So, what do you do if you’re like my colleague-friend–an expert with a successful
business–and you want to feel that you have a BIG PURPOSE, but you’re just not
feeling it?
If you’re feeling ho-hum, and not called to anything particularly meaningful, or not meaningful enough for you, I can almost bet
it’s because you aren’t connecting with the right audience.
The one you’re currently working with is either too broad (a
huge issue for so many experts/service providers!!) or simply
not the right one.
You need to know, who has the pain that you most want to
heal? Not the pain you are dealing with now, but the pain that most galvanizes you when you think of soothing or eliminating it. Perhaps you are working with too superficial a pain right now—or an audience whose level of pain doesn’t enable you to do your greatest work.
Or look at the aspiration you most want to help people fulfill. You may simply not be calling your current audience to reach high enough. Or you may need another audience entirely who has higher aspirations.
My Big Purpose is to change the world by ensuring that you, visionary leaders, change the world. I am very clear that I am here to help that population, and the
recent change in my business identity makes that abundantly clear. I am speaking to
a very select group of experts now—those who are visionaries and want to change the
world. I narrowed my already narrow market. And I did it because I had to for my
own growth. I was feeling that something was missing—I was feeling uninspired–and I
realized that I was getting bored with what I was asking of them. I didn’t need to change
markets, as you may, but I needed to call them to higher aspirations—to satisfy my
own soul.
And, luckily, my desire to call them higher coincided with what was happening in the marketplace: millions of service-based entrepreneurs waking up to a desire to be part
of something bigger. And I knew I was the one to help them.
Knowing my skills and talents went a long way to firmly establishing my Big Purpose.
But I’ll delve into that in my next post. For now, I want to emphasize the importance
of your audience in feeling your own purpose.
You are here to effect change. You wouldn’t have chosen your profession otherwise.
And you do have a purpose—and I firmly believe you have a Big Purpose. If you’re
not feeling it, take a hard look at those with whom you’re working now. In some way,
they are not igniting your spirit. Either call them to something higher, heal a deeper
pain, or change to an audience who wants either or both in direct proportion to
your passion for either or both.
Be sure to get on next week’s call: A Time to Lead: Do You Dare?
UPDATE: A relatively new client of mine wrote me the other day because she was
noticing a lag in her excitement. “I have moved away from “life interests” and into
more of a “business” market and am questioning what I am doing and why– forgetting
that it simply doesn’t excite me thinking about working with HR or executives to
bring my offering to them. It actually gets me to an icky place of, “Why bother?” I’ve
looked at our work so far and see that the only thing that needs changing is my target
market! Now, it is feeling GREAT!!”
Purpose is entirely linked to your target market!
