Biz Notes: Business with Intention

As I mentioned on Monday, I spent this past weekend in Chicago running an event. A few months back I partnered with Jess Constable of Make Under My Life to plan a series of workshops geared towards helping small business owners design businesses with intention. This weekend marked the launch of our workshop series, and I couldn’t have been more satisfied with how it all went! We held the event in a gorgeous co-working space in downtown Chicago. It was the perfect spot for fellow entrepreneurs to gather together, talk about their businesses, and figure out how to essentially design their business to fit the life they want to live.

For me personally, one of the main reasons I wanted to work for myself was so that I could do just that-  ”design my life” so to speak. Obviously a successful business isn’t started overnight, and in terms of my business goals and life, most of mine are still yet to be accomplished and years in the works. That aside, I can (and should), at this point in the game, still work to design my business with intention. That means establishing key intentions for how I want to live my life and then determining how those intentions are reflected in my business decisions. This principle applies to any type of work you do- whether you’re a small business owner or not. I’ll walk you through my intentions to paint a clearer picture of how this works:

• I want to run a successful business which allows me full ownership and control of my work.
• I want to partner with interesting and inspiring people so I don’t always feel like I’m just “running” events but rather creating them.
• I want to have my own office space that is open, bright, and convenient to my home, so I’m always near friends, family, my dog, and kids (when the time comes).
• I want to hire additional staff so I can grow the amount of work my business can take on. I want to delegate certain operational areas of the business so I can focus specifically on how I can grow and expand my business and services.
• I want to build a business and team that can mold to the personal changes in my life, so that when I have kids or other personal obligations I’m able garner support from others and shift my responsibilities.
• I want to continue to nurture and grow the relationship between my blog and my business and be strategic about how those two will work together.
• I want my business to allow me to maintain a lifestyle where I have time to work out, cook food from scratch, spend time with family and friends, and travel.

Some of these intentions I’m already meeting, and some of them, as I said, are way down the road. Nonetheless I can still make choices in my work today to impact meeting these intentions. For instance, though I’m not ready to hire full time staff quite yet, I can hire an intern so I can begin developing best practices for hiring and training staff so that when the time comes I’m more experienced. I can work to maintain connections with friends and colleagues that I think would be beneficial to work with in the future so I can build a team I really trust and enjoy working with one day. I can work to expand my connections and relationships with other entrepreneurs and bloggers to open the door to new projects and partnerships. And lastly, I can make a conscious effort to maintain a balanced work schedule so I have time to do the things outside of work that are important to me.

You may be thinking, “But you can’t just say these things and make them happen- especially that last one!” Yes, that’s true. But if I’m aware of them, if I’m really clear on what on want in life and how that connects to my business, I can make a consistent effort to work towards those desires until one day it’s a reality.