What’s the Right Amount of Hermit for Your Business?

You’ve probably noticed there are all kinds of weird themes for days, weeks, and months. June, for example, is both Zoo and Aquarium Month and LGBTQ+ Pride month. This particular week has the intriguing theme of… hermits. Yes, it’s Hermit Appreciation Week. (It might be for hermit crabs, but I’ll be talking about people.)

Hermits live alone, which has positives and negatives

We all know people who aren’t really all that into other people. They may or may not be married, though they may be more likely to have a pet. Hermits take this to the extreme.

Some hermits lived in caves or in places away from human habitation (at least in legend), and these people were considered wise. They were untroubled by the “noise” that you get when you live with other people, so they were thought to be more pure in their thinking. Especially since back then, whole families with multiple children and generations might live in one room. Which is good for cold nights, but not great when you’re not a people person.

In the 18th century, rich Britons might include a hermit on their property as entertainment and also a signifier of wealth. The hermit on someone else’s property would have their own little hut or structure to live in, and were typically unmarried men.

Hermits are unusual because as I’ve discussed elsewhere, human beings need to socialize. Though even true hermits that live alone would still be in contact with other people sometimes. A wise hermit might be approached by villagers to give them counsel, and a hermit with a patron would sometimes be asked to entertain the patron’s guests. 

Although they are not necessarily considered hermits, a lot of medicine women or healers lived alone. They may have never married, or they may have been widowed. Similarly, they might be asked for counsel or for help with medical issues, but tended to live alone with pets and plants.

If you’re not much of a people person, being a hermit might sound pretty attractive. Live by yourself without people bothering you? Do what you want pretty much all the time? Ignore the Joneses and live the life you’ve always wanted to live? 

But maybe you're not an introvert, so being a hermit sounds absolutely horrific. No one to rub your feet when you get home after a hard day? No one to watch your favorite streaming show with? No one to go places with? No one to discuss hard questions with or debate whether that dress makes you look attractive? Sure, you could call a friend for some of these, and maybe you do, but it’s nice to have someone in-house who’s often available and easy to access.

If you’re a business owner, you can’t be a hermit

I find with a lot of clients and prospects, especially accountants and lawyers, that we’d all just rather do the work. It’s what we’re good at, it’s our zone of genius, and even if other people don’t love what we do, well, WE do. 

People like us tend to avoid marketing and sales because, well, ick. I have definitely been on the receiving end of some sleazy sales tactics and I find the idea of me doing that horrifying. (Though of course there are plenty of ways to sell without sleaze.) And marketing isn’t our work either. 

Some of us (*raises hand*) would much rather set up shop in a cave and hang a shingle outside the cave, for the occasional villager to show up and request our services.

We all know that unfortunately, just hanging out your shingle doesn’t work. There’s a lot of competition out there, and very likely there’s someone who does what you do. Somehow you have to stand out from the crowd and work with prospects to understand the value you bring so they can hire you and you can feed yourself.

I’m a productivity consultant who specializes in clients who are overwhelmed or feel like there's not enough hours in the day. While I wouldn’t say there’s a ton of people out there doing what I do, there definitely are some. Since we can all work virtually we’re all in each other’s geographic territories, so we still need to stand out in a (small) crowd.

For a lot of us in the service industries, including consultants, marketing means networking. Divorce financial analysts, for example, get referrals from family law attorneys and mediators. Estate planning attorneys get referrals from CPAs, financial planners, and insurance brokers. CPAs get referrals from bookkeepers and financial planners, as well as estate, family law, and probate attorneys.

Referral sources tend to have a lot of business of their own, so they don’t have time to trek out to your cave and ask to partner with you to help service their client. They could probably find someone who doesn’t live in a cave. So for the business you want you have to get out there and meet people.

However, business owners can take some ideas from hermits to improve their business

All the time you spend networking is time you’re not spending elsewhere in your business. You might be a partner with someone who does the work, so your job is mostly to make it rain. (In this situation, your partner is probably a would-be hermit.)

Yet, you still need time to work on your business. To build strategies and create plans. To mentor your staff and help them develop their skills and capabilities. While you’re out networking, you might discover that there’s a new or different problem for people than the one you currently solve, and you need to make a decision about whether and how to solve that problem. That means setting aside time without other people around you.

Business teams and research have discovered that there’s an ideal way to brainstorm ideas, and it’s not to throw everyone in the room together and have them bash it out. What works better – especially if you have a diverse team with lots of viewpoints – is to have everyone involved brainstorm individually first. On their own, no distractions. That way, all the perspectives are unique to the person.

Only then do you bring them into a room and start discussing ideas. You also need a psychologically safe culture for this, where no one is worried about looking dumb or being shot down if someone else doesn’t like their idea. 

You won‘t get caught in groupthink, where everyone agrees on an idea just to keep the peace, or because the idea came from a senior staff member, or because people have been ridiculed for their ideas before and therefore keep their mouths shut even if they have a disagreement with the idea or see that it has major flaws.

The key to starting this alchemy is to hermit (albeit briefly.) Everyone goes to their separate cave and mulls first. This is time that isn’t spent in service delivery, so sometimes business owners don’t want to take too much time for this. 

However, if you’re working in a field with plenty of competitors and you have a goal for your business, giving people this kind of time on a regular basis allows them to be more creative. No one’s coming up with great ideas while they’re reviewing a client’s tax return. 

Recap (tl;dr): 

Being a hermit sounds pretty attractive to some business owners, but it’s no way to run a business. However, spending time outside service delivery to brainstorm ideas and create plans can be a huge boost to your business.

Do you have difficulty scheduling this kind of time, either for yourself or your team? Let’s dive into the underlying problem together. Schedule your free consultation.

Photo by Aleksandr Gorlov on Unsplash