Your biz is sort of like having a baby.
If your biz is in it’s infant stage, it needs EVERYTHING from you. It’s totally dependent on you, and there’s not much coming back from it (besides how exciting it is to have a new baby that you LOVE so much!).
You’re running on fumes, you’re stretched thin as you try and figure out this new world and incorporate everything new that you need to be doing- while the rest of your life demands all the old things it used to from you. It’s hard to always know the best thing, the RIGHT thing to do. There’s LOTS of wisdom, lots of advice, a million ways you can turn, a thousand different strategies and methods of growing your baby biz. It can make your head spin to try and figure out which is the best- which tools to use. It’s overwhelming, and the danger with overwhelm is that it can cause paralysis. Structure, daily attention, and support is CRUCIAL at this stage for healthy development of your baby without you going bonkers and getting stabby.
Or maybe your biz is in it’s toddler stage: it needs lots of hands on time, lots of supervision from you as you guide it lovingly to GROW. At this stage it can’t do much by it’s self (bring in an income, etc), it still is very dependent and needs a lot of step-by-step guidance and direction from you. BUT- it’s beginning to take very small steps by itself- get noticed, bring in a little money, require you to uplevel slightly and find new tools for growth and visibility. Now’s a crucial time to start to find OTHER people to hold it, because it’s going to need MORE arms than just yours for healthy growth (and so that YOU don’t feel crazy and overwhelmed as it gets bigger).
After the Terrible Twos, your biz stretches into a mobile young’un. This is where it starts to go out into the world by itself- bringing in some income, you’re able to hand over basic pieces to those hands you found in toddlerhood, but you still need to do a lot of the day-to-day work yourself, still need to work all the pieces and give lots of nurturing love and attention to keep it growing strong and healthy.
Ah, the teens: you finally see income coming in. Other people can do a lot of the work you don’t want to be doing. Your biz is way more independent – you can step away and all the balls stay in the air. You can begin to think about branching out: upleveling, adding new aspects of the work you do, hiring and training people to do your work UNDER you.
Which stage is your biz in? How does it FEEL to you right now? How easy does it feel to TEND to your biz in the stage it’s in without getting all murder-y yourself?
Because here’s the bitch of it:
Most of us didn’t grow up within an extended family where we saw new generations bounced from knee to knee, everyone taking a turn holding so the mama could rest, playing with a new baby, bringing the family food and tending to the house so mama and baby could rest and bond.
Most of us didn’t grow up in a home where we saw old generations cared for and nurtured (at home) gently and lovingly to their passing.
Most of us grew up disconnected from our food- not seeing the crops carefully planted. The fields and animals tended, nurtured, cared for every single day until they were ready to go to harvest- and then the hard, dedicated work that went into bringing that harvest to the table.
We are collectively LOSING OUR understanding of knowledge of how to tend and nurture something:
Through the sweet beginning.
Through the tender, new stages when something needs SO much from you and you need to understand how to care for it, what’s most important to be doing, what feels right and true to YOU, what this thing SPECIFICALLY needs- because it’s probably going to be DIFFERENT from what OTHER things need.
Through those difficult phases where you hate each other, where it’s HARD, where it makes you cry, but where you have to wake up each morning to this THING that you committed to, to this thing that you are dependent on, tied to, that your heart is wrapped up in- and you have to remember WHY you’re doing it and focus on what it- and you, need to get past this point.
Through the bittersweet phases where you celebrate it’s independence, and figure out how to be more hands off, how to put it in someone else’s hands, step away from it, understand that you don’t have to be it’s everything anymore.
So, when you started your biz, it’s very likely that you grew up without a bounty of experiences of older people tending and nurturing. And even if you DID, this work can be HARD. It can be exhilarating. It can be soul-crushing. It can be the highest high and the lowest low. And it’s crucial to understand how to keep the “baby” alive- no matter what stage of biz growth you’re in.
I just spent three days with a ballroom full of ASTONISHING women biz owners, leading them step by step through these three tools IN DEPTH- with hands-on exercises, deep, group conversations, and even some ritual work around connecting to their inner wisdom around what their biz needs from them to grow to independence.
***SIDE NOTE***I STRONGLY advise you to find a way to grow your biz in community with other women, with the support of a trusted mentor- there is no substitute for this support and work and too many women suffer from the delusion that we “should” be able to do this alone.
In the interest of not giving you a book-sized blog posting to read today, I want to share the first tool I gave them.
1st Tool to Keep the Baby Alive:
Be crystal clear about what it needs- combine intuition, MAD support, and time for clarity.
There are two things that are necessary here: clarity of vision and SUPPORT from people who KNOW you and your biz.
And clarity of vision takes TIME and space to connect inwards and hear your truth–because here’s the deal: there’s a GADJILLION theories, strategies, and formulas out there.
There are actually more and more every day. There are gurus out there making millions from telling YOU what the BEST strategy is to use. What the BEST marketing tool, email sequence, template is. But there’s a dark secret in the industry.
The bottom is falling out: the old strategies and formulas they’re teaching in all the webinars, books, e-courses…they’ve crashed. Even the gurus are not getting results. When a gad-jillion people are using the same webinar template “guaranteed to sell,” people get wise to it. And they don’t WANT spoon-fed content in a one-size-fits-all box anymore.
And this is actually a HUGE relief to me- I don’t know if it feels the same way to you- because it means that it’s not about FINDING or PAYING for the PERFECT strategy to bring you what you want- it’s about STOPPING AND LISTENING. It’s about going BACK to grassroots guerilla marketing and community building. It’s about connecting with others instead of trying to manipulate them to buy. It’s about being 100% CRYSTAL CLEAR about how you’re in service.
It’s about flipping the bird to the answer ONLY coming from external, “expert” sources.
We’re plunging into darker days: with no templates to follow. No “surefire” strategies. We understand that mass-produced content ISN’T the same as hand-held, personalized support. And what do we do? We look within. We get info from trusted sources who KNOW us personally.
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AND…I’d love to hear YOUR opinion and experience. Come on over to Tribe of Sacred Rebels and join the conversation (case in point- AMAZING, free group of women biz owners who are non-competitive, inspire and support each other, and share resources).
