Building a business all depends on the mindset that you have around it.
If you feel a business is all about money, you can easily define every decision around whether this will make money or not.
Every hire, every purchase, every acquisition.
It doesn’t matter.
Maybe you’ve had a boss that made every decision based on whether it would get them promoted or not.
That’s why getting pregnant didn’t mean happiness for them. It meant dread at the idea that you might not be around for a bit which could lower their performance.
When working on your own business it can be hard to maintain a specific mindset around things.
Especially when things aren’t moving as quickly as you like.
You might get desperate and resort to tactics you don’t like just to see something happen.
6 months later you find that you’re still using those tactics because you’ve come to rely on them.
What has happened to you?
New Neighbors
I love moving to new places, but I hate moving to new neighbors.
You never know who you’re going to get and it freaks me out. You might be surprised to hear that I’m not really a neighbor-chatting type.
It’s something I need to work on.
So my fear is always that I’m going to have a neighbor where we don’t align on certain things.
Like maybe they like to throw parties on Friday nights where the noise is coming through until 2am.
You can’t pick your neighbors.
But this is where building a business is awesome.
When building a business you’re the first one to arrive on a new planet.
There is nobody else but you.
How Will You Build Your World?
You settle down in your world and you build a nice little cabin.
But you don’t want to be alone. You do want to surround yourself with others.
Unfortunately, nobody else knows about this place.
You have to go out there and let them know that it exists.
- Do you tell everyone?
- Do you try to invite a certain type of person?
1 is easy.
You just broadcast out to the Universe that this place exists. You have absolutely no idea who is coming because the message is generic.
Maybe you say “It’s a beautiful place with lots of trees” and because of that a ton of people come.
This can make you happy until you realize you don’t like them as neighbors.
We do this a lot on social media.
“Anyone can make money selling digital products.”
Anyone? Technically yes, but right there you’re inviting everyone.
2 is a lot more difficult.
Your Message
It requires you to craft a message that attracts a specific individual.
You don’t get to simply say, “It has a ton of trees!”
Instead, maybe you say, “It reaches around 15 degrees in the Winter with a lot of snow and 110 degrees in the Summer. But the Fall and Spring are beautiful if you can handle the pollen.”
Not the best message in the world, but how many people have you eliminated? Probably a ton!
However, you see that nobody has come because that message didn’t appeal to anyone.
That’s okay.
You learned something.
So you go back again and add to the message.
“And there is this lake with the most magnificent fishing. The fish are smarter than what you’re used to which makes the challenge more rewarding.
And you can fish year round. Even in those cold winters.”
Now you have some people arriving and living around you.
Everyday you get to talk fishing with others who absolutely love fishing. You learn more about fishing and they learn from you.
They also go out and tell people in the Universe about the fishing.
You’re building a world that you want.
You Decide Your Customer
As a business, you can decide what type of customer you wish to attract.
If you’re a vegan donut shop then right away you know who you’re not going to attract.
And you have to be okay with that.
We live in a world where thousands of messages are hitting people daily trying to get their attention.
It’s almost impossible to filter out the noise.
But sometimes there is a message that catches our attention and that’s because that message is tailored to us.
It feels like the person that sends it meant to only send it to us.
The more specific the message, the fewer people it resonates with BUT those that it does resonate with, it does with great strength.
Admittedly, that’s terrifying.
You want to build this world with amazing people but there are messages that you send out that don’t attract anyone.
You’re still alone in your world.
But each of those messages is a point of feedback and each piece of feedback allows you to strengthen your message.