At first glance, it seems nutty for a company to get rid of a successful line of products. If they’re making money, people love them, and they’re buying them, why in the world would you get rid of that product?
By making the decision to get rid of the Friday Box and announcing that decision, Lisa Woodruff put on a masterclass of how to commit yourself to your purpose.
In recent years, Lisa Woodruff has been splitting her business’s focus between her original purpose of helping people organize their homes, including their paper and invisible work, and the additional task of helping people organize their business or volunteer persuits. It sounds wonderful, and it was, until it wasn’t.
Lisa used the analogy of feeling like she’d left a lot of people back at a train station. They were trying to get their homes in order, but were stuck, not knowing what to do and how to get to where they wanted to. And she was off on some other train, enjoying her business and helping business owners. All of those women (and some men, I’m sure) left to flounder because she’d been splitting her focus. She’d left her purpose at the station.
When you feel so deeply about your purpose, even a additional, profitable product line, can feel like a burden if it takes away from that purpose. Lisa feels like she was uniquely created to help people organize their homes, and even though business owners and professional have homes, the Friday Box was focused on their career and not their home.
Lisa had the courage to do what a lot of people can’t. She ruthlessly got rid of what was holding her back from focusing on her purpose. There’s more than one lesson we can learn from her, but I think the most important one is that your purpose in life is worth protecting, even from additional positive things, even from things you enjoy, even from profit…
Your purpose is what you’re meant to do, and nothing is worth distracting you from that.