4 Steps to Giving Your Business Its Unique Voice in the World
One of the greatest impediments we can give our business is to try and do it the “right way,” according to external ideas of best practice when it’s totally wrong for you. Rather than seeking to apply outside ideals of how to grow your business – what if you let the voice of your business emerge and assist you?
Here are 4 steps to helping your business have its voice and to be your creative partner in the institution of your business practices:
1. Listen to the whispers of your business.
No business desires to fail. We only lose the ability to thrive with business when we apply external controls and ideals of “best practice” rather than consider what will work for this business. We can stop or even kill our business’s ability to generate revenue when we are not willing to be different to the status quo.
An entrepreneur friend of mine designed a really great product and decided to take that product idea to a “boot camp” for start-ups. After spending long hours following the boot camp method, all the energy and enthusiasm they had for their business began draining away and my friend eventually decided their product could not succeed. This wasn’t true, but it was evident that the boot camp method they were using did not match their particular business. How many times have you tried this in your own business: applied someone else’s brilliant idea of how to succeed and judged you or the business when it didn’t work? It doesn’t have to be the end of the story!
Open your business to new possibilities again – I call it listening to the whispers of your business.
Ask questions and invite those whispers to be heard:
- Who do I need to talk to and where do I need to go to expand my business today?
- What systems and processes can I add to my business that I haven’t considered?
- What other services or products can the business offer?
- What other industries have I not considered that would use the products or have a need of the services my business offers?
What if your business is asking you to look at things a bit different and discover what else is possible?
2. Build trust between you and the voice of your business.
We learn early on not to trust ourselves – if you didn’t do something “the right way,” you are wrong, and if you make a “mistake,” you are bad at it! Trust you, not the right/wrong paradigm created by others.
Build trust in your own knowing with your business with this daily practice:
- Every day is a blank canvas. Don’t hold onto any judgments of you or the business from yesterday. Clean the slate every day and create fresh from today.
- Forget the traditional “to-do” list and ask the business questions first thing each day, such as: “Business, show me who and what can I add to you today.”
- Whatever ideas come up: write them down, institute them and then notice what your choices yield as you go along.
The more you trust yourself to follow the business whispers, the clearer they’ll become, and you will become less inclined to give up what you know in favor of what other people believe is the right or proper choice.
3. Acknowledge you, even when it doesn’t work out.
Truly successful innovators know that failure is a total misnomer. Every choice you make in business, no matter the result, contributes to your future greatness – but it rarely looks the way you expect it to! When I trust the voice of my business, my business grows. When I acknowledge what following the whispers of my business is creating, it also grows. For example, if I ask my business, “What would it take to work with more CEOs?” and then I meet the CEO of a big financial company on a flight a few days later, I acknowledge that!
And if something doesn’t work out how you would like, ask these questions:
- What’s right about this I am not getting?
- What do I know now that I didn’t know before and how can I use this to my advantage?
- Ok that didn’t work out quite the way I had hoped, what else can I choose now?
- What possibility or opportunity is my business showing me that I can now be aware of?
Your business will continually show you various possibilities if you ask; and if you acknowledge them, they will show up even faster.
4. Be willing to be uncomfortable.
When you are seeking growth and change in your business, the business will show you opportunities that are not always comfortable, especially if you like being in control of everything. If you are willing to embrace the adventure and receive the unexpected, you will allow the voice of your business to thrive. This is particularly important as you look to creating your revenue. Revenue increase is as much about opportunities as well as money.
Ask questions like:
- “What multiple streams of possibilities are available to add to your business today?”
- With each one of those possibilities, ask “which can I add that also have revenue attached?”
Some streams will be strategic (like improving brand recognition) and some more about financial revenue. If you don’t define in your mind what they need to look like (because it rarely, if ever, looks the way you think it will), you will let the business have its voice and it will create for you in surprising ways.
When considering what is best practice for your business, ask your business to assist you in the generation of ideas, possibilities, clients, products, services and other revenue streams that will allow it to expand. When you listen to the voice of your business, you no longer have to get it right and can enjoy discovering what you and your business can create in the world that no one else can.
