In today's show, I'm talking about a really well known principle of psychology that most entrepreneurs and leaders don't actually know about. This principle really helps you create next level growth in your business by ensuring that your motivation stays high. This is your permission slip to take the next 20 minutes or all to yourself. Relax and enjoy the show. This is your time now.
Okay, let's go. Hi, I'm Suzi Belmont, a multi seven figure entrepreneur with 15 years experience, as well as a psychology expert, qualified coach, and therapist. This podcast is your secret resource to help you grow from the inside out. It's like personal development for entrepreneurs and leaders, all wrapped up in fun, positivity, and motivation. So, pull up your chair and get ready to change your life and your business from the inside out. This is the Inside Out Entrepreneur Podcast.
Hello, Hulu. Um, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. It is so, so nice being back in your earlobes and chatting again because so many of you reached out after the first show to tell me how happy you were that I'm back. So for that, thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. It was a super warm welcome back. And so amazing to be on the receiving end of that.
And for all of those of you who did ask about the show, don't forget that you will need to subscribe to the show on whatever platform you're listening on, whether that's iTunes, Spotify, or elsewhere. Okay, so this week, let's dive straight into the topic, which is all about how you use psychology to grow yourself as an entrepreneur, which ultimately creates next level growth in your business.
And really specifically, I want to talk to you this week about motivation and how you stay motivated when you're growing your business. And as you can no doubt guess, because I focus on you rather than strategies and funnels and hacks for your actual business, this is about how you stay motivated and keep those people around you, your team and others motivated too.
Oh, and I nearly forgot before I jump straight in and go through all of the detail, those of you who've been reaching out and asking me how you get the secret episode of the podcast, that is over on my website. So if you haven't done that, Just pop on over to www.suzibelmont.com and you'll see on the podcast page there, you can just download it. It's not available with the general podcast. It's one that's in its own little space.
So you'll have to get that one there rather than trying to find it on iTunes. Okay, let's go back to motivation and how you build it up in your business, how you sustain it and how you build it up for your team, how you build it up with people around you. And this can also apply to your customers too. And to explain this, I want to break down a really powerful concept in psychology that can help you supercharge your own growth and your business growth.
And this is a concept based on a theory called self determination theory. So, what is self determination theory? Well, really simply, it's a theory that's pretty universally accepted as a really good theory created by two psychologists called Edward Deci and Richard Ryan.
And in essence, it focuses on what is needed to motivate people, whether that's you, whether that's your customers, whether that's your team, whether that's your family, it doesn't matter what is needed to motivate people around you. And according to this theory, you have three needs that must be fulfilled for you to grow and to stay motivated. So this is kind of important stuff that you need to know. Yet most entrepreneurs, most leaders don't know this. I definitely didn't in my earlier days.
So I am sharing this with you right now so you can get a little bit of a step up and be one foot ahead of where you were before. So what are these three needs? Well, let's start with number one. The first need is focused on a core need that you have to feel in control of your own choices and actions. A lack of this is actually why so many employees hate their jobs. They have no control of what happens in their day, and so motivation is heavily affected as a result.
Having this sense of being in control as an entrepreneur is called autonomy. When you have autonomy and the freedom to make decisions, you will feel more motivated and engaged. So let me share a little story of how important this is. Because this is something that came up in my journey way, way back in 2013 when I got my first book deal. And back then before I was doing the book, I was swimming in autonomy. I could do whatever I wanted in my business.
I could co create with my customers when I was bringing out new products. I could work with my team. I could hire people. I could fire people if I wanted to. I could do what I chose to do pretty much every day. And as I became so big in that industry so quickly, I got known and then I started to get offered various things. And one of the things I was offered was a book deal.
I was actually offered multiple book publishing contracts and ultimately I accepted one that paid me 30, 000 pounds up front with royalties later. Now that was all good at that point, I was really excited about it, I thought this is great. But then, fairly soon afterwards, I started to get a lot of intervention in my timetable. So, as I just mentioned, up until this point, I could pretty much do whatever I wanted.
But, when the book deal came along, grateful as I was for having it, and really excited and I really wanted to do it, but I also had to work with the publisher. And the publisher wanted certain things created by a certain time, done in a certain way, according to what they thought was right, and I instantly started to lose my sense of autonomy. I felt like the publisher was dictating my working week and I completely lost my motivation to create the book over the next couple of months.
In fact, the book ended up being really, really late because unlike when I had complete autonomy, I was procrastinating because I wasn't motivated to move forward with the book because it wasn't coming from me fully in the way that I was used to. And what is so important here to note is that I had been paid £30, 000 up front, which was a pretty good advance at that time in the industry that I was in.
And considering it was my first book, I was untested in the market and so on, I thought it was a really fair deal. But that money, that payment, once it was in the bank, didn't motivate me at all. And this is the crux of the point that I want to make here. When you're running your business and looking for growth, a really big tip is to avoid making money your number one reason for anything. And I'll explain why in a second. Now, I'm not denying that money is important.
I know money really matters to entrepreneurs. It matters to me as well. And I am all for money goals and having money as a general motivator. But when the going gets tough, money is actually an external motivator. And according to self determination theory, which is really well tested, the real motivators that drive you forward and keep you going are internal ones.
Money is simply never going to be as strong when you're in the tougher moments in business as the other more internal drivers, and these internal drivers are called intrinsic drivers, or motivations, or needs. And one of those is this sense of autonomy. So, applying that back to my book deal, I needed to produce the book for reasons that mattered internally to me, not for external rewards like money.
And at the time, I didn't have a sense of autonomy about the book, nor did I have any of the other needs that I'm about to mention in a moment that will drive my motivation. So it was really hard to motivate myself to write this book just based on money alone, even though it was a fairly hefty advance. So let's turn this to you and your motivation. In your own business and growth, think about how you've structured things around your own autonomy. How are you creating autonomy for you?
Are you building your business around the true you and your unique strengths and abilities? Because if you are, you have real freedom. Are you allowing yourself to show up as the true you? Or is something making you hide away or hide a part of you? Because if you're hiding parts of you, this is where you're going to hit obstacles. This is why I focus on working with entrepreneurs to really revolutionize your relationship with yourself.
Because you've got to have that natural aligned feeling with your business. And that involves really understanding who you are and how you work, and understanding how autonomy works for you. And this is perhaps best explained in the words of one of my clients. So I'm going to read out something she wrote to me because this is what prompted me to produce this podcast. Her words should really help you understand what autonomy feels like when it's actually present in your business.
And this is what she said. I invested in Suzi as a business mentor and coach, which, FYI, is the best money I ever spent, truly. She took an inside out approach to my business, starting by pulling me apart and slowly rebuilding me, only without the fears, doubts, perfectionism, overthinking that was holding me back before. She basically rewired my entire brain. It was mental, literally and figuratively.
Partway through this process, I started to tap into my deeper intuition, and I had a worrying realization. I actually hated working with managers who found excuses for their toxic behavior. These were not my people. I wanted to work with amazing women who did want to change. And because Suzi had transformed my life in such unexpected ways, I knew that I was a better wife, mom, sister, daughter, friend, and better at my business, it felt more fun, more free, and more under my control.
I knew that this is what I wanted to give to other women, so I knew I was going to pivot in my business. So do you see how understanding how she worked, who she was and what made her feel in control of her choices and her mindset and her actions, then led to massive increased motivation to alter her business and work to what was aligned with her true self.
And that client is now flying, she's doing her own thing, she's completely transformed what she's doing in her business and she's fallen back in love with it. And this is the real crux of autonomy.
You really have to have it in your business, you really got to be the one in the driving seat, making decisions and feeling free to make decisions from the true you, from really understanding who you are and not having masks on and doing things in a way that you're kind of half showing up, because that's not autonomy. Half making decisions, half hiding. Half doing things the way you think other people do them, rather than just producing from yourself, from your core.
There is this other aspect of this need, number one, the autonomy need, which is all to do with what underpins motivation. Those of you listening who have teams working for you, think about how you are creating autonomy within your team. Are you micromanaging your employees and creating a bottleneck because everything has to go through you? If so, this is stripping your team of autonomy and will strip them of motivation too.
And you'll see it, you'll see that their motivation drops if it hasn't already. Instead, you need to get really clear on how you can let your team feel 100 percent in control of their own decisions, their own actions, and their own results. And this is a really powerful way to work. Once you start to delegate in a way that you give them that responsibility, and you focus on managing your team by delegating autonomy to them.
This is a really different way of working if you're not used to doing it. And I often coach my own clients about how to let go because letting go is so hard for entrepreneurs who started a business on their own. And one of the main reasons I focus on this is because your team won't be motivated if you can't let go, if you can't hand over and build autonomy or let them build autonomy for themselves. And if you want any proof of that, have a think about teachers.
And I don't want to keep picking on schools, I spoke about them in the last episode, but because you've all been to school, you know what I'm talking about. The government regulates schools so much that teachers have no sense of autonomy anymore. Teachers don't really get to decide what they are teaching, and everything is geared towards SATs, the standardized tests. So teachers, as well as students who also lack autonomy in schools, become demotivated, and now they're leaving in droves.
And it's the same with students. They're demotivated in school because they don't have much autonomy. They don't find school interesting or motivating because this fundamental piece, one of three pieces that they need, is missing, this fundamental piece of autonomy. And so naturally the motivation goes. Worse still, schools and governments then try and motivate children or teachers via external influencers, like points and badges and rewards and exams.
But the real way to motivate is to go inside, to look from the inside out. So, bring that example back to you. Think about your business again and what parallels you can draw. How could you create more autonomy in your life and in your business? Think about how important it is to be you, to be uniquely you, not feeling like you have to do anything like anyone else, or you have to do something according to someone else's rules. You get to do it your way. This is part of being an entrepreneur.
You get to do it differently. You get to go out on a limb. You get to say things differently to everyone else. You get to say whatever you want to say and you get to build a whole new level of motivation when that underpins how you're working. This really is one of the ways to find success and happiness and one of the things that underpins success and happiness.
Entrepreneurship is all about forging your own path, and that path must be one that lets you feel 100 percent in control of what you choose to do. And any time you begin to notice your motivation dropping in your business, just think back on this and just ask yourself, have I lost autonomy? Have I lost that sense of autonomy, that sense of control, that sense of freedom to do what I want? What do I need to pivot? What do I need to make changes to, to get that autonomy back?
Okay. Number two, the next pillar of self determination theory, because remember there are three pillars to self determination theory. The first one was autonomy. So the next one, and a need that must be fulfilled for you to grow and stay motivated is competence. This means that in your business, you must feel that you are effective at what you do and that you are capable of doing it. Now, big, big slam on the imaginary brakes here.
I said capable, not totally perfect in every possible way, not the best in the world and better than everyone else, not the leading number one expert who never makes any mistakes. Just capable. Feeling capable and competent underpins how motivated you feel in your business and personal growth. And this is a massive point. If you create the right business for you it will fully align with who you truly are.
And not only will you feel effective and be able to create content with ease, you will feel capable. If you compare that to someone who simply copied someone else's business model because they saw the success that someone else was having, but the model doesn't really align with their own story, their own work, their own background, their own research, their own experience, it won't take long before motivation drops off and they cease to want to grow the business.
So sometimes you just need to tweak your business model so it really aligns with where you feel most capable and most competent. And if you've gone slightly off track here, just bring it back. You don't need to destroy the business. You just need to bring it back and say, where did I start doing stuff that wasn't really where I was capable and competent? I was just doing it because everyone else was doing it and I got swept up in a trend or something going on in the market.
And if you're finding that you're doing that, and actually you've lost that sense of capability and that sense of competence, bring it back. Bring it back to where you started and what was the core of what you were going to do. It all comes back again to what is happening inside of you. When you feel skilled and able to tackle challenges, your confidence grows and then this impacts your motivation. The need for competence is why you also need to keep continually learning in your business.
Now that doesn't mean you need to be some kind of course junkie. What I mean by this is honing your skills, your expertise, and really deeply understanding who you are and how you operate from the inside out becomes really important information. You can't improve your competence and confidence if you don't understand who you are and why you're doing what you're doing and what it is that motivates you about doing it.
Now, as some of you will remember, in one of my former programs, I used to talk about the competence confidence loop. So imagine, because some of you won't have heard this, so imagine for a minute you are looking at a wheel on the side of a car. And as the car starts to move, the wheel starts to go round and it's moving round really smoothly like a car wheel does.
Now, imagine for a moment that I have given you a sharpie and you've just stopped the car and you've written on one side of the wheel in big capital letters the words COMPETENCE. And it's kind of arched round the wheel, let's say it's on the right hand side of the wheel and it's going round and it says the word COMPETENCE. Say you wrote it at sort of the 12 o'clock to 4 o'clock place on the side of the wheel, if that makes sense.
Now, on the same part of the wheel, on the same side of the wheel, still on the front, on the opposite side, on the 9 o'clock, sort of 9 o'clock till midnight side, I want you to imagine you've written the word CONFIDENCE. So, on one side of the wheel, you've got the word competence, and on the other side of the wheel, you've got the word confidence. Now, imagine the car slowly starts to move, and it can drive forward because competence and confidence balance each other out.
They're two halves of the same wheel. Once there is some competence movement, then around comes confidence and once confidence comes around, around comes competence and then you have competence going around and back comes confidence and it goes round and round with competence and confidence, competence and confidence going round and round together and they are completely in sync with each other and then the car gets faster.
It moves faster, it goes and it goes 10,20,30,40,50,60 miles an hour because they are balanced together. This is how this works. You need competence in your business in order to have confidence, and you need confidence to continue to grow your competence. They go together. Now, imagine this wheel represents you, imagine that it is you. What would happen to the car if I took off the wheel and put a pumpkin on there instead of the wheel, instead of the tyre?
The car would drive a little bit, right? Because the pumpkin would be there and it would still be round, so it would go round, but then, as it started to speed up, the pumpkin would probably explode everywhere and the car would come grinding to a halt. And this is what it's like when you base your business on someone else's model or methods or strategies and you don't have competence.
You can drive for a little bit, but as soon as the car tries to speed up, the wheels come off because there's no competence in someone else's model. And of course, when you don't have the confidence, you don't have the competence either. So everything just explodes like a pumpkin going around instead of a tire.
Instead, you have to remove the pumpkin, which is the things that you're basing on everyone else, and go back to the tyre, your tyre, your wheel, and put what you know, and what you learn about, and what your unique capabilities are, and your competencies, and put that on there. So you work with your confidence and competence again. Competence and confidence. Can't say those words too many times without getting them mixed up.
So as you think about your business and your next level of growth, go back to you and what you are best at. What is your unique USP? What do you do best? Focus on that bit. And if that means delegating other bits to your team, remember tip number one, and give them autonomy as you delegate. Because the bits you want to do are the bits that you are most competent at. And you want to be delegating everything to everyone else, or not doing it at all. Delete or delegate.
Okay, let's go on to the third thing. So just to recap before I do, there are three parts of self determination theory, which need to be there. These three things need to be there in order for you to feel motivated. Number one was autonomy. Number two was competence. And number three, the last pillar of self determination theory, and a need that must be fulfilled for you to grow and be motivated, is connection to others.
This means building strong relationships with your customers and your team as well as a network of peers that provides a sense of belonging. And this is actually one of the reasons why models of business that rely on set it and forget it principles feel not very satisfying. Because not having connections to others goes against this fundamental principle of what humans need to feel motivated and to thrive. It's why a lot of people tend to prefer lives when doing group calls in their business.
That sense of human to human connection is really important. And it's not just you that might feel not motivated if you have a set it and forget it part to your business, it's actually your end user, your customer. They need that connection with you somewhere, or your peer group. They need that connection with you somewhere. It's why we all got so down and not motivated during COVID, because we were missing one of these three pillars.
We were missing this, it's called relatedness, but this sense of connection to other people. So most people understand the importance of connecting to their team and building a network, but having that personal connection to your customers is so powerful. Indeed, one of the things I used to do in my former business was send video messages to any new customers, and this small personal connection had such a huge impact on all of the customers.
But for me also, as the entrepreneur, as the person sending those videos, you know, there were thousands of these that went out. So it was quite a lot of work. Each one was only a minute, but every time we got a new customer, a new live little video recording was done. I used some software called Bonjoro, if you're interested in doing this. One of those would go out and what worked for me was it motivated me.
It was like a boost of energy every time I sent one and I received a reply because there was that sense of connection, that relatedness. It's also why I encourage you to reach out to me when you're a listener of the podcast. And I say things all of the time, like don't forget to DM me on socials, send me an email at support at www.suzibelmont. com, check in on my website, come and say hi, just reply to an email on my emails, whatever it is.
Because if nothing else, that sense of connection with you, with my listeners, is something that underpins my motivation and growth. If you do reach out to me, this will explain why I almost always reply personally. Almost always. I'm not going to say every single time because there'll be somebody, somebody listening who says you didn't reply to me personally, it was one of your team. So I'm not going to say every single one, but 99. 9 percent of the time I will do that.
And this sense of connection motivates me. It's one of the reasons I found taking such a long break from social media during my sabbatical Really, really hard. And it's actually one of the reasons why my confidence dropped during that sabbatical. So I really want you to focus this on being about you, because we all know the customer loves this, right? Customers love to receive personal messages. And if you get a personal message from the owner of the business, it's really nice.
So no, one's going to dispute that, but I want you to think about why it also motivates you. Often the action of taking the step is the thing that will ultimately build your confidence and get you motivated again. It's just taking the step to build that relatedness, to build that connection. So to recap, the three principles behind motivation, according to self determination theory, are number one, autonomy, number two, competence, and number three, relatedness, which is connection.
And to help you remember them, my metaphor about the car and the pumpkin was not accidental. If you take the first letter of each of these, autonomy, competence, and relatedness, A C R, and you reorganize them to competence, autonomy, and relatedness, you spell car. Now you have no excuse for forgetting this little bit of psychology, this little psychological theory that will help you keep motivated if you implement it. Just remember, whenever your motivation drops, have you got autonomy?
Or let me do it the right way around for the car. Have you got competence? Have you gone off on an angle and you've started doing things in your business that you're not really competent to do? And if you aren't competent, you've either got to become competent or you've got to go back and do something different. Have you got autonomy? Are you making all of the decisions that you need to make from a place of autonomy or is something else influencing them?
Are you being led by what somebody else is doing? You're noticing a competitor doing something and you're therefore doing things that that competitor is doing because you're kind of following their sense of autonomy rather than coming back and saying, what do I want to do? What is my decision in this? Doesn't matter what everyone else is doing. What's my decision? And the third one, our relatedness. Are you building connections with your customers? Are you building connections with your team?
Are you building connections with your peers? If you're not, if you've let that drop back for whatever reason, maybe you got too busy and you didn't want to build connections with your customers anymore and you didn't have time to. Maybe you've been really busy with some personal issues and that's got in the way of building connections and relatedness with your team. Those are the things you might want to look at before you start thinking about why am I not motivated?
Maybe I need to completely destroy my business and start all over again and do something completely different in a completely different niche. Probably not. You probably just need to come back to the CAR. C A R. Competence, Autonomy and Relatedness. So just before I finish up today, I'm just going to give you three or four, maybe five little tips if you're really keen to improve your motivation. So start by focusing on strengthening your self determination.
And this means making sure that you're showing up in a way that number one, fosters a belief that you have full control over your life. Autonomy in your business means that when you are confronted by challenges, You believe that you can overcome them. This is very much linked to your energy, which is something I talk about in one of my programs that you can see over on my website. Number two, don't build your business relying on external rewards or punishments.
Try and set your goals based on an internal drive from within you. This means achieving the goal is largely based on your own effort rather than setting the goal linked to something that you can't control, such as how many customers will sign up, how much money you make, uh, something like that. If the goal was internal, for example, that you showed up every day on a live if you were doing a launch, that would be an intrinsic goal.
motivator, an intrinsic goal, something that you control, something that's internal, and you can achieve that. It is likely that you will then stay motivated throughout because you're focusing on that internal achievable goal. Number three, base your actions on goals that you've set knowing that you are capable of achieving them. It's really important to have some idea of where you are heading with your business and why.
And focusing on what you're capable of doing puts you in the right place to build competence and then improve your confidence. As I said earlier, capable doesn't mean you need to be the best in the world, just means you need to be capable. Number four, don't work in isolation. If you're not motivated, don't just go off and hide somewhere and just do something in isolation.
Find ways to connect to other people, whether that's reaching out to your customers, checking in on some of your clients, speaking to some of your peers, going live on Facebook, talking on someone else's post on Instagram, whatever it is, find a way to connect. Because I promise you, you will notice a difference.
If you're not motivated in your business, just having something like a customer reach out to you makes such a difference and you'll know what I'm talking about if you've experienced that. When a customer reaches out and tells you something, gives you some feedback, says that they're doing really well, it kind of makes you feel more motivated. And then number five, a last one just to mention, is take self responsibility as well as all of these things. Accept blame for your failures.
But then move on. It doesn't matter if something goes wrong. It doesn't matter if you've lost your motivation. It doesn't matter if your autonomy dropped or you've realized that your team has got absolutely no autonomy whatsoever. You just fix it. You become aware, and hopefully today's podcast is making you aware. Then you take responsibility for something that's not quite right, and you tweak it. You make it better. It's as simple as that.
And then give yourself some credit for your success and the fact that you are making the changes. Don't just ignore the fact that you've made this huge change based on these really strong psychological principles. So this is a nice simple principle that I just want you to remember. Whether you stick up car, C A R on your wall, above your desk, just as a reminder, or just keep it in the back of your head.
When your motivation drops, Think about the CAR Principle, which should lead you to remember self determination theory, competence, autonomy, and relatedness . Okie dokie everyone, that is it from me today. Thank you for being here and listening with me and I will see you in the next episode. Oh, and before I go, don't forget, if you're new to my world or you haven't yet discovered my website, head on over and take the ESP quiz, the Emotional Survival Patterns quiz.
If you're curious to know more about how your emotions may be sabotaging your business and your entrepreneurial growth. It's all about the inner world. That's what I do. . So you can go and check out that on the website. See you next time.