I was recently privileged enough to be invited as a guest speaker for a monthly lunch organised by local business women. I spoke about motivation from a slightly different perspective, and I must say that I was inundated with telephone calls, e-mails and faxes from people who attended the lunch. The sincere appreciation expressed was a little overwhelming I must say. Everyone who contacted me asked me to put my thoughts about motivation in writing, so I thought I would.

Of course it is tough to condense a 40 minutes presentation to a few hundred words but I will do my best. The following ten suggestions are what I use to stay motivated in my life, both personally and at work:

1. Start every day with focus – quiet time, think about the day, visualise and plan ahead.
   This way your day starts in a very positive and focused manner and from my experience, you get a lot more done with a lot less stress.
2. Work smart – don’t hide from crappy stuff, manage your time and work realistic hours.
   We all put off doing the things we don’t like, we all complain about working too much and having too many things to do. It really is about working smarter rather than longer. If you feel like you never get your list of “things to do” completed, you soon burn out.
3. Never play the victim and avoid people who do – keep negativity away.
   Some people seem to always find someone to blame for all of life’s challenges. Keep negative, motivation stealing people out of your life (both professionally and personally).
4. Have a very strong moral code – black and white. Prevents gray areas.
   Knowing what is right and wrong takes a lot of pressure out of your life. It lets you get on with what you are doing without having to constantly evaluate decisions. Stop and think about your own moral code.
5. Laughter is a big part of my life – especially at work
   Motivation feeds on laughter. Encourage lots of this in all parts of your life. Have a little fun – it really isn’t that serious. Make your workplace a lot of fun – laughter is not unprofessional.
6. Learn to say no and listen to your instincts
   Feeling that you have no control in your life can result in serious motivational problems. “No” is a very powerful word that we all need to say more often and to know when to say it, we need to learn to listen to our instincts.
7. We all make mistakes – accept them and let them go – move on
   Making mistakes means being human. Don’t beat yourself up. Learn from them and put them behind you.
8. Know what de-stresses you and know when you need it
   Stress affects us all in different ways. Likewise the tools and triggers for de-stressing are different in all of us. Learn what works for you (I like a swim in a creek, away from people and in the middle of the rainforest) and know when you need to do it. Stress builds up over time, not overnight. Likewise de-stressing takes time to take affect. Start working on it now, not when you are a wreck.
9. Have a good confidante – not a whinge group
   We all need someone who we can talk to about anything – the good, the bad and the ugly. Someone who won’t judge, but will understand. You need to be completely comfortable that what you say to them is in confidence.
10. Stop and enjoy the special moments that make it all worthwhile
    Take the time to stop and celebrate the special moments in your life. All too often these get lost in the midst of the madness of day to day work. The achievements are why we all do what we do, acknowledge and enjoy them.

Once you know how much business you want you can start marketing and advertising to attract it. There are a few concerns in this area and one of the biggest is the problem associated with attracting too much business, yes that’s right – too much business. A couple of stories follow that illustrate my point:

A friend of mine was involved in building a large Oceanarium. The launch of the attraction was very big with hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on enticing crowds for the opening day. Well the crowds came – far more than the Oceanarium had allowed for and the result was that the day was a disaster. People were stuck in queues for hours, the crush of the crowds was crazy, the restaurants ran out of food, children were lost, people fainted and so on.

It took a long time for this attraction to rebuild its reputation. The grand opening was a financial success but a complete failure in terms of long-term marketing. The crowds left after a disappointing experience and consequently they told their family and friends not to bother visiting the attraction because it was a shambles.

Another short story that I have found fascinating has to do with smoking. A friend recently tried to stop smoking following an intensive advertising campaign from the QUIT line on television. The graphic blood and gore advertisements were too much and the quit line seemed to be a fabulous support for anyone trying to give up the dreaded nicotine. The advertisement worked and my friend made the decision to quit on the spot.

After a week without cigarettes she had a moment of weakness and decided that she needed help quickly – no problems. A quick call to the QUIT line and everything will be OK. She called the line, was put on hold for ten minutes and then a rather rude lady said that she couldn’t help now but someone would call back soon.

Seven days later someone called, apologising about the delay and protesting that the extra advertising had made them so busy that they could not cope with the thousands of calls they were getting every day. By this stage my friend had given up and she still smokes to this day.

There is a valuable lesson to be learned. If you start to do a lot of marketing make certain that your business can cope with the increase. All businesses want the phone to be running hot but few can cope with a sudden increase in business without making at least a few operational changes.

New customers that come to your business as a result of your marketing activity will be testing you to see if you can deliver what you promise. If you don’t impress them the first time around you may never get the opportunity to try again.

Let’s face it there are a lot of places out there that are simply pretty darn dingy and depressing to work in. They are grungy, run down, tired, smelly, tense and uncomfortable. I never really understand why some business owners don’t make more of an effort to make their working environments more appealing for the people who work there (and lets not forget the customers visiting the business).

We all spend so much time at work surely it would be better for everyone involved to have the very best workplace imaginable. Build a positive environment, one where staff are encouraged to be a little light-hearted and to have a good time and the results will rub off onto the customers.

Next time you are out and about take a few minutes to observe some of the businesses that you visit. From my experience the worse the business atmosphere and appearance the worse the attitude of the staff. Having pride in the appearance of your business means you have pride in the products or services that you sell.

My top ten tips for building a positive working environment are:

1. Have a good cleaner. First impressions count and having a clean business is critically important for any business, especially food related businesses.

2. Make sure that the workplace is tidy – this is different to clean and it means that pictures are straight on the walls, magazines tidy, things in the right place and so on.

3. Have some background music, make it light, depending on the business of course, but set it to suit the mood of the business. Make sure that music is played on a good sound system not a $9.99 throwaway scratchy AM radio.

4. Put some flowers in your reception area. Nothing improves the mood of a room like a fresh bunch of flowers (and make sure they are replaced before they look dead).

5. If you have magazines for people to read throw out any that are more than a few months old. Let’s move beyond the 1976 Woman’s Weekly.

6. If you have won some awards or supported a charity put the certificates up in the waiting room. Show that you have community spirit and pride.

7.Encourage your staff to have some fun – it is not unprofessional to laugh.

8.Eliminate bad smells – either use a good air freshener or have an air purifier that plugs into the power. Remember though that replacing one horrible smell with another will not help the problem so make air fresheners subtle.

9. Ask your staff for suggestions regarding their working environment – what do they think would make it more enjoyable for them and for the customers.

10. Ask your customers for suggestions that would make your business more appealing and inviting for them.

The one thing most people consistently complain about is a lack of time – and I am probably the worst offender. Well, I have decided to do something about it and the first step became obvious to me recently when I attended a seminar discussing amongst many other things, my favourite new term – FTI or “failure to implement”. I have it written in big, bold letters across the whiteboard in my office and it is the one thing I am in the midst of changing and removing from my vocabulary.

We are all bombarded with pressures and demands from a hundred different directions. Some days seem like you get nothing done simply because you are responding to emails, phone calls, SMS messages, faxes, letters and face to face encounters. Whilst this can drive you nuts, I also believe it is the main reason for FTI. We get too busy on the day to day stuff to actually implement things that need to be done and we don’t get the time to put systems into place to make things happen automatically. The end result is that we slowly go nuts trying to do more and more but never really getting there. It’s like treading water without going in any direction.

I recently met with clients who have been stressing out for years trying to figure out how they can work less but they have never actually managed to find the time to sit down and work out how to do it. It is on the never ending list of “things to do” but it isn’t getting any closer to the top of the list. My advice to them was to have a meeting tomorrow, sit down and work it out – and don’t leave the room until a clear and realistic plan is locked in and implemented. They did it and now their lives have turned around – and of course they realise they should have had that meeting years ago. It’s always easy to offer advice form the outside looking in.

I don’t know too many businesses that don’t suffer from some degree of FTI and it is a nasty little critter. It creates frustration, exhaustion and an overwhelming sense of frustration. I am certainly going to do something about it (and today not next year) and I hope that anyone else reading this who feels like they are treading water, starts working right now to get rid of the FTI bug.