March 24, 2017

191: How to Overcome a Plateau in Business

Everybody goes through a time where they feel unmotivated with their business. In this episode, Steli and Hiten discuss two types of plateaus that can get you down and not moving—the business plateau and the emotional plateau. They share tips and insights for how to identify the rut you are in, how you got there, and the steps and encouragement that will help you get out of that rut to move your business and self forward.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:05 – Today’s episode is about how to overcome a plateau in business

00:27 – Plateau means you have flattened out and don’t know what to do next

01:02 – Steli thinks this is a topic that hasn’t been discussed enough

02:20 – Hiten says you may be in a plateau if you feel unmotivated in your business

02:33 – An emotional plateau is when you are not motivated, even as your business is growing

02:40 – The other direction is when the sales are not growing

03:08 – “Figure out why you have a plateau”

04:03 – If the plateau is business-related, it’s just because you do not know how to improve it yet, so find the data that helps you improve

04:55 – Even if things are going well, people will get emotional plateaus

05:31 – The reason why you are plateauing is either because you’ve kept doing the same things or you’ve changed something that was working for you

06:19 – It might be because you changed the wrong thing

06:56 – You need to identify what it is and act on it

07:23 – There are many options for what you could do

08:29 – To break the funk, you have to be brutally honest with yourself

08:45 – Hiten has people who says they break out by asking “what would Hiten do?”

09:36 – A tactic is to write out what you are feeling and write it like a business report

10:34 – Hiten likes to receive reports from start-ups because it shows their self-awareness

11:40 – Steli suggests Episode 139 for how to do effective post-mortems

12:07 – “Either you resisted change or you resisted consistency”

12:31 – The hardest part is not wanting to get out of the plateau

13:20 – You have to suck it up and make uncomfortable choices

14:00 – It will also help to think about the other people of your team who are relying on you

14:10 – Steli and Hiten want to hear from you, go to iTunes to give a review and rating

14:43 – Also subscribe to the email list

15:03 – Steli and Hiten enjoy doing this for all the listeners and because they also enjoy talking to each other

15:14 – End of today’s episode

3 Key Points:

A plateau can be an emotional plateau where you feel unmotivated in your business or a business plateau, where you’re stuck and don’t know how to improve your business.

Identify the cause of your plateau by doing some introspection and act to get OUT of it—whatever the cost.

You can get over your plateau by being real to yourself and stepping out of your comfort zone.

Steli Efti: Hey, everybody, this is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. And today, on "The Startup Chat," we're gonna talk about how to overcome a plateau in your business. And "plateau" basically means you're flattening out. Your sales are flattening out, maybe even just your motivation is flattening out. But you're basically at a place where you might not know how to grow the business, but you've built some level of the business, and you're trying to figure out what to do next. And, you know, usually there's a lot of emotion attached to this type of situation, so we wanted to talk about it. Both of us have had it in our own businesses and seen other folks, sort of, go through this, and help them out.

Steli Efti: Yeah, I think this is a super important topic. I know that's there's probably ... I've seen a little bit about this topic out there,

...more

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By Steli Efti & Hiten Shah: Serial Entrepreneurs, Sales & Marketing Experts, Startup Investors & Advisors, CEOs running multi million dollar SaaS Startups

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