How do you stay motivated? This is a great question and one with numerous answers, but for me it is all linked to enjoyment.
I personally got to a stage where I just didn’t want to climb into the car to drive to work. Once I’d dragged myself in, “motivating staff” was almost impossible when I couldn’t even motivate myself. Why should they feel engaged in their roles just for job satisfaction when the person with the most to gain didn’t even want to be there?
I’m sure many of you reading this understand what I mean, so how did I overcome it?
After some reflection, I decided that it was being a mortgage adviser that I’d had enough of. The meeting clients was great, but the paperwork and potential issues that the job generated was just sucking the life out of me.
Finding out where you stand
That’s when I decided I’m faced with two options; am I a mortgage broker who owns a business? Or am I a business owner whose company sells financial services?
I decided on the latter and, from that point on, I knew that I had to commit 100% to my decision.
Step one in this process: de-authorise as a mortgage broker.
Yes, step one is taking away your safety net. Without doing this, it’s almost impossible to build your dream company as you’ll fall back into the default thought process of: “I like this client, I’ll write the business”, or “This is a big case, I’m not passing this across”.
Or, the most dangerous of all: “Business is getting quiet; I’ll get rid of a few advisers and write the business myself”.
Obviously, you can’t deregulate until you have a team. I estimate this as five advisers and the appropriate administration team before considering de-authorising. But anything below this is not yet a business but still an extremely busy job.
After the first step
So, what does life look like when you deregulate? The “business is getting quiet” suddenly is answered by “I need to generate more leads for my advisers”.
The first response solves a problem in the short term, the latter solves the problem over the long term.
Still not convinced?
If you spend 30 hours as a mortgage adviser and 10 hours as a business owner – and I’m guessing that first figure is on the low side, while the second is on the high side – how fast are you going to build a successful company that can supply you with that elusive “passive” income?
After all, a successful company needs to have a great marketing department, successful sales team, a slick and fully systemised operations system and needs to be in total control of the numbers.
How much more successful would you be if your 40-hour week was now 100% devoted to growing and developing these four areas? How diverse does your day become and how much more engaged are you with your business?
It becomes easy to motivate your staff when both you and they understand what the purpose of the company is, and everyone understands their commitment to achieving that goal.
Scroll back up and look again at the two questions that face you, it’s time for you to decide.
Are you going to take control of your destiny or are you going to be just a bit player in the story of your own life?
