In the last blog I talked about what a heart-led business is. This time I’m going to focus on how you can go about finding your purpose and your WHY in order to build a heart-led business if you don’t already know what they are.
Your life’s core values
The keys to your sense of purpose are your values and beliefs. Ask yourself, What do I value in life? What do I believe to be true? Write down all the words and phrases that spring to mind. But don’t just take these at face value. Drill down further. Keep asking yourself Why? until you get to the core values at the heart of what you believe. You’ll know you’ve got there when you have a list of abstract nouns such as ‘freedom’, ‘truth’, ‘compassion’.
For example, I might think that one of my beliefs is that ‘reading is good’. But ‘reading’ is a verb, so that can’t be the core value I’m after. How about ‘books’? That’s a noun, but it isn’t an abstract noun (note: you can physically pick up a book, but you can’t do that to ‘freedom’, ‘truth’ or ‘compassion’). After drilling down further, it turns out that two of my core values are ‘creativity’ and ‘education’.
So what are your core values in life? Come up with a list of around 15 if you can. If you’re anything like me, you will easily end up with many more than this: the last time I did this exercise I wrote down 42 different words!
If you would like some inspiration when trying to come up with your life’s core values, you can download a free list of 99 here:
Your business WHY
In his book Start With Why, Simon Sinek claims that ‘people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.’ In other words, clients and customers are drawn to do business with individuals and companies or organisations that have the same beliefs and core values as they do. It isn’t enough to have these beliefs and core values, though; the key is being able to demonstrate them clearly in words and actions.
So, now that you have a long list of your life’s core values, look through it and underline or highlight those words that are relevant to your work. What are the beliefs that underpin your business or that you want to underpin the business you’re planning? These are your core business values, and they should be at the front of your mind whenever you write any business content or talk directly to your customers and clients.
In conclusion, knowing why you are doing what you are doing is a sure way to develop a passion for WHAT you are doing. This will then be so much easier to put into words and actions that will attract the people you want to attract to your service or product.
And that is the next step in the process of building a heart-led business: knowing who your ideal client or customer actually is.
This is what I will discuss in the next blog. In the meantime, if you’d like ongoing tips, advice and support, why not join my free community over on Facebook?
Alternatively, if you need more focused support in writing your business copy – whether it be for your website, your social media posts, or that book or course you’re planning – you can work with me on a 1:1 basis. I can tailor what I do to exactly what you need in your business, from planning your content, giving your writing a quick proofread, or even helping you to write your content completely from scratch.
Why not book in a free discovery call with me so we can have a good chat about what you are up to in the world and how I might best be able to support you?