143 – The Power of Purpose – Let’s Get Serious about Productivity

You're listening to gift biz on rapt episode 143 Attention gifters

bakers, crafters,

and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one.

Now you are in the right place.

This is give to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode,

packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources, and the support you need to grow.

Your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue Mon Heights.

Well, hello and happy.

New year,

2018. If you're listening to this show,

the day it's actually going live,

it is new year's and hopefully you have had a wonderful

celebration and are as excited and charged up about the possibilities

that the new year can bring.

As I am.

The crossing over into the new year is always a marker

in the sand.

You know,

we have an opportunity to reset some of the things that

we were doing last year that we might want to change.

And of course there are those infamous new year's resolutions that

sometimes hold for a short time.

And most of the time don't carry through for any more

than a month.

Well, today I want to talk with you about the power

of purpose,

and this is something that I incorporated into my life and

my business last year,

that really helped me realize significant changes.

What I want to share with you is how you can

make changes in your activity and in the mindset that you

have connected with your business to help you achieve those resolutions.

So they don't Windle away after a short time and how

you can make sure that the activities that you're doing every

single day are moving the ball forward towards the goals that

you create for your business.

I want you to reflect back for just a moment on

last year and be really honest with yourself.

How did you do,

maybe you stretched yourself to new Heights and you saw those

results in your sales numbers,

or maybe you added something into your business,

like a website,

or you started doing trade shows or you entered into corporate

accounts. And you're super pleased with everything that you've accomplished.

If that's the case,

high five from me,

kudos to you,

you are golden,

or could you have done better?

I don't know if you're like me,

but I'm always feeling like I could have done something better.

Even if I'm happy with my result.

I always feel like I could have done more.

I'm always driven to move forward.

Or maybe you're someone who was really serious about starting your

business last year or doing something specific within your business.

But for whatever reason,

it got delayed,

things just didn't come together.

And you're sitting here now at this point,

and you didn't achieve what you had set out to do

for last year,

no matter where you fall in the spectrum.

If you're someone who feels that you could have done better,

I want you right here and now to forgive yourself,

you know,

we always do the best that we can with what we

have, the tools that we have,

things that we know,

people that we've met that have helped us along the way.

So I want you right now,

no matter what's happened in the past,

if you feel like you came up a little short,

that's the past.

Now it's the future.

And I want you to forgive yourself.

If you're just feeling like you weren't able to achieve what

you wanted to that history does not need to continue and

pave the way for the future.

You can change everything right here.

And right now my strategy will help you to do differently

so that you can produce stronger results for next year.

What if next year there was no more guessing if what

you were doing was the right thing for your business and

what if there was no more focusing on the wrong things

and wasting time and money,

and what if there was no more comparing yourself to others

and feeling like you're just not keeping up.

I have experienced all of those things.

And I've also experienced the challenge of so many things to

do for me right now.

It's the combination of running two different businesses for you.

It could be you have a full-time job and you're trying

to start your business on the side,

or you've started a business out of a hobby or a

craft that you love and you're at home and also raising

your children or homeschooling or any number of different types of

things that keep vying for our attention and our time.

I remember those days.

Oh, so well,

and I'm sure you can relate to it too.

I knew something had to change.

And finally,

I figured it out.

I want to share what I consciously started doing this year

that has allowed everything to fall into place.

It comes down to having the power of purpose in your

business and the power of purpose in your days.

I'm not talking about being superficially purposeful.

I'm talking about being deeply purposeful.

Now this may not make a total sense to you right

yet, but it's going to in a second,

have you ever been so busy all day that there's just

not a minute to spare,

but then at the end of the day,

when you shut off your computer and you leave your work

area, you look back and it's like,

I really didn't accomplish that much.

You know,

how was it that I was so busy,

but I really didn't accomplish anything.

Me too.

I've been there until I started using this deuce strategy of

mine. And when I did my activity level,

bumped up tremendously from podcasts and Facebook lives and hiring in

some staff,

talking on stage,

talking on some online summit,

I can just go on and on.

And that increase in activity also showed me benefits on the

financial spectrum.

And not only that let's face it,

we all talk as entrepreneurs about having balance.

I finally felt this last year for really the first time

in a long time that I had some breathing room where

I was really enjoying family time out of town,

family trips,

celebrating weddings and reunions,

and a wonderful two-week vacation with my husband.

And it was all done not by working more hours,

actually, by working less,

it comes down to being purposeful with my business and my

days. And when I did that,

all of my activity was intentional.

I was able to filter out distractions and time-wasters,

and I was focusing on revenue generating tasks.

So I got more done in less time with bigger results.

That is what the power of purpose can do for you.

You see being busy all day.

Doesn't always equate to sales.

Let's face it.

Everybody has 24 hours in a day.

How is it that some people can get so much done

and see success in their businesses and other people with the

exact same 24 hours,

even though their intent is there,

aren't able to move forward.

I want to start giving you the details of the power

of purpose strategy and to make this a little bit easier.

I've created a worksheet for you.

It's available@giftbizonrap.com

forward slash one four,

three. It lays out the strategy that I'm going to share

with you,

and also gives you a place where you can put in

your own details.

So you can start using this strategy right away.

There are two categories that I want to focus on.

One is the overall company purposes and the other is the

daily task purposes.

We're going to dive into the overall company purposes first.

And this is something that you do one time for your

business. Maybe if you change products,

at some point,

you might do it twice.

But the point is,

as your figuring out what your company is all about,

these are things you want to get really clear on,

right? In the beginning,

when we're in my maker's MBA program,

this is the very first step.

We talk about defining all of this right up front,

because it really helps you pave the path for everything that

you do as you move forward.

So again,

we're going to talk about overall company purposes,

and this is something that you do one time,

and this should live with your company pretty much through its

entire life.

Now, the overall company purposes are broken into the purpose of

your business and the purpose of your product.

Let's talk about the purpose of your business first.

Now I can hear some of you saying,

well, Sue,

that's obvious.

I want to be in business because I want to make

money. Well,

I want to challenge that thinking a little bit,

because if you are only in business to make money,

then when things get tough,

when the inevitable obstacles occur,

if you don't have a deeper passion than just making money,

you are not going to have the strength and determination to

move forward.

You need to find a deeper purpose for the reason that

you're in business.

And to demonstrate this,

I would like to introduce you to two women who both

have a candle company,

their names are Jessica and Maria.

Now, if they both had just a very superficial purpose,

they may say,

I love candles and they're fun to make.

So I'm thinking I can earn some extra money on the

side. You see how that is pretty much a solely financial

motivation that is not going to pull them through when they

encounter struggles or have challenges in their business.

But think of this Jessica's purpose is I want to form

some balance in my life while I'm home raising my three

children, adult activities and interaction will help keep me sane and

makes me feel like I'm contributing financially to the family.

So there is of course,

a little bit of a financial element,

but it's way more about fulfilling her quality of life balance

in her life.

Being able to bring in an income to the family while

also raising children and being stimulated with more adult type activities.

Now let's look at Maria.

She's in the business for an entirely different reason.

She says,

I want to start a business now.

So I have something to move into when I retire that

way, I won't feel lost or without direction.

Again, a deeper level of purpose to starting a business,

knowing your business,

purpose grounds,

everything you do as you move forward.

So I want you to think right now what yours,

if you've already downloaded my worksheet,

you can start scribbling notes,

right there,

jot down thoughts.

And I want you to be super honest with yourself.

This has nothing to do with something that you're going to

put on your website.

This is something very personal to you.

It could be that you want to be recognized and be

proud as a woman,

entrepreneur who has their own business.

Maybe you secretly or not.

So secretly despise your boss and are just tired of the

nine to five,

where everybody else controls your hours and your activities.

Maybe you've been thinking for a long time about starting your

own business,

and you finally want to do it and prove it to

yourself and others that you can turn.

What is a hobby into a real business?

There are so many reasons to start a business,

and I hope I presented to you that it should not

be just about making money.

There's a deeper purpose and a deeper reason I'll share with

you. My business purposes.

The reason that I started the ribbon print company is to

build and create something that I could sell down the road.

Now, any ribbon print customers who are listening,

don't start freaking out.

I don't look at selling any time in the near future.

I'm thinking maybe 15,

20 years from now,

something like that,

but that is my intent and purpose for it to be

financially rewarding later while I still love what I'm doing within

that business.

The reason I started the gift biz brand with this podcast

and the courses and all of that is because of the

reward that I get.

When I hear people coming back to me and telling me

that a strategy that I shared with them,

or some type of coaching that we did,

or a tool that I gave them in some way,

I've had an impact and help them grow their business.

Personally, for me,

that is so rewarding.

It makes me feel like apart from my children and my

family, which of course is number one,

but it makes me feel like I'm doing something useful now.

Seriously, that's the reason.

And it might seem so superficial and it's not collected with

money or anything like that.

But that truly is so rewarding to me.

And this is a company that when I sell the ribbon

print company,

it's something that I can still take with me and move

forward. I wanted to just share that with you,

because it helps again for you to understand the personal level

that the business purpose should have for you.

So let's move on now to the product purpose.

When you think of what you offer,

you want to get to the same level that you did

with the company purpose.

So to continue with the example of our candles,

if you were a candle maker,

you would not say,

Oh, they're pretty.

And they smell so good.

That's why people should buy them.

Doesn't work because there's not enough motivation and individuality.

There's not enough that separates you from somebody else who makes

candles. But what it could be is something like this.

My candles offer unique scent combinations that provide proven relaxing effects,

such as calming nerves and invoking peacefulness.

When you identify your product's purpose,

which is done from the customer's perspective,

you now have a differentiating feature that makes your company unique.

Again, this does not focus on how much money you're going

to make or what the product is.

It focuses on the results or the outcome that your customer

receives by using your product or your service.

This completes the overall company purposes.

Again, your business purpose is your deep down in your heart

reason why you are starting or already have your own business.

And your product purpose is from the customer's perspective.

What is it that they achieve or they receive?

What is the result or the outcome when they use and

purchase your product or your service,

if you're an existing business already,

I want you to also define this for yourself.

It's not just for new businesses.

Many people have never actually put on paper or become clear

to themselves about the company purpose or their product purpose.

And when you do become very clear on these points,

this alone is powerful information that ground you,

as you move forward,

the download could be very handy just to keep this all

together for you.

You can access that at gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash one 43.

I think this is a good place for us all to

just stop,

take a deep breath and listen to a word from our

sponsor. This podcast is made possible.

Thanks to the support of the ribbon print company,

create custom ribbons,

right in your store or craft studio in seconds.

Visit the ribbon print company.com

for more information.

Now let's move on to the daily task purposes.

And underneath that,

we also have two categories.

One is goals,

and the other is projects starting with goals.

There is a lot of information out there about setting goals

for your year.

So I'm not going to be going into a lot of

that. Now suffice it to say that you should have three

overarching goals for a year.

In other words,

three things that you really want to get accomplished this year.

They should be smart goals.

Again, you can Google what smart goals are.

You want to be very clear and write down what those

goals are.

The reason is then when you encounter other things that inevitably

are going to come up throughout your year,

you can analyze whether you should take on new opportunities based

on whether they are advancing you towards one of these three

goals. So now,

for example,

let's say you have an opportunity to go to a conference.

You would ask the question of yourself if by going to

this show,

is that going to get me further along with one of

the goals that I have set for myself for the,

if it is then the answer would be,

yes, you should go to that conference.

But if it's a conference that isn't going to provide you

with further information,

something that you need right now for this year,

that will help you to advance your goal.

Then the answer to that should be no.

I know people who will go to conferences just for the

social part of it.

But I would question that in terms of,

are you wasting time and wasting money,

that precious dollar that you're using to build your business?

Is that the right decision for you right now?

You can apply this same thinking to such things as starting

a blog.

Why should you start a blog?

Because someone said you should,

or because you can tie it into one of your business

goals, being very clear on your goals,

gives you the groundwork to decide yes or no to things

like this.

And I want to share with you a theory that one

of my podcasts guests gave me,

I think this past summer,

I can't recall what episode it was right off the top

here. But her point was,

there are some things that just are not in alignment with

what you're doing right now.

So you can think of it as there may be something

that you really want to do,

but it can be done some day,

just not today.

So I want you to think about that too,

as you're going through this coming year,

when you have your three goals,

and if something comes up that you really,

really, really want to do,

but it's not in alignment,

say to yourself someday,

but just not today.

This also helps you avoid shiny object syndrome and jumping from

one thing to another things that are disconnected from your goals

and cause confusion and disruption are wasting precious dollars with no

outcome. You want to stay crystal clear on what your three

goals for the year are.

Then we move on and talk about project purposes.

Projects are all those tasks that you do underneath a goal

so that you can achieve the goal.

These are these little step-by-step pieces that when they build on

top of each other,

they end up leading you to success.

For example,

if you had a goal of creating an online shop,

some of your projects might be determining what platform to use,

what the design and the flow of the content will look

like. Who's going to actually do it.

And then getting to all the steps of building the site,

all of these projects are done through daily work.

And this is where things are most likely to fall apart.

You know what your goals are and what your individual projects

are to reach the goal.

But then what happens throughout the day,

a girlfriend of yours calls.

And she says,

Oh, I've got to tell you what just happened this past

weekend. And what do you do?

You spend an hour and a half on the phone with

her hearing all about her weekend or you're in the middle

of a project and you get distracted.

You say,

you know what,

I'm starting to get a little bit hungry in this idea

of a big fluffy bowl of popcorn looks really good to

me right now.

Or you hear something on your phone and you see that

you have a message and it must be important and you

check it out.

And then you see that there's some things in Facebook that

you might need to look at.

So you go from one thing to another and all of

a sudden you're watching cat videos and another hour has passed

through your day.

There are a million things that can take you away.

The truth is we create distractions because it's easier to do

these things.

Then work on the activities that produce results.

It's human nature.

We can distract ourselves all day long.

And I want to repeat this because it's so important to

understand we create our own distractions because it's easier to do

those things than to work on the activities that will actually

produce results.

This is why at the end of the day,

we've accomplished nothing.

Even though we're busy all day long.

When you apply the power of purpose daily,

you start to focus on the right things,

understand the value of the activities that you're doing and you

use time and energy to affect Results.

Now I bet you're saying,

okay, Sue,

that sounds all great.

But then how do you do it?

You've just told me what I need to do,

what I need to be looking at the value of all

these purposes,

but how do I actually do this?

information every single second.

So no surprise that there is such a challenge for us

to just stay on task.

So what you need to do is periodically I do this

about every 30 minutes or so I consciously look at what

you're doing and say,

am I still on task or did I somehow get off

task? Now I've been telling you that I've been using this

strategy for a whole year.

I've become more conscious and it's becoming more natural for me

to stay on task,

but I still get sidetracked often.

However, what happens is because I'm consciously checking myself every 30

minutes or so,

I can get myself back on task.

I'm not going to say that if your girlfriend calls you

and wants to tell you all about her super exciting weekend,

that you're not going to talk to her.

Of course you are.

But in the back of your mind,

you can be saying,

okay, I get the fact that I'm not still on task.

And then maybe you'll limit that conversation to only 15 or

20 minutes,

not an hour and a half,

or if you're in the middle of a really challenging project,

you're just,

you've hit a roadblock.

You're not sure which way to move forward instead of figuring

out the right way you think,

well, maybe I'll go pour myself another cup of coffee,

or maybe it's time for me to have a bathroom break

or something like that.

I suggest to you that you say,

all right,

I can do all that.

After I moved through this next step,

because remember we like to create distractions when things get harder

or when there's things that we're less comfortable doing,

or don't know how to do this is the way you

move your business forward without giving in,

to gravitating to those easier projects or just going and taking

time on things that really don't advance anything in your business.

Even though it's fun,

like daydreaming or straightening your shop or doing a little bit

of shopping online or watering the plants in your office or

more Facebook,

what do you think guys?

Who's guilty.

I'm raising my hand over here.

I've done it time and time again.

And that's why this strategy is so easy,

but so powerful because when you grasp it and when you

start implementing intentional checking throughout the day that you're staying on

purpose, it is so powerful and will lead you to Results.

I've seen it work for me.

I have walked out of my office on days,

feeling like I have moved forward.

I've accomplished what I've needed to accomplish.

And my goals are being completed faster in less time because

I'm being purposeful with my intentions,

my activities,

and they're always aligned with what my true goals are.

Make yourself a sticky note and put it where you can

see it regularly throughout your day or program on your phone.

That an alarm is going to go off at certain times

throughout the day.

That will trigger you to remember to analyze if you're on

task, whatever it is that you need to do to ensure

that you're checking in on yourself throughout the day will be

really helpful.

And as you proceed forward,

and as you start integrating this in and really consciously doing

it, it starts to become natural.

Every time you start to flip onto a different task,

you'll see,

you'll start catching yourself and saying,

wait, should I be doing this or not?

And if you should,

then of course you carry on.

And if not,

you redirect yourself.

This is the power of purpose.

The very best thing about this power of purpose is it

doesn't cost you anything to implement and you can today.

So download by worksheet,

cause that walks you through everything.

Again, gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash one 43.

Make sure to set up your business purpose and your product

purpose. This is something that will be a guiding light overall.

You'll do it once for your company.

And then you'll get into the daily task purposes,

the goals and the projects.

And this is what you consciously work with to make sure

it's in alignment as those big projects come throughout the year.

And you want to say yes or no to them.

And as those daily projects start,

you get a little bit challenged and you naturally tried to

pull yourself off course.

You now know how to keep yourself on target.

So the project gets done and you advance.

I can promise you you'll see the same types of growth

and activity and growth in Results.

I mean revenue that I've been able to see this past

year. So who's with me.

Raise your hand.

I would love to know if you're going to be implementing

this and how it's working for you.

You can always reach out to me by email sue@giftbizonwrapped.com.

Tell me how the power of purpose is working for you

or anything else you'd like to share with me about the

podcast. And if you're getting value from this show,

go over and subscribe on iTunes.

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live. They'll come right down to your phone further.

If you're up for leaving a rating and review,

I would appreciate that too.

Those types of things,

the subscribing rating and reviewing specially in iTunes gives more exposure

to the show.

So other creators like you will find the show,

be able to listen and also advance their business.

I always say it's a way of helping to pay it

forward to other makers.

Just like us.

Thank you so much for joining me here today.

And until next week,

I hope you implement the power of purpose bye for now.

I want to make sure you're familiar with my free Facebook

group called gift biz breeze.

It's a place where we all gather and our community to

support each other.

I've got a really fun post in there.

That's my favorite of the week.

I have to say where I invite all of you to

share what you're doing to show pictures of your product,

to show what you're working on for the week to get

reaction from other people and just for fun,

because we all get to see the wonderful products that everybody

in the community is making my favorite post every single week,

without doubt.

Wait, what,

aren't you part of the group already,

if not make sure to jump over to Facebook and search

for the group gift biz breeze,