Transforming Too Well

Aicila: [00:00:00] Hi, welcome back to Business As Unusual. I'm your host Aicila. And today we're gonna go somewhere a little mythological. A few weeks ago I celebrated my cultic heritage on St. Patrick's Day. It was scaled down version of my usual. I didn't even make a boiled dinner. I was dealing with a sick cat. However. I did one thing that I always do, which is watch a film called The Secret of Ronan ish. If you haven't seen it.

It's a beautiful Irish movie about a young girl named Fiona who goes to live with her grandparents on the coast of Ireland. Woven through it is a retelling of the Silky myth Seie. If you're not familiar, silkies and Celtic folklore are. Who could shed their skins to walk as human, women on land for a time.

They move between two worlds, the sea and the land, and never really fully belong to either. And, and one of the really important things to note is that if their seal skin is stolen, lost, or destroyed, they can't go back to the [00:01:00] sea until they re. Discover it or recreate it depending on which myth they're trapped on land in human form.

I've watched this film probably a dozen times, but this year I started thinking about it in terms of work, business and being a founder and entrepreneur. And the silky myth, uh, that skin isn't lost gradually, right? Like it's taken suddenly while she's distracted or while she's even present in her human life and not really thinking about the sea or beyond that moment. She might even be happy, enjoying the warmth of a fire, the company of people, uh, the ordinary pleasures of land.

She turns around. It's gone. And that's the part that I wanna focus on around being an entrepreneur, a founder. It's not always that we make a slow series of compromises until we don't recognize ourselves anymore. I mean, that does happen. It can be that we genuinely get absorbed in what's in front of us, the launch, the client, the revenue goal, the next thing that needs doing.

'cause there's [00:02:00] always something next, right? And somewhere in that absorption our, we lose our skin, right? Our sales skin, our access. To the C uh, sometimes it's a business model we adopted because it was what everyone said would work or it's a metric we started chasing because it was measurable, not necessarily because it mattered.

Sometimes it's just the accumulated weight of being useful and available and professional for long enough that we stop asking whether any of it is really ours. And that's the thing about the soki. She can function on land. She builds a life there. And in many of the myths, she's. She finds happiness and joy in family, but underneath all of it, there's a persistent restlessness, a seeking a distraction, a sense that something is off, that she can't quite name.

It's not misery per se, it's more drift, if that sounds familiar. Then, uh, I keep listening. Uh, 'cause I think in business it looks like you're executing [00:03:00] well, your systems are working, you're hitting your numbers, but maybe you're also scrolling more than you used to or finishing projects without feeling anything.

Maybe saying yes to things you don't want to, and no to things you do. And also, and I think this is really key, stop really asking why. You are, and it can feel like you're less motivated. You are, ah, I used to be able to do all these things. But I think when you've lost your skin and you haven't gone looking for it yet, that's what this feels like.

And the other thing about the, the Silkie myth that I really appreciate and it's, I think it's pretty useful, is what happens when she finds it, she doesn't deliberate, she doesn't weigh the pros and cons or create a transition plan. She simply. Dawns it and goes back to the sea completely and immediately because it was never actually a choice between two equal options.

It was always a matter of whether she could find her way to her true passion and purpose. [00:04:00] She lives in the sea. She leaves it for short time periods to experience land. And I think when we start our business, that's the sea. It comes from this passion within us. And, and when we get distracted by those day-to-day things. And caught up in them. It, it feels good.

But the minute we recognize that that's not it, we go right back. There's no question about what's the more, what's the higher priority. So in work, there's a few ways I've seen this happen, here's a couple that I'll mention that might be useful to you. One, the first is making money your only metric.

That's probably the most common. Uh, when revenue becomes the sole measure of whether you're doing things right, things can start to fall away. You start maybe chasing clients who can pay rather than the work that fits. You optimize offers for what converts rather than what you're actually built to deliver.

You get good at the business in a way that sort of slowly empties you out. And it does work and you do need to have revenue on your list [00:05:00] of things that matter. Because you need that to, to keep things going as part of the engine. And so that will work for a while. The numbers will go up, but there's a flatness that grows underneath it.

A sense that you're executing well on something that no longer feels like yours. And once again, it'll, it could feel like motivation, problem. You find it harder to get up, harder to do things that you don't like to do because they're not attached to the deeper purpose. And that's what it feels like when that skin or that purpose that,

the underlying passion, um, has, has been lost. Uh, and I'll just say also like, it, it, it's hard not to make money a metric. Like I said, it's a very tricky thing 'cause it does have to be a part of your metrics. It just can't be the sole metric. Another one is selling yourself at all costs, uh, for getting to actually connect.

Uh, it's a little subtler. Uh, you learn the language of your industry, you optimize your messaging. You get very good at presenting the version of yourself that converts. And somewhere in the process, the real relationship, the one that made you wanna do the work with these people in the [00:06:00] first place starts to feel more like a nice to have. Connection

energy is one of the three energies I talk about in the energy equation, and it's not soft or optional. It's relational fuel that often sustains the work. Anything is really worth doing in the right company. And when it's gone, it, it's not just that you get lonely, you're running a business that doesn't really deliver on what it promises because the thing people came to for was the real version of you a.

The one that I feel like I've done the most is efficiency. Part of my job is systems and operations. I love making things run smoothly. I love efficiency. And I used to measure everything in terms of. You know that, how efficient it was. And I had a situation several years ago where I was running an organization. And we had planned a little retreat 'cause we'd gotten a small amount of funding to kind of get our team on the same page.

It was a nonprofit. And then we had some transitions and I was just like, how are we gonna take two whole [00:07:00] days out of our work and do this nice to have experience. Very inefficient. But I had given my word that we were gonna do this. We'd already booked it. I, you know, I said, all right. Was just gonna go through. And I guess we're just gonna have to do a lot more when we get back.

And then on the trip, uh, and doing the work that we did as a team to connect and to, to kind of problem solve certain things, but also to just take a break from the work experience and really engage as humans around why we believed in what we were doing. Um, something kind of magical happened. And when we got back, everything got done quickly and easily and effectively.

And I realized that, that that piece, that connection, that passion, the connection to our skin is a metric that you can't quantify. And it, it is essential to a really thriving, situation as thriving team. So I'm gonna take that and put it into the energy [00:08:00] equation lens. We talk about three types of energy in the framework, momentum, energy, the drive to execute and finish. Creative energy, the capacity to generate ideas and solve problems and connection, energy, the relational fuel that makes the work feel like it means something.

When you've been transformed for too long, walking on land, all three start to deplete in ways that don't look like depletion.

They can look like discipline problems or productivity or mindset problems. You think, oh, I just need to push through. I need a better system. I need a coach who will hold me accountable. And underneath it all, you're actually running those three energy systems on empty and asking yourself to perform at full capacity and then wondering why it's not working.

It's like turning on your car with no gas and being shocked that it doesn't start. It's not a personal failure. I would say it's a resource awareness problem and a resource management problem. 'cause a lot of us are not aware that we need to cultivate these energies.

And the, and the end of solution is reconnecting to your purpose, finding that skin. So how do you know if this is happening to you? [00:09:00] Uh, a few things that you could look for. One, work that used to energize you, feels like it takes from you now. Not in the normal way. Every meaningful thing costs something, obviously, but in the way that it feels like there's no return.

You finish the project and you're relieved it's over, not proud that you did it. You start making decisions primarily based on what's safe or what's expected, rather than what's actually true for you. That contrarian instinct that used to guide you is maybe God a little quiet. And another one that I can point to is you can't easily answer the question, and this might be the most important one,

why am I doing this? Not because you don't have an answer more. 'cause the answer you have sounds like something you're supposed to say. It's not something you really feel anymore. If any of those are landing right now, pay attention. 'Cause your skin doesn't have to be gone forever. The silkie who finds her way back doesn't become a different creature to return to herself.

She remembers where she left, what was already hers, and that's what I, in my work, I call this the energy core, the internal combination of creativity, [00:10:00] connection, and momentum that's actually driving you. Underneath all the adaptations. It's not something you build, it's something you uncover. And the practical implication of it is you don't have to blow your business up to get back to it.

You don't have to quit everything and start over. You do have to be honest about what you're optimizing for and whether that thing is actually aligned with what you're here to do. So, uh, I, this helps, uh, I wanna leave this with you. Just a question to sit with this week. When you strip away the metrics, the conversions, the follower counts, the revenue benchmarks.

What's the thing that made you wanna build something in the first place? Not the origin story that you have in your about page, the real one, and where in your current business does that thing actually show up? If you can find it, protect it. If you can't start looking. The skin is likely closer than you think.

You just have to stop moving long enough to look for it. That's all I got today. If this one resonated, I'd love to hear what it brought up for you. Find me on Instagram at bi curian or reach out [00:11:00] through the website. If you wanna go deeper on the energy equation and figure out which energy type is running lowest for you right now, the Energy Equation snapshot is free at https://www.bicurean.com/energysnapshot.

It takes about a minute and a half and it'll give you a clearer picture of where you actually are. Thanks for being here, and I'll talk to you soon.Thank you for tuning into business as unusual, remember, in this ever evolving world of modern business, it's not about fitting in.

It's about standing out. See you next time. Stay curious, stay innovative, and always keep it unusual.