How to scale your business with the 4 elements of nature
Are you building a naturally balanced business?
Businesses, even online businesses, are built within the constructs of the laws of nature: earth, air, fire, water.
Depending on where your own personal elemental balance is — the balance of the business owner — leads to how your business plays out.
For example, if you’re a fiery person, then you’ll put your energy into expanding on the fiery element of your business. But that means the other elements might get left behind.
So you need to focus on intentionally increasing the other elements of your business – or hire people with other capacities to balance you out. (You know the classic warning to not hire a replica of yourself? This is the elemental explanation for that.)
We have a full podcast episode on this! Listen now:
So let’s look at each of the elements to help you identify where you’re at and where you may be off-balance…
Fire
Fire is your passion. Your heart. Your why. Fire is the parts of yourself that drove you to start your business in the first place. It’s the driving force behind what you do, and it’s there to keep pushing you forward on the bad days when you feel stuck. You’re wondering if being an entrepreneur is just too damn hard to be worth it… and then you remember why you started your business in the first place 🔥
Fire (and water, which we’ll get to in a bit) is also about your cash money. You can spend money on certain things to flood more energy into your business (advertising is a great example of this). Make that fire GROW! But you can also “burn money” by throwing money at things that aren’t working.
You also don’t want to be burning the candle at both ends, having that go-go-go fire mentality that’s going to lead to burnout (and kill your passion).
🔥 Check out our 8 Phases of a Numinous Launch guide to see how we plan our online launches in a way that prevents burnout.
An imbalance of fire in your business might mean you’re bored, or that after hitting certain big goals you’re CONFUSED about what to do next because your Why isn’t deep enough. Time to stoke that flame and see where it guides you!
Air
Air is your ideas, your words, your teachings. Your brilliance. This is your intellectual property – the courses you make, the emails you send, the concepts you develop. How you communicate with your people and your audience.
This is also how you came up with your genius business idea to begin with. Fire might be your why, but air is your what: 🌬️what exactly is your business idea and what does it look like?
The imbalance here may be the business that switches new offerings or niches every month or two 🌪️ versus giving your audience structure and a foundation to flourish. If you’re always trying to change up your brand or your offerings instead of allowing your loyal base to thrive in the programs you’ve already created, you’re leaning heavily toward Air, without the balance of the other elements.
Earth
Earth is your structure and foundation, your assets, your systems and team.
The earth element is the grounding element of your business. It takes all your ideas and passion and puts them into a structure that allows your business to continue on WITHOUT YOU! 🌳
(If you’re a little addicted to work and hustling… don’t freak out about the idea of building your business for other people to run without your constant attention. You have to be okay with this if you want to build a thriving business that will last in the long run!)
Earth is having a sound team that supports you and your customers. It’s the funnel that’s taking traffic from happening once and turning them into repeat buyers. 🌱 It’s the course that houses your teachings so that people can buy them and learn from you.
Earth is the how: How are you making your killer business idea into a reality? What structures do you have in place that might be supporting your ideas — or holding you back?
(Not gonna lie… as a triple Virgo who runs a digital marketing agency, the earth element is my jam. My fave. I put a lot of time and energy into my organization and structure. And I LOVE helping other businesses build incredible teams and systems that allow them to scale and grow without the headache!)
Having your earth element out of balance might mean you’re a liiiittle too practical. Maybe you’re a bit of a control freak and you have trouble delegating projects, even if it will help in the long run.
Maybe you’re so caught up in structure that you lack the passion and inspiration that drives people into action and transforms their life. And without that, you won’t ever have the level of impact you truly crave. 💩
Water
Water is your traffic/people, the emotions you induce in your audience, the transformations you cause in other people’s lives. It’s your intuition.
Water is vulnerability. It’s sharing your story and emotions and giving others the space to feel their own emotions in turn. It’s about making your customers fall in love with you!
The water element is also about your stream of traffic/your audience members who interact with you on social media or your website.
Skillfully, leaning into water can cause monumental transformation: 🌊 it can make your business BOOM and help you impact thousands of people!
Being out of balance with water might mean not sharing or opening up to other people because you feel too deeply and you’re afraid to feel bad things like rejection, judgment and shame. ⛈️ Or not wanting to share any details of your personal life with your audience even though they really do want to get to know you (and you know businesses do better when they have a public figurehead they can connect to on a personal level).
Out of balance water can also mean building an audience but not monetizing it (AKA having a blog or Instagram with thousands of followers but you aren’t making offers for people to work with you deeply or to purchase the epic product you created). You have a lot of passion and creativity that will make the world a better place — but you’re too scared to use it.
Water also represents wealth, and just like the ever changing nature of water, a resilient business has money in multiple forms. 💦 An emergency fund like a deep reservoir. Money coming in like the stream that feeds the reservoir. Money going out from the overflow. And from that overflow we have the water that we drink in the form of our salaries and paying our team.
Natural elements & your business
So I’m curious: where do you feel strong? Where do you feel lacking? Meditate on how you balance the elements within your own life and how that translates to your business.
You can absolutely build a successful business without elemental balance, but to scale you need to address any imbalances you have. Because if you lack passion, or you can’t come up with a good idea for your next online program, or you don’t have the right team in place to make your ideas a reality, or you aren’t being authentic and open with your audience… your business won’t be the success it could be.
For a multiple-7-figure business, you need them all.
Ask yourself these questions to figure out where you’re at:
Fire
What do you feel most passionate about your business? Do you have a big Why that is fueling your business growth and actions?
Are there times when you feel like you’re burning the candle at both ends?
How is your cash flow? Are you throwing money at things to fix problems? Do you even know where your money is going, or are you burning through it unintentionally?
Air
Are you creating intellectual property?
Are you regularly and consistently communicating with your audience and your customers?
What original, life-changing ideas have you had with your business?
Earth
Do you have structure and foundation in your business, or are you switching offerings and niches so often that you can never truly establish yourself in your industry?
Do you have structures in place so that your business can run without you? Think: the right team, an optimized sales funnel, standard operating procedures…
Why are the specific courses/programs/products you’ve chosen to offer the best ways to get your awesome ideas and teachings to people?
Water
Are you tapping into your emotions in your messaging so that people can feel you and have a transformation?
Are your clients and customers having a massive transformation to working with you or through your products?
Do you have enough traffic coming into your business? Are you monetizing the traffic that’s coming in?
Are you building wealth through your business in multiple forms? E.g., a 3-12 month emergency fund, streams of income for money to flow in, an overflow for money to flow out & pay expenses, pay your salary and team...
Spend some time journaling on the questions that most stick out to you. What do they mean for your business?
Once you understand why you’re doing things a certain way, you can figure out if it’s the best approach for your business or if it’s time to make a new plan.
Need help balancing your business?
Dirty Alchemy Digital Marketing is the spiritually-focused digital marketing team that strives to help businesses connect to their magic — all while growing and scaling your business.
We have almost a decade of experience building successful remote teams that make online programs a success. So if you’re looking for help with marketing, online course management, or advice on hiring the right team, we’ve got you covered.
The mastermind for magical online business owners who are ready to SCALE re-opens in August!