MOTIVATION: THE LYNCHPIN OF SUCCESS

WHY YOU DO IT MATTERS MORE THAN WHAT YOU DO
Before you agree to do anything that might add even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself What is my truest intention. Give yourself time to let a yes resound within you. When it’s right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it. – Oprah Winfrey

At the height of the dot-com bubble* Masayoshi Son’s worth was growing by 1.4 billion dollars per day but in the year 2000 after the markets crashed, his company Softbank’s value had dropped over 73 percent in two months and literally went crumbling at the end of the year from 200 billion worth to 2 billion with Son losing over 70 billion dollars in a day after topping Bill Gates as world’s richest person for 3 days. Son lost almost all his money and that loss is recorded as the highest ever financial loss for a person in history. But this would not be the end of Son. In the years following the market crash, Son saw mobile phones as the key to building his company back up again. And in 2006 before the first iPhone was even released, he made a deal with Apple to be the sole distributor of the iPhone in Japan. At the time, the success of the iPhone was no sure thing. But Son took the gamble and what followed was massive success. The iPhone quickly became the dominant smartphone in Japan and this was the beginning of the turnaround of his fortune. Masayoshi Son is now back in the game and according to Forbes Son is worth 23 billion dollars with Softbank now worth over 129 billion dollars.

The case of Masayoshi son’s glorious fall though unique due to the huge amount of money involved is not that peculiar in the world of the business as such it is important to note that 90 percent of startups or new companies fail according to a Forbes magazine study. But Son’s Softbank story is interesting and worthy of mention as though most of the companies which fell due to the market crash and never resurrected Son was resilient and got back to building his company unlike the others who quit after the most famous crash. This is where comes in the motivation factor; the lynchpin of success- the most important or focal thing of success, why you do what you do. Unlike the other people involved in the crash who just wanted to take advantage and make a quick buck of the booming market of the internet Son had a real interest in the computer technology and the future. This is what motivated his resilience and made him to go on and rebuild his soft bank business which has now recaptured its place in the technology world unlike the other dot-com fellow who went back to the other conventional business of that day like oil.

The reason people move from business to business or career to career is because they are motivated by something that does not sustain one in an endeavor which is mostly money. Imagine your purpose in life is to make tons of money if you try to go into a business venture and over time the business is failing the natural inclination is to drop the business and go into another one right? But the problem with this is that this process is bound to repeat itself and this is the story of most people and business failures to do.

The thing is if your motivation is money you will not have the strength to move on in the business after all hope seems lost. The logical thing to do is per conventional wisdom is to go on and start another business hoping that you will strike lucky which in real life is not likely to happen because success in business and in everything demands patience and resilience, you are likely to encounter adversity, failure and failure before you make it big. If your motivation is right failure will not be the end of, your business but like Masayoshi Son you would go back to the drawing board, try more audacious and innovative ideas in your business or field and it always eventually pays off.