Find the systems you need to grow your business
Don’t worry, I’m not going to attempt to recruit you into my MLM scheme here or tell you how you can make “6 figures in 6 hours” or some other bullshit.
But if you believe in setting intention and what you focus on matters, then I really want to know:
Do you like money?
Specifically, do you like money coming into your business and if the answer is “DUH, yes!” then why don’t you have systems for your money?
I was barely three pages into the massive tome of family history that I’d borrowed to fill in some of the more remote branches of my family tree when it hit me:
For decades and centuries, we relied on newspaper, certificates of birth and marriage and death to record the impact of one person on the world. Now, with the advent of YouTube and blogging and the internet, it’s much harder to be forgotten and to make a true impact.
I love watching episodes of “Who do you think you are?” because they always delve a little deeper than Uncle Henry born in 1932 or the distant cousin who died during the Gold Rush. It’s all about the stories you uncover, the images from the past and the miracle of history and luck that made you who you are today.
If someone tracked the history of your business, 100 years from now, would it be a footnote in the margins or an origin story that inspires and impacts the world?
Sometimes, when it comes to systems, people assume that all they need to succeed in life or business is more productivity. I mean, we all have the same 24 hours, right? It’s how you use them that matters.
No. 100 times no.
Not only is there so much more to reaching your goals than being productive with your time but we don’t all have the same 24 hours.
It’s always interesting to watch the logic of children when they’ve been asked to do something unpleasant, like clean up toys or eat vegetables. Kid logic is the most pure example of our resistance to the things we know we need to do but put barriers in our own path to doing.
If you ask a child to put away their toys they might:
All the while, you fume and cajole in the face of the frustration that can only be brought by a toddler.
Except… we’re all toddlers.
Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, your business success is directly tied to your personal growth potential. The ability of an entrepreneur to mature, take on new challenges, question the status quo and step forward with confidence will all impact your bottom line.
Of course, most people think that they just need a better marketing funnel or sales page so they ignore the most essential element of a business: you.
Personal development can get a bad rap because, when it’s done poorly, it’s little more than rah-rah cheerleading about confidence and chanting mantras. Any course or training or experience that leaves you feeling fired up and excited, but doesn’t create any actual change is no better than an amusement park roller coaster: Fun while it lasts but useless day to day.
Now, I don’t doubt that personal development teachers and coaches want their students to walk away changed but if you’re not equipped with a system to implement that change then it’s likely to be fleeting.
Once I create a system for my business, it’ll be perfect forever, right?
Uh, I have a process for that so why isn’t it working?
Well… if I had to guess the reason that your systems are no longer working, it’s probably because you couldn’t predict the future, the systems didn’t adapt with your growth or your team is human and therefore fallible.
It might feel like an odd question to a community of entrepreneurs and business owners but I’m really curious: Do you love your business?
I was thinking back to the days sitting in an office downtown, hating my life. It was a crappy little office and the company I worked for paid little more than minimum wage and were obsessed with saving money. At one point they asked us to recycle our soda cans so we could use the money in our office budget. Later, they canceled the cleaning service and bought us a vacuum.
I hated it and I assumed that owning my own business would be 100% better.
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When I launched this website (first as kellyazevedo.com), way back in 2011, I’ll never forget how anxious I was about learning WordPress. I didn’t know code, was worried about uploading and then losing all my content and, frankly, I didn’t want to look like an idiot figuring it all out.
So as I complained and worried to my friend Patrick, his repeated assurances that I could “figure it out” were of no help whatsoever. Finally, I just asked, “if it’s so easy, can you show me how?”
And in the days before zoom and virtual classrooms and 783,000 YouTube videos on every imaginable thing, we got on Skype and Patrick showed me how to blog on WordPress.
It was, embarrassingly for me, super simple to do.
But I can see a world in which I let “I don’t know how” stop me from making progress and hitting publish on that first post.
It really annoys me when someone says to learn something you just need to “fix your mindset.”
It’s not in your head.
There are things that you legit do not know how to do. Yet.
So how do you get over that roadblock and keep going?
It’s already mid-January so it’s just about time that those goals you wrote down December 31st are being shoved to the bottom of a paper pile, the realities of client work and responsibilities are showing up and that voice that sounds suspiciously like your mother says, who has time for all that nonsense, just stick to what you know!
Before we know it the year will be yielding to tax time, the long, hot summer, back-to-school, another hectic holiday season and 2019.
So today I want to share how I reach my business goals and inspire you to quit quitting and actually achieve those dreams for your entrepreneurial life.
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It’s that time of year again when every listicle, podcast and clickbait is promising you unprecedented wealth, health and happiness if you just do these 228 things that successful people swear by!
And while it’s always interesting to get a peek inside the lives of other people and find out what they’re doing, chasing the rabbit trail of “what should I do?” by crowdsourcing habits is a surefire way to end 2018 the same way you ended every other lackluster year: frustrated, burned out and wondering if it’ll ever get better.
So today I’m pulling back the curtain to share how I was able to meet every one of my personal goals in 2017 and how I set myself up for success. Not as a roadmap for you to do as I did, but to demonstrate that you can make your own rules along the way.
Today’s post is all about success in your personal life and be sure to join me next week when I share more about business success.
