Living Your Why as a Business Owner
Recently, I’ve been talking a lot with my team about the importance of finding your WHY and aligning your business (or your role) with your purpose. This is such an essential part of growing a business you love – one that allows you to thrive, both professional and personally – but it’s also a step that many business owners overlook.
Developing your WHY isn’t easy, but it is important. You can still grow a profitable business without it, but that business isn’t likely to fulfill you (or your team). This is how burnout happens – and that is definitely not the road I want you to take.
When you take the time to craft and understand your WHY, you’ll be able to use it as the basis for your hiring, your messaging, your growth strategy, building your culture, and your goal setting (among other things).
So today, I’d like to share some of my WHY. I’m hoping it will inspire you to dig a bit deeper into yours!
My Origin Story
I guess you could say that I grew up learning what it meant to be an entrepreneur. My father passed away when I was young, and my mother set out to develop a winery in what is now Southern Oregon Wine Country. At that time, though, vineyards weren’t really a thing in Oregon – she started from ground zero and worked hard to build a successful business.
As a child, I watched her face challenge after challenge; as a teen, I learned more about the daily details of running a business by working different roles from working in the vineyards to working in the winery to working in the tasting room. When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to do everything from running a picking team at harvest to attending Wine School in France! (And yes, that was as amazing as it sounds!)
I saw both the good times and bad, and I learned a lot of lessons that stuck with me through the process of building my own businesses – first my fledging business when I was in high school, then later my law firm, and now Upleveling Your Business. I still had plenty to learn, obviously, but this is where I found the desire to own my own business!
Building My Businesses
As a young attorney, I loved what I did – and I was good at it. When it came to owning and growing my law firm, however, I definitely had my ups and downs. When I started out, I took the route that many law firm owners take – I worked 80+ hours per week for very little pay, and I missed a lot of the people and events that were important to me.
But I kept up the hustle, and I made it work.
Eventually, I learned how to write a business plan that works – one that I can refine as I go – and how to implement the systems my team needed to excel. And as I learned how to do this, my time became my own again and I started to make more money. What a change!
When I sold my law firm, my Systems Manual became a $100,000 negotiating point. Why? Because it made so many parts of the firm practically turnkey – the new owner had all the “WHO Shall Do WHAT by WHEN” details behind all the operations.
And the team I had worked so hard to develop could keep doing what they excelled at!
When I started Upleveling Your Business, one of the first things I did was to create a business plan and the beginnings of our Systems Manuals – and my professional and personal Mission Statements are front and center in both. My WHY is the basis for just about everything I do, and it’s something that I want to clearly communicate to my team.
The Joy of Developing My Team
My team is actually a large part of my WHY. Something that I found early on is that I love being able to build and develop my team – to surround myself with people who align with my purpose and actively develop them to more fully reach their WHY.
This is actually why I came back to entrepreneurship. After I sold my law firm, I was a coach with another company – and although I loved working with my clients, I really missed being able to build and develop my team. When I wrote the original business plan for UYB, it included the team members I wanted to hire and when.
The first year, I reached a lot of the goals I had set (even during the height of the pandemic) and started building my team. We’re coming up on our 3rd Anniversary next month and working with my team is still one of my favorite things about being an entrepreneur!
I learned a lot of lessons with my first business, and I’ve learned a lot while building Upleveling Your Business as well. One thing I’ve learned to do is to actively search out people who not only align with my WHY, but who will walk alongside me in building this business and serving our clients with excellence. I want my team to be just as fulfilled as I am in their role.
It does often take longer to find just the right people, but again, it’s worth it. I wake up excited to work with my team and my clients, and my team does the same. And together, we can all fulfill our WHYs!
If you would like resources or support to equip you to build a team that aligns with your business and your WHY, let us know – we have resources designed to help you!