Market Projection

I explained in more detail in this post why I think we’re all messed up:

Things that should have happened didn’t.
Things that shouldn’t have happened did.

I described in this post on projection - what’s within, seen without - how I have experienced and observed unconscious projection as a common manifestation of being messed up.

Some of the messed up, with their propensity for unconscious projection, become entrepreneurs, company founders, and company owners. 

I did that.  Yay.

My company is a member of VT KnowledgeWorks.  The program feature that I most treasure for its meaning, significance, and transformative impact - and therefore, its ability to make me tear my hair and gnash my teeth - is being mentored by its executive director, Jim Flowers. 

Even upon reading just the title of this post on Jim’s blog, So you want to launch a business..., I became apoplectic:  The market is always right.

Right?!  Right?!  The market is the arbiter of right and wrong?!  If the market buys what my company sells, I’m right?  If they don’t, I’m wrong?!

I was enraged. 

Beneath rage is always hurt.

Jim's post is dated almost a month ago and it’s taken me that long to realize the source of my anger and, therefore, my hurt.

What is within, I was seeing without.  I was projecting my own, inner messed-up-edness onto my 17-month old company.  I thought, “If the market buys what my company sells, I am right and good.  If it doesn’t, I am wrong and bad.”

I won’t go on and on, but I have always struggled with self-value, depending on people and forces outside of myself - and beyond my control - for a sense of value.  Hence, the anger, hurt, pain, and hopelessness generated by believing, one more time, I had to try to “make” someone or something - this time the market - value me and find me “right.”

Now that's a market projection.

While I stopped listening to The E-Myth Revisited when the author suggested touching customers, I credit him with helping me realize that I need to be very conscious that my company does not become a job for me, but a company based on a business model for which I and others work.  And if I’m not there?  The business model carries the company and it goes on without me.

I am not right or wrong, good or bad, if my company succeeds or fails.  The company that I happened to found will succeed or fail based on whether or not the market needs or desires what it creates.  As the current head of a company that I expect to generate such products and services in such demand by the market that I will be replaced by a new head some day, my job is to derive the business model that will make that happen.

In a recent email to me, my VT KnowledgeWorks mentor, Jim Flowers - who coaches entrepreneurs using what he calls the Four Fundamental Factors, well-explained by him in this video - suggested I consider identifying niche markets for my company's offerings within the broader Market.

The market again?!

My hair is not torn and my teeth are not gnashed.  I am not apoplectic.  I don’t need the market to value me.  I need it to value my company’s products and services.

Let me become conscious of my very, very highly developed personal power of projection and use it to my company's advantage.  What is within that I can see without?  What do I specifically want and need?  What might a specific niche within the broader market want and need?  Hmm…