Lessons from Business: Two Years In

I started my business a couple years ago, and when I took some time recently to review, comparing where I am to where I started, I realized I feel pretty good about what I’ve built, what I’ve offered, and who I’ve become along the way.

There’s lot of growth + learning still ahead (as always), but for now, here are some of the lessons I’ve learned so far in this early breaking-through stage of business-building:

1) The business isn’t the thing. It’s the container for the thing.

The *actual* thing is the work + art + magic (that my business holds, supports, and facilitates). When I’ve mistaken my business for the thing itself, it hasn’t gone well. Remembering the actual function of business (+ where it belongs in the matrix of work + life) helps me ground into what matters + then direct my attention accordingly.

2) Building a business (at the least the kind I want to build) takes time.

In my experience, business is a slow + organic build. Because business is an alive thing built on relationships + networks nurtured over time (supported by qualities + skill-sets + sensitivities developed over time). So nothing’s gone wrong when it takes longer than we thought. Growing things require a lot of nurture + a lot of patience.

3) Business is a call + response relationship with the world + with others + with self.

So much of business-building is trying something + watching what happens. How do my people respond? How do I respond? How does this feel? What happens in the world around me when I do this thing (compared to that one)?

Tracking these layers of responsiveness has been key. For instance, I began deepening + developing my art in response to the excitement + interest I received when I shared some of my just-for-fun paintings. Another time, I offered a couple of group programs after I noticed I was feeling a little stale + stagnant doing just one-to-one work, which opened up a whole new set of possibilities in my work.

Listening, noticing, and responding (and then doing that on repeat) is what business is all about.

4) Marketing should feel good.

It should also probably feel uncomfortable + terrifying. But it should never feel gross.

There’s all sorts of advice out there about how to sell + market, and I spent way too much time trying to figure out the “right” strategy. Ultimately, I decided that I was only going to market in ways that felt good in my body + right in my soul.

If people choose to work with me, I want it to be because of the depth + clarity of my signal, not the cleverness or pushiness of my marketing.

I learned too that marketing isn’t just about promoting my work + making money. It’s about being the person I want to be in the world. It’s about clearly transmitting what I have to offer in ways that (I hope) make people feel good + connected + hopeful, regardless of whether they take me up on my offer or not.

It's a beautiful process of connecting with my people + sharing what matters to me + getting to know people + making no-pressure invitations. And, at the deepest level, I want that to feel good, life-affirming, and coherent for all parties involved.

5) Business matters.

There’s something life-affirming about entrepreneurship + small/local business. These smaller, more direct models of commerce are spaces where we can share our values, shape culture, prioritize + uplift what capitalism normally devalues (like art + care + connection), and imagine new possibilities.

Our businesses + entrepreneurial endeavors are an opportunity to do so much good in the world. And that's a beautiful thing worth doing.

To my fellow entrepreneurs: I’m cheering for you!

And also sending gratitude to everyone who’s cheered me on along way too .

Finding Our Way Back

Getting off track is part of the process.

This is what I try to remind myself when I’m frustrated with my progress, or when I’ve fallen (yet again) into the grooves and patterns I’ve been trying to unlearn.

I remind myself that we forget so that we can remember.  And that it’s the work of going back in, returning to the practices I know work for me, and trying again that deepens transformation.

When we learn (again) what we already know, we’re building resiliency and capacity.

So there’s an opportunity in these moments of failure and frustration to remember that living a good life isn’t about doing it perfectly or always staying on track – it’s about finding our way back and developing practices of pausing, noticing, and returning to what we know in those hard moments.

So if things go awry, no need to panic!  You have what you need to take that first step back toward where you want to be.

Paths of Failure

One of the life goals I set for myself (when I was about 14 years old) was to learn Spanish. Committing to that process is one of the most important things I’ve done in my life.

Not because of the awesome new skill it gave me but because it broke something in me that needed to break.

I took a Spanish class my first semester of college that felt like an absolute disaster: an endless series of humiliating failures (obvious evidence of my complete ineptitude), that agonizingly specific feeling of embarrassment and despair in those frozen moments when I couldn’t find the words, the C (gasp!) I got on my midterm.

But as anyone who has learned a new language (or done any hard thing ever) knows, reaching a goal is simply a matter of failing well, productively, and consistently.

So there was a choice to make: I could choose a different major and return to what came easy for me, or I could commit to that path of failure.

To get what I wanted, my identity had to change – from smart person to determined person, from person who gets straight A’s to person who commits to processes of learning, from person who succeeds a lot to person who fails a lot.

I am thankful I had Spanish to remind me that I am not here (that I did not come all this way into this dimension of time and space!) to hold my breath so as not to disrupt some frozen stasis of perfection I’m clinging to for dear life. I am not here to serve or uphold models of smartness, goodness, or success that other people made up. I am here to get gritty and dirty – to come into fierce contact with the world and my own self.

And here’s the thing: I speak Spanish almost every day, and it’s often still a colossal failure. I still lose words or say them poorly. I still have to ask people to repeat themselves. But I have also traveled alone in other countries with Spanish. I have assisted clients in accessing services, navigating the legal system, and creating safety plans with Spanish. And I have had conversations with hundreds of people I would not have been able to speak with had I not chosen this path of failure.

And what I know now that I did not know then is that there is no ultimate arrival or success – only beautiful milestones along a path of infinite failures.

I believe that part of what it means to be human is to take ourselves to our edges, to have our identities shattered and recreated, to surrender to what it means to be a beginner, to let go of where and who we are to embrace an ongoing process of becoming. This is what I came here for. And I like it a lot.