One thing I have learned about small business, is that some days, you wake up unsure of why you even bother. One thing goes wrong, something else goes down the drain, you're STILL fighting last months battles… You start to wonder if you were insane to think this whole business thing was anything other than a way to fast-forward the aging process.

Mostly, we turn to ourselves and struggle to figure out what went wrong and how we can fix it. Sometimes it's stressful, sometimes we feel like we're banging our heads against a brick wall. So we changed our approach and embraced outside help.

Most small businesses know the importance of having people around to bounce ideas off, but I still think a lot of us don't do it enough and wind up making our lives far harder than they need to be. This is especially true if you work from geographically isolated areas, as we did for quite a while. However, the last few weeks has seen change in the air, and new ways of staying motivated inspired and wrinkle free:

1. Get a Business Mentor
   

   Yesterday was our first meeting with a Mentor, funnily enough, a concept quite new to me. Our mentor sat us down, listened to what we had to say, and immediately suggested one or two things that made us both sit back and say 'duh!'. Having an 'outsider' sitting there, focused entirely on our business gave us ideas we simply would never have been able to think of on our own. Even having someone else there gave me the confidence to feel like the weight of our success wasn't solely on our shoulders.

2. Work with other small businesses

   Whether it's organising to meet up and work form a wireless enable cafe once or twice a week, or sharing an office, having other people around whose lives are as crazy as yours, not only gives you ideas on better ways to do things, but the confort of knowing that other people are in exactly the same boat.

   
   The office may be small but we make it work ;)
   

3. Talk to Inspirational People

   They aren't as hard to catch a hold of as you may think (or as I thought). Tim is excellent at walking up to people I'd assume were just too busy, and hitching up get-togethers that last several hours and are simply invaluable from  both a business and personal level. 

4. Get together for a few drinks and talk seriously about wild, insane ideas
   

   This we have done a lot recently, and when you have spent a night discussing ideas that the light of day would never appreciate, you no longer feel that what's on your plate is actually that hard to achieve :)

5. Go to Lunchtime Seminars

   BORING! Well, I thought it would be. But when you spend your morning focused on projects, a quick lunchtime spell of thinking about your unconcious mind, or anything you generally don't have time to think about, helps you get away from that day-to-day grind and onto the bigger picture.