I’ve been rewatching Dharma & Greg recently
Not because I’m particularly trying to relive the 90s, but because there was something about Dharma’s way of moving through the world that made me stop and think.
She’s open. Curious. Interested in people. She talks to strangers. She follows conversations. She notices what’s going on around her. She doesn’t seem terribly concerned with whether everything is productive or useful or part of some bigger plan.
And it’s made me think about something I see a lot in small business: how easy it is to spend so much time inside our own businesses that we stop looking out at the world around us.
To become very focused on the screen in front of you… Your inbox… Your website… Your content… Your numbers… Your to-do list… Your next offer… Your strategy… Your problems.
And before you know it, you’ve spent an entire day inside your own business. Sometimes an entire week.
Running a business can make your world surprisingly small
This is something I don’t think we talk about enough.
Running a small business can give you enormous freedom, but it can also make your world quite inward-looking (particularly if you work alone).
You can spend hours thinking about what you should be doing next.
Who can relate? You analyse what’s working. You worry about what isn’t. You look at what everybody else is doing online. You tweak your website for the hundredth time. You create another spreadsheet.
And it can all start to feel terribly serious!
The strange thing is that most businesses ultimately exist because of people. The customers, clients, suppliers, collaborators, communities, people we haven’t met yet.
And yet we can spend an extraordinary amount of our working lives sitting alone, staring at a laptop.
Sometimes the best thing you can do for your business is simply look up from it.
Look up and see what’s actually happening
Some of my best ideas haven’t come from sitting at my desk trying desperately to have a good idea. They’ve come from conversations, meeting other business owners, listening to somebody explain what they’re struggling with, being out of my home office and going to an event, wandering around a town, noticing how people behave in a shop, a café or a community space, somebody saying something completely unrelated that sends my brain off in another direction.
There’s something enormously valuable about being out in the world. Because it might just lead to a client or an opportunity. But it also it reminds you that business isn’t an abstract thing happening inside your computer. It’s happening between people.
And sometimes, when we reconnect with that, business starts to feel a little more interesting again.
Connection can bring the joy back
There are inevitably days when running a business feels heavy. It feels like nothing is moving, you’re second-guessing everything, you consider opening up a new tab and looking for a 9-5 job.
For me, I’ve found, the thing that shifts that feeling is getting out of my home office and having a conversation with a person (normally over coffee).
But this could also be going to an event (industry related, or not), hearing someone else’s perspective, helping somebody work something out, laughing with another business owner about something that has gone spectacularly wrong.
Connection gets you out of your own head and gives you perspective. And reminds you that everybody is figuring things out as they go which quite often, it brings a little joy back into the day.
Being true to yourself doesn’t mean staying inside yourself
There’s a lot of conversation around building a business that feels authentic to you, which I completely agree with that.
I think we should build businesses that reflect who we are, how we want to work and what success actually means to us. But there’s an interesting balance here.
Being true to yourself doesn’t mean becoming closed off to everything outside yourself. You can know what matters to you and still be curious, have strong ideas and still listen, build a business on your own terms and still allow other people to challenge your thinking.
In fact, I think that openness is often where the interesting things happen!
Someone introduces you to an idea you hadn’t considered. A conversation changes your perspective. A collaboration creates something neither of you would have thought of alone. You discover a problem you genuinely want to help solve.
Being open to other people doesn’t dilute who you are.
Sometimes it helps you understand yourself, and your business, better.
Business doesn’t have to feel serious all the time
This is perhaps the other thing Dharma & Greg reminded me of.
There is room for lightness. Not silliness for the sake of it. And certainly not pretending that running a business is easy. It isn’t!
But professional doesn’t have to mean relentlessly serious.
You’re allowed to enjoy your customers!
You’re allowed to have a laugh with your clients!
You’re allowed to try an idea simply because you’re excited by it!
You’re allowed to organise something because you think it would be lovely to bring people together!
You’re allowed to create a business that feels warm and human and interesting!
Because life is short. And most of us spend an enormous proportion of it working.
If we’ve chosen to build our own businesses, surely one of the privileges of that is being able to create some enjoyment within them.
And, let’s face it, it won’t be every day, it won’t be every task (hello, MTD), and lord knows there will always be admin.
But glimmers – interesting people, engaging conversations, curiosity, moments where you think, I’m so lucky that I get to do what I do!
This is why I keep coming back to community
It’s also one of the reasons events and business communities matter so much to me. Networking sometimes gets framed purely as a business-development exercise.
Go into a room. Shake hands. Reel off your elevator pitch. Collect business cards. Send follow up emails. And yes, opportunities absolutely come from networking. But I think there’s something much bigger happening.
Being around other people running businesses reminds you that you’re part of something. It introduces you to perspectives outside your own little bubble, creates conversations you couldn’t have planned, gives you people to celebrate with, learn from, recommend and occasionally have a moan with.
And particularly for rural business owners, where opportunities to bump into other founders can be fewer and further between, those spaces really matter.
That’s a big part of what I want the Ripon Women Business Network, my business socials and future events to offer – a chance to look up from the laptop, meet somebody new, have an insightful conversation, learn something, find an opportunity, or a new friend. And hopefully leave feeling a little more energised than when you arrived.
Perhaps joy is less complicated than we make it
And I’m not saying joy in business needs to become another thing to optimise (put down the spreadsheets, planners and colourful pens). Try noticing where it already exists.
The client that makes you smile, the project that gets your brain ticking, the person you met at an event who had a completely different perspective, the coffee with another founder where you suddenly realise you’re both facing exactly the same problem, the idea that comes from a conversation you nearly didn’t have, the moment when you close the laptop and remember there is an entire world happening beyond it.
So that’s what I’m taking from my latest watching.
A reminder to stay open.
To stay curious.
To talk to people.
To look around.
To build a business that still feels like me, while remembering that some of its most interesting parts will come from people and ideas outside of me.
And, wherever possible, to enjoy the process! Because we spend far too much of our lives in our businesses not to.
Come and connect
A big part of what I’m building through Sarah Lewis & Co is about helping small business owners feel more connected – to their businesses, to other people and to the communities around them.
That includes the Ripon Women Business Network, relaxed business socials and other events bringing business owners together in and around North Yorkshire.
They’re designed to be useful, and human. Somewhere you can have a proper conversation, meet interesting people and step outside your own business bubble for a little while.
If that sounds like something you could do with, take a look at my Events page to see what’s coming up.
And perhaps, in the meantime, close the laptop for an hour and go and talk to somebody. You never know what might come from it!
