Episode 466: What vows did you take when starting your business?
In this episode you'll learn:
The ability to evolve and change with circumstances, recognizing that what worked in the past may not work in the future, and being willing to adjust strategies accordingly.
The practice of maintaining clear, consistent dialogue with all stakeholders, setting boundaries, and actively engaging in meaningful exchanges that prevent misunderstandings.
The fundamental element that creates strong business relationships, enables delegation, and maintains reputation with stakeholders, customers, and team members.
The art of maintaining individual autonomy while working cohesively toward shared goals, creating space for both personal growth and collective achievement.
The commitment to creating lasting positive impact that extends beyond immediate business success, fostering enduring relationships and meaningful change in people's lives.
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That can be the absolute death of business, but also the death of any relationship. Because even in friendships, like, people change and adapt and evolve and sometimes you grow apart and sometimes you grow together. And people are willing to open and adapt and change and be flexible, but sometimes they're not. And that's when you know friendships can break up, relationships can break up, businesses can fall down.
Do you love your life as a small business owner? Be real. Sometimes we just don't. It's my hope that this, the My Daily Business Podcast helps you regain a little of that lost love through practical, actionable tips, tools and tactics, interviews with creative and curious small business owners, and in depth coaching episodes with me, your host, Fiona Kolacki. With more than 20 years experience in marketing, brand content and systems and having now helped thousands of small business owners, I know what it takes to build a business that you can be proud of and that actually aligns with your values, your beliefs and your hopes for the future. So much of our daily life is spent working on and in the businesses and the brands that we are creating and so it makes sense to actually love what you do.
So let's get into this podcast and help you figure out how to love your business and your life on the daily hello and welcome to episode 466 of of the My Daily Business Podcast. If you're listening to this in real time, it is the 21st of November. It is almost the end of the year. I cannot believe that. And today it's a really special episode because this one is a little bit more personal than normal. And that's because tomorrow is a really special day in my life.
Before I get stuck into that, I wanted to remind you that if you are interested in joining our AI chat for Small Business owners, you can do that anytime@mysdailybusiness.com Aichat that's a I C H a t. We also have a range of courses that you may wish to buy for your end of year gifts for your friends, family, co workers. And that could be a course on how to start a podcast. It could be a course on how to get their first book written. It could be a course on just their money mapping, figuring out their finances. We also have my two books Business to Brand and Passion Purpose Profit available and we can sign them and send them anywhere within Australia. If you wanted to buy them from overseas, feel free to get in touch and we can talk to you about shipping costs. But you can find all of these things@mysdailybusiness.com shop.
All right, before I get stuck into today's coaching episode, I want to of course acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of these beautiful lands. And for me, in North Warrandyte, that is the Woi-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, never been ceded.
All right, let's get into today's coaching episode. As I said in the intro just now, if you're listening to this in real time, tomorrow is a special day for me, and that is because it's my wedding anniversary. Now. My husband and I got married way back in 2008, so 16 years ago, and we met a couple of years before that. So we are literally into the late teenage years of our relationship. Now today is not about our specific relationship, but if you think about 2008, this was, I think iPhones had come out like the year before. Facebook had just started the year before. Instagram was not a thing. Nobody knew about Instagram. It was going to be a couple more years until that happened. And so we got married very much in a pretty traditional way. And it was not photographed everywhere. We had a couple of really good friends who had great, like actual cameras, who took photos. We, I think I bribed my housemate Tim at the time to video it with a video recorder that my mother in law had borrowed from the school that she worked at. And I think we paid him in whiskey. But it was definitely not like the weddings of today, where so much of it seems to be about what it's going to look like on Instagram, all the photos that people will take. And I guess in that kind of this comparison of which event you went to, which label you were wearing, who was there, how many people were there, how much do you spend? All of that. And yeah, I mean, I love looking at this stuff on social media as much as the next person, but so much of it seems to have become such a huge production. And yeah, it's just, it's interesting, I guess, to reflect on this and gosh, I sound like an old middle age boring lady right now.
But today is not about weddings as such, but it is about relationships and whether you are in a long term relationship, no relationship, a marriage, whatever. I thought that today, in light of what's happening this week in my life, that I would talk about the way that I see weddings and any kind of long term relationship marriage really in a similar way to business and how much they run in parallel with each other. I mean, we have, you know, sayings, work, wife, work, husband. But so much of what we do in small business very much mirrors a relationship. We literally having relationships with these brands and these businesses that we're building. And so I kind of wanted to speak on that and talk to you about kind of 10 ways that your business is very much like any other really big, really important long term relationship in your life. And maybe it's going to trigger you to maybe put a little bit more romance into your business relationship at the moment if it's been lacking that.
Starting off, the biggest thing, I guess is the commitment, the willingness to ride the ups and downs and be with that person or with that business even in the harder times. Now none of you, I'm sure, will be stranger to harder times, especially if you had your business before or started it very close to the start of the pandemic, especially retail businesses or event based businesses or anything like that, where it couldn't just jump online. So many people I worked with during the pandemic were just shocked at how much of a blow their businesses and then their life in turn took from that. Now you've also got the economic climate right now. So things have been particularly hard and tough and challenging for a lot of people. And just like a marriage, it is very tough and challenging and hard at times.
I saw somebody recently. God, where was it? Maybe it was on TikTok and they were giving advice to their daughter who was in her, I don't know, early 20s. And they were saying when you choose a partner, you want to choose somebody who will get through the death of your parents with you. And I thought that was really, you know, profound, but also very poignant because it's not about this. Mother was saying, you know, it's not about what they look like right now or what job they have or how much money they're making right now or what the wedding's going to look like. It's about could this person take me through really dark times in my life? Because that's essentially what any kind of long term relationship, whether it's a marriage or not, is going to have to do. You will go through hard times and just like a business, you will ride hard times.
Now sometimes these things are too hard and they shouldn't be just stuck with for the sake of longevity. I truly believe that about marriage too. You know, some people are very much better off as separated or divorced and some people, you know, are flogging a dead horse in terms of their business. But for a lot of us, the vast majority, I would say you're in a business because you wanted to create something meaningful. You wanted to create something with purpose. You had meaning and passion behind it. And it's not going to be rainbows and unicorns every day. It's going to be hard work and difficult and challenging. And there'll be many times when you think, why the bleep did I start this? Why am I still going? Why am I putting myself out like this?
And it could even be the times that aren't particularly necessarily challenging or difficult. It's just something new, and you haven't done that before. And so it's petrifying because you're like, oh, my God, I have to stand on stage. Or, oh, my goodness, I'm about to do my first trade show. Or, oh, my gosh, I'm about to send that email that could change things up for us. Or, wow, I'm going to walk into, you know, an angel investor's office and talk to them about what I want. All of those things are challenging and difficult, especially the first few times. I was going to say the first time, but this is the first few times. And so much like in a relationship where you're going to go through new things together, and it sometimes that newness can feel very daunting and very uncertain. And so that commitment is needed, whether that you're riding high and everything's good and everyone is in a good mood and everything's great, or you're in a downtime and there's going to be, you know, weathering, like, tough economic cycles or tough relationship phases or times when, you know, maybe things are just not going to plan, or maybe your stuff is soaring and your partner's is not, or vice versa.
And likewise, let's say you're in business. You may be like, yeah, okay, why is the shop next door doing so well and we're not? And so in that business, you want to really think about, what does success mean? And sometimes it might be success is kind of, you know, being dedicated to this even when it's not exciting or profitable sometimes, or it's feeling like it's taking every ounce of you to just keep it going. But, you know, and you feel in your heart of hearts that it is worth doing. Now, again, I'm not saying that longevity is like the number one goal with business because you don't want to just be in it until it absolutely ruins you financially, emotionally, all of that. Likewise, A marriage. I have no qualms about saying that if somebody is not right for you, it is much better for you to get out of a toxic, horrible relationship than stay in it.
But in terms of today's topic, which is really how marriage is like business or how business is like marriage, the first thing is really just the commitment that there has to be a level of commitment that it's not going to all be easy. It is not going to be all straight shooting. It is not. You know, you're definitely going to have moments when you are crying your eyes out, thinking, why am I doing this? But it's about asking yourself, do I have the commitment? And is it that important to me to keep going, to keep it going?
The second is this sort of financial partnership. You have a financial partnership with your business, with your brand, and for many of us, it's a big chunk of, of our finances. It's a lot of the time the reason, or one of the main reasons that people got into business is like, I feel like I can either make the same money that I'm making with less time or I can make significantly more, again, potentially with less time than I'm making working for somebody else. Or maybe you want complete financial freedom. And so you go into that partnership with that business and you are trusting that if you put in the work, that it's going to work out for you with the relationship.
You also have this kind of shared resources and responsibilities. And a lot of people, you know, have heard me talk about Ramit Sethi. I think he's, you know, great. It took me a while, I have to say, to get to like him. Like years. I used to be like, oh, he's just grating on me. And now actually I really like him. Anyway, he has this great podcast. He's recently rebranded it called, oh, what's it called now? Like, Money for Couples or something? Money Couples. But if you just look up Ramit Sethi on YouTube, he has this podcast. I have talked about this podcast with so many of my clients because it's like relationship counselling with couples and, but with finances. And I feel like when it comes to a business, you have to have that same mentality to be really knowing your numbers to understand what the business needs from you financially, what you need from the business financially. There needs to be a transparency there between money and spending. And this is all the same stuff that ideally should also be in a committed relationship, whether it's a, you know, a marriage or some other long term committed relationship. This, this need to understand how much do we have, how much are we spending, how are we trying to grow this? There needs to also be this kind of joint decision making on, you know, major financial investments.
Likewise with your business. You can't necessarily just come all in and scale, you know, in the first year because you may be like actually without investment, we can't do that and it's going to be detrimental to the business. So let's look at a five year plan, a three year projection, whatever it is. But that financial partnership we are all in with our businesses, even if you decide to exit the business and sell it, even more so in a way, because you're taking this thing, this thing that you have given your blood, sweat and tears for and you're handing it over to somebody else in return for some sort of financial valuation that you think is fair.
So the second point, I guess in this way that running a business or having a business is similar to being a marriage, is that financial partnership, you know, really, are we partners? Is this a place where I can be one, knowledgeable about my numbers, but two, transparent with what I'm doing and where I'm going and why we are doing that? And I think money not. I think I have looked at these statistics before. In Australia, the average first marriage lasts 12.1 years. I remember because when we got to 12 years I said to my husband, oh, look, we're getting above the average here. And one of the biggest reasons that marriages break up outside of it just, you know, some people just not the right fit for each other, but is money. It's issues around money, issues around secrecy around money, you know, like all sorts of things.
So relationship, you want to be knowledgeable about your numbers and understand where things are going, where they're coming in, where are they going, et cetera. But also in a business, it is absolutely crucial. I work with people all the time that get very confronted about their numbers and it can be really hard and there are definitely lots of times tears involved. And I'll always say to them, yes, it's confronting to look at this, it really is, especially if you have not been looking at it. But it is also powerful because now you have a place to start from as opposed to ignoring it or imagining that the numbers a lot better than they are, ah, or in some cases, you know, people are related and like, oh, I had no idea that I have the opportunity to earn that or that we are already so close to that. And so in either way, money is a huge part of a relationship and it's a huge part of business.
The third thing that I think is parallel between having a marriage or any long term relationship and running a business is the idea that like growth in both requires people to be adaptive and growth just requires adaptation. So in terms of your business and your relationship, what worked in the first 12 months may not work by, you know, 36 months in or five years in or 10 years in. And so you can't imagine that, yes, I'm going to do this in year one and I'm just going to have the exam, exact same processes, the exact same way of dealing with things in year five. Because you will grow, your partner will grow when we're talking about relationships, but your business will also grow.
What I started this business as when I first quit my executive role, another company is so different to what I actually do now. When I first quit I thought I'm going to go in and I'm going to run, you know, brand and marketing strategy sessions for corporates and consult to them. And you know, essentially that's what I'll be doing and I'll be in the city most of the time. And if I'm lucky, maybe I will take on these small business clients that I had a few of and maybe that will grow at some point to like maybe 50% of my income. And essentially now I very rarely do corporate consulting. I still do the odd thing here and there. I just actually did something last week, but even then it was still for a relatively. I wouldn't say it's a corporate, it more like a small business that's quite large.
But suffice to say, if I had looked at my business in year one and gone, that's what I'm going to do for the next 10 years. It, just is not reality because things change, life changes. We had a pandemic. I had a child, I lost both my parents. So many things have changed in that time that have meant that my business needs to evolve and adapt as well. And same way with, you know, my husband. We've been together, like I said, for gosh, 18 years as partners and 16 of those married now as of tomorrow. Yay for us. But we're totally different people to who we were when we first met. I was like mid-20s, early 20s when I met him and now I'm in my 40s and now we have two kids. It's a, very different lifestyle to us, living in the city and partying it up and living in London and doing all these fun things. It's still Fun, it's just a different way of having fun.
And so that growth is absolutely key also when circumstances change and evolve as they will have. And, you know, we've all seen that with the pandemic, the current economic climate, it's constantly evolving and you need to adapt to that as well. So you have to have, like, flexibility, you have to have a willingness to try a new approach to, to think that just because we've always done it that way, we'll continue to do it that way.
That can be the absolute death of business, but also the death of any relationship. Because even in friendships, like, people change and adapt and evolve and sometimes you grow apart and sometimes you grow together. And people are willing to open and adapt and change and be flexible, but sometimes they're not. And that's when, you know, friendships can break up, relationships can break up, businesses can fall down.
My, grandfather had a business in Ireland in the, you know, 1930s, 40s, 50s, and when he died, there was a lot of stuff that was wrong with that business because he had not adapted to new changes in technology and changes in, in the way that something was happening in his particular industry. And so that left my grandmother at a very vulnerable state, particularly with three young children and raising them by herself with no kind of welfare or any kind of help. So, you know, I know firsthand from that experience and my father talking about it growing up, that you need to be able to adapt and change and be malleable in a way.
And the best businesses are those that have been able to adapt, adapt to what their audience needs, adapt to new technology. I mean, at the moment, as I said, we are running an AI chat group once a month. AI is here. It is absolutely here. It has been here for a while now. And if you're not getting on embracing that and not understanding, okay, how do I make use of this, then it's potentially going to be damaging for you. And if you are Interested in the AI chat, you can join anytime at, mydailybusiness.com Aichat A I C H A T. Even if you don't join that chat, go and do some research into AI, get yourself around that. Because just like a business, you know, or just like a relationship needs to evolve and adapt and move with the times, so too does a business, in order for it to, to exist to, to, you know, be around in a certain amount of time.
Also on that, both relationships and businesses need to reassess and adjust your strategy. Every so often you need to be like, okay, you Know, where are we now? Even at the moment my youngest son is about to start school. So I know that next year will be the first year in pro, probably 12 years where 11 or 12 years where I have had the option of working full time. Now I've worked three days a week and I'm happy to continue to work three days, maybe four. But if I'm doing the fourth day, maybe that'll be more like creative stuff that I want to do. But that is a, ah, transition. It's a it's an adjustment for myself obviously, but it's also an adjustment for my husband. It is an adjustment for the family. And we have to change and adapt and adjust and look at, okay, what's that going to look like if I do work, you know, four days a week instead of three days? What, what will it look like for our relationship, but also for my business, what's possible because I have a bit more extra time because I'm not looking after a very young child, you know, two days a week.
So that is really important as well. So that's number three really looking at growth and adaptability. If there's a better way of saying it, I guess growth requires adaptation. The fourth point, where marriages and or long relationships are similar to businesses. This is like in neon writing. Imagine that I'm sending it to you in a big neon bold everything caps. Communication is everything, absolutely everything.
So in your relationship, regular check- ins are beyond essential. Anyone who's been in any committed relationship for some length of time will say that it is communication, communication, communication. Same way with, you know, business. You want to be making sure that you're clear in your communication. But you're also, if you have staff communicating regularly, checking in, seeing how everyone's feeling, seeing that you're not, you know, getting complacent. Also that you're not letting things slide that potentially should have been picked up, that you're not scared of being confrontational, that you're not letting resentment fester. And so that communication is so key because any kind of small irritating issue can become a big problem if it's not addressed. And that is so important in business and in relationships.
And you hear all the time, I have some good friends who've, you know, come out of, you know, committed relationships and often they've talked about just the communication. It just was not there, or we didn't know how to communicate or we had been miscommunicating for so long or we'd gone and got help and we still couldn't find a way to communicate. So communication is so important. And in that communication and in business, this is crucial as it is in a relationship. Setting boundaries. I know I talk about that a lot and you know, we often talk about Dr. Rebecca Ray's book Setting Boundaries, also Nedra Tawab's book, what is it? Set Boundaries, Find Peace. We'll link to both of those in the show notes for this.
But you have to have boundaries. You have to have clear expectations and, and really understand that, you know, as Dr. Rebecca Ray says, if you give somebody your boundaries, you're almost giving them an instruction manual on how to best, you know, communicate and relate to you. And there's nothing bad about setting boundaries. Sometimes it's the best thing that we can do for our own sanity in business and in a relationship.
And I think also another part that's really important, and I'm going to quote, I don't know if it was Audrey Hepburn, but it's often quoted as Audrey Hepburn. You know how she said, we have two ears, one mouth, you should listen twice as much as you talk. That concept is so important in business and in relationships. Just that active listening to really hear what is being said and also what is not being said, what is not coming through.
And I remember ages ago in one of the companies that I worked at, really looking at listening tools. Like this was kind of the software that you could, that was called listening Tools. And even in like focus groups and surveys and everything, you want to see what is not being said, but also what is being said. What are these nuggets of wisdom? I recently talked to an incredible co founder of an amazing AI tool that I'm obsessed with at the moment and have been using like literally daily for months. And he is on the podcast very soon. If not, maybe, maybe he's just come on before this or maybe next week when, the time that this comes out and he talked about this idea of like being obsessed with the customers and understanding firsthand what were their problems, talking to them every day, doing, you know, tens and tens and tens of calls with people to understand how they're using it and just listening, listening, listening, listening.
And that is absolutely key for a marriage as well. So that is number four, communication is everything. Number five shouldn't come as any, really surprise. Trust is the foundation of everything. So much of business is built on trust. Trust with your staff, trust with your suppliers, trust your audience is trusting you. And I think, God, I can't remember who actually said this. Now I'm all For quotes. And I. But that idea that, you know your reputation can be made in 20 years, or it takes 20 years to make a reputation, 20 seconds to ruin it. And trust can so easily be broken in a relationship and in a business.
So you can't micromanage every detail. There has to be a level at which you trust your partner or you trust your staff, or you trust yourself to just make this decision. You don't know exactly where the road is leading, but you're going to trust yourself or back yourself. Also, you've got to rely in terms of that on other people to do their part. You've got to go, okay, I'm delegating this. And, as much as that is hard, I'm going to trust that you can do it likewise with a partner. There's going to be so many instances where you are relying on them. You have to give them, you know, a bit of the control, a bit of you have to empower them to be like, yes, I trust that you're going to go on this journey with me, especially if it's like a long term, committed relationship. I trust that we are, on the same page. I trust that you are doing things in my best interest and vice versa.
You really want to, like, think about how that betrayal of trust, you know, whether it's financial or emotional or whatever, whether it's in your relationship or in your business, can be absolutely devastating. Now, I talked about in, late October, I think it was, I, did a whole episode on trust being broken in my business with somebody that I worked with, and how incredibly devastating and impactful that was, how it really made me, you know, reassess my systems, reassess everything. But it really made me second guess myself, I have to say, as well.
So I know that when people can be in toxic relationships where there isn't trust, where they feel that that trust is broken again and again and again, whether it's a friendship or a relationship or whatever, it can be absolutely devastating. And the same goes with business. So, I don't know, you want to look at your instinct, trust your instinct, but also really do everything you can to make sure that you're protecting that trust and protecting what people are expecting from you.
So I guess that's number five. Just trust is the foundation of everything. Number six, there has to be a balance of teamwork and autonomy or independence, for want of a better word. A long time ago, when I was in high school, I remember my friends and I were kind of obsessed with Karl Gibran Is that how you say his name? Anyway, this poet, author, writer. And I remember that there was this one, like, paragraph or poem or something, piece of prose really. And people would use it all the time in their weddings. And I've heard it at a number of weddings actually, so it, it's fitting to put it into today's episode.
But it talks about this idea that a relationship or a marriage is like building a house, where the house is on, strong foundations, but allows enough space for two people to be themselves as well. So I actually googled it because I was like, I have not looked at this since probably the 1990s, so maybe I'm getting it wrong. But it does say all of these. And at the end it says, stand together, yet not too near together. For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
And so I guess when it comes to business and relationships, you have to have a mix of independence and teamwork. So in a business, you have to have, especially if you've got staff, their ability for them to be autonomous, for them to have creative ideas, for them to come up with the ideation by themselves, to not micromanage every single thing, and to also have them feel empowered to make decisions, to make a call, to do. Xyz. And likewise, in a relationship, you cannot control, and you should not be controlling the other person to such a degree that they have no independence. And likewise, as somebody in that relationship, you don't want to be so dependent on them for every single part of your life, for all of your happiness, for everything else.
And likewise with a business as well, you don't want that business to be everything, to be your complete identity, that who are you without them? And that you could never survive if the business went under. Because you can and you will if that happens. Hopefully it doesn't. Same way as marriages break up, people survive. And so you want to have this mix of the independent and the. And the kind of team together. You want to have a unified vision for, like, where you're going, but also your own vision for your own life. And likewise, in a business, you want to think, okay, this is where the business is going. This is what it means for me. But also, like, who am I outside of this business? I am my own person as well.
And I know a lot of people felt a huge amount of vulnerability during COVID when, there was the option that the business may not survive, their business may not survive. And a lot of people I know I coached and talked through and I felt a bit of this myself is like, who am I if I don't have that identity of the founder of this or the CEO of this or whatever it is. And so you really want that balance of independence and teamwork and work, you know, as a unit with this person that you're in a relationship with or as a business, but also have the boundaries for your own independence as well.
So that is, what are we up to? Number six, number seven. And it kind of goes with what I've just said as well, that there has to be some sort of shared vision for the future, like where are we going, what are our goals, what are our values, what are our beliefs?
I'm such a huge person, to, you know, thinking about alignment and values and it's in both of my books, I spend a bit of time on this and making sure that you show up for those values internally and externally. Likewise, in a relationship you have to have, you know, alignment between your values or it's going to be a rocky road for a long time. Because your values often, I believe, are what guide you in life and in business as well.
And to that you want to think about how often in your, if you are in a long term relationship, how often you're sitting down and really thinking about where, where are we going, what's our plan, what are we like, what is our goals, how do we create those things together? Also like, where's the compromise if we have different goals or different priorities or different dreams? And similarly with a business, you may decide, okay, the business needs to get to here in the first three years. It may not get there for five years. And so can you compromise on some of the things that you were hoping for in those first three years? Can it? What would it look like if that was pulled to five years?
And I do this with clients all the time. When we look at, you know, their thrive numbers, when we look at getting, you know, into a new territory or doing this or that, sometimes there just has to be a bit of compromise and, or even like, let's say even, I don't know, like marketing channels, there are bazillion of them. I've worked in marketing for 23 years in some form or fashion and sometimes you're going to say, you know what, we need to compromise, we are trying to do too much or we're not going to be on that platform for another six months. And that's okay because we need to fix these other things first.
So that idea of compromising between different dreams or different priorities is really important both in business and in a relationship. Number eight. Huge, huge, huge. You want to invest in relationships. Now this might sound silly because you're like, of course you're trying to have a long term relationship. Yes, you need to invest in relationships, but you really need to spend the time to build strong relationships with your suppliers, with your stockists, with your employees, if you have them, with your family, with, in laws, with the people that make your person your person.
And again, I'm not talking about like toxic, very harsh, horrible people that are not good for you or anybody, but in general, you know, invest in the relationships. You know, turn up to the birthdays, turn up to the, you know, children's parties. Like be there, be part of the memory making. Don't be like, this is not that important to me. Because if it's important to your partner, then it should also be in some way important to you.
Likewise, if you are trying to retain staff, you want to show up, show up. Not necessarily to like, I know all the things they have going on socially, but show up. If they've done a great job, show up, tell them, talk about that, nurture that relationship. Likewise, nurture your partnerships. If you've got partnerships with vendors or stockers or suppliers or manufacturers or media or whatever it is, nurture those relationships.
You also want to, you know, think about what investment you're doing, particularly as a leader in a company or, you know, the leader in your, you know, family or whatever it is. What are you doing to upskill yourself around things like how you deal with, with difficulties, how you deal with like different personalities, how you deal with different expectations, you know, what self awareness are you doing, what skillset are you trying to get better at so that you can be the best person for, for your family, for your partner, but also for your business. What are you doing? Or are you just sort of coasting along and thinking, it'll be fine, it'll be fine, it'll be fine.
We are all growing and adapting and changing and sometimes it really needs us to stop and take a big hard look at ourselves and realise how we are, the problem. So that's a really important thing and it can be very, very confronting. The other thing with that kind of nurturing relationships is that you want to think about am I genuinely creating a positive, psychologically safe environment or culture at work or in the relationship as well.
So a while ago my husband and I took to I heard, ah, one of my siblings actually call their significant other A particular cutesy name, right? And I said to my husband, oh, my God, like, that was so funny. And I realised I don't call him that ever. And I actually did like a little survey of my friends and I said, do you call your partner these kind of cutesy names? And they were like, yeah, I totally do. I actually never use their, you know, normal given name.
And I was like, really? So if you, you know, if you were at a family event, you would say, hey, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it became kind of a joke with me and my husband, but it was actually quite nice. And now we do it all the time because it became this thing that sort of. It was just nice to be like, have this cutesy little name for each other. And I'm not going to say what they are on here, but I'm not saying you need to have cutesy names for your co workers, but are you doing things that bring up the mood? Are you doing things that make people feel seen and valued? And are you coming in with a smile on your face? Are you being a great leader? Are you asking how they are and genuinely listening for the answer? Or are you coming straight in with, this needs to be done, this needs to be done, this is late. And so really thinking, am I creating that positive culture, that space where people can feel free to open up, to be themselves, to be vulnerable and enjoy, you know, enjoy coming home, enjoy coming to work, that sort of stuff?
Number nine, Ah. I mean, all of these are so important, aren't they? But number nine, having a partnership where problem solving is encouraged, where it's not just a blame game, but where you, you know, you face challenges together rather than everyone's, you know, fending for themselves.
Years ago we had somebody do a job around our house and it hadn't gone, and my husband and them were in kind of discussions, I guess you could say, and the person, this sort of trades person, they just kept, you know, it just kept going round and round in circles. And I said to them, hey, we all know what the problem is. We have talked about the problem. We could talk about the problem till the cows come home. What we need to do is be solutions focused. So what are some solutions? I can think of three. Here they are, what other solutions do we have on the table?
And I think that is key in business, but also in a relationship, because, yes, you can totally go into, well, you did this, well, you did that. When you. And it just. Is this blame tit for tat as opposed to going, this is a situation we're in how do we work together, to get out of it, or how do we work together to move through it, or how do we work together to make sure this situation doesn't happen again or has less chance of happening again?
Now, that situation could involve money, it could involve kids, it could involve whatever, I mean, at a workplace it could involve something legal, it could involve something really potentially damaging to your brand. But instead of focusing so much on the problem, you really want to think about how do we come together to solve this problem? How do we do problem solving? How do we find solutions that work for both parties?
Also the ability to learn from our mistakes and move forward and to support each other through crisis. To support each other. As I said at the very start, you know, there are going to be such dark moments for everybody. No person on the planet is immune from dark moments and from moments when things are very tough, very challenging and you are wondering, why am I in this situation? And you want to have somebody by your side. Likewise, you want to have a business and people in the business that are there for you and you're there for them. So you really want to have that kind of problem solving partnership.
That's number nine. And number 10, on a slightly more positive note, this idea of building a legacy together. You know, you hear all the time about people who will say, oh, my parents were together for this long or my parents had a great marriage. I mean, obviously there are people that didn't have that and there's no judgement on that. It's just, you know, fact. Some people don't, some people do. But you hear that idea of like, oh, my grandparents were this, or my parents did this, or my auntie, whatever, or my best friend has the most beautiful relationship. And so there's that kind of legacy that is often outlasting people and that can be there decades after they have passed on.
And in that relationship, you kind of creating a legacy where values and lessons and things are passed on from generation to generation because of that relationship that came together in that is also this idea of like, you know, the two of you in this relationship, or a throuple, if you're in one, coming together, and creating something that will last beyond you and that could include, you know, wealth, generation, you know, generating incredible memories for people, incredible experiences as a family, but also as a business and for that culture.
I mean, some of the funnest workplaces I worked in, those people that I worked with, we are still good friends. I mean, one of them is literally my best Friend. He's the first person I ever hired in a company that I was working in when I was, like, 23 or 24. And we have known each other for 20 years. And we would never have met if that workplace hadn't had such a fun culture where we were able to come together, be ourselves, you know, laugh at the boss or whatever. But that impact, I mean, so many. I literally just had a text message the other day from one of the guys there that I haven't talked to in years. But we had. It was almost like a family where we work together. And that is, a legacy that lives on, whether those people still are in the business or not.
We will definitely have places we've worked, businesses we've worked with, where you have such memorable, like, you just want to smile when you think about that place. And that's what you want to build with your business and the people that come into it, but also with your relationship. You want people to smile when they think of, you know, this relationship about. Yes, those people, they were made for each other. They really brought out the best in each other. And the same thing happens with a business.
You also want to, you know, potentially change people's lives. And that could be if you're in a relationship, your kids or other people in your life. And then in a business, I mean, you look at so many businesses, they're literally changing the lives of the people who interact and encounter, those businesses. And they're not huge, big brands. I work with small businesses all the time that are changing lives, that are giving people hope, that are changing perspective, changing behaviour. So many, so many of them I put into my new book, Business to Brand, because the entire book is about this. It's about how small business can create brands that change the way people operate in the world, that change the way people communicate, come together, care for each other, that are courageous and curious and creative.
And so that number 10 is really, really about leaving a positive impact on other people, being like, I'm glad they were in my life. You know, they were incredible. They're an incredible person to go through life with. That's how I feel about my husband. I feel like I'm incredibly lucky that he is my best friend. He's also, you know, an incredible person. I said to him the other day, thanks for doing life with me. You know, thanks for being this person that we both met in our 20s and now we're in our 40s and we've got two kids and totally different lives, but we're still there. For each other. We're there for each other. At the end of the day, turn Netflix off, have our cup of tea, have a chat. We know that we have each other's back. And you want that with your business too.
You want to think about all this time, all this energy, all this effort that is going into it day after day after day. It is a choice. Just like a wedding, you know, sorry, not a wedding, but a, marriage or any long term relationship, it's a choice. You get up every day and you have to choose, do I want to stay in this relationship? And if I do, how am I going to maintain that? Likewise with a business, you know, do I want to be in business? Okay, what do I need to do today to keep it going, to keep it flowing, to keep it growing?
So that is it for today's episode. A big, long one, but one around something I find very, very important. Obviously, that relationship, to me, my marriage is probably the most important. And then my children, of course, that have come from that marriage and that commitment. And so whether you are single, whether you are in a relationship, whether you just got out of a relationship, there's nothing in today's episode that I want you to take away. That, oh, if you're in a marriage or a long term relationship, you're somehow better. you're not at all. Likewise, if you don't have a business, you are not somehow less off than people who do have a business or somehow inferior.
But I just wanted to point out the parallels that run between a relationship and a business because there are so many. I just mentioned 10, but there are so many. And just to recap on those 10, should, I count down or count up? Okay, maybe from number one, commitment, absolute commitment through the ups and downs. Number two, really being in financial partnership. Number three, understanding that growth requires adaptability. Number four, communication is everything. Number five, trust, trust, trust. To have trust as your foundation. Number six, there has to be a balance between independence and teamwork. Number seven, having a shared vision for the future is essential. Number eight, it is crucial to invest in relationships. Number nine, having a partnership where problem solving is key. And number 10, building a legacy.
So I hope that you've enjoyed that. I hope it gives you fuel for thought. And if you have enjoyed this, I would love it so much if you could leave a review. Whether you listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever you listen, it really helps us get found. And I know that we get so many incredible DMs, and I love them and I'm so thankful for them. And I would love it if you've ever dmed us to say thank you for the podcast. If you could take that energy and put it into a review. Even if you just hit the stars. You don't have to even write anything, but just hit the stars. It really, really helps other small business owners find this and I put a lot of effort and time into this and yeah, I just really, really, really appreciate seeing those reviews.
So thank you in advance. If you want to go through this in text format, you'll be able to find that plus links to AI course or any other courses that you might want to buy for friends, plus our books, business to brand or passion, purpose, profit. All of that is available on our website and you'll find the links to those things in the podcast show notes, which are also on the website at mysdailybusiness.com podcast 466 and finally, I'm not even sure if he listens to this, but happy anniversary Jerome. Love you.
Thanks for listening to the MyDaily Business Podcast for a range of tools to help you grow and start your business, including coaching programmes, courses and templates. Check out our shop at mysdailybusiness.com/shop and if you want to get in touch, you can do that by email hello@mydailybusiness.com or just hit me up on Instagram @mysdailybusiness.com.
