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How to stay motivated as an Entrepreneur?

Rachid Akiki, MD, MBA
3 min readMar 21, 2022

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I have been building/learning for months, and one day I hit a plateau where I was so discouraged that I couldn’t bring myself to keep going. It’s hard to stay motivated as a founder. Sometimes, you have to believe when no one else does. And then, there are those times when it’s hard to believe even for you.

Fellow founders, have you been there?

Impossible is nothing

1. Customers

One of the biggest motivators when building a business is taking on customers without charging them. It might sound silly, but it works very well. Start off with an entirely free product with no fixed timeframe on when to start charging. This works really well to validate the idea, get feedback, and figure out how people use the product. Use that to figure out where you want to take things. Don’t introduce a paid plan until you are at a point where you have a solid offering. Within a few days of that, you will have a handful of customers convert to paid.

Getting your first paying customer is a huge motivator! Every time you get a new customer, it just drives motivation higher and higher. You need to love what you’re doing. If building your product/business is a slog and you’re not enjoying it, that won’t change. Your motivation won’t improve without a serious change in perspective. It cannot all be about money, and if you’re not in it to solve a problem, I think you’ll always struggle to get anywhere.

2. Support System

If you don’t have a passion for it, you’re most likely going to stop doing it. But, of course, even if you love what you do, there are going to be crappy times.

I believe that it’s very important to have a support system in place so that when things go badly, you have someone to turn to. You can talk to them, and they will lift you up or guide you on how to resolve the issues.

If you don’t have a local support group, I think the next best thing is joining startup communities like NoCodeChat, and Facebook Groups. Founders of all backgrounds go through very similar things, and we can help each other!

3. Remember Your Why

Have a recurring event on your calendar called “Your Why,” and in the description of that event is the reason…

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Rachid Akiki, MD, MBA
Rachid Akiki, MD, MBA

Written by Rachid Akiki, MD, MBA

Decentralizing healthcare 🚀 Medical Doctor turned Serial Entrepreneur. Boston & Miami-based. Studied physics, medicine, radiology, & business. Always Learning

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