Like many of you, I sometimes wrestle with figuring out the next step in growing my business. For me, I realized that my next step had to do with inviting many more people onto this email list. I’ve been watching a friend of mine, Jason Stein, grow his email list rapidly through public speaking.
The trouble was, I wasn’t seeing a lot of doors opening for me to do public speaking. At least not yet. I had made inquiries, follow-ups, researched, and nothing much was happening. I felt stuck. I felt inadequate. Ever feel alone and like you didn’t know the way through?
Every one of us has a hidden teacher that we can ask in these situations.
In lonely, troublesome situations like the one I was in, I recommend you ask your hidden teacher: your business. What? Ask your business? What does that mean?
Most of us have a miserable relationship with our business. If your business was a lover, it might have left you long ago. We beat it up, demand it to produce and support us. And, when the business does succeed, we rarely acknowledge the success, but just keep on pushing.
If you stop to look, you will find that your business is a hidden teacher, right in front of your nose. Your business has a being-ness to it that is beyond you, whether you are legally incorporated or not. Think about the word “corporate” – it means a body/ physical form. Your business has one, and it has a lot it can teach you.
So, what does it mean to “ask your business?” Put away the incense, candles, and ouija board, I’m not talking woo-woo. What I mean is that when you have your own needs such as a mortgage, family, personal dreams, it’s very easy to get those needs tangled up with unrealistic expectations on your business, which causes you to miss out on real opportunities.
If you can see your business as a separate “being” as if it were a child (and I’m guessing that it’s younger than you are… but maybe not) then you can begin to have a healthy relationship with it. And, you can learn from it.
If you were to ask your heart what age your business is, in human developmental terms- a newborn, a toddler, a teenager- what do you see? And what does it, at that age, have to show you about what it needs, and what it really wants to do?
You wouldn’t expect a toddler to be driving a car and paying rent. So don’t expect a new business to fully support you. Instead, see how it wants to play and explore in the marketplace. Similarly, don’t spend your time hand-feeding a teenage business. Rather than keeping it in a crib, let it roam a little further, taking on some responsibilities, beginning to act like a full-developed business, while at the same time still providing some discipline and boundaries for it not to overreach itself and get into trouble.
I suggest you take some time in the Remembrance, (described in the free workbook you get when you subscribe), and ask to be shown the heart of your business, and to begin to build a relationship with it.
Keys to Asking Your Hidden Teacher
• Let yourself get comfortable, begin the Remembrance, and just let your heart “see” your business, as if it were a person. What do you notice? How old, developmentally, is it? What do you notice about its personality that maybe you didn’t know before? What if you let yourself have a real relationship with your business, how would you want to act towards it?
• This is not a Ouija board- don’t ask yes/no questions. Often a yes/no question means that we think we know the right answer, or that we’re at least close- yet what if we’re in left field? Instead, ask open-ended questions such as “What is my business’ perspective or feeling about this situation? What does my business need, or want to tell me, in this situation?”
• If you have realized that perhaps you haven’t been treating your business very well, take time each morning to be in relationship with your business, to see what it feels like, what it has to say, how it sees things from its perspective.
Oh, and what did my business say? When I sat in Remembrance, my business wasn’t worried at all about public speaking. It had one word for me: “Publish.” I then realized that I had an opportunity to be printed in a large circulation magazine that had been sitting in my lap for months, but I hadn’t acted on it, distracted by other things. I wonder what your business knows that you aren’t seeing.
You should check out my friend and colleague Jason Stein– he is a tremendous coach, who is also very spiritually based.
