New Directions: Doing Business for (a Small Bit of) Social Good

It’s easy to lose motivation to do something hard if the reason you’re doing it is unclear or misguided. Or maybe the vision is clear at the beginning, but then it gets fuzzy when you put pen to paper (perhaps even literally, like me). So, what then? Why keep going?

If I’ve learned anything from starting my business (I’m not even sure why I write “if”…I’ve definitely learned things…a LOT of things), it’s that the path is way more twisted and three-dimensional than I thought it would be. Left, right, U-turn, up, down. If you could see my internal turn signals, you’d think there was a tripped wire somewhere. But such is the reality of a self-starter trying to find their niche.

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I started my business with what I was going to do but didn’t have a clear picture of why I was doing it. Sure, I knew I wanted to do something different, work for myself, and follow my passion for writing. But those are all self-centered ideas, and while they motivated me to quit my job and start my own thing, they didn’t keep me motivated for very long.

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It took several weeks of conflicted feelings toward my business plan before I started to realize that I wanted something more for my business, to do more than just write and edit words as much as I enjoy those…