Cultivating the Deadly Sin of "Sloth" in your Business

Let’s talk about the 6th Deadly Sin of Sloth and how you can use it in business!

If you’ve just joined my Tribe, let me catch you up to speed. I’m doing an 8 part-blog series on the 7 Deadly Sins and how to utilize them to propel your business forward. Yes, you read that correctly! If you’d like to read previous blogs on this topic, start here. 

Traditionally, people think of sloth as laziness. dictionary.com defines it as a “habitual disinclination to exertion.” But what if sloth simply means finding the easiest way forward? What if cultivating sloth in your business is about finding shortcuts that broke the rules and truly worked?

Here is one of the biggest shortcuts I took in my business to grow it exponentially. I took a look at everyone around me - my peers, and all of the business coaches out there teaching the online model of business. Every. Single. Person. around me was telling me to take my business online.

I really, really tried to be a good entrepreneur and listen and follow the rules and build a business online. But I kept getting stuck, and overwhelmed, and would find myself stopping more than starting. I had more of a relationship with Wordpress than with my boyfriend, and let me tell you I wasn’t getting any results with Wordpress.

I asked myself if trying to build my business online was really worth it, because I found myself hating my business more than liking it. After recognizing that trying to build an online business was actually getting in my way I just stopped.

Instead of connecting with folks online, I started getting out and going to networking events and conferences. I connected with people face-to-face and almost immediately people started buying from me. And, check this out, I was having a lot of FUN doing marketing and sales for my business. And no one seemed to care whether or not I even had a website.

I grew my business to multi-six figures in one year with a basic website and an email list of less than 200 people.

As my offline business grew strong, I slowly began to grow an online presence. It is still a work in progress, but it is done in a way that works for me, like through these weekly blogs to you good people and through sales funnels that I have fun creating.

Go figure. If I had stuck with the model that everyone else told me to create I would still be a financially strapped unsuccessful entrepreneur hating my business.

Cultivating the energy of sloth in my business had exponential results!

Think about that for a minute:

What do you absolutely NOT want to do, even though everyone is telling you that you should? What shortcuts could you take that break the “rules?” (Nothing illegal or magical thinking!)

What if those shortcuts actually worked out and you actually didn’t have to work as hard as you think you have to work? How could you make your own life so much easier, even though others might disapprove of you?

And, here’s a doozy, what if you decided to stop struggling? When you productively activate the energy of sloth, the productive path to success becomes available to you.

The destructive way of engaging with sloth looks like binge watching Netflix and expecting others to work hard on our behalf. It looks like not being the strategist in our own business or not taking responsibility for ourselves and our lives.

Exercise: Ask yourself, What do you absolutely NOT want to do, even thought everyone is telling you that you should? What shortcuts could you take that break the “rules?”

Comment below and let me know what shortcuts you will use in your business!

In the next blog, we’ll explore the seventh Deadly Sin of Gluttony.