Do you ever wish you had more fun, excitement & passion in your life?
Do you ever wish you felt more passion for your business?
That’s how a client of mine was feeling when she came to our coaching session the other day – unmotivated, discouraged and overwhelmed. Definitely no passion!
In less than 15 minutes, I asked her a series of pointed questions that completely flipped the switch for her. By the end of the session she was saying, “Wow I never would have looked at {my marketing} this way. This sounds fun. I’m excited to get started!”
In this article, I explain exactly how she flipped the switch from discouragement to passion so quickly, and also give you several questions to spark your own passion.
Step One: Admit You Have a Problem
I talk to so many entrepreneurs who no longer have passion in their businesses.
They feel discouraged and overwhelmed …
They aren’t having any fun anymore …
And perhaps worst of all, they’ve stopped wanting to do any marketing!
The reason that lack of marketing is the worst is because without marketing, you won’t have a business for very long. Customers don’t just fall from the sky – you have to market yourself so that they can find you.
I had a coaching session yesterday in which the client wanted to work on improving her lead generation strategies.
I said, “Great, we can do that. Let’s first establish a baseline. What are you already doing to generate leads, and what’s working the best?”
But that line of questioning very quickly revealed that she wasn’t actually doing much lead generation at all.
Not only that, she didn’t really even want to generate more leads because – you guessed it – she was feeling little to no passion for her business.
So I took a sharp right turn and started asking her about what she does feel passion about in her life.
Give Yourself Permission to Feel Passion
Her first objection was, “Yeah, but how is that relevant? It doesn’t matter if I have passions outside of my business; that’s not going to help me get clients.”
“Just trust me,” I said. “I promise I’m going somewhere with this.”
So her next hesitation was, “I don’t want to tell you what I actually spend most of my time doing because I think it’s a frivolous waste of time.”
I assured her that there would be no judgment, so she confessed that she spent a lot of time – like hours a day – on social media, watching videos and reading chat threads about various forms of social injustice.
I followed that up with a question about what kinds of conversations get her feeling excited, and she said that happens whenever she starts talking to people about stress relief – which is the basis of her business.
So I suggested she combine her passions. Find ways to weave mentions of stress and stress relief into the conversations she was already having online about social injustice. After all, doesn’t it make sense that people who get all worked up about the injustices in the world probably experience a lot of stress?
She absolutely loved the idea and couldn’t wait to get started.
Your Turn
How would you like to have the same kind of turn-around in your own mindset, and feeling of passion toward your business?
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
1. “What am I most passionate about?” If that’s easy for you to answer, great! But in case it’s not …
2. “What do I spend my time actually doing?” This one requires some radical honesty, especially if, like my client, you’ve been telling yourself judgmental or shaming messages about how you spend your time.
3. “When I’ve gotten excited or enthusiastic in conversations with people recently, what was it about?” Even though my client no longer felt much passion for the way she’d been doing her business lately (especially her marketing!), it both surprised and pleased her to realize that she did still feel a lot of passion for the thing she’d built her business on, stress relief.
These questions should help you remove any judgment or hopelessness you’ve been feeling lately about your business. They also give you permission to embrace your true heart’s desires – your passions. That’s a powerful combo, that might just open the door to a new kind of creative expression.
Let me know how it goes for you!