In this article, I describe “successful remote business” as a business that fulfills you and that leverages your main core strengths. In addition to their intrinsic motivation regarding their needs to create this business, I believe that most people have difficulties taking action toward the realization of their successful business because of two main reasons:
A lack of clarity of what business will truly fulfill their soul (what their passion is) and/or
A lack of certainty in their abilities to make it happen (their internal strength/resilience)
Lack of clarity: Very often, people are not sure what their passionate business is about. They lack clarity of what this one thing is that they would connect with. Some of us will try out dozens of activities to find out, but most will not. Not being completely clear on what will make you feel alive makes it obviously tricky for you to engage in a long-term project, or build a 'passionate' business.
Lack of certainty: Very often, even people who have identified their passion choose to keep them as hobbies, something they will do on the weekend, instead of exploring the possibilities to make it a full-time activity. The vast majority of the time, they do so because they lack certainty in their capacities to make it happen. Hence, so many aspiring entrepreneurs will remain with this longing sense of uncertainty.
First, grow certainty in your core strengths, then gain clarity in your passion
Most people will NEVER take the time to identify their passion or what 'resonates' with them. Those who do generally first try to clarify what is the ONE thing that truly ignites them, by following instinctively what they like and/or what they are good at.
Then...
IF they REALLY feel it,
IF they muster enough courage to go against the warnings of their parents and how society might label them,
...they take a leap of faith and HOPE it will work out while battling with the image of the starving artist in the back of their head (this person who is ok with scarifying their material well-being just so they can focus on their passion).
Then, they aim at growing the certainty that they have what it takes to make it happen.
While this strategy might work for some of us, it generally leads a vast majority to disillusion.
There is a secret for you to drastically improve your chances to find passion and fulfillment in your life: It consists of doing the opposite.
First, grow your certainty in your core talents and strengths.
Then, get clarity on the medium you choose to express your core passionate energy. Instead of looking for the ONE thing you are passionate about, learn how to bring passion to a specific project (be it a business or a job) that will resonate with the authentic and empowered you.
We can summarize the relationship between your core talents/strengths and your passion in a partly submerged / partly emerged iceberg:
Now, did you know that the subconscious (or ‘feeling’) mind represents a staggering 95% of our total mind power, leaving only 5% of our power to our conscious (or 'thinking') mind?
How much do you think learning how to master your core strengths (anchored in your subconscious mind) and articulating your personal or professional project around them would make in terms of lasting confidence, resilience, and fulfillment?
I encourage anyone to take the Clifton Strengths assessment, which I find really good (about 85% of Fortune 500 companies provide it to their employees). Then, do the work of really analyzing your strengths and reinforcing them. Become excellent at what you are already good at, and everything will become more accessible, removing the majority of the questions you keep asking yourself and that are preventing you from taking real action toward your aspired business.
In parallel, try noticing the moments when you feel that your confidence is fading away and write down on a piece of paper the fears that lead to your loss of confidence. We all have blockages or 'paradigms' blocking us toward realizing our true potential, which we inherited from our direct and cultural environment. Once you start seeing a pattern in how your paradigms manifest themselves, you will be able to take some conscious distance from them and act regardless.