Business is Personal

Be the Leader of Your Life and Business

Penny Power

• Publisher: Panoma Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781784523862
• Topic: Développement personnel
• Subtopic: Réussite personnelle

Business is Personal. A statement on life as a business owner. Being the leader of your own life is the greatest lesson in business. Your business is personal as it is yours.We live in a fast paced, over-connected world. Relying on your own instincts and knowing the dreams you hold for your version of success, ambition and happiness will ensure you have the life you want and not the life you compare yourself with.Business is Personal shares the areas of business that are rarely discussed, but have been learned the hard way by Penny and others. The emotions we need to understand, the mind we can be in control of, and tools Penny learned, following years of hard work and many challenging moments. Penny has poured her heart into this book and it is incredibly revealing.

I woke up with that dreaded feeling in my muscles and the anxiety in my chest. The words in my head circled: “why bother, who needs me anymore, I don’t trust the outcomes, business is just too tough for me”. And: “I am not one of those people who can make a business successful. I don’t fit the profile of a rich, successful person”.

The other words that struck me again, as they had so many times before: “business really can be a head f***” – and it is. There is no escaping that.

I still had that yearning, that desire, that need to be a business owner and fulfil the dream and purpose I had set out to achieve 19 years earlier. But, I finally realised I was a little bit broken, and I knew I had to go through a personal journey. I had been breaking for two years, maybe more, and I had finally acknowledged it and found enough courage to begin to learn more: more about myself and more about how to fit into this crazy world called business ownership.

Like you, I have loved my business life. From the very start I loved the independence, the daily passion I could apply to my work, the exhilaration of the growth in myself and my business and the feeling of achievement. I spent over 30 years in business with 20 of those years as a leader of my own business. I have been a small business owner and eventually an entrepreneur. I think big with my ideas because I like to solve big problems that are societal. I have launched two businesses that trailblazed new concepts, and I am now creating my third.

There are many of us who have decided on self-employment where the internet and the culture of economies have enabled us to start a business in a day. It is easy to get a bank account and quick to register a website. With the innate digital skills many have to use social media, we can begin to tell the world: “I am a business owner.” It is truly fantastic.

Now in my 50s, having created some amazing businesses and stumbled many times, I want to see if my learning can help others. My journey has been a rocky one, and I called myself an accidental entrepreneur for years. Learning business as an owner, rather than working in a larger company, has tested me.

The aspects of business that have tested me most are the parts that do not come naturally to me. I have skills, I have drive and ambition. I can work hard and I can sell. I can build great teams and I can build a noise around me that gives my business the attention it needs. Where I fall down is due to the emotional and mental strength that is needed every day. I can have long periods of self-belief and resilience and then something builds up and I find myself anxious, stressed and out of control in my head. Like all startups, entrepreneurs and small business owners I know and have interviewed, I do a great job of hiding it. It is easy to hide the rapid heart rate, the sleepless nights and the stomach ache from fear. We can hide the confused minds and the searching for answers and trust.

The moment in my business life when a potential business partner said: “It’s not personal, Penny, it’s just business” was a truly defining moment in my business growth. The rage I felt, the trigger of ‘how dare you’ and the moment when I stood up for myself and said what I believed: “It is personal. What is more personal than the reason we get up, feed our families, spend our time and dedicate so much of our thinking to? Of course business is personal.”

The internet is a great tool for us, it has changed the way business is done and opened up our worlds, made us more efficient and more connected. There is a ‘but’, and it is this: over the 20 years I spent supporting startups and small businesses, I witnessed enormous pressure from people comparing and striving based on other people’s definitions of success and happiness. The open, transparent, online world that we live in has sucked us all into a whirlwind of other people’s lives. It has created a sense of frustration, failure, guilt, regret and perfectionism that impacts our day-to-day emotional and mental state as we constantly strive for, and seek, the lives other people have, to be like them.

The statistics on business failures past one and five years are too depressing to discuss here. The reasons for them are varied. Financial concerns are always the main reason given – they ran out of money. However, I believe our emotional and mental strength governs our success. It is our ability to know ourselves deeply and to find the emotional strength to overcome the mental shocks and the real obstacles that inevitably come. Business is Personal is about nurturing your emotional and mental self, caring for your soul and being physically well enough to manage the roller-coaster. It is about having a mantra. Mine is: “Business is personal. It is mine and I am in control of what I want it to be and what it adds to my life and the lives of others.”

When do you know that your business no longer feels personal to you?

The biggest factor in owning your own business is that you control the culture of your life, the hours and the business model. You are the leader of your dream. I have learned that we should look out for the moments when we let go of our instinctive knowledge and let go of what feels right. We should note those moments and trigger points when we have stopped being that leader, stopped being our own boss, stopped believing in ourselves and what we know – those are key moments.

Have any of those moments happened to you? Be aware of the moments in your future. These are the trigger moments: When someone else takes control of your business.

• When you find yourself acting like someone else.

• When you are affected by unsolicited advice.

• When you lose the passion you had because the business is starting to be something you don’t want.

• When you make a decision that doesn’t feel right to you.

• When you no longer have the strength to stand up for yourself.

• When you seek validation every day and know you have lost your inner belief.

• When you wake and no longer feel in control.

The truth is, we have all felt some of these at some point. Only you will know when this has taken hold of you. And when it does, you know what you need to do. You need to get your business back to the way you want it and make it personal to you.

Mindy Gibbins-Klein stated this beautifully in her book The Thoughtful Leader. We must: “Be careful about being influenced by others’ thoughts and ideas. You will always be exposed to outside influences, but you don’t have to be a pinball in a machine, being moved by external forces outside your control.”

Holding on to your own beliefs and belief in yourself is the mindset of a strong entrepreneur. It is okay to ask for specific advice when you know exactly what you are seeking, and you can trust the knowledge and experience of your teacher. In this highly connected, open and overwhelming world of communication we are exposed to many thoughts and ideas. The best filters are your personal choices and desires. You know what you want and what is right for you.

Self-development or self-improvement

As a group, we spend millions on self-improvement books and courses to help us find our path to success. But, what if this book is different? This book is about you already being amazing and already having the ability to achieve the success you truly seek. The majority of people I have supported are already amazing, but they are so hard on themselves. The daily grind to be better has an impact on our emotional and mental states. I would like you to discover that you are already amazing, and to find a place within your soul that is kinder to yourself and allows space in your head to breathe and grow from within. To love yourself in business so that others can love you. To value yourself, so others can value you.

Overthinking – the plague of modern age

An online friend added to a thread I started on Facebook. I was asking people about the vast array of tests we can take online to analyse ourselves, to discover our strengths and weaknesses. I loved his reply:

“I think we are in danger of overanalysis of people, situations and ourselves. Not everything in life can be pigeonholed. Life is not perfect – we don’t have weaknesses, we have characteristics. The real issue lies in how we find it necessary to stereotype and label everything. Be kind to others and generous in your thinking about yourself.”

Stop comparing

We now live in a world where the temptation to compare ourselves with others, to be like elements of the people we see, is ever-present. We witness other people’s lives and compare our happiness and success with what appears to be their perfect life. These thoughts are damaging and painful and impact the core of who we are and the life we could live if we focused on what is fulfilling and rewarding in our own lives. You cannot be that other person. Being you has to be enough, and it is. When I realised that, my life became whole.

Within these pages of thoughts, I have a dream for you: to be happy with who you are. When that happens you become more deeply connected with yourself, the people around you and with your business. The easiest person to be is yourself – no pretending, no acting. This is the real you that everyone wants to see and work with.

The take away I want you to have from this book is that your life is personal. It is your life. No one else’s. No one should judge you – including yourself. The complexity of your life up to this point has made you the person you are. It has created your values, your ambitions, your view of what success is and your thoughts about what makes you happy. It has also created your pace, defined what you are willing to sacrifice and what aspects of life you will not let go of. It has given you skills, passion, meaning and purpose. Every day you have got up, applied your thoughts, beliefs and feelings to the day and then, at the end of the day, you got back into bed, sometimes satisfied with your achievements, sometimes lacking in joy, sometimes ecstatic with happiness.

Like our DNA, all the components of who and what we are, along with our thoughts, experiences and skills, are unique. How can we possibly compare ourselves to another person? It is for this reason that your life is personal, and so is your business. Your business IS personal to you.

Never feel small

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”

Dalai Lama X1V

Starting a business is the most courageous action anyone in the economy can take. From that point onwards, you are self-reliant. No salary will come in from anyone. I meet too many sole traders who say they feel small and irrelevant in the economy. You should never feel small when you have taken such a giant step. Every person I meet who owns a business makes me want to bow my head in respect for them and what they have done.

Arguably, a sole trader is the person I have the most pride in. Of course, getting to a point where you can employ others and support their families and dreams through your own endeavours of building a business is incredible. However, I rate the sole trader higher than others as they have many challenges and roles to play in their business. They often feel small and unimportant, and yet their skills are so diverse, as is their ability to drive themselves every day without accountability to others. They are amazing.

I have got used to being an entrepreneur

I was speaking to a new client recently and, in passing, he said: “I have got used to being an entrepreneur.” I made a note of his words and later asked him what he meant. He struggled to define it but said it was a feeling, a mindset and an awareness of the ups and downs.

One constant among us all is that in choosing to be an entrepreneur we choose a life of ups and downs – a wave of highs and lows where the lows can be so low, and the highs can be so high. The drug of life is when all things come together. For that moment, that day, week or year, we are on top of the world. It is when our emotions and ambitions, our motivation, drive and our character all align. Those are the good days, and we seek those moments as entrepreneurs. We celebrate it when it happens, and we need to feel what happened, understand what made it happen and patiently wait for the next time. Because it will happen again.

We have to learn from the lows. A great gift in life is our self-awareness. The saying ‘you learn more from how a person fights than how they love’ is a great statement because you will learn more about yourself in the lows than you will when you are drinking the drug of success.

Never a victim, always the student

My take on this is that the strong, resilient entrepreneurs I know (the one I have been climbing back to be), are never a victim of the lessons they are forced to learn. This is one of the key things I want to help people achieve. Feeling let down, emotionally drained and lacking in self-belief are all components of an emotionally drained business owner. They are the words of someone who needs to step back and become strong again. When blame, anger, sadness and mental draining happens, this person needs to take tender loving care of themselves.

The aim is to get back to learning, to appreciating the moment of being a student again and deciding if this is a lesson you want to learn as you face the future with this newfound knowledge, or is this something you would never want to repeat? Remind yourself that business is personal, it is your choice, your business, your lesson.

Your personal lifeline

I was once asked by a wise business coach to draw a line from birth to death of the type of life I would like. Would it be a straight line with no ups and downs or would it have curves? The line I drew had quite large ups and downs. I felt it was the only way I would know I had truly lived. It may be worth thinking about this and being true to yourself.

Is it time we were all a bit more open?

Writing a book about the emotional and mental journey of business ownership would be pointless if I avoided the reality of the hard aspects of it. I have become tired and demotivated by the images of our mega entrepreneurs, the ones displayed on TV who treat entrepreneurs like idiots just because they don’t know everything. I feel it is time for us all to be more honest about the journey and the realities. If each of us knew that o...