212 | Your Business Is Only One Part of the Equation

Welcome back to the podcast. One of the things that I have been thinking about is I don't believe that we can separate the business from the woman running it or from the life that you're creating. Although I think that the business world has tried to do that. They've tried to separate it and keep it isolated or compartmentalized for many years.

And I think that we're recognizing it doesn't work so well. Because I really truly believe that, like, what good is a successful business if the way that you have built it and what you have created does not actually create the life that you actually want. Now, when I work with a client, there are really three areas that I am constantly looking at and we are diving deeper and deeper into our work together over the year. And I start from the end actually.

So I'm looking at what kind of life are you actually creating? And are you actually creating what is alignment for you and what you truly like a truly heart's desire? Or is this something that you saw or someone else doing and you're coming from that angle? So that's first and foremost.

I'm always using that as the lighthouse, like our compass. And then I look at how are you actually creating and leading? Like what is your self-trust like? What is your leadership look like for yourself and also for your team?

And then also we get into what I call the more so 3D, the actual operations, like whether the operations actually support all of that. So let's dive in. So I call it like the first pillar is like life by design. You can call it whatever you want, but really what I get to is what are we building and scaling this business for?

So often when someone comes to me, that is one of the things that they want to do. Obviously, it's natural, it's in our inherent state is to grow and to expand. Like that is what we were sent to planet Earth to do. But I don't think that that's actually where we need to start.

We need to first decide what do we actually want our life to look like? So the first what I call pillar that I look at and that I'm constantly going back to, which I think is our north star, is life by design. Like, what are we actually building this for? What kind of life do we actually want?

What do you want your days to look like? Which ultimately is going to be a feeling, right? Like, what do we want our life to feel like? What do we want our days to look like?

What do we want our months and our years to look like from a health perspective, from a spaciousness perspective, from a business perspective, from a mom perspective, from a partner perspective, like all of that? Like, what do we actually want our days, our months, our years to look like? And before we decide, you know, that the business needs to grow, it needs to be bigger, we need to make more revenue, we need to hire more people, we need to grow and scale because that's what a lot of times people come to me with is like, okay, I want to grow, I want to scale.

But are we actually even doing that in an aligned way for what you actually want your life to look like? So I would stop and I would say, like, start there, like start from the end and like, what do you actually want your day to look like? And look at is your day actually like that? Are your offers actually set up that way to support that?

Is your team actually set up that way to support that? Like, I think in the business world, we follow or we just take this advice or this blind advice from people that say that we need to grow. And that is true, but it's like, in what way? Like, how are we actually doing it for us?

That is what we want it to look like. So, the questions that you need to ask yourself is how much do you actually want to work? Like on an actual weekly basis. This is some of the stuff that I will actually get into the nitty-gritty with clients and in the weeds with, because I think we need to be really clear here.

How many hours a week do you actually want to work? How much money do you actually want to net? Not gross, because that's a whole nother topic, but like, have you actually sat down and done the math of like, what do I want to contribute to my family? If you are the sole breadwinner, okay, what is that number?

If you are have a partner and you want to contribute some of it or whatever it might be, like you need to sit down and you need to do the math of like get in the weeds in this stuff and like what does that actually look like? What are your household expenses? What do you want to contribute to travel and to play and to give back to the community or whatever that might be? Like, actually do the math there to figure out what is the amount you actually want to net.

And what do you want to use your time for? I think sometimes we use our business to fulfill some of the things that we actually need to fulfill on our own. And what I mean by that is we can easily work in our business because that's something that we love to do. It's an extension of us.

I think that that is part of our soul transformation. And also sometimes we use our business to try to meet that need versus actually developing hobbies. You know, I meet so many women that when I'm like, what do you like to do for fun? They look at me like a deer in a headlights.

And this was me. This used to be me. So I'm not berating or dogging on that part. But I really truly believe like we need to be able to play.

We need to have hobbies, we need to have things outside of our business that we enjoy doing for so many reasons. So you really need to sit down and think about like, how much do I want to work? How much do I want to be in my business and then working on my business? How much money do I actually want to net?

And what do I want to spend my time when I'm actually in the business doing CEO stuff? And sometimes we have to do employee stuff, right? Because we are the magic. And then also, like, what do I want to do outside of it?

And really start like from that back end and then work, you know, forward. You know, think about travel and family and playing and spaciousness. And what I truly believe is that our business strategy should actually come from the alignment of what our soul wants, right? And the and to support our life, not to dictate like the what I did for 20 years is like, okay, I'm just gonna make the money and then I'm gonna go have fun, versus I'm going to have fun and I'm going to enjoy every single day.

I'm not gonna make retirement be something that I get to experience and enjoy in some future event. I'm going to now have a life that I love being in, business that I love working in, along with everything else that I do. So it's not this like you have to withhold the fun and withhold all of the joy until some later time. Like really start to think about what do I want my business to look like and what do I want my life to look like so I can enjoy all of that now.

You know, I had a mentor early on where she talked about how we all needed to have, this was more so kind of coaching wise, but we needed to have 20 clients a week. And I remember thinking when I heard her say that, that feels absolutely exhausting and terrible. Now, maybe in her mind she was thinking like getting your reps in and all of that, but I'm like, that is not, I don't want to be, I do not want to be at my desk for 20 plus hours a week because I know because I was coming from a place where I was working 40 plus hours and being at my desk, like I know I do really well with spaciousness, with being outside, with having some of my work be more so intellectual, it doesn't necessarily need to be right here in front of the computer.

And I think we really need to think about like what does that look like? Because when someone suggests something, if you aren't so clear on what you want and what you are willing to do and not willing to do, and what lights your soul on fire and what gives you life force and what drains it, we can be so easily swayed. So really start to think about what do I want my days to look like? And does my calendar actually represent that?

You know, the second pillar that I always look at and think about is like the self-trust, the leadership. Like, who are you? What is your identity? Who is the person while you are leading it?

You know, you can have the best strategy. We've all been there, I'm sure, right? But we can still second guess every decision that we have. We can over-rely on mentors.

I've been that person. You know, we can carry everybody else's problems because I think that we're really good at that. That's what we've always done all of our life. We can avoid those hard conversations that we need to have with our spouse, with our employees, with our children, whatever it might be.

We can constantly be looking outside of ourselves for answers. You know, leadership isn't just about like directing, delegating, giving responsibility to people. It's trusting yourself enough to make some of those more difficult or what I call harder decisions, right? And when I say hard, they're not hard decisions.

It just feels uncomfortable in the body. If you're used to people pleasing, if you're used to always being a yes girl, if you're used to putting everybody else before your desires and your needs, well, then yes, it will feel like in the beginning, a more difficult conversation. And you need to be what I think is we need to be able to be an island of one at times. Because I really truly think that as founders, we sometimes are, right?

We're gonna go against what our entire team thinks that we should do. We're gonna go against maybe what some of our advisors, whether it be financial advisors or CPAs or whatever it might be. And I think that the more that we resist that, the more that that doesn't allow us to actually step into our power and step into who we truly are. You know, I think for a long time I always felt like I was an island of one, but now I've had to really change that belief and really think of it from a place of like, of course, I'm going to be an island of one, but it's not an isolating place.

It's just like I kind of go first. That's typically my role. And I'm okay with that now. I think for a long time I felt bad about it.

I felt like I'm different than everyone else. But there always is going to be someone, multiple people, right? And as founders, I think that's where we live, where we're gonna do like the weird stuff first. We're gonna do the stuff that doesn't make sense.

It's just something that like we didn't get to where we are by following the crowd and listening to what everybody else, you know, thinks or um suggests that we should do. And so I think that when we can really settle into that idea of the island of one and from an empowered place, from a place of like, yeah, I'm gonna suggest some things that a lot of people are probably not going to agree with or they're not going to get at first. And that's fine. Like, there's been so many times that I have done things that from the outside it looked like, what the heck is Aaron doing?

And then the rest of the world caught up to that, right? I was homeschooling before homeschooling wasn't cool. I was eating plants, and you know, before I don't like calling myself a vegan, but like before that was super trendy. Like there was a lot of things that I did before everyone thought it was so cool to do, or before mainstream.

Like that's just part of who we are. And I think the more that we can settle into that, the more that we can recognize like that's just that's just what we do, the less resistance that we'll probably have. And so I want you to think about leadership and self-trust is such an important pillar in your life. It's not just, you know, delegating to the team.

It's really like, how do you want to lead yourself? How much do you trust yourself? How much are you there for yourself, even when everyone else thinks it's a terrible idea? Because I'm sure you've already experienced this.

If you haven't yet, there will be times where you're going to be the one that thinks that that's a great idea and everybody else thinks it's terrible. And are you willing to still have your own back and still move forward even when? And then the third thing that I dive into is the actual 3D stuff, the business operations, like getting into the financials, getting into your business operations. You know, does the actual business support what you say you want?

This is what I call all the 3D stuff, the money stuff, the profitability, the cash flow, expenses, the team, the labor, the insurance, the contracts, like whatever the bankers, like think about the whole system from that very 3D tangible place. Because a lot of times what I have found is this is the thing too, is as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as founders, we say we want freedom. But so often we say that, and then we are working like an employee, or we're working more than an employee.

So we can say that we want freedom, we can say we want, you know, spaciousness, we can say that we want all of these things. But if you've built a company, which I know too many people that have done this with terrible margins, or you have people that you are having to depend on you. You've got all of these employees that you haven't led in a way that they can make their own decisions, that they can trust themselves. So now all of these employees that you've hired depend on you, or you have overhead that requires you to keep growing and growing.

That business model doesn't support the life that you say you want. And I've met so many business owners in this way, right? From the outside, you would never know that this is what's going on inside their business. And when you actually talk to them behind the scenes, when you know they can actually let their guard down, they're like, I hate my business.

And I think we spend so much time with our business. Like, if you think about the life of your business, of what you want it to be and how you want it to grow and how you want to be with it, like I think we should love our business. I think we should love what we do and really being very intentional about how you set it up, about the decisions, because every decision that you make is going to either lead you closer to the life that you are wanting or having, or it's going to move you further away.

And you've got to be really clear on this. And I think that it can be so easy to get distracted, to take what other people's suggestions are and to follow what they are saying, these mentors that you might have, you know, you have to really start slowing down. You have to start connecting to yourself. You have to start running it through your questions and your filters to really make sure that what you are deciding on a daily, on a weekly, on a monthly, on an annual basis is in alignment with the life that you want.

And none of these pillars or areas that I look at live in isolation. They're all everything is intertwined. It doesn't help to grow a business without knowing the kind of life that you want, right? Like if I would have said yes to the previous mentor and just gone off on and like, well, I have to have 20, you know, people because that's what she says.

There probably would have been a lot of resistance in the body that probably if I would have had 20 in a week, I would have been exhausted. I would have burnt myself out and I would have hated what I did. And so we really have to take a step back and we have to ask ourselves, like, what is an alignment for me? I don't think that you can create the life that you want without trusting yourself, without leading yourself.

And you can't self-trust your way and high vibe your way around not so great business operations, whether that be money, whether that be a team, all of it, right? So that's why I'm always looking at the whole person, the whole business, right? We aren't in isolation. I know that, you know, sometimes the CPA will make suggestions based on obviously numbers.

Your insurance agent is going to look at it from a risk perspective. Your attorney, like all of these people are going to have their ideas for you, but you have to look at yourself and your business as a holistic, as the whole person, as the whole business. How does it fit into everything? And this is exactly the type of work that I do in my private advisory with my clients, you know, across all of these three areas.

And we keep going deeper and deeper because awareness gets broader, things come up to the surface that maybe you weren't aware of, you know, for the first three months that we worked together. And we just keep diving into this at a deeper level because I don't think that we can separate the woman that runs the business, you know, from the life that she's trying to create. And so if you want a strategic thinking partner in your corner who can look at the whole picture with you, who isn't emotional about it, but also feels safe to be with and to tell these things too that you don't or don't maybe want to tell other people.

I had a client once say, Erin, you've kind of replaced some of my friends that I used to talk to about my business because I don't need to go to them anymore. You serve that along with all of the other things that you do for me. And so if you're wanting someone who can be in your corner, who can be non-emotional, but can also be a safe place for you to bring this stuff to, you can find the details about working with me in the show notes. So I want to leave you with this.

Take the three pillars that I suggested or the areas, however you want to call it, and think about them this week. Think about what is the life that I actually want? Like, get rid of the money, get rid of like just allow yourself to dream and really think about what do I want my days to look like? Second, how are you leading?

How are you trusting yourself? How are you treating yourself when you make a decision? How are you treating yourself when, you know, your CPA makes a comment about your numbers? How are you treating yourself?

How are you treating yourself when your team thinks that you should do one thing and you think you should do another? And you people please, and you say yes to the team and you say no to yourself. Think about how you're leading. And then really be able to look at, you know, am I taking care of my business from an operational standpoint, from a 3D standpoint?

Is there anything that I am not looking at? Maybe I'm avoiding. Am I running an efficient business? Those are the three pillars that I keep going back to over and over with clients.

Okay, I'll see you in the next episode.