When the Business You Built Doesn’t Really Speak to You
Some people come to business guidance with a business question. Others come with a life question dressed up as a business question.
Dan arrived with a lot on the table. Webinars. Personal coaching. A YouTube channel in a different field he loved. An old dream of opening a venue with events, talks, and atmosphere. And a lot of noise in his head about where to go next.
What was bothering him was not a lack of direction. He had direction – several of them. What bothered him was feeling scattered.
After he laid it all out, I asked him a simple question:
“What charges your battery?”
He did not understand.
“Like a phone running low – what plugs you in? What do you do and come out with more energy than you went in with?”
He thought for a moment. Then said: “The channel. When I sit down and film something I actually love, and it comes out well – I am flying.”
“And the webinars?”
A short silence. “Less so.”
I told him: “If the YouTube channel is what charges you – that is not a waste of time. That is part of what you are building. You do not need to choose between what you love and what you do for a living. You need to understand how much time each thing gets – and decide that consciously.”
One hour a week on the channel – does not interfere with anything. Three hours because you are fired up about a video – also fine. No chaos. Just a decision.
The second thing that came up was the old dream – the venue with events and lectures. The one he had been putting off.
I asked him: “You are postponing it – but is it completely dead?”
“No,” he said. “It is sitting in my head.”
“Then maybe it does not need to happen now. But it can get an hour and a half a week. Not to build it – to think about it. To sit with it. Not a business plan – just keeping the dream alive, without it weighing on you.”
He relaxed. Like he had been given permission for something that was already there.
The success in Dan’s story was not a new business plan. It was not cracking a revenue model. The success was a person leaving a conversation feeling like he did not have to choose between who he is and what he is building.
Sometimes, business guidance is really just helping someone remember that the business is supposed to serve life, not the other way around.
