Plant for Profits: Want to be profitable and happy in your business? Get to know yourself!

Self Actualization as a Pathway to Businesses Success

Plant for Profits Column - Leslie F. Halleck

One of the most important keys - if not the most important key- to success in starting and growing a successful and profitable business is knowing yourself. Really well.

But wait, don’t good businesses always start with a good business idea or product? Not necessarily. Great ideas are only truly great when they can be manifested into reality under the right circumstances by the right people. Just because you have a great idea doesn’t mean you’re the right person to manifest it! As someone who spent years running other people’s businesses and handling their customers and clients, and more than a decade running my own business full time, I’ve learned that the great idea, product, or service - the what you’re doing - is not always the determining factor in professional success and profitability. Nor does a good idea always result in happy customers. More often it’s who you are, who you’re doing it for, and who you have to work with to serve them that determines your success, profitability, and happiness - or lack thereof. It’s the people, not just the product or service you dreamt up.

That means you, your personality, natural proficiencies, proclivities, and preferences are directly tied to the kind of business and customer that best suits you. This is typically not what new entrepreneurs who are dreaming of starting their own business - or business owners already in the muck - ever think about.

If you've worked with me as a business client or a student, you've likely heard me harp on the importance of authenticity and transparency. It's tough to project those things in your business if you haven't first gotten real with yourself about who you really are and how you want to work.

How do you want to work, and who do you want to work for and with? I’d argue this question may be more valuable to ask before you ever settle on your new great business idea. If you’re going to be in a long term relationship with customers, employees, your schedule, and work environment…shouldn't you at least like them?

Developing a business plan for either a new business, or an existing one that needs direction - or an action plan for a career transition, job project, or business project - requires defining specific measurable and time sensitive goals; as well as both strategy and tactics. Of course.

But, and this is what often gets left out, how do any of those specific measurable and time sensitive goals fit your personality?

If you’re in the business planning process, or need to refresh your existing business plan or brand mission and identity (or are job hunting) here are some less-common but more-important questions to ask yourself first (I’m sure you can come up with many more):

• What is your personality? Do you love working with people in person? Or do you prefer to stay behind the scenes?

• Do you want a lot of flexibility in your work schedule? Or are you ok being tied to a brick and mortar schedule?

• Are you a great team player, or do you prefer working independently?

• Do you like to travel for work? Or do you prefer to stay put.
  
  

• Do you delegate well? Or are you a control freak?

• Are you eccentric and independent? Or a social life of the party?
  
  

• Who do you want to serve, and what is their personality?

• Who do you want to work with to do so? What is their personality?

• How do you want to do it?

• When do you want to do it?

Often, when working with my clients or students on their botanical business - be it an idea or an existing business - these are questions they’ve not really spent any time considering. And once they do, they’re often confronted with the reality that what they thought they wanted to do as a business, does not at all suit them personally!

And you know what? That’s A-OK. In fact, the sooner you reconcile with your personality, how you like to work, and who you want to work with, the faster you’ll be able to make a profitable pivot to something that suits you best. That's part of path to self-actualization.

Remember that one of your strengths as a solopreneur or small-business is your ability to adapt and pivot quickly in response to external conditions, such as market shifts or changes in consumer demand. It also enables you to quickly reposition yourself and your business to better align with you, your lifestyle and goals.

You may have heard the old adage "Make the Plan, Work the Plan". I wholeheartedly agree with this approach, but with my own personal edit "Make the Plan, Work the Plan, Change the Plan". Plans aren't permanent and you can change them as you learn more, your goals change, or you need to pivot. So if in the process of self-discovery and self-actualization you realize you don’t really want to start that brick and mortar plant shop you’ve been dreaming about because you don't want to be tied down to a hard schedule, don’t get discouraged or beat yourself up. Making a new plan can be a little scary, but I often find people get themselves in the most trouble in green industry businesses when they are unwilling to change the plan. Just take a long look in the mirror...and change the plan.