Many people who start a home based business are not successful. The reasons why people fail will differ from person to person. I want to have a closer look at the theories of motivation to analyse some of the reasons for failure.

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Due to the structure of this industry, most of the home based business owners do not employing other people on a full time basis. They do not report to a boss on work progress on a regular basis, they do not interact with fellow workers on a daily basis as people working fulltime in a formal job do.

The motivation is totally different for the home based business owner. We must understand it to be optimally motivated every day in this environment.

Quite a lot of the people become involved in a home based business programme due to good salesmanship and not after they have done their homework. They have high expectations of making big bucks quickly, without much effort or work and study.

False Assumptions About Motivation And The Home Based Business

Many people believe that the motivation of people is only money and biological drives like hunger.

Studies have proven that the ability of money to provide motivation is very limited. It is only motivating people when they have a relatively small, simple task to perform over a short period of time. The more complex and long term the task is, the less money will be a true motivation factor.

Having a good lifestyle or the ability to travel and see the world will be considered by many people as nice to have. The big question is whether it will really motivate somebody to perform and work hard over time on a daily basis.

Most of the people that join a home based business group are motivated to join because of the guru or salesman telling them about the new lifestyle and the big money they can earn. The problem is that motivation does not last. It is not enough or a good enough motivating factor to keep that individual slogging and working hard every day.

I believe the fact that the real motivation of people is not being understood well enough in this industry by the gurus is one of the main reasons why so many people join but are not successful in making the big bucks that can be made with the programme.

Newer Theories Of Motivation And The Home Based Business Owner

People will not be motivated in their daily task if their basic needs are not satisfy. Their basic needs are not necessarily the potential better lifestyle or big bucks on some future date.

People are only motivated in the long run if they are doing something that is their passion or that interests them, something that they feel is meaningful. They must have a feeling of being part of a community. They must work for, be part of, and believe that they are working towards something much bigger than themselves. They must build a legacy. This legacy is not the life on the beach or travelling.

Understanding these true motivational factors of people is missing in the marketing strategies of most home based business owners when they sell their product and try to motivate people that have joined their team. Let’s have a closer look at them.

Autonomy And The Home Based Business Owner

One of the big motivational factors for people is autonomy. This is the beauty of the home based business. This is the kind of job somebody can do where he does have absolute autonomy. He has control over his time, tasks, techniques and the people he wants to work with. He does not have a boss to report to.

The home based business owner has complete autonomy over everything he does. He must develop his own business plan, set his own goals, develop his own time scales, decide for himself on his training programmes, and have his own daily plans.

I believe the importance of this as a motivational factor is not being used properly in this industry. Reasons for failure are due to the fact that many people starting out in this industry do not understand all the basic processes involved in planning a business and managing it on a day-to-day basis. More assistance is needed to assist home based business owners in this.

Mastery

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle

People are motivated if they feel that they have learned something, have developed a new skill, applied that skill successfully, and are making progress in the development of their own abilities. They must see and feel the progress. They must be able to measure and evaluate their progress regularly. The athlete preparing for a big event has a training programme. He knows where he wants to be on a specific future date. He is planning his daily exercise programme and is monitoring his progress regularly. That is the only way he can be assured that he will be in top physical form and mental state on the day of the competition. He is being motivated daily during the slogging period of exercise and preparations because he has a dream, a goal, a plan are taking action, monitor his progress daily and give him feedback on the progress.

The same principle applies to the home based business owner. He must know what he wants to achieve. He must have a plan on how he wants to get there and he has to monitor his progress daily.

There is so much knowledge that a home based business owner has to master and learn. He can be overwhelmed by that. He might not have a plan and priorities. By taking small steps every day he will not be motivated daily to keep on taking action and to work towards his goal. He will lose interest.

Purpose

Money or profits have a limited ability to motivate people. We are motivated in the long run if there is purpose in our life. We want to belong also and be part of a bigger community. We want to contribute to others. We want to find meaning in life. In his theories of motivation, Maslow called it self-actualisation. There must be a purpose bigger than ourselves in life.

I believe that in the home based business industry this is not getting enough attention. People are losing interest and becoming demotivated because the emphasis in the industry is on the “self”; my lifestyle, my travel, the way I want to spend my time, I do want to earn big bucks fast.

We must develop a way to motivate people by giving them a bigger purpose in their lives that they can work for or be part of. Every day they must feel that through their daily actions or work, they will improve their own financial situation, but they will also contribute towards the lives of other and build their legacy.

The home based business must look at the integration of social entrepreneurship as an integral part of the industry. We must also develop ways to support and motivate people working with us.

The Lessons For The Home Based Business

“A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.” – Tony Robbins

It is a science to motivate people and keep them motivated. In the home based business programme, there are too many people who start but lose interest after some time. The rate of failure is too high. If failure is being defined as people not achieving in the industry what they believed they could or should have achieved, the real reason for this must be determined. My view is that the importance of the correct application of the basic theories of motivation is not being applied correctly in the industry.

The nature of the home based business lends itself to apply the theories of motivation much better. The environment to motivate people is much better than in the more formal work environment. By applying some of the theories of motivation in our business, we will make more people successful and in the process everybody working together will be more successful.

Join our team and we will keep you motivated. Your success is our success. You can reach the sky if you dream-it-plan-it-do-it daily. It will not happen overnight but remember it is a journey to your goal, not a happening.