Last I wrote, we took a look at your product inventory and then considered whether each item was timeless, temporary, residual, and/or linear.
Today, I’d like to tell you more about what that looks like for my business—it took a long time for me to successfully use that filtering lens on myself.
I expect you might face similar challenges anytime you attempt to reevaluate your own approach because, whether we like it or not, our businesses are personal. It’s practically guaranteed your perspective is too close. It’s difficult to see past the tip of your own nose!
That’s entirely normal. In fact, it’s human nature! And, I’m here to help.
Timeless, Temporary, Residual, and/or Linear
All the products you’ve ever created make up one fantastic product inventory. I’ve made a magical little room in my mind for this product inventory, and I imagine it filled with beautiful displays of all the assets I’ve ever created for my business.
As I look around the envisioned shelves of my business’ inventory, I realize that each product is either …
- Timeless (lifetime value, available through time), or
- Temporary (limited lifespan, available real time)
There’s reason to have both timeless and temporary offers in your product inventory, but you’ll want to spend more time and energy on the timeless. Why?
Because your product (and subsequently, your offer) is either …
- Linear (single input for single output), or
- Residual (single input for multiple output and long-term benefits)
We’re all taking the above into consideration as we review our product inventory.
Now, add this line of questioning to each product in your inventory: Do I deeply enjoy it? Is it work that I still want to create and/or build upon? Is it the stuff I research or practice while I’m procrastinating?
Because things change. You change! Sometimes, especially in product creation and income generation, the churn of doing and producing and production takes over. We lose that initial clarity we had in the beginning, and instead, feel an incredible urgency to reinvent the wheel – OR – we get stuck in a niche we feel we can’t grow beyond.
My Business Vision
As I was organizing all of the products I have for sale in my inventory (books, courses, lead magnets and automations, and even the Luminaries Club), I came up with dozens of ideas on how to combine them, market them, and repackage them.
And each time I designed an offer, I ended up completely lost in my old ways of thinking—making do with what I had, blindly following the early path I set out on, losing the forest for the trees, and narrowing my own perspective as to what was possible.
I’d make a plan for my new business offer. I’d sit with it for a few days (sometimes weeks). I’d realize that I’d employed the same approach I used to take, and it wasn’t going to lead me to where I wanted to go. Then, I’d start all over again.
When I say it’s taken me years to outthink my old way of doing things, I am not exaggerating!
I decided I needed a thorough review of the vision for my business, and while I was conducting this exercise, I realized I’d never had a vision for my business before!
For over a decade, I’d been building a business without a clear vision or end product in mind.
Can you relate?
It was through this process that I found the calling I’d been answering all along:
I read and research, write summaries, and create guided discovery lessons—like the blog post I’m writing today. It’s business operations that I greatly enjoy—the organizational structure, the systems, the flow and the input and output of it all.
Inspired Creation, Effortless Delivery
What about you? Do you have a clear vision for your business? Does it align with your calling? Is your work still giving you that sense of inspired creation, effortless delivery you had in the beginning?
If not, what needs to change?
