Client case studies, Grow your profits, Values-based business
Louise Nealon is an award-winning Public Relations Director who specialises in supporting purpose-led organisations and campaigns. Louise started her own business, in partnership, in 2007. After 10 years, she relaunched under her own name.
When Louise began one-to-one business coaching with me in July 2021, she was already earning excellent money, with a stable of retainer clients who considered Louise as part of their team, complemented by recurring annual project work, including a boat in the Sydney to Hobart race and Queer Screen’s Mardi Gras Film Festival.
Having co-owned a PR consultancy in Sydney city and managing a team in her first business, she didn’t really want to lease a city office and hire a team, but was unclear about how she’d earn more otherwise. Louise had rebranded under her own name, with beautiful professional photography, and her business looked awesome from the outside.
But she was keen on more.
Earnings plateau
Louise had been stuck in an earnings plateau for some time, she hadn’t put her prices up for years, and was keen to redefine her relationship with money as well as her business.
Says Louise, “I was going through the motions. I’d lost my mojo. I was keen to explore various options for redesigning my business model and what they could look like.
“I chose you because I’d been a long-time email subscriber of yours and loved what you said and the way you said it. I loved your purpose. ‘Hustle and heart’ says it all about you.”
Embracing the hustle
The first problem that Louise identified was a great reluctance to negotiate rates and talk about money. She found pricing proposals took a lot of time and energy and understood she needed to change her attitude and beliefs around money and pricing.
We set a conservative monthly revenue goal which she smashed quickly, so the second goal she set was 75% higher again. She’s exceeded this several times since. Part of this progress included speaking with long-term clients about her value and how that could be remunerated better.
Through business coaching, Louise increased her prices, started invoicing upfront, changed her terms and conditions, chased outstanding bills that were causing significant stress, and created proposals to streamline her quotation process, while improving her conversion rate.
“Brook helped me examine my revenue regularly and explore various options to leverage my expertise, cultivate more of the work that I loved, and delegate, outsource, or partner with others who could take on pieces of work that I wasn’t passionate about.”
“I can easily become overwhelmed but Brook has have a way of breaking down complex things and apply a laser focus to see beyond what I can see. She bring this infectious fun energy which changed my opinion on sales, business development and marketing. She made it fun to work on my business.”
People-centric business
Together, Louise and I looked at her innate strengths and talents, things she was deeply curious about exploring, and areas that she was competent in, but had lost interest in.
“You made it about me the business owner, not just the business. I especially enjoyed the insights I gained about designing my ideal lifestyle and how my schedule could look.”
We explored different business models and options for how to manage client work as well as work more collaboratively, to develop her professional skills as well as reduce the isolation that being in business for yourself so often means. Louise became more strategic and focused with her networking, developing a team of service professionals to complement her skill set and offer a wider array of services to clients and prospective clients.
“There was nothing we didn’t explore, from exercise and nutrition, to where I was living – I’ve since moved out of the city and bought a house by the beach with my wife! – to goals that went far beyond the business.” Louise hired an organiser to help her move into her new house, and joined the local bootcamp on the beach.
“I totally appreciate now just how important your attitude, health and wellbeing and outlook is to your business’s bottom line.”
From service provider to business owner
One of the big changes in identity Louise made was from service provider, at the beck and call of clients, to expert and owner. Instead of being paid to do the ‘grunt work’ of raising visibility and publicity on behalf of her clients, Louise is changing her approach, to being paid for her strategic ideas, for others to implement.
“You’ve definitely increased my self-belief and changed my perspective of myself, from service provider to business owner.” Louise now treats her business like one of her clients, scheduling time for regular business planning, brainstorming and creativity.
Louise has improved her decision-making abilities as an owner – which is a central skill – including not agonising about turning down less-than-ideal clients. “You have a great ability to help me find solutions very quickly that always seemd to work.”
Louise can discern between fast decisions and those requiring more consideration, and regularly carves out time making decisions, rather than rushing the process because it feels uncomfortable.
But perhaps the biggest change is the sea change, from an inner-city Sydney suburb, to a beach-side house south of Sydney.
Says Louise, “My self-trust and self-confidence have hugely increased through working with you. Work has gone from something quite stressful to really enjoyable. I see a future for my business now, whereas before my retirement plan was to win Lotto! You make business fun – like I can achieve anything.”
Values-based business
{The title of this article came from Carmen Hawker, who floored me when she poetrically expressed something that I’d been using far too many clunky words to describe. Thanks Carmen. It only took 2.5 years to get written.}
One of the tragedies of kindness, integrity, values and principles, is how easily these can be exploited by those not burdened by them. With the Australian election looming, it’s too easy to see evidence of principled people being roundly criticised for any tiny, perceived hypocrisies, while those apparently without principles get off scot-free.
If you stand for something, some may see you as an easy target for exploitation. As a values-based business owner who works with other values-based business owners, I see this play out every single day.
I was victim to this many times in the early years of my business, attracting numerous charming narcissists and energy vampires who manipulated me into over-delivering, for minimal, or no, compensation. These guys will suck you dry, spit you out, and you make believe you’re at fault.
How do you know if your values have been weaponised against you? Oftentimes you don’t.
You may continue to be used and abused for years until burn-out changes your perspective. A sense of resentment and anger are useful indicators that your values are being used against you.
How to know if you’re vulnerable
Has anyone ever said to you:
“I can’t believe you get paid to do this! What a fantastic thing to do – the money must be an absolute bonus!”
“Other people would kill to do what you do.”
“We’re looking for people who are totally committed to this cause.”
“This is such a fantastic cause and the budget is really tight (or non-existent), but you’d know that you were doing a good thing.”
If so, then it’s possible that your values have been weaponised against you.
You want to live in integrity with your values. You want your beliefs, words and actions to be in alignment. So when someone suggests that your behaviour is out of alignment with your beliefs, you want to change so as to remain in integrity.
Ripe for exploitation
“They don’t make a job prestigious unless it sucks” is a saying from law school (not my law school, I’m an arts student). But it’s not just prestige that’s a gateway to exploitation.
Any industry or sector with fewer jobs than there are applicants, which is aspirational, prestigious, or feel-good, is also popular for energy vampires. This includes the arts, fashion, health and healing, politics and not-for-profit worlds. (This is not an exhaustive list.)
But this phenomenon is also industry-agnostic because conscientiousness is beyond industries and sectors.
When you’re committed to doing the best job possible, you’re easy to exploit.
“We were expecting more.”
“This job hasn’t been completed to the standard we were hoping for.”
“There’s more to do.”
It can be hard to distinguish between constructive criticism and deliberate exploitation. Sometimes it’s difficult to objectively discern whether you’ve done a poor, adequate, good or great job.
But the good news is there are things you can do to ensure that your values aren’t weaponised against you.
How to protect yourself
Boundaries are essential.
Boundaries are really important for all business owners, but especially for those who socially active, empathetic, and/or sensitive. You may like to remove your mobile number from the internet, create smarter website forms to reduce back-and-forth conversation, and have a clear pre-quotation briefing process, before a price is given or alternatively, state your prices on your sales pages.
Divorce self-worth from sacrifice.
The martyr or saviour complex is still alive and kicking, thousands of years after the philosopher Socrates was condemned to death in 399 BC for “refusing to recognise the gods” and “corrupting the youth” of Athens. Your self-worth has nothing to do with how much you sacrifice or who you’re attempting to ‘save’. Embrace ‘selfish’. While it’s meant as an insult, it’s really a sign that you’ve got your priorities sorted.
Make your proposals or quotes more detailed.
Especially if you do creative work, your proposals or quotations need key details, including the number of revisions, timelines, and requirements (with deadlines) for clients.
Don’t work for exposure.
You can’t eat exposure. After a certain point in your business (when you’re busy and earning good money), don’t work for exposure. You can still do pro bono work, but this is different.
If you do pro bono work, make your process clear.
Whether or not choose to openly share that you offer pro bono, make your process clear. You may choose to offer a set number of hours per month, or per paid hour (ie: for every six hours of paid client work, you give away one hour for gratis). Whatever you decide, write it down and display it where you can see it. Write down what causes are dear to your heart too, so you can more easily see when some passionate person comes along with a cause that’s not your cause.
Invest in your resilience and joy.
It’s far easier to spot an energy vampire or charming narcissist when you’re well-rested and happy. It’s far harder when your tank is empty, and you’ve lost your joy, perspective and self-trust.
Work
for love and the money
Binary thinking is a contributing cause of a lot of exploitation: specifically, the persistent misconception that work is either creative, or it’s well paid. Either it’s fun, or it’s well paid. Either it’s prestigious, or it’s well paid. Either a million girls would kill for your job, or it’s well paid.
Of course there are other valuable things we gain from work apart from money, including gaining skills, knowledge, new clients, experience, contacts and – yes – exposure.
But this binary thinking that tells you that highly paid work must be difficult, time-consuming, or uncreative, is not just untrue, but is actively stopping you from growing a dream business – where you work for love AND money.
You can use your values and integrity as a brand point-of-difference, to magnetise similar people with similar values to you. Protect your enthusiasm – you are your biggest business asset. Invest accordingly.
Want to work for love AND money? Our flagship program enables you to do just that. It’s especially for values-based business owners who want to grow, without compromising their values or integrity. Jump on the interest list now – we open soon!
Client case studies, Values-based business
I first met Simon Kelly when he spoke at the Sydney WordCamp conference in 2017. Owner of Renegade Empire, Simon is a highly regarded website designer, funnel specialist and systems expert who’s coached other web designers and digital agencies to optimise and grow their agency alongside Troy Dean in Agency Mavericks (formerly WP Elevation).
Since we met in 2017, Simon and I kept in touch, talking shop when I visited his hometown of Melbourne. In an industry that’s full of web designers who lack communication skills and customer service, Simon stands out as a genuinely nice guy, well regarded for his ability to make complex technology seem simple and achievable.
Unsustainable business
Website design can be hugely demanding, with long hours in front of a screen, lots of technical detail, countless back-and-forth communications between clients and team members, and the frequent need to update one’s skills.
Simon lives in Melbourne, which had been disproportionately burdened by continuing and extended Covid lockdowns. He was working too-long hours and wanted to build a business that would give high value to his clients, while giving him the freedom to take time to travel with his girlfriend.
As things stood, he didn’t see how this would be possible.
“What I was doing wasn’t sustainable”, says Simon. “I was working a whole lot and just not feeling like I was getting out what I was putting in. I was low in energy and frankly, I’d lost my enjoyment of my business. I’m a little embarrassed to say I wasn’t very excited to serve my clients.”
“I didn’t really know what was wrong exactly, but I did know I needed help with my business model and my marketing. I wanted someone who could support me to see my blind spots and guide me towards better decisions.”
Simon reached out to me mid-way through 2021 for one-to-one business coaching. “I knew your niche was value-based service business owners. I like how you run your business and life, how real your marketing feels, and how courageous you appear. I wanted to soak up some of that courage, happiness and excitement.”
“When I filled out your first form to book a call with you, I could already see how your form questions focused on the things that I needed: to make great offers, to provide real value, to improve my marketing, and to increase my personal energy and enjoyment of what I do.”
The volatility of running your own business
Simon was earning good money at Renegade Empire before he engaged me for coaching. With his special skill for optimising processes, lack of which causes a lot of stress, headaches and rework for web designers and agencies, he’d already systematised his business. He had a steady stream of inquiries, referrals and recurring income.
But burnout was close by and he was feeling emotionally fatigued and flat – very common amongst business owners, and that’s before we add the extended stressors of Covid and Melbourne’s numerous and extended lockdowns.
The volatility of self-employment – with high highs and low lows – is frequently cited as the number one reason why businesses close down. And while particular tactics can help smooth out cash flow, the emotional volatility for owners should never be under-estimated, posing a real danger, both mentally and fiscally.
In our first session together, I coached Simon to identify personal short-term and long-term goals that were meaningful and unique to him and his business.
“You weren’t dismissive of my stress, but you wouldn’t let me dwell in it. You made me feel that I could show up, in exactly whatever state I was in, and we could move from there. You normalised the many emotions of business and had relatable stories for pretty much everything I was going through,” says Simon.
Simon rediscovered practical ways to improve his mood and energy levels. He refined and improved his processes even further and turned these into the Renegade Empire signature system.
I provoked him to identify and embrace his unique approach, use densely branded language, move away from common industry terms and develop his own unique parlance (or “Simonisms”) and turn his system into a visual model that could be easily understood by prospective clients and others.
Your attitude is your biggest business asset
Since working with me, Simon has reconnected with his purpose and enthusiasm for his business, and life. He’s better defined his ideal client and reinforced his boundaries around who he takes on, to avoid having his time and energy sapped by bad-fit clients.
“Since coaching with Brook, I know now that I can have a great life and a great business, increasing my revenue and profits without working more hours or sacrificing my time off. I now appreciate the role that fun plays to making my business financially robust and personally rewarding.”
“Brook made me feel heard, without indulging a bad mood. She modeled the resilience I needed to take action on difficult things and to pick myself up when I didn’t get the results I wanted. With her support, I process setbacks far more quickly and am far more kind to myself,” says Simon.
“Coaching homework that we set together, including her additional resources and assets like the ‘Banking Confidence’ meditation, were both productive as well as enjoyable to do. I upgraded my business as well as my life, which has opened a lot of new doors.”
“I’m far more excited about my business and am far better at recognising opportunities than I was before. I’m producing work far easier and quicker, things such as blog posts and email content.”
Perhaps most importantly, Simon isn’t retreating when his mood takes a dive. With increasing stress and risk as businesses grow, it’s even more important that owners take their moods and mental health seriously.
“I’m sharing my struggles and problems openly, instead of hiding from them. In the past, I would hide and try and improve alone, whereas now, I’m actively seeking more help and more people to talk with and grow together,” says Simon.
“No matter what the challenge, Brook helped me face it. It wasn’t always comfortable, but she helped guide me through it all.”
Do you ready for change? Inquire about business coaching with Brook.
Building your reputation, Values-based business
Circa 2005, I boxed up the leftovers from one of my client’s corporate lunch events and dropped it off at an industrial estate near Sydney Airport. Oz Harvest was in its nascency, having started in 2004 by Ronni Kahn, who noticed a huge volume of food going to waste. Since then, it has grown to become Australia’s leading food rescue organisation – a simple idea that satisfies two social goals – reducing waste and feeding the homeless.
Ronni came up with the idea through her work as the owner of an events company, where she saw huge volumes of food going to waste. Ronni’s idea was simple and started small: she took her own surplus food from her events to local charities.
Laws needed changing for Ronni’s idea to really take off – and in 2005, Ronni and a team of pro-bono lawyers were instrumental in helping pass The Civil Liabilities Amendment Act in NSW, to allow potential food donors to give their surplus food to charities without fear of liability.
I’ve been highlighting the work of OzHarvest in my digital marketing courses for years and have witnessed the organisation go from small and Sydney-centric to becoming more widely known, to inspiring other businesses. This is the power of a good idea that needs little explanation – it takes off.
Good news! Using your business to grow your impact to change the trajectory of society is on the up-and-up. It takes time, commitment, and the support of thousands of others.
My Hustle and Heart impact framework equips and empowers business owners to stop being the town’s best-kept secret and magnify their impact to create real change. There are three pillars to impact: growing your reputation, building thought leadership and investing in your character.
Our first hurdle is compassion fatigue.
The problem of compassion fatigue
Believing that the social cause close to your heart should be self-evident is an attitude that’s sure to end in tears. No, your cause isn’t necessarily my cause, and attempting to bully or shame me into caring is likely to have the opposite effect.
We are all suffering from compassion fatigue, long before the pandemic came along and things have worsened exponentially since. Compassion fatigue – emotional, physical and spiritual exhaustion which results in a diminished ability to empathise or feel compassion for others – most often affects front-line workers (it’s sometimes referred to as secondary traumatic stress) but is also a problem for ordinary people.
When a caring, sensitive person feels emotionally assaulted by the news or constant requests for charity, their guard goes up to protect themselves. If you’ve noticed yourself being short with people, you could be experiencing it too. Opposing sides become more firmly entrenched in their position, with less patience or compassion for the opposing point of view.
This is a real problem, not only for individual wellbeing, but for enacting positive social change because to win the hearts and minds of people and politicians, to change policy, to lobby key stakeholders, to achieve higher vaccination rates, to donate money or time to worthy causes, requires advanced skills in persuasive communication.
Growing your reputation
To communicate powerfully and effectively requires several ingredients and several stages. First, you need to say something worth listening to. To do this requires empathy, emotional intelligence and creativity. Once you’re saying something worth listening to, you need to amplify this by raising your visibility.
Without visibility, you don’t have the opportunity to reach and affect great numbers of people.
Growing your professional reputation, whether you’re an individual or organisation, is critical. This goes beyond producing your own media assets for your own platform, such as whitepapers, blogs, podcasts and videos.
To grow your reputation quickly and powerfully, you need to create purposeful partnerships, build networks, engage public relations, and work with media to help amplify your message to new audiences.
Building thought leadership
It’s not enough to have visibility and an audience. Your thought leadership is the difference between developing widespread trust and having limited influence bound by your own community who love you.
Thought leadership is all about credibility. Without credibility, we have very limited trust from others and our impact is stymied.
During various controversies that are amplified on social media, I go looking for influencers’ response. It’s clear that some influencers don’t bother doing further research or background checking before they share a video of “freedom” protests in Sydney and Melbourne that are produced by a neo-Nazi, or don’t think too deeply beyond their own selfish needs before mouthing off about “not wanting to be relatable”, thereby destroying their personal brand, and future wealth, with one self-centred social video.
Many don’t realise that they’re being deliberately co-opted into supporting tangential causes that they may only be vaguely aware of.
A massive online social media community doesn’t make for thought leadership. Thought leadership is different.
To develop your thought leadership so that you can influence the mainstream and have real impact, you need to research widely, develop your empathy so that you’re better able to appreciate the diversity of viewpoints, follow your curiousity, and cultivate your creative thinking. You need an open mind and an open heart.
This process isn’t always fun.
It can be hugely destabilising to examine your own thinking and realise that you are – upon further reflection – wrong. It’s not enjoyable to see how your good intentions may have negatively impacted others. It takes strength of character to change your hard-won opinions and embrace paradoxes and ambiguity. Indeed, appreciating that ambiguity and paradoxes exist is a good start to move away from linear, overly simplistic thinking.
Truth with a capital T has been used to justify violence for millennia. We can do better.
Investing in your character
Much is spoken about leadership and how to cultivate it. It appears everyone is a leader. And while it’s understandable that businesses want to get the most out of their people and equip them with leadership skills that are largely learned on the job, the related subject of character doesn’t get talked about nearly as often.
And yet developing your character is critical, for many reasons, not least of which is our future. For our planet’s survival, we must have leaders who are highly ethical, compassionate and brave enough to choose the unpopular path and then to compassionate persuade their constituents to support this.
The best leaders in times of crisis and upheaval are those who are empathetic and courageous enough to admit, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But here’s what I think we should try. Come along with me and let’s be open with each other about what’s working and what’s not.”
When everyone else is fortifying their positions of judgment and throwing hurt barbs across the division, it takes real strength of character to try to build a bridge. But if positive social change is to happen, a bridge must be built. Your contribution is needed. Your business can be a force for social change. Together, we create a bright future. There’s still time.
Our flagship Hustle and Heart program is built on our impact framework, comprised of the three key pillars of growing your reputation, building through leadership and investing in your character. Won’t you join us?
Values-based business
“The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there” (Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
Coaching is a lot of “not this” and “not that”, much like zen. It can be hugely valuable but it’s intangible. It’s clarifying, but also challenging. It’s can feel therapeutic but it’s not therapy. It’s lovingly supportive, but independent. It’s empowering, but ego-destroying. It’s all care, but no responsibility.
After 10 years of coaching hundreds of business owners, including other business coaches, executive coaches and leadership coaches, this is what I’ve learnt, mostly as a business coach but also as a coachee (someone receiving coaching).
Safe to be vulnerable
The essential starting point is creating a psychologically safe place for the coachee to be vulnerable. Without this, coaching can’t happen.
It should never be in doubt that your coach holds your sessions in the strictest confidence. While you may feel somewhat self-conscious, rest assured that your coach is more likely to be impressed, than to be judging you.
We have all felt stupid, frustrated, angry, depressed, stressed, anxious, or confused at times – including your coach. A coach is not superhuman.
Mutual respect
For coaching to work, it needs a base of mutual respect by two intelligent, consenting adults. While this should be assumed, I’ve heard enough horror stories to suggest otherwise.
Your coach should never be condescending, judgemental or patronising. As the coachee, you lead the session topics and agenda, unless your coach clearly stipulates that their one-to-one coaching is actually a structured program (my one-to-one coaching is a choose-your-own-adventure).
If you’re unclear on what you want from coaching, that’s okay too. It’s normal to be stuck on your next best step in business. Your coach is an expert in helping guide you towards clarity, excavate your desires, and turn these into tangible, trackable goals.
While your coach should never tell you what you should want, nor belittle your goals, they may lovingly challenge the parametres of your ambitions. It’s common to allow our disappointments in life to shrink our ambitions or censor our desires.
This is where coaching can be hugely helpful. Your coach can advocate for your wants and needs, and stoke the fires of your ambition so that you’re excited and motivated in their business. But it’s not your coach’s role to tell you what you should or shouldn’t want. That’s not coaching, that’s infantalising.
On competition
Oftentimes, coachees seek out coaches who have trod the path before them, so it’s not uncommon that the coach and coachees are working in the same industry – such as when I coach digital marketers, small business coaches or business trainers.
Many coaching clients have told me that other coaches have declined to coach them because they’re in competition. This is important to do when the coach is triggered by their coachee or doesn’t see how they can be open with them, as they’re in competition.
However, my approach to branding is to render our competitors irrelevant – which means embracing and amplifying our differences and getting clear on our specific ideal client group. There’s more than enough business to go around, especially when our branding works to call people out.
A coach who says “do what I do” isn’t coaching. The coach giving a shopping list of tasks to the coachee isn’t coaching. Copying or following someone else’s business strategy or marketing tactics isn’t smart, even if you’ve been instructed to. It can be unethical and it’s almost certainly ineffective.
One of the joys of coaching is uncovering the uniqueness of individuals and their businesses. Inspiring self-insight into our strengths, and creating strategies to stop our weaknesses from becoming self-sabotage works far more powerfully than playing follow the leader.
Countertransference in coaching
Countertransference in coaching is when a coach unwittingly projects their past experiences into the process of coaching. Coaching then becomes more about the coach than the client.
Clients can also do this – projecting their emotions and experiences onto their coach and drawing conclusions that aren’t real; this is referred to as transference.
As we are living, breathing skinbags of emotions carrying the weight of centuries of our conditioning, countertransference is almost impossible to avoid. The zen of coaching requires self-awareness to mitigate this.
Emotional intelligence and agility give us insight into how our past experiences might be colouring the reality of the coaching relationship, as well as what’s helpful to the coachee in the moment.
Of course, a coach’s life experience is highly valued by clients. I believe that my opinion is often valuable for my clients, though coaching purists may disagree.
Most importantly, the coach needs emotional insight, intelligence, agility, maturity and character to be able to manage their own emotional landscape as well as their clients’ and put their clients’ needs at the centre. The coach needs to be zen.
Ownership and independence
“When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.”
(Baltasar Gracian)
It’s a dirty little secret in coaching that some coaches are very choosey with taking on clients so as to secure the most glowing testimonials and endorsements. Coaches may only coach business owners who are already at a certain level of success, so they may take full credit for the gains made by the coachee.
It’s important to vet people before you accept them as clients, not just in coaching. A bad-fit client can bankrupt your business and rob your peace and self-confidence.
I don’t want to take people’s money if I don’t believe that they’d benefit from working with me. Coaching isn’t magic. I can’t miraculously shift an entrenched shitty attitude, nor inspire change in someone who has too much emotional baggage or is too close-minded. They may be better suited to therapy or they may need a ‘rock bottom moment’ that can motivate them towards change.
Having said that, the wins and losses of coaching aren’t mine, or any other coach’s, to own. And while I might feel proud of my clients and keen on testimonials, I can never take credit for their successes.
Similarly, I don’t encourage my clients to coach with me for years and years. Breeding dependence on the coach isn’t ethical, nor helpful to the coachee.
The zen of coaching, in all it’s “not this, not that”, means that the coach needs to set the coachee free, to go on to amaze themselves by what they’re capable of.
Building your reputation, Values-based business
The Australian bushfires have affected everyone, consumed our attention, and ignited despair, anger, hopelessness, alongside outrageous political missteps. These fires have attracted the world’s attention and led to a massive outpouring of charitable action and donations from Australia and beyond.
I want to share what I believe about businesses getting involved with politics, charity and public affairs: in short, I believe there’s not nearly enough of it.
You can’t be a leader if you’re only here for the good times
For 12 years now, I’ve been teaching business people how to build their reputations as experts, leaders and authorities in their field. But this is just empty words if you’re only here for the good times. When difficulties, tragedies or challenges arise – this is where leaders are made.
Our lack of real political leadership has highlighted, yet again, the need for ethical, selfless, critical-thinking, future-focused leaders. And for those who would protest that they aren’t ‘experts’ in bushfires: what if Australian comedian Celeste Barber had concluded that comedians have no role to play in fundraising $50 million (and rising)? Or if Leonardo di Caprio had believed that actors had no relevance to environmental action? Or if Bill Gates believed he should stick with technology and not bother with philanthropy?
The state of the environment is everybody’s responsibility and has a direct impact on economics and business. We have demonstrated that capitalism doesn’t need to be at the expense of the environment or workers’ rights anymore. Businesses don’t just have a moral obligation to the planet – environmentalism is also an economic imperative.
[Tweet “You can’t be a leader if you’re only here for the good times”]
Your marketing demonstrates your values and makes up our collective culture
Marketing isn’t just about selling stuff. Marketing is communications, which is part of our culture which we’re all participating in. It breaks my heart – over and over again – when I see a lack of acknowledgment or response by businesses to issues that directly impact a particular sector, or that impacts the people that make up the community that a business is servicing. Your silence is deafening.
And please, I know how intimidating and scary it can be to join a debate on current affairs as a business owner. I am also guilty of staying silent to avoid risking inadvertently causing offense or provoking misunderstandings.
But ALL communications are innately challenging: communication is not what you say, it’s what other people hear – which is outside our control and can be fraught. But yet! We must stand up and stand for something. Or risk becoming irrelevant, ineffective, out-of-touch.
Values-based business are the way of the future. We are all media companies. We have far more power to influence culture than at any other point in history. We have the ability to decentralise power through creating our own work, to make a far greater impact in our local communities and to provide an alternative to the mainstream that is inclusive, loving, encouraging and empowering. This is within your power and remit, but only if you recognise it.
The personal and professional are not two separate spheres
Many people continue to believe that the public sphere and professional spheres should be kept separate. This is the increasing privilege of a minority who live without hardship, without physical or mental difficulties, who can afford to have their homelife taken care of by others so that they can access great swathes of unbounded time to dedicate to work.
For women, this has always been far harder to do and this continues to be reality as we enter a new decade.
These bushfires have been all-consuming – apart from the obvious limitations of clients of mine who’ve been affected by defending their homes, and getting access to electricity and internet connection once fires have swept through – but also to our ability to focus, to continue “business as usual” and to continue undeterred. It’s been incredibly difficult for many of us to continue to work at this time, despite needing to.
Work is not the domain of robots and software. Businesses are composed of people and we bring ourselves to work – in all our complicated, emotional, awe-inspiring and outrageous glory. This is especially the case for the self-employed but is equally applicable to big business, where the frailties of a single human at the top can have far more devastating consequences.
Revolutions are impossible until they are inevitable
This final line from Jess Hills’ monumental book, See what you made me do, borrowed from freedom fighter Albie Sachs, struck me in the heart this morning. In my experience, we are far more motivated to change by the need to move from the negative than by pursuing the positive.
These bushfires were just the push I need towards a dawning realisation that I need to do more. Not in future, when I have everything mapped out, thoroughly researched and prepped, but now. Imperfect action towards a common goal.
These are my beliefs and values. I’m hoping they’re yours, too.
- That financially successful, emotionally sustainable, and personally rewarding work, of our own sweat and smarts, is not only possible but the way of the future.
- That self-insight, self-confidence and self-advocacy are necessary to this.
- That enterprise and entrepreneurism are vehicles towards social change and social good, particularly among marginalised communities, and to stimulate growth in isolated areas (Australia is a great country for this).
- That self-expression, communication and story-telling is power! Especially stories that challenge the status quo, stimulate critical thinking, and provoke diversity and inclusiveness.
To this end, Hustle & Heart is:
- Contributing a minimum 1% of all annual profits to a select few charities that promote environmentalism, literacy and numeracy, and ethics.
- Offering a 15% discount off all courses, programs and memberships to people working at charities. You will need a registered charity number to access this.
- Launching a scholarship program in March for my flagship program, Hustle & Heart, with further scholarships planned for other key courses later in the year.
A lot of these have been in the pipeline for some time. There were always details I hadn’t figured out yet, something to worry about or ponder over. But these bushfires have highlighted that there’s no time like now.
Now is all we’ve got.
