The Business Of You – Part 1
May 13th, 2021 // 11:25 am @ Scott Manning
Over the past few weeks, in a variety of places, I have been writing to you about “The Business of You” and the more you think about yourself like a business the more you will get a return on yourself in every way and, as I always point out, the least of which is money.
There are many correlations to this. I believe Stephen Covey got it right with his Sharpen The Saw and the Compartments of Life that you balance to ensure all are working synergistically the same way that you must do within a business.
In nearly every business they get over weighted with too many people or too many resources or even too much focus on any one specific project. Being out of balance throws the rest of the business into, at the very least, an ineffective state and often times even into complete disarray.
Here’s the thing: it’s not necessary the ‘too much’ or ‘too many’ but it’s the repercussions that it has on everything else that results in ‘too few’ or ‘too little’ of something or someone else.
The very same thing goes for you as a business in your life and rest assured I’m not talking about the ever mystical and elusive idea of balance. The problem with balance is not in the word; it is how it’s applied and how people interrupt it.
Balance does not mean in time or effort or even attention. Balance means that you are, for the point of our discussion today, fully maximizing the return on yourself in your life based on your goals and objectives in a sustainable way.
You can, I assure you, always find a way to make more money. Just like you can always find a way to work smarter. You can always find a way to simplify. There is always a way to do anything. But it’s the wrong objective.
Instead the questions should always be why, to what end, and for what purpose.
This is why I like to think about you as an investment aside from the fact that you actually are – and the better you are for yourself, the better you will be for all of the other people and endeavors in your life.
In my ‘too much’ example think of it like a garden. Imagine parts of your garden getting overgrown and eventually they will be choking out other plants from the nutrients they need. You’ve got to trim them back so one crop doesn’t destroy the entire harvest. Yet, at the same time, you don’t have to water every plant equally nor do they require the same attention. Some crops may be worth more to you and demand more resources, while some crops you may let wither away.
So many people are approaching everything in their lives as one-size fits all. I call it the blanket approach. Whether that’s their goals or their health or their family or their customers or their businesses or their hobbies. They do it either because they don’t know any better or because it’s just easier.
The fact is there’s nothing more obviously customizable than your life and your business. And yet so many just take it for granted and as I pointed out last week are incredibly naïve or negligent, casual or careless with this incredible opportunity.
Ask yourself what in your life has become overgrown? Where are you out of balance in comparison to your goals and objectives? What in your life has become too much or too few lately?
Of course, to answer those questions accurately, you first must have a vision for the whole of your life as a business. You need to be a CEO in charge of your life.
If you were to assess your own viability as CEO of the Business of You in what ways could you improve yourself in this capacity?
The great big point that I’m making today is before you can go focusing on maximizing returns, which is the exciting part and always where we want to invest our time and focus, we need to first assess where there are gaps and deficiencies.
This requires discipline and tough love on yourself.
You ultimately get to make whatever decisions you want and change everything or nothing or anything in between based on all of this – the first key though is simply the assessment and awareness over it.
Your life as a business has a multitude of things happening all at the same time and while they can and should be organized they can’t be dealt with one at a time no different than they can be handled in a one size fits all approach.
You and I can agree that there are gaps and leaks in everyone’s life somewhere. You, being who you are and being right here, no doubt aren’t in crisis mode or even have any major issues in your Business of You. However, the goal isn’t complacency – the goal is pursuit of excellence and progress towards your ultimate ambitions and state of ideal.
Therefore if you put as much intention towards the Business of You as you do your actual business (hopefully) or your personal hobbies then you’d be amazed at how much more clear minded and confident you would be. You’d actually enjoy and realize the benefit of what feels like “more time” because you’d be wasting a lot less plugging and patching and fixing and mending with more time living and enjoying and going and growing.
Call it a state of the union or self-assessment or a personal diagnosis of the Business of You, it makes no difference to me, it’s just important that you do it. As CEO, lead the charge and clarify what success looks like in your vision.
Once you’ve done this, the underperforming and underserved aspects will be obvious. You will then know to regain balance and prioritize resources to course correct. That’s how you go about positioning yourself to be poised for the most fulfilling and profitable growth of your life.
You’ll be a thriving CEO of the most important business you own that requires the greatest amount of investment of them all because you are worth it and because there is nothing more capable of the greatest returns in your life more so than The Business Of You!
Next week, we’ll get to the fun stuff and talk about maximizing your return on all of this and how to make your life more valuable to you, to your business, and to all those around you.
Category : Blog
