Recently someone in our community decided to close down a successful business because it felt out of alignment with what she wanted to do. In this episode, I talk through the steps you can take if you’re feeling the same.

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Big Ideas

The backstory [0:15]

The idea for this episode came up from a post in our community, where Laura Lee Fallon opened about something that had been weighing on her for quite some time. She had launched a coloring membership, it had gotten off the ground, and she had hundreds of members in that membership. But she felt out of alignment with it because it wasn’t something that she was super passionate about.

Through that, she started having doubts about whether she should continue moving forward. Then the past year, unfortunately, her mom died of cancer. And it gave her a lot of clarity about what was really important. Ultimately, she decided to close down the membership. You can imagine how difficult a decision like that is when you’ve got something that’s a success and is generating recurring revenue. But it created space for her to launch the new idea that she is more passionate about, which is serving military families struggling with PTSD.

If something doesn’t feel right with what you’re doing, and for whatever reason it’s just not feeling in alignment with where you want to go, I want you to know that you’re not alone in this. And there are some steps that you can take.

Dream [2:59]

Number one, dream. Imagine that you’re an artist of your business, an artist of your life, and you get to decide what you want to do. One of the beauties about being an entrepreneur is that we get to decide how we want to do business. If people don’t like how we want to do business, then they don’t do business with us, and that’s okay. The flip side is that staying current with what it is that we want to do and how we want to do it, allows us to feel good about how we are moving forward. What does having the perfect business look like for you? You may not be clear about what exactly you’re doing, but you should get clear on how the business serves you and shows up for you.

For example, in my life, one of the things that I’m clear about is that the business is there to serve me and my family, not the other way around. When my kids are at school, I’m loaded with work. But when they come home, I want to be able to spend time with them. It’s different for everybody, and I’m not here to say that the way in which the business shows up for me is going to be the way it should show up for you. But you’ve got to get clear on that, and it starts by dreaming about what you want to see possible, and what would the perfect business provide you.

Act – clarity comes from action [6:42]

Number two, act. We can visualize and dream till the cows come home. But if we don’t do anything about it, then we’re never going to achieve that dream or that vision. I can tell you this clarity comes from taking action. For example, when I graduated university with my honors business degree, I was trained as a corporate manager. But I knew that wasn’t going to be the path for me. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, but I was clear on what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to be limited in terms of the amount of time I could spend with family, and I didn’t want a limit on how much I could earn in my career.

What ultimately happened was I just took a step. That first step for me was resigning from a corporate job before I even started, becoming a speaker and then ultimately, an opportunity arose to become an affiliate manager. Next thing you know, I’m running an affiliate management business. I wanted to share what I was learning, so a friend and mentor of mine suggested that I start a membership site. I didn’t know anything about memberships, and I was having trouble setting it up. That led to a conversation with a good friend of mine, Tracy, where I shared my vision for creating a membership platform, and he suggested that we team up and create it together. That ultimately became a WishList Member that went on to become the world’s number one membership platform for WordPress.

Through that, I had the opportunity to work with more than 70,000 online communities and memberships, and I learned exactly what works and what doesn’t when it comes to growing a highly successful membership site. Suddenly, I now had this expertise that I could share. I shared it with consulting clients, then I partnered with Michael Hyatt to create a membership, and we took that membership to 1100 members in the first week, to then 2500 members after the first year, 4500 after year two, and 6000 after year three. People started asking, how are you growing this? And that led me to creating our signature program TRIBE. Through that, I started to realize people were still getting stuck on the tech side of things. So we started to brainstorm and think about a solution that could best serve all of our audience, which has led us to Searchie.

If you had asked me when I graduated university if I would be helping people every single day to launch, grow and scale highly profitable memberships, I would have laughed. I wouldn’t have even known what a membership site was. But it all came because I took action. So even if you’re not crystal clear on how you’re going to create that dream business, you’ve got to start somewhere and take action in some direction. If I hadn’t taken that first step, none of it would have happened for me. Little by little, you get more and more clear about the things you like, the things you don’t like, and the direction you want to move in.

Experiment – try stuff, do more of what works [13:50]

Number three, experiment. One of the best quotes I heard from a friend was ‘Think about your first business as your practice business.’ It relieves you of the pressure that you’ve got to get it perfect. The reality is that in business, it’s a bunch of experiments and you’re going to try a whole bunch of stuff. And by trying this stuff, you’re going to figure out the things that work and the things that don’t. So in this process of experimenting and figuring things out, pay attention to what’s working and do more of it, and do less of what isn’t working. But don’t keep doing the same thing. Because in that experimentation, is where you begin to have major breakthroughs and discoveries. If you’re not willing to experiment, then that’s when things start to fall flat.

Memorable Quotes

“Don’t keep doing the same thing. Experimentation is the key to major breakthroughs and discoveries.” – Stu McLaren

Resources

Gettribeguide.com

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