Internal struggle
Ask yourself this question: what is my core business?
It is always difficult to pick up the mirror and look at yourself critically. However, if you want to find out what makes your business tick, you have to. Ask yourself what is your strength and what is your weakness? How can you work with your weaknesses or adapt and turn them into strengths? Where do you want to go in the future? What you enjoy doing at the moment?
I've learned so much and I am still learning something new everyday. But is that my greatest strength? A sum of all the things I've learned? Or is it merely a set of tools that I've taken and made my own, just so I can do one core thing better than before? Have I twisted the information I've gathered into skills that I can purposely use for one core business?
In the last month I've joined the cooperation Founded By All. A community that thrives on co-creation, helping each other and standing strong together. I joined the cooperation because I've longed for a spot where I can focus my business; a place where I can freely spit ball ideas; a community where like-minded others come together. In the last weeks they have challenged me to find my core and helped me along the road to get there.
Founded By All is a cooperation built out of creative businesses, or shall I say creative people. For is it not that a business is just a giant reflection or amplification of a persons character? With his flaws and strengths? Perhaps this why I have found it so hard for me to focus on my business. I've seen 'it' as myself rather than a business. I find myself turning to others to sort me out, to tell me what I should do and who I am. While the only person who can answer all the questions is me.
Recently I've been struggling with these questions. I have come to realise that even though my business is a direct reflection of my personality, it is also a business. Therefore it has a character on its own. A character surely based on mine, but also one that my target audience can see and identify with. I have come to learn how to see these two characters separately. Not as a front and a back, but linked or linear. They are separate but closely connected. I realised that looking at another character is easier, rather than looking at my own flaws. I am successfully objectifying things that run round in my head.
From this point of view I am starting to understand the core business of my company. And by the link that it has with my own personality I'm indirectly learning and strengthening myself. Maybe I have found a solution to critically looking at myself, by seeing my personality as a business, an independent character.
I'd like to thank my colleagues at Founded By All for giving me strength. Picking up a mirror requires courage but suggesting someone should pick that mirror up requires loyalty and devotion. Thank you for believing and supporting me. I feel like I have come home.