The Most Important Relationship You Have in Your Business
Creating and setting boundaries for yourself as a business owner, parent, spouse, friend, daughter, sister, and every other role that we have in our lives can prove more challenging than just being able to say I need to set boundaries for myself and my business.
When we are passionate about what it is that we're doing it creates an extra layer of our identity. This happens without our even being aware that it is taking place. Our language changes from what we do to who we are. As we make these changes, the people around us make these changes as well. For example, the shift takes place from “I teach English” to “I am a teacher”. When we start to use “I am” language in our business, and it becomes so ingrained in our lives, it becomes more and more challenging to differentiate between what we do and who we are.
How do you even begin to start setting boundaries around who we are if all we speak is who we are? If I am a teacher, how do I not teach in those teachable moments that I encounter each day?
I found this challenge in my own mediation business that I had established in 2000. I started out one day saying that I would do divorce mediation. It sounded like, “I am going to offer mediation services to people who want a divorce.” I woke up five years later and realized that I had become a mediator. My language had shifted, as did the language of those around me to “I am a mediator”.
With this shift, my streamlined practice for divorce mediation changed to parent teen mediation, family mediation, elder mediation, community mediation, neighbor mediation, workplace mediation, and the list goes on. The mediation skills for how to do mediation was transferrable, so why not? Well, “why not?” was really about my not setting boundaries with what I do from who I am. This caused a great deal of confusion in myself, as well as with those closest to me and my business. I no longer have the mediation practice as my interests changed and I needed to work with what was my passion, which today is supporting business owners.
When we become very clear about what we do, and are able to separate that from who we are, the magic begins to happen. We can let loose the passion and the interest in our core area of work and really focus on our bottom line. It is when we are stretched in many different directions, through not having set clear boundaries with our relationship between who we are and what we do, that we can become overwhelmed or even lost in focus about where we are going.
This reality creeps up on entrepreneurs. It creeps up because when we are starting a business, we are likely limited with cash flow. This reality forces us to do many tasks to continue to be able to do what our heart desires in our business. The reality is that as entrepreneurs, we need to do the bookkeeping, the marketing and advertising, the networking, the business planning, the telephone answering and everything else that takes up the time away from what we started our business for in the first place. Add the fact that we are mothers, who are masters at multitasking, and doing all of these tasks becomes apart of who we are as business owners.
In business, who we are is translated in our vision, mission, mandate, values and guiding principles. This is then woven throughout our business model and is integrated into every activity, product and service that we offer to our customers. This is where we need to keep the “I am” separate from what we “do”. When we can become clear about what it is that we do in our business, we can start to surround ourselves with the people who do the things outside of what we do in our business. They are the bookkeepers, the marketers, the telephone answerers and they provide necessary core services for the operation of our business.
Today it may seem unrealistic to hire a full time bookkeeper or other core service provider, but it is necessary as you grow and develop your business in the years to come. Prioritizing what is most important to you is a start. If you could be working on providing the product or service that you are passionate about all the time, is it worth it for you to do those other tasks that are necessary in your business? Is spending 2 hours a week of your time one website updates worth it for you? Or, would you rather spend that time working with a customer? How do you rate and value your time compared to that of the time of another service provider who can do the website updates for you. Is your $____/hour or customer, worth the $____/hour that the service provider can offer you?
The most important relationship you can have in your business, is with your business. The best relationship builder you can practice is setting aside time to review what you have done, where you are at, and where you want to be. This is essential for start up and established businesses to really synthesize the relationship you create between “I am” and “I do”.
Vision boarding, system mapping and mind mapping are all helpful steps that you can take to sort out the clutter between the tasks of what you are passionate about, the reasons why you started your own business, with what needs to get done. There are many website resources, that you can access, to see how these processes work and how you can start doing them for yourself and your business.
Once you differentiate between the two, you can prioritize and decide if you will continue to do everything you have mapped out, or if you will surround yourself with the people who can do those tasks for you.
Your passion in your business is your inspiration to continue to move forward. By creating systems of activities in your business, you are ensuring the stability of your business model and a relationship that is truly unstoppable.
Until next time,
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Hi, I’m Suzanne.?Thank you for reading my post.?
For 22 years of my career, I have worked in education, mediation, conflict management, and consulting but have always had an interest in Arts and Humanities.?Things are beautiful and appealing?and?play an essential?role in my practice of weaving the messy with the beautiful.?
I believe in courageously honouring my truth and living my legacy. A fiercely passionate entrepreneur and lover of meaningful conversations, coffee, food, art, travel, and building connections. When I’m not spending time with my tribe of creative souls and speakers of truth,?I am focused on writing values-based children’s books to do my part to make a positive difference in our world.?
Want to get in touch??I enjoy meeting new people and sharing our experiences as global citizens.?Send me a message or give me a call, I’d love to hear from you.