[Please welcome Brad's guest post about Rekindling our young hearts, soul & spirit for our businesses == Passion! Enduring my move...I have much to share on this topic, for posts to follow...but 'til I have an extra minute to do so, please read, absorb & share your link-love & kind-thoughts/comments below! ]

Are you at a plateau in your business?

Do you sometimes wish for the excitement and freshness of the early days?

Then this article is for you!

Remember the early days when your business was just an idea in your head?

How excited you were to build something with so much potential. 2 hours of sleep at night was enough – you had the passion and adrenalin to make up for it.

The early days of the biz were a blur too. You were unstoppable. You made everything happen and started to see your dream become a reality.

But today, something is different. Your business is fine, you are making money, but there isn’t that drive and passion that once was. Like an old married couple, you and your business are only going through the motions. Sure, you still love your business, but you long for that energy of yesterday so you can take your company to the next level.

How exactly does one recapture that spirit and excitement?

To start reawakening your entrepreneurial passion, lets go back to the very beginning for a minute. What were you doing in the early, first days?

Were you making sales? Marketing? Paying bills? Meeting with suppliers? And everything else you do on a day-to-day basis now?

Of course not! Back in the very beginning, your business wasn’t a business at all. It was an idea. That idea spawned a dream and when it was in the dream stage your energy and mind were unstoppable.

Perhaps 80% or more of your time was spent in the first days simply dreaming about your business. “If I do this, then I’ll surely get that result. If we move in this direction, we’ll be able to grab part of that market!”

If you are in a business rut now, it’s because your dream is now playing second fiddle to the work you need to do. The child like imagining, playing with ideas and pretending is now sitting in a corner while you pay the bills, meet with consultants, calculate proformas and other “responsible” business tasks.

If you truly want to get back to the point where where your energy explodes and profitable ideas and breakthroughs happen, you must invite your dreams back into your business.

You may argue that you don’t have enough time to sit around dreaming all day. “I barely have enough time to do the stuff I need to do to keep the business running” you say. There’s a problem with that logic. The childlike imagining IS your business. It’s the basis for everything you have built so far.

If you aren’t taking the necessary time with your dreaming, then you are cutting off the source of energy, profit and ultimately growth of your business. I would liken this to having Bill Gates start your IT business and you firing him after the first 4 weeks. Sure, he got the ball rolling, but what happens 6-8 months down the road? Do you just wing it? Do you “play it by ear?”

Can you see how cutting off your creative side is actually hurting your business? How you have no choice but to make time to dream? Your survival depends on it.

So how can you make time during a busy day to dream and create new ideas?

1. Schedule the time – right now, stop reading this and schedule at least 1/2 hour per day for dream time. Put it on your calendar and make it a recurring appointment for every day.

2. Take that time every day – Sit still, doodle, play with ideas and dream every day.

3. Get rid of distractions – This is time with your most important consultant…don’t blow it by answering your cell phone, fiddling with email or surfing the web. Just sit and listen, take notes and learn.

4. Be consistent – like I said, if you had a chance to meet with a superstar every day, would you skip appointments? Would you fire them after the first 4 weeks? It’s the same with your – dream time. Don’t skip days and make excuses. Your business will be there when you get back.

It may take a week or two for you to get back into the swing of things with your creative side. After all, you two may not have spoken in a long time. If that’s the case, be patient. Sit every day, doodle, write down ideas and trust that the reawakening will happen. It will. And when it does, you’ll be back on top of your game again.

Brad Isaac is a lead software programmer and blogger. You can get more tools to reawaken your entrepreneurial passion in his Creative Mind Hacks serieson his blog, Achieve-IT!

Stay tuned for my follow-up post…regarding “Will Passion Lead Your Business–Alone?” Til then, please share your comments, thoughts, concerns, questions, compliments…quick “hi” to Brad & I below!

Liked this Article? Please Click Here & Subscribe to My RSS Feed :-)

Loved this Article? Then, please share it with others at: Sk*rt ·Shoutwire· Sphinn· Pligg·

About this Post
Permalink | Trackback | | Print This Article

Posted on September 11th, 2007 by Ponn Sabra
Filed under: Empowerment, Entrepreneurialism