02  Finding your Purpose with Katie Newman

02 Know and Be Yourself

 

Welcome to this second video on how to build a purpose-led business. I’m really excited that this is something that you want to do and that you’re ready to invest time and energy in making it happen. 

 

You won’t regret it, running a purpose-led business is not only an amazingly rewarding and fulfilling thing to do, but it is also the foundations for a successful business. So, let me tell you a bit about how the next four videos are going to work. Well, in order to build a purpose-led business, you need four key ingredients, and in each of the next four videos, I’m going to be sharing with you what those ingredients are. 

 

So, in each video, we’ll talk about why that ingredient is important, what great looks like, and how you can start to build it into your business. I’ll also be sharing stories, practical tips and exercises along the way. 

 

So, by the end of this miniseries, you will be clear on what your purpose is, you will able to clearly articulate it and share it with others, you will understand how to build a business that achieves that purpose, and you will be completely motivated, excited and energised by what you’re trying to do, and will be looking at your business with completely fresh eyes. 

 

So, let’s go and make that happen. So, what’s ingredient number One? Well the first ingredient in any strong purpose-led business is you. You are your business, so your experiences in life, your values, your beliefs, your behaviours, your skills, your strengths, your weaknesses too, are going to heavily influence the business you create. 

 

So, in order to understand the purpose of your business, you have to first understand the story you have lived. I want to share a story with you about a girl named Caz. Caz grew up in a loving family with parents who always supported her and encouraged her to try new things. But during her school years they moved around, a lot. Her dad was in the Army and she was never in one place more than three years. 

 

This meant that on a regular basis she found herself that new kid in class, the one with no friends, the one feeling left out. She wasn’t bad at making friends and she learnt to do so quickly, but there was always that moment, at the beginning, when she knew no-one and felt really alone. As Caz grew up she found that she had a talent for baking, and that this helped her in making friends. Just like the kid who brings in a cake on their birthday, Caz started bringing in a cake on her first day, and marvelled at how quickly it broke down awkwardness between people and enabled you to start chatting.

 

When Caz left school, she knew that she wanted to bake full time, but she never forgot those experiences she had of how easy it is to feel lonely, but also how simple it can be to enable people to create powerful connections with each other. So, she decided to set up a cake making business and cafe, to provide other people with the opportunities to connect with each other through sharing cake, just like she had done. This is the short version of Caz’s story, but you can see how the experiences she’s lived of moving around, having to make new friends and feeling lonely have hugely influenced her and led her to be doing what she’s doing today. 

 

Now when we hear Caz’s story, we start to get a sense of what her values are: connection, kindness, community. And we can also start to pick out her strengths: baking, being able to form meaningful connections with people quickly, resilience. And we start to see the beliefs she holds which underpin what she does:

- A belief that as humans we all want to connect with each other, we just need to find excuses to do it

- A belief that food, and particularly cake, is a great leveller

- A belief that kindness is the best answer to any problem

 

Now identifying these values, strengths and beliefs are really important as the more aware you are of them, the more you can build them into your business and use them to create a business which truly represents you. 

 

So, to help you start to identify your values, strengths and beliefs, here’s the first exercise that I’d like you to do.

 

EXERCISE

Firstly, find a quiet place, free from distractions where you can be uninterrupted for fifteen minutes. Then I want you to get a pen and paper, (and make sure that you have quite a lot of paper that you can write on), and I want you to set a timer for fifteen minutes. Now when you press go on the timer, I’d like you to start writing, and don’t stop writing until the timer goes off. This is called free writing. And it is a wonderful exercise for enabling you to explore your deeper, hidden thoughts and feelings. 

 

There is so much valuable content that is stored in our subconscious that we don’t pay attention to. An exercise like this gives you an opportunity to let it all out. Now one of the really important things about free-writing is to just go with the flow, and not edit your writing as you go along.

 

 No one is ever going to see what you write, except you, so do not worry about grammar, spelling, or it even making sense. This is just going to be a stream of consciousness, that will take you where it wants to take you. 

 

So, approach it from a place of curiosity, and you will be amazed at what you end up writing down. Now the topic I would like you to write about, is your own story. You choose where this story starts, but it is the story of your life that has led you to this point where you are now, where you are either running or setting up your own business. 

 

Don’t worry if when you’re writing you go off on tangents, this story doesn’t have to be chronological, it can be a mixture of memories, reflections, questions to yourself, just go with where you feel your mind and pen want to take you. Just remember the two rules… don’t stop writing, and no self-editing whilst you’re writing. So, I’d love you to do this now. Pause this video, and then come back to it once you’ve done your free-writing, and I’ll give you the second part of the exercise. 

 

It’s really important that you do the free-writing first before you have the next set of instructions, so that you’re not focussing on anything else. So relax, enjoy it, be curious to see what comes up. And I’ll speak to you again once you’ve done it. 

 

Welcome back. How was it? I trust that you found it an eye-opening exercise, I certainly remember the first time I ever free-wrote being amazed at what had come out, all these thoughts and feelings and memories that had been buried within me suddenly spilling out through my pen. 

 

Equally, don’t worry if you found it awkward or difficult, it’s not an easy thing to write consistently for fifteen minutes and surrender yourself to just seeing what happens. But, if you completed the exercise, you should now have a good few pages of writing that in some way, shape or form tells your story of how you got to be doing what you’re doing now. 

 

So what I’d now like you to do is to take another ten minutes and read back what you’ve written. As you’re reading, I want you to look out for three things and list them separately. Firstly, I want you to look out for and list your values, secondly, I want you to look out for and list your strengths, thirdly I want you to look out for and list your beliefs. Read what you’re written as many times as you need until you have lists containing around three to five things each. Press pause now. 

 

Congratulations! You’ve completed the first step of creating your purpose-led business. You have articulated your values, your strengths and your beliefs. Take a moment and look at those lists you’ve made, hopefully they feel like a true and authentic articulation of who you are. 

 

Make sure you keep these lists somewhere safe but visible as we’re going to be revisiting these over the next few videos. You may also want to take the next few days to reflect on these lists, and update and tweak them until you’re really happy with them. When you’re ready, join me in our third video where we’ll be helping you to articulate your purpose. See you there.