Feb 18 2010
Your True Calling Inspired Business Startup
Published by Tom Volkar under Business Startup | 
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The old saying goes, he who hesitates is lost. That’s true but the hesitator is more than lost – he’s lying to himself.
If you’ve wanted to identify and start a true calling inspired business and haven’t by now. What’s your excuse?
Really what are you waiting for? I hope it’s not a small business idea that’s so brilliant that it arrives bathed in golden light on the wings of angels. That’s a myth. More good ideas come from observing mistakes than from epiphanies.
But to observe a mistake and extract the wisdom from it you’ve got to be willing to try lots of stuff so you make really good mistakes in the first place.
This post came from a mistake. Yesterday I started a teleclass with 8 folks on the line. It was called, Finding the Clarity and Confidence to Begin Your True Calling Inspired Business.
Halfway through the call all the participants got bumped off and I was talking to myself. I thought that a couple may have dropped off and the remaining folks were just shy about participating. I figured even if I were alone the recording would still take and I could send it out to folks. Nope. Later I found out that I had no audience and no recording.
So I re-recorded the call and simplified it down to the three necessary ingredients for a true calling inspired business startup and five ways you can start up your business today.
You might think you need a perfect startup business plan or at least a completed idea of what your business will look like but that’s not true. Believe that and you’ll never get started.
What you need for a successful business startup is to feel really good about it. That good feeling comes from the clarity and confidence to begin. If you’re through whining about risks and security and are ready to do something, listen to this recording and tell me what you think. Better yet – get started; humanity needs your expressed uniqueness.
[podcast]http://www.delightfulwork.com/audios/TruCallInspiredBiz.mp3[/podcast]
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Tom,
In November I started a business that I feel is my true calling and it is pet sitting. I love talking with the people and I love being able to responsibly take care of their pets and their homes.
I’m not sure that pet sitting can provide sufficient income to label as abundance.
Can a person have more than one true calling?
Myrna Fabrizio
@Myrna: I think our “one true calling” has a multitude of ways it can be manifested. You’re called to care for animals and one way you’re manifesting that calling is with pet sitting, but there are other ways you could build on you calling to supercharge your business. Perhaps you could also offer pet training and pet owner training. Perhaps you could market products that you’re inspired to design or love to use in the course of caring for pets. If you brainstorm on your “true calling” you can discover the wide range of ways you can bring your calling into your business and combined there is a great potential for abundance in finances, and abundance in all other things too.
@Tom: I’m looking forward to listening to your audio. I’ve often believed that when we’re faced with hiccups, like the crash of your call, it is the universe showing us that we can do things better. It’s an opportunity to improve. In writing, there is rewriting, but in life we’re rarely take the time to rewrite, to do over. So, sometimes the universe create opportunities for us to do just that.
Rebecca Laffar-Smith´s last blog ..Kat O’Reilly On Writing Romance
Myrna – Welcome! I believe that there is one true calling for each of us but that calling definitely evolves over time and keeps coming up in different ways. So Rebecca’s answer to your question is spot on. I like to help folks determine the over-riding mission of their calling. For example, my mission is to enhance vocational clarity and end the under-earning that comes form vocational confusion. So all of my coaching, workshops and products serve that mission and answer my one true call. To determine your mission look for that one big actionable cause that you really care about bringing forth in the world. Brainstorm like Becca suggests by asking yourself what are all the ways I can bring this calling forth.
Rebecca – Welcome. Thanks for giving such a wise answer to Myrna. I agree that mistakes are a very good thing. It could be an opportunity to improve as you say or they could show us an entire new direction for opportunities we were previously blind to. Bottom line without mistakes we just aren’t putting enough stuff out there to stumble into the good.
Hee hee. I love the idea of a business inspiration arriving on the wings of angels! I think most people would also like a written guarantee from the Universe: “Do THIS and you’ll definitely be successful.”
I agree with you about learning from good mistakes! Creating a successful business is about making course corrections … and that’s impossible if we’re not moving to begin with!
Love what you said about creating a “third-place dream” too!
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea Hess|Empowered Soul´s last blog ..Manifesting and Dimensional Rules of Creation
Rebecca,
Thank you for your wonderful ideas.
Tom,
Many thanks for this teleseminar and for your comments. I’m looking forward to brainstorming to see what comes up.
Myrna
Ah Tom… your failed recorded call is a perfect example of what you are all about. Because you are clear about your vocation you saw past the ‘mistake’ made beyond your circumstances and just redid it a different way.
That’s how I was raised. If something’s not working one way, do it another, limited only by what’s morally right and what’s possible. (And what’s possible is unlimited.)
Our purpose (calling) is what wakes us up and energizes us to action. I think the confusion comes when we’re unclear about the vehicle for realizing that calling. We confuse the calling with the vehicle. And that’s where the brainstorming comes in. Some call it mind-mapping, or looping.
I LOVE what you wrote above: humanity needs your expressed uniqueness.
It’s like, if someone needs permission, you just gave it to them!
Thanks… think I’ll read more of what you offer here.
Barb Hartsook´s last blog ..Do Sports Teach Kids How to Live Life Beyond the Game?
Some great observations and comments here!
It is so common to think that you must have every exact detail pegged down before beginning your venture. In reality, starting out with a passion and purpose is like a mother duck getting her ducklings in a row…. you’ll notice that the little ones don’t all line up perfectly behind her before she starts walking… nope.
Mother duck starts walking or swimming and then the ducklings naturally fall into line. Put’s a new light on ‘getting your ducks in a row’ to do something.
Just get started and be prepared to adjust course as life presents opportunities
Hi Tom,
I’ve begun.
I like the approach of establishing the requirements. I like the groundedness of this.
I think discipline rarely works – it is great for getting through emergencies but is draining long term.
I think my one true calling has to do with wholism – it cuts across the ‘silos’/compartments that things are put in. Not sure how to communicate this yet. The most concrete way I have of saying this is that I am interested in health rather than just one part of it (food, exercise, thinking, feeling, relationships, whatever).
My big course correction so far is moving from hoping to make money from my blog directly to using it to build an audience and credibility and make money other ways. At the moment selling eBooks, later on (when I’ve moved cities and settled into a place to live) offering live calls (an idea that I got from being on one of your calls, Thanks!)
Thanks for the audio, I liked it a lot.
Evan´s last blog ..Personal Development for Smart People
Andrea – Yep movement is key to everything. While moving we see stuff and while moving the mistakes are so frequent that we don’t stop long enough to over-think them. It requires some getting use to but speed to action can be a very good thing.
Myrna – Glad you like the recording. Keep asking yourself for each tip. How might I apply this to my business?
Barb – Welcome! Thanks for your kind words of support. Humanity does need each of us to express to fulfill our blessings of uniqueness. I hope it acts as permission for others. Imagine a world where more of us are eager to serve gloriously.
Cathy – Welcome! Another action gal! Absolutely I’m in tune with your comment. Nature doesn’t sweat small adjustments. Nature just breathes and evolves. We can as well but as thinking individuals we can evolve mush more rapidly through choice.
Evan – Thanks for your supportive comments on discipline. You may be surprised to know that few have the courage to say what you did. Yet I don’t see it working long term for folks either. Regarding your wholistic approach, that’s a good fit for you. Perhaps you could keep digging into the well of understanding why that speaks to you so much. Glad you took the time to listen to the audio. It is well structured and grounded and anyone will find at least one approach on it that will work for them.
> More good ideas come from observing mistakes than from epiphanies.
Well put, and I agree, clarity and confidence are the keys (as well as an ability to deal effectively with ambiguity and risk.)
J.D. Meier´s last blog ..Three D’s for Motivation – Direction, Decision, and Dedication
Hi Tom — thanks for that share — I know that happened to me on an (attempted) teleseminar too! It’s funny, I (and I imagine others) tend to fear that this sort of thing — a logistical foulup — will happen, but when it actually does it becomes clear that it’s not a big deal.
J.D. – Yes indeed being able to effectively deal with risk and ambiguity with confidence and without attachment is quite a skill.
Chris – Yeah, what are you going to do. Stuff happens and we respond. It probably won’t be the last time but this time everybody wins. Keep making that lemonade.
Hi Tom!
Really like the phrase “true calling sweet spot” in your recording. That says it all. I think of a true calling as some activity that coalesces all the threads of one’s life into a flexible and strong rope upon which one can pull in a fortune with meaning or meaning with an attached fortune.
In a sense, it is like what Jung called individuation. This is the process of giving expression to all the parts of oneself.
As we postulate that we each have a true calling that is ether discovered or yet to be discovered, we are true to our own individual uniqueness.
Whatever that is, that is the “sweet spot” and it is unmistakable if we resonate with it.
Hi Tom, thank you for this post. I wrote you for the 9, and I did answer that question for myself in this recording.. and I can see the sweet spot.. I have a few more ideas that are surfacing.. I’m just trying to silence the horrible inner critic not of the ideas but in general. so much judgment of self keeps arising. The last conference I had participated in with you was so helpful and I got far! 1/2 way through the part 1: project I am working through and it was going great then I got a bit dried up the last week.. but I am pushing again for the next 1/2 the same and then this new sweet spot that became more clear in doing that 5 min exercise is the part II so I am getting somewhere.. just pushing the waves right now. or I guess I should say, learning to become one with them. Jenn p.s. I appreciate your help so much lately with blogs, recordings, conferences etc.. it is great! I feel so blessed and say “Thank you!” again!
Jenn´s last blog ..Workshop 3 of 10: Opening the Door: When Love Satisfies