In my last post, I shared the difference between authentic vs ego-driven purpose. The question was—is your sense of purpose coming from the truth of who and what you really are, or is it coming from a place of who you think you should be?
Getting clear about your authentic purpose makes it much easier to build your business’s unique offering, positioning, and messaging around your true strengths.
But what if that authentic purpose looks a lot different than what you’re actually doing right now? What if the business you’ve spent years building doesn’t really seem to match your talents, strengths, and interests? Should you just scrap everything you’ve worked so hard to build and start over?
Not necessarily.
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[Full Transcript]
In my last post, I shared the difference between authentic vs ego-driven purpose. The question was—is your sense of purpose coming from the truth of who and what you really are, or is it coming from a place of who you think you should be?
Getting clear about your authentic purpose makes it much easier to build your business’s unique offering, positioning, and messaging around your true strengths.
But what if that authentic purpose looks a lot different than what you’re actually doing right now? What if the business you’ve spent years building doesn’t really seem to match your talents, strengths, and interests? Should you just scrap everything you’ve worked so hard to build and start over?
Not necessarily.
Just because the current iteration of your business doesn’t align seamlessly with a deeper sense of purpose doesn’t mean that it’s the wrong fit altogether. More than likely, the common threads between the theme of “your strengths” and the theme of your existing business is just a bit hidden. You may need to bring them closer to the surface in order to see them clearly.
Why not just plug along with your business, even if it doesn’t light you up? Is it really worth the trouble to discover these mismatches between your business and your purpose? After all, it’s about making money, right? Why mess with that?
Think of it this way—if making money is the only metric of success in your work, will you miss out on a much bigger payoff? Things like joy, creative fulfillment, and a connection to something deeper than material rewards?
The Hidden Opportunity Cost of Not Aligning With Your Purpose
Pause for a moment and envision what the future will look like if you stay on your current course. It’s 10 years from now, and you’ve spent the previous decade building a business that you don’t feel particularly inspired by or connected to.
Of course, no business just hums along without challenges.
- You could lose a key client.
- A disruptive technology could render your product or service obsolete overnight.
- A new wave of competitors could eat away at your customer base.
And yet, this “future you” has hustled and persevered despite the odds. You might not have actually enjoyed the journey all that much, but you’re still standing.
What was the opportunity cost of sticking with the status quo? What alternate version of your business could you have built during that decade—one that might have aligned better with your true strengths and interests?
Whether you stick with what you know or redesign your business based on what’s possible, you’re still going to have to face risks and overcome obstacles. Designing your business around an authentic sense of purpose will increase the odds of your long-term financial success, and also allow you to enjoy true success along the way. The kind of success that comes from authenticity, fulfillment, and living a purpose-driven life.
Overriding the Sunk Cost Fallacy
But what about all the work and time you put in already? If you change course now, won’t all that effort be wasted?
This is a perfect example of sunk cost fallacy. You’re reluctant to redesign your current business because you’ve already invested heavily in it, even though there’s a clear upside to doing things a different way.
Knowing what you know today about your current business—and how it does or doesn’t fit your strengths and interests—would you still build it in the same way?
If the answer’s no, you have to ask yourself why not? And knowing that answer today, why would you continue to invest more work, time, money, and effort over the next 10 or more years of your life into something that you wouldn’t even want to start again in the first place?
Reimagining Your Business
The good news is that a more authentic, engaging version of your existing business may be a lot closer than you realize.
After all, there’s a reason you got into the line of work you’re in, something that fueled you and inspired you to turn an idea for a business into a real-life, living, breathing venture. You probably didn’t set out to build a business around a mission that you don’t care about at all, or around activities that you hate doing.
You started your business because you loved working with a certain type of client on certain types of projects. Or because you loved designing and building a certain type of product. Or because you were totally inspired by the thought of solving a specific type of problem.
More than likely, the current version of your business has simply shifted away bit by bit over time from that version of your business you first dreamed of. With each new project, each new customer, each new challenge or obstacle or inflection point, it changed in a tiny, almost unnoticeable way. But those tiny shifts compounded over time, until one day you woke up and your business looked completely different than your original vision.
The DNA of that original idea is still there at the heart of your business. You just need to rediscover it, and then make a conscious choice to design your business’s competitive advantage (positioning) and strategic narrative (messaging) around those authentic strengths.
Start at the Beginning
- What was the original vision that inspired you to start your business? What did you think it would look and feel like?
- What were your strengths, interests, skills, and talents that you felt made this the right business for you?
Take Inventory
- What are the parts of your current business—the activities, clients, and projects—that light you up and inspire you?
- What are the parts of your current business—the activities, clients, and projects—that drain you?
Reimagine What’s Possible
- What are the common threads between your original vision and your current business?
- If you were to redesign your business around the positive and away from the negative, what would it look like? What would you keep? What would you get rid of?
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