Be Sure You Love the Business You’ve Built

Everyone thinks that becoming an entrepreneur, creating greater income, having time, freedom, and being able to do life your way is the big dream worth pursuing. But what about when you don't love the business that you've been building when you look at it and you just aren't loving the experience? What if you don't love the niche or the industry that you're in? The roles you personally play in your business, or maybe the relationships that are involved? This episode is all about ways that you can ensure that the business you create won't only yield the desired outcomes you've determined, but that the business is also a business you genuinely love owning and operating. I'm going to share examples of when I've pivoted a business with 180 degree rebrand and when I've sold a business that just wasn't for me, as well as how I've reoriented when it was time to just make an improvement with an existing business. If you know you're not only here to be an entrepreneur, but an entrepreneur who loves their business, let's dive right in. You're listening to the Universe has yous Business. It's the podcast for rising entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, and change makers who are here to achieve more while letting the universe do the heavy lifting. And I'm your host, Andrew Donovan. Let's dive right into this content, shall we? Now, I thought long and hard about this week's episode. I wanted to have a little bit of a vulnerable moment with you. And the reason why is because I've been reflecting a lot on the moments when I feel most discouraged in my business. Because it's just part of entrepreneurship. I mean, really, this is part of life, right? But especially as an entrepreneur, it's easy to feel like all the weight is on your shoulders. Do you know what I'm talking about? If you are the primary breadwinner and your family's income relies on your business, or maybe you just have pressure to be successful for other reasons. It's easy to look at yourself and feel like maybe you're falling short of your own expectations or expectations of the people around you. But also, most of the time, when we start a business, don't we have this grand vision at the beginning of what we think we can accomplish? I know that when I first started, at the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey as a network marketer, I definitely had this in mind. I knew the ranks in the company that I was working with, and I had this idea that I was gonna just zip through those ranks so fast because I knew that I was competent, and I knew that I had passion, and I knew where I wanted to go, and I thought that I believed in myself. And so I set on my way. And then pretty soon I started taking score of where I was and especially taking score of the lack of where I wanted to be and found myself really judging myself harshly. And so that's the context for this week's episode. I actually originally titled it when you don't love the business you've built. Because I meet entrepreneurs pretty frequently. Actually, always I'm gonna say we have sides of our business that we love, and then we have parts of our business that we don't love. And sometimes when we focus enough on the parts we don't love, it begins to get so heavy that we think maybe there's no way to make it work. And so what I want to go over with you in our episode today is one what I would do differently if I could go back and coach my very beginner, entrepreneurial self, where I found myself encumbered by unmet expectations. So often, I'm going to talk to you about how to reorient yourself. If you're thinking that maybe you just don't have what it takes to make your existing business work, or maybe the negatives outweigh the positives so much that there's just no hope for you, in most cases, I. I promise you, it's just a simple process of reorienting yourself, recalibrating your focus, and then most of what you want can actually come through your existing business. You don't have to give it up. You don't have to quit. You don't have to leave it and start something new. Sometimes that can be the answer. And I'll even share in this episode some moments where I did, in fact, do exactly that. But most of the time, what you want can come from what's right in front of you, the thing in front of you, your business or the relationships in your business, the roles you play in your business, the processes that you're involved in in your business, most of the time, those aren't actually the things keeping you from loving your business, even though we think they are. So if I've just thrown you for a loop, hang tight, because we're gonna get there. All right, so back to my origin story. I was in network marketing. I had all these expectations for myself, and what I really discovered after several years of feeling a lot of push and pull, there would be moments where I felt like I was making progress, but there would also be a of lot, a lot of moments where I'd get really frustrated with my business and my ability to grow that business the way I wanted to. And what I finally discovered after years of this tug and pull and mostly focusing on my frustrations, I realized that I was trying to be somebody else. I was spending most of my time trying to be someone that I wasn't. So I would go to company events, I would listen to motivational speakers on YouTube, listen to really good books. I would follow other influential and successful people in my industry and I would compare myself to them. And usually I'm a pretty good student. And so usually I'll go to a motivational talk. I'd go to a conference or a seminar, a convention, and I'd leave feeling really fired up because I'd see someone else being a way that was getting them results and I would think, oh, I can be like that. And so I feel pretty excited for a little while. But it was never long term. It lacked longevity because it lacked authenticity. Because my job ultimately is never to be someone else. My job is not to be other successful marketers, other influencers. My job is to be me, to live my whole truth. And that's why if you followed me for any amount of time, you know that my most passionate message says you are your whole truth and your business is just a vehicle to amplify that truth. And so what I discovered after a while is that the problem was usually not my business. The problem was that I wasn't being my truth. I wasn't showing up with genuine authenticity. And you know, to give you some specific examples, there would be long stretches of time where I tried to show up as this charismatic, convincing young professional. And I would leave out the fun part of my personality, which is really sad because I'm really fun. And I know that sounds very. That sounds self aggrandizing, but I know that I'm fun. I'm a Hufflepuff. And so Hufflepuffs are fun. They have a good time. They like to laugh and be playful and. And I would have long stretches in my business where I wouldn't bring that to my mentor calls or to my Facebook live videos or my YouTube videos. When I would coach people, I would leave out the fun and playfulness I would be so intense about. Like, let's focus on what matters and get you toward your goals. And that's great too, because I'm also achievement oriented and that's one of my biggest strengths. And that's a big part of what makes me a great mentor. But when I would leave out the whole of who I am, when I would show up as just a fragment of Andrew, I'd leave out the fun and the playfulness and consequently the joy. It just sucked the life out of my business. And those are the moments when I loved my business the least. Okay, so as you reflect on your business, just do a little self inventory for me right now. Where are you showing up very authentically? And the way that you know you're showing up authentically is that in your heart space, you feel whole and complete. And when you're not showing up as the whole of who you really are, it usually feels like you're kind of pushing. You're trying to make something work. You're trying to make things happen. You've got that feeling of trying to, like, you kind of have to push against the world, push against people, push against the universe, to try and make things go the way you want them to go. Not in a manipulative way, although that technically is manipulative, but in a way that just lacks total authenticity. Do you see what I'm saying? And so with that little self inventory, you might even pause this episode and do a little bit of journaling for just a minute or two. Okay, now that you've identified the difference between where you're showing up wholeheartedly versus partial heartedly, well, that emotional difference is very large. Right. There's a gap between those two spaces. And you can see why. When you're not showing up wholeheartedly, totally authentically, you see why it becomes really easy to start doubting yourself as the entrepreneur and to start doubting the viability of your business. Now, sometimes we end up in a business that just isn't right for us. Does that happen? Totally. You've seen entrepreneurs on tv, you've seen their Instagram posts where people talk about how they met an opportunity, it got them started, and then they decided to go a different direction. Now, most of you probably know my story. So in my first network marketing company, it's actually not my first one. My first one, I signed up and bought a big $1,500 kit and had no idea what to do and just fizzled out. But my second company is where I actually developed quite a reputation, a lot of influence, built a big following, and had a lot of fun, a lot of frustration, too. And I ended up selling my position in that company. Now, when I did this, it was a huge decision to make. I actually, when I made the public announcement that I was Stepping away from this company, I. I ended the Facebook Live, and I just sat on my couch and cried because I had invested about seven years or so of my life into this business, and I had really tied a lot of my identity into this business. And it was scary to explain to people why I decided to sell this business and go a different direction. Now, fundamentally, now I know that I don't have to explain myself to anyone. I get to just follow what feels totally right and inspired to me. What happened? For those of you who are wondering, why did he sell his business? I had actually hit a pretty high rank one time in this company, and that, for me, was like. I checked the box, and I was like, okay. I finally proved to myself that I can do this. And I also know that my passions are taking me in a slightly different direction. Same industry, just a different role in the same industry. And I had, a couple years earlier, started an education company where we write health and wellness reference books specifically for essential oil users. And I really liked how I was able to use my strategy, my artistic design, and my marketing skills to blow up that company. And ultimately, it was actually a legal requirement of my company to make a decision, be a distributor in this company, or continue my education brand that I had built, because there was a conflict of interest with the United States FDA there. And I decided, you know, I'm gonna choose the one where I feel like I can serve more people and that utilizes my talent more. That lights me up the most. And so, to me, it actually, for a few moments, it did feel like I was walking away from my original business. But mostly it felt like I was moving towards something that was just calling me. And the results have been so tremendous. And I know I made the right decision there. And I wanted to be. When I made this announcement, I wanted to be very careful because I wanted it to be clear that I wasn't telling all the other people in my company that I had been working with for seven years. I was not telling them, maybe you should quit and go do something else. I was just doing what was right for me. Now, when we invest ourselves in certain things, whether it's a business, a marriage, a religious pursuit, a calling of sorts, whatever it is, there's always something that we want at the fundament. It's always to feel better, right? We pursue our business because we want to feel accomplished. We want to feel like we're contributing, like we're purposeful, like we're doing what's right for us. I mean, that follows suit for anything we Invest in relationships, church callings, whatever. Like those examples I'm giving. And the reason why it becomes easy to question the thing we're pursuing is because sometimes we start taking score of what we're involved in and we might notice that we're not getting the results we want. And then we think maybe it's not the right thing. But here's what I found. When you're in a space of alignment, alignment meaning you're tuned into the whole of who you really are. You're tuned into that soul calling at that soul level. That's where you're being guided most of the time. You know that you're in alignment because you feel refreshed, you feel invigorated, you feel inspired. More of the time you feel like you're not trying to move away from something, but rather that you're leaning into something that's calling you forward. It feels like, like eager anticipation. And what I found is that when you're in that space of alignment, you tend to draw out the results you want from the environments that you just happen to be in anyway. And so as I've grown, I've been married for almost 10 years now and grown through so many challenging things. I mean just, it's ridiculous. The things that I didn't realize I would need to learn before I got married. And there have been many moments where I've questioned my marriage and I've said, well, maybe this isn't the relationship for me because I'm not getting what I want. But listen to my energy there. That is totally of out of alignment conversation I would have with myself. And then what I found is that when I would go into my alignment, when I go inward with my focus and find my alignment, I would draw out of my marriage the things that I wanted. It was very different than going to my marriage and saying marriage, spouse, you need to change and show up differently so that I can have what I want. Instead, I would calibrate internally and my marriage would just start to evolve and to meet me with delivering the things that I really wanted. And I found this to be the same with my business. There have been moments where I've questioned my education company and I thought, should we just fold? Should we just sell? Because maybe I was in a space of misalignment, really focusing on the lack of what I wanted, focusing on the things I didn't love and. And instead of quitting that business or selling it or folding it, every time I find myself out of alignment, I remind myself to chill and to get into a more receptive state and to go find my alignment to tune into those emotions that I just mentioned a bit ago. And in my space of alignment, my business would always start to yield the things that I wanted. Sometimes those things that I'd be frustrated with would be relationships in my business. I might have some customers that are giving us a lot of grief, or maybe some team members that aren't showing up in ways that we've agreed on, or maybe just their life circumstances have changed and they've not been able to show up in the way that I would expect them to. And on the surface you'd think, well, Andrew, you're the manager, you're the leader, you're the CEO. There you go. Tell those people to get their game in order to step it up. But that has never been my approach. Rather than going and addressing the problem head on, I always go back to calibrating to my alignment first. And frequently I would have a conversation with a relationship in my business that needs some adjusting or needs some attention. But the difference between having those conversations from alignment versus frustration is night and day. And people are always way more receptive. And I always feel better about the experience when I start from alignment. And the same can go to anything in your business. Maybe you're frustrated that your Facebook ads aren't performing or that you just don't feel clear on what your messaging should be. Do you make your webinars your videos about this topic or this topic or this topic? Do you launch a new course right now or do you focus on one on one clients? Maybe you're frustrated with the lack of clarity. And if you stay in the lack of clarity for too long, again, it can be really easy to start questioning the viability of your business. But what I want to remind you is this. If there is something you want, the abundant loving universe always has the capacity to deliver it to you. And not one but unlimited ways. And your existing business is included in that unlimited ways. And there's even so many ways that your existing business can take shape, can evolve, can unfold. The reason why I love the term miracle or serendipity or like just unexpected, delightful coincidence is because those are the moments where in your alignment are able to receive the unexpected benefit that the universe is wanting to deliver to you. But when you spend most of your time talking about what's not working, or taking score of the absence of what you want, or taking score of all the things that you don't like in your business, well, you're just you're hashing over the. Of the what is ness of your experience. You're hashing over the present, what you can observe and therefore creating more of the same. Same. Instead of opening yourself up to the possibility of what's unseen, the possibility, the unlimited possibilities that lie in front of you. And so what, what happens in reality is when you decide to focus on finding those feelings of inner alignment, finding those feelings of subtle inner peace, of finding your inner inspiration, and you spend more time in that space. What can happen is multiple things. One, you might wake up one morning and realize, you know, I've been trying to make this business work for the past however many years. It's maybe it's not for me and I'm going to move in a different direction. That feels like a path of least resistance. But what happens more often than not is the example that I shared with you about my marriage. You don't wake up and realize from an inspired space, I've got to end this, it's over business, we're getting divorced. Right? What usually happens is, is that you draw out from the people and the existing surroundings more of what you do want, and you start experiencing unexpected growth in ways that you didn't know would be possible. And that's really the lovely, powerful benefit of true alignment. So that's the difference between starting over and just reorienting with what you have right now. And the answer is not sit down right now and make a decision. The answer is find your alignment. And you know, a lot of people get really scared at the idea of maybe having chosen the wrong choice. And you can never, you're not, you've never made the wrong choice for me. I can't even list the endless value that I received from that first business that I started in network marketing that springboarded me to where I am now. My mentors, the challenges that I worked through, the self discovery that I went through, the people that I served and helped and the people that I didn't help very well. All of it was of high benefit to me, and I'm so grateful for all of it. And everything you experience in life is indeed a stepping stone to somewhere else. Because your life's a journey. It's never that you find your pad and you're like, awesome, this is my foundation. I'm just gonna stay here forever. You're always moving somewhere. And when you stop moving somewhere, when you lack progress, well, that's when you get super frustrated, right? And that's when you start really questioning if you're in the Right space. Let me give you a little secret here. You're never in the right place. That's the paradox of life. Where you are is perfect and where you're going is everything. Because if you try to stand still, well, time is in motion, energy is always in motion. That's contrary to the function of your existence. So how do you start fine tuning what you've got? I want to give you four simple things that you can do. These are journal prompts. And so you might want to write these down, you might want to pause the episode and just jot these down in a quick journal. And then give your 15 minutes sometime today to reflect on these things. Okay, number one, define your winning feelings. So if you were in your dream business, don't worry about where you are now or where you've been or where you think you should be that you're not. Okay, just in regards to your dream business, what are your winning feelings? Emotions don't write outcomes yet. Okay, Feelings are things like I want to feel like. I want to feel like I'm on top of the world. I want to feel like I'm living my best life. I want to feel like I. I'm just being true to who I am. I want to feel authentic. I want to feel purposeful. I'm listing all of my winning feelings just to give you examples. I want to feel like I'm purposeful, I'm serving people. I want to feel like I'm in motion. I want to feel like I'm inspired with the people around me and the things I'm doing. Those are my winning feelings. Number two, define your winning outcomes. Now this is what most people focus on and then prematurely take score against. They use the winning outcomes to self defeat. Okay, but we're going to define our winning outcomes not from the lack of their existence in your business and life right now, but just to help you do this as a pleasurable exercise and nothing more. Write down these winning outcomes just because it's interesting to think about them. All right? Not because you've got to get there. All right? Then you're just introducing more resistance to your experience. So winning outcomes can be things like. And I like to have some measurable outcomes. And. And you might also have some esoteric outcomes. All right? The feelings are more ethereal outcomes. I want to feel like I'm on purpose. I want to feel joy, I want to feel fun in my business. But the winning outcomes are typically measurable. Things like, I want to pay off the house. I want to get my first 10,000 subscribers on my email list. My first 100 subscribers on my email list. In my dream business, what are some outcomes along the journey? I want to have my first five figure month or my first six figure year, or my first seven figure year. I want to launch my first course. I want to get my first 10 paying customers for my coaching brand. I want to sell my first 10 packages where I don't sell one hour at a time, but I get people to buy four or six sessions at once and have a bigger sale. Those kind of outcomes. All right, number three is define your winning processes. Now, you might not know this, and frequently the processes that work for us reveal themselves as we gain experience as entrepreneurs. It's easy to become aware of processes by reading books, going to workshops, studying other mentors and people that are in your same industry. And that's great. And that's really where you kind of play trial and error. Maybe someone reveals a process to you for email marketing or Instagram marketing and you think, I like that idea, okay. And you try it out and then realize some of it was for you, none of it was for you, all of it was for you. You discover as you go, and that's all of value. But right now, based on what you do know, you don't have to have all this perfect. And you're never going to get it perfect because you're always a growing entrepreneur. But based on what you know now, what are some of the winning processes that you'd like to see more of in your business? For me, I like big picture strategy. I like working with my team to define a marketing campaign, but I don't actually love executing the marketing campaign. And so at this point, in the different companies that I've built, I have teams that run things for me that write a lot of copy, that run Facebook, Instagram ads. These are all skills that I've developed as a marketer, as an entrepreneur, but they're not my favorite things to actually be involved in day to day. And so that is some of the process that I would say. Winning processes for me are defining those big picture things and then creating project templates that my team can then follow and execute with me on the behalf of the company. So other winning processes for me are I love the branding, I love defining the brand feel, getting clear on our mission, our values, and the aesthetics too. But I don't actually want to design the logo. I've done that in the past, but I don't want to do it anymore. So I've defined processes that Help me feel like I'm winning in my business. And that's really useful because I mean, do you feel the energy in this conversation right now as you define what processes are winning processes for you? Well then it's easier to tune into those and to maximize your strengths and exercise your gifts in a way that produce maximum output per the effort that you put in. And then number four, and finally, define your winning relationships. How easy is it to get on the phone with your mentor and to say, well, this girl or this employee or this team member or this colleague's not doing this or they're doing this and I hate it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that's great. Now you know what you don't want, what do you want? Alright, define those winning relationships. If you can't list people that are winning relationships in your existing business, that's okay. Make someone up. Define your ideal customer, avatar or what are they like, what's their attitude like, what's their personality like, what do they spend money on? What do they do in their free time, what hobbies do they have? How do they interact with you? When you're doing a Facebook Live or a webinar or a mentor call or a coaching call? When you're offering your services to that ideal client, what's their receptivity like? That's a winning relationship, right? Or the people that you hire, maybe you've got people that you've hired, maybe you haven't hired anyone yet. What are those relationships like? I love to think about this. I like to think about how my ideal working relationships are. People who have this can do attitude. When I say, hey, I think that we need to invest in some YouTube ads because we mostly do Facebook ads and they say, great, we could do that. I think that we could do some self study. Maybe we could talk to this marketing agency, maybe we could follow this YouTube marketing influencer and watch some of her videos. I love the can do attitude. I also love when people that I'm working with, people that I've hired, people that I'm freelancers, that I'm contractors that I'm hiring. I love it when people prioritize. That is so juicy to me. I love when they first things first. I love accountability. I love when my working relationships, we agree on who's doing what, we get clear on timelines, we get clear on desired outcomes and then people hold themselves accountable to what they're doing. And that's so good for me. So do you see all the things that we've talked about these Four things that you can do a little reflection, journal entry on your winning feelings, your winning outcomes, your winning processes, and your winning relationships. Basically, what I've discovered here, or what I've described here is a calibration exercise. This is how you reorient your focus to what you want. And yeah, some of you might get really clear on this and realize, I'm not in the right industry or the right business, but most of you are gonna realize that you've just been focus on the wrong stuff. You've been focusing on what doesn't work, and now you've reoriented your focus. Spend more time here. All right, your call to action at the end of this episode is to spend 15 minutes a day on those journal prompts. And next time you talk to your mentor, talk to your mentor about those things, not what isn't working. Next time you talk to your therapist or your spouse or yourself in the mirror or your voice in your head while you're doing the dishes, talk about those things and see what begins to come to you. This is the easiest way to fall in love with your business. And when you love your business, you want to stay in your business. And you draw more out to love from your business and the people in your business and what you're doing in your business, how you show up, the roles you play. All right, my friends, well, that is our episode today. If you found something valuable in this episode, do me a favor on Appa Podcast, go, hit, rate and review. Give it a 5 star review. Spend 30 seconds just jotting down your takeaway from this episode. The reviews really help us get the word out and help more people get exposure to this. So I appreciate you taking the time to rate and review the episode and I will see you next time. Good luck with your journal entries and may you love your business abundantly and may your business continue to serve you.