Solopreneur Journeys: The Process Matters, Not Just The End Result
As a solopreneur, it’s easy to get overly fixated on the results and not enjoy the process.
To succeed in your business, you might think you need to stay super focused on the results and use that to measure your growth. Now, while this principle may help you find success in the short term, the outcome is generally burnout or quitting when things get tough in the long run.
This is because when you are only concerned with achieving the desired result, you may unwittingly exhaust yourself attempting to get there. And when you experience difficult months (which all businesses do), you will already be worn out and perhaps even find yourself wanting to give up.
So, what to do? Well, that’s what we will discuss today.
Why Is It Important To Focus On the Experience, Not Just The End Result
It’s easy to get caught up in thinking about the end result, especially when it comes to our goals. We can often be so focused on what we want to achieve that we forget about the journey along the way.
However, it’s important to remember that the journey is just as important as the destination. Why? Let’s find out:
1. Helps You Deal With Mistakes
Humans make mistakes; nobody is perfect in this world. It’s only from mistakes that you grow and learn in life. When concentrating only on the result, you fail to take risks or experiment with ideas that could propel you to a significantly better result than the one you are hoping to get.
2. Keeps You Thrilled And Excited
When a business owner like yourself is focused on the journey, they feel a sense of thrill about being in the moment and taking it all in.
Feeling excited about your work and the steps you take makes you dig deeper at all the opportunities that come your way, but it also keeps you engaged in your work 24/7. And that’s because gaining experience and learning how to be a better leader can be intensely rewarding.
3. Keeps You In Charge
Achieving success is not totally under your control; several external factors could work against you, such as competition, health, and time, to name a few.
However, when you don’t have the burden of getting results hovering over your shoulders, you develop a locus of control that empowers you, increases your self-esteem, and eventually brings you success.
4. Makes You Happy
Taking pleasure in the fruits of your effort always brings happiness; that’s what focusing on the experience provides you.
You might not get positive results every time as running a business is full of uncertainties. But if you focus on the process over outcome, you stay happy because you know that you did your best.
It is useless to base your success solely on a certain result since doing so will just cause you to feel frustrated and disappointed. Instead of letting your happiness depend on achieving a certain outcome, let it depend on how hard you have worked to achieve your objective.
5. Fewer Distractions
When it comes to delivering specific outcomes, there is always an immense sense of pressure. You may feel compelled to take shortcuts if necessary to get the outcomes you desire since you want to make a statement to yourself and your peers.
When you concentrate on the process, extraneous things become irrelevant, and there are fewer distractions, leading to less pressure, more efficiency, and eventually success.
How To Focus On The Experience Rather Than The End Result
1. Take Small Steps
Given how competitive our world is today, it’s easy to see the success stories of other solopreneurs and want to fast-forward to where they are. However, we often don’t see all the tiny steps they took to reach the top.
While climbing a mountain, you wouldn’t think about what’s at its peak, would you? Perhaps, the only thing that would be on your mind would be placing one foot in front of the other and figuring out what your next step would be.
If you constantly ask yourself how to achieve success in your business, there is a high chance that you will be overwhelmed. Instead, you should focus on working dedicatedly on one project at a time and build your repertoire in the process.
Believe it or not, it’s about breaking the bigger picture into smaller pieces. This works in all situations in life, not just when starting a business. You need to concentrate on the little steps while using the bigger picture as a motivation to make the right choices.
Note that the small steps are also choices, and if you continually make the right ones, you are bound to succeed.
2. Don’t Take Shortcuts
Today, people seem to be fixated on the end results, and many solopreneurs and small business owners believe that the outcome is the only way to measure success.
But we can’t get the desired results without spending hundreds of hours making mistakes and learning along the way. It is the journey and experience that leads to achieving your big-picture goals. When we constantly wonder when the money will start coming in, we are not focusing on the journey, thereby missing out on valuable learnings that could’ve prepared us for future challenges.
Make no mistake, the end result is important, but it would cease to exist without the journey. So, focus on the process, not on the outcome.
3. Ask Yourself “Why?”
We are reasonably certain that everybody in your circle knows what you do. If you are reading this article right now, it’s highly likely that you are a business owner! But do you know why you do it? In other words, what is the real reason behind your wanting to start your journey as a business owner?
The most successful and inspiring entrepreneurs know this; they know the purpose behind what they’re doing. More often than not, money is the end result of what you do, but why you do it is the most essential part.
So ask yourself, what motivated you to start your business in the first place? Once you have an answer, it’ll be that much easier to weather the storms that come your way as your business takes off.
4. Stay Invested In Your Business
Figuring out why you do something will help you feel inspired, emotionally engaged, and encouraged. Your interests will make you automatically invested in your business, and along the journey, give it your all to make it successful!
Although making money and being rich is important, it shouldn’t be the one and only goal. Instead, your main goal should be to become an inspiring solopreneur with an invested audience who supports and deeply cares about what you do and why you do it.
5. Enjoy The “Flow”
To enjoy the journey to the fullest, you need to start spending more time in the flow. But what does flow mean?
In simple terms, a person is said to be “in the flow” when they are so immersed in a task or activity that they lose track of time and don’t seem to care about anything else. To reach this state, your challenges and day-to-day duties have to match your skillset and knowledge, and you should also be able to enjoy them.
So, try and find out the things that you could do to maximize your time in the flow and cut down on the activities that steal your flow. It’s highly recommended that you keep track of your daily activities and find out whether or not you become immersed in your business and lose sight of time.
The more time you spend in the flow, the more you will enjoy the experience and the happier you will feel about your business. But remember, like with everything else be mindful of your health and make sure you spend time away from focusing solely on a singular task.
6. Success Is Not The End Of The Road
Many solopreneurs believe that their journey ends when they achieve their end results. But that’s not how success works. As we have discussed above: success is a journey, not a destination. And to sustain it, you need to make sure that you keep doing what you’ve done to reach the goals that you’d set out for yourself.
Keep in mind that all your hard work, perseverance, focus, and passion cause success. So, ensure that you keep working hard. Once you start taking your work lightly after you have tasted success, it won’t be long until your business fails.
Final Thoughts
There you go. Hopefully, by now, you have realized why you should focus on the experience of starting a business and not just the end result.
When you turn all your energy and attention to the processes involved in growing your business instead of the outcomes, you learn faster and become more successful down the road.
On that note, it’s time for us to say goodbye. Until next time, take care!