Motivation to humans is what gas is to vehicles. You need it to stay at the top of your game as a Shopify merchant.
Motivation is the fuel that drives us to accomplish our goals. We need it to overcome our fears, procrastination, anxieties, worries, and unbearable situations. We need it every day of our lives.
You need to stay motivated to build your hustle on Shopify. Why?
Having a Shopify online store comes with a myriad of uncertainties. You have to worry about marketing to the right audience, shipping, lead generation and customer retention.
One error in one aspect of your Shopify business can affect other areas adversely and can affect your business negatively if not handled properly. In fact, if you are not careful you might sink into depression.
To prevent this, you need to take up activities that can uplift your body, soul and spirit and raise your motivation level. When you stay motivated, you will have a reason to keep pushing even when quitting feels like the only available option.
Thankfully, we will be sharing tips to stay motivated as a Shopify merchant in this post. Let’s get into it already!
Why Motivation is Important
Motivation is the driving force behind our actions. Whether you realize it or not, we need motivation in our daily life to succeed.
It is important for Shopify merchants to stay motivated to help them solve problems, and cope with challenges.
If you want to get motivated – and stay motivated – you need to go beyond listening to motivational speakers. You need to ask yourself some “why” questions. Why are you running an online store on Shopify in the first place? Why did you pick the products you are selling?
These questions can help you see where your motivation is coming from.
To help you better understand motivation, let’s break it down into two forms:
- Internal Drive
- External Drive
Internal Drive
This is the passion, interest and love for a task that motivates you to keep going. It lives within you and you alone can nurture it. It is what separates the achievers from the underachievers.
You can think of it as your life purpose – the inner drive that pushed you into e-commerce. It is the reason why you are a Shopify merchant.
External Drive
Unlike the internal drive, external drives are mostly from external factors. It can be in the reward for a job done, recognition at the place of work, words of encouragement and emotional support from family and friends.
Though these drives have tendencies to provide you with the motivation you’ll need, they may not make you happier in unfavourable conditions.
We have been discussing motivation and why it is important, next we will look at how to stay motivated every day as a Shopify Merchant.
Tips to Stay Motivated Everyday
There is no particular way of staying motivated, however, applying these hacks to your everyday life and business will keep you from giving up on your dreams.
1. Be Passionate About Your Business
You’d be setting yourself up for disappointment by starting a business you have no passion for. This is because there are days the passion for what you do becomes your sole drive to continue and not give up.
Before you venture into any business, you’ll need to ask these questions and provide sincere answers to them.
- Do I want to be here or continue doing this in the next 1-5 years?
- Does doing this make me happy?
- Do I like what I am doing?
If the answer is no, then you should look for what makes you happy and commit to it. This is because you will rarely find the motivation to do things or set up your store properly when you know it does not make you happy.
2. Remember your Goals
The goals and objectives of your Shopify store can keep you motivated. Whether it is to improve sales, increase conversion, or create awareness, the eagerness to achieve your goal will be a good motivating drive.
To easily achieve these goals, there should be a sustainable plan that is measurable to ascertain the growth at every level of the goal.
Create a daily routine and keep reminders all around to refocus your mind when you feel discouraged. Let your goals be your drive and reason to continually run your business.
3. Break Tasks Into Smaller Manageable Chunks
The ambiguity of a goal can be tasking and discouraging especially when the goal is enormous and requires a longer completion time.
The best one can do is to break the project into create smaller achievable tasks with effective measures put in place to ascertain the success and growth of each task.
These tasks can be done sequentially where one begins after the other has ended or they can be done simultaneously but in a way that does not affect the other one.
There are various scheduling tools to help you with assigning breaking tasks and assigning them to your team. These tools have unique features that are utilized based on the size of the project.
For instance, the Gantt chart is a popular scheduling tool for assigning tasks. It also showed the task due date and the progress at a glance.
Let’s say your goal is to sell to 20 countries, the best option is to break your goal into smaller tasks say one country at a time. Then break further into smaller tasks such as feasibility study, market survey, target audience, awareness etc.
This will help you stay motivated and achieve your goal eliminating the need to feel discouraged.
4. Get Rid of Distractions
One thing about distraction is that doesn’t come labelled. It can be a task that has no relevance to the goal you desire and consumes time.
Other distractions can be things around you such as spending time on gadgets or extracurricular activities on time meant for work.
It is best to identify your distractions, get rid of them and surround yourself with relevant things that make you inspired. This will help you stay motivated every day and achieve your objectives.
5. Create a Positive Work Environment
“A positive atmosphere nurtures a positive attitude, which is required to take positive action” — Richard M. DeVos
Declutter your workspace, and take out irrelevant things that can keep you distracted. Also, keep the design simple and neat.
Blank walls can be boring, so you may want to decorate the wall with frames of your favourite quote or affirmation you believe in.
Ensure there is proper ventilation and lighting to keep your spirits high. An indoor plant will help regulate the flow of air and you can always have a piece of nature with you all day.
6. Avoid Procrastination
Procrastination is the opposite of motivation. It is a killer of joy and dreams. Left unchecked, it can steal your sanity and health. Don’t give it a chance!
If you find yourself procrastinating more, then you need to tackle it from the root. Seek the things that make you procrastinate and work on them.
As a Shopify merchant, you might find yourself procrastinating when you have one big task to tackle. Instead of taking it head-on, you can break it down into smaller tasks to get them done.
Doing this can inhibit your natural tendency to procrastinate.
7. Be Optimistic
You just have to stay optimistic if you want to stay ahead in life. This is because pessimism is detrimental to both your personal and business growth.
It affects your dreams and aspiration. You tend to lose focus, overthink and worry about uncontrollable situations.
Avoid pessimism, it drains motivation and renders you helpless. Always have a positive look on life even in the most challenging conditions.
8. Recognise Your Progress
In our quest to achieve our goals, we often forget to recognise our progress. Recognising those small wins may seem insignificant at first, but can be a great source of motivation.
Motivation comes from recognising your progress, which comes from tracking your smaller goals.
This is why it is important to break your goals into smaller milestones to track progress and know how far you come and what is left to achieve.
Celebrate your little winnings and see how it motivates you to do more.
9. Celebrate Your Success
Celebrate your success no matter how small the task is. Acknowledging your input towards a project yielded result is a great feat to celebrate.
Telling someone about your success gives you this sense of satisfaction. It recharges your motivation and positivity.
For instance, as a Shopify store owner, your goal is to sell a thousand products on your site in a month or gain new leads for your email campaign. And in one day, you sell about a hundred products. It is worth celebrating knowing that your effort paid off.
10. Strive to Be Better
Strive to be the best version of yourself in all your actions. Never settle for mediocrity when you can be the best.
There is motivation to do more when you attain a certain level of success in your personal life and Shopify business. It pushes you to learn more and research more to produce the best result.
For a Shopify store, when you compare your beginnings and your growth, it gives you this satisfaction and sense of fulfilment in your self which motivates you to do more as a business knowing that success is attainable when you put in more effort.
11. Be Accountable
Nobody is perfect and people are bound to make mistakes. Always be accountable for your actions. When wrong, try to take corrections when right express and let your actions speak for themselves.
Your customers, store visitors and employee comes first. You should do things to make them happy and free when working with or around you.
Surround yourself with happy people who share the same common interest and goals as you. It lightens moods and increases your motivation level.
12. Take Healthy Breaks
Take occasional breaks to rewind and unwind. No need to beat yourself up, even the most determined man feels overwhelmed.
Feeling burnt out, you can take a break, go for a walk, eat your favourite snack, or do things that are not related to work.
Sometimes what you need is rest, you’ll be surprised how energetic and vibrant you will be after you have had your rest.
If you have the funds to go on a vacation. Don’t think twice about it. Take a long trip, enjoy yourself and let go of all your worries. No matter what you do, things will fall into place at the right time.
13. Exercise and Eat Healthy
During exercise, your body does not relieve tension and stress. It releases chemical messengers called neurotransmitters (endorphins, endocannabinoids, dopamine) which process pains, regulate heartbeats, responsible for mood, attention, learning and motivation.
Combining exercise with a good healthy diet will keep your body, soul and mind ready to take up any challenge. It will be highly welcome if you are engaged with tracking your body health progress on the digital level and the use of the intermittent weight loss app may serve you as your personal assistant in doing this task.
It reduces the risk of contracting diseases and also has positive health outcomes for the body. It keeps you healthy and motivated.
14. Seek External Motivation
At your lowest and all internal motivation is gone. You can seek motivation from the world and things around you.
The motivation could be a book, podcast, youtube videos, listening to your role model, chatting with a friend, reciting your affirmations, meeting with a mentor, motivational quotes and articles, taking a work, words of encouragement from family or playing music.
You do know what works best for you when you need motivation, do it fast and get back to doing greater things.
15. Be Grateful for What You Have
In life when things go wary or in business when it seems to be crumbling. When motivation is on a low, we tend to see life from a negative lens and blame the world for our predicaments.
Appreciating the things you have for example life, family, food, and shelter etc, Acknowledging these things will boost your motivation beyond your imagination.
Remember who you are and why you created a Shopify store in the beginning.
Conclusion
So there you have it; 15 tips to help you get and stay motivated as a Shopify merchant. These tips can help keep the grind going even when quitting feels like the only way out.
We hope you found them helpful.
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