If You Never Feel Successful, This May Be Why

Last week I was in mastermind meetings all week long and there was this recurring theme that kept coming up. And I see this in a lot of the groups that I'm in and it's this feeling that you don't feel successful.

You don't know when to stop. And you feel like you have to keep going. You have to keep growing, and making your business bigger. Everybody is striving for that million-dollar business.  Even people I know that have really small businesses are always trying to push to the next level or thing.

Why you never feel successful

The huge reason that people experience this constant need to grow, improve, release new things, keep moving towards something bigger is that they've never sat down and thought about what success looks like. There is no end.

You never sit down to see what you want your life to look like.  Or define what success looks like? How do you know when you've reached where you want to go?

How to define your vision of what being successful looks like

So how do you define your vision of what success looks like? If you have never done this exercise before I really encourage you to do this.   Here is what you will need to do:

• Get out a piece of paper
• Find a quiet spot
• Maybe have some good music playing

Now that you've found your quiet spot, I want you to think about what would you like your ideal day to look like.  Basically, you are visualizing what do you want.  Think about the following things:

• What time do you wake up?
• Are you cleaning or making food?
• Are you at the beach or in a camper?
• Do you have a beach house?
• What are your kids doing?
• What are things you do not want to do?

There are many things that might seem outside the realm of possibility.  I know people who have a house manager. Someone that comes in during the week to clean, cook, drive kids around. They help with shopping and basically with anything that you do not want to do.

What if you don't know what to do to start a business

You're thinking about starting a business, but you don't know what you want to do.  There are services out there that people hate doing.  So there is a market for starting a business for that. Some people hire house cleaners that come in and do their housekeeping and their laundry.  Or they hire people to drive their kids to activities. There are people who will do your grocery shopping, meal planning, buy all the groceries, and even do all the meal prep. The sky is the limit when you're thinking about not only what you want to do for a business, but also what you can hire out for people to do.

What does your week look like?

After you have decided what your ideal day looks like, you need to see what your week looks like.

For me, I'd love to get to a three-day workweek.  I'd love to get all of my work done between Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  I've been trying to block off Mondays and Fridays for really deep work that I need to get done and try to keep all my meetings and everything else scheduled on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

So for me, part of my definition of success is working Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Define what your vision of being successful looks like

Once you know what your mindset and vision look like, then you can sit down and start putting together how much money you need to make to make this happen. And define what people you need to hire to make this happen.

For example. Let's say you have a retail store or a retail boutique.  You only want to work in your store on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So that means you need to have coverage in the store the other days that you're open. So then you need to figure out how much it cost for you to do that. What systems do you have to have in place to make that happen?

Determine the cost of success

If being successful to you means living by the beach, then determine how much it would cost you to live there compared to where you live right now.

If you don't define what you want your week and day to look like you will keep pushing and burning out. You will get tired out and give up on the dream because you don't really know what the dream costs.  You just think that you need to be making more than what you are making right now.

So when you start to do that investigation and the research, you can put a number on what you need to do until you get there.

Quality of life versus stuff

The thing that's important is not the stuff. It's the quality of life, right? You want more time with your kids and your spouse. And also, you want more time to relax, and less time at your desk.

And that's why we built Bookkeeper Training School.  Because we teach moms how to build a business where you can make good money without being at your desk all the time. That's really where that concept came from because I was seeing so many moms that were just trading a desk outside the home for a desk inside the home. And that isn't really improving the quality of life.

You might have eliminated some commuting time, but you're still working a ton of hours.

Think about what's important to you

So when you start to think about what's important to you.  What are your values? And what do you want your lifestyle to look like. You can then start to research and put numbers on it.  You'll know how much you need to make in order for this to happen.

The first time Jeff and I actually did this was about four years ago. I sat down with Jeff and ran all the numbers because even though I was home, most of the time Jeff was still working. I was teaching at the university. Jeff was working full-time in his job. He was pretty miserable, and we were thinking that we needed to grow the business more.  Because we thought that that was the only way we could make more money so we both could stay home.

We were so tired and stressed all the time. And so I went through and I ran the numbers focusing on what we really wanted.  After determining that, I realized that we didn't really need Jeff's salary. What we really needed was his time.

So I went to him and showed him the budget, and that we could get rid of his salary and still be okay. It took him a while to really embrace that he was okay with it. But it was like the best decision that we ever made.

How your thinking defines your being successful

If you just think that it's got to be bigger. That you need to make more money.  You can't possibly do that. If you keep thinking that you might not make the changes you need to feel truly successful.

Once you've figured out how much you need, you'll know when it's enough.  You'll be able to be on the path that is successful for you and have the ability to do the other things you want to do.

When you are on this path that you don't know where you're going, and you just feel that you have to move faster and have to keep going.  You keep pushing because you don't know what the end game looks like. That's a recipe for disaster.

What does success look like to you?

I would really encourage you to start thinking about 2021 and what that's going to look like.  Sit down and figure out what success looks like to you? And it doesn't have to be what success looks like for anybody else. Your vision of success is yours.

Most people thought I was crazy when I bought a motor home. But for me, that was my vision of success. The ability to go out and work from anywhere and enjoy time with Erik and Jeff.

Your vision of success does not have to look like anybody else's

Your vision of success doesn't have to look like anybody else's.  Write your vision down, figure out how much it costs, and then set goals to get there. It is one of the greatest ways to decrease your stress and increase your optimism.

If you need help with this come join me at the Small Biz Mama Group on Facebook. You can feel free to post in there. If you need help putting together what it costs to reach your vision of success, post in the group. We'd love to help you with that.

It's really important that as moms, you understand that you can define what success looks like for you.  That way you have something to move towards that's concrete.