“Readjusting Your Head And Your Bottom Line”

These last 2 years have been quite the journey, and no one can deny the impact it has had on our people, our communities, our business, and on ourselves. Even though I’ve worked really hard through this pandemic, I’ve felt stuck in a plateau both personally and with growing InTech.

So, I did something kind of radical. I donated $5,000 to St. Jude’s Research Hospital for the opportunity to meet with Marcus Lemonis, billionaire CEO of Camping World/Gander Mountain, and star of the TV Show “The Profit,” to help knock me out of this funk.

I flew to Miami December 2021, seeking some answers. I told him about feeling stuck, and asked him how to get out of my own way. He didn’t approach this the way I would expect...

“Your situation might be different than mine, or than the person sitting next to you. You might have a sick mother to take care of, and this takes all your time. You might have a husband who doesn’t help and 4 kids you have to take care of while running or your business – any matter of burdens. That’s not just an excuse, that’s your life situation. You need to accept that. But the thing you cannot ever forget is your WHY. What’s your why, Leia? Give me the top 3.”

I didn’t even have to think. I know why I do this.

·??????I want a strong financial foundation for my family.

·??????I want to have a massive, mission-driven impact on my community of businesses we serve as a security-centric managed IT services provider

·??????I want to continue having a place where awesome people come to do meaningful work to grow both personally and professionally.

“Good. Now NEVER lose sight of those 3 things. In whatever you do, do it with these 3 things in mind. And never, ever do anything unless its PROFITABLE. Period.”

Wow. Ok. Not what I expected, but the man is right. Too often we allow ‘noise’ and the day to day to get in the way and obscure the WHY – the true, core reasons we get up each and go to work. He’s also right that we need to do everything profitably and that this needs to be in the forefront of everything we do. So much propaganda recently has made us feel like accepting fair compensation for the value we provide is somehow evil or bad. Like we are taking advantage of people if we ask for a fair price for our services or pay fair wages.

The fact of the matter is, that if we don’t things profitably, we won’t have the ability to pay our teams a good salary, we won’t be able to stay in business, and we won’t be able to have a positive impact on the world.

So, I challenge you to stop a moment and ask yourself, what is your TRUE “why.” Then post your WHY where you can see it when you wake up each day and while your working.

And if you haven’t, reassess where you are doing things unprofitably in your company and determine what change needs to happen there - because it does. You have a purpose, and you must step up to fulfill it, but you can’t if you aren’t in business profitably.?

Leia Shilobod is the CEO of InTech Solutions, Author of Cyber Warfare: Protecting Your Business Against Total Annihilation, and a Subject Matter Expert on all things CMMC 2.0 and NIST 800-171. You can reach Leia at [email protected] or www.itdoctoolkit.com.