Have you heard of the window of tolerance?
It’s a concept coined and outlined by Daniel J. Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine.
Basically, it refers to an emotional sweet spot where we can function and thrive in our everyday lives.
Two zones sandwich this optimal sweet spot.
The hyper-arousal zone, where things feel intense and overwhelming.
When we’re in this zone, we’re more likely to be buzzing with energy, feel angry, irritable, anxious, and hypervigilant. Things feel messy.
And the hypo-arousal zone, where we feel numb and zoned out.
When we’re in this zone, we’re more likely to withdraw from the world, feel depressed, ashamed, and disconnected. Things feel meaningless.
Many people figure out how to manage outside the sweet spot. But after this goes on for too long, your mind and body will be fried and you’ll burn out or check out.
When we’re in the zone, we feel grounded, flexible, open, curious, and engaged.
We can better handle life’s inevitable highs and lows without losing ourselves.
We live in a society that expects us to push beyond our optimal zone.
We uphold busyness where we’re on all the time with technology keeping us connected to the machine that has no such zone.
And then when we start our own business to push back against this in some way, we often end up in a place where the peaks and valleys are often more pronounced.
The time freedom and flexibility we hope to get from being our own boss eludes us as we work to find the business sweet spot.
What’s the business sweet spot?
I found out about the window of tolerance while I was reviewing a client’s content for their email marketing strategy.
Their main offer is a self-study course for people with chronic pain and fatigue.
The bulk of their revenue comes from evergreen sales of their course.
People can enroll anytime because it’s always available for purchase.
Evergreen sales like these are an essential component of the business sweet spot.
Minimalist biz owners focus on an effective, simple, and repeatable sales method with an evergreen core product or program. This kind of model makes it more likely they’ll have consistent revenue that allows them to thrive every day.
It’s a matter of amplitude.
Much like your level of arousal goes up and down within your window of tolerance, so will your business revenue and the effort you put into getting that revenue.
A minimalist biz prioritizes models that keep the amplitude of revenue and effort within a manageable window.
A launch model doesn’t do this. When you rely on launches, you have more intense peaks and valleys. A successful launch in one cycle doesn’t mean it’ll succeed in another. It’s super stressful.
Whereas a solid evergreen approach is steadier and it allows for continuous improvement of systems, processes, and conversions.
Plus, the manageable amplitude of effort and revenue will also help you deal better with any departure from the sweet spot.
Whether you decide to go ahead and have a big splashy launch or buy another business as an investment, your core business can support that…and you.