Entrepreneurship is tough. Whether you’re just starting out in your business or you’ve had your business for a while, we run into roadblocks and bumps along the way. And when we do, we ask ourselves, what can we do differently? What’s the right thing to do to move forward and to get past them?
There is an overwhelming amount of information and possible actions that we can take when we hit roadblocks. We get all kinds of information and advice from various places and, as soon as that happens, we get consumed by all this conflicting noise. We listen to all these different mentors and we forget to listen to ourselves.
But when it comes down to it, whether you are starting out or you’ve had your business for a while, business is really simple. But, as human beings, it’s our natural tendency to overcomplicate things and when we’re struggling in the middle of the mess and the muck that’s when we can get stuck. That’s when we seek opinions and advice all over the place. We think to ourselves (especially if we’re trying to get our business running and we’re not making any money) “Well, if I just add more thing, if I just get more advice, if I just add more products and more stuff, eventually it will work out.”
What actually winds up happening is that we overcomplicate things instead of just letting business be simple.
It’s exactly the same with life. We overcomplicate it. We know the whole focus of life is to just be happy but we add so much extra stuff in – extra drama, extra work, extra everything – and we overcomplicate our lives when they don’t need to be overcomplicated.
There are three things that we need to do to keep our businesses simple – because simplicity really is the key. It’s the key to doing less in your business, to bringing more energy, more passion, more love and more money. Because the more money we make, the more people we can serve.
So, the first thing we can do is stay focused on what we love. It’s simple – do what you love. Inspiration is all around us. Often we think that we need to do what makes us money, or we need to do what everyone else is telling us to do. Instead we should focus solely on what we actually love to do and moving from what’s in our heart and not what is going on externally around us. We have so much chaos going on, but when we can really get quiet… we can truly listen for what our heart is telling us that we need to do. We can absolutely hear and see and uncover what we don’t want in our business so we can add more of what we do want and ultimately we can be happy. So do what you love.
The second thing we can do is to stay in our own lane.
Ask yourself: Who cares? Who cares what other people are doing?
Stop trying to see and do what everyone else is doing, just stay in your lane. That’s how we learn to differentiate ourselves. We just show up every day and keep being who we are and who we need to be and eventually stuff will start to happen. When we get focused on what everyone else is doing that’s when we get confused and overcomplicate things. We start swirling. We get away from what our higher purpose is. So, when we stay in our own lane and we put ourselves out there and we start speaking from the heart, doing what we love, eventually that differentiation and that uniqueness will come out. It’s just part of the process. We just need to stay in our lane and focus on what we’ve got going.
The third element is to build an amazing team. We can‘t – and shouldn’t – be doing this thing by ourselves.
We need an amazing team of people around us who are aligned with the vision that we have for our business. People who complement our skills and who can do things even better than we can do them ourselves. People who can do the things that we don’t really like to do and shouldn’t be doing, so that we can focus on our own zone of genius and be the vision in our business. Let go of those things that are just keeping us “busy” and distracted but not progressing our business. Because when we can build an aligned team, that’s when all kinds of creativity, innovation, confidence, connection and community can be built. This can reduce complications and keep things simple. We take what we do best and make it even better without adding more things into our business. If we add the right people to our business, we can perform even better. By keeping our world simple, more ideas, more creativity and more love come into it.
Business is tough when you’re first starting out or when you’re trying to get through a hurdle or struggle, tons of stuff happens, but if we can remember that the principles of business are simple, we can avoid those unwanted thoughts of ‘I can’t do it”, “I shouldn’t be doing it”, and “I don’t know if I can do it”. We move from a place of fear and scarcity to a place of possibility where anything is possible. So stay focused on that, stay focused on how simplistic you can make your business and it will grow so much faster.
