take actionable steps to achieve it.
Once you’re confident in your purpose, establish short- and long-term goals that are SMART—specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. By having these objectives, you can better align your actions with your vision, which may provide more clarity and direction for your efforts and keep you pushing forward even when you may not feel like it.
The next step is to develop daily routines that support your goals. These habits will assist you in maintaining your productivity and focus as you complete each task, no matter how rote or difficult. A key part of this is cultivating accountability. While that primarily involves holding yourself accountable for your actions and progress, you may also want to seek feedback from your peers or mentors, who may be able to provide a more objective viewpoint to help you better understand what steps to take in your vision and mission.
Finally, though it’s impossible to achieve success without hard work, it’s essential to prioritize your well-being so you don’t end up reaching burnout. By taking a break on weekends and establishing a healthy work-life balance, you’ll feel more energized, enabling you to stoke your passion and fortify your resilience to continue working toward success.
While it may be your motivation that ignites your initial flame of inspiration, it’s your discipline that will keep it burning. Integrate both into your journey, and you can better unlock your full entrepreneurial potential and overcome any obstacles you may face along the way.
TAKE ACTION:
Examine the “why” behind your actions, and determine what steps you can take to help you better achieve your short- and long-term goals.
When it comes to running a business, there is a seemingly endless list of tasks to complete, from formulating a business plan to building a team to establishing processes. A key aspect that’s often overlooked, however, is nailing down who specifically you’re selling to. Every leader understands who their basic client base is—a local hardware store will sell to builders and DIYers, for example. But to get the most bang for your marketing buck and maximize your company’s overall efficiency, you need to know who your ideal client is by creating a persona for them.
For perspective, consider those businesspeople whose survival literally depends on growth: farmers and landscapers. When planting their respective seeds, these experts don’t just scatter them randomly and hope for the best. They know with pinpoint accuracy which ones thrive best in which soil and climate to yield the ideal crop. In essence, that’s what persona creation does for a business—when you seek to understand who your customers are at a micro level, it provides big-picture benefits.
Knowing which client base to pursue and nurture will be vital to your success for a few reasons. First, it will give your team members a precise target audience when developing sales pitches, designs, marketing, and social media posts and videos. Rather than making an educated guess on how best to relate to clients through the script, look, and messaging, they can approach each task with confidence, certain that they are connecting to the right people the right way. Just as important, having a persona locked in will make your clients happier since it will consistently demonstrate that your company knows them and their needs. In turn, they may grow to trust you above your competitors and become loyal patrons, bringing you both repeat business and valuable referrals.
To ensure that you’re planting your customer-targeting seeds in fertile ground, you should first learn more about your current clients. Some of the crucial data to accumulate and pore over are age, gender, education, household size, location, job, field, and income. In addition, dig deeper to get more subjective yet equally valuable information, such as their needs, values, motivations, and, yes, even pain points concerning your business or industry. In short, you’ll want to discover as much as possible about their purchasing journey from beginning to end along with everything that influences it. Put yourself in their shoes to understand how they think and feel, and you’ll more easily anticipate their goals and potential obstacles when it comes to purchasing your products or services.
A good place to start is by asking the tried-and-true reporter’s questions. You surely know your own company’s why (i.e., mission), what (products and services), and how (vision), but how well do you know your customers’ respective answers regarding their purchasing decisions? To find out, consider such questions from their perspective: Who are they as people? What are their values and motivations? How can you best communicate with them? Why would they choose your company over the competition or vice versa? You should also take into account their when tendencies—such as when they’re likely to open emails and respond to them and when their habits change (perhaps during the holidays)—and where considerations like where they like to shop and spend their time on social media.
There are several ways to gather such targeted information. Do surveys, interviews, and even focus groups to hear directly from customers, and combine that gold mine of feedback with quantitative resources such as web analytics. And don’t forget to seek the opinions of the people in your company who understand your clients best: your sales and retention teams. They can tell you from firsthand experience who knows, likes, and trusts your brand, who doesn’t, and the reasons why.
Once you have gathered both qualitative and quantitative information, sit down with your team to identify areas of common ground among your current and past customers. For instance, does a large percentage of them skew older? Do most live in metropolitan areas? As you discover similarities, add them to your ideal client persona until you have a well-defined profile of who is best suited for what you provide. If you notice multiple critical findings emerging, consider branching out to create secondary personas. Just remember to stay true to your brand’s overall look and feel, message, and mission across each one to prevent customer confusion.
There’s an old axiom that says change is the only constant in life—and those winds of change often arrive suddenly in the business world, ushering in shifting values and needs with them. So be sure to revisit your customer personas at least annually to make sure you’re still targeting your ideal audience. Continually keeping this valuable information up to date can help you maximize your success, allowing your company to reach the people who want to hear from it most.
TAKE ACTION:
Sit down with your team to determine the most efficient way to get quantitative and qualitative data for determining your business’s ideal customer persona.
Whether you’re a solopreneur looking to build a strong business or part of an established organization eager to grow, it’s pivotal that you surround yourself with great talent. When you have people you can consistently rely on to do their jobs efficiently and to a high standard, you can accelerate toward your goals at unbelievable rates.
Of course, there’s a difference between wanting to hire the best employees and knowing how to do so. Even if you manage to attract the right individuals, you have to somehow identify the winners among a big crowd of applicants. Check out these widely applicable tips to help you successfully navigate the hiring process and form a more lucrative team.
Once you post a job listing and see the applications start flooding in, you might feel a little overwhelmed. The business and technology experts at EarthWeb report that an average of 118 people apply for a single job opening. So how do you decide which are worthy of an interview? There may be dozens with a well-written cover letter, relevant experience, and the appropriate skills, but you can’t interview them all—unless you want to make staffing your full-time job. Instead, your first round of interviews should comprise just a small number of candidates, each of whom would be an ideal fit for the job, at least on paper.
To narrow your selection, write up a rubric of qualifications, noting which ones are simply preferences and which ones you won’t budge on. You also need a keen eye for red flags and green flags that may indicate the truth behind an application’s facts and figures. Red flags that reveal a potentially unfit candidate might include a laundry list of short job stints or a lack of industry-relevant experience. Green flags, meanwhile, include major awards and accomplishments from their education or a previous job. (Just remember to reach out to applicants’ professional references to confirm these claims.)
After you single out the most impressive crop, invite each one in for an interview, where you can start to discern the intangibles that will lead you to the right hire.
Applicants aren’t the only ones who need to prepare for interviews. As the one doing the hiring, you should enter these meetings with a clear picture of what signifies a “good team member” based on the position being filled. Take these examples:
It’s also crucial to keep your company’s culture at the forefront of your mind during interviews. Try to define what makes your brand and workplace unique in one sentence; this will help you zero in on those candidates who would fit in naturally. Are they an excellent collaborator who would contribute well to your team’s brainstorming sessions? Are they a passionate goal chaser who’d thrive in professional competition and blow past their quotas? Trust your instincts, and be ready to pass on people who don’t seem right, even if that decision is based primarily on a gut feeling.
Now that you know your objectives for these meetings, it’s time to polish your interviewing skills. Most applicants will likely have prepared some impressive stock answers or even white lies to get past common prompts like “Tell me about yourself” or “What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?” You need to ask the right questions to sidestep such falsifications, flattery, or exaggerations. Consider ones like these:
These prompts are meant to inspire in-depth conversation rather than rote yes-or-no answers, so if you’re short on time, save half of them for a second round of interviews. Either way, always make sure to ask each applicant the same questions to put them all on a level playing field and better allow you to compare their personalities, experience, and skills.
After the interview process, you may be faced with several qualified candidates but only looking to hire as few as one. A favorite strategy of mine for narrowing the field is using the Predictive Index Behavioral Assessment, a research-based personality test that reveals behavioral traits and key motivations. Send this to each interviewee, then use the results to help make your final decision about who would fit your company’s culture and the position’s demands best.
However, be careful not to put all your stock in one candidate—a competing employer may snatch them up before you do, or the results of their background check could filter them out. Instead, you should review the applications, interviews, and personality tests to establish a ranking system. That way, you’ll know who to turn to next if your top choice slips through your fingers.
It’s a fact of business that good workers will come and go. But if you arm yourself with these techniques, you can repeatedly find great talent, extend offers, and welcome great teammates aboard to help your company continue driving toward success.
TAKE ACTION:
Apply these tips to track down and identify the best applicants to hire.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Luke Acree is an authority on leadership, a lead generation specialist, and a referral expert who has helped more than 100,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their companies. He hosts Stay Paid, a sales and marketing podcast, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Foundr.com.
CEO Susan L. Combs took a big leap of faith early in her career when she walked away from a position at a large insurance company to start her own brokerage firm, Combs & Company. She discusses her path to success and what helped her get where she is now, including the guidance from her late father—whose legacy she continues to honor through her book and nonprofit.
You launched your own company at twenty-six. What did that journey entail?
I was employed by the largest entertainment insurance brokerage in the United States. After a year of working with them, I was offered a contract to participate in their management-trainee program but wasn’t told what it would pay. The year before, I had only earned $24,000 working as an independent contractor, and employer-paid benefits weren’t included. I was only netting about $150 a month, so I was often in the red.
When I asked what my new contract would pay, I was told to just trust them. I replied that trust wouldn’t pay my bills, and we parted ways. Luckily, I already had a plan B in place to start my own firm. From day one, I had negotiated with the brokerage to own my book of business. This meant that when I walked out the door, I took all my clients with me—and instantly made twice as much money since I was no longer required to split my earnings with the house.
My company has continued to grow ever since, even celebrating its nineteenth anniversary in June of this year. Today, we offer all types of insurance, including life, health, property, and casualty. I also consult, such as on medical malpractice cases and workers’ compensation-related litigation, where I serve as an insurance-risk strategist and Affordable Care Act expert witness in forty-one states.
How would you advise someone starting their own company?
I’d say, “Don’t underestimate the loneliness factor.” When I formed my own business, I worked out of my studio apartment. After being used to a large, bustling office, it was a big change for me. I ended up getting myself a cat for company and making it a daily habit to attend a weekday support group meeting so I could connect with other people. As an entrepreneur, it’s important to find ways to structure your day and reach out to others, whether it’s simply going to the gym or meeting someone for a cup of coffee or a walk.
How essential is connecting with others and having mentors to building success?
It’s absolutely vital. I really value my peer mentors. At this point in my life, my closest friends are all professional women, and many are also in insurance. Every year, we get together for a conference or a girls’ weekend, which gives us a chance to share industry knowledge and talk about business goals, when we want to retire, and other mutual topics of interest. It’s incredibly valuable being able to bounce ideas off each other.
One of your mentors was your father, Major General Roger E. Combs, a veteran of the Vietnam War. What prompted you to write your book about him, Pancakes for Roger?
It was a cathartic exercise. When my dad died a few years ago, I threw myself into helping my family, so I didn’t get to fully benefit from the grief process; writing the book allowed me to truly grieve.
The premise arose from a request my father had when he was in hospice care and dying of Agent Orange-related throat cancer. I had moved from New York back to Missouri to help care for him. One morning, I found him at the dining table and asked him what he was doing. In his confused state, he said, “I want pancakes for breakfast.” That broke my heart—he had a feeding tube and was on oxygen, so it wasn’t a good idea. I heated up his feeding formula and brought it over to the table. He asked what it was, and I told him it was his syrup. He smiled.
He passed away a few weeks later on August 22, 2018. After his death, I took a day off from work and, at my husband’s urging, went out for pancakes. He snapped a picture of me eating them, and I posted it on social media asking people to enjoy some pancakes for Roger. I received several photos in return; I never expected it to resonate so much.
A year later, I started a fundraising effort using the hashtag #PancakesForRoger. For every pancake photo received, my company donated to the University of Missouri School of Law Veterans Clinic in my father’s name. We host it every February now. The first year, we got about 150 photos; this year, we received 857 from all fifty states and Washington, DC, along with twenty-nine additional countries on all seven continents. As a result, we gave $10,142 to the clinic, almost double what we previously donated. The money helps provide free legal services to veterans and their families.
Your book is filled with your dad’s advice. Which do you treasure most from him?
My father taught me an incredible number of valuable lessons, but I’ll share one that resonated with me early on. I graduated from college in 2001 during a terrific job market and had several offers on the East Coast. My dad accompanied me on the trip, during which he spoke to me about the three core facets of life: the person you’re with, your work, and where you live. He explained that if you’re happy with all three, you’re living a golden life. Even if you’re content with just two of them, you’re doing fairly well. But if you only like one aspect or none, it’s up to you to fix it. I’ve always taken that message to heart.
What are your plans for the nonprofit company you formed in honor of your dad, Pancakes for Roger, LLC?
In 2025, I want to start giving grants to veterans. Our mission is to unite them with funding opportunities to enable them to help others. For example, if a veteran is a youth baseball coach and needs equipment, we can give them $1,000 to buy what they need for the kids. Or if there’s a veteran whose vehicle is in the shop and they can’t get to their job because they can’t afford to fix it, we can assist them. Eventually, I want to create a Shark Tank for veterans to help them start their own businesses. We will also continue the #PancakesForRoger photo campaign, donating to the Veterans Clinic for every picture posted—it’s fun, and everyone looks forward to it.
For more info, visit pancakesforroger.org
