I’m a great lover of the inner child. We all have one, but for many of us through the process growing up, we’ve lost touch with this magical and valuable part of ourselves.
However there are many things we can learn from children about how to go about life. In this article I explore three things five year olds can teach us about running a businesses.
Make it digestible
Your brand messaging works best when it is easy to understand. To help us, we can imagine we are speaking to five year when crafting our copy.
As we write about what we do, it can be tempting to speak in elaborate language to try to sound impressive. However, this can end up making it harder for people to understand how we can help them.
If someone has to expend too much of their focus (i.e. brain calories) trying to understand your message, you will likely lose them. How you speak about your offering is their first taster of it. So if you speak in a way that makes things difficult for them, they will see your offering as difficult.
We want to make their experience as easy and fluid as possible. Therefore simple, clear and tangible messaging is best.
Action Plan:
Think about how you would explain to a five year old what your business does. (If you have a spare five year old hanging about like a niece or a nephew – even better! Actually speak to them.)
The goal is to speak about your offering in a way they understand, and even think ‘wow, that’s cool!’ This is not your final brand copy by any means, but it is a foundation to build upon. Remember to keep it:
- Simple – Don’t use too many long sentences or elaborate words, and avoid repeating yourself.
- Tangible – Explain abstract ideas by saying how they would look or feel for a person in real life.
Make it manageable
Growth is more fluid with a plan that’s manageable, rather than triggering. So much business advice out there is about pushing. Pushing through difficulties, pushing through work, pushing ourselves into discomfort.
Whilst perhaps helpful for some, this energy is more in the masculine, and may actually create resistance for others. Especially if you are highly sensitive or have more feminine energy.
This is because the pressure to push through can sometimes be so overwhelming that we don’t move forward at all. Or we push ourselves to do things that aren’t right for us, just because others are doing them (or saying we should do them). What we’ve then pushed ourselves into either doesn’t help us grow at all, or takes us to a version of success that doesn’t make us happy.
Instead, we can create a path forward for ourselves with small steps, just as we would with a five year old. This can help us grow not only with more ease, but more quickly too!
By having small steps to take, rather than a giant leap, we’re much more likely to actually move outside of our comfort zone. As we do, we get a feeling of accomplishment that acts as a positive reward, thus encouraging us to do more of the things that help us expand. Through this we show ourselves that we can move forward, enhancing our belief in ourselves.
Action Plan:
If you have a goal that feels difficult, overwhelming or triggering, or that you’ve been putting off for ages, break it into tiny steps. In fact here, the tinier the better!
Grab a pen and paper, on the left side write where you are now and how you are feeling. On the right side write where you want to be and how you want to feel. Now draw a bridge going across, including all the small steps to get from one side to the other. Then walk that bridge in real life!
Overall, taking a series of small steps can be a more gentle, fulfilling and aligned way to expand.
Make it fun
Remember when you were a child, how your creative spirit would run free and you didn’t need something to be productive to see it as valuable?
We all have an inner child waiting to be set free again and live with carefree joy. And whilst growing up might have taught us that life (and business) needs to be serious, there’s precious value in connecting with our inner child.
It is our key to inspired creativity, allowing us to create offerings, marketing and businesses that are a unique expression of us.
It is our key to caring less about what people think, so we can show up as our natural selves (and magnetise an aligned community in the process).
The things we loved to do as children were our natural gifts and joys. We weren’t thinking about how we could monetise them, we just did them because they made us happy, and we were likely naturally good at them.
Action Plan:
Grab a pen and paper, and think back to when you were five. Write down what you used to love doing, that perhaps you’ve lost touch with?
I used to love making fairy houses and drawing just for the fun of it. And whilst I might not be making fairy houses for my business any time soon, illustration has become a beautiful and unique part of what I offer people.
Think about how you could infuse what you loved doing as a child into your current life and business to harness those natural gifts.
Concluding thoughts
On the other side of being serious, sturdy and robust, is the opportunity to be playful, fluid and sensitive. This side is not always so encouraged in the world of business, but can actually be part of our strength.
It helps us be creative, authentic and empathetic – all valuable traits to have in business. By getting in touch with them, we can create a more easeful success that’s aligned with our true nature.
We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to the talented Kat Fletcher of Crafted Wild, a branding agency based in London, UK, for sharing this article with us. Kat is a visionary when it comes to creating brands and has a remarkable ability to translate people’s visions into captivating visuals.