Brené Brown. Image credit.
Brené Brown, a darling of TED talks, speaks a lot on the power and necessity of vulnerability. Her key tenants, covered in the video below, are fantastically relevant to business owners, particularly those who run passion-based businesses.
Author, scholar and speaker Brown talks specifically on letting ourselves be seen, loving whole-heartedly, the practice of gratitude and joy, and truly believing that we are enough.
Here’s how they apply to you in your business:
Let yourself be seen
Going into business for yourself is far more than putting out your shingle and showing yourself to your clients and potential clients. When you’re ready to step up and embrace all that you’re capable of, it means truly letting yourself be seen – owning and sharing your opinion, especially when it’s unpopular, saying ‘no’ to clients who aren’t good for your business, sharing with your tribe why you care and what your broader agenda is, and seeking publicity by nominating yourself to media outlets and business awards.
When highlighting your weaknesses and mistakes, strengths and achievements, it can sometimes be harder to showcase our achievements in societies such as Australia where people are quick to isolate or ridicule anyone outside of the sports arena that we consider “too proud” or “too successful”.
When you let yourself be seen, you are making yourself vulnerable to the haters, the moaners, the jealous and spiteful, the deafening silence of indifference, and the voices in your head that say “don’t make a fuss”, “who are you to ask for this?”, “you’re not good enough”, and “why can’t you just be satisfied?”
When we let ourselves be seen, we make marketing so much easier because we’re attracting our tribe. When we let ourselves be seen, we push the boundaries of what’s possible in our sector. We may bring in the perspective and strengths from another sector or approach which, combined with our vision and values, enables us to reimagine what’s possible. This will, eventually, permeate and transform our entire sector.
When we let ourselves be seen, we give permission for others to be big and brave as well.
Love whole-heartedly
It’s easy to love whole-heartedly when we’re surrounded by support. It’s far harder to love whole-heartedly when we’ve suffered the set-backs that make up every business’s rites of passage – the unfair complaining, the stupidly-long hours, the rejection, the waste of time and money, and the everyday bad luck that we’re all privy to.
There are no guarantees in business as there are no guarantees in life. With the best-laid plans, we cannot control all factors that contribute to us defining our business a ‘success’ or a ‘failure’.
And yet we turn up.
This sheer act of persistence, combined with the inspiration and enthusiasm that we (in different measures at different times) bring to business is an act of faith. And an act of love. As business owners, we solve problems, help people lead happier, healthier lives, are compassionate and listen to our clients to try to understand how they feel.
If we didn’t truly love what we do, we’d take the easy route and leave our passion as a hobby. We could get ourselves a job – you know, one that was far more predictable, with clear expectations, regular salary, and a clearly defined skill-set.
When we decide that we’re all in in business, we love whole-heartedly – not just our modality and our clients, but ourselves and our broader vision that our business encompasses.
Practice gratitude and joy
Research suggests that gratitude is good for us. Joy and gratitude in business are their own public relations campaign – people cannot help being attracted to those whose attitudes buoy them up.
Of course, it’s unlikely – and undesired – to be joyful and feel gratitude every second of the day, every day of the year. But we need to remind ourselves when things get tough, that it’s a privilege, not a right, to work for yourself. To call your own shots, to use your creativity to steer your business in any direction you choose, and to provide for your family is a privilege that not everyone is able to exercise.
Especially when we’re scared, notes Brown, we should cultivate gratitude and joy. Even if it’s just the gratitude for having pushed ourselves outside of our comfort zone in order to grow.
Believe you’re enough
There are countless one-(wo)man bands out there fearlessly carving a new path in this brave new world of business and there are plenty of case studies and business models of single people businesses making over a million dollars a year. It is possible.
Regardless of whether you want to make a million or more dollars a year, or whether you’re happy with far less, believing that you are enough is essential to business.
Of what use is it to make a million dollars a year if you work 100 hours a week leaving no time to enjoy your wealth? When you truly believe that you are enough, you ruthlessly clear negative self-talk and give yourself permission to want what you want.
Your business doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s business. Believe that you are enough – and that you have the resources, skills, vision, courage and persistence to craft your business into whatever you wish. You are enough.
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