This week’s reminder is that there is an inextricable link between loving yourself and your path to profitability.
While these two things may seem like they don’t go together, I’m telling you, they are connected and central to your success as a leader.
I have an exercise inside The Bold Profit Academy that walks members through questions to help them put this into action and to implement it, now I’m sharing them with you.
First, I want to have this important conversation because when I look back at the multitude of business decisions I have made over my lifetime, the ones that have led to the most success, including financial freedom, have been where I have made a choice and a decision to put me first.
Don’t get me wrong, these were challenging decisions, it’s not easy to choose ourselves, I get that. But the decisions that have challenged me to choose myself, to choose my health, to choose my happiness, to choose my goals, my purpose, my desires – those are what led to profit.
I don’t often talk about loving yourself first, or self-love, that’s not usually within the range of content topics here, but I share today because I need you to understand that there is no business unless we put our mental, emotional, physical, financial wellbeing first.
We need the endurance to be able to show up for our businesses over and over and over and over again.
So I want to take you through some of the ways loving myself first has come up in my business to give you the opportunity to reframe how you might be thinking about this for yourself.
The first way this came up for me was the very decision to even start a business. Did I love myself enough to put my happiness, and ultimately my health, above the fear of the unknown? Did I love myself enough to take the leap, not knowing if I would experience success?
Then, once I saw it was possible to have success on my own as a business owner, did I love myself enough to have the courage to quit my corporate 9-5 job?
Did I love myself enough to disappoint my boss, who I worked with for almost 13 years and really cared about? Did I love myself enough to prioritize myself in that situation?
During my first year of business, did I love myself enough to sacrifice the little money I was earning to invest it in a coach to guide me through?
Did I love myself enough to ask my husband to support me for a year while I got things off the ground?
Then, did I love myself enough to hold my feet to the fire and make sure I had enough income coming in to honor the request I made to my husband, instead of assuming he would go on and on forever into perpetuity supporting me financially if my business didn’t support itself?
Did I love myself enough to create programs and services that made sure I had the space to care for myself emotionally, mentally, and physically?
Did I love myself enough to raise my prices to ensure that I was financially cared for?
Do I love myself enough to, every day, prioritize my energy and energetic capacity over things that drain my energy? For me, that’s things like social media, producing more and more content that might or might not work, learning new tools or systems that may or may not do anything for me, so do I love myself enough every day to prioritize my energy?
Do I love myself enough to make sure every day I prioritize getting paid?
So how can you love yourself so unapologetically that it creates a profitable business?
The hard truth is unless you love yourself enough to take a stand for your mental, emotional, physical, and financial health, your business will always be a weight on your shoulders.
Many of us women are working at the expense of our fulfillment, purpose, joy, pleasure, whatever you want to call it. There is one thing I know for sure, that is not sustainable. It’s not in alignment with the fullest expression of ourselves, and alignment = abundance.
When we are in alignment, when things come with less effort, when things come with less resistance, when we’re able to be pulled by our alignment, that’s when abundance happens.
Being in integrity with what you want, how you want to feel, and what you believe, creates momentum and sustained energy so you can do the most important thing required for your business: to keep going.
So I’ve included a bunch of questions in this podcast episode, answering the questions mentioned here are meant to give you a starting point to help you align with what you really want to do, and the work that fills you up instead of drains you dry.
So think about your work, and focus on how you love to work, not how you’re told to work, not what you see other people doing, not what you feel you should be doing.
As an example, when I first started my business in 2014 it was a big deal to have a Facebook group. My business coach told me to open a Facebook group, so I did. There was no thought behind why I should have this group, no intention or understanding of how it sits in my business, the purpose that it would have, what I would do in the group, etc. Running this group exhausted me, I didn’t like showing up that way, it was draining.
Then in 2017, when I started this podcast, I closed it. Podcasting felt good, and I’ve been doing that consistently since we launched it. Almost 4 years of podcasting now and this podcast does way more to generate client leads than that Facebook group ever did because this is what I love to do. I show up excited to record podcasts, whereas with the Facebook group I forced it. They are different energies.
So think about your work and focus on how YOU love to work.
Make no mistake, this will go against the grain when you do this. When you focus on what you love to do, it’s really disruptive, you are challenging societal norms.
It’s okay to be a trailblazer. It’s okay to challenge those things. I can’t think of a single client that I have that didn’t have to wade through the utter discomfort of disrupting their industry.
And I can think of times in my life where I’ve done the same. For example, when I took my first sabbatical, which was a four-week time away from my business, I could barely do it. My biggest anxiety and stress was, what would my husband think?
My husband, John, doesn’t take as much time off as me, he does not have the flexibility that I have in my business. Our businesses are very different, he runs a manufacturing business, which is infinitely more complex than a service-based business. And for a long time, he has been hooked into hustle culture. Whether he has worked for someone else or for himself, long work hours had been the norm and a badge of honor.
He’s also a high achiever. He likes to push himself, he likes to challenge himself, he likes growth. And he has really tangled that up into his work, like many of you, and I, have done. At the time of my sabbatical, I was unhooking myself from hustle culture, but he was still in it. It was so uncomfortable for me to talk about, I felt embarrassment and guilt, and some shame.
But what’s interesting is that it benefited us both.
It wasn’t without its complexities, but he started to see, “maybe I can do that.” Maybe I don’t have to be in this hustle all the time. Maybe I can plan to take a month off. He has since changed his work schedule and now they have half-day Fridays
The point is, by me going against the grain, by me being willing to disrupt and challenge societal norms, even though it was uncomfortable, it changed a lot around me.
With all that said, I didn’t start this business to make millions. I started this business so I could do what I love and provide a living for myself.
And somehow by putting myself first, by putting my health first, by loving myself unapologetically, I built a business that has generated multiple millions of dollars over the last handful of years.
This is why it’s so important for us to put ourselves first, to love ourselves enough, to put our goals first, to unsubscribe from the different cultural norms that we are seeing.
This is really why I have created the Revenue Goal Calculator, this is where you can start putting yourself first so you can do what you love and create profitability.
It’s not either/or, it is both/and: “I love myself and I create profitability.”
Now take some time to think about these questions to help you discover what you love and how to prioritize it in your business. Think about how you’re working and ask yourself what feels energizing, what drains your energy, what feels light, what feels heavy, what brings you fulfillment? What makes you frustrated and resentful? How does what you love to do align with your best-fit clients? How does it serve them for you to do what you love to do? How do the things you love to do help your clients get the outcomes that they want?
Write that down, give yourself tangible proof and evidence that this is possible.
