Episode #107: Are You Building The Business You Really Desire?

After years of running my first business, I found I had unintentionally built myself something I never really desired in the first place. In this episode I’m talking about why it’s so crucial for sensitive business owners to check in with what they want, plus I’m sharing an exercise to help you start doing that.

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Ruth Poundwhite 0:00
After years of running my first business, I found that I had unintentionally built myself something that I never really wanted in the first place. In this episode, I’m talking about why it is so crucial for sensitive business owners to check in with what they really desire. And I’m sharing an exercise to help you start doing just that. You’re listening to quietly ambitious with conversations about how it really feels to build a business that honours your whole self unapologetically. And that includes who you are, how you feel, what you really desire, the impact that you want to create, and importantly, the money you want to make. I’m your host, Ruth Poundwhite. And my superpower is supporting sensitive and ambitious humans to make more money by fully expressing and owning all of who they are. Let’s dive in. Hi, and welcome back to a another solo episode of quietly ambitious. So today, I have actually just been running a free mini course success without sacrifice, and I’m afraid it’s no longer available to sign up to. But I will run it again in future. So make sure you’re on my newsletter if you want to hear about that. But anyway, that’s not the point. What I want to say is that I really wanted to talk about whether you are building the business that you actually desire, because this has come up a lot in the trainings I did for that mini course. So I’m basically going to condense it down for you in this podcast episode. So I want to start by saying, when I talk about success without sacrifice, I am aware that it may sound too good to be true success without any sacrifice. The truth is, I don’t mean that there will never be hard times and that it will all feel easy. That would obviously be a lie. But what I mean is getting clear on what success really looks like for you, allowing yourself to really go there and paint the picture of what success without sacrifice would look like for you personally as the unique human you are, and building your business in alignment with that. And I talk a lot about doing it in a way that allows you to be your whole self unapologetically. That’s what I mean with without sacrifice. The reason why it’s easier said than done, is because being your whole self comes with all of it. All of the messy stuff, all of the learnings along the way, all of the inner work along the way, the audacity of wanting to build a business in your way, the self doubt that comes up with doing it in your way not having the evidence that it’s going to work all of that stuff. So it is easier said than done. But that is what I mean about success without sacrifice. And I also just want to speak for a second before I move on to building the business that you really desire about what’s going on in the world. You know, thinking about pandemic wars, poverty, everything that is going on in the world, it feels even more audacious to be talking about building your own version of success without sacrifice. But what I want to say, and the question I always asked myself is, is who does it serve for you not to do it. And what I come back to is that building it in the way that supports me allows me to do my best work in the world allows me to do my teeny tiny portion of what makes the world a better place. And I do genuinely believe that when people are free to be themselves and doing the work that they love in the world and do what they’re meant to do the world is a better place. So as like, as simplistic as that may sound that is my belief. But I just want to speak to the fact that there are things going on, I am definitely in a position of privilege. And at the same time, yes, it can bring up feelings of deservingness like deserving should do I even deserve this. Should I be thinking about this? But the question I always come back to is who does it serve for me not to. So that’s the little intro out the way basically in this episode, I just want to invite you to ask the question to yourself, about whether you are really being intentional about building the business you desire. So

it’s when I first started my first business, I started it because I couldn’t get a job out of uni so I finished uni could not get any jobs. It was the recession 2008. And I just started working online as a way to make money like that’s literally all it was. And the thing that happens is you can very quickly find that your business takes you in a direction if you’re not intentionally choosing the direction you’re going in if you’re not intentionally making choices today about how you want the future Look in your business, right? So that business for me very unintentionally went in a direction that I hadn’t really thought through from the beginning. And I found myself in a place where it was not fulfilling to me. It was. And because of who I am, because of my personality, like being not fulfilling to me makes me like men, it was chipping away at me, it was taking something from me, right. So I think that, and like, don’t get me wrong, I do think, especially in the early days of business, there can be growing pains, you’ve got to try doing things to know whether they’re actually for you or not. So sometimes you got to try stuff to know that you don’t like it. Sometimes you’ve got to build up to a certain point before you can outsource certain things. But if you’re feeling resentful, if you’re pushing, if you’re burning out, if you’re dreading certain parts of your work, these could all be signs that your business is going in an unintentional direction, and then it’s not building towards something that you ultimately desire. Okay, I hope that this makes sense. And the thing is, especially for sensitive humans, when you are building your business, towards something that actually ultimately you don’t desire, it can absolutely lead to burning out. Like I said, like, for me, it was this real feeling of disconnect between who I was inside and what I was doing on the outside, which chipped away at me for sure. It can also literally show up in terms of energy levels, like mentally and physically. And

honestly, I suppose the thing that I think really underlies it is, if the ultimate business that you are working towards is not the thing that you really desire, then how is that going to affect the way that you show up for it to make your goals happen. So on one level, you might be like, Yeah, I just want to make these goals happen. But another at a subconscious level, it might be like, but if I make this happen, it’s going to bring something that I don’t want, it’s going to lead me in this path that I actually don’t want to go down. So it’s going to affect how you show up and your content is going to affect how you sell your offers, it’s going to affect what offers you put together in the first place, it’s going to affect how confident you are to innovate and go in your own direction and claim that unique magic in your business, it’s going to create this kind of ceiling of what you can achieve either because you don’t really want it and you get stuck, or you’re so busy, and so consumed with what you’re doing that you’re not even listening to the inner voice of what you desire, which hopefully, this podcast episode will give you a pause a moment to pause and consider that and I’m going to give you a little bit of a journaling exercise in a sec. The bottom line is and this is what I was talking about all week in my free mini course is that sensitive business owners cannot pretend to be someone they’re not, they cannot. It’s not sustainable for them to build a business that they ultimately don’t desire. And it can work for some people it straight off the gate like they can’t even do it. But for some people you can push through for years. I mean, I am one of those people. But I really want to encourage you to be honest with yourself about what you desire for your life. And the thing I want to say before we get to the exercises is that it does feel audacious to own your desires in the first place. There are so many reasons that we don’t even let our minds go there. It could be cultural conditioning could be experiences we’ve had in our life could be ways that people have made us feel could be the fact that as sensitive humans we’ve learned not to trust our feelings could be that we have a certain life and it’s really going to rock the boat if we’re honest about what we want. Could be all the stuff that’s going on in the world make us think who the hell am I to even be thinking about why desire right now, all of this stuff, it feels audacious. But I want to encourage you to go there anyway. Because like I said, people who are living in alignment with who they really are, are happier people and it makes the world a better place. Bottom line. But you deserve to feel good. You deserve to feel good in your life. You deserve to feel good in your business. Okay. So what I’m about to share with you is a little bit of an exercise that was first taken from my quiet ambition course which by the way you can find on my website, go to Ruth poundwhite.com forward slash quiet hyphen, ambition. That cause takes you on a journey. So in this little mini episode and mini lesson I’m talking about like tuning into what you desire. That course takes you on a journey for four weeks with really short actionable lessons to get you really tuning into what you desire. And I feel like this was such an important step for me as I was making the transition from my first business into now doing what I really want to do. So this is just a tiny part of that course. So if you want more go and look for quiet ambition on my website, Ruth poundwhite.com forward slash quiet hyphen, ambition. Okay, so what I want you to do is I just want you to get your journal out and I want you to do some journaling on what you truly desire. And that is a big question and it can be hard to tune into it. So what I’ve got is a list of categories for you that I would love for you write out what you desire in all of these places. And as you’re writing out, I want you to be willing to allow a little light, like, how do I want to say this, I want you to be willing to follow the little nudges you’re getting. Because in my experience, so many of us have a little feeling or a little thought, and we shut it down before we even let it come through. So when you’re doing this, I would really love for you to write down those little thought thoughts and feelings, don’t shut them down, and write them down, no matter how ridiculous they hadn’t how ridiculous they sound, okay, so something might come up, like I want to be a best selling author and speaking on a stage in front of millions. If that comes up, your conscious mind is probably gonna go like what on earth? That is not for me, for whatever reason, that is not possible for whatever reason, just go there. Just write it down. Okay, be honest with yourself, get set a timer for 15 minutes, do some journaling, be honest with yourself. Okay, so here’s some of the categories. And you might need to pause and write these down. So what do you desire it for yourself in all of these areas of your life, your home, your family, and relationships, travel, your physical body, your health, material possessions, personal development, education, spirituality, support systems, finance, and wealth. And anything else that comes to mind, like I’m sure I’ve missed off something really important there. But I’m just gonna repeat these videos. So home, family and relationships, travel, physical health, material possessions, personal development, education, spirituality, support systems, finance, and wealth, and anything else you can think of. So that’s the first list and then I want you to think about these areas within your business. The offers that you put out there, what they are, and how you deliver them, and how you work with people, your pricing. So what you want to charge and the money, you want to make your content, what do you want to say to people? What do you want to be sure showing up and saying to people on daily basis, your boundaries, the way you work, the support that you have in your business, the impact that you want to have in your business, and anything else that comes to mind there. So let me just go over that again, really quickly. So in your business, your office, what they like, how you structure them, how you work with people, your pricing, your content, what you want to say, the way you work your boundaries, supporting your business, the impact you want to make, the income you want to make, and anything else you can think about in your business. So

you’ve got quite a lot to work with there, I would love for you just to be totally honest with yourself. Like I said, allow the nudges come through, let yourself listen to them. And like I said, at the beginning of this episode, I know it’s not as easy as it sounds, when you write this list, I am not expecting you to make all of these changes in your life and to make them all happen straightaway. And by the way, this list is not just about things that you have, or do, it’s about ways that you get to be in your life as well. I’m not, it’s not about making a shift, immediately, obviously, it’s just not gonna happen straightaway. And there is a mental shift that needs to come along with making it possible as well. But what there’s the shift that I do want you to make today. And this was the theme of the free five day mini course. So you’re getting it here, the the high like the the short summary, is I want you to make the decision today that you aren’t going to be the right person for your right people. And what I mean by being the right person for your right people is that you exactly the way you are exactly the way you want to show up you in Integrity and Authenticity, you owning who you are. And showing up from that place is what people relate to and what they want to why they want to work with you in the first place, right? And being the right person for the right people starts with being the right person for you, which starts with doing this journaling and being really honest about what you desire. So after you’ve gone through this list, ask yourself Am I really building the business that I desire? Am I making choices in alignment with the life and business that I want to create? Or am I being taken in a different direction? And if you do realise the latter, by the way, please be kind to yourself. This is why we do this like bigger picture work, right? This is why we have coaches, this is why we do the journaling. This is why we need to take time out to work on the business and not just in it to make sure it’s going in the right direction. So just ask yourself, Am I making? Am I going down the road of the business I actually want to create what am I not admitting to myself here? And how can I take one teeny tiny step today in alignment with the business that I desire to create? So it’s about taking choosing to do it and taking one team tiny step, after one teeny tiny step. It’s not about making it all happen now. And like I said, this is all easier said than done, there’s going to be so much work required in a work to really own who you are, and be confident expressing that through your business. But start today by taking one step in the direction of the business that you desire to create. And like I said, if you want to go on the full journey with this, get my course quiet ambition at Ruth poundwhite.com forward slash quiet hyphen, ambition. So many people have done that course. So many people do it again and again and again. And you do get lifetime access. So yeah, take advantage. Go through it. Be really honest with yourself and build your business in alignment with the life that you really choose for yourself. Do it intentionally. And I just want you to know, as difficult as it may seem, or as many obstacles that there may be along the way. You’ve so got this and it is so worth it. Trust me. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of quietly ambitious. If you have a moment to rate and review know that it really does make a difference. And if you’d like to carry on the conversation, then you can connect with me on Instagram at Ruth Poundwhite Join me in the Facebook group or my personal favourite. Sign up to my newsletter letters to quietly ambitious humans. Just go to a Ruth poundwhite.com forward slash newsletter to subscribe and keep doing what you’re doing because your work really does matter.

Note: at this time transcripts are automated and unedited, which means errors may occur. But we hope you find them helpful!

 

 

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“am I making choices in alignment with the life and business that I want to create?”

Show Notes

After years of running my first business, I found I had unintentionally built myself something I never really desired in the first place. In this episode I’m talking about why it’s so crucial for sensitive business owners to check in with what they want, plus I’m sharing an exercise to help you start doing that.

“BE the right person for your right people “ 

Some of the things I talked about:

  • What I mean by “success without sacrifice”
  • Why choosing it isn’t as easy as it sounds
  • How many of us are censoring our own desires
  • An exercise to help you tune into what you really desire

Links from the episode:

Other episodes you might like:

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Where to Find the Podcast…

Thanks so much for listening!

When you subscribe to updates you get access to 3 bonus episodes of the podcast – exclusively for email subscribers – that dive behind the scenes of my business (I talk about failures, money, community & more!)