5 big shifts you can make to create more impact without burnout in your purpose-led business, and be a leader in the transition towards more flourishing futures for all.

Do you often feel lost, overwhelmed or uncertain about your direction? Lacking clarity, confidence, even though your business is successful. 

You’ve hit six figures, or are well on your way. But are living with an increasing sense of uncertainty that keeps niggling and tugging at you.

Perhaps you feel like something is missing, there’s an emptiness, a longing or both. You can’t quite put your finger on it. Find the right words to describe it.

You also know you’re ready to move on. You’re done with getting stuck in cycles of burnout, being wedded to your laptop and not having time for kids, creativity, exercise or to simply to enjoy your home. 

Maybe you are worrying about the ‘how.’ 

Struggling to know what your next move looks like in practical terms, including money. Especially as the main breadwinner or with an equal share of the finances in your relationship.

Whenever you do get glimpses of your next move, next offering – or the kind of life you truly want to be living and leading on – you question yourself: ‘Who am I to do or say this thing?’ 

It feels big, like something wants to be birthed through you. The energy is powerful yet you can doubt yourself, like you don’t have enough experience or expertise. Or that people in your industry, including flagship clients, aren’t ready to hear what you have to say.

Since this can be such an uncomfortable place to be, what I’m going to say next might sound quite strange. Yet, from working with smart, ambitious, driven founders and leaders like you every day, I know these are signs you’re actually on the right track. 

You’re on the cusp of something quite beautiful – and beauty is needed more than ever right now. 

You haven’t done anything wrong, you’re not out of alignment, and you haven’t compromised on your values. Far from it, you’re intuitively picking up on critical shifts that are happening within yourself, in business, the world.

Your own sense of uncertainty is mirroring the global sense of uncertainty, upheaval, and dissolution. Which, as hard as that is, has the potential to be a powerful ignitor of change.

Like the season of Autumn, the premenstural phase of the menstrual cycle, or perimenopause, the old stories and ways of being are beginning to loosen, fall away and shed so that – after a period of darkness, wintering and composting – a rebirth can happen.

Individually, collectively.

So, what do you think? Are you willing to be an island of hope? A beacon? A wayfinder for others who are experiencing the same within your industry? 

If the answer is yes, here’s 5 big shifts you can make to create more impact without burnout with your purpose-led business – and be a leader in the global transition towards more flourishing futures for all.

Sales & Marketing Your Way 

Your entrepreneurial skills are going to stand you in good stead as you shape new offerings and pivot your existing business towards thought leadership and industry-wide change. 

Perhaps even set up a second alongside business which enables you to share your gifts and unique lived experience in diverse and fulfilling ways. 

The difference is that, this time, instead of spreading yourself too thin – or hiding for fear of burning out again – you get to do sales and marketing your way.

Sustainably, regeneratively. Which means:

• Knowing who you are, where your strengths are as a leader, and what marketing strategies are going to be most energising and effective for you

• Addressing any money shadows head on and deciding what what you want to contribute to the economic conversation going forward

• Blending long term and short term online strategies with in person strategies that build real relationships

• Regularly resting and tending to your nervous system so that you’re moving through personal and business evolution without collapsing.

Be More Human

Avoid buying into the fear around artificial intelligence (AI), also knowing that it’s going to get harder and harder to out compete machines. 

Instead harness AI to do functional things that keep business costs down and make systems, processes, project management and content creation quicker and easier. 

At the same time, look for the ways in which you can add value at a human scale. Dial up the things in your business that AI can never replicate, including:

• In person community and authentic, meaningful connection

• Personalising offers, giving generously and pricing so you can over deliver without over stretching yourself or your team

• Practising mindful presence and deep listening in business relationships so you can foster courageous spaces that increase creativity and innovation

• Hand holding so clients can implement, action and see things through to completion

• Case studies and testimonials to build trust in your products and services.

Back to Nature

The current economy is based on extraction of human and natural resources.

It can feel relentless, overwhelming and disempowering when you think about the size and complexity of the issues from climate justice and biodiversity collapse to decolonisation and social justice, and so much more.

Amidst all of this, even if they don’t consciously recognise it, people are craving Nature. While the cliche is true, if you love something, you will protect it.

If you can inject more Nature into your business, you will not only improve your own mental, physical wellbeing and sense of connection to the more than human world, you will also be fulfilling an unmet need in your team and clients. 

Which will add to the sense of connection people have to you and your business. People love to feel good, and people feeling good about you and your business is good for sales.

Start by building more nature into your own life, and then into the way you and your team do business. For instance:

• synching your business strategy with the seasonal cycles

• take meetings and events outdoors into green and rewilded spaces

• look for creative ways to do your everyday work in a natural setting

• make sure your leadership development incorporates nature connection.

Big Picture Activism 

Activism and business aren’t two words that have sat well together, but that’s changing.

People are done with thinking there's something wrong with them. It’s making them unhappy, lonely and depressed. Or just stuck in a self-improvement loop that can end up feeling just as frustrating.

By including big picture activism and education in your messaging, you can help your clients understand how they’re impacted personally and professionally by the dominant system.

You can then show them how your business can help them to not only solve their problems but also to be part of wider systems change. 

Addressing root causes rather than fixing symptoms.

In a non-depressing way, you can shed light on the issues that feel most relevant to your business such as patriarchal capitalism, Western education, colonialism or greenwash. 

When you address one thing, you’ll start speaking to everything that’s interconnected. 

Collaboration and Connection

Social media algorithms love polarising posts that emphasise separation, competition and ‘better than-ness’ but you don’t have to play that game. 

It’s exhausting and, ultimately, serves no-one. 

When you are confident in who you are, what you do and the value your business brings to the world, you can stop positioning yourself in opposition to others and start looking for points of connection and potential collaborations. 

In doing so, you will have to face your own emotional wounds, shadow, fear, scarcity, have uncomfortable conversations – and be an imperfect role model! 

Thing is, you don’t have to be perfect. What’s more important is your:

• Curiosity and compassion, for yourself and others

• Willingness to have a go, experiment, f*ck up, be wrong

• Capacity for awe, wonder and belief in something bigger than your individual self.

This will enable you to take a more collaborative approach, expand your network, and reach more people with your business. While also having more fun, being stronger together. 

In a sea of unrest, you can be an island of hope that calls your people in, shows them how business can be in service to life. For better, for the long haul. 

It starts with you trusting yourself, and going in the direction of what makes you feel most alive. And then welcoming and accepting uncertainty and discomfort as par for the course.

Signs that you’re on your path, becoming the leader you were always meant to be, leading the change within your own life, as well as within your family, business and community.

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