Unlocking Entrepreneurial Success: Why Paying Yourself First Keeps You Motivated [Actionable Tips Inside]
Starting your own business can be an exciting adventure. But let’s face it, it requires an amount of resilience that’s hard to maintain. This makes the argument between discipline and motivation a bit tense. Some argue that discipline is better than motivation, while others focus on recharging motivation to overcome challenges. In this blog, we’ll discuss the latter. You can make a significant difference by implementing a strategy that fuels your motivation and propels you towards your goals. The strategy in question? Paying yourself first is a game-changer that will keep you going like the Energizer Bunny. You’ll keep going and going!
In my previous post, I briefly mentioned three methods I used to stay motivated; one was prioritizing my compensation before all else, but I didn’t explain why it works. So, in this post, we’re taking a deeper dive into the strategy.
What Makes The World Move:
“The world revolves around punishment and rewards,” I think I heard this quote from Wein Salema, “The Genius Prince Guide To Raising A Nation Out of Debt.” That’s not important; the important thing is that it’s as accurate now as it has ever been. When I was a kid, my mom used to give us treats for doing good deeds or other tasks like keeping our rooms clean, taking out the trash, or getting good grades. I’m sure you’ve experienced something similar, right? This is something called positive reinforcement. Positive Reinforcement is” the process of rewarding or reinforcing desired behavior to increase the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated in the future” (Stabbon & Cerruti, 2003.
In fact, video games do something very similar with sounds and bells but take it a step further. With video games, the sound of the bells, victorious sounds, level-ups, and more triggers the reward center of a person’s brain. This releases dopamine or causes hyperarousal. When someone experiences hyperarousal during an activity, it will cause the person to associate that activity with pleasure. When this happens, the person begins to seek out that same pleasure again and again.
I wish I could tell you that I came up with this trick myself, but I didn’t. I first learned it when I took the One Funnel Away course to boost my affiliate marketing business. I was at my lowest during this time and looking to better my business. My traffic had slowed, and I felt like I was wasting my time trying to get it to start up again. Before, I had used a blog to get traffic to my affiliate links. Sure, it took some time, but I wasn’t in a rush. Affiliate marketing wasn’t the primary source of my income. However, after the fall of my first business, I had no money coming in. My bills were due, and it was time for me to reorder my medication; I was once again living with my mom. I felt like a failure; the OFA challenge was my last hope.
How To Properly Put It Into Practice:
Right, so how exactly do we properly put this into practice? Let’s say that you make $1,000 one month as an affiliate marketer; how of that do you think you should pay yourself? $300? $400? How about $500? Well, as affiliate marketers, we have a lot of bills to keep track of domains, email marketing tools, paying for traffic, and other tools. This makes paying yourself $400 or more out of $1,000 unreasonable. $300 is better, but you need to make sure you have enough money to put away for taxes. I would advise you to put away 30% of all your income for taxes at the end of the year. So, how much should you pay yourself? It should be enough to make sure you can account for everything else while also keeping you motivated enough to keep moving forward. I would advise that you immediately pay yourself 10%, so in this case, $100.
I’ve tried to use different percentages, but they don’t work out as efficiently as 10%. I also like to use this as a jump-off point to assemble my budget. Here are a few things that I would put money away for after paying yourself:
- Taxes
- Marketing/Advertisement
- Surprise expenses
- Utilities
- Vehicles
- etc.
You’ll find that you’ll have more expenses as your business continues to grow more and more. For instance, you may start as a solopreneur right now but later add employees to delegate some of the tasks you need to be done later. That’s a topic for another post, I suppose.
Final Words:
Entrepreneurship is a challenging journey that requires both discipline and motivation. While some argue for discipline alone, paying yourself first can provide a game-changing strategy for staying motivated. Positive reinforcement is deeply ingrained in human psychology, and prioritizing self-compensation is key to success. By allocating a reasonable percentage, such as 10%, you can reward yourself for hard work and ensure that essential aspects of your business are taken care of. As your journey evolves, remember to celebrate your victories, big and small, and keep paying yourself first to stay motivated. With determination and progress, you can conquer the entrepreneurial landscape one step at a time.
