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Every day we hear of success stories where someone was at the right place at the right time and made their business thrive. However, what is often left unmentioned is that most businesses take a long time to get off the ground and onto the road to fortune.
Yes, even with a great concept, business plan and team behind you, it can still be a long time before your brand is recognized and your sales start booming. This is why it is essential that you don’t give up. Push through the difficulties and you may get to see that grass is indeed greener on the other side.
In this article, we will discuss not just why you have to be persistent in your business but also how to keep yourself going even when the going gets tough. Let’s journey down this path together so that you can see how to make your business last, how to keep on enduring and how to never give up!
Many people rely on passion to keep themselves going. Whilst this is a strong motivation, it can easily be lost over time and dwindle down to nonexistence. A much stronger motivation to back you up is purpose.
A purpose company with purpose-driven workers is not just more attractive to your clients but it gives you a real reason to be there. No longer are you just clocking in every day for survival but instead, you are looking towards the end goal and fixating on what your company will accomplish.
Passion and drive play a key role in your persistence but your objective and purpose are what should be the basis of your determination to keep on working, keep on improving and keep on persisting.
A purpose-driven company will be more effective in the long run and will keep both you and the other employees resilient and stimulated. Even if your company already has a clear purpose, do your best to keep reminding yourself of it and keep it clear for all to see.
Selling something that is not that great is disheartening. Spending all of your time trying to convince everyone that it is amazing whilst you yourself know that it is not is draining and saps all your energy and strength.
This is why you need a product or service that you really love, believe in and want to share. Even if it doesn’t satisfy something you want, you should at least know that what you offer is in some way better than the competition. When you believe this, it is easier to make your employees believe it and overall your company’s attitude will be boosted.
However, if you are reading this and you find yourself admitting that you don’t absolutely love what you do or what you sell then you need to make some changes. Quite simply, if it’s not good enough, you need to make it good enough.
This is something you can do at any time. Take a good look at what you do and what you are selling and search for ways to improve. Adjust and alter it until you are really happy with it and can believe that it is worth the money that people will pay.
A pessimist will see the difficulty in every opportunity whereas an optimist will see the opportunity within every difficulty. You will have hardships, this is true. But how you react to such tribulations is what really counts.
Your persistence and endurance rely greatly on your attitude toward different situations. Additionally your success and how others view it will be impacted also. For example, you might lose out on a big sale or deal with a major corporation. If you react badly they will certainly be glad of their decision and possibly let other companies know to steer clear of your brand.
However, what if you handle it in a positive way? Well, then they might consider working with you in the future, they may admire your spirit, your energy and your outlook. No one wants to work with a downer but everyone wants to work with someone who has great energy and personality.
Try your best to see the rainbow in every cloud and take every situation as an opportunity to learn, improve, innovate and continue on better and brighter.
Imagine a chef that cooks tomato soup every day for 20 years. He may love tomato soup and it may be a really great tomato soup but after 2 decades of doing the same thing and making it in the exact same way, he surely will be sick of it.
Likewise, if you allow your business to become stagnant it will become less interesting for you, for your employees and yes even your clients. To keep persistent you need to keep it interesting.
This may include new methods of marketing, new ways of doing your work or updating your products. Obviously, you want to make sure that whatever changes you make are beneficial to your company and bring benefits to your business.
People like companies that show they are putting in effort and they also like to see things that are new, therefore, if you can make some changes from time to time then it will keep it interesting for everyone and it will help you to keep on pushing forward.
Many associate persistence with how you deal with your customers and other companies. A persistent company can be relentless in pushing their service or product and does not give up until they get what they want.
Whilst in the world of business sometimes you do have to fight for different things there is a very fine line between being constant and being just plain annoying. For example, if you have someone considering a deal or service you might follow up here and there to see if you can help with anything and keep it at the forefront of their minds.
However, if you were to call them every hour of every day, they would likely block your number and want nothing to do with you. This is an exaggerated illustration but it makes the point that if you become a pest to your clients and other companies, they will have nothing to do with you.
Therefore, you have to strike a balance. Be relentless and persistent in your efforts to gain business but consider how you would react in their shoes and avoid becoming a nuisance. If people do find your attention to be overbearing and tiresome then they will likely react badly.
This negative feedback can impact your motivation to continue on and damage your endurance and persistence as a business owner.
Every company has ups and downs. Unfortunately due to our nature, we tend to dwell excessively on the darker moments. To avoid this, something practical you can do is as follows.
Whenever you have a really good day, stop and take a moment to really appreciate it and think about it. Make this like a bookmark in your mind that you can go back to at any point. When you build up a good amount of good days that you can remember, suddenly things won’t look so dark anymore.
Additionally, when your company hits a record or makes a milestone, make a note of it or keep a memento. Each big step in your company’s journey should be recorded just like a parent might keep a memento of their growing child. As your business grows, the accomplishments will also.
All these good moments together will likely outweigh the bad ones and even if you do at some point get overwhelmed by struggles, you will at least know that it hasn’t all been bad.
When you see business stories, who do you admire? The entrepreneur who gave up his dream and started working a 9-5 job? Or the person who despite all odds, faces opposition, faced difficulty, and continued on anyway until the business worked out?
Obviously, we all admire the man or woman who endures. Persistence is an admirable quality that shows strength, determination, and perseverance. Even the movies we watch have the hero be someone who faces hardship and conquers all odds in the face of adversity.
So the question remains, how do you want people to remember you? As the guy/girl who gave up? Or as the person that despite all odds made it work?
Continue to consider what your legacy will be in 10 or 20 years. What will people remember about your life, about your struggles and about your personality? If you can stick it out for just a bit longer, then you might just make it through.
Use this thought as motivation to keep on persisting.
Whilst persistence is necessary and admirable there is a time when every businessman has to be realistic. If you are trying to sell Ice cream to Antarctica, no matter how much you persist, it is unlikely to succeed.
Therefore your persistence needs to be tampered with wisdom. Only continue on if there is a possible light at the end of the tunnel. This takes research, careful consideration and good business sense.
We want you to succeed but we certainly don’t want you to spend 20 years working on a folly. Thus we recommend that you evaluate the possible success of your company carefully and if you deem that it could really work, never give up, never surrender and don’t let anything stop you from persisting.