Why a Selfish Strategy Is Just Good Business

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Hey, Hey, so last week we talked about those five questions that your strategy really needs to answer. And I wanted to highlight one of them this week. And talk about one of the, who answers that you maybe didn't consider. Remember the question was who are the stakeholders? Who's impacted by the strategy that you're creating. And one of the things I find with small business owners is they tend to put themselves lost in just about every equation. So when you're creating a strategy and you're asking who one of the who's, who is the most impacted by the strategy that you're creating. Is you. The CEO. Yes. You impact the strategy by being the person who sets the direction, et cetera. But the flip side is also true. The strategy has a huge impact on you. Now we're pretty good at some parts of this. So we're thinking about our strategy and usually the values of the business often come from your own personal values. So it's offered, aligned in that way. And sometimes we even take this a step further and we start to think about, well, the strategy create good work-life balance for me, so we're pretty good about thinking about those kind of key elements. We're very focused on, does the strategy get the business where it needs to go? Right. Tick. Box number one. We're usually pretty good at going. Does it align with my values? Okay. Tick box number two. Is it going to give me the work-life balance? I want sometimes we tick box number three. But we forget to ask. Does the strategy make me happy and motivated and excited and engaged. Do I want this business? And this is so key because of you're not happy and engaged at work. If work isn't giving back to you, that's when your mental health starts to suffer. You start to get stressed. It feels like you're on a hamster wheel. You're not inspired. You're bored. You're frustrated. And then you're working all the hours, but no real reason. And burnout and stress become like your colleagues. And this is really key because when that happens, when you are not [00:02:00] taking care of yourself physically, and you're not taking care of yourself mentally. So you've got all of that frustration junk happening because of the strategy you've implemented. Then that starts to have knock on effects. So those become like the first two dominoes, right? But once you're in that kind of stressed mindset, we don't tend to make great decisions. We're making decisions that just to get the decision out the way we're not thinking long term, we're thinking I'm exhausted. I'm tired. I'm stressed. I'm angry. Um, any of these things. And what decision can I make just to stop feeling that. Instead of what is the best thing for me in the business right now? What is the best decision I could make here? And then if the proverbial hits the fan, you're already operating at a 10. Now we're adding across this, on top of that. So we all know we're not our best selves under extreme stress. Now, double that with a crisis. Your decision making is going even more haywire. You're feeling even more stressed. Your behavior follows. It's a recipe for disaster. Also when we're stressed. We're not the best communicators. We're not thinking about what does this other person need from me in this conversation. But only coming at it from the perspective of like, this is what I need. I don't have time to make it sound good and still nice. And like, hold your hand. I just need you to do right. Like now. All were retreating and kind of sulking to ourselves that people aren't doing what we wanted them to do. Even though we're not really communicating it really well. And then think about what that feels like for your team. Or for your clients? They start to feel that. So if you've got the strategy, that's making the business, all this money. And you aren't inspired by what it's doing, or you really hate what it's doing or you've outgrown what it's doing. Your health and wellbeing is going to suffer. That is then going to be the first domino that knocks on all the dominoes until your team and your clients suffer. And in the business will suffer. And we see this a lot. We see people in the online space build really beautiful, big businesses [00:04:00] that make loads of money. And then poof. They're gone. And that can be that the CEO has gone. Whoa, this is so not working for me. I'm out. Or can be that it's had that knock on impact. And so while it might've felt okay for you to white knuckle through things, When the business was making a ton of money. That payoff might not be there anymore. Right through all of these things that we've been talking about. And so maybe you're not that keen to do the business anymore. Now, the second part of your personal wellbeing. And small business CEOs tend not to think about when they are building a strategy. Is their own financial stability. And what I mean by that is most small business CEOs are not paying themselves consistently. Now you might have a strategy that's super successful for the business. It might even be a strategy that lights you up. You're super excited about it. So we're ticking all the health and happiness side of things. And it's great for the business. It's earning you loads of revenue. But as you deliver on that revenue ventricles are to making sure you pay your team. Making sure you're paying all your software charges, et cetera. Right. And on a good month. There's profit leftover and you feel like you can take some money out of the business. On a bad month we're sales were low or you had an unexpected expense. And that profit has dwindled. Again, you're just taking what's left over. Now when you are not financially secure. That creates stress. And remember what we said about stress. So you've created this strategy. That's great for the business and maybe inspiring for you. But ultimately. Isn't focused on paying you. And does it mean it has to be paying you. Seven figures, eight figures or anything. But it needs to be paying you enough that it covers your bills at the bare minimum. That's the starting point. And it needs to be paying you that every month. That's how you feel financially secure. If You as the CEO. Cannot feel secure and stable. That's automatically going to chip away at how happy you are in the business. And [00:06:00] it's automatically gonna raise your stress levels. And all of those things are going to start again, poor decisions. Really bad communication. Team morale is going to tank. So your strategy needs to be more than just, this is going to make the business lots of money. It needs to be, this is going to make the business money. It's going to make me super happy and engaged and it's going to be profitable. It's not enough that it makes money on the top line. It has to be consistently profitable. So that you can consistently pay yourself. When I have a conversation with a CEO, who's burnt out. One of the things that I can almost guarantee they're going to tell me. Is that they haven't paid themselves for X amount of time. If this is resonating for you, I want to invite you to join me on profits and paydays. It's a weekly email series. For coaches, consultants, service providers. Where your paydays had been a bit more. More war. Then teaching. W. And the series is going to help you learn how to boost your profits to keep your paydays flowing. Even in those months, we, we talked about, well, you have a lower sales month or you have one of those unexpected expenses. The goal is for you to pay yourself consistently. Not consistently unless. dot.dot. I'm going to pop the link in the show notes, or you can go to Diane mayer.com forward slash payday. To sign up. Before we go. If you only take one thing away from this episode. I want it to meet at paying yourself is a good strategy. It's not selfish. Paying yourself and allowing yourself to be financially stable. We'll allow you to be a better leader, a better manager. A better coach or consultant for your clients. And if your business or your strategy is not allowing for that. Then that strategy cannot be successful.