What business are you in?

A successful business and life are based upon a coherent energy flow, clear boundaries and objectives, recognition of opportunity (when to allow, when to act), connection to self, and a good sense of humor.

Managing holistically means always placing your work within the context of your environment and your total life.

To make this success happen, you MUST have a good definition of what business you are in. I have talked about this before and will continue to as it is the most important decision that you will make. We spent a whole year at Harvard Business School looking at cases/examples of poor business decisions that came out of a lack of the management’s answering this question well.

The example I remember best from business school was from the movie theater business. *The concessions for buying snacks and drinks often represent the theater’s primary source of profit (snacks make up 20% of revenue but 40% of profits in the United States theaters, with a box of popcorn generating a profit of 85%). They were in the snack/food business not in the movie business in terms of their viability and thus determines the layout of most movie theater even today.

How you define what business you are in comes from how you measure success.

Most US corporations measure their goals solely in short term dollars earned, which leads to a very one-dimensional view of the world. For most of you, your business must include other additional measures such as time invested, social values, relationships, community, and long term impact. One of the beauties of defining your business well is that you built it on who you are and what you want to create.

I use the question of what business are you in just about everyday of my life to clarify both small and large decisions. Back in the late 1980s, I went through this process and decided that I am in the energy business – understanding energy, consciously living energy, and teaching energy. By energy, I mean the life force that is our world. Energy is the lens through which I see, make decisions, and create in every aspect of my life. It underlies everything I do – sometimes more consciously than other times and is still what business I am in today. It is the passion from which everything else flows.

I build the daily details of my decisions about my personal, spiritual, and business life by asking: will this feed me energetically or deplete me?

Will it increase my understanding of energy and/or financially support further exploration of energy. If I don’t know the answer, I dowse. Having a framework within which to make decisions makes it much easier to say no to all of those enticing side events that lead nowhere. This doesn’t mean that I don’t make crazy or last minute decisions with my energy, time, and money. I totally believe in the magic of the unexpected and unplanned. It just means I have a way to look at that decision so I can choose before I go too far down a path. Also, as one who tends to be a bit addictive, this helps me to steer away from burning out and/or eating too much when I am tired.

Another way of saying this is that in order to be successful your energy must be congruent with your goals. Your time, energy, and money needs to be allocated clearly toward what you want to accomplish with your life. Start at the top with a clean and concise definition and let the decisions flow from it.

This whole process is in a sense obvious, but no one does it because our minds become monkey mind and won’t stay focussed on the process of deciding what business you are in. This is why it is SO important to do this with someone else and to actually finish it. It is worth the effort!