Episode 387: Are you having fun?
Are you having fun in your business? In this episode, Fiona shares insights on infusing fun into your work. She encourages business owners to reflect on their initial passion, explore strategies to integrate creativity into daily operations and so much more. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
The importance of enjoying your work.
Drawing parallels between business enjoyment and relationship maintenance.
Reflect on initial business passion.
Integrate fun and creativity into daily operations.
Rediscover sources of inspiration.
Empower yourself to prioritize enjoyment and flexibility.
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Connect and get in touch with My Daily Business:
Hello and welcome to episode 387 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today. It is a quick tip episode and this is an important one, regardless of where you're at in your business and regardless of what your goals are this year. Stick around for it. Before we get stuck, I wanna acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which I record these podcasts, and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been seeded. The other thing I wanted to mention is that it is group coaching time. If you are interested in group coaching, we kick off very soon in early March. If you wanna find out all the information and apply, you can do it over at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. Alright, let's get into today's quick tip episode.
I have to give props to one of my clients who inspired today's podcast, and I'm not gonna name them because you'll, you'll hear it shortly as to why. But honestly, this topic has come up many times in coaching, in group coaching, in master classes, and in many things that I've done in this business over the years. And I can't believe I haven't done a podcast episode on it, but today I thought I would. And it's really, is it a tip tool or tactic? It's a tactic, I would say and a tool. And that is to consider how much fun you're having in your business. Now, as I said, this came from a recent conversation that I had with a client where we were talking about them hitting a major, major financial milestone. This is something that they had been working towards for a couple of years, and it's a huge financial milestone, and they did not think that they would necessarily achieve it.
And this person has got multiple generations that depend on them. And it was huge. It's huge. It's huge for any business to hit this sort of milestone. But it was particularly massive for this business based that they are quite a small business. And one of the things that came up though, was that they didn't feel that excited about it. And they were saying, I don't even feel that excited about my business anymore. Now, as I said, this is a common thing that has come up for people, regardless of whether they've hit milestones or haven't hit milestones, is this idea that there's no fun, no real enjoyment in their business at the moment. And one of the questions that I often ask people is, how are you finding fun? Do you enjoy what you do? And it's at the very start of this podcast, do you love what you do?
You don't have to love it every single day, but there should be elements of fun, enjoyment and excitement in there because those are the things that are going to keep you engaged and keep things from being stagnant. It's much like if you're in a relationship with somebody and it's going on and on for years and years and years, there still has to be fun. There still has to be humor, there still has to be lightheartedness. There still has to be playfulness in there for you to stay engaged, excited and enthusiastic about that relationship. The same thing can be said with your business you wanna make sure that you're still having those fun moments. One of the things that I'll ask clients to do when this comes up is to think way back when they started the business.
Because when you, it's just like a relationship when you start a relationship. And I do know that a lot of marriage counsellors do this because I have watched couples therapy on, or couples counselling, I should say, rather than marriage counsellors, but I've watched couples therapy every single season of it. And I've also watched many, many, many shows where people go to counselling. I love looking at social relationships and social experiments. And one of the things that they often do is likewise ask people to think back to the start of their relationship and what was exciting, what was engaging, what was, you know, the things that made them enthusiastic and wanting to keep going with the relationship. The same thing could be said for your business when you stop and think about where was I. What was happening in my life at that point? Why was this such an exciting option? What was it about it that was keeping me engaged? And this is where it mustn't be just money that is the driving force for your business. Because as I have seen many times people hit these financial goals or make a certain amount of money that they never thought they would make, it doesn't make all their problems go away. It doesn't make it suddenly super enjoyable to run this business because there's still the business to run. And if that business hasn't been set up in a way that is fun and engaging and exciting with you, not every single day, not 24 7, but at least part of it, then it doesn't matter really how much money you make from it because you're not fulfilled emotionally, you're not fulfilled internally. And so what today's tip episode is really about is asking yourself, one, how much fun do I have in my business?
And two, how can I get back to doing some of the things that lit you up at the start? For example, I remember when I started this business, I loved designing things. I love doing this kind of graphic design. I often think in another life, I might have been a graphic designer, but I'm not. I'm not a perfectionist enough to be a graphic designer 'cause I always have things a little wonky. I'm married to a graphic designer. I have two best friends who are graphic designers and I'm not particular enough, but I loved the enjoyment of creating and doing things in Canva or drawing or having a visual notebook and having some nice pens and paper and things. Even though I've had the majority of our graphics now created by people who work with me, and I don't do that, I still give myself that element of playing around with graphics.
It can just be a little, you know, a slide presentation that I'm doing for somebody. It could be me just coming up with something that, you know, is like a brief for the graphic designers. But I love still going in and doing that. I also just do that in my downtime as well. And that element of fun is still there, but for a few years, I didn't do it at all. And I was like, oh, I've taken away that entire creative part and given it to somebody else to do, and I'm not getting to do that. Now that might be one example, but for you, you might think about, okay, you know, when I started this business, I was designing all of the collection, and now we have people that work for us who do that, but it's like, how could I still design parts of it? Or how could I still get in touch with that part of myself?
Another thing to consider here is thinking about what you did at the start that was really fun and also inspiring for you. It might have been that you were looking at, I don't know, trend forecasting companies or that you were, I don't know, spending some time looking through magazines. I mean, remember those things, print magazines? I remember when I started this business, and well before I started this business, I had a subscription to Fast Company and I had a subscription to the actual print magazine version of Fast Company. And it used to take a while. They were always late because I'm in Australia and it comes from the US and I used to just get so excited when that magazine arrived. And I remember when I started my business, I went back through old copies of the magazine and I was just looking at, you know, all these people that had started businesses and what their advice was.
And I loved doing that. I loved it, I got so much enjoyment from that. And I used to make a vision board for my business and I'd cut up things from magazines and then you get to a point where you just sort of either forget to do that stuff or you feel like you don't need to do that anymore, or you feel like, you know, you don't have the time to do that anymore. And it's thinking back to like what was super enjoyable at the start, and am I still doing that? Like for example, with the magazines, I remember I would get one of those magazines, I would make a cup of tea, I would go out the front of a log cabin home that we lived at the start, and I would just sit there and I would enjoy this magazine. And sometimes I'd even sit in the hammock or lie in the hammock and read it.
And it was so exciting to me and I completely stopped doing that. And it's thinking back to, okay, where am I getting this inspiration from? And it might be that at the start, you used to go to art galleries or you used to, I don't know, go to different markets and see what people were doing and kind of draw different inspiration from places. Or maybe you went to, I don't know, like networking events or you put yourself out there a bit more at the start to meet people that also had a small business and now you are so far into it that you just don't do that stuff anymore. It's thinking, is my business fun? And how can I get more of the fun back? Because I think sometimes we forget it's our business. It's not just a job that you work, it's not that you are completely, you know, controlled by somebody else in the way that employees can be in terms of business, that you own it.
And that if you wanna take a morning off and go into a gallery, you can, it's your business. If you want to, you know, open your store a little bit later on a particular day and you know that you're not gonna, you know, completely financially ruin yourself, go and you know, go and have a cafe morning and sit with a magazine and enjoy the experience because these are the things we want. And we started this business to have more flexibility, more freedom, a lot of the times, more financials and also more fun in terms of that F. But then we get to a point where it maybe always all becomes about the financials or it all becomes about staff issues, or it all becomes about the issues with our supply chain or something else that's happening. And we can let that completely cloud us so that we are not even enjoying what we are doing. And in that case, it's like, well if I'm not even enjoying it, what's the point?
That is it for today's quick tip episode, really ask yourself, am I having fun in my business? What was I doing at the start of this building, this relationship with my business that was enjoyable and exciting and invigorating and fun, and how could I maybe bring some of that back into what I'm doing? And lastly, just reiterating it is your business and you get to decide how it's run, what you do, what elements you take on that is your business. That is it. I'd love to know what you took away from this. Don't be a stranger. You can always send us a message, I'm at @mydailybusiness on TikTok or @mydailybusiness_ on Instagram.
Thank you so much for reading and sending a lot of fun your way. Bye.
