Are You Building the "Perfect Business"?

Are You Building the "Perfect Business"?

I loved this blog post by my business coach, mentor, and most of all, FRIEND!  Kim Flynn is a speaker, trainer, and business consultant for women who want to play big in business.  She posted this blog post and I am going to syndicate it here because it is brilliant.

Motivational Myth: You Need to Find the Perfect Business for You

August 21, 2013 by Kim Flynn
 

If you find yourself with a dreamer personality, you may fall prey to this motivational myth saying that you need to find the perfect business for you.

I had only worked with one of my clients, Jill, for two weeks when she told me she was switching businesses. Jill was a happy, engaged, light-up-the-room kind of personality. She was fun to work with and eagerly completed each homework assignment in my coaching course. After hearing everyone else talk about the passion they felt for their particular business, and hearing from motivational speakers that she needed to find her “soul purpose” in the shape of the perfect business, Jill got a little purpose-envy.

She announced on our next call that she was no longer working with her husband in real estate, but she really felt committed and interested in essential oils. She had already signed up as a rep in an essential oils network marketing business and felt like she now had her purpose which could bring her the perfect business. So I told her I would be happy to support her in this change, but she had to be sure that she would stick with this second venture. I needed her to commit to the process of growing A business. She readily committed and was diligent in applying the training and education to the new essential oils business.

Then we hit the infamous month three, when clients start to doubt themselves, doubt the education process, and get tired of being a pile of goo. They also get tired of putting one foot in front of the other, and miss the excitement of the initial dream stage of the start-up. Jill called me and said she didn’t know if essential oils were the perfect business for her. She liked them, but she didn’t know if they were really her purpose. She wanted to look around for another venture that was her perfect fit; her soul purpose and the perfect business.

What I think of the need to find the perfect business myth

My advice was to her, and it is also to all of you, that we don’t wait for our purpose to fall into our laps. We don’t wait for God to come to us in a dream and tell us in Morgan Freeman’s voice: “Here is your purpose”. We don’t wait for a perfect business idea so wonderful, so perfectly matched to who we are, or so noble a cause that it makes us sigh with inner world peace.

Instead, we start with where we are. We commit to the process of growing one business. One. We recognize that if we have been pulled to business, that learning business may itself be our purpose at that time. If we don’t know exactly what a perfect home business is yet, we start with whatever is in front of us. We stop looking for the perfect business and instead commit to the one we already have.

Jill could commit to the real estate business or the essential oils business. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that she learns how to build A business. When her dream perfect business plan comes a-calling, whether two years from now or twenty, she will have the skills, knowledge, and internal expansion that will enable her to take on her purpose. If she jumps from one business to another, constantly looking for the perfect business, she will miss out on the education of how to take a business from point A to point Z.

Jill got a lecture from me that sounded like the paragraph you just read. She recommitted herself to the oils business, knowing that it might not be the perfect business for her, but it didn’t really matter. She was getting her business education which could help her with the business plan creation and growing. Jill learned the unsexy truth about business: You won’t be able to have influence in your area of purpose if you don’t get started with what is in front of you now. Jill was one of the fortunate ones. She realized that the education process was the goal towards having the perfect business one day.

Your first business is rarely the dream in the sky or the perfect business.

So I challenge you to start considering your first business as just practice. Don’t buy in to the motivational myth that you must find the perfect business for you. Instead, keep growing your current business into something that offers you the purpose to go on, and it may become just the perfect business for you! 

If you are interested in a FREE Business Consultation and Training Session with Kim Flynn Consulting, click here!