13 Ways to Fall Back In Love With Your Business
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“Assuming positive intent can help you learn to love the people around you.”
— Mike Goldman
1 - Surround Yourself With Great People
- Trust and respect are key; choose team members who share your values to foster a positive environment.
2 - Exercise Control Over Your Role
- Focus on tasks you enjoy and excel at; delegate the rest to optimize your role and satisfaction.
3 - Align Personal and Company Purpose
- Ensure personal and company purposes are aligned for greater fulfillment and connection.
4 - Be In Service To The People Around You
- Serve your team well; sometimes this means letting underperformers go for their own growth.
5 - Winnable Short-Term Goals
- Set achievable short-term goals to maintain motivation and progress towards long-term objectives.
6 - Keep Score, Have a finish line
- Use KPIs to track progress; having clear goals and a finish line keeps motivation high.
7 - Assume Positive Intent
- Believe in the good intentions of others; approach situations with curiosity to foster understanding and empathy.
8 - Fall in Love with Your Clients
- See clients as individuals with unique needs; reconnect with your desire to help them.
9 - Show Vulnerability
- Be open about challenges; authenticity fosters genuine connections.
10 - Get Coaching, Join Mastermind Groups
- Seek external advice and support to gain insights and overcome challenges.
11 - Help The Person You Used To Be
- Mentor those at earlier stages; it refreshes your passion and appreciation for your journey.
12 - Take Time Off
- Regular breaks are crucial for rejuvenation and maintaining long-term enthusiasm.
13 - Create New Exciting Goals
- Challenge yourself with ambitious goals to avoid complacency and stay passionate.
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Back in 9th grade about, oh my God, 45 years ago, yeah I'm friggin old but back in 9th grade, I had a teacher named Mr Sadako. Who at the time I hated but I look back at him and he was amazing and the man changed my life. The class was, it was basically a speech and debate class back in ninth grade and he had us do a whole bunch of things to force us to get up in front of the room.
And one of the things he did was he had a hat in front of the class and in that hat, he had a bunch of topics and you had to get up. And pick a topic out of a hat and then talk about it in front of the class for five minutes. So it's my turn, and I walk up to the hat and I pull out the piece of paper.
Toenails. I have to talk about toenails for five minutes in front of the class. And I mean now I can get up in front of a room for two days and talk and I'm fine, but in ninth grade getting up in front of the class for five minutes all by yourself with everybody looking at you. That was crazy scary. And here I am
I've got to talk about toenails for five minutes. So I stop and I take a breath and it comes to me. I talk about my grandmother's thick discolored ugly toenails for five minutes and the class loved it. And I loved it. I realized in that moment that I loved being in front of the room and the center of attention.
That was my first real speaking gig and I fell in love with that and I did a whole bunch of things over the years. I was a management consultant for many years, but anytime I got a chance to get up in front of a room and present or facilitate a large group of people, man I was in all my glory. And it's why today
as a coach and facilitator and speaker. I don't ever want to retire. I absolutely love what I do every single day. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, leaders, CEOs, they start their career or at some point in their career, they fall in love with something. Maybe you fell in love with the industry that you are involved in, maybe you fell in love with the clients that you are working with to add value.
Maybe you just fell in love with the idea of being someone who owns a business or as a leader within a business. But if we're lucky, we fall in love with our business. A lot of entrepreneurs started their business because they fell in love. But then real life takes over. And overwhelm hits us. We're overwhelmed with the sheer number of issues we have to grapple with every day.
We're overwhelmed with the sheer responsibility of running a company and being responsible for people and for our clients and for our vendors. We're overwhelmed with the amount of advice we're getting from every smart podcast coach or speaker or consultant or coach or mastermind group, we get frustrated by the people around us who aren't doing exactly what we'd like them to do in the way that we want to do it.
And that overwhelm and that frustration causes us to fall out of love with our business. It's happened to me. I'm sure it probably has happened to you. If it hasn't, congratulations.
But we tend to fall out of love with our business and it becomes harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning and do what we need to do. And because I love my business so much and because you know, on the weekends, if I have not much going on, I'll gravitate down to my office just to do work because I want to. To me retirement's a dirty word.
I can't ever, why would I ever want to plan to stop doing what I love doing? So part of what I'm all about and maybe I'm learning it's everything about what I'm about, is yes, this is the better leadership team show. But I think what it's really about, the reason why it's so important to have a great leadership team is so we could fall back in love with our business.
And that's what I want to talk about on this show is 13 ways to fall back in love with your business. So let me just go through them and you know, the first way has got to be to build a great leadership team. It's what the show is all about. The first way to fall back in love with your business is to surround yourself with the right people, surround yourself with great people.
Part of the reason why we fall out of love with our business and we don't want to get out of bed. In the morning is because we've got to go work with a whole bunch of people that frustrate us that don't seem to care as much as we do about our businesses. And that may or may not be true, that may be just your perception.
And I'll hit that in one or two other ways to fall back in love with your business. But the key is if this is what you're going to do every day, do it with people. You trust, do it with people you respect, do it with people you have the ability to be vulnerable in front of, do it with people you like. You don't have to be best friends with everyone on your team, but I'm not sure there's anything more important than surrounding yourself with the right people being in the right neighborhood.
So that's the number one way to fall back in love with your business. Build a great leadership team, surround yourself with great people. If you want to know more about how to do that, listen to just about every other episode on this show, read my book, Breakthrough Leadership Team. I'm going to keep that first one short because it's what the show is all about.
The second way to fall back in love with your business is to use the control you have. Because you own the business or you're the CEO or you're a leader within the business. I was talking to one of my clients last week. And she happens to be one of the owners of the business. And she was frustrated because she felt like she was being forced to do a whole bunch of things within her business that she didn't enjoy very much, but she just thought, hey, you know, because I'm an owner and I have this role, this is what I've got to do.
I've got to supervise these people. I've got to be involved in these meetings. I've got to, you know, here are all the things I've got to do. And man, most of them frustrate me. What I really want to do is this.
And because she was. It's hard to see the big picture when you're in the picture. And she was definitely in the picture is she felt stuck that she had to do all these things. And what I helped her realize and I want you to realize is that if you are the owner, the CEO, a senior leader. Congratulations
you have a better ability than anyone else to control the role you play within your business. Sometimes we forget that we have that control and we get stuck in a certain role. You have the ability to define your role. My client had the ability and I helped her to do that. She had the ability to craft a role.
Where she was able to do the things every day that she loved to do and that she was best at and delegate the other things. Hire to support those other things. So the second way to fall back in love with your business is to exercise that control to craft a role in your business where you're spending most of your time doing the things you love and the things you're best at, that's number two.
The third way to fall back in love with your business is to align your personal purpose with your company purpose. So when I work with my clients, one of the things we do is we create a purpose for the company. A purpose is not what you do. It's why you do it as a company, you know, for me, my purpose as a company is to help people fall back in love with their businesses, to help people feel more fulfilled by what they do for a living.
That's why I do it. That's my big why. And for me, my purpose as a company aligns 100% with my purpose as an individual, I learned a long time ago when I saw my grandfather who was forced to retire in his mid eighties, I saw the strongest, proudest man I ever knew kind of wither away in front of my eyes.
The gleam went out of his eyes that he lived two more years after he was forced to retire, but there was no life in his living, you know, I felt like my grandfather was gone and that impressed upon me that I needed to find something I love to do and do it and put myself in a position where no one can tell me to stop where I'd never want to stop.
Now granted for me, it's easy. I'm a small business. I've got a small team. It's basically me and I've got some helpers. I know for you, maybe you've got a larger team than that with a purpose that's not necessarily aligned to who you are and what your purpose is as an individual. But if you truly want to fall back in love with your business, then you need to try to align those two.
And that may mean modifying your purpose as a company in order to better match. what you're all about, what you care about is an individual. So that's number three, align your personal purpose and your company purpose. The fourth way to fall back in love with your business. And by the way, you don't have to do all of these 13 things.
The power of 13 things, and I'm sure when I'm done with these 13, I'll think of a bunch more and I'll put them maybe on a different episode of the show. But the power of this is pick and choose it. Maybe one or two or three of these things that are going to help you fall back in love with your business.
So let's go back. So number four to fall back in love with your business. It's helpful to be in service to the people around you, to the folks on your team. Now one way to look at it is they're there for you. They're there for the company,
but to fall back in love with your business, you need to understand that you are in service to them. And let me give you one example, which is an interesting one because it's not going to feel like one where you're, you're helping someone else, but you are. But think about when you have someone on your team that is underperforming.
You might think to be in service to them means to keep them around however you possibly can. Even if they're underperforming, just find things for them to do, continue to try to coach them. Being in service to them means making sure they have a job, but I'm going to call BS on that. I don't think that's being in service to them.
I believe with all my heart and with all my experience that everyone has the ability to be a superstar somewhere,
maybe not in the role you have them in, maybe not in your company at all. And by you keeping them around, you are not only hurting yourself, your company. Your clients, maybe your vendors, by having someone underperforming working on their team, but maybe most importantly, you're hurting them. You're keeping them in a role that they will never excel at when they could be a superstar somewhere else.
So , it doesn't feel like you're being in service to someone to cut the cord on them and set them free to go work somewhere else. But trust me, you are. So the fourth way to fall back in love with your business is to truly be in service to the people around you.
The fifth way to fall back in love with your business is to make sure that you have winnable shorter term goals.
When I work with my clients, we create these 90 day priorities we call rocks and one of the ways to fall out of love with your business is to have this beautiful long term vision
but to feel like every day you're not achieving that vision because that vision is so big and you know, it's that flag on top of the mountain. It's a beautiful thing. You should have a vision, a powerful vision that aligns with your purpose but if you don't have shorter term goals with a chance to win every day, every week, every month, every quarter. You're going to lose that longterm vision because you'll never reach that longterm vision.
You will get burnt out and feeling like every day you're just on this treadmill, not getting anywhere. So to fall back in love with your business, find some ways to win in the short term, create 90 day priorities and there's no magic in the 90 days. You want to create a 30 day priority, go crazy. But I would say don't make it any longer than 90 days.
Find a way to win in the short term and you'll fall back in love with your business and we'll give you that momentum to continue to win and eventually reach that longer term vision.
Sixth way to fall back in love with your business. It's to keep score. Have a finish line in the same way it's important to have short term goals that I call rocks.
It's important to have a finish line that is measurable. It's not a whole lot of fun to watch a football game or any sporting event. And if no one's keeping score. It's going to get boring really quickly, but we do that at work is people come in every day. We come in every day and we're not sure whether we're winning the game or not.
So have a set of key performance indicators, both lagging indicators, which are measures of results. But also leading indicators, leading indicators are measures of activities that lead to a result. It's important to have both of those things. Because if all we have is measures of results, we may get burnt out before we achieve that result.
As opposed to measures of activities that drive that result, that's something we can win at every single day. That was number six.
The seventh way to fall back in love with your business is to learn to love the people around you. And the first one I said, surround yourself with great people. This is different.
This is all about assuming positive intent in the people around you. It is so easy. I did a whole TEDx on this whole TED talk on this called the antidote to anger. Go listen to it. It's also on a podcast episode called the antidote to anger but we so often, I so often assume negative intent in other people. When someone does something wrong when someone does something I don't agree with when someone throws a wrench in somewhere I assume that they're being a pain in the neck on purpose.
You know, it's almost like I believe people wake up in the morning and say... hmm, what can I do to screw things up today? I mean, that's silly. I don't know anybody that does that. Maybe you do okay. But, I've never met anyone that wakes up with the sole purpose of screwing things up today. If we believe in positive intent, what I call the law of positive intent, if we believe that everyone is trying to do the best they can with the resources they have, it causes us to get curious instead of frustrated.
It allows us to love the people around us, even if they're not doing something we agree with. I could remember a friend of mine who, man, I think is a much better human being than I am. We were in a car together, him and his wife, me and my wife were in a car together and we were going out to dinner. And there was a woman driving in front of us who was driving like a lunatic fast and then slow and then switching lanes.
And in the middle of lanes, we're like, what's wrong with this maniac? What is she driving like a lunatic for? and finally we were stopped at a light. We were able to pull alongside of her. And when the light turned green, we were able to go ahead. And get away from this lunatic. And all I was thinking is, what's wrong with her?
You know, what an idiot. She doesn't know how to drive. And this friend of mine kind of stopped and went oh man I feel so bad. I'm like, well, what do you feel bad at? He said, we were just at a red light. I should have asked her if anything was wrong. And I thought, oh my God, here I am assuming that this woman was just a lunatic driving like a maniac on purpose.
And here my buddy who assumed positive intent thought maybe she's sick. Maybe there's something wrong. Maybe she needs help. So the seventh way to fall back in love with our business is to assume positive intent and fInd a way to learn to love the people around us.
Number eight. Related to that, we could fall back in love with our business by falling back in love with our clients.
For a lot of you, that's why you got involved in this career or in this business to begin with because you loved helping your clients. But then the quote unquote real world sets in and man, some of our clients feel like a pain in the neck and we tend to assume negative intent in them as well.
Well, one way to fall back in love with your clients. It's to better understand who they are. Don't think of your clients as a demographic. You know, my client is, you know, mid market, you know 25 to 34 year old, you know, women in the Northeast, or it's you know, mid market pharmaceutical companies. No, your client is a real living, breathing human being with wants, needs, desires, things that keep them up at night.
Figure out what's the biggest problem they have that you can solve better than anybody else. But get to know your clients as human beings and fall in love with the idea of helping them again. And understand when they do things to frustrate you, their goal is not to frustrate you. There are probably things going on in their business and their lives that you don't understand.
So try to understand. And fall back in love with your clients to fall back in love with your business. That was number 8, let's go to number 9.
Number nine is to show vulnerability to the people around you. I could remember when COVID happened and the world shut down. Some of my CEO clients felt like they needed to put on their superhero cape, get on a zoom call and help everybody understand that everything was great.
Everything was fine. They were doing fine. The company was going to be fine. We're all good. Let's move on. Well, the problem with that is it wasn't authentic. Now, I'm not saying that as CEO, you should have been curled up in the corner crying with the camera on you, you know, on a Zoom call and in the fetal position.
Of course not. But by you putting that superhero cape on, not only were you being inauthentic. And what I mean by an inauthentic is when you're not aligning who you are on the outside with who you are on the inside. Being inauthentic causes stress. Not being vulnerable also causes the people around us to feel like they can't be vulnerable with us.
And if they can't be vulnerable with us, they're not telling us what's really going on. Where they're having a challenge, where they need help, where they made a mistake, where they're having problems at home that may be impacting them at work. And when they can't tell us that, we tend to get more and more frustrated with them because we don't understand them very well.
And we're frustrated again that they're not doing exactly what we want them to do when we want them to do it. So by showing vulnerability, being open and honest with them, where do you need help? Where did you make a mistake? Maybe you're having a bad day. Be open and honest. Be authentic. Align who you are on the inside with who you're being on the outside.
That's number nine, vulnerability.
The tenth way to fall back in love with your business is to get some coaching. And I don't mean that as a commercial for hiring a business coach like me, although this causes you to go out and hire a coach. Great but for me and I'm going to combine coaching and mastermind groups, basically going out there and getting help.
I have a coach I've been working with for over 10 years who I love to the ends of the earth, who I could always call. And I do always call whenever I have a challenge and he has a way of Talking me through it. I have a number of mastermind groups that I get together with regularly. A mastermind group of other coaches, a mastermind group of other speakers, a mastermind group of other CEOs that I get together with monthly and we share challenges with each other, we kick each other in the butt when we need it, we pat each other on the back when we need it.
I was just not too long ago in Tampa, Florida with a group of speakers I had never met before, but an amazing woman who I had met before brought us all together. In a house for two and a half days, five of us in a house for two and a half days, five speakers, just learning from each other, sharing with each other, helping each other.
Although all those things cause you to fall back in love with your business again.
Number 11, help the person you used to be. What do I mean by that? Well, wasn't too long ago that I was struggling to build my coaching business.
8, 10, 12 years ago, struggling to build my coaching business, the business I'm so proud of today.
But here's what I find is that some of the most rewarding moments in my week are moments I spend with coaches who are struggling to build their coaching business, who I'm mentoring. And I've had formal mentoring relationships and I have one of those now where I'm mentoring another coach every month.
And I also just have younger and by younger, I don't necessarily mean younger in age, although most of them are younger in their coaching business, younger coaches who call me. From time to time to ask for my advice and my coaching and my help and they call me because they know I love to do it and I'm always going to be there for them.
And the interesting thing that I find is when I'm going through a difficult time in my business and maybe I'm frustrated with something or I'm overwhelmed by something. I'm struggling with something. And I start to fall out of love with my business when I mentor a coach that needs my help. It causes me to fall back in love with my business all over again.
As I'm helping that coach, it helps me to realize where I was and where I am now. And it gives me this incredible feeling of pride in what I've created. And it gives me this incredible feeling of fulfillment that I've built this business that I love so much. Even if in that moment I was going through some frustration, helping the person I used to be makes me grateful for what I built caused me to fall back in love with my business all over again.
That was number 11. Close home stretch. Only two more left.
Number 12. Very simply. Take time off. It's amazing how many CEOs of small and mid market companies I talk to that are prospective clients and one of the things they tell me is that they haven't taken any real time off other than maybe a long weekend here or there they haven't taken any real time off in five years seven years ten years.
We need to take time off as much as I love my business. I need to take time to
head to a different environment. Could be someplace beautiful in Europe. It could be a national park in Utah. It could be going to visit family in Staten Island. Although they're kind of crazy. So that that's not a breath of fresh air. but it's just getting out of work mode for some significant period of time to take a breath and reenergize and recharge.
And by the way, I am the kind of person when I do that, I still look at my email from time to time. So. I'm not necessarily saying you've got to get religious about a full break, cold turkey from your business. Go away from your business and don't think about it for the next seven days. If you could do that, great.
If that's helpful to you, great. If you can't. That's okay too. I check my email. I'll take a phone call every once in a while, but I'll tell you when I take time off,
that's when my batteries recharge. That's when sometimes out of nowhere the best new ideas come to me and that's where when I get back to work, I'm raring to go. I've gone on two week trips to beautiful places in Europe. I remember being on a trip where we did Paris and Italy over two weeks and I loved it, but I'll be honest by day 12 or 13, I didn't need to see another beautiful church or have another beautiful meal.
I wanted to get back to work and now I didn't feel that way day one, two, seven, eight, but I felt that way day 12 or 13. I think that's a good thing. That's part of falling back in love with your business. My batteries were recharged and I was ready to go back to work. So number 12, take some time off.
And number 13, the last one for this episode and I'm sure there's a whole bunch more is create some exciting new goals,
create some goals that scare you a little bit. I could remember. Not too many years ago where I created some goals and a three year vision for my coaching Business that should have excited me. The the revenue number and the profit number that I was looking at just by getting a little better Every year at what I was doing, getting better at coaching, which I'm always working on doing, working with bigger clients, charging more money to my clients, all those things in three years, we're going to get me to a number amount of money I could make that I never thought I'd be able to make.
And you think that would have been exciting to me, but frankly, it bored me. And I don't mean the money bored me, but just doing the same old thing for the next three years, just doing it better. I don't think I would have gotten to that goal because I think I would have bored myself into slowing down and maybe my business would have shrunk instead of grown.
For me, a way to stay in love with my business, a way for me to fall back in love with my business is to create bigger goals that scare me a little bit. So when I had that goal, that coaching goal, and I said, I need to do more than that. The next thing was oh, you know what? I need to write my second book.
That's when I wrote. Breakthrough leadership team. As I was writing the book, I was thinking about that. I said, you know what I need to do? I need to get out there and make public speaking a much bigger part of my business. I did that and I thought I need to start a podcast. So what did I do now? Now I've got a new book I want to write and a piece of software I want to write
along with it. All those things scare the crap out of me. But man, that's what I love. The reason why I'm an entrepreneur, why I'm a coach is cause doing the same old thing day in and day out is not for me. I need exciting new goals. So those were 13 ways to fall back in love with your business. Real quick,
number one was build a great leadership team. Number two was exercise control over your role in the organization. Number three, align your personal and your company purpose. Number four, be in service to the people around you. Number five, create shorter term goals so you could win more frequently. Number six, keep score, have a finish line.
Number seven, learn to love the people around you through assuming positive intent. Number eight, fall in love with your clients. Number nine, show vulnerability. Number 10, coaching mastermind group, be around people that are helping you and you're helping them. Number 11, help the person you used to be.
Number 12, take time off. Number 13, create exciting new goals. Wow, that's a lot of stuff. A little bit of a longer solo episode than I normally have, but I hope that was helpful. If you have other ideas on how to fall back in love with your business. Man, I want to hear them and always remember it's hard to build a great business unless you have a great leadership team.
The first part of that is, man, you better love your business. I hope I hope I helped you do that today. Look forward to talking to you again real soon.