Personal growth and solopreneurship has been a part of my adult life since the beginning. Over the years I have noticed many parallels between the two. Each involves confronting problems and greeting change to move forward toward a goal. There is one phase of change that stands out as the most difficult to tolerate.
The most challenging phase of change, whether it pertains to personal growth or entrepreneurial endeavors, is the period when we pour our time and money into addressing a problem or fostering growth, but are not yet at the stage where we can reap the benefits of our investments. This moment requires us to rely on blind faith, especially if it’s our first experience with the cycle of entrepreneurship or personal development.
Being in this situation is incredibly vulnerable and anxiety-provoking. It often feels isolating and lonely because there’s an inherent understanding that we’ve made a decision from which no one else can rescue us. We can and should ask for help, but the help is a “tool” not the solution or a rescue mission. This is the point where many people decide to abandon their efforts, thereby ensuring they never see the fruits of their labor.
Another difficulty with this stage of the cycle is the uncertainty regarding its duration. There are times when it’s necessary to recognize that the investment isn’t yielding results and to avoid falling into the sunk cost fallacy—sometimes things just don’t work out. However, when things are progressing and it’s appropriate to do so, it’s crucial to persist. This phase of investment and sacrifice will eventually end, and the individual will start to enjoy the rewards of their hard work and patience.
The phases of change for our purposes are:
Desire and Fantasy: This is where dreams take shape. You envision who you want to be or what you want to build. It’s the moment someone imagines their life sober or better at setting boundaries. For a business, it’s about identifying the problem you want to solve.
Decision to Start: Here, action begins. You start implementing self-help materials, drafting business plans, and conducting market analysis. It’s the crucial step from dreaming to doing.
Investment Period: Now, you commit significant time and resources to your dreams. You might hire a therapist or invest in essential business tools, employees, and equipment. In this phase, hard work happens without immediate rewards. In therapy, you delve deep, exploring and addressing core issues. This is when therapy feels like “it’s getting worse before it gets better.”
Promotion: With a solid foundation, you can begin reaching out. In business, this means marketing and attracting customers. In personal growth, you start experimenting and pushing your boundaries. This phase is often more rewarding because you start seeing the fruits of your labor.
Return on Investment: Finally, stability is achieved. Changes feel reliable, and you’re prepared for surprises and new endeavors. In business, you trust your operations. You might tweak marketing or services, but you have a product that people want and need, creating mutual reliability between your business and your customers.
Expansion: We go back to the beginning and fantasize about where we want to go next.
Ideally, we want to reach a point where we embrace each phase with confidence, knowing that each step brings us closer to our goals. While the Investment phase often trips people up more than the others, everyone encounters blocks at different phases for various reasons. In my view, someone has truly “arrived” when they no longer experience these blocks and take each phase in stride. They understand that there is no final destination. Instead, they embrace the process, focusing on honing it rather than trying to end it. This shift in perspective allows them to stop wasting effort searching for an endpoint and instead work towards making the ongoing process of investing and receiving more sustainable and, dare I say, fun!
