This is not about making more sales.
This is not about making more money.
This is not even about following your passion.
What we're doing here, together, is exploring your business to make it more sustainable, and more in alignment with your values, vision, and self.
But it's not so that you can get more customers, pay your bills or do what you love.
Those are metrics – they help us measure how sustainable and healthy your business is.
But they are not the real why.
This is about personal responsibility.
The real goal, the reason for you to build a sustainable business + to take the time to explore it is because you are responsible for your life + happiness. You are the only one who is going to create the change you desire. You are the author, the actor, the stage.
When you begin to take responsibility, when you start to follow the threads of your enthusiasm towards a craft, a business, a calling, you grow more confident.
With that confidence, you are able to bring more peace, joy and love into the world.
You start to wonder…if you can start a business+ provide for your family, what else can you do? If you can define success for yourself, and work in a way that works for you, where else can shift your expectations? Where else can you bring integrity and wholeness?
This is really about bringing more peace, joy and love to the world.
Making your art brings you joy.
Sharing your art is an expression of love.
Living in alignment with your values (whatever they are: beauty, peace, freedom, self-expression) brings you + your family more joy and peace.
But how you go about it matters. If you pile on “shoulds”, expectations and other people's values, you'll crush that spark. You'll suck out the joy, the expression of love. You'll miss out on the confidence because you'll never fit in someone else's mold. And when your spark is crushed, your work won't have the same power to move, inspire or change the world.
This is huge, world-changing stuff, but it doesn't have to be a huge production. You don't have to sell* a zillion things to change your life (or someone else's). You don't have to create the perfect, peaceful workday to take joy in your work.
You only have to explore.
Pay attention.
Revisit your expectations.
Define success for yourself.
Make your own map.
Look for ways to integrate your values into what you do, how you talk about it and who you serve.
PS. I call the above “exploring” – an active verb – because you'll never be done with it. This is the real work of your art, the real work of changing the world.
*You don't have to sell anything to change the world. But this is for the makers I work with, people who are called/inspired to share their work by selling it. If you're not called/inspired, know that you can take personal responsibility in another way.