Ikigai: Your Reason for Being (and Your Best Business Strategy)

There is a concept in Japanese culture called Ikigai. It translates, roughly, as 'reason for being' - the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning, that makes the effort feel worth it, that sits quietly at the centre of a life well lived.

It is represented as four overlapping circles. What you love. What you are good at. What the world needs. What you can be paid for. Your Ikigai lives where all four meet.

I came across it years ago and thought: that's it. That is exactly the question every practitioner needs to sit with before they build anything online.

The Four Circles, and Why Most Practitioners Are Only Using Two

Here is what I see, over and over again, in the practitioners I work with.

They know what they love. They have spent years (sometimes decades) developing their craft, their training, their expertise. They are extraordinary at what they do. Two circles covered: what they love and what they are good at.

But when it comes to translating that into an online offer, something shifts. They second-guess the value of what they know. They undercharge, or they don't charge at all. They wonder who would actually pay for this, and whether it's enough, and whether they are enough.

The third and fourth circles, what the world needs and what you can be paid for, feel uncertain. Presumptuous, even. And so they stay small, or they stay stuck, or they build something that doesn't quite reflect what they actually do best.

Ikigai says: all four circles matter. And when they align, something clicks.

What This Looks Like in Practice

I had a client (a somatic therapist with fifteen years of clinical experience) who came to me convinced that she needed to build a course. Everyone was building courses. Courses were the thing to do. So that was the plan.

We spent the first session just talking. Not about the course. About her. What lit her up. What her clients kept coming back for. What she found herself saying, again and again, in sessions that seemed to change everything.

It turned out she had this extraordinary gift for helping people reconnect with their bodies after trauma. Not through a recorded course someone watches alone on a laptop. Through live, guided, deeply relational work. The kind that cannot be automated.

Her Ikigai was not a course. It was a small, intimate, live online group programme. Six people. Eight weeks. Her being fully present, doing what she did best.

She launched it three months later and filled it from a single email to her existing list.

The course idea wasn't wrong. The timing was. She needed to find the centre first.

The Ikigai Question Nobody Asks

Most online business advice starts with the market. What is selling. What the algorithm rewards. What your competitors are doing.

Ikigai starts somewhere else entirely.

It asks: what is the intersection of your love, your skill, the world's need, and sustainable income, for you, specifically, in the work you are actually here to do?

That question changes everything. Because when you build from that centre, the business becomes something you can sustain. The content doesn't feel like a performance. The offers feel true. The clients you attract are the ones you are actually here to serve.

And the days when it's hard (and there will be days when it's hard), you have something to come back to.

A Reflection for You

Before we go any further, I want to leave you with the practice from the image at the top of this post.

Draw four circles. Let them overlap in the middle. Write one honest answer in each:

• What do I love doing - the work that makes time disappear?
• What am I genuinely good at - the thing people come to me for, again and again?
• What does the world, or my specific corner of it, actually need?
• What can I realistically be paid for, in a way that works for my life?

Where they overlap is worth paying attention to. That is your starting point.

Not your competitor's starting point. Not the trending format on Instagram. Yours.

What Comes Next

In the next post in this series, we will look at Ishiki (awareness and presence) and why being fully present might be the most underrated business skill a practitioner can develop in a world that rewards noise and volume.

But for now, sit with the four circles. See what comes up.

If you find yourself staring at the centre and wondering how on earth to build something around it, that is exactly what the work I do is for.

If you would like to explore what your Ikigai might look like as an actual online business, a single Mentoring Session is a good place to start. Sixty minutes. No jargon. Just clarity.
You can book at https://www.hummingbirdmentoring.com/mentoring.

And if you need a quieter place to think, somewhere to sit with the reflection, reconnect with yourself, and remember why you started, The Nest membership is there for exactly that.
Find out more at https://www.hummingbirdmentoring.com/the-nest-membership. 

What is Ikigai and how does it apply to an online business?

Ikigai is a Japanese concept meaning 'reason for being.' It is represented as four overlapping circles: what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. For practitioners building online businesses, it provides a framework for offer clarity, helping you design something that is both commercially viable and deeply aligned with your actual strengths and values.

How can a therapist or coach use Ikigai to design their online offer?

Start by answering each of the four Ikigai questions honestly: what do you love doing, what are you genuinely good at, what do your ideal clients actually need, and what can you sustainably charge for. Where those four answers overlap is the foundation of an online offer that feels authentic and can work as a business.

Why do so many practitioners struggle to charge what they are worth?

Many practitioners are strong in the first two Ikigai circles (love and skill) but underestimate the third and fourth: what the world needs and what can be paid for. This often shows up as undercharging, over-delivering, or building offers that don't reflect the full value of their expertise. Ikigai helps reframe this by making all four dimensions equally important.

What is Hummingbird Mentoring and who is it for?

Hummingbird Mentoring is run by Jo-Anne Mac Millan, a transpersonal therapist and certified Kajabi Expert based in County Clare, Ireland. She works with therapists, coaches, healers, and educators who want to move their practices online, combining strategic business mentoring with deep Kajabi expertise. Find out more at hummingbirdmentoring.com.