Reinventing Success
How successful do you feel in your business?
Chances are, you’re accustomed to working from a definition of success that’s pretty straight forward. Or perhaps you haven’t spelled out what success in your business means, and you’ve been floating happily along. Either way, my hunch is that the pandemic has altered how you’re looking at your business, and the success thereof.
Success has a certain look and feel that, esp. this year, many of us are clinging to, hoping to retain a sense of normalcy. Yet “normal” has changed: for some of my clients, their business has slowed significantly, for others, it’s more than doubled, yet it’s rare that I talk with another person whose business hasn’t been affected somehow.
No matter how the pandemic has affected your business, chances are high that reinventing what success looks and feels like will be good for both your business, and your psyche.
Let me give you an example. Generally speaking, in my business, success means several things: happy clients, enough money to take care of myself and more, and freedom to work and play on my own schedule. While those criteria still apply, I’ve added / revised / reimagined how they show up in my business. Right now, the emphasis has shifted away from as much one-on-one work with clients, to more writing and unstructured time to ponder and create. I’ve taken advantage of this to travel more extensively while still working, something I’ve only done in small snippets previously. What I’m doing hasn’t really changed, yet the way I’ve portioned it out has. These days success is less about making immediate money, or having lots of client-facing time, and more about creativity and having the space to write, work on longer-term projects, nurture relationships, and reimagine how I’ll do my work going forward so that it’ll serve me for years to come.
Take a few minutes today to think about how you define success. Does that definition still apply? Can you redefine success in such a way that you feel good about how things are going now, and are incentivized to create offerings that rise to the challenges you and your clients are facing?
Giving yourself the gift of this introspection will reap great rewards into the future for you, your business, and those you serve ~ and that sounds like success to me!
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Let’s keep this discussion going ~ add your comments below, or join me over on Twitter @kristinecarey for a real-time conversation, and share your thoughts on success, esp. under the current working circumstances.
