Wednesday Wisdom: Business Gratification Meter

Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Business Advice for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses

Sometimes knowing what we don’t like to do guides us better then things we love to do.

Take the month of March for example when many of us have tax appointments and staring at the black and white expenses and revenues of another year in business glares at us. I typically need sunglasses to examine the glaring bottom line of my business, sometimes higher than I projected and sometimes not so much. Examining numbers all day, which always leads to a headache, is one reason I transferred from being an accounting major to a general business major in college.

When it comes to the yearly duties of sales, I discovered eleven years into my second company, a very sales-heavy business, that making cold calls, selling hundreds of events, obtaining sponsorship monies, and renewing thousands of memberships on a yearly basis burned me out. Sure, sales are the lifeblood of a business – especially if you are a solo entrepreneur – but instead of feeling like blood gushing through my body energizing me, it was draining me after doing so much of it. All I wanted to do was “do” what I was good at – planning events, public relations, writing, and inspiring women.

Then almost 20-years into being a business owner, I rediscovered my childhood passion of sports as losing all my hair stopped me from wanting to speak at events, but rather cover my bald head in a pink cap and get outside to breathe and accept a new me and a changing business life. Again, not wanting to speak with a wig on or dress the part of a successful business owner, in traditional terms that is, led me to set a new lifetime goal.

So what do you NOT like to do anymore – write, promote, count numbers, sales, or market constantly? By focusing on what you don’t want to do anymore opens up your future to something different. It could be adding staff to take over the tasks you don’t like or hiring another woman in business to do that work for us. Perhaps, it is moving out of a main part of your business, into a new division that excites you more and what your customers want? 

Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is to have you focus on what you don’t like to do and then find a solution and plan to stop doing it. Decide to move in another direction or hire someone or at least acknowledge it to yourself so you can grow into a different part of your company. We all need to stop and take inventory, not only of our supplies and financial figures, but of our gratification level, especially if we are a long time business woman running our own operation.

I hope today you focus on moving away from what you hate to do and into more of what you love to do so you have a new direction, goal, or attitude the rest of 2023.