Your Business is NOT Your Baby

Sometimes we want success so badly that it's actually our wanting that's keeping it away from us. It seems counterintuitive because we've also learned to take complete ownership over our success and where our business goes. But in this episode, we'll uncover the difference between treating your business like your baby in a way that introduces a tremendous secret resistance, versus being the inspired, aligned steward over a business that is inevitably on its way to incredible growth achievement. Let's jump in. You're listening to the Universe has yous Business. It's the podcast for rising entrepreneurs, coaches, and change makers who are here to achieve more while letting the universe do the heavy lifting. Hi there. I'm your host, Andrew Donovan. I am excited to talk to you about this commonly misproportioned, disproportioned concept of your business being your baby. Now, this topic was actually inspired by a recent episode of Shark Tank that I watched, and a person, basically in a nutshell, an entrepreneur, was on Shark Tank, and a shark said, would you be willing to sell your whole business? And this shark was Barbara Corcoran. And she said, I don't mean to offend you, but I think that she thought that she would do better with the business if she just took over the whole thing. And this entrepreneur, who was more of an inventor and a dreamer than an actual executor, like executionist, that sounds like you kill people. That's not what I mean. I mean, she was more of a dreamer and an inventor than someone who can actually execute on an entire business, like create a company. And so Barbara said, could you. Would you be open to just selling your business? The entrepreneur said, no, I couldn't do that. My business is my baby. And I thought and thought on this because I hear this term quite a bit. You usually hear it from struggling entrepreneurs, not successful entrepreneurs. Now, this lady who was on Shark Tank with her business being her baby, I wouldn't call her struggling. She had sales. She hadn't grown an empire. She didn't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales. She had lots of sales, but she didn't have a company. She had a product, as they put it. And here she had an opportunity to basically, Barbara offered to buy her business for a quarter of a million dollars, which was a lot more than this lady had done in sales. Now, why would I say that? Usually struggling entrepreneurs are the ones who say, my business is my baby. Have you ever said that about your business? I've been tempted to say that in the past, but I usually catch myself, and I don't say that because I realize there are some incredibly flawed things usually lie behind that saying, and here's what I mean. My business is my baby is my baby usually means that there's a certain level of attachment to your business. Do you know what I'm talking about? That feeling of I can't let go of control because I want to be the creator of my destiny. I want the outcome so badly. I want the things that come with success in my business, whatever that means to you. And because I am so attached to it, I don't want to let go. Now, you might not have somebody knocking on your door offering to buy your business right now, and maybe that's not even your intention. Maybe you don't even have an exit strategy in mind at the end of the day. But the principle is still the same. Being all in versus being attached. And this is what I want to discuss with you today. Are you ready? So let's dive right in here. Now, if you've been to any kind of entrepreneurial training, you know that the concept of being all in is basically something that coaches, trainers, mentors universally agree on. Are we on the same page here? If you have your whole heart in your business, well, then your business is more likely to flourish. You're more likely to meet serendipitous events and opportunities that will allow you to take your business to the next level. So it's basically universally agreed that it's a good idea to be all in, to show up, as Marianne Williamson, the author of Law of Divine Compensation and recent US Presidential candidate, as she calls it, showing up wholeheartedly. And I like this concept because, well, it feels good to be all in, doesn't it? It feels good to have your whole heart in the game, to have your mind in the game, to have your focus set, and basically to be imperturbable. That being said, that's not the same as being attached. So when I say being all in versus being attached, what would you say the difference is? Can you feel an energetic variance between those two things? For me, there is a huge, energetic difference. Being attached feels like constriction. It feels like tension. It feels like resistance. Ironically, paradoxically, attachment and resistance are the same kind of energy. And it sounds contradictory because resistance usually means pushing away, attachment means pulling toward. But it's still that same kind of controlling vibe, you get me here versus being all in. Now, a lot of times people say I'm all in, and what they're really experiencing is a feeling of attachment. But now that we've defined the feelings, the emotions of attachment, constriction, control, need to hold on to. Okay, let's talk about the feeling space of being all in, of being wholehearted. So for me, that means it's a feeling of openness. It's a feeling of almost sacred surrender. It's a feeling of having so much faith, so much belief that the greater good is unfolding, that God, that the universe, that Source, has your back and is always rooting for you and is always working in your favor and as your greatest ally because you are the universe. It feels like being able to surrender to that because not because you think you're small and insignificant, so you should surrender someone or something smarter than you, but because you're one of the same, and so it's safe to let go. And in the absence of that need to control, it's easier to just lean into everything that's unfolding, to lean into the inevitable success that is yours when you line up with it. How does that feel for me? Like I said, they are vibrational, worlds apart. There is such a difference between being wholehearted, between being all in versus being attached. Like saying, my business is my baby and I can't let go of control because while I don't want to lose any opportunities, I don't want to lose my success. I don't want to miss out on something that should be mine. When you are showing up wholeheartedly, you know that you can't miss what's for you when you are in vibrational, energetic alignment, in energetic harmony with the direction you want to go, with the feeling space, the energy of those end outcomes, those goals, those targets, those dreams, and the experiences along the way that matter to you. Well, you can't miss anything that's for you. When you're in alignment like that. Now, does that feel better? Because for me, that is the only way I'm interested in showing up in my businesses. Wholehearted, all in and pure of focus. Meaning that I don't get distracted by what people think about me, by what people are saying, by maybe the lack of results in this present moment. Now, do I execute this perfectly? Of course not. I'm a human being and I get distracted more often than I would like to. But I feel really grateful that I understand this concept here because every time I catch myself being attached, that's an opportunity for me to remind myself, hey, this is an opportunity to let go. It's an opportunity to lean into the whole of who you really are, Andrew, to become more aligned with the whole of who I am, to be whole, to show up wholeheartedly, essentially. Now, I've got a few talking points that I want to go over here. That first one was being all in versus being attached. And have I caught your attention with that? Have we found a little bit of an energetic space that you feel you would like to step into a little bit more? Now if I were to go back to this idea from the Shark Tank episode, this entrepreneur who said, I can't let go because my baby is my business, you might be thinking, well, I've seen people be successful even when they're attached. So how do these things work together? Now you and I both know if you study law of attraction, if you study the law of divine compensation, if you look into any of the more new world spiritual concepts like a course in miracles, which isn't that new, but if you get into any kinds of these more new age spiritual lines of thinking, you know, that you can struggle and achieve results. I mean, we prove that all the time. There are entrepreneurs who hustle and, and overcome obstacles and they get results, but it takes way more energy. And here's something that's really funny and I would love to literally spend an entire episode talking about just this point that I'm going to say right now. The struggle can produce an outcome, but it's actually illusory that the outcome came from the struggle, because the positive results, they actually come from little lapses in your resistance. Here's what I mean by that. If you were to launch a desire, if you were to birth a dream, set a goal, set an intention, and you introduced no resistance whatsoever, the universe would with ease, line up all the cooperative components to actualize whatever you dreamt up. But as human beings, we like to put all kinds of resistance in front of our own paths. That's part of our growing process in this physical reality we live in. Okay, so we in reality launch a desire, cast a dream, set an intention, write down a goal, and then we argue for our own limitations. We say, okay, but no one's ever done it this way that I want to, or I've tried in the past and it didn't work out, or my mother in law said that this is impractical, whatever, right? We put the resistance into the mix and so it causes a delay. So when you find yourself struggling and working really hard and, and you still see some successful results, the success, I'm telling you, is what comes to fruition in spite of your struggle and your hard work and your resistance. Because hard work really I mean, think about the language there. Hard work, not flowy work, not inspired work, not excited work, hard work, which is resistance. So if you achieve, if you, if you rendezvous with positive experiences, good opportunities and successful outcomes, those things happened in the little mini lapses of your resistance. Now what should you glean from that? What's to be had here is the majesty of non resistant experiences, of non resistant thought, of non resistant energy. Imagine if you spent more time in flow and less time in resistance, more time in ease, less time in control. What could you achieve in that kind of space? The sky is literally the limit, the, the, the infinite expanse of the universe that you're a part of. That is your limitation, which, which means that there is no limitation, right? You have access to limitless potentiality, pure potentiality. Okay, so I got a little bit woo woo with you here. Let's bring this down to let, let's bring, bring this back to some reality, okay? Now another popular saying that I hear from entrepreneurs is failure is not an option. Now let's look at, not the words here, let's look at the energy that usually lies behind this saying, failure is not an option. Now if I were to say, what does that feel like? Some people might say it feels like. Well, what would you say? It feels like confidence, it feels like determination. It feels like focus. I would also say that the people who say the saying are usually people who are afraid of failing. And so they almost have to grip their fists super tight and, you know, get their knuckles nice and wide on the steering wheel and they say, failure is not an option. I am driving to success, period. And that's not wrong. It's totally not wrong. But there's an easier way, okay? The reason why there's an easier way is because with or without your determination, the universe has heard your desires and is already aligning all the cooperative components for your successful outcomes. Do you agree? If that's true, the best thing you can do is get out of your own damn way, right? The best thing that you can do for your success is to do what we talk about all the time on this show. Find the feeling space of where you're going and you will go there. When I talk about being wholehearted, feeling like pure focus, what I mean by that for me is if I were to focus on the feeling space of where I'm going, the emotions, the energetic feeling of where I'm going, and if that's all I focused on, oh my gosh, you would just be going 1,000 miles an hour toward your Dreams, you would be rendezvousing with so many delightful, cooperative, serendipitous components, opportunities, people, experiences, that you would almost have a hard time mentally metabolizing the things that were unfolding in front of you because they would line up so quickly. And so that's why I say being wholehearted for me feels like that pure focus. Not focus, that feels controlling focus. That is just pure alignment with where you want to go. That is thrill. That's exhilaration, right? So when we're talking to bring this full circle here about your business not being your baby, what I really am inviting you to consider here is the opportunity to let go of your need to control, your opportunity to let go of your need to, like I said, grip the steering wheel, white knuckle it, and almost coerce the world around you to bend to your will to be a successful person because you don't have to do it that way. Are there people who do it that way and are successful? Yeah, they do. And it costs a lot more energy. It costs a lot of energy. It also costs a lot of joy because white knuckling, it usually is more of a forced experience. It's less of a being in flow and being an inspiration experience. And like I said a moment ago, it's not right or wrong. Nothing's. I don't think anything's right or wrong. But you still get to choose. Do you want to be white knuckling it and pushing through, or do you want to be in ease and flow and inspiration and what feels more satisfying? I will say this. There is a level of satisfaction that comes from being determined and pushing through and breaking through barriers. You've seen those moments in your life, right, where you sit down on the couch after a long day of struggle and you say, I made it through this. It's a sense of relief. And sometimes it can feel pretty satisfying. But there is so much more satisfaction to be had from finding yourself intentionally in alignment. Because you practice the kind of mindfulness that we're talking about here. Because you don't need to. You intentionally, you consciously don't make yourself be in control all the time. You allow yourself to step back, to recognize that the whole of who you really are has accounted for everything that's important to you. All those dreams you cast, all those goals you wrote down, and the plans to execute them. I mean, do I believe in having a plan? Obviously, strategic is my number two strength next to achievement achiever. That's my number one. I love having a plan and I like having multiple plans. But I like having a plan because for me, it's fun to map things out, not because I'm worried that if I don't have a plan, then I'm not in control. If I don't have a plan, I'm not being a responsible entrepreneur. If I don't have a plan, then I'm not doing what other successful people do. I don't buy into any of that because I know that everything I want has to meet me when I line up with it. So that's really the only, only thing that I care about. So why do I. You might see me doing things in my business, like the entrepreneur that says, my business is my baby. I have to really be in control. I have to, I have to be the captain that's managing my own, piloting my own ship Here. You might see me, Andrew Donovan, doing similar things as those entrepreneurs. But I promise you, the feeling that I'm experiencing is going to be really different. And my level of pleasure and satisfaction and joy along the way is going to be different. And you may have heard me say this before, but the energy of the outcome will always match the energy of the process that got you there. So even if you were to manage your business like it's your baby and be in control and steer the ship and take control of the wheel, right, and you were to get to a successful end destination, even if that happened, the energy of that end outcome, whatever successful destination you arrived at, it would be the same energy as the energy of the process that got you there. So the outcome would feel stressful and it would feel like you've got to keep things in control still. Versus if you say, you know what, I believe that the universe has got my back. I believe that I can't miss what's for me. I believe that I am meant to be on a journey where I meet joyful, exhilarating, satisfying, lovely things and people and experiences and opportunities along the way. Well, as you hit successful outcomes in your business, the outcomes will feel like that journey that got you there. Again, neither are right or wrong, but you have the choice. Which one do you choose? So, my friend, reconsider for me that phrase, my business is my baby. Reconsider the phrase failure is not an option. And what I would love to invite you to consider instead is a simple, powerful reframe. What I would say instead of failure is not an option is alignment is my constant commitment, meaning that I'm not even thinking about failure or not failure, I'm thinking about alignment. And every moment that I'M conscious of it, I'm going to ask myself, can I align with the whole of who I really am? How does that feel? Inspired? Lovely. Satisfying? Grateful. It feels like assurance. It feels like stability. It feels like real security. It feels like freedom. It feels like options. It feels like possibility. In any moment, can I tend to my alignment a little bit more? And the more that I tend to my alignment, the more that I won't be able to miss all those good things that are inevitably coming my way. Alright, so that's my reframe alignment is my constant commitment. And with that, I hope that this has been a valuable conversation for you. Do me a favor, hit the follow hit the subscribe button. Share this with any friends that you think would value and benefit from this message and I will see you on the next episode. Bye for now.