Whether you are launching or sustaining your own small business, it’s easy to get sucked into the endless barrage of fear-based thinking that can cause you to doubt yourself, your offerings, and your decision to be self-employed in the first place.
Here are some simple reminders to keep you motivated, inspired and on your mission:
1. Counterparts vs. Competition
Branding, marketing and business experts continuously emphasize the importance of ‘knowing your competition’. The problem I see with this is that the whole concept of competition is based in fear-based scarcity thinking. It invites a ‘win or lose’ mentality and invites the belief that there are not enough customers out there for everyone.
If you focus on winning out over the competition, your consciousness is generating an energetic frequency of need, and therefore likely deflecting clients.
On the other hand, if you choose to see other businesses who offer similar products and services to yours as counterparts, you may even find yourself creating collaborative ‘win-win’ opportunities with them, and therefore increasing your customer base.
2. Boldness vs. Best Practices
If I have learned one thing since starting my business, it’s that I’m always more successful when I do things my way. In other words, if I start out approaching something the way it ‘should be done’, I tend to get stalled and frustrated. When I allow myself permission to be creative and authentic, ideas and prospects begin to flow.
Late last year, when launching my coach training academy, I was preparing a lesson to teach students the standard coaching model to use with clients. Days went by and I struggled to figure out why I was procrastinating so much. All of a sudden the little voice inside my head said “create your own coaching model”.
I listened, and within 48 hours I had birthed an entirely new model for coaching that has since become the greatest selling point of my coach training certification courses.
3. Productivity vs. Busyness
Our societal view of what it looks like to be successful typically conjures up an image of someone who is always on the go. When I first started my business I was convinced that if I slowed down, even for a day, I was lazy.
Since then I have learned the importance of stillness. (I even wrote a blog about it!) One day, after weeks of relentlessly jumping from tab to tab on my web browser looking for more ways to market my business, I got fed up and decided to leave the house, grab an iced coffee and get a pedicure. While in the pedicure chair, I received three (yes three!) calls inquiring about my services.
If we are constantly striving for work (as stated in #1 above), we are not only depleting ourselves unnecessarily, we are actually deflecting prospects with our negative energy. Sometimes we just need to stop, practice a little self-care, and stuff starts happening…