Goals give entrepreneurs a direction and the motivation to achieve something. If we pick a goal that blocks us however, we might get there in the end but it will be a hard slog and can lead to bad decisions or inactivity. When we begin to feel overwhelmed and things feel more difficult than they should be, it's at this stage that it helps to question what really motivates us and our beliefs.
My journey into entrepreneurship started with a project that I was doing for fun in my spare time; I launched a weather balloon to film the curvature of the Earth and uploaded the video to Youtube. When this got thousands of hits and then international media coverage, I decided to leave my job and turn my hobby into a business even though I didn't have a clue how to do this.
However the fear of not earning enough money to live on and the pressure to be successful led to me starting my business with the wrong goal i.e. I must earn X amount to pay the bills!
For the second project, I was attempting to send up another weather balloon and this time create a piece of artwork in Space. With the dread of not earning enough money, I threw myself into making this happen but for some reason, this time around nothing seemed to come together and I felt overwhelmed. It had all gone so well during my first project! I couldn't understand what was going wrong and turned to a friend and business coach Trudy Thompson to ask for advice.
Tip - if you're feeling overwhelmed, ask people good questions and take one step at a time.
In one of my first coaching sessions, I found out about a very simple creative thinking technique that helped expand my thinking and question my beliefs, to find a more inspiring goal than just earning money. I discovered my 'wow' goal was hiding behind my fear of not earning enough money. What I was truly motivated to do was to see my Space artwork exhibited in a gallery and share my story alongside it to encourage other people to achieve what seems impossible.
A year later and not only had I created the artwork in Space but it was being displayed in a top London gallery in an exhibition about my work. This opened up more doors for ongoing projects and it also ended up providing me with the money to pay the bills!
Tip - use our 'Wow' list technique to help you discover your true motivation and goals.
I was so grateful for the help I had received from Trudy that I wanted to find a way to share my experience with others and show them how to take on their own goals with the right mindset. Trudy and I teamed up and now we both run the Entrepreneurs Retreat based in Cornwall to help people of all ages to get a business off the ground, start a new project or do something radically different with their life.