Have you ever woken up in the morning and felt completely flat at the thought of going to work?
Have you just had enough of the customers and clients you are working with and your boss and the demands they place on you but……. you are the boss?
Have you looked back at the reasons why you started your business (often freedom, flexibility and a genuine love for what you do) and wondered why they just don’t resonate with you anymore?
If so, you’re not alone!
For every small business owner with their sights happily set firmly on the future, there is another small business owner feeling distinctly uninspired at the notion.
And I’ve found this phenomena seems to occur when you’ve been in business for 6-8 years. You typically started your business when you escaped the corporate cubicle, often once you had children and your new schedule become incompatible with the demands of the job.
Excited and confident you took the skills you’d developed in your corporate role and turned them into a business. Graphic Designer? Become a freelancer! Marketing Manager? Become a consultant!
For the first few years everything goes pretty well. You have skill and enthusiasm and quite a few contacts and you quietly and consistently build up a business base that serves you well and allows you to balance your family with your clients and business. Life is good!
But.
That morning comes when you feel flat, disheartened and unmotivated. Sometimes you are aware of it creeping up on you and you try to ignore it….. But it sits there in the pit of your belly. Not. Happy. Jan. The universe gives you taps on the shoulder, letting you know that all is not right with your world. Sometimes you encounter heath challenges. Sometimes it’s clients that you attract that just do not work out and cause pain and challenges. Sometimes it’s emotions and reactions that just seem out of proportion to the situation. It’s different for everyone.
But I’ve found the root cause is the same – you are out of alignment! You have changed so much since you started your business that it no longer fits you. It’s time for significant change and even though you know this fact deep inside, change can be scary and so you avoid it.
Almost every business owner that I’ve worked with has gone through this process and once you recognize and accept the fact that change is inevitable, even exciting, it’s easy to step forward and recreate what I call a Wholehearted Business.
A wholehearted business is one that brings the whole of you into the core of the business. It’s a business in which you get really honest about what you do and don’t want to do. It’s a business where you give yourself permission to redesign and realign your products and services so they reflect your own passions and skills. It’s a business where you define exactly who you want to work with and the outcomes and results you provide. It’s a business where mindful marketing communicates these outcomes with honesty and confidence and where you become a Lighthouse in your industry. And it’s a business where you can get excited again about the thought of being of service and going to work each day.
The realignment process is almost an unveiling, following your own heart and creating new stories, moving from should and must to alignment and fulfilment, from doubt and comparison to self-belief and purpose in your business.
And it’s a delicious and far more enjoyable way to work, I can vouch for this from personal experience. After a corporate career in marketing, events and sponsorships I launched my own marketing consultancy at the dining room table in 2004 with my two small children underfoot. Ideas Into Action grew from home to a Chatswood office and from casual to full time staff with clients in three states. I was also (and still am) the co owner and Marketing Manager of a national sailing franchise with my husband.
In 2012, exhausted, stressed and pretty uninspired I began to question… ‘Is this it?” and began to explore what my intuition was telling me…. that there was something more, something different I needed to be doing. A period of intense soul searching, education and personal coaching followed before I developed a new level of clarity and courage and launched my new business that promotes this message of living and working wholeheartedly.
Life is so much better today! Work is so much more enjoyable! I’m back on purpose, in alignment with my values, connecting and collaborating and working closely with entrepreneurs and individuals on projects and businesses that excite me. And yes, financial abundance does follow when you are on purpose and committed to proactive mindful marketing of your wholehearted business.
You can make this change as well if you have that similar feeling of being out of alignment and longing for a change. Sometimes your business needs a radical overhaul, sometimes just a few simply tweaks and sometimes you take a deep breath and plunge into a whole new direction that just lights you up when you think about it.
That’s the key. That’s the test for you. When you consider continuing your business as it is now, do you feel heavy and resigned? When you think about making some changes, of redesigning it wholeheartedly do you feel a sense of lightness, freedom and anticipation?
Where might you go?
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Angela Raspass is a speaker, author, business strategist and transformational coach, “Your guide to a wholehearted business and life”. She helps entrepreneurs let go of should and must and instead, build wholehearted businesses that are in alignment with their values and desires, that serve them as much as they serve their clients, businesses that reflect their brilliance, strength, and power so they show up confidently, attract clients they love, and charge what they’re worth.
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