Growing a business is a personal-development program with a compensation plan attached. It brings up visibility, money, rejection, experimentation, relationship, and the end of relationships—often in the same week.
The primitive brain may interpret every person who appears as someone we must please. That makes an already uncertain process exhausting.
A viable business is built around fit: the people we serve well, the problems we genuinely address, and the forms in which they actually want help.
Ask Before Building the Whole Thing
A heartfelt idea can still miss how people want to receive it. Talk to those you hope to serve:
- What are they struggling with in their own language?
- What have they already tried?
- What form, pace, and price feel usable?
- What would make an initial experience easy to consume?
- What outcome would help them know the work mattered?
Listening is not surrendering creative leadership. It is letting the relationship inform the offer.
Not Every Visitor Is Your Client
Someone can ask for help you do not provide, want a style that is not yours, or require more support than the offer contains. Saying no protects them from a poor fit and protects the business from promises it cannot fulfill.
The aim is not to become appealing to everyone. It is to become clear enough that resonant people can recognize the value.
Tapping: I Have to Make This Work for Everyone
Side of the Hand: Even though business exposes me to visible experiments, something not working is information—not a public verdict on my worth.
Even though I want to help everyone who asks, clear fit is part of ethical service.
Even though asking customers what they want feels vulnerable, relationship can improve what I create.
Top of the Head: I have to get the whole offer right.
Eyebrow: People may think the idea is silly.
Side of the Eye: A no feels like rejection of me.
Under the Eye: So I keep building without asking.
Under the Nose: Or try to serve every person who appears.
Chin: My primitive brain wants certainty and belonging.
Collarbone: I can give it smaller experiments.
Under the Arm: Clear feedback can guide the next version.
Top of the Head: Who is this genuinely for?
Eyebrow: What do they say they need?
Side of the Eye: What can I provide with integrity?
Under the Eye: What is outside the offer?
Under the Nose: I can make the first step useful and easy to experience.
Chin: Trust grows through repeated contact.
Collarbone: Fit matters more than universal approval.
Under the Arm: I can grow the business through service, learning, and clear boundaries.
Take a breath. Choose three people who resemble those you hope to serve and ask one open question before refining the offer.
Let Experiments Stay Experiments
Some ideas that seem certain will fail. Some modest tests will work for reasons we did not predict. A business needs enough emotional resilience to learn from both.
Use appropriate legal, tax, and financial guidance. Emotional clarity supports business judgment; it does not replace professional advice or market evidence.
Session Audio
This Guide was adapted from a Thriving Now session with Rick Wilkes and Cathy Vartuli, recorded March 12, 2014. The transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.