Using Mindfulness to Know What Type of Business to Start

It’s the million dollar conundrum. You want to start a business but you’re not sure what type of business to start.

Do you create an agency, tech company, product, side hustle, or all of the above?

This is a predicament many businesspeople repeatedly find themselves in, so much so that it often leads them to overthinking, which in return often leads to experiencing bouts of inactivity.

So how do you know what business to start? How do you know you’re making the right decision? It all starts with using mindfulness in the following ways.

1) Use mindfulness to think about what you want to spend the rest of your life doing.

Let’s say you’re feeling sick today and you’ve taken the day off from your work. You can’t go anywhere because, well, you’re sick. And you can’t really do anything physical because the doctor said you need rest. So you open up Netflix. What movie are you going to watch? What if you only had enough time to watch one movie? You’re probably going to pick something fun, mindless, engaging, or complex. It depends on who you are and what you like. In other words, self-awareness.

That’s kind of how people treat life, or in this case, business.

Do you want to spend your career doing something fun, mindless, or complex?

It all depends on the life YOU want. So spend some time getting to know yourself better before you embark on a journey in business.

2) Think about what would make you happy and who you would want to work with.

Some businesspeople want to do fun things by themselves. Maybe that’s why they start a travel blog that turns into a business and then travel the world on nomadic adventures and have fun each and every day.

Some business folks want something high stakes, something productive and complex that challenges them each and every day. Maybe that’s why they go into tech.

Additionally, some businessmen and businesswomen love interacting with people. They love helping people and fueling their growth. This would explain why some take the route of creating events and conferences or work in the event industry. For a scope of what this could look like, at least from a research standpoint, take a look at this full list of digital marketing events in the D.C. area.

All in all, you need to make a decision about what you want to do and with whom. It doesn’t have to be the actual business you want to run, merely the type of business – that’s all.

3) Think about how much stress you’re actually comfortable handling.

This sounds like a crazy thought but it’s pretty tangible if you think about it.

At the end of the day, business is very stressful. You have to deal with a lot of factors in your control and a lot outside of it. You’ve got competitors, product issues, staffing constraints, resources, the environment, the economy, etc. It’s a lot.

So when you think about what type of business you want to start, you should really think about how much stress you want to deal with in your life.

If you genuinely don’t want to deal with a lot of business stress, then long story short maybe business isn’t for you. Maybe a side hustle would be better. There’s less risk involved and there’s less of a commitment.

Conclusion

Mindfulness can be a great resource when it comes to reflecting on what you feel is important in your life. It’s also a great resource for determining what type of business you want to build. Spend your time thinking about the area you want to focus on. It doesn’t have to be exact place, just the “area.” Then take action and move forward. At least then you would have completed your homework about yourself and your wants. From there, it’ll all be about growth!