Have I Lost Interest in my Field... and Did I Ever Have It?

It’s normal to feel a sense of hopelessness at times when it comes to running a business.

As we begin working through the 3 questions proposed in our previous article (When is it time to RESET your business?), our goal is to find the root cause of the frustration we are currently feeling.

Being an entrepreneur is exciting and engaging, but often, the day-to-day drudgery that takes over your calendar after the initial rush of intense emotions following creation & launch can be… overbearing.

It creeps in. A thief in the night. You find yourself up late processing emails, or unable to sleep, or up before the sun trying to “catch up” on the work from yesterday… but you know as well as I do, that’s a fool’s errand. It’s a myth. There is no “catching up”, because like a hydra - when you slay one task, 4 more take it’s place!

This overwhelm leads to exhaustion, which sucks the fun out of running a business - and shouldn’t it be fun? Exciting? Sure! After all, it doesn’t take much more than 1 or 2 search queries to find people that are having fun when it comes to running a business.

However, before we make any major decisions, it would be wise to complete a few thought exercises to see if we can drill down to the root of our problem. Maybe our business isn’t optimized, maybe it’s set up to run as a job, or maybe we’ve just lost interest in the field we once found so exciting.

Ask yourself: am I still interested in my field? Is it exciting or have I lost interest?

When you started your business, did you select a field or a product or a service that you personally found exciting? Something that could hold your interest? Something that provided a real value to your customers?

Or…

Did you select a “get-rich-quick opportunity” because you read about someone making millions on a drop-shipping ecommerce site? A person making big bucks selling graphic t-shirts without holding any actual inventory? Did you buy a business without quite understanding whether or not it was actually profitable?

To boil this down - did you start a business to pursue something that you were genuinely interested in, or, did you start a business to pay the bills?

Neither answer is wrong - but you need to KNOW this answer so that you can plan your next step!

Example Answer #1: “I started my business because I was passionate about playing guitar, and I had several bad experiences with the way in which music teachers were explaining theory. While they were not incorrect, I had a better way, and I knew that by producing some online courses I could help other musicians learn using the tricks and tools that helped me.”

Example Answer #2: “I had an online marketer tell me they made $5,000 a month without working by selling iPhone cases without holding any physical inventory. I actually use an Android phone, but I figured everyone would be willing to purchase my drop-shipped case (that 250 other online stores, including Amazon are selling) as long as I can provide the rock-bottom lowest price, and have great SEO.”

Take a moment to analyze your personal situation. Why did you start this business?

Once we have our answer, we can move on to the next step, and ask if we are lacking income… or something even more profound. I’ll provide my answers at the end of this exercise as well.

🍻  Cheers, - AJ

Interested in working together? Sounds great!

I help website owners like you turn window shoppers & tire kickers into paying customers. I’m also a partner and Senior Design Lead at The Hauser Design Group where we focus exclusively on premium website development.