If all you want to do once you hit that big revenue goal you're chasing is shut the business down, that doesn't seem like the best use of the time, money, and energy it will take for you to get there.

Takeaways:

• Building a sustainable business requires balancing financial success with personal fulfillment and energy.
• Recognizing personal motivations for starting a business is crucial for long-term perseverance.
• Aligning your business goals with your core values avoids friction in daily operations.
• Embracing change as an opportunity helps entrepreneurs adapt and innovate despite market fluctuations.
• Continuous learning and personal development keep entrepreneurs engaged and prevent burnout over time.
• Setting operational and personal growth goals alongside revenue targets ensures a fulfilling business journey.

Hey, hey.

Welcome back to the five minute strategist.

Once you move out of those initial stages of business being super exciting and everything being new and an adventure, and you start to get into the real work of building a sustainable business, you have to start thinking not just about how do I sustain this business financially, but how do I sustain the energy that I'm going to need to build this business, to maintain this business, to lead by team and the passion to do this same business over the long term.

This is not just a white knuckle willpower your way through it kind of journey.

You have to find that balance between the financial success and the personal fulfillment that allows you to keep going day after day after day.

And I think we're all familiar with kind of the starting points of this, which is really thinking about, okay, why did I start a business?

But I find that a lot of people get really stuck at this very beginning point because we've been taught in entrepreneur land that it's our story that sells us, it's our big why.

And by all means, you should have a vision for the business and how you think the business can change the world.

But I also want you to know what drives you.

And that could be as simple as I want this business to make enough money that my kids never want for anything.

They don't have to take out student loans, I can help them buy their first house, I can give them a call.

Whatever it is that drives you, I want you to have a moment to acknowledge that to yourself.

Now, you may have that big vision and that huge why and that's great.

Or you may have something that feels, quote unquote smaller and more personal to you.

You could be driven by solving a particular problem.

You could just be driven by entrepreneurship itself and how exciting it is to create something.

Or it could be that you can make more money doing something as an entrepreneur than you could in a corporate job, or maybe you just don't like the corporate environment.

Maybe you're a little neuro spicy and you like to do things your own way.

No one gets to tell you whether your why is good enough or big enough or fancy enough, but if you don't tap into it, you are going to struggle to keep going in the long term.

So once you've reconnected and you're like, this is why I'm in business.

I don't care if you never tell another soul what it is you want from your business if you have a really huge world changing view, but you also have a more personal connection I want you to think about that personal connection for a while.

That personal connection isn't going to motivate your team like a vision would, but we're talking about motivating you right now.

The other piece we're all kind of familiar with is making sure that our goals and our values align so that you've got this clear picture of your values, and then you've looked at your business goals and you've made sure that they are an application of those values.

Right?

So if you one of your values is around work life balance, your goals are structured in such a way that still allows for personal time.

And the reason we want to make sure that these are aligned is we want to remove that friction on a daily basis.

If you're working on something that isn't particularly lighting you up, that already feels hard, if it feels like it goes against something you truly believe or something that you stand for, that's just going to add friction to that process.

It's going to feel even harder.

It's going to take that much more energy for you to convince yourself to do it and to get through it.

So this is kind of setting that base layer for like how do we make sure that the business that we're building actually works for us in the long term?

But we want to think a little bit bigger than that.

We want to think about how we can use the thing that is the most common in our entrepreneurial world as a source of inspiration for us, as fuel for us, as a way to motivate us as we go.

And one of the things that we cannot get away from as entrepreneurs is changed.

We operate in a market that is constantly in flux.

We're impacted by so many external factors.

So you being able to see change not as something scary, not as something threatening, but as an opportunity to try something new, to innovate, to adapt, to flex your skills is going to help you push through those challenges and see opportunities instead.

And then finally, you want to think about you as the person.

So were often chasing these business growth goals and we can forget to come back and ask ourselves, what skills or knowledge do I need when I get to that level in order to be able to lead my team effectively, to deliver to my clients, to handle a business of that size.

And this keeps us in that learning mindset, right.

Its really hard to get super bored when theres always something new that you can be learning.

And I think what often happens and what we think of as burnout is very often actually more bore out, right.

In that we're so bored, we can do our job with our eyes closed and our hands tied behind our backs, and we stop looking for those opportunities for us to grow into that next level of ourselves.

So if that next level for you is seven figures or multiple seven figures or multiple six figures, I want you to think about what that's going to take from you as a person, but also from your business.

What has to change in your operational structure, what has to happen in your team, what has to happen in your marketing.

And if all of that has to happen, who do you need to be for all of that to happen?

Now, suddenly, you don't just have this revenue goal you're chasing now, you've got a different kind of goal with different milestones that you can be ticking off in parallel to the business's goals.

So we're keeping your personal fulfillment going at the same time as we're working on that business growth.

And that is how we build a sustainable business.

There is no point going flat out to get your business two seven figures and beyond, only to realize when you get there that you don't want to run that business anymore.

That is a huge investment in time, in energy, in mental capacity and financially to get to that level.

If all you do when you get to that level is shut it down, it doesn't feel like it was the best use of those resources.

So what is your strategy to sustain your energy and passion for your business over the long term?