Various "problems" starting a profitable business

[Tomas J]

Hi there,

I would like to share some problems that I am currently facing while trying to start a profitable "Fastlane" business. To clarify my current situation, I have an idea about my own business, but I am still not really working on it.

Motivation/Discipline
Although I was a professional athlete for about 8 years (I handled to keep myself motivated through the bad times, when injured etc.), I struggle to keep myself motivated when almost nothing is going (no customers, no sales etc.) on and there's a ton of work to be done before anything will start to happen.

What I consider as a problem
I've tried some "online business" models before, I mean creating Kindle books and so on (don't actually want to discuss that its a kind of crap), but I've never managed to get a positive feedback loop in any business. I also need to point out, that I've never had a real "F*ck this event" in my life - I've always managed to keep above average standard of living.

Do you have any ideas/tips about how to overcome this and keep myself motivated even when there's nothing really going on with my business and there's only a ton of work to be done? I've come up with the following:

1. Find a mentor - maybe I need a "supervisor" in the beginning
2. Find an accounting partner
3. Start to profile myself as an entrepreneur on social media in order to create some social pressure on me

I sincerely believe that once I get a positive feedback loop, it will skyrocket my motivation as the same thing happened when I started my career in athletics. Firstly I was not really interested in everyday sweat, the things radically changed after I've managed to win some local competitions (mainly because of my talent).

I would be grateful for any contributions to this thread.

Have a nice day!

 

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[rwhyan]

Discipline > motivation

 

[Thoelt53]

A mentor isn’t going to babysit you and make sure you’re doing what you should be doing. That’s on you.

Plug away and accomplish small things first. This will build momentum and discipline. Discipline is a muscle, so exercise it like you would your physical body. It helps if you carry discipline through all areas of your life.

 

[NMdad]

Agree with what others said about discipline & building that muscle.

You were a professional athlete, so you had to train daily, right? You probably had a routine. Create a routine for your entrepreneurial journey. How will you train, what specific activities do you need to train on to create a business? What are the things you need to repeat--your entrepreneurial reps?

 

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[QDF]

The best motivation I've ever found is having a strong vision of the future, and the discipline to see it through.

Not just a vision of your personal life either. Have a vision of what your business will look like in the future, in as much detail as you can imagine.

Once you do this, you'll naturally think of things you you need to do to make it happen. Write these down and make a to-do list.

Now stay disciplined, start working on this to-do list (even if it's only a little bit every day to start), and always keep your vision in mind to guide you.

You'll eventually build momentum, confidence in your vision, and the habits you need, and then staying motivated becomes much easier.

 

[Tomas J]

A mentor isn’t going to babysit you and make sure you’re doing what you should be doing. That’s on you.

Plug away and accomplish small things first. This will build momentum and discipline. Discipline is a muscle, so exercise it like you would your physical body. It helps if you carry discipline through all areas of your life.

Thanks for your reply. I actually don't want anyone to babysit me, it's more about being accountable. Maybe it sounds weird, but even that I am pretty sure that this is the lifestyle I want (I mean unscripted lifestyle), I still struggle to work on it. You know, it's hard to work without any supervisor when I've always had one at the beginning of something great that happened in my life. Again, parallel with my athletics career: at the beginning of it, I was faking the training when the coach wasn't looking, that time it was no weekend without a party... through the years I've developed such discipline that I had no problem to train two times a day even without the coach supervise me.

I was thinking a lot about how that happened.

My theory: Firstly, I've won a few local competitions thanks to my talent and I really enjoyed that feeling of winning, of being good at something... Then, through the time I've realized that when I train more, I have better results (that's not always true, especially in a sprint, but at the beginning, anyone gets better with more training) and here the positive feedback loops came to action and since that moment it was "easy". But that would never happen if there would be no coach, training partners etc. at the beginning...

Anyway, I agree that I need to start small, develop momentum and confidence etc.