“Sometimes we convince ourselves that we know the way the story goes. What if we got excited about not knowing? The possibilities become endless.”
This is from one of my writing teachers, Al Watt from the L.A. Writers Lab . I read that recently and thought This is the same as for marketing and growing your business.
You finish up your coaching program or get your healing certification and you embark. You may’ve received some marketing information as part of that program. Or perhaps you signed up for a program to help you build and grow your business. Maybe your business took off right away – if so, that’s amazing. And you’re one of few. For most other people, it takes time. Inching your way forward.
What gets in the way is that it’s easy to convince yourself how your business should look. For example –
You should offer one-to-one coaching. You should create passive income. You should offer high priced boutique services.
Or how your marketing should look.
You have to be on social media. Doing the latest. Reels, stories, and so on. You need a Substack – stat. You have to contact people a lot. Or incessantly (I’m looking at my inbox this morning and have three – 3! – emails from the same coach in under 24 hours – bleh) Or never.
Or what you need to say.
You have a smoking hot deal. Only three more spots left. Get it before its GONE!
And then once you have an idea of how it should look, if any part of that doesn’t feel good, it can go off the rails. (Note – I’m not talking about something that feels fundamentally good but is a stretch and feels uncomfortable. That's different and needs a level of discernment.)
And then the fight-flight-freeze response can set in.
If you’re a fighter, you double down. Work longer, apply more elbow grease. You’re going to make this work, dammit.
If you’re a fleer, you might decide you’re going to throw in the towel – change course, huck your message out. Find a new niche. A new business partner. A new something
If you’re a freezer, you stop. Your heart starts to slide away. You fritter away time you’ve set aside to be with your business and marketing with busywork. Or adjacent tasks that feel good or maybe you avoid it all together for a good novel or bout of Netflix. Which isn’t bad in and of itself, but if weeks are going by and you’re feeling worse, then yeah, this.
From Knowing
The thing is, you’ve been bombarded your whole life from the culture, and possibly your family, with messages about how businesses are supposed to look. What success looks like. When you decided to become a coach, healer or creative entrepreneur, you had people in your industry that you consciously or unconsciously defined as “having made it.”
And it’s likely you adopted a posture toward your business of knowing. Of knowing how it should look and be. Of what it is supposed to be like to market it and be successful.
To Not Knowing
But what if, as Al suggests, you get excited about not knowing? About the process of discovering your own authentic voice. The message that you truly, deeply want to share with those you help. About finding the way to market that feels easy? Or fun? Or light?
Perhaps you could imagine your relationship with your business and your future clients and then get excited by and act upon the possibilities that present themselves, step by lovely step.
If you could let go of believing you know, and instead trust that your intuition and inner knowing, the possibilities are indeed endless. I don’t know where you’ll land, but I’m pretty sure you’ll end up somewhere you’ve never dreamt of before.
How magical does that sound?