It was a launch event in London – 240 women and maybe a dozen men, including myself.
Here was a room full of really successful business women. Leading teams, setting up multiple businesses, some consistently making 7 figures a year in revenue. And they were bigging each other up all day long. Referring to each other, offering help, suggestions, solving problems for others over lunch.
It was gorgeous to watch a room full of people not only flying high, but lifting others up. And not just other women – us guys too. Celebrating our wins, encouraging our struggles, sharing ideas and contacts.
I’ve been thinking about why it felt so different. And then I started wondering: what part of yourself do you leave at home when you walk into your business?
Bringing all of yourself to business
I’m going to use masculine and feminine as terms here. By which I mean the energy, the essence, the nature of each in totality. We all carry both. Nothing here is about gender identity, or putting one above the other.
My observation is that the feminine brings all of itself to what it does. It makes decisions, but it also considers all the aspects of the outcomes. To people, communities, values, perhaps even the planet. Nothing gets left at home. All the aspects of the feminine are interwoven, and are all brought to bear together all the time.
That’s what I felt in that auditorium. Serious decisions, made by people who clearly know how to win, and the whole of each person showing up to make them.
Why does that matter?
Because one of my core themes is design vs default.
Design is the deliberate choice of what you want, considering all the angles. Default tends to focus on profit, growth and winning. It lauds more, bigger, better. More money, power, influence, success – measured only by those criteria.
Those things aren’t wrong; business needs them. But on their own they’re only part of the picture. And the default is what you get when you only bring a part of the picture.
The approach I saw in that room seems much more aligned to design. Considering all the angles, naturally.
I know a launch event is set up to feel good and people bring their best selves. But you can’t fake a room full of people solving each other’s problems over lunch for no reason other than they can.
I think a lot of us leave something behind
I think a lot of business owners started out bringing all of themselves too. The values, the care and the reasons they started. And then, in all the busyness, they learned that success meant leaving some of that out.
Toughen up. Just focus on the numbers. Oh, and care a bit less, because caring reduces your profit.
I hear it all the time. I could grow faster if I stopped caring so much, but I don’t want to turn into one of those businesses. And yet success – as business usually defines it – requires exactly that.
So you grow, but it never feels quite right. Or you hold back from growing, because the only version of bigger you can picture is one you don’t want to become. Either way, part of you is left out.
What if that’s not the problem?
This room was the other way. Winning and warm at the same time. Successful and caring. Celebrating their own success, but not at the cost of another’s. And doing it all together.
So here’s my question for you: what part of yourself do you leave at home when you walk into your business?
The care you worry makes you look a bit soft, the part that feels “this isn’t right”, but bows down to the potential profit anyway? And what about the values you started with, but now feel you have to ignore to succeed?
Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s what’s holding your business back. It might actually be what your business is missing.
Being in that auditorium last week and feeling the energy of over 200 women doing business differently was wonderful. Winning, warm and inclusive at the same time. Life and Business by Design – in action.
If you recognise any of this, even a little, I’d love to hear what landed. Reply here or send me a message directly.
Neil