Bored entrepreneur

In business world, humans are facing personal dilemmas and struggles on daily basis:

If you work for a boss, you wanted to quit and start your own business.

If you run your own business, you wanted to quit and work for a boss.

If you have a successful business, you wanted to start another one.

If you started another business, you just wish you never started another one.

The list will go on and on.

The point is, as a business person, you and I were destined to be, well, dissatisfied.

Being entrepreneurs magnifies the impacts.

You want your money work harder and faster for you, helping you in building your business ‘empire’ and wealth.

For an ultra-entrepreneur – the term I refer to someone who is very creative and aggressive in his/her entrepreneurial journey, owning a successful business is never enough. Owning two is nice, but soon, you will feel the urge to start the third. And so on.

What about failure? Failures feed ultra-entrepreneurs – The more you fail, the more you want to achieve success. That’s why those entrepreneurs are successful – They use their failures as fuel to their passion for success.

Often, this agressiveness results in many, successful, businesses, as well as insurmountable busy-ness. You soon feel 24 hours are not enough. You feel that you need a way to be present in two places at the same time. Rest? What rest?

When things are suddenly becoming… monotonous and boring

Eventually, being busy for a certain period of time will take its toll – You are physically and mentally exhausted. You feel that all the excitements are replaced with boredom – Doing the same thing again and again… entrepreneurship does look unattractive at times.

You suddenly lose your ‘fuel’. You suddenly can’t answer, “What next?” You have friends, colleagues and family around you, but strangely enough, you feel ‘lonely’ in the midst of your success – Being someone who reaches the level in which only a select few can is lonely indeed.

When you were starting out the first time, you are filled with worries and anxieties, as well as passions for the unknowns. When you were in your boredom, you are filled with… believe it or not, despair and agony.

You lose hope because you don’t know what to do next with your entrepreneurial journey. You are in pain because you want to exit from your situation, but you don’t know when and how.

How to bring the passion back into your entrepreneurial career

You understand procrastination is unacceptable. You understand that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. You need to get the passions back into your entrepreneurial journey.

Unfortunately, reviving your passion for entrepreneurship can be as hard as taking your first step when you plunged into entrepreneurship. The more you wait, the more severe the impacts.

You gotta get back on track! You gotta learn than success can’t be limited by how many successful businesses or how much money you have – because if you do think that way, you will slip into a deep boredom.

There are 1001 things you can (and should) do as an entrepreneur, other than building asset and wealth.

No worries, when there is a will there is a way :) Here are some tips to help you with your endeavour:

• You need to rediscover what your ‘carrot’ is
  Is traveling the world your passion? Is owning an island your passion? Is starting non-profit organisation like Bill Gates did your passion? Rediscover what has driven you to be successful, and start making it happen in less than a year – How’s that for a milestone?
• Start or support a non-profit
  Starting a non-profit always a great cause can be done by an entrepreneur. Giving back to the community in capital and energy will light your passion back – Giving you a cause to pursue and a meaning to your success, other than fame and fortune.
• Automate your businesses
  You need a challenging endeavour? Try to automate your businesses; it is not as simple as you think. Doing so has two-fold benefits: Challenging yourself, as well as getting out from your busy business life to pursue any other passions you might have (try the above tips.)
• Plan for succession
  Believe it or not, not many business owners have prepared a formal plan for succession. They often said that “They have all the details in their head,” when the truth is they really don’t have any idea about succession and how to do it smoothly. If you think planning for your succession is depressing, think again. Forming the plan will actually help you set the target when you should step down and let your children or any other trusted parties to step up and take over – And targets are what drive entrepreneurs.
• Be an angel investor
  Being an angel investor is a privilege – It’s fulfilling to see those you have helped succeed, as angels are not motivated by money, but by the excitement of helping entrepreneurs in their entrance.

Good luck in your getting-out-of-boredom endeavours!

Ivan Widjaya
Cause-driven entrepreneurship
Image by adreson.

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