How Business Owners Have Focused Vision During CoronaVirus
Headspace & Vision
As the Coronavirus event continues, we have to be very protective of our headspace as entrepreneurs, maintaining a focused vision for our lives, and our business. This is a major event and we will come out on the other side. I encourage you, if you haven’t done it yet, to sit down and think about your vision for your business in the next two years. What do you want your business and your life to look like? How do you want to be experiencing your days? Get that picture clearly anchored in your mind.
In creating your vision, write about what is going on in your life and in your business, write in the present tense as if it’s happening. I have my vision for December 2021. I was reading through it this morning and I have to admit as I was looking at it, I was a little reluctant because I thought “it’s not going to be the same.” There is no way what I projected when I wrote it this past January. There’s no way that that’s going to happen by December 2021 given all the things that are going on right now. Then, as I started reading it, I realized it absolutely can still happen.
If I hold in mind how I want to be and my vision for what types of potential is being created in the worldover the next two years, we can utilize the circumstance that we’re in right now to move towards that vision.
Below I’ve captured some key pieces of my conversation with Sir Steven Wilkinson of Good & Prosper from my Facebook Live Series [March 23]
An Invitation to Be Strategic
What I want you to understand is we want to avoid the survival traps. The survival trap is where we make a short term decision that gets us through today or next week or the next two months. But that can actually take us very far off course from our vision. So, for example, as we look at how revenues are shrinking, it’s tempting to say, “Okay, I need to lay off team members and downsize drastically to get through” which may be an option for you. Are there other options that would move you closer to your vision? Because that may help you survive in the short term, but it may not be a strategy that gets you to your longterm vision.
So through this event, it’s going to be continual navigation between dealing with the now and the future. Hold in mind how you want to be, how you want to show up, and the kind of business that you want when you come out of this, you will make better short term decisions that serve that longer-term future.
Sir Steven Weighs In: Getting Our Arms Around This
“It’s been an enormously challenging two weeks for everybody. Number one, it’s been challenging on all sorts of different levels. Individual-level businesses are being severely, possibly even catastrophically impacted that pushes all our fear and flight buttons cause to go into overdrive and experience existential panic.”
“The second one is, trying to understand what’s happening in our economy. How can it be that two weeks ago we were a green market economy and now suddenly we’ve been mandated to shut down. Everybody just shut down, stop working.”
“That’s us. That’s every single one of us is now ceasing necessarily. Just getting your head around that fact is enough to blow several fuses in a normal brain. I mean I’m finding it really difficult just to comprehend how far we’ve come in the last two weeks.”
Sir Steven Weighs In: Conclusions
We’re not alone. This is not something that’s happening to you or to us or to a few people. It’s happening to everybody everywhere. We’ve never faced anything quite as significant in its speed or in the consequences of it for generations even in the run-up to World Wars, we’ve had more notice than this.
So I don’t think it makes any sense whatsoever to, to dwell too much on what, how we’re going to come out of this, how long it’s going to last. We are where we are and the only thing we can focus on is being as good as we can be today because things are changing so rapidly.
Recognize that it’s not about you. It’s not your fault. It’s not, it’s not any sign of weakness or failure. This is happening to absolutely everybody. And the conclusion that I’ve come to over the past couple of days is it doesn’t matter how this turns out, it really doesn’t. Because if it turns out well and it’s over soon (whatever soon means), then we will want to have been as good as we can possibly be during this time. And if it doesn’t turn out well, well at least you’ve tried.
Because it’s a system, it’s a systemic catastrophe. The system is also working really hard to make sure that the fallout for each individual is kept to a as small amount as possible. I mean, governments are actually realizing that small business owners are the backbone, the network, the nervous system of the entire economy. It’s not just a question of saving two or three airlines or one or two automotive manufacturers. This is impacting everybody. I think governments for the very first time are recognizing they’re going to have to throw a huge blanket over this to make sure that the delicate nervous system of the entire economy is not damaged beyond repair. Because they are doing that, I think we can be reasonably secure in the knowledge that whether it’s the best program or not, programs will be developed that will help us get through this. And as I say, what happens after that is not something we need concern ourselves with now. It really isn’t.
A Return to Community
Sir Steven continues, “I think the most important, thing that I would say following on from that is that we’re noticing across the world a return to community. The individualism that has been celebrated and enforced over the past, came to an end last week. We cannot afford to be exclusively individualist, we just can’t afford it. We are seeing that community is everything in these times. You’re seeing the positive side of people really going out of their way to helping each other, people being there for each other — recognizing this as something we have to get through together. There’s a sense of togetherness.
I reflected upon what Sir Steven said and I believe there is a rebalancing of our dominant discourse about entrepreneurship and work, especially in America. We have quite a focus on work hard, and if you’re an entrepreneur, work is everything and with what is going on now, the whole globe is making a shift towards work supports life.
We have to stop commerce in support of life.
That is a massive rebalance right there. There are lots of opportunities and good things in the midst of the stressors that we’re dealing with. And I really would encourage entrepreneurs and teams as you’re reading this, to be looking for how we can experience gratitude, as well as what are the wins and successes that are happening in our families and with our teams — the good stuff.
This is an excerpt from the Coronavirus Selfcare & Strategy Series, Episode 2. I hope you’ll find it useful for this and other major stressors, events, and changes as you navigate rough waters so you can truly lead your team, your business, and your life. To watch the full video, please click below.
Get in front of this now. Assess your level of entrepreneurial burnout and the health of your business. It’s time to get your life back!
Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist™ and author of the How to Hire the Best series is the founder of Tap the Potential. At Tap the Potential, we work to free business owners from the constant demands of a growing business. We believe work supports life, not the other way around. Through our proprietary Better Business, Better Life™ coaching program, we transform cash-sucking businesses into highly profitable, Great Places to Work, then send business owners on a 4 Week Vacation™ to celebrate that accomplishment. After the first year in our program, our clients have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank account than ever before.
