Let’s say you had a particular business idea based on your experience (say you worked for a company for a few years as a _______ ). Your business idea happens to be a logical step drawn straight from your ‘experience’: You’re doing more or less the same thing, only as a freelancer. That’s often what people do, but not if you’re working with me. Not always anyway.
While some clients already have their business model/idea pretty much set in stone before they go through my process, there are times when clients go through more of ‘transformation’ as part of that process and change their direction entirely or, while working with me, gain significant insights to further refine their ideas.
This is typically what happens as we find out more about ourselves (Self Discovery from my SEEN Framework):
- What we notice is how we’ve been ignoring our personal values for the sake of getting ‘paid’. This often happens without us realising it.
- We gain a deeper understanding of particular qualities of what we do (mostly emotional).
- We discover more options because our strengths are often transferable (to other adjacent areas).
- As a result, we realise that an initial business idea may no longer resonate so strongly with us.
Let me say this. It’s always YOU first. Then, it’s the people you want to serve. Only after that, your idea makes sense.
Revising your business idea through a process of self discovery is always better (more cost-effective) than changing direction after investing a significant amount of time and money on ‘establishing’ a business.
So what now? You may feel like you’re lost or stuck. Not really. This is the beginning of a tremendously valuable discovery phase. This is when you can really open your eyes and ears. You can start having conversations with people who have worked with you or people you were thinking of helping. I challenge you to really listen to what they have to say. You’ll be surprised how much you gain by opening up to people and really hearing them out about their hopes and dreams.
After you open up to yourself and those you seek to serve, you’ll find that you have far more options than you ever thought possible.
