How to Have a Healthy Relationship With Your Business

[00:00:00] Emily Thompson: You've asked for it, we're delivering. Finally, the doors are open for a group coaching offering for creative business owners like you. It's called Boss Owned Business, and it's a six week program including a real physical workbook and six 90 minute calls to help you redefine what a healthy relationship with your business looks like to keep you from burnout and moving towards your version of success.

[00:00:24] Learn more and sign up to join me at beingboss.club/coaching, but hurry, registration closes on August 26th. That's beingboss.club/coaching. Welcome to Being Boss, a podcast for creatives, business owners and entrepreneurs who want to take control of their work and live life on their own terms.

[00:00:45] I'm your host, Emily Thompson. And in this episode, I'm flying solo to dig into one of the most important relationships you have as an entrepreneur, your relationship with your business. You could find all the tools, books, and links we reference on the show notes at www.beingboss.club. And if you'd like this episode, be sure to subscribe to this show and share us with a friend.

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[00:01:58] Okay, so that was a big statement, that one of the most important relationships that you have as an entrepreneur is your relationship with your business. Does that make anybody angry? Did that statement like warm somebody up? I'm not saying that it is the most important. But I am saying that it is important.

[00:02:19] It is one of the most important relationships that you have and not a lot of people think about their relationship with their business as a relationship. And maybe that's part of the problem because you absolutely should be thinking about your business, your relationship with your business as a relationship that you need to foster and cultivate and nourish and workshop.

[00:02:46] As needed to make sure it is a good one, because it is a relationship that defines us. If you are calling yourself an entrepreneur or a business owner, you are literally letting your relationship with your business define who you are in a sense of what you call yourself or literally how it is that you identify, but it also defines us in other ways as well.

[00:03:13] For example, your relationship with your business may define you as being someone who's always busy or always available, or you are successful or fill in the blank. Right? Your relationship with your business defines who you are. It has a, in some capacity, it has a huge impact, also on more important relationships and less important relationships in your life as well.

[00:03:45] Your business could take precedent over some, it could make some relationships even better. It has an impact on a lot of your relationships. In addition to just you and it. So today I want to dive into this relationship. I'm not gonna say a little bit because it's maybe kind of a lot. I want to help you take a look at your relationship with your business and maybe along the way help you make it a little bit better as well.

[00:04:18] Because this is quite a commitment. And I do think that the more that business owners and entrepreneurs think about this relationship, the more they're able to be proactive about it and make it better, which makes us better people. It makes our businesses better. It's just, it's all good. Okay. Only good things.

[00:04:39] Well, it could feel bad, it could feel painful if you uncover some nasty things along the way. But ultimately the idea here is that by looking at your relationship with your business, you're able to actually make it better. Now, owning a business can fill a lot like having a child and like children, your business goes through phases.

[00:05:04] When you first get started, your business is a baby business, right? It needs all of your attention. You're up late at night, taking care of it. You are putting all of your time and energy into it in order for it to grow, in order for it to stay alive beyond those early days. So a business or a baby business needs a whole lot of your attention, but one day your business becomes a toddler.

[00:05:34] It's up and doing big things. It's getting opportunities, it's likely needing honestly, maybe even more attention to keep it wrangled than when it was just a baby business, just getting started. You are probably putting out fires. You're hopefully writing down a whole lot of systems, you were testing things out.

[00:05:55] You're seeing what's going to stick, whatever it may be, you are in it. And you're doing a lot of things. It's starting to prove itself and you don't wanna give up just yet. Then it moves into a little more steady sort of childhood phase. You can leave it alone every now and then, but it's still not really contributing to a greater good.

[00:06:18] You have some clients, you have some opportunities, you're selling some things. But you're still in there doing stuff. You can take a day off. You can, hopefully you, at this point you have some things automated so that some things can happen without you, but you are still incredibly involved with the day to day of a sort of childhood level business.

[00:06:38] Then there's the dreaded teenage and no, this is a business. The exciting teenage years where you can legitimately leave your business alone. By this point, you should have, I think some employees in place, at least one or some really great automations at the very least that you can leave it for a couple of days.

[00:06:59] It is contributing some to the household. Is it not right? It's paying you but it's not quite mature. It's not running on its own. You're not handing it all for weeks at a time. It still needs you, but it needs you a little bit less. And then hopefully one day your business will graduate into adulthood where it can more or less run on its own.

[00:07:21] You can hand things off to employees, you can automate things. You are less necessary hopefully for the day to day operations, and it is heavily contributing to your general wellbeing and pocketbook. And so in a lot of ways, you have to think of yourself as a parent and your business as a child that is yours.

[00:07:51] Sometimes that relationship is going to be good. Sometimes you are gonna let your business become an ed brat, and you're not sure how it got there or add what it is that you're supposed to do about it. But you do have to do something about it and it is your job to do that. It's your job to reflect on what this relationship is, how you are contributing to each other, make sure that you both stay your individual selves and can come together to create something beautiful.

[00:08:23] It's a really important thing for everyone who is a business owner and wants to stay one to consider because it is what can make or break a business and, or a business owner along the way. So the question here is, is your relationship with your business healthy? And I wanted to present those sort of stages of business, both to show you how it really can be like having a relationship with a person.

[00:08:57] But also I wanted to be really clear that it doesn't matter what stage of business you are in. You should always be striving for a good relationship with your business, and you can find yourself in a bad relationship with your business in literally any phase. In my experience and what I've seen both

[00:09:21] with myself and my own businesses, but also through knowing and coaching and, talking to and masterminding with hundreds, if not thousands of bosses over the years is that you can have a bad relationship with your business. No matter what stage your business is in, you could have a really toxic relationship with your baby business.

[00:09:45] You could have an equally as toxic relationship with your teenage or adult business. Likewise, it can be really good at any and every phase of business as well. So this is not something for you to reflect on only if you are just getting started or only if you're making less than a hundred or, yeah, that's right.

[00:10:07] A hundred thousand dollars a year. Or only if, you have a team of 50 under you. This is something that everyone needs to be considering literally all of the time. And I'm bringing this up specifically in this episode because I just did a really big, deep dive into the creative entrepreneur's relationship with their business in a beta task group for a new coaching program that we've been testing out here at Being Boss for years, we've been running annual surveys to our audience, to you guys, to those who are listening to this podcast.

[00:10:44] And who are members of the Being Boss Community or who follow us on Instagram and asking you a couple of things, both about you, how long have you been in business? What do you do? What do you call yourself? Those sorts of things. So we can understand who you are, but also if we made anything for you, what would you like it to be?

[00:11:02] And for years there have been numerous requests for a coaching program, something that bosses can take part into become better business owners, better bosses. And so at the beginning of this year, we decided to sit down and finally make this program. Got super excited about it, sat down with the team.

[00:11:24] We put this thing together. We just did a beta task group for this new coaching program. It's called Boss Owned Business. And it's a group coaching program that focuses on you, the boss, the entrepreneur and your relationship with your business? It has been fascinating, y'all it has been incredibly fascinating.

[00:11:45] The beta task was super successful. I loved doing it. The bosses loved it. The feedback we got was amazing. Really amazing. And we're about to launch it into its first open enrollment. But today what I want to do is share some of the things that I learned along the way and share some basic tips to help you out.

[00:12:05] Because one of the things, and I didn't discover this through doing this coaching. This is why I created this coaching from literally years and years of working with bosses. Working with bosses, but also just like having a meal with a boss, having a cocktail with a boss, getting emails from bosses, doing podcasts with bosses, all of these things, Monday meetups in the community, virtual co-working you name it?

[00:12:30] I am there and bosses are sharing and I'm like wow. Creatives have kind of messed up relationships with their businesses. It is just, it's just fact. Sometimes I hear the weirdest stuff y’all, the weirdest stuff. But I also get it. And this is where this creative piece comes in. I think this is just probably a natural enough thing with business owners in general, when you choose this path for yourself, you are going into a relationship with an inanimate idea.

[00:13:08] That being the business, it innately can be ripe with problems I believe, but the creative piece adds a whole other layer of potential problems. Let's say you're an artist or designer. You honey are selling a piece of your soul and that is going to give you a kind of messed up relationship with your business.

[00:13:31] Let's say you're a coach or a consultant. You are selling your expertise that can give you a kind of messed up relationship with your business. Let's say this is almost the pinnacle of them. Let's say you're a personal brand. You're an influencer. You are selling who you are and what you do, and maybe a different way than an artist or a coach.

[00:13:56] And whew girl, you are selling yourself. And that makes room for a kind of messed up relationship with your business. Let's say you're a solopreneur doing something, doing any of these or something else entirely different. You are committed to keeping it lean and small, and that is ripe for kind of messed up relationship with your business.

[00:14:24] Period. Creatives have a hard time being anything other than an overbearing single parent. Like the kind that makes real world helicopter parents seem aloof and detached. If I had a dollar bill for every time I heard a ball say to me, but no one can do it but me or no one can do it as well as me or as fast as me or whatever, that for me is a sign that you need to work on your relationship with your business.

[00:14:57] And if anyone like, feels like I'm talking right to them in this moment, don't stop this podcast cause we're gonna keep going through. As I have seen, this happen with artists and designers and coaches and consultants and people who want to run personal brands or just do anything as a solopreneur and I've heard them say that no one can do it but me or any other sort of toxic.

[00:15:23] Sort of red flags that I hear along the way, I find that there's several ways that this bad relationship with a business manifests. It manifests in a couple of really key ways. So there's all these signs or there's like these foundations, and these just sort of conditions that are there.

[00:15:46] You're an artist, you're selling a piece of your soul. That is a condition, here is how that can manifest in bad ways and all of those other examples. I'm not just picking on the artist here. One is some really messed up mindsets. Some really, really messed up mindsets, some things going on in your head where you believe that you are just doing it wrong, or maybe you believe that success is not happening fast enough for you.

[00:16:14] You're judging your success to someone, anyone else's. I often see this manifested in people not stopping and realizing what they've done, not recognizing the success that they have, when and where it happens and otherwise completely lacking the ability to trust themselves in their decisions.

[00:16:38] And this last one, I think is really important because I believe this stems from a place where you don't even know what you want and because you don't know what you want because you're just lost in this business, you lack the ability to trust yourself and your decisions because you don't know where you're going.

[00:16:59] It's a wild place, a wild place. I also see bosses in these places, in this place of not having a good relationship with their business, saying yes to things that aren't the right fit. This is like one of my tell-tell signs. It's even more tell-tell if you don't even realize you're doing it because oftentimes a bad relationship is present because boundaries were never put into place.

[00:17:24] You don't know what you should be saying no to, or you get complacent or are driven by scarcity and you're knowingly saying yes to things that you know you shouldn't. So that you can make another bucks, that you cannot let this opportunity pass you by. And that again is a lack of knowing where you're going, for you to understand the lens through which you need to be saying

[00:17:54] yes or no.

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[00:19:03] Another way this manifests. And this one is I know rings really true for potentially a lot of people listening to this. And honestly, in some capacity, most business owners, if I'm being quite honest is being overworked. And/or underpaid and those things don't always go hand in hand, you can be overworked and paid really well.

[00:19:29] Right? You can work just enough and not be paid enough. And this looks like lots of things. In all honesty, it can look like you are working too much, but it can also look like there are interruptions where you don't have good boundaries around your work time. And things are sort of bumping in putting out too many fires, or maybe you're trying to be off living your life.

[00:19:55] And you're getting pinged by emails and team members and clients or customers, whatever it may be. You are overworked. And then there's this underpaid piece, this not getting what you need in return from your business. And absolutely money is one of these things, but there are other benefits as well.

[00:20:17] There's time off, there's vacations, there's literally health insurance, there's the right tools to do your job, there is career development. There is you, you getting from your business, what it is that you need. Oftentimes, when a relationship with your business is not good. It results in you not getting what you need from your business.

[00:20:43] And I think all of these can add up or contribute to, in some capacity, burnout. Burnout is something that I have been very open about here on this show for many years. It's something that I struggled with a couple of years ago, looking back at it now I did not have a good relationship with my business.

[00:21:04] And that is absolutely what contributed to what was 18 months of very awful burnout. But it's also something that I'm seeing in bosses constantly now, a lot of burnout, and the remedies for which are not being fed by a bettering of a relationship with their business, it's being their holes, being patched by

[00:21:28] I'm gonna take a day off. When what you need to do is build a better relationship with your business so that you can build more sustainable healing. And then, this working in this business that you potentially do want to keep long term. So there are lots of ways that this manifests and I hate that as I'm going through these, I recognize this so much all of these things and some capacity or another so much in bosses that I know and bosses that I talk to regularly, that I see, that I share space with.

[00:22:11] I see too many people struggling with their relationship with their business and it manifesting in all of these ways. And honestly more, so maybe this is resonating for half of you listening to this, to someone, to you, perhaps. I wanna do a gut check and the goal here, well, I'll talk, I'm gonna add some disclaimers after.

[00:22:38] What I want to do is do a gut check. I wanted you to gut check your relationship with your business. I'm gonna ask you two questions. I want you to give yourself a yes or no answer immediately. Quick gut check. No shame, no guilt, no judgment. I can't even hear you. This is only for you and yourself. Gut check your relationship with your business.

[00:23:04] Here we go. Yes or no answers very quickly. One. Do you love your business? Question number two, does your business love you?

[00:23:24] Okay. The goal here is not love . This is the disclaimer. I don't need everyone to have that kind of relationship with your business, but I wanted to ask that question, that level of that question, to give you a hardcore gut check for how you feel about your business and how you think your business feeds you.

[00:23:47] If you answered yes to both of those, high five boss, you are winning, you are like ultimate boss winning. You are a boss who is owning your business. And I love that for you. If you answered no to either of those questions and especially both of those questions, you have some work that you need to do with your relationship with your business.

[00:24:16] In some capacity or another. And honestly, we probably all do. Even as I am juggling Almanac and Being Boss, there are places where things are just ebbing and flowing and with such speed that I recognize and need to sit down and do some course correction with my own relationship with my businesses. And that is also just the process.

[00:24:42] One of the things that we came up with when we were creating this coaching program was this idea that we're going to work through this with the bosses who go through this program. But as with everything that we do here, it doesn't stick. It doesn't stay forever. You change your conditions, change your business changes.

[00:25:06] And with every change that happens to you and your life and your business, your relationship with your business has to also shift and change. So this reflection of you with your relationship with your business is one that has to be ongoing. As I see myself moving into some next phases, I recognize that I have to keep my finger on the pulse of my relationship with my business in order to keep it in a good place, consistently.

[00:25:43] So you recognize potentially that you have something to do with your relationship with your business. I wanna share with you next, a couple of problems that I often see needing to be fixed as a result, or that once fixed could result in a bettering of the previous conditions that I shared. So I have four problems here that I see happening most often with bosses who need to fix their relationship with their business.

[00:26:21] Here they go. Number one. Sure, fire sign. You have lost yourself in your business. If you have lost yourself in your business, then you got some fixin to do because who are you? If you're not a business owner, if you're not the creative, making the thing, serving the thing, whatever it is, who are you, if you don't know who that is, you've lost yourself in your business.

[00:26:49] What do you value? Not your business, not your customer, not your client. You, what do you value? If you can answer that question, if you cannot answer that question, then you have lost yourself in your business. What do you want to be known for? For real, not your business, not even professionally, necessarily.

[00:27:15] What do you want to be known for? My very favorite answer to that question personally, for myself came whenever I was doing, I think it was a guided meditation. I wanna say it was Bridget Edelman. And one of the gatherings for Being Boss, all the replays for all of those are in the Being Boss clubhouse.

[00:27:34] If anyone ever wants to check those out, I remember she did it made us do this visualization. And one of the things was what do you want to be known for? And while we were doing this visualization, I did not go professional I'm like, I'm literally the boss known for bossness running this event. And we start going through answers and people are like, serving my clients and being great in my industry.

[00:28:04] And, I think my answer was something along the lines of like, I know how to make good food. I know how to enjoy a dinner party because I haven't lost myself in my business that much. There's something that I want to be known for that is outside of anything I'm ever going to do in business. And here's really the kicker for most bosses.

[00:28:29] And I've seen this over the years of especially running CEO Day Kit. There is a exercise in CEO Day Kit that has you reflecting on the different parts of your life and work. And bosses always struggle with this one, there's always so much conversation around this one in particular, and that is what are your hobbies?

[00:28:50] If it's not related to your business, what are you doing? What are you interested in? What are you reading about? What are you crafting and not selling? What are you doing for yourself, for personal entertainment, outside of your business? Nothing? Maybe? If that is you, you have lost yourself in your business and need to fix your relationship with it.

[00:29:19] Number two is similar but different. And the first one, your business has taken over you and it happens. It happens especially in those early years, but I think also can be just as relevant later on in your business as well. The second one, the problem is your business has taken over your life. So it hasn't even just taken over your identity.

[00:29:45] It's also taken over your ability to move in the world. You've lost the boundary between your life and your business. And this looks like any number of things you're working too much. You're letting sort of your work get into parts of your life that is shouldn't, you're answering emails on vacation.

[00:30:07] You're taking calls when you're with your family, whatever you, you're not doing hobbies. Right? Whatever it may be, your business has taken over your life. I think this causes a bigger problem in that, or actually this is not a bigger, it causes another problem. Whenever your business takes over your life on this level, you're not actually working in a way that's good for your business.

[00:30:36] I realize as I was coming out of burnout, that I was no longer good for my business. After about 35 hours a week. Any time that I was putting into my business after 35 hours was not good. And not only wasn't it not good now, but it was going to keep me from recovering so that I could be good next week too.

[00:31:01] And then it spirals and then you hit burnout. So when you don't have clear well held boundaries between your work and your life, when you are letting your business take over your life. It's not only doing bad things to your life, but it's also going to do bad things to your business. And sometimes we can't see the ROI situation on life, but when brought back into the context of what it does to your business, sometimes that makes a click.

[00:31:32] So take whichever one of those you need. Problem number three is that you are likely not focusing on what matters most in your business, which results in important things start falling through the cracks. You can't see the forest for the trees. Right? You're so busy with your head down, doing the work, putting out the fires, chasing the shiny objects, reaching for every opportunity, saying yes to all of the things that you stop focusing on really important stuff in your business.

[00:32:13] I will never forget one of the, my shining examples and shining in not a good way. Examples of this is I will never forget coaching someone once. And it was someone that I had admired who came to me, wanting me to assist them and some online business process things. And I was very excited to do it. It was someone that I had been aware of.

[00:32:34] I was dream client situation. Until I realized it was not a dream client situation or that's not even true. I think still very much so dream client, but was shocked at the state of their business because this person admitted to me that they had a stack inches high on their desk of printed invoices that had never been sent out and paid.

[00:33:05] And yes, this was back in the day when you were still printing out your invoices and like mailing them to clients. This was a product maker who had a stack of invoices inches high that had never been sent out to be paid. This person had tens of thousands of dollars sitting on their desk waiting to be collected, but had never bothered sending them.

[00:33:32] This person was so focused on all of the things and was such a tizzy over all of the things that the basics that made their business run were being forgotten. So those red flags look like invoices not being sent. Bill's not being paid. You missing your own deadlines, which is not a boss move everybody, not a boss move.

[00:33:59] So when you start developing a bad relationship with your business, oftentimes your business is the one that suffers or, well, your business will suffer. You're both in it. You're not getting any sleep. You're not getting a vacation. You're not getting paid. You're getting overworked and your business is also suffering along the way.

[00:34:25] In this case, you need to better systemize the basics that run your business. You need to understand what needs to be happening every day, week, month, year to keep your business running so that you can be more in, on all of the other things that are happening. When you start letting the important things in your business fall through the cracks.

[00:34:46] When you're not focusing on what matters, always be collecting ABC's business. Then it is a sure fire sign that your relationship with your business is amending. Problem number four, last one I wanna share, there are many, but I wanted to bring out the most common ones because they want you to recognize if you need to work on this or not.

[00:35:07] Number four is you are not getting the benefits that you need from your business to run your life.

[00:35:17] Maybe, maybe none of those other ones hit home for you. Maybe you still have hobbies. Maybe you are great with your boundaries. Maybe you are still getting the stuff done, but maybe you're not getting the benefits that you most need. You're not getting paid. You're not getting vacation time. You're not getting like legit benefits like health insurance, or the tools that you need to do your job or professional development or whatever those things are.

[00:35:50] If you are doing all of the things, but you're still not getting what you need from your business then something needs to shift and change. Because what I often find is you may be fine with it now, but don't get to the place where you're gonna resent your business, because that is a journey that you will be going on.

[00:36:09] And from that, there is no returning, at least not very easily. If you ever get to the place where you are resenting your business, because you are doing all of the things, but it's still not paying you. You still can't take a vacation, you still are not getting what you need from your business, then you will start resenting it.

[00:36:27] And that will snowball real fast, really, really quickly.

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[00:37:20] So those are four big problems that I often see with bosses when they get to this place where their relationship with their business is toxic. And I think that there are worse ones, usually around boundaries. I think there are like lighter, easier ones, or maybe it's just that, you know. Well, honestly, now that I think about it, I think it's still just boundary related.

[00:37:44] Boundaries are a big part of this everybody. Boundaries are a big part of this. And though that is one of I think the most important things that you can do when trying to work your way out of a bad relationship with your business. What I actually wanna share with you as to what I find is one of the most important things that you can do for beginning to work your way out of it is to know your values.

[00:38:12] Is to just know your values. And there are two sets of values. Over the years, we have talked to values many times in the show notes for this episode, I'll be sure to, make sure that there is linked. Several resources that we have for you knowing your values, we've done episodes on it. We literally have a quiz to help you find yours.

[00:38:34] It's also an exercise that we do in CEO Day Kit and is something that we put into this group coaching in a way that we've never done it before, which makes me super excited. Well, we talk about it a lot because this shit is important. It is incredibly important for you to know what your values are and for you to show up for them and use them in all of these things, because it is foundational for how I define a boss.

[00:39:02] If you know who you are, you own who you are, you know what you want. You actually wanna make it happen. If you were gonna show up and do this work, if you were gonna, make it towards your version of success, you do all of those things because you know your values and you use them. And in this group coaching,

[00:39:22] I actually splitted them and splitted them, actually split them into two groups. We've done business values for years, tons of resources we’ll have them linked, but we also added in this exploration of personal values first. This is sort of a new take, and this is one it's not completely new, we've talked about before.

[00:39:44] But in terms of practicing of like sitting down and guiding bosses through it, the first time we've ever done that, and it was monumental, it was incredibly huge. And it was literally the first thing that we did together because I really do believe that doing any work for yourself, for your business, any of those things it's only ever going to feel aligned.

[00:40:07] It's only ever going to be aligned if you are aligning it to what you hold most true to yourself, and those are your values. So, what is important to you? What do you want to cultivate more of? Who are you? Your personal values are that thing. And when you know those first, then it's easier for you to move forward.

[00:40:31] It's easier for you to define yourself so that you can move into the space of your business as a clearly defined being that can hold their own through the hurricane that is business ownership and with an entity that has its own values too. Those being business values that we define second after your personal values, because they are informed by a completely different set of rules.

[00:40:57] And oftentimes with bosses, there is a good bit of overlap, but that's not always true. Sometimes they are quite different. For me personally, there's almost no overlap actually. I think there is no overlap. Yeah, I can a hundred percent say there's no overlap between my personal values, the values of Being Boss the company, and the values of Almanac.

[00:41:20] Supply Co the company. So whenever I'm walking up into either of those businesses, either of those entities, I am me first. I have my personal values and it is through the lens of my personal values that I make decisions that I show up that I work to bring them into fruition. In those spaces and outside of them, but in those spaces, I also add this second layer of business values through which I make decisions and I show up and I otherwise do work to bring them to fruition.

[00:41:52] And we found that as we took everyone through this go coaching program, that once you have those incredibly defined, especially the personal values for the purpose of this coaching program, what we wanted to focus on was you. You, the boss, the business owner, not the business, there's coaching for days for your business.

[00:42:10] How much coaching though, is there for you? The entrepreneur, the business owner, making sure you are aligned and you know who you are whenever you can do all the work that you do with your values defined first, it all makes way more sense. It's significantly easier. So if you've never done the exercise of what is your personal values, I've told you a million times to go do your business values.

[00:42:34] If you haven't done that yet, definitely do that. But first do your personal values, know what's important to you. And then through that lens, you can start really reflecting on what is happening between you and your business that you need to change. I have a really great example of this that came to me really recently.

[00:42:55] Boss friend of mine was sharing the story about how she was very excited about a decision that she had just made in sort of a side business that she has. She has a creative sort of boss business, but on the side, she also owns a building and is a landlord, and it was it's work that she's done for an incredibly long time.

[00:43:18] Been the landlord of this building and has found it especially recently to be incredibly draining. And so she'd been wrestling with this decision of how to make this work better for her for a while. And she decided, you know what, I'm gonna run this through my personal values. She ran the decision through her personal values and it became really easy for her to take the step that she'd been sort of walking around for a really long time and hired a

[00:43:50] property management company to manage this property for her, because her doing that job herself was completely outta line with all of her personal values, which is why she constantly felt such friction in that space. When she told me that story, just let me like zoom high five doll day. I was like, that’s great news.

[00:44:12] That is exactly how you should be doing it. And I could just tell, as she was telling the story, how she felt so much lighter around this responsibility because she had made this decision in a way that was so true to her because she did it through her personal values. It did nothing with business. I mean, it did, it is like a business endeavor, but completely sort of different situation.

[00:44:36] And in a situation that completely worked for her. So that I think is just one little inkling of the power of knowing what your values are when you know what your values are, you can look at the friction in your business, in your relationship with your business, and so much more easily find a solution.

[00:44:58] If you ask yourself, for me, two of mine are creativity and freedom. And so I can look at any decision and just through those two, think how does this support my intention, my value of creativity. How does it support my value of freedom? Does it help me cultivate more of it? Etcetera, etcetera.

[00:45:28] And if it doesn't, if it's not aligned, it's an easy no. Or I make the decision in a way that it is aligned with my values and I'm going to feel good about it. I recently was having a conversation with a friend of mine who were talking about an opportunity that had come up for me and I was sharing how it was from an outsider.

[00:45:50] It would have seemed a blessing of an opportunity. A blessing of an opportunity, but as someone who has had an inside look into the opportunity and knows a couple things around, it was an easy no for me, it was one of the easiest nos I've ever had and potentially the sort of opportunity that could really great PR, really great

[00:46:13] for audience building, really get me seen by a lot of eyeballs, but it was literally going to go against my personal values to say yes to this thing, knowing some things that I know anyone else see this, anyone else hear that I say no to this opportunity? And they would be like, Emily that's like professional suicide.

[00:46:35] I'd be like, yeah, well, bye. If that's, what does it end for me then? I don't think I wanna be here anyway. But as I was telling this friend about this, cause when the opportunity came to me, it was an easy no, and I just sort of moved on and I thought about it later. I was like, wow. Like if anyone else were to be given this opportunity, they would just like take this up.

[00:46:54] And this is not me being ungrateful. This is me knowing my values. It gives me knowing my values and taking my like insider information and absolutely using it and not turning a blind eye because of this amazing “opportunity”. So I was talking to a friend of mine and she was like, high five for doing this.

[00:47:14] I can tell that you feel very at ease with this decision. And I was like, you know what I have said, I have said yes to opportunities in the past that did not allow my values and I regretted them every single time, every single time. But I have never said no to an opportunity in alignment with my values missing out on something and regretted it.

[00:47:42] I would rather say no and fill in alignment than say yes, and take the opportunity and feel out of alignment. And that sort of centeredness is also what makes it really easy to make decisions. So, two, I think important sort of illustrations of how knowing your values and living through them through your personal values in this instance can help you be a better boss and in this situation, be a better business owner and have a better relationship with your business.

[00:48:20] So that's my tip for you. And I have many more, I've been doing this work for a long time y'all, so if you're really feeling it, there is a group coaching situation happening it's called Boss Owned Business. This is six weekly 90 minute calls with me, including some hot seats. We also put together my very favorite part of this, and it is a physical workbook that we're literally gonna send you in the mail, a workbook that the team and I put together.

[00:48:50] We're very proud of it. We love it very much. That will guide you through six modules. It has lots of really good prompts. Some place for you to just like work things out and brainstorm, some fill in the blanks to make things super easy for you, but a physical workbook to guide you through all six modules.

[00:49:09] And then we're also delivering to you an editable PDF guidebook. So I mentioned earlier, the thing about your relationship with your business is that it is ever changing. As you change, as your life changes, as your business changes, your relationship with your business changes. And so this editable guidebook gives you a place to document your boundaries, your ideal relationship with your business, so that you can reflect on them and you can grow and change them as well.

[00:49:42] And so this, this PDF acts is like an annual or twice a year, quarterly reminder of what's important to you, what you're here to accomplish, what your version of success looks like, what some of your most important boundaries are, so that you never forget, because it's easy to forget when your head is in the sand doing the work and it's editable so that you can, it can grow with you.

[00:50:07] We're also doing a private group in the Being Boss community, the whole shebang. I'm so excited about this coaching program and it's live-ish. I think about the time this comes out and we're gonna keep the car open for a couple of weeks. If you were listening to this episode, weeks months later. Come over to the website beingboss.club/coaching, sign up for the wait list.

[00:50:30] I will do this again. This is not going to be something that I do in perpetuity. So don't think that like, oh, I'll just sign up next time. I'm gonna do this like two or three times, I think maybe, maybe. Doing the beta group was a ton of fun. I loved it. I, so look forward to doing this with a new group of bosses.

[00:50:51] The beta group was a group of bosses that I've been working with for years. These are bosses who have been in the community. We only opened it up to community and clubhouse bosses. So almost every one of them were bosses that I've known for a long time. And I know their businesses and was able to really dive in in some good ways.

[00:51:08] I'm excited to open this up to a whole new group of bosses, as well. But I also don't plan on doing this forever. I'm not, I don't see myself as a coach. I'm not trying to build a coaching business with this. This is not what I'm doing. What I want to do is coach some bosses. And help you have a better relationship with your business as I am growing and changing in my own relationships with my businesses as well.

[00:51:41] And also because literally bosses have been asking for this for years, for years and years. And we finally sat down after we did last year's, after we did last year's survey. And we're like, okay, we, yeah like shit or get off the pot. If I may, like, are we going to do this thing that bosses are begging for almost like a follow up to the Being Boss book, if you will, but kind of completely different.

[00:52:07] There are some things that we talk about. I mean, there are some parts of being boss that are just universal and no matter what we do, we're gonna talk about them values being one of those things. But it is also more than that. It is a culmination of years of podcasting and coaching and working with creative business owners, but also being a business owner myself and navigating many different phases.

[00:52:29] As a business owner of two very different kinds of businesses and bringing it all together into one coaching offering. The beta group loved it, it brought clarity and confidence and it helped the bosses feel less overwhelmed. And my favorite more at peace with their businesses. Because whenever you can do that, you can do more.

[00:52:54] You can do better in your business. And that's what I want for every single boss listening to this is for you and your business to just do beautiful things together. And that can really only be really optimized, done happily when you can move forward with greater ease, because I really do. I want everyone to feel good as a business owner.

[00:53:23] I feel it, I feel it a lot and I love this, and I want this for everybody. So if you're interested and you wanna learn more beingboss.club/coaching. If you're listening to this sort of in a timely manner, go check it out. If you are listening to this later, go get on the wait list. I'm very excited to be doing this.

[00:53:48] This is not something I plan on doing forever. But I'm excited to do it a time or two or three, over the next couple of years, but if you're into it now, Jump in. It's gonna be a fun group. It's going to be incredibly impactful. We're gonna touch so many parts of your life and work. It's gonna blow your mind what you can do in six weeks.

[00:54:11] And that clarity and confidence is really what I want to accomplish for everyone. And that really comes from not being in a bad relationship with your business. So there you go. If this resonates, do some work. If you want some help doing some work, come see me. I'm happy to help.

[00:54:37] All right boss because you're here. I know you want to be a better creative business owner, which means I've got something for you. Each week the team at Being Boss is scouring the news, the best entrepreneurial publications and updates and releases of the apps and tools that run our businesses and is curating it all into a weekly email that delivers the must know tips and tactics in the realms of mindset, money, and productivity.

[00:55:00] This email is called brewed. We brew it up for you each week to give you the insight you need to make decisions and move forward in your creative business. Check it out now and sign up for yourself at beingboss.club/brewed. That's beingboss.club/B R E W E D. Now until next time. Do the work, be boss.