Motivation

Entrepreneurs are driven. They are ambitious. They are full of energy and zeal. They are go-getters. Entrepreneurs wake up in the morning with the goal in their minds and the passion to achieve it. But what happens when an entrepreneur wakes up in the morning with nothing but the desire to go back to sleep? What if anyone wakes up in the morning with nothing but the desire to go back to sleep? What if your job is breaking your back? What when fatigue and exhaustion and dullness creeps into your life to form an ever-hanging pall of misery and boredom.

You can tell yourself you're stuck in a funk and that it'll pass. And yes, that is true, it will probably pass. But what about now? Right now the funk exists and its making you sad and demotivated. What about now? When you're spending every minute of your day wishing you were somewhere else? Wishing you were someone else. Wishing that you weren't wishing this at all? What about now?

Dealing with lack of motivation isn't easy. You can watch a million youtube videos where Micheal Jordon gives a speech about how important it is to be a legend and to go for your goal and all that. But at the end of the day, you can't be motivated by a video. Not for too long at least. You can't make yourself do something based on a very well made commercial for sports shoes. Motivation isn't something you get externally, it comes from within. And if you're not feeling it, you're just not feeling it.

The truth is you can try to pump yourself up. Give yourself one of those intense locker room speeches ("Tonight is about you, out there on that field", etc). But then again you're the one that has to convince yourself to do what you've got to do. Whether its that paper you need to write, or that presentation you need to finish, or that important phone call you need to make, that job, that thing, whatever it is, only YOU can make you do anything. And when you don't want to, the most you can do is wait. Wait for the funk to pass. Because tomorrow is a new day. And just like the feeling you get from watching those "motivational" videos, the funk never really lasts that long.

Telemarketing

A big part of my job as manager is calling previous customers and getting them to book their window cleaning appointments. Basically, it's turned me into a (mostly annoying) telemarketer. Now, I've been on the receiving end of telemarketing calls plenty of times and while I always try to be polite I may be guilty of occasionally losing my cool and saying something mean or perhaps hanging up on them. Now, since I am the one making the calls, it seems God thought this would be the perfect opportunity to exact some sort of just revenge. Not particularly pleasant. Its a dreadful thing when you call someone at home and they're all excited when they first answer the phone (a chirpy "Hellooo") and then you tell them who you are and you hear their voice drops a few octaves and you hear this dismayed and tired "Oh", and you know this isn't going to go well. It's a pretty frustrating thing. Sometimes I feel like yelling at people and telling them that I'd much rather scoop flaming dog poop than be calling them right now but I just have to, seeing as how its my freakin' job!

While most of the time telemarketing is a huge pain in my backside, sometimes it can be somewhat fun, or interesting at the very least. I once called a previous customer and spoke to him for a full 15 minutes in which we discussed film and comedy and dissected different forms of humour, however we didn't really talk that much about his windows and finally he didn't even book a job! Well, sometimes you just got to take a break and talk to a stranger about random things. It just helps to put the joy in job (yes, I am aware it doesn't make too much sense but just go with it, will ya?).

In the end, any telemarketer who has been yelled at for calling people during dinner time or just for calling at all will tell you that it's a deceptively hard job, which isn't all together very rewarding either. Not to mention you're sitting at the damn desk with a headset on (oh, yes I bought one), doing nothing but talking and munching on snacks. One thing is for sure, whether or not it helps in the expansion of your business it most certainly helps in the expansion of your ass.


Seinfeld: Hello?
Telemarketer: Hello sir, would you be interested in blah blah blah..?
Seinfeld: Oh, I'm busy at the moment. How about you give me your home phone number and I'll call you back?
Telemarketer: Uhhh... I don't think I can give you my home number.
Seinfeld: Why is that? Because you don't want strangers calling you at home?
Telemarketer: Well.. yes.
Seinfeld: Great, so now you know how I feel. *hangs up*

Windows

I don't know if you've ever realized just how many kinds of windows there really are. Fixed windows, orieal windows, bay windows, jalousie windows, sash windows, french windows, storm windows, various types of storm windows, blah blah blah.. There really is no end in sight.

In my whole life I have been familiar with one single type of window- Glass window. Perfect, isn't it? So now here I am, a professional window cleaner (because that is what my business is) who knows not the first thing about windows. So off course I had to learn.

I remember spending prolonged periods of agonizing time staring up with tear filled eyes (most of the time it was really cold, we're talking -20'C) trying to figure out why there is a tiny gap between two panes of glass in which there is a partition grid. Am I supposed to pull the two pieces apart? How would I clean in between? Do I clean in between? *Brain explodes* I finally figured, after a length of time that I am not proud of, that the little gap between the two glass pieces was insulation, courtesy the insulating window, a very common sight in the freezing weather of Canada.

Do I seem ill equipped to clean windows? Perhaps. But am I ill equipped to run this business? Hell no. With all its problems and all its chances this entire business is, for me, a fantastic learning opportunity. Not only to learn about windows (I wonder where this knowledge will help me in the future), but to learn about hard work and people skills (I've been yelled at my fair share of times too). To learn about my own mental and physical capacity. To learn about sales and marketing. To test my limits and my patience. I take this as an opportunity to not only learn about business management and all the other soft skills they're always saying something about at job fairs and employment workshops; I also take this as an opportunity (more importantly at that) to learn about myself.


"Find yourself and do it on purpose."
-Dolly Parton