As a freelancer or small business owner, we have to wear all the hats just to be in business. We’re responsible for marketing, sales, finances, operations, account management, strategy, and more.

So when we’re thick in the day to day grind, it can be easy to get sidetracked from the big WHY behind starting our business in the first place.

I grew up around small businesses. My parents ran a textile company and the farmers in our local community worked for themselves. So, I had an insight into self employment from a young age.

As a rebellious teenager, the last thing I wanted was to be the same as my family. Nope, I wanted to go forth into the world and be an employee, working for big multi-national companies. So that’s what I did, and pretty successfully.

The impact of personal values

When choosing my career path, I never really considered the flip side of being an employee. I loved the regular salary and ease of consistent work, but found that I struggled with restrictions around working hours and location. I also felt constrained in the way I worked and often out of alignment with my own personal values.

I had very clear personal values around integrity, workplace culture, fun, being in nature, and ethical practices. These were at the forefront of my mind when I began working for myself.

During my time as an employee, I loved reading about companies who did things a little differently. People like Patagonia who had flexibility in when work was done, especially if it was a good surfing day. Or other innovative small businesses with fun working environments and a different approach to customer service.

Eventually, I took the leap and began working for myself. I was excited to finally have the opportunity to do business the way I wanted.

How the daily grind can affect our values

It’s easy for business owners to get sucked into the daily grind of work that has to be done. We juggle running the business and finding new customers with delivering client work. This can mean less time to step back and ensure we’re working in line with our personal values.

For me, growing my business meant more networking. This increase in meetings resulted in my life operating on a tight schedule. The pace of my working week began feeling frenetic and the flexibility I’d craved from self employment simply disappeared.

I’d effectively transposed working as an employee into my own business.

Luckily, I noticed things were feeling off balance and hired a coach to help me unpick what was happening. It was an interesting and illuminating exercise, resulting in a change to how I work.

One day a week is now scheduled for developing outdoor content, bringing more of my personal values back into work.

I also checked in on my business values and am confident I was still working in line with those:

• Integrity

• Friendly

• Partnership

• Authentic

• Trustworthy
  

Even so, an episode from About the Adventure podcast recently highlighted that there’s more work for me to do around living my personal values. I realised that it’s important for me to:

• Create more balance between work and outdoor adventure

• Connect with other business owners who have outdoor and nature inspired values

• Be more conscious about the type of networking I do

• Recognise that time outdoors helps feed my creativity and do better work

• Make work fun again

• Work with like-minded clients

• Build an ethical business
  

It’s feels like a great development for my business. My core personal values have a huge impact on the way I do business and, being more aligned feels exciting.

Tuning into our inner voice

I’m a firm believer that starting and growing a business is not a linear process.

Instead, it’s a gradual process of micro decisions in relation to external circumstances. Sometimes those decisions might temporarily take us off course. But tuning into our inner voice can highlight when things feel off balance.

The day after listening to the podcast episode, I knew I was ready for a change.

The first step was to get out into nature again before the working day. The universe tested me by sending the heaviest rain in weeks. But I headed out, got drenched, and came home happy - all before 8am.

That day turned out to be one of my most productive in recent times.

Seems that living in line with our personal values really does make a difference 🤔

Enjoyed this blog post?

You may be interested in learning more about how taking on too many meetings impacted my business.

Read my blog post Marketing for Introverts.