(Published in the August 2023 issue of the Millwater Magazine and the Orewa Magazine)
Last month we covered ‘Know your WHY to be your version of awesome’.
Starting a new business or running an established one, sometimes it’s hard getting up in the morning. This isn’t about a cold winter’s day, it’s about finding your energy spark.
Daily you’re faced with solving issues like: loosing a valued staff member, customers you can’t afford to loose changing the rules; you’re partner wondering if you love your work more…
Finding the energy to solve issues, will come when you know your WHY. This isn’t corporate jargon, and it’s really quite simple to do.
Here are some tips to finding your own energy generating WHY:
- Start by writing down the 5-10 things most important to you in life. Doesn’t matter if these are what you have or what you want.
- Top of the list will usually be family, happiness, health, free time, maybe wealth. So don’t make it genic like this, make it specific to you. Sometimes just a family photo on your desk is enough to remind us our why, but we want to get more out of this so that’s why we try for 10 things.
- The things you want are your goals, the things you have are the goals you need to protect. They’re your high level goals.
- If you have staff or a team ask them to do the same thing, write them down.
- Now compare the lists. We know the usual things, it’s the unique things we’re looking for.
- The usual things will remind you to get up for the day, the unique things will help you leap up. It’s really your WHY.
- Write the combined list down and display somewhere you’ll see often, this is what makes you all, you. Can be private, but displaying publicly demonstrates honesty that will inspire others.
- Now you have the WHY. Family will understand, staff know the plan, suppliers want to back you, customers want to deal with you, partners want to be with you.
- Knowing your WHY will give you the HOW. With your goals in view every decision you all make is easily filtered – Will this decision help us achieve our goals?
Some of us know this, but not many write down and display our goals to see every day. That’s the magic step that engages our subconscious.
We ran this goal discovery exercise with Business Whangaparaoa and the underlying theme was ‘create benefit to members’. We work on a lot of projects to build the business community, but this helped us prioritise what was most important. In 2 months we have doubled our membership and we have a new sense of energy amongst the team. Try it for yourself.
Chris Norris – Truth Seeker Cert. MKTG | MCC | Cert. Typography
Former Chairman of Business Whangaparaoa and Board Member for Silverdale Business. He is also a mentor with the Business Mentors Programme at MBIE. Now running a locally focussed branding business. Allbrand.co.nz – Revealing the truth in businesses. If you are passionate about something you already have a true story. Get in touch to seek it: Chris@allbrand.co.nz
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