Hello there. I’m Coach Kim. I’m going to be talking today about building inspired businesses. As business owners, we usually create a business out of a passion that we have. So our “why we do it” is very important. At some point, if the product or service you’re offering is popular and you figure out your marketing, you start making sales, you start to grow.
All of a sudden, you have customers buying your product or service, and you have a business. In ActionCOACH, we define a business as a commercial, profitable, enterprise, that works without you. Therefore, if you have something that you’ve created, and you can’t leave it to make money, meaning you can’t go on vacation, you can’t sell it, whatever it is, then it’s not really a business. It’s really just a job you’ve created for yourself. So creating a business means this entity is an asset, and at some point, you can sell it, because somebody can buy the whole thing and keep running it and it continues to make more. Or you can hire a CEO or another manager to run it, and you can take the profits and create another business, or invest that money somewhere else. That’s a real business.
I like to help my clients create not only a business but an Inspired Business.
An Inspired Business has three components. One is profitability. Two, it is sustainable. Three, it’s empowering.
The first piece is profitability.
Obviously, a business has to make money. That is what makes it a business and not a hobby. When you make money, and you are profitable, you can put that money back into the business to continue to grow the business. In order to grow the business correctly though, you have to have a clear vision of what you actually want to create. How big do you want it to be? What do you want it to look like? What does success look like to you as a business owner? Your definitely of success is different from other people. I have my clients define what success looks like for them. Obviously, making money is a big piece of it. And how important is time to you? To spend it with your family? To go on vacation? To travel?
Or is success about being able to start a charity organization? Is it about creating as many jobs as you can to support your community? So…what does a successful business look like to you? When you know that, and your vision is clear, then you know why you have to be profitable.
Creating profits also involves getting the right people in place and doing the right jobs. This helps people be highly productive, which is a big piece of profitability. Happy employees help create happy and healthy businesses.
Another piece of profitability is having the right systems in place, to support your team, so that everything runs efficiently and effectively. This makes the business scalable. We want to make sure that not only does the business enjoy profitability, but as a result, the business owner, and the team, get to enjoy the financial rewards of growing an inspired business. A business doesn’t grow without a team. We have to give back to my team financially. Therefore, I want to help my clients create massive profits.
The second piece is sustainability.
If we’re just working really, really hard and this is going to just fade away in a year, that’s depressing! We have to make sure the products and services that we are offering can grow and evolve. We can get so stuck with a certain product that we create, we don’t see how it can evolve and how it can mature. And a lot of times, at some point, maybe that product isn’t needed anymore or it runs out of time. It isn’t sustainable.
Think about this COVID pandemic we have all been going through. Many business models have changed and some have even died. If we are totally stuck in a certain way we sell a product or a service, or we can’t see possible changes to a current product or service, then we are not sustainable. Especially, in this day and age.
Therefore, we have to be able to adapt, we have to make it sustainable.
So what are the things you can do to keep evolving your product or service, adding new products and services that are very much needed? A lot of my clients, during COVID, have added different revenue streams that they pivoted to, mainly during this time, but will probably keep when they start doing things the way they used to do them. Therefore, they will have a second revenue stream, which is fantastic. Looking at what makes your business sustainable, what makes the product or service sustainable, how does it need to evolve?
Another part of sustainability is your own, inner growth, or personal growth. In order to keep things growing and moving in your business, you have to keep things growing and moving, on a personal level. And when we stop working on ourselves as entrepreneurs, and I mean business skills, communication skills, mindset skills, skills around dealing with our emotions, our fears, overcoming those things, when we stop working on those, our business will plateau. You will see your income, pretty much plateau, or start to slowly decrease. Therefore, you have to be working on yourself, you have to be working on how you can become a better leader, a better manager, a better visionary. Then keeping all of that in alignment with that vision that you’ve created for your life, for your business, for yourself.
The third piece is empowerment.
We have to be empowered as individuals and as business owners, to do what we love every day and to ultimately make a living doing it. Our team members have to be empowered as well. I think hiring people to work with you that are in alignment with what you are putting out into the world is very important. When you hire people who are in alignment with all of this, it is amazing. They feel empowered to do the thing that they are really good at in their job, which lifts everything up. Productivity and morale skyrockets. When people are doing those things that feed them, that feed their souls, their spiritual side, that’s really, really important to creating an inspired business. Having that level of empowerment in your business, knowing that I’m creating this holds space for other people to step into more of who they are. It allows them to share their talents and abilities with other people. This can be a very powerful thing. We have empowerment as a piece of this inspired business around customers, too. I want customers and clients to feel empowered to be a better person, whatever that means to them. If my product or service helps them become better at whatever they do, whoever they are, that is incredible.
As a business coach, my focus with my clients is to teach them, support them, coach them, and help them create a business that supports their lives. They have certain dreams, individual dreams, and excitement that they want to create. When they are clear about that and I’m clear about that, then I can help them create a business that supports their personal goals. That’s why we have businesses, right? If I’m just gonna create a business just to make money, I can go do that easier by getting a job. If I’m going to create a business, then I want it to support the life overall that I wanna live. So I have to be really clear about that. I have to know what I’m doing.
Empowerment is also important when it comes to our products or services. Offering something that is good for the world, that lifts the world up, is really important. We are all in this together, and if I can help another business increase their revenue or get better clients, whatever it is, then that helps me increase my revenue. So how do I look at this as a win-win-win situation? Treating everybody like they matter, and knowing that this is a place that they can step into and be more of who they are.
Therefore, those are the three pieces of building an Inspired Business: profitability, sustainability, and empowerment. I love doing this work, mostly because at the end of the day if I’ve had some coaching sessions with clients, and they’re on track and they’re doing things that are fueling themselves and they’re excited about what they’re doing, that is the best feeling. I was put here on this planet to support other people in achieving their dreams. I call it Building an Inspired Business.
