Lessons from 2021: Building a More Aligned & Sustainable Business Model for 2022
What does sustainability mean to you? How about success? Joy? When you think of these words, what do they signify to you?
What if I told you that you could gain the space you need in your life to create success and joy, if you were to implement a sustainable business model?
Wondering what that is, or what that may look like?
I’ll share a few of my successes, as well as downfalls, and ask a few key questions that provide you the opportunity to create a revitalized sense of balance, purpose, alignment, and ultimately—
Joy!
The Dynamics of a Successful and Sustainable Business Model
Your business, your relationships, and even your health will all blossom and flourish with proper alignment. The reason that creating a sustainable business model is such a successful tool is that it allows you, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, to step out, step aside, and release yourself from the constant pressure and demands of the daily grind, without having everything fall apart. It is vital, necessary even, to create a sustainable life. A joyous one!
There are a few key aspects when it comes to creating and implementing a sustainable business model that will work for you and with you. We’re going to review a few key questions I have for you to really dig deep and self-reflect—not only on the business side of your life, but in your personal life as well. After all, these pieces are not separate from one another, they are a cohesive unit that ebbs and flows. At times like the peaceful swells of the ocean waves, and other times like a hurricane.
My good friend Taylor Slango from the Aligned & Ambitious Radio podcast talks a lot about “spaciousness” and what this means. What does spaciousness look like to you? I invite you to check her out—she’s incredible!
For me, spaciousness looks like ensuring I am leveraging, batching, and creating intentional content. In doing so I’m freeing up and balancing all areas of my life. I’m creating joy! I’m instilling a sustainable business model and letting what I’ve implemented work for me so that I can step away, step back, from the constant pressure and demands of being an entrepreneur and business owner. I can find the balance between this and being a mother, a wife—a human being—with a million things to juggle.
This road wasn’t always an easy one for me. It took a lot of hard work both internally and externally to reach the point that I have. Is it perfect? It never will be, but—with a sustainable business model, finding this balance—finding your joy is possible!
Creating a Sustainable Life: My Story of All the Ups and Downs
As I previously mentioned, everything didn’t start as well-balanced, sustainable, and as joyous as it is now for me. I ignored my body and my mind, to the point it became so severe that my health was declining.
My health—what keeps me upright and able to balance everything I needed to—was falling apart in 2020. I knew that I had to work hard at recognizing patterns in myself, at recognizing where I was giving too much, where I was ignoring and avoiding those “nudges” my body was giving me. I also needed to reflect and assess what I felt good about. What had I done that worked well for me—where could I take it a step further to keep this momentum going.
When 2019 hit, it hit hard for all of us, and everything changed. Everything changed in an instant when it came to running our businesses and balancing our personal lives and relationships. Life as we’d known it, was no longer readily available. I pushed myself hard. Too hard—like many of you. Just. To. Stay. Afloat.
This hustle and grind continued into 2020. I also was working on implementing new systems, new structures, that in the long run I hoped would work for me. The cost at the time though was my health and a bit of my sanity. I knew 2021 had to look different. It had to epitomize “space”. I really began to self-reflect, listen to my intuition, and pull apart those hidden places I’d kept tucked away and had ignored.
The result?
I could step away from my business and not have it all fall apart. My health improved. I created sustainability throughout my personal and business life. A bonus—a little FYI…a $24,000 day sales day—one day! Let that sink in for a moment…I accomplished this by following my nudge. By paying attention to what I’d been ignoring internally.
Creating and implementing a sustainable business model through leveraging, batching, and creating intentional content was what provided me the opportunity to find the space in my life I needed. It worked for me!
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Time to get Intuitive: Self Q&A
I want you to take a few moments, whether you choose to reflect on these just in your mind, or jot them down on paper—a journal perhaps—and dig deep to ask yourself…
1. When you reflect on 2021, what do you feel good about? What have you done or changed in your life or business that has brought you a lot of joy? What has worked right for you?
Time to turn the tables. In 2021, what didn’t work well for you this year in either your personal life or your business? Where are you feeling off-balance? Where are you feeling an overwhelming sense of pressure?
2. Where are you really feeling pulled to change, to adapt, to adjust (grow) in your life in 2021? Where has that little voice in your head, or that gut intuition, told you to listen and follow?
3. Where are you putting in your time? How much time? What does it feel like? What is the cost of your time and the benefits?
Time to Tune In and Tune Up: The Bottomline
When we ask ourselves these questions, it creates an opportunity to assess where we may be putting too much of ourselves. If we are self-aware, if we reflect, we may be able to see a bit more clearly where we’re out of balance. Where does correction need to be made? How can you serve and support your clients, in innovative ways?
If we don’t take the time to listen to our bodies, to listen to what is drawing us into these areas we want to keep hidden, or ignore, it can send us into a downward spiral, and quickly. If we don’t access and create a proper alignment across the forefront of our lives, the pieces will quickly fall apart, and we will feel immobile in every aspect of our lives. We will deteriorate.
This will often look like a review of the “what worked well” and “what didn’t work well” of previous years, or months, if you want to break it down into smaller windows of time. Start to look at and plan next year. Digging even deeper—monitor where you are spending your time. What are you prioritizing with your limited time? Ask yourself what it is taking away from you and what is benefiting from where and how you’re spending your time. How is your investment of time being used, and is it being used well?
Where does your focus need to be to cultivate, create, and align your goals to get you to a place where you can joyfully wrap up in spaciousness?
This self-reflection and self-assessment can create a revitalized sense of balance and purpose. Podcasting really can be a platform to create intentional content, to create more ease and alignment in your business and in your life where you are fully supported within your role. Listen to your body.
Let’s tune in and tune up our lives! Let’s not create the definition of insanity for ourselves. Let’s reflect and create a sustainable business model.
Be inspired, confident, powerful, and innovative in 2022 to do things your way!
You are worthy!
And don’t forget to pre-enroll for EMPWRED to leverage the PWR of podcasting to profit & innovate in your business…your way!
