I will rise a thousand times, again
This topic was previously covered in one of my weekly newsletters. To get other timely tips, make sure you’re on the list: www.thejilljames.com/newsletter
In a moment of LA woo-ness, I attended a friend’s guided journaling and soundbath. (This retrograde double eclipse energy is no joke.) Many guests were entrepreneurs or senior executives. In sharing about elevating ourselves, we talked about what’s holding us back. As one senior executive said, it’s hard to elevate yourself in a competitive environment where you’re under the microscope. There’s no room for error.
But that’s not how change works. All change is disruptive, even change that elevates us. Elevating means breaking things. Those breaks might impact our relationships, team, paradigms, systems, and money.
So while I laid on the floor, buzzing with ideas, I also realized that I had to break some things. We think of growth as a process of gain, a chart that goes up and to the right. But a growth journey also comes with losses that deserve to be recognized, and perhaps even grieved.
Maybe you love everyone on your team as a person, but their skills just aren’t right for your next phase. When we care about people and value their contributions, it’s hard to ask them to move on. But, you might need different professional partners and advisors who’ve been through the next phase of your journey.
On the money front, change always takes a little longer and costs more than we had originally planned. It’s easy to get down on yourself when you’re over budget or missing your schedule. In the process of discovery, we’re going to learn things and need to adjust. You may know the Kubler-Ross Change Curve,Ⓡ which shows a negative outcome happens before a positive one. It’s the J-curve. Gains are preceded by losses.
Change is inefficient. What we don’t want is to make obvious, known mistakes or step on proverbial land mines. I joined last weekend’s event to benefit from expert guidance in navigating personal growth and to be introduced to new tools and ideas that might work for me.
It was challenging to sit in a room of strangers and be vulnerable. And I paid to put myself there.
If you’re considering a big change, there’s a benefit to having the support of someone who’s been through it before. Besides making the J-curve more shallow, it’s just nice to know you’re not alone in your entrepreneurial experience. If you’d like to talk about it with me, book a 20-minute Strategy Session.
On Another Note….
Understanding the Impact of Tariffs on Small Businesses
Ah, words, how easily you twist. What I see as elevation could be your nightmare of destruction. Your “Liberation Day” might be my going out of business sale.
You could take everything I wrote above, plug in the word “tariffs,” and watch it spew forth from the White House this week as just a little blip on the J-curve toward awesomeness.
The 10% blanket import tariffs enacted for April 5 will affect all of us. As individuals, they may cost American households as much as $5,200 in the coming year through price inflation. The US Chamber of Commerce, a conservative business group often stuck in 1988, even says tariffs are bad for small business owners, both in cost of goods and the inevitable wage inflation that comes with higher prices.
Is this destruction for a greater good? Are COVID-level measures of uncertainty the precursor to a little J-curve dip before everything gets amazing? Somebody evidently thinks so, although 99% of economists say otherwise and nearly all individuals and business owners will be negatively impacted in the immediate term. To be clear, this is the stepping on the land mine part. This is all stick, no carrot. Unlike COVID, this is not a black swan economic event that can’t be reasonably predicted. These policies are harmful and economically destructive and will have an impact on you over at least the next six months.
If you’ve been a reader for a while, you know what I’m going to say. Step up your marketing efforts. Build a bigger pipeline of leads. Shore up your budget and get a backup line of credit. Be open to opportunities. And contact your Congressional representatives. It will take an assertive shove from constituents, but they can still put the executive’s tariff power into check.
