Your Business Is Not Your Soulmate.

I’ve found the next perfect pyramid scheme I mean, network marketing opportunity to get involved with. It’s selling a magic pill for everyone who wants to become the most spiritual person they know. Those searching for the connection to the universe. Activating their highest self and living there. Awakening the Goddess within. Becoming at one with the universe.

It’s called ayahuasca.

Yes, I had to google ‘that hippie drug from Peru’ to even know what it’s called, because even though I’ve tried to convince you I’m cool, I’ve still got nerd inside me.

What? You haven’t heard of it? You’ve been sniffing essential oils instead? Oh.

Drink up for divinatory and healing purposes.

You’re laughing at me aren’t you? Think I’m ridiculous? Good. But that’s what you’re doing right now when it comes to success in your business.

You think in order to run a successful business you need to drink up some funky tea, download divine insights into your perfect purpose-led life and create your business from your ultra-spiritual experience. Or else.

You think you need to bypass being human and ascend into your business archetype. Or else.

You think you need to figure out your soul purpose, your reason for being here on this planet if you’re ever going to run a successful business. Or else.

Or else you may as well quit now, firmly place your tail between your legs and bail back to corporate.

Enough.

You’re not trying to launch a freaking space rocket to the star people.

You’re setting up a successful business.

That pays the bills.

So you can in fact live your life purpose.

Your business doesn’t need to be your soul journey to your life purpose to be successful.

Exhibit A: Me circa January 2014.

Let me take you back to the start of that year, when I was soooo over my business. The year prior was a constant search for ‘alignment’ and ‘life purpose’ with my work, to the point where my business was packing its suitcase, ready to bail on me.

Why? Because my business was sick of the pressure of being the only thing in the entire world that’s supposed to ‘ascend me to my highest self’, have me levitate off the floors and make all the money.

It seemed that everywhere I looked, and every piece of advice I got, people were warning me that if I didn’t consider my business to be my soulmate, as in I thought it was ‘the one’ and I was ready to get down on bended knee, marry it, start a family with 2.3 kids and move out to the suburbs, then it was going to fail epically.

Well, it turns out that trying to run a business that was supposed to be my soulmate just wasn’t working for me either.

Read: The. Money. Wasn’t. Coming.

And if you tell me it’s because I wasn’t aligned one more time, I will resort to throwing things at you.

Bottom line: I was over this ‘path’ to success. The path that said choose your business over your life, because if your business was aligned it would be all you ever needed.

Because trying to turn my business into my soulmate wasn’t making me money, I flipped the bird to that advice and looked at my business as an entity with the sole purpose of making me money so I could do fun things in my life.

I wanted my business to let me live my life. I didn’t want it to be my whole entire life. And the only way I knew how was to look at my skills. Actual skills I had accumulated over the 10 years of studying and working in the corporate world.

The rap sheet looked like this: Marketing skills. Communication skills. Copywriting skills.

And so I built my business around being a marketing consultant.

That’s it.

That’s all I cared about.

My life purpose, as far as I was concerned, was to have fun.

Some would say that maybe my business wasn’t aligned. I say it was aligned for a successful business model. Aligned to do everything I wanted, have all the fun, play hooky lots of days, travel multiple times.

Aligned to keep me entertained.

Aligned to keep making money.

Aligned to let me show up and become a writer.

Guess what? That ‘not so aligned’ route that I took worked, you guys.

I succeeded in creating a business that had nothing to do with my life purpose. And it was growing successfully.

Talk about being an anomaly.

No, I didn’t need some big dramatic life purpose reason and ‘why’ behind my business.

I had a business vision: make money so I can live life.

Vision complete.

The only thing I needed in order to complete my vision and set up and run a successful business was a skill. A skill I was confident in. Something I could sell.

Coupled with the determination to make enough money no matter what to go to NYC for a month.

And the additional skill in knowing how to communicate to my customers why I was the worthy choice.

Ta daaaaaaaaa. The recipe for business success.

Before I discovered my own secret herbs and spices, I believed my business needed to be my life purpose. In that pursuit, I burnt my business to the ground while searching for the perfect business vision.

Not physically because who owns a bricks and mortar business these days and can actually pull that off without the police getting involved?

Metaphorically speaking, I burnt it to the ground by giving it the finger and turning my back on it.

I didn’t show up for my business for a couple of months so neither did the cash. Or the clients. Or the community.

And fair enough, if I wasn’t showing up, why should they?

When I finally stopped trying to turn my business into a soulmate that was letting me down, and turned it into a business that makes money so I could live, I started showing up again. And after months off and no traction, I got paid exactly two weeks later.

So, how did I turn my burnt out ashes of a marketing business into a Dumbledore style phoenix and get paid in two weeks? I showed up and wrote about marketing every day. I wrote a new article, I pitched my services at the end, and I shared it.

With everyone.

I showed up. Every day. Writing. Sharing. There. Selling. Every day for two weeks.

No, I didn’t sit there dreaming of my life purpose. I showed up in my business, did my business activities, then shut the laptop down and got out there and lived my life.

So, dear spiritual coach, put down the ayahuasca tea and look at your business through the eyes of what skill you can sell today. Then get out there and sell it.

Save your divinity-seeking experiments for your fun trip to Peru instead of turning it into your business strategy.

The takeaway here is this:

If you’ve got some mad skills, such as knowing how to do taxes like the back of your hand, and it’s fun enough to do, you can make good money doing it and being your own boss too.

Sure, taxes aren’t sexy, but the money you see coming in when you’re at the spa at 10AM is.