You're listening to the life friendly business podcast. I'm your host, Erin Thomas Wong, business mentor, author and founder of the cocoon VIP membership, empowering women around the world to build businesses on their terms. If you want to grow and scale, a business that works in harmony with your family and your life, this podcast is for you.
How do you measure your success? The life friendly business podcast is all about doing it on your own terms. It's about carving your own path, doing it at your own pace, and not being influenced by other people's measures of success. Right now, in the online world, I personally am being bombarded with messages about becoming a six or seven figure business owner. And I know I'm not alone, the women that I mentor and the women in the cocoon VIP membership, are saying the same thing. Now if that's your goal to earn six or seven figures, that's awesome. And this podcast episode is not necessarily for you, because the people that I want to speak to today are the people that are finding this paralysing.
So whether your aim is to earn 20k 40k 60k 100k, it's perfectly respectable. Whatever it is, that is your aim to earn financially in your business does not make you any less of a business owner. And you really do not need to justify your income goals to anyone. As far as I'm concerned, money and income is only one KPI key performance indicator. The fact is, when you reach that level of money that you're so desperate to achieve, you'll already be striving for the next amount. So we really need to think about how we're measuring our success, so that we can recognise it when we get there.
What if being successful was actually a feeling rather than how much money you have in the bank. So I can tell you that I measure my success through a few different things. Firstly, impact, am I making a difference? Am I helping people? Am I bringing something positive to the world?
Secondly, happiness, do I actually enjoy what I do, I could be earning all the money in the world, and still be miserable. So for me enjoying what I do, having that passion every day is absolutely crucial.
Flexibility. So I run my business around school hours, I also make it so that during school holidays, I can tone it down so that I'm not over committed in terms of my time. And I can have the flexibility during my week, as I talked about in the first episode about what life friendly means to me, I'm able to work my schedule around all the other things that are happening, but also things like my energy, and the self care that I might need to give myself at that time.
I measure my success by the fact that I am my own boss, I dictate the pace of how I work, no one else. And that is just such an empowering place to be. I also measured my success through earning enough money to contribute and pay the bills and pay the mortgage and buy nice things and have holidays. Of course, that's one element of it. But also, I have a sense of purpose. So now I feel like I know what I should be doing with my life. And I'm now playing it out. And that feels successful to me.
So have a think about what success means for you and how you're currently measuring your success. I know there's so many women that I speak to that they're constantly feeling like they're failing, because they're not achieving enough in inverted commas. And you know, they should be doing all the things they should be achieving this achieving that. But let's just slow down and think about what success actually means to us.
So in terms of salary, and finance, it's really interesting when you look at the average salaries in the UK, so the the average salary for a full time job in the UK is 35k for a part time job, it's 12k. So I know there are women in my community right now, who they are striving to not have to go into the office and be there from nine till five or nine till three if it's part time and earn 12,000 pounds a year, but with all the stress of working out who's going to pick up the kids from school, who's going to look after them during the school holidays. And actually, what they're striving for is to create a business that they can earn 12,000 pounds or more, but on their own terms, working their own hours. And that is perfectly respectable. Even if you want to replace your previous corporate salary, which may have been around the 35k mark, but you want to do it on your own terms, you want to do it working flexibly, you want to be able to take time off when you need to, for the family. That is perfectly respectable.
So all these messages that were being fed about needing to earn six or seven figures. I think that that is causing a lot of paralysis. And for some people, it is quite toxic. Not for everyone, but I'm speaking to you, if you're feeling like you're getting sucked into those messages or feeling like that's what you should be doing.
So let's not get swayed by other people's definition of success, because comparisontitis is one of the biggest hurdles to overcome. In terms of enjoying your business journey, what you're doing is comparing someone else's front stage with your backstage, this is the double edged sword of social media as well. You know, social media has helped me to grow all of my businesses over the last 13 years. And I love the fact that with social media, we can be so connected to each other, we can create community, there's there's a lot of amazing things about social media. But the negative side is that we find ourselves seeing a kind of swayed reality of people's lives. Because most of the time, we just want to share the good stuff.
So when you're looking at what other people are doing in their business, as well, and you know, your competitors and feeling like they're so much better than you just remember, you're looking at their front stage, and you have no idea what's going on backstage.
Let's just take a moment, though, to reflect on something. Because if you decide to live by your own measure of success, surely it really doesn't matter what anyone else does. So Jenny, down the road, might be running her business, and her measure of success might be earning seven figures, and you know, driving a Tesla and having a big house. And that's what she wants. And she may well be working crazy hours to do that not necessarily I know, it's very possible to earn great money, not working all these crazy hours. But her measure of success might be dictated by that, then you might have Sue down the other end of the road who's running her business. But on a daily basis, she's actually able to have the flexibility that she wants, perhaps I know lots of women who are homeschooling as well while running that their business. And it allows them to do that. Perhaps she's got a child that needs extra support. And she's able to do that running it around to her business. And she's still able to afford nice things, they're still able to go on a holiday, they're still able to get takeaways on a Friday night. And she's actually really happy with her life and her business is growing and scaling steadily.
So these two people have very different measures of success, and Jenny probably wouldn't be satisfied at all, with Sue situation. But does that matter? Sue is quite happy, Sue is able to have the freedom and the flexibility that she needs. And she's earning the money that she wants to earn in order to give her a good life. Now, I'm not saying that what Jenny wants is wrong. What I'm saying is, is that we need to choose our own measures of success. So if you do decide to live by your own measures of success, then maybe you can put to bed the comparisonitis with other people.
If you're worried about what other people are thinking about you, you know we have all these negative stories, our own inner critic, where we think that people are judging us. The reality is, is that they're probably too busy thinking about themselves to spend very long at all thinking about you, I know that one of the biggest barriers that that we face as business owners is the fear of failure. And often that comes down to how we will be perceived if we have failed in inverted commas. Now, the thing is, is that failing is actually the first attempt in learning, I absolutely love that failing, first attempt in learning. And actually, it's not black and white in our businesses, whether we have failed or whether we have succeeded, because actually, we need to be pivoting and evolving and adapting to the environment that we find ourselves in. And you know, never before have, we had to do that in the way that we have during lockdown. But the point of running your business is that you do adapt to those changes. And so stop worrying about failing, because, you know, things can change. And in fact, you know, with my own story, this is my fifth business, the Mumpreneur Collective is my fifth business. And I have learned so much from that journey. And from every single one of those businesses, I've been able to take the good things that I've learned and the things that I love. And I've been able to roll them into this business.
So if you're on your first business, or even your second business and thinking, Oh, my God, this just can't fail, please take that pressure off yourself. Because you know, it may well be born into something else, something bigger, something better. So what I'd love for you to do is to do a couple of things that after this episode, to reflect on how you're measuring your success right now, and perhaps how you could reframe it.
So number one, reflect on what success actually means to you. As I said, for me, it's a mixture of things. It's including impact, happiness, flexibility, finance, also wellbeing, I didn't mention that one, you know, we must look after ourselves and our own mental health and our own physical health as well.
Number two, decide that you will no longer allow yourself to be negatively influenced by other people. So if you're seeing messages online, that are triggering you, in a negative way, remove those triggers from your environment, but also decide that you that doesn't have to be right for you. And you know, for those of you who feel inspired by the messages about six or seven figures, that's absolutely wonderful, that I'm not saying that that's a bad thing at all, I'm speaking to the people who are finding this toxic. So you've taken a moment to reflect on what success means for you, you've made a decision that you'll no longer allow yourself to be negatively influenced by other people's measures of success.
And number three, I'd love you to write this down, write down what your measures of success are, and put it somewhere to remind you so on the days when you're having a wobble, you can remind yourself why you're doing this. Running a business can be hard, it is not an easy option. And you have to have that passion and you have to understand why you're doing it. So write down what are your measures of success, put it somewhere to remind you and have it there, in case you're having a bit of a difficult day. It really is time to carve your own path. Stop looking around you. Focus on what you're doing, and enjoy the journey. Good luck.
You've been listening to the life friendly business podcast which is all about carving your own path and doing it at your own pace. But I know that's not easy to do. So to help you decide what a life friendly business looks like for you and help you to stick to the boundaries and commitments needed to create that I've created the life friendly business description. Download this free workbook and spend 30 to 60 minutes reflecting on what life friendly means to you and the changes you may need to make in order to achieve the work life balance you desire. Once you've made these decisions, you can add them to your own printable life friendly business prescription that you can put on your wall to remind yourself that you have the power to design your very own life friendly business. Download yours now at lifefriendlybusiness.com/prescription
Transcribed by https://otter.ai