Ep. 24 The Stern Truth: Have You Lost the Passion For Your Business? Part 1

Have you fallen out of love with your business? Or do you feel like you lost the passion for your business? You aren’t alone in that feeling.

In Part 1 of this series, I explore what I believe are the two main reasons we end up losing that passion. 

The first is the drains that we feel from all the things we do for our businesses. Certain aspects of our businesses can zap us of energy and keep us from building. The second is forgetting your “why”, the reason you started your business.

Speaking to those drains, they can be a huge part of how you run your business. My Business Energy Reset helps define your biggest drains, show you how to fix them, and realign your focus to grow faster. It’s a quick assessment and many business owners have found value in it (email me at Marshall@marshallstern.net if you’re interested). 

The drains can stem from the ping-pong of administrative activities, from emails to invoicing to sales. That’s not a long-term growth strategy for anyone. What works is leveraging our strengths, being intentional with our time, and leaning on our community.

Be sure to tune into Part 2 of this series, “Have You Lost the Passion For Your Business?”, coming very soon!

I’m excited to bring back the ONtrepreneur Bonfire Series. It’s a ZERO cost series starting in August running for 4 weeks. Email me to get your spot before they’re gone - Marshall@marshallstern.net.

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Book your complimentary business blindspot assessment with me here: https://attractwell.com/MarshallStern/landing/breakthrough-session

I encourage you to reach out with feedback, topic suggestions, and share your own entrepreneurial challenges.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] All right, everyone. Before we get into today's episode, just a quick reminder. The Ontrepreneur Bonfire series is starting soon. August 6th is our kickoff session. It will run for three weeks. There is absolutely zero cost to this except for your time for one hour per week. Send me an email if you are interested to get on the list and get the link for our first session again for August 6th.

[00:00:25] Send me an email Marshall@marshallstern.net. Details again in the show notes. Now grab a pad of paper and pen and enjoy this episode.

[00:00:41] Hi, I'm Marshall Stern and I've spent over 35 years leading and growing multiple small businesses. I know firsthand the struggles of entrepreneurship, feeling isolated, lonely, overwhelmed, and feeling like you have to do all by yourself. I've been through multiple recessions, and I have felt the highs and the lows. 

[00:01:00] I've been there, and I get it. This podcast is here to change that every week. I will bring you straight talking advice, real world strategies, and honest conversations about what it takes to succeed in business without the fluff, the gimmicks, or the sugar-coated. If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start making real progress, then you are in the right place.

[00:01:24] This is the Stern Truth.

[00:01:29] Welcome back my friends to another episode of the Stern Truth Business Unfiltered. And I have a question for you. Have you ever fallen out of love of your business? Put it another way. Have you ever lost the passion to your business? This topic not only resonates with me, but I think it'll resonate with many of you.

[00:01:57] In my journey as a coach and entrepreneur for over 35 years, I've had my ups and downs. I've had multiple businesses, and at times I've loved the businesses and at other times I've lost the passion and there's different reasons. Why we lose the passion or fall out of love in our business. And I'm going to be splitting this up into a probably a couple podcast episodes, if not more in the future.

[00:02:32] But my question to you is this, if you look at your business, are you drained by certain aspects of our business? Now there's a couple of reasons why we have this feeling of losing passion or falling out of love, and we might not even think of it that way. We just might be exhausted. That's probably the feeling that you have.

[00:03:01] Maybe it's not now. Maybe it's been in the past. Maybe it's been in the future, and if it's going to be in the future, I want you to listen to this episode and take notes so we can navigate through it because it can and probably will happen if you don't look at the signs. There are two signs, okay? Or two reasons why I believe we fall out of love or lose that passion for our business.

[00:03:30] Number one reason is we are drained. The activities we are focusing on, and that will totally hold us back from achieving what we truly want to achieve, and that's what we're going to focus on today. The second one I just want to put out there, and we'll talk about this in a future episode. We forget the why, why we started our business.

[00:03:56] In fact, I'm going to rewind. I don't want you to not think about the why. In the future, I want you to think about it now. Remind yourself why you started your business, and as for what we're focusing on and being drained by it, let's face it, as entrepreneurs, as small business owners now, not all of us are entrepreneurial, so I'm speaking to everyone who has a small business right now.

[00:04:31] If you could look at your activities, what activities are actually draining? You mentioned this quote before from John Maxwell. Your success is determined by your daily agenda, what we focus on. Or as Tony Robbins, another thought leader likes to say,  is quoted as saying, where our focus goes, our energy flows.

[00:05:05] So look at all the activities you are doing during the day, and I'm going to give you an invitation. I have what I call the Business Energy Reset. I mentioned it a little while back. It is live now. So if you want to take it, it is a short quiz, assessment and it will help you identify where the opportunities are to grow in your business.

[00:05:30] And if you can hear in the background, my dog is barking. Stella is barking. She has taken this assessment. She okay, maybe she hasn't but can't hear. She's barking in the background because someone's walking by. Here's the thing, I want you to email me, Marshall@marshallstern.net and I'm going to send you a link to this assessment.

[00:05:50] It's a Business Energy Audit, a Business Energy Reset Audit, it’s a short quiz. A few questions and you'll get the results, which will give you some tips to move forward. But I'm going to give you a little bit of the assessment right now. So if you have a pad of paper and a pen, I want you to simply write down all the activities that drain you.

[00:06:15] These might be administrative activities such as invoicing. Bookkeeping if you own doing your own books, responding to emails, not necessarily sending. There's a difference when we are sending emails on our terms, on our time when we're being proactive. That's one thing I'm talking about, the reactiveness that can be draining or falling into that loop of email, responding back and forth.

[00:06:45] The ping pong I mentioned in a previous episode. Responding back and forth to emails, that might be one of the things that drains you. What else drains you? Just having to come up with content for social media, for blogs, doing it yourself. Is that draining for you? Going to networking events? Maybe the wholesale process drains you or maybe parts of it drain you.

[00:07:11] Maybe you do some cold calling or you go to networking events and it drains you. Not everyone is an extrovert. Not everyone loves to be going to networking events, putting themselves out there. There are certain strategies we can do because we have to meet ourselves where we're at. We will need to push ourself out of our comfort zone a hundred percent, but we need to do it in a strategic way that works for us, allows us to grow, okay, but where we can actually leverage our strength.

[00:07:45] So certain aspects of the sales process. Another thing that might drain you is constantly being stuck in our business, constantly being stuck, doing the client work, constantly being stuck, getting things done for our clients. And everything we want for ourselves, for our own business is put to the side.

[00:08:06] At the end of the day, like I mentioned in earlier episode, we end up having a busyness, not a business. We need to look at the vision of the business. We need to look at why we started the business, what we want the business to look like in two to three years, and then we need to be intentional with our schedule.

[00:08:26] Be intentional with our calendar. Because if not, you will simply be the employee of your own business. And if that's what you want just to do the client work and get paid and then have your weekends, that's great. I'm happy for you. But if you want to have either it's scalable business or just to grow your business so you don't have to be doing it all the time and you can actually take more vacations, spend time doing the things you love with the people you love, there is a better way.

[00:09:03] I'm not talking like all the experts say, you know, take my program, give me 15, $20,000 and I'll help you build an eight, now nine figure business. And you too can be on the beach with your laptop working remotely or on the beach with your mai tai, enjoying your freedom because your business is running in the background.

[00:09:27] Sure, we can put automations in and you can get away. You need to build a team for that. But what on a daily basis is draining you and why did you start your business? These are really, really important because if you continue to focus on the wrong activities, the activities that are draining you, that might, some of the activities that are draining, you might not be the wrong activities, but maybe the wrong activities for you.

[00:09:57] So there's two things. An activity. If that is the right activity that will move your business forward, but it drains you, okay? Then there's certain strategies we can put into place, and one of them is to be resourceful and look at who else can do these activities instead of you. Do you have someone on your team?

[00:10:19] If not, can you bring someone on your team to do that? Then there's those activities that actually pull away from growing our business. One of those activities can be simply getting stuck constantly in the client work. Again, who can you bring on your team or what can you do to remove yourself a little bit so you can build the vision, build the strategies and the daily action steps towards so that you are actually moving towards your vision.

[00:10:55] I might be as simple as blocking some time. It might be as simple as taking time every single day, what I call and E-Myth calls it. The audit block might be half an hour to work on the business rather than always in the business. If you do that every single day, you're one step further than you were before.

[00:11:17] Don't just show up every single day to do what's in front of you. Don't show up every single day and just check your email box because, and have that as your to-do list. Because that is so easy to do. I've been there my friends. It is. If you are not where you want to be in your business, if you're exhausted by your business, look at what is exhausting you about your business.

[00:11:38] Another thing, they may exhaust you and train you of your business is toxic clients or the wrong clients. Another thing that might drain you about your business is just surrounding yourselves or having people around you that are negative. And this is can be a touchy subject because sometimes those people who are negative or the naysayers are in your personal world, family, friends, they might be negative or they might be negative towards your business and they just tell you, go get a job.

[00:12:09] Why are you doing this? Why are you busting your butt? For this business. Go, just go get a job. There's strategies you can do, implement for that one of them. Bringing people into your inner, into your inner circle. Maybe it's a coach and a mentor, maybe it's an accountability partner. Maybe it's just surrounding yourselves with other entrepreneurs who are in a similar situation, or maybe even better yet, one step forward, one step ahead of you and allows you to stretch whatever it is.

[00:12:40] It's all about getting clarity over what are the actions or what are the activities during the day that drain us? Who are the people during the day that drain us? And you and I, let's do this together. Let's figure out a plan to remove those drains so that you could focus on activities that energize us.

[00:13:05] We're passionate about that. We wake up every morning saying, I am so lucky I get to do this. As opposed to waking up every morning thinking, oh my God, I have to do this. I get to is what you want? I have to, is not what you want. Don't have to anymore. Let's get you to get. So if you want to have a conversation about this or if you want the Business Energy Reset link, send me an email to Marshall@marshallstern.net.

[00:13:38] One other thing, a reminder, the Ontrepreneur Bonfire series is happening very soon. Kickoff session. It's a three-week program, completely free. August 6th. Again, you can send me an email. I'll send you the link for that. Have an amazing week and let's get you towards a place where you are energized and you are loving your business.

[00:14:04] Again. If you've fallen out of it or you're exhausted, send me a message and let's chat. Have a great week, and we'll see you again next week for another episode of the Stern Truth Business and Filtered. 

[00:14:19] Thank you so much for tuning in to Stern Truth. If you found today's episode helpful, we would love to hear from you. Please like, share and leave us a review. Also, if you'd like to be a guest in the upcoming episode or join us in one of our Moment Accountability Group sessions, simply email me to marshall@marshallstern.net. That's marshall@marshallstern.net.And don't forget to hit the subscribe button, so never miss an episode. 

[00:14:44] Until next time, keep pushing forward and leading with confidence.