Reigniting inner passion: keeping your business passion alive

Keeping your business passion alive

With thanks to our guest contributor: Jo Hanlon of Mind Your Ps, our go-to HR experts

You may have inherited a business, started one, bought or fallen into one by chance. Regardless of whether you’re the CEO, or serving coffee to your regular customers, one thing is for sure, most of you will experience the loss of passion for your business or work from time to time.

So what gets in the way? A plethora of reasons I’ve heard include:

• DOING the work yourself & working IN not ON the business
• Not having enough time to do things well
• The uncertain and changing economy
• The Government red tape
• Ongoing staff/manager issues distracting progress
• Others or your own negativity
• Not having enough money
• Plain old fatigue from trying to be everything to everyone
• Personal changes
• Hating what you do… the list goes on!

So how can you uncover, clarify further, regain and rejuvenate your passion for your business or job? Here are my top 3 tips.

Tip #1: Know your PURPOSE, the WHAT for and WHY you do what you do in the first place. Your Purpose gives access to sustainable Passion, Inspiration and Energy. The strategies, day to day tactics & values driven behaviour are HOW you and the team uphold Purpose.

Take a moment to reflect on what your Purpose is. Is it to make a difference to your client’s life; send your kids to the best school; save the planet; make lives easier and more workable; provide jobs for others; fundraise to support medical research to change lives? Whatever it is, it must be REAL enough for you to remain Passionate about it against all odds. If you don’t know it, there are plenty of resources available to help you uncover what it is.

Tip #2: Ensure your PURPOSE is BIGGER than just you. Being involved in a game bigger than just our own personal gain really does feed our dreams and Passions by keeping them alive and relevant. When your Purpose is aligned to your innate human nature, involves your own values and is in the interests of your communities, it can only draw bigger and better performances from you and inspire and engage others.

Consider the passion and drive of national sportsmen and women who do their best for their country as well as achieve their own personal bests. Nic Marchesi and Lucas Patchett’s venture, ‘Orange Sky’ of providing mobile showers for the homeless is one fantastic example. Think also of the continuous efforts of scientists and fundraisers dedicated to years of research and fundraising to find new cures for various ailments. You can’t help but be inspired by these people who have a clear Purpose that benefits many.

Tip #3: SHARE it with others. When you Passionately articulate and communicate your Purpose, you engage the hearts and minds of others including your staff; giving you support in the doing and the dreaming.

Think Fred Hollows, Glen McGrath, Bill & Melinda Gates, Professor Alan Mackay Sim and Sister Anne Gardiner.

Sharing your Purpose also keeps you on track and accountable on a much wider scale than just living in your own head and that goes for SME business owners and leaders as well as large philanthropic organisations.

My belief is that many of the reported 75% of businesses that fail within their first 5 years, have missed being clear on their Purpose for existing in the first place. Providing a product or service just because you like it, may not be enough to push you past the first few barriers to success. Being clear on your business Purpose, having it be bigger than you and sharing it gets others engaged in the process and assists to build resilience; giving you the Power and synergies needed to push through barriers to find workable solutions.

So to your homework: I strongly recommend you take some time out and reflect, ask for help if needed, to rediscover your Purpose and revitalise your Passion. If you have tried to do your best but nothing is bringing it back, maybe it’s simply time to get real with yourself, make a change to follow your heart’s Purpose and kick that real Passion into gear now, after all, life is too short to have no Passion for your business!