Feel Like You’re Not Making Any Progress? Read This

"why am I doing this? Does anyone care? How much money have I made? Why not just cut my losses and go get a real job? Am I actually helping anyone?"

Any variation of these thoughts come to all entrepreneurs at our lowest moments. Here is my 5-step process to pushing through. That’s right; pushing through, because it’s one of those inevitable moments that can’t be avoided 1. Ask Yourself What Constitutes Progress? You’re concerned about progress, but have you stopped to consider and perhaps even write down what would constitute progress? Is it a specific growth in sales, in customer satisfaction? What do you need to see, to say to yourself ‘Yes, My business is making progress.” All too often the reason why it feels like you are not making progress is because ‘progress’ is a moving target. Nail it down. 2. Meditate on Your Expectations After going through the first step, it’s important to find some time to meditate or pray - whatever your way of getting to a state of inner peace is. Try to reflect on how you set your standards and expectations. Are those standards appropriate? What are your influences? What tells you that is where you ought to be? How did you set your metrics? Here you should be trying to get a sense for whether you’re being too aggressive. 3. Did You Hire Right? You can only edit or write (indulge my figure of speech here). If you have hired people to takeover the writing so that you can manage and you still find yourself doing writing, then you might want to evaluate your hiring decisions. In my experience, this has been the cause of most of my bad days, those days it feels like I’m treading water - working so hard to set up something that runs like a well oiled machine but instead it keeps breaking down. 4. Reach Out to Your Support Group As an entrepreneur, a support system is tremendously important for moments like this. They keep you going, they remind you how far you’ve come and they encourage you to get fired up again! 5. Learn to take pleasure in small wins! At the very early stages of a Startup, every move you make is major but as time goes on, you’re not going to be making progress at the speed of light like you’re used to. For the sake of your team (and your sanity) you need to cultivate the habit of celebrating, even small victories. It gives you the momentum to carry on.

Wonuola Okoye

Principal Coach

Big Startup