Finding your Life Purpose to Start a Business.

Have you ever considered?what your life could be like?if you started a business?

Not just any business.?

A business you love, one for which you spring out of bed in the morning to run it, to grow it, to create for it.

I am lucky that the first business I started when I was 25 (a spa) and this current one -?OPEN FOR BUSINESS?- are two ventures that have taken my heart, soul, and brain.

Here, I want to share why these two businesses led me to love my life as a small business entrepreneur. One word:?purpose.?It is not passion for a hobby or an activity. Passion is what we do for ourselves because we enjoy what it does for us. Like hiking, running, yoga, art, surfing, knitting, golfing, etc.

On the other hand, our purpose is what we do for others and the reasons we do what we do. Our purpose is how we make an impact. It is what makes us face adversity and obstacles with persistence and faith. If "purpose" were an emotion, I would call it "true love." True love is long-lasting, giving, forgiving, and resilient. Passion alone isn't.

These businesses fueled my deeply seated purpose in life, my "Big Why," as Simon Sinek calls it in his book "Start with Why."?

These two businesses became the HOW to my WHY. They evolved into instruments or vehicles that served my purpose.

I started my first small business more by survival than design when I was a 25-year-old recent European immigrant, determined to pursue the American dream. The motto of the business was?"Making the world feel good."?Well, it was a spa, after all. Today my seasoned businesswoman self would call this "a unique value proposition."?With a team that grew from 1 to 40 employees, we created a haven of relaxation for our stressed-out Silicon Valley women, men too, but mostly women, who juggled their competitive careers, and their social lives while growing families, trying to be all-around "Wonder Women."

It was through this first business that I discovered small to mid-size business (SMB) entrepreneurship as the ultimate vehicle to having the freedom to live how we want by prioritizing?who?and?what?matters the most to us. I bootstrapped it when I was young and inexperienced and made many costly mistakes. Yet this small biz venture still managed to grow to multi-million dollars in yearly revenues. Over the two decades that I grew this company, I realized that I loved "small business" more than the spa business itself. Hence I moved on to a new chapter with my current company.

Today's business is truly in sync with what I believe. It is about helping people?craft their life by design with the right business for that ideal life. Fundamentally, the theme and purpose are similar to my "origin" business. It is still about?making the world feel good. Only now, it is about the freedom to prioritize our time based on WHO and WHAT matters the most to us, the best way to have a fulfilling life in my experience. This company's unique value proposition (UVP) is summed up in the framework that guides our coaching services, digital membership, and courses:?"Start the right business to live the right life."

The big lesson.

A critical component of success with a business you own is to begin by picking a business that is aligned with your life purpose, priorities, and values. It takes introspective work to gain awareness of what propels us from the inside.?

But once you find it, it is powerful.

It is more powerful than how much money you have to start a business and more essential than your skills and experience. I am a walking example of it. When I launched my "origin" business several decades ago, I had no formal education in business, just a high school diploma. I had dropped out of college and had quit my tedious life as a corporate worker-bee in Paris to see the world and visit America on a shoestring. When I made the wild and hell-bent decision to live in the US, I had little savings and was a new immigrant with limited command of the English language. Against all odds and with hard work to fix my countless mistakes, the business grew to a successful 4,000-square-foot brick-and-mortar service and retail location, later including e-commerce, that supported my ideal life in a country I love. All because I had picked?the right business?that leveraged who I was at the time and how I wanted to live. Years later, the business also gave me the freedom and time flexibility to check an important item on my bucket list: finishing college.

I share this personal journey to illustrate that if a clueless, inexperienced young immigrant with limited resources and broken English can do it,?anyone -?with?the right business?aligned with purpose-?can succeed as a business owner.?

I had stumbled upon my life purpose along with the business as a vehicle to actualize it. At 25 years old, I didn't consciously pick the right business for me. It was mostly by intuition. Years later, after I had become a business coach and mentor, I learned why most businesses don't last beyond two years. They are built on a flimsy foundation from the beginning. By working with and interviewing countless unhappy business owners and examining the causes of their dissatisfaction, I created and developed a formula to start any business on a solid foundation for success. It is a shortcut that leads the owner to faster profits and a happy entrepreneurial life. The formula is titled?Right Business Right Life?. Through a four-stage framework and our coaching services and digital courses, it guides new entrepreneurs to research, vet, plan, and launch the ideal business for who they are and for the life that they desire.

Should you even want to start a business??Great question. On the first Saturday of each month, I host a free?Q&A event?on starting a business. The goal is not to convince you to start any business. The goal is to field your questions and share resources and ideas to help you explore if and how starting (or buying) a business might be right for you.

To save your seat for the next event, click?here.

If we haven't met yet, I'm Patricia Bottero St-Jean. I am a fan of the freedom and flexibility that can be earned with a business you own. The truth is that I love small to mid-size businesses because I love freedom. As a business coach, I founded?OPEN FOR BUSINESS, a start-a-business lab and coaching agency, when I realized that a great cause of business failures stems from new owners who started their entrepreneurial career without doing the right research or who were sold the wrong business. I created the?Right Business Right Life??step-by-step formula to guide aspiring business owners in early-stage research and vetting their ideal business.

If you wish to begin your entrepreneurial career on a solid foundation for success, let's discuss your vision of your career as an entrepreneur and the steps you'll need to succeed with?a free discovery and strategy call?to brainstorm your business idea.

Patricia Bottero, MBA, Business Startup Coach. [email protected] OPEN FOR BUSINESS