This article is the fifth post in a series about creating momentum for your new, emerging work and business by strengthening your foundation before you attempt large-scale marketing efforts.
Article 1: Honoring Key Themes as I Celebrate 30 Years In Business!
Article 2: How Mainstream Business Development Lets You Down, Steers You Wrong Article 3: When Business Guidance Triggers Business Trauma
Article 4: Business Development: There IS Another Way
Article 5: Read Below
Article 6: The Best Way I Know to Create Momentum in Your Emerging Venture
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At the end of the last post, I mentioned that creating a strong business foundation makes it easier to market your work and develop momentum.
Your business foundation comes into form, layer by layer, as you address the 7 Momentum Milestones for Change Catalysts with New, Emerging Ventures. When you define the details of your emerging work and business, then you have something solid to stand on when you start sharing your work with others.
Creating a solid foundation for your work and your business requires more than just implementing a set of specific strategies. You must deepen your own understanding of your business in a way that gives you a strong, grounded sense of where you are headed.
When your foundation feels strong enough to support you in stepping forward with your work, you will know you can rely on the structures and purpose of your business to help you develop a flourishing venture.
Turning Quicksand into Solid Ground
If you are having trouble stepping forward with your business, it’s likely you don’t yet trust your business foundation. Nothing’s defined enough to depend on. You figure one thing out, but you don’t know if it will hold because each decision you make seems to shift your vision. It’s difficult to create momentum when your foundation resembles quicksand because whenever you try to move you just get mired in the inner chaos of figuring out your next move.
To create a strong, stable, dependable foundation, focus on strengthening your:
- Clarity –When you feel confused about these elements of your work, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to take action to move your business forward. You must have a clear sense of your intentions about the various aspects of your work – your core focus, your offers, your target clients, your pricing, your marketing message – before you start marketing your work.
- Alignment – When your proposed work or business structure is not in alignment with your values, your integrity, your expertise, or your client’s needs, you will naturally pull back from sharing your work. When you feel aligned with the work you do with clients and the way you are offering your services, you feel more at ease and comfortable with what you are bringing into the world.
- Confidence – When you feel nervous or unsure about your work or business, you will naturally hesitate. It’s actually a good sign that you realize you aren’t quite ready to take action to share your work. Building in more confidence through increased clarity and a clear sense of alignment about your own work and your ability to run your business sets the stage for taking more actions with ease.
A Solid Business Foundation Strengthens Your Success
As more and more pieces of your business foundation come into focus, your clarity, sense of alignment, and confidence increase. With that your willingness to take actions to share your work grows.
The more strategic actions you take, the more results you see unfolding in your business: more connections, more serious inquiries, more clients decide to work with you, and more income. This is when you start noticing more and more signs of momentum in your business.
Discover the Best Way YOU Can Create More Momentum in Your Business
To discern where you need to focus to move your emerging work and business forward, there are two ways to proceed.
First, Learn More about the 7 Momentum Milestones
The best way I know to move Change Catalysts out of the quicksand and onto solid ground is to help them create a strong, grounded business foundation that incorporates 7 essential milestones. Work the milestones in order because each milestone builds on the previous ones. You can read all about the seven milestones in my new eBook, 7 Vital Milestones to Turn Your Emerging Work into a Flourishing Business.
As I mentioned in my last article, this journey is not the mainstream business approach you are already familiar with. This gentle, organic journey is specifically designed to support Change Catalysts who are in the process of birthing a new, emerging business venture - new business, taking existing business in a new direction, or creating a new trailblazing version of their work.
If you’ve been on this journey for a while and you still aren’t making progress, it’s likely that you aren't feeling completely confident with one or more of the early milestones.
Until you sort out the gaps in your foundation,
it will be difficult to generate any sense
of momentum in your work and business.
The best way to get started is to pay attention to your experience as you read about each milestone in the eBook.
- If you feel comfortable about the topic addressed in a milestone, then it’s likely you’ve reached that milestone and you are ready to move to the next one.
- If you feel anxious about a milestone, it’s likely you have a gap that needs to be resolved before you can progress.
- If you are hesitant or confused about a particular milestone, it’s likely you have some clarity but there’s a specific piece that needs to be cleared up before you’ll have the confidence to move forward to the next milestone.
Second, Pinpoint the Best Ways You Can Focus Your Energy
When you are first learning about these Momentum Milestones, it can be difficult to sort out your next step, especially if you have made progress on some milestones but not others.
In working with Change Catalysts who are in the process of bringing their new, emerging work into the world, I have found that it’s important to look at the underlying patterns of their story to discover the interlocking factors at play.
By working collaboratively to see the whole picture, we get a better sense of the challenges you are facing and how they are keeping you from building momentum in your emerging work and business. By gaining this deeper understanding of your situation, we can pinpoint the best ways you can focus your time, energy, and resources to move forward in a way that aligns with you, your work with clients, and your business.
Schedule Your Momentum Mapping Session.
In preparation for our conversation, you'll
fill out a questionnaire that will help me
prepare for our conversation to discern
where you stand with each milestone.
If you'd like to understand more about developing your work, download Carol's eBook:
7 Vital Milestones to Turn Your Emerging Idea into a Flourishing Business.