Taking a Naturopathic Approach with Your Business
What’s Naturopathy?
Naturopathy is a blend of different therapies, all attempting to restore the body to health in the most natural way possible. Based on the idea that the body has the innate ability to fight disease, its techniques are noninvasive and designed to stimulate the body’s natural healing powers.
Naturopaths believe disease is not just a physical symptom, but rather a product of the mind, spirit and body. A consultation may include analysis of your medical history, lifestyle, diet, exercise habits, stress, relationships, sleep patterns, bowel habits and mental and spiritual health. The goal is to find the underlying cause of illness. They also assess a patient’s unique situation, paving the way to create optimal health, not to just treat disease.
Ok Soo…
Instead of covering up the problems in your business, take a naturopathic approach to get rid of the underlying problems – focus on correcting the source of the problem.
» Partnerships
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things never seem to get better between you and your business partner. You try and try and… try some more, but the heads just keep on bumping and the frustration continues to rise.
You may have a rockin’ business, but it’s not seeing it’s full potential because the partners – you guys – never seem to agree on anything as a result, the performance level continues to plummet and your clients inevitably suffer as a result.
Instead of trying to brush it off – while your business is suffering – why not just part ways and seek another partner – or possibly go solo. Some things just aren’t meant to be and the sooner you realize that, the better of you’ll be.
» Explaining your business
I see this time and time again: entrepreneurs creating these elaborate business ideas to create services that the entire world (not a selective group of people, which is the right way to offer a service.) and their mothers can use. Then when it comes down to explaining exactly what it is that they do, they themselves never even get it right (ahh…umm…let’s see…. Ok…), let alone the person who they are explaining it to (huh…what do you do?…).
Whatever happened to the word “simple.” It seems to have left the vocabulary of many entrepreneurs nowadays. You really need to dig through all the fluff, bells, whistles, and yadda-yadda features of your company and come up with a service that is so simple, that even the local pothead stoner who is in a constant state of confusion can understand your business without a problem.
» Your business is sick, so heal it
Like people, your business may become sick from time to time. In order for it to recover, you’ll have to spend the necessary time taking care of it and coaxing it back to optimum health.
Just as the naturopathic doctor doesn’t shove pills down their patients’ mouths in an attempt to temporarily alleviate the systems, you – as the business owner – just can’t slap on a new logo, write some jazzy new copy, or hire a new team to magically repair the problems.
It has to be deeper than that.
You have to analyze what’s going on inside your head, because it’s in your head where all of your decisions that reflect your company are made. The problems need to be located from within, before changes can be made and improvements can be seen.
The mind controls the body, true. But it also controls the business. It’s so obvious and such a simple concept, but at the same time, entrepreneurs get lost trying to solve issues that are products of bad decisions that were made without going back to the source – the mind – where the problems originated. Always go back to the source.
