In this episode, we are going to be talking about one of the most important things in your business. And that is knowing your values. Every person who works with me, whether they are life coaching client, a business coaching client, or even joining my mastermind. I always do a values assessment with them first, because without that, I have no idea what's going to trigger them or what their preferences are going to be. And so in this episode, I hope that you... not only realize the importance of knowing your values, but also realize all the things you can do once you know them.
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Welcome to the Breakthrough Mastermind Show. I'm your host, Jen Argue and I facilitate masterminds for women entrepreneurs who are go getters and want to not only make a big difference in the world, but when to create more financial independence.
Today, we're talking about knowing your values, your values personally, and also your values for your business and how knowing your values for your business can help you make better business decisions that will benefit you in the long run.
So you're building a business that you love and that you don't want to burn down. So first, knowing your own values. When, you know your own values, you are able to build a business that brings you joy. And when you get faced with decisions, you can always ask yourself, does this decision align with my values better? Or does this decision align with my values better? And as the person in charge of your business, you want to make sure that it's always honoring your values because when you start to feel stuck, when you start to feel frustrated, it's typically because there's something that is not aligning with your values for a lot of us, we value freedom.
And that's why we go into business for ourselves, we want more freedom. So when your business starts to feel like it's encroaching on your freedom, you're probably gonna start to feel a little bit burned out or frustrated or not happy about the business that you're building. That's probably when you start having those thoughts of, should I go back and get a job, right.
So always know your values and use them when you're making decisions. Now the same goes for your company. So this is the second point having your values really clearly laid out for your business is important when it comes to number one, making decisions in your business, just like you do in your personal life or the decisions that you make for your business as you, but your business as well needs to have these values.
So that. When you get partnership decisions, you can ask, does this partnership align with my company's values? And most likely your company's values are going to be aligned with your vision. There might be some that are a little bit different, but in general, they're going to be pretty much aligned. So it helps you with making decisions like partnerships, like we said. Also, you might have to make a decision about features in your product or your delivery, even though a feature might be... a very common thing.
Like let's just say a Facebook group, a lot of coaching businesses have Facebook groups, but let's say you don't really spend a lot of time on Facebook and Facebook... when you go on there, it's against like your values in the sense of it's a distraction. It keeps you from being focused.
It's too noisy, maybe you don't want to have a Facebook group. It's okay. And so pick a way to have a community forum in a way that is more aligned with your values. Now, maybe you love the noise, you love the commotion. You love everything that Facebook has to offer then to you it would be a no brainer to do a Facebook group.
So making decisions for your business that are in alignment with your values will help you build a business that you love. The other way that you use values in your business is with hiring. You want to be sure when you are in the process of either hiring somebody to work in your company, or you might be hiring a contractor, you want to be really clear on your values and your company's values upfront.
Your values personally, if you're working closely with that person. Otherwise, it's going to be your company values, right? So let's say you're in an interview and you say, these are my company's values. You can ask the person either, like, what are your values? Or do you find these values? Something that are aligned with yours as well.
And based on that, you're getting the agreement upfront that this is how we operate, and this is how we run a business that makes our culture a happy place to work. Now, when you start to experience difficulties with an employee, ask yourself. What is out of alignment with my values in this situation? Is it that this employee takes really long breaks?
Is it that this employee isn't meeting deadlines. If they're taking really long breaks, they might not be aligned with your value of working really hard. Maybe you're a work hard play hard person. And that to you is coming across in a way that doesn't feel aligned with your values or maybe it's missing deadlines.
And you have a really high value of integrity and part of integrity to you is meeting deadlines and not missing them. And maybe this person keeps missing the deadlines. And so that is going to be out of alignment with your value. Now, anytime this does happen, it's a good time to have a courageous conversation.
We don't want to ignore things and let them go on and on, right? We want to have that courageous conversation and come back to that initial conversation of that value talk that you had, the agreement that you had. And based on that conversation, you can decide from there, which way to go, what the best solution is... but the values are what's going to save you in that situation.
So you want to be really clear on your company's values. I, I want to give a little story and maybe you've heard me tell this story before, because I've been talking about it this past week a bit, but I just got voted on to be on the board of directors for a local nonprofit. And we had our first board of directors retreat this past weekend, and they hired a executive coach to come in and lead the retreat.
And she has clients of... she's really big companies, better her clients like Blue Cross Blue Shield, GoPro, Southern Methodist University, and more, the reason she's helping this non-profit is out of her giving back. So during our lunch break, I went up to her and I asked her, what do you think is the biggest challenge that a lot of companies have?
And she responded instantly, they don't fire faster enough. Now you've probably heard that phrase "Hire Slow Fire Fast." I was kind of surprised you heard her say this, that this was the first thing that came out of her mind when she said, you know, when she was referring to challenges. So to me, that was a big aha moment.
Like yes, values are so important. And one of the difficulties she did bring up as we were diving deeper into that conversation is it becomes really challenging when you have somebody working for you, who has people working for them, whose values aren't aligned with the company. And so it is really important to make sure that everybody you hire has...
At least an agreement to the values that the company has because it affects everybody. It affects the whole team. It affects the culture in it. It affects the decisions that are being made. So if you are seen and you know, the value, if you're seeing the value of knowing your own values and your own company, having values as well.
And you don't know what your values are... reach out to me, I do have a mini workshop on how to discover what your values are. And I provide it in a way where you're not only discovering your values for your company, but also for your personal life, because it plays a big role in your personal life as well.
But if you want to get your hands on that, just let me know. And I'll provide the link in the show notes as well. So I hope you got a lot out of today in realizing why it's so important to know your values and the impact that it'll make in your business. It will bring you so much more confidence and it'll make you a quicker decision maker and it'll help you build a company you are absolutely in love with.
Also, when it comes to value, as you know, one of my values is self-care to make sure that you are pouring into yourself and your health and your wellness. And one of the ways that I'm doing that with my mastermind is by taking them to a beautiful adults only all-inclusive in Mexico, this April, if you are listening to this before, April 10th.
And you want to apply to the mastermind. I would love to meet you, that application will be in the show notes. And if you get into the mastermind, you will have the opportunity to join us in Mexico. So I would love to have you there. And if you like this episode, please follow and leave a review and share it with a friend.
Thank you so much for listening.
