The Mysterious Key Foundations in Building a Holistic Business

I visited Mount Bromo a long time ago when I lived in Indonesia. I had awe feeling to see the sunrise and listening to the whispering sand dunes around the majestic volcano of Mount Bromo. Mount Bromo stands tall above the clouds. A grand mysterious volcano that erupted many times and rebuilt itself over and over again.

I see the trend now that more and more entrepreneurs want to build a business that reflects their whole self and they want to channel their self-actualization by building a holistic business that brings fulfillment to themselves and makes an impact on their clients and society.

I support solo entrepreneurs who want to build their businesses holistically. As I reflected the Mount Bromo, I now understand the strong foundation that enable Mount Bromo to rebuild itself despite several eruptions. So, what are the mysterious key foundations to building a business that is resilient against setbacks? Here are my ideas for building the foundation for a holistic business.

1. Healthy mindset.
A healthy mindset is operating when we’re optimistic and have faith in the future and move toward growth. I believe that deep inside ourselves, we have a seed of a positive mindset. Everyone expects to succeed not fail in the business. However, human isn’t perfect. When we have challenges from time to time or during the growth period, fear, anxiety, or self-doubt can sabotage our mindset. It’s necessary to check in with ourselves if we have irrational beliefs that can sabotage our behaviors. It’s believed that all problems come from limiting beliefs that we hold to ourselves.

2. Self-Awareness
The ability to recognize what’s happening at the moment: emotions, thoughts, behaviors. The key to developing self-awareness is to pause and observe what’s going on inside. Self-reflection is a good way to reflect on what happened and learn to see from the facts vs opinions so we can make the right judgment. Checking in with ourselves from time to time is a good practice of self-awareness. Having self-awareness leads us to have good self-management.

3. Well-being
Well-being is not limited to physical, it can extend to emotional and mental health. If we take care of our well-being well, we have the energy to take care of the business, to be creative and productive. We also want to pay attention to work-life balance so we can have time to recharge ourselves.

4. Virtues or Characters
For Solopreneurs who are building the business solo, we show up our virtues and characters and they’re often reflected as our personal brand. When we communicate with our clients through marketing messages, we show up ourselves through our characters and virtues. People are often attracted to the person’s virtues behind the brand. Thus, it is important to cultivate our character strengths and virtues to develop ourselves to become a better version of ourselves continuously.

Do you know that these mysterious four key foundations are inside of you? Thus, you’re building a holistic business from the inside out. By nurturing on the inside, you have a strong foundation to build the business. By having these foundations, you will have the resilience to weather challenges and setbacks and rise again, to rebuild the Mountain, to rebuild your business.
These foundations are relevant to me. I rebuild my career over and over again even though there were eruptions in my life.