How Soup Can Save Your Business Soul

You’ve heard of Chicken Soup for the Soul?

Consider this note Spirit Soup for the Entrepreneur!

You inspire me. So I want to make you some soup. May I?

Many of you know I’m moving from my beloved canyon home of almost twenty years at the end of this month. So I’m thinking a lot about, What is home. Where do we find our identity. How can we create comfort and community on-the-go.

We all need new ways to freshen our spirits. To inspire our creativity. To motivate ourselves in business.

What if we had nourishment on tap? Instead of mother’s milk — soup!

Soup has always been a source of comfort. Home in a bowl.

Isn’t this the experience we want to offer to our customers and clients?

A feeling of home. Of security, support — and a rocksolid product or service.

The best way we can create this is to master the Know, Like, Trust factor.

What are the ingredients?

You need to radiate both confidence + also be chill. You know this.

Yet.

How can you be relaxed? You are an entrepreneur! You are under pressure.

Build your list. Bring in sales. Be your brand.

What is your brand?

If Brand = Story.

Then…

You Are Your Story!

More reason you must master storytelling so you can win at social media and business.

Consider soup the perfect analogy for creating your own unique Know, Like + Trust factor. Not for everyone. This is where some of you stumble. For your Ideal Clients. The ones who like spicy soup, if spicy soup is your thing.

If you are authentic. If you are uniquely you. Not everyone will love you. The right people will.

If you want to succeed in business, you must be willing to polarize. To create love and hate in your followers.

The number one ingredient is this:

Experience. Your experience. Your life, your adventures. Your triumphs and failures. The lessons you’ve learned. The places you’ve traveled, the songs you’ve sung.

What’s your special soup recipe?

Let me share a short scene and exercise to help you create your own signature soup.

Once upon a time, I went to Bangkok with a boyfriend.

One night, we bypassed all the neon sharkfin soup signs, all the golden Buddhist temples, and sat at a table outside a tiny restaurant.

The night was moist and strange. I could feel my leather purse rotting in the humidity. A slender Thai waitress set a bowl of soup down before me.

“Immortality Soup,” she said.

“Immortality Soup,” I repeated, inhaling the scent of coconut + lemongrass and other mysterious ingredients. Delighted because it’s true:

You can achieve immortality, you can be memorable — if you tell your story well. If you use powerful, distinctive language. Language that springs from your taste, your being, your personal experience.

This, too, is brand.

Ingredient question: Are the words you use in your marketing, your content, distinctly yours? Or are you a mimic? Are you a victim of the Copycat Economy? Let’s break that habit now.

Exercise: Pick a partner. Or try with a few people. We did this on our last Inner Circle training call and it was wild and powerful.

Each person says one word. Then the next person says a word. Repeat. Sounds insanely simple, right? It isn’t! Because our default is to respond to the person who says the preceding word.

For example, X says “White.” We’re next. We say “Black.” Because we are responding to their word. We are riffing off their idea. It’s normal. And, you must throw that first word out.

Throw out the easy, knee-jerk word. Breathe. Stay in the moment. Take as much time as you need to let your word rise up. Then say it. You’ll know when it comes. So will those who hear or read it.

This may sound like voodoo — and it kind of is. Because it’s the language that comes from your deeper self. Your unconscious. It’s original. It’s personal. And it’s more effective because people can feel the energy you bring to the words.

Try it. Don’t give up. It gets easier. Then, replace a boring word with one of your power words and track the results. Observe the responses. Let me know!

I hope you enjoyed your soup of the day. That you got some comfort and value.

This note was inspired by the warm words of a current client. Her words also inspired the amazing illustrator Sarah Steenland, who created this drawing:

“I am thankful today for the people who are sent into my life that make my life rich and bigger. You, Rachel are one of those people. I am a foodie and cook. So I am thinking of you as a beautiful soup created by a master chef, with all the circumstances in your life being the seasoning that makes you so complex, rich, robust and makes people want to come back for more. Thank you for putting yourself out there for me and many others. Thank you for holding the space for me, for believing in me and for being you. I write this with love and respect.”
~Denise the Inspired [aka Denise Hall]

Let your rich experience feed your content. Let it spice the language you use to tell your story. Instead of keeping yourself hidden, or mimicking, why not let your whole self flavor the soup.

Yrs in truth,
Rachel