You make the break, you start your new business or a new role. You start your very first day with such hope and enthusiasm. Then...
....it gets hard...
because you have to turn ideas in action and invariably budgets are tight. Ideas are easy; putting them into action well, that is tough!
Slowly over time, that initial enthusiasm turns into dismay, frustration or maybe even doubt....You start to wonder have you made the wrong move?
What do you do? How do you find that desire to blast through the barriers and succeed?
In this Ted Talk video there is a wonderful message for anyone in business. It is a talk from Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame and it resonated with what I truly believe
...that you have to find your truth, stick with it and let it take you home!
When I launched The Engaging Brand I struggled until I realised that my business needed to be my passion...not what I thought I should do, not what people asked me to do, not what paid the bills.
I had to find what Elizabeth Gilbert calls in this talk... 'home' and for me that was quite a long journey after years in the corporate world. I had to strip away the corporate skin and find what truly makes me happy.
I had to find a way to express myself in a way that made others happy AND most importantly me happy.
Nowadays I speak, I write, I mentor people who I believe I can help, who I believe I can make smile. I work with people who don't want the suited professional who speaks jargon, I bounce on stage....I express my ideas through little Bob cartoons, I am writing simple life and business guides.
I write like I speak, I speak how I write. I mentor like I am and I live by what I mentor.
Some people will love it. Some people will hate it.
That's OK. That is life.
I have got over myself, my worries and my desire to be liked by everyone.
I would rather make a small group of people smile with my enthusiasm, honesty and observations....than try and make money by appealing to all.
It was a hard lesson but it was a great lesson.
For the last few years I have connected with so many great people. I have made people smile because of who I am NOT.
Now here is the weird thing...over that period my business has flourised more than ever... which goes to show
"Being something to someone is better than being nothing to everyone"
Watch and think...
What is your home?
Yep. Here's the thing. I LOVE my business. We've experienced the highs of success, the lows of failure in the past few years... We thought about giving up but we love our quirky business, our farm, the fact that we do a great job more than we love ourselves. It's our home... Literally. The fact is we shouldn't go out of our way to make people love us... We shouldn't "over brand" We need to listen a bit more and communicate a bit better and use the methods we know we are fab at to talk with our communities... yep.we do the things we LOVE... And dear hearts lots of you will hate it, and that's fine... A few of you will love it and that's fantabulous.
Posted by: [email protected] | May 03, 2014 at 09:22 AM