Truthbomb alert – my top business mistakes this year

Turning my top business mistakes into my next steps started here.

To say this year has been a huge lesson-learning one for me, doesn’t do it justice.

While everyone’s talking 2019 planning in the internet ether right now, I’m looking back.

I did a deep dive into what I wasn’t clueing into, and why, over the past year or more to clean the slate for pure creation. And then set meaningful goals.

Creativity requires an unburdened platform.

With that in mind, I’m sharing my biggest business mistakes with you. They are BIG ones. I won’t even get into tactical moves that didn’t work or out or campaigns that cost money and went nowhere.

I’m sharing the deep denial shit. Because that’s what gotta get cleared first.

MISTAKE ONE: Total disconnect from my BHAV

I’d say up until this year, my vision was pretty small. I just wanted to make enough money doing the work I love and have quite a bit of time off. I get why. I’ve had a small child and that requires focus.

I couldn’t see my big vision, because I buried it. I want to help other entrepreneurs, who are brilliant, really show up – take a bolder stand and become leaders with all their integrity alongside them. And it probably goes a lot farther than that.

My dream of living a healthy, spacious lifestyle & growing my business wasn’t real because it was a fantasy.

A fantasy alongside short-term actions doesn’t equal a vision. (Bolded more for my sake than yours.)

A business owner without a vision is like a road-trip without a destination. It doesn’t get us very far.

When I allowed myself to dream I saw a bigger company with a bigger team. I know the kind of person I’d like to hire full-time. I know the places I want to engage with my tribe. The details began to show up. And they require more commitment.

That’s when I realized I’d been afraid of failure. Admitting that fear allowed me to get back on the horse again and discover the content and connection that matter to me.

The bonus: what truly matters to me, more likely matters to others.

Basic stuff right? Even though most of our fears aren’t real, they’re always within us so we need to build in a system that consistently challenges them.

MISTAKE TWO: Not owning my zone

Humans needs to see themselves over and over again to realize who they are. That may sound a big weird but let me ask you, how easy is it to summarize one of your friends or even business peers? It’s probably not too hard to describe someone else. But doing it for ourselves is complicated

Where do we start? What side do we talk about? Which story do we tell?

It can be agonizing coming up with our elevator speech or even our bio. We know too much. And sometimes we even think our big messages don’t need to be heard.

Telling ourselves that someone’s already saying it, living it, doing it and there’s no point in trying to rise above the noise … happens all the time.

I convinced myself that growing an individual brand was too difficult for my personality. And that I needed to grow something new, with me in the background. While I’d love to have a bigger team & a brand that didn’t include me always at the centre, starting something from scratch is even more work.

It’s been MUCH easier to re-ignite my to my personal passion and learn what it means to grow a stronger business and be a thought leader, within my current container. That required owning my zone of genius – my quest for truth, love of deep conversations and strategic mindset.

And then sharing it without fear. No more dumbing down!

Ready for more denial? 😉

MISTAKE THREE: Isolation island

For some reason, I was building my business in a vacuum. I had a strange notion that I was doing all the things … and that I just hadn’t created the right message, at the right time for the right people to create massive momentum.

Well, the reason why I hadn’t done all that was because I wasn’t meeting enough new people – the ones who loved and validated my message and work.

It was a habit I picked up from being a new mom with a baby who cried a lot and didn’t sleep through the night for years. I couldn’t get out very much and when I did, I was too tired to enjoy it.

Not easy situation for anyone, let alone an extravert.

But I got used to being on my own and pushing through. I sought some support but not enough.

MISTAKE FOUR: Waiting to be picked

Probably in part because of feeling isolated and partly to do with some kind of Princic pride, I ended up in that habit of “waiting to be picked”. Most of us are brought up thinking that if we’re good at something, we’ll be discovered.

Well how can we be discovered if hardly anyone can “see” us?

So this year, I reached out to others in new and old ways. I hired coaches, did deep work and reached out to people I simply admired and wanted to meet. I intentionally grew my confidence.

Choosing to show up and be noticed resulting in the one thing I was missing:  validation. Through conversations with other amazing entrepreneurs, I validated my own vision and zone of genius.

Doing so caused me to develop a stronger framework and message with my personality front and centre. The first thing I did is put together this framework: 5 Steps to Creating your Noticeable Brand guidebook. If you haven’t already seen a copy, grab it now. It’s so good!

It includes all the wisdom I’ve gathered from the last couple years of learning. (And a bunch from the 7 years before that!) I’m using it to guide myself & my clients over the next year.

What mistakes do you need to face in order to clear out space for your creative break? So you can soar and bring people with you?

Click here to read part II of this post. IT talks all about how I’m planning for long-term success from short-term goals next year. Something I’ve never done before … and includes bigger commitments.