"Everything that happens to you is a reflection of what you believe about yourself." - Iyanla Vanzant
To thrive means to grow vigorously or flourish. But what does thriving in business mean? Does your business have what it takes to be successful in the long run? Have you thought about the things you need to start doing as you move forward in your business?
Mindset and intention are two very important factors to consider when starting your business. From creating a business model and understanding the levers in your business to overcoming hurdles that can delay success, as entrepreneurs you have to be proactive in protecting and executing your vision.
In this episode, Nikki will share key takeaways from her presentation at the Signature CEO Conference, her thoughts on what thriving in business truly means, and the three key components that are essential to thriving in business.
Her experience of being a speaker and attendee at the Signature CEO Conference will provide helpful insights to help you determine what thriving in business means to you. Listen in for some valuable lessons that you can apply to your own enterprise.
Thriving Points:
- Understand the levers in your business that create predictable and sufficient income, and deploy them repeatedly and consistently.
- Work on your purpose and let your business support your life.
- Love the people you work with, whether it’s your clients, customers, employees, partners, or vendors.
- Having sufficient income doesn’t mean it’s just enough to cover your bills. It’s actually whatever is needed in order to support the life that you want to build.
- Do what you're passionate about but you also have to temper that with what you're good at.
- As a business owner, you have the right, the opportunity to be in choice about who you engage within your business.
About the Show:
Women Thriving in Business features candid unscripted conversations with entrepreneurs, business experts, authors, and academics aimed at contributing to business success. This weekly show provides interviews with business leaders who have built, grown, and are thriving in business. Nikki A. Rogers, host of the show, also discusses achievements, lessons learned, and advice for aspiring business owners to develop the mindset, strategies, and connections necessary to thrive in business. Whether you are just starting or you have been in business for decades, WTiB offers inspiration, strategies, and resources to help you THRIVE in business.
About the Host:
Nikki is a strategist and transformation coach who believes life is too short not to do what you love. She is passionate about helping entrepreneurs build sustainable companies and supports business leaders in developing the mindset, strategy, and connections to create thriving businesses and build legacy wealth.
Nikki is the CEO of The Bladen Group and an alumna of North Carolina A&T State University and UNC-Chapel Hill.
Connect with Nikki:
A Team Dklutr Production
Nikki Rogers: Your business is an asset that can support a thriving life. I believe this, and I'm committed to making this a reality for every entrepreneur and business owner who listens to this podcast. The Women Thriving in Business Podcast was created with you in mind, whether you were thinking about entrepreneurship or you're a business veteran, this podcast has inspiration, information, and advice you can use to thrive in business.
Women Thriving in Business features candid, unscripted conversations with entrepreneurs, business experts, authors, and academics who will contribute to your business success. I seek out and talk with business leaders who have built, grown, and thrive in business. My name is Nikki Rogers, transformation coach, author, and the host of the Women Thriving in Business Podcast. I work with women entrepreneurs to develop the mindset, strategies, and connections necessary to thrive in business. Join me and your fellow Thrivers each week on this journey of discovery and success.
Welcome to this week's episode of Women Thriving in Business Podcast. I'm your host, Nikki Rogers. I'm so excited to be back with you again. In this episode, I share some key takeaways from my presentation to the Signature CEO Conference. During that conference, I shared my thoughts on what thriving in business really means.
The topic was Build, Grow and Thrive in Business. And I discussed three key components that I think are essential to thriving in business. Listen in, let me know what you think. Do you agree with these three? Are there others that you would like to share as you think about what thriving in business really means? In any case, listen in. Let's go.
Hello Thrivers, and welcome to this week's episode of Women Thriving in Business Podcast. This week, I want to share with you my experience of being a speaker and attendee at the Signature CEO Conference last week. One, for those of you all who have never attended, I highly recommend it to you. It was a great gathering of some really great people, great professionals. I learned a lot about the event industry as well as just about business in general. So I'm going to share with you a couple of takeaways from my presentation, as well as just some of the insights that I gained by listening to the other presenters, as well as having some great conversations with the presenters and the attendees at the event.
The topic of my presentation is build, grow and thrive as an entrepreneur. I really focused on that idea of thriving as an entrepreneur. And as I was building up the presentation, I really had to define what I meant by thriving and examine that. I talk about thriving in business, the title of this podcast is Women Thriving in Business, and I wanted to share with the audience what I really meant. With that, I developed a definition of thriving, or there are three key components that I think are present or must be present in order for you to be thriving in business.
Number one is that you understand the levers in your business that create predictable and sufficient income, and you can deploy them repeatedly and consistently. Number two, you are working for your purpose and your business supports your life. And number three, you love the people you work with: clients, customers, employees, partners, and vendors. So let's break down the first one. You understand the levers in your business that create predictable and sufficient income. When we talk about levers in your business, what are the activities that you do in your business that create predictable and sufficient income?
For instance, you know that if you conduct 10 sales calls per week that that is going to reliably convert into three to four sales, or three to four contracts in that period of time or over a period of time. You also know that if you send out a certain number of emails to a select number of folks who are on your email list, that is going to drive a certain amount of traffic to your website, and then a certain amount of that traffic will then convert into sales, or it will convert into further conversation. Again, depending on what their business model is, what your industry is, and you want that to be predictable. Meaning, you know that you have a certain return on investment for those activities that you engage in. You know that if you have two additional employees that that generates an additional, let's say $50,000 in revenue each month. Those are the types of things that you need to know, and that relates back to having processes, documented procedures, systems in place so that you can repeat those activities in a certain manner.
It also allows you to train new staff and get them up to speed rather quickly instead of doing a trial and error type of process, and it supports the continuity in your business operations.
And I mentioned sufficient income, when I use the word sufficient it means sufficient to support the life that you want to lead, sufficient to invest back into your business, sufficient to support and pay your employees and yourself. Not only a livable wage but in a way that is aligned with the contributions that you, yourself, as a business owner, and your employees make to the business. So when I use the word ‘sufficient’, it's not just enough to cover your bills. It actually is whatever is needed in order to support the life that you want to build.
And then the other part of that is that you can deploy those levers as processes, those procedures repeatedly and consistently. Again, that goes back to training, that goes back to discipline, it goes back to examining when things don't go as planned so that you understand how to improve that process for the next time. It also includes examining what's going really well so that you can, again, do more of the things that are actually working for you. And I think about this as when you're doing your, maybe it's a weekly assessment, monthly assessment, maybe it's a quarterly assessment that you are taking the time to think about what it is that you want to continue doing, so what has worked well? What are the things that you want to stop doing? So think about things that have not worked as well for your business over that period of time that you're examining.
And then things that you're going to start doing. So as you, again, get very attuned to your business, what is working and what is not working? You start to think about what are the things that you want to do next? What are some areas in which you want to innovate and grow? And so you need to start thinking about what are the things that you want to start doing as you move forward.
The second point that I mentioned, that you were working for your purpose and your business supports your life. And so I think of a purpose as when your experiences, your talent, and somewhat your passion meet, and that all comes together in a way that actually creates a viable service or product that then you can offer to the world, and has the impact that you wanted to have. So the purpose is that combination of those things, so it is what you're good at, it is what you care about and it also has the impact that you want to have in the world.
A lot of people say, do what you're passionate about and yes, I would say that to an extent, but you also have to temper that with what you're good at. For instance, I can be very passionate about being a professional singer but the truth of the matter is that there are other people who are much more skilled at that than I am. So when I think about what my purpose is, it is combining my skills and experiences as a management consultant, as well as an internal auditor.
And doing the things that I really am good at doing, which is curating information, connecting people to others that may help them along their journey as well as connecting them to ideas and thoughts that may expand their perspective around how they're creating and growing their business, and the other piece is being able to see the big picture and connect the vision for people. So my skills and my passion are aligned around that curation of information, connecting people to the resources that they need, and then also helping them to envision a bigger picture for their business. And that allows me to then have the impact that I want to have, which is to see more business owners have thriving businesses that support their lives.
So in that way, my skills and my passion, what I'm good at, my gifts align also with the impact that I want to see in the world. So that is how I am working and living in my purpose within my business. The other piece of that is that your business supports your life. So we have the opportunity as business owners, as entrepreneurs to create a business that supports the life we want to have. If the life you want to have is that you're able to take a vacation three or four times a year, or that you're able to take Fridays off, then your business can support that. Then I feel like you're thriving in business.
If you want to create a life where making the most money possible is what is important to you, then again, you craft your business around that. However, if having a work-life balance, work-life integration is what is key for you, then you have the choice. Almost the obligation, but definitely the right to craft a business that supports the life that you want to have. And again, that is my definition of what thriving in business looks like. And then the third part of that is that you love the people you work with.
Again, as a business owner, you have the right, the opportunity to be in choice about who you engage within your business. You get to decide the types of work that you want to take on, especially if you're in a service business. You get to decide the type of work that you want to take on, the type of clients that you want to work with. You get to decide the type of employees that you want to hire. You get to decide the types of people and other businesses that you want to partner with in order to move your business forward.
Those are all the things that you get to choose, and I would say you can always choose again. So if you are in a situation where you have worked with a client before, and maybe it hasn't been the greatest experience, or maybe you just realize as you are finishing up that work, that interaction that this is not the way you want to go forward or in the future. You get to choose and change your clients.
So remember that you always have a choice because you own the business. It's your business. So those were the things that I shared in my presentation, and some of my key takeaways from just being a part of this great conference are one, I got the opportunity to learn a lot about the event industry, which is just not something I had a lot of experience with. Amongst these creative entrepreneurs, which a lot of the people in the industry are creative entrepreneurs, they are event planners. They are designers of experiences, they may be floral designers, they may be marketing and branding folks, business owners who create desserts and desert experience, or caterers. There were a number of creative entrepreneurs that I came in contact with, and what I really learned from them was the art of customer service. How you can deal with the variety of personalities as you go about creating your art. The other part was being somewhat selective about who they work with and how they go through the process of selecting the people they work with.
But I learned a lot from these creative entrepreneurs about how you can refer to others, for there might be a greater match. And then I also learned about diversification of your business and how you can do that as a creative entrepreneur, as well as maybe a not-so-creative entrepreneur. So thinking very clearly about what the needs of clients and potential clients are, and thinking about how you can best serve them at all levels. Maybe there is a difference in the amount of time and energy that you spend based on a particular pricing model. It could be about giving your team the experience and responsibility to provide the service that your brand is known for.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing more insights with you that I gained from the speakers at the conference. But before I go, I want to leave you with a quote that I think is very appropriate related to thriving in business, and thriving in business is all about mindset and intention. And the quote that was shared was, "Everything that happens to you is a reflection of what you believe about yourself." and that quote was from Iyanla Vanzant. I think it's really appropriate because thriving is all about mindset.
I'll leave you all with that. I'd love to hear from you all, what thriving in business means to you? So please share in the comments, send me a note, I'd love to hear from you. Until next time, keep thriving.
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Women Thriving in Business Podcasts. If you like this episode, share it with a friend. You can also join us on social media to share your feedback and comments. We'd love to hear from you. Be sure to like, review and subscribe on iTunes so you never miss an episode. Until next week, keep thriving.