Rupal Y. Patel
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I have been having lots of tough-love conversations recently with my coaching clients around their plans for their businesses and their goals for this year, and I wanted to share some of that energy with you.
Now, 2020 was a mo-fo of a year, there is no escaping that. Many of us faced challenges or hurdles like we've never faced before. Many of our businesses had to be totally overhauled or revamped. Many of our lives were rocked by lockdown. And many of us are still reeling from the uncertainties of the world around us. BUT. Many of us also flourished in 2020. We made massive progress. We launched new businesses. We pivoted and persevered and helped others along the way. We made stuff happen day in, day out. And that's why sometimes we need to shake ourselves and remember how easy it is for us to do hard things. And that if we really want to build the life and success we want then we can either make excuses or we can make things happen. This is always true. Even before COVID, there have been challenges and shocks. Even before COVID we have faced uncertainty and upheaval. Even before COVID our personal lives have been overhauled by change. After my first daughter was born I ran a business full-time and held investor meetings or important phone calls while breastfeeding. After a health complication, I went for daily hour-plus walks because I needed time away from the gym to recouperate but didn't want to give up on my body. After a major financial shock, I mercilessly eliminated costs in my personal and business life and got hustling to make more money and get more clients. I bring up these very personal examples because each of them represent a choice: self-respect over self-sacrifice, self-care over self-pity, self-preservation over self-destruction. And I say this not because I am super-human or perfect in any way, but because I am very normal. I am just like you. You have done the same. You have persevered when you wanted to give up. You have fought when you wanted to let go. You have found a way forward when it would have been easier to float backward. You made the same types of proactive and productive choices in different parts of your life at different times of your life. You did that. And I'm here to remind you of your own power because it's so easy to think others are better, more resilient, harder working, or luckier than we are. But we know that's not true. We are ALL doers. So, remember my dear Entreprenoras, as you look to the year ahead, as you look to grow past the year that's gone, YOU can do hard things. You have done hard things. And YOU are either already the type of woman who makes things happen, or you already have it in you to be her more often.
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Just a few years ago, I remember feeling excited and proud that I had gotten to the point in my business where I needed to hire not one, but TWO new assistants. I was over-stretched and overwhelmed at the time, and was excited to have two people to pass all my "stuff" on to. I had made it!
But ahhh, how quickly that pride turned to disappointment. Before the first month was out, one of the assistants decided she didn't want to work. And before the year was out, it was clear the other assistant wasn't moving my business forward. It was only when both of them had gone that my business started to flourish and grow towards its potential again. Not only had I cut costs, I realized that some of the work they were doing manually was better done using a software, and some of the other work they were doing was simply a waste of time or padded with "nice to haves". It wasn't sexy having zero employees again, but it was better. And that's why I am now so careful to recognize that it's not the "more" or the vanity metrics or the catchy sound-bites that tell us when we have "made it"; its the results and impact. It's not the mindless inputs, but the thoughtful outputs. It's not how little we sleep, but how much we accomplish while awake. It's not the number of hours we work, but the number of high-value things that get done in those hours. It's not working harder that is something to be proud of; it's working smarter. Sure, sometimes we should be proud when we hire someone. And sure, sometimes we should be proud of how hard we work and how much we give up to achieve our goals (life is about tradeoffs, after all). BUT, we should also watch what we are proud of and make sure that we are proud of the things that have a real, measurable, and positive impact on us and our businesses and not just the things that sound impressive or make us look - or feel - like business bad-asses. Watch what you are proud of and the other "stuff" will take care of itself. When I was starting my first business, I came across a quote that had a massive impact on me: "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." I remember at the time doing an immediate inventory, and I didn't like what I found.
I had left a highly-intellectual and analytic career with brilliant colleagues, finished two years of business school where I was surrounded by driven and focused friends, and was now working for myself, by myself. I was isolated and on my own for most of each day. And when I was around other people, the five I saw the most were my then-fiancee, my soon-to-be-mother-in-law, and some lovely but uninspiring friends who didn't work. I was the average of that?? One of the biggest downfalls of becoming an entrepreneur that not enough people talk about is this: when you are bootstrapping a business, working from home, and building your vision from scratch, you have to make an effort to find the communities that you took for granted when you were working for someone else. You have to look for people who will support, push, and challenge you. You have to seek out relationships that will help you and your business grow. But where are you supposed to find them? And how? For a long time, I had no idea. I was mildly depressed for large parts of those first few years and I felt deeply isolated. (It didn't help that I was living in the 'burbs at the time, where the only things within walking distance were a large supermarket and a movie theater... not exactly buzzy co-working spaces where I'd meet other entrepreneurs!) After almost two years (TWO YEARS!) of doing things on my own and being professionally lonely, I teamed up with two of my favorite and most successful friend-preneurs to do something as life-changing and morale-boosting as starting a WhatsApp group, and our little threesome was, and still is, exactly what I needed. But, dear Entreprenoras, as we all know, not all WhatsApp groups or business groups or entrepreneur groups are created equal. We have to choose wisely. We have to look for, or create, environments that will help us do and be more than we could do or be on our own. We have to go where the standards are high. It's that thing about averages: if we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with - and science and research has proven this to be true again and again - then wouldn't it be great to be a part of a group where we are surrounded by high-performers who are committed to excellence, learning, improving, and sharing (like this one!)? Wouldn't it be great if we sought out communities where we were the "dumbest" person in the room so we could push ourselves harder than we knew we could push? Wouldn't it be exhilarating to be surrounded by people who get what we are trying to do and will help us do it better, faster, and more successfully than we could have on our own? The communities, the people, the ideas that contribute to our average don't have to be physical. They can be made up of the authors we read, the podcasts we listen to, the thought leaders we follow, the online forums we join. But we have to choose carefully. We have to go where the standards are high. Where the expectations are massive. Where we will metaphorically rub elbows with people who don't make us feel desperate for a shower after we have metaphorically rubbed elbows with them! It's the law of averages, after all, and you don't want your "five" bringing your average down. As I've grown my two businesses, I've found myself asking for some seemingly unusual things: for assistants to use certain fonts in presentations, to send me information in bullet points instead of block text, to lay workbooks for an event at specific angles, or to use paperclips instead of staples.
And every time I give very clear direction, a small voice in the recesses of my mind chuckles a bit because what others might see as being diva-ish I see as being decisive. Whether we admit it or not, we all have standards, and expectations, and preferences for the way we want things to be done. It doesn't matter if someone else thinks it's stupid or over the top because no one else can tell us what we care about. Because the thing is, I would rather be the type of leader and partner who is clear about my expectations instead of a passive-aggressive one who pretends not to care but then fumes and burns inside. We don't go into restaurants and expect waiters to know what we want, so why do we do that with our partners, our clients, our suppliers, or our colleagues? Why not just communicate what we want, exactly how we want it, and take the guesswork out of it? Why not be specific about when certain instructions are must-haves and when others can be executed within general parameters? It doesn't mean we'll always get what we want, but at least it leaves no room for mis-interpretation. And then any results that are other than what we've asked for are failures of execution, not failures of communication. This isn't to put blame on others or take responsibility away from ourselves. Quite the opposite: when we communicate what we want and are specific about it, it puts total responsibility on us to be clear, and frees the people in our lives from the stress of not knowing. Good instructions and communication set everyone up to succeed, not fail. If you want your co-founder to do more of the tedium that has ended up on your desk, ask them to help. If you want your partner to help out at home more so you have time to build your business, ask them to help. If you want your bookkeeper to send you your P&L statements each month so you can review them, ask them to do it. If you want something but aren't sure whether it exists, ask Google if it does. Ask, ask, ask, and ask again. And be specific about what you want. The more you ask, the more you'll get and - more important - the more you'll see that being a good leader or CEO or partner or parent isn't about testing other people to read your mind, it's about giving them the tools and instructions to succeed without having to do so. When I had our second child back in October, I was reminded again of the beautiful, but chaotic, chaos that comes with those early weeks and months. Life is broken up into unpredictable blocks of time between naps and nappies, appointments and ointments, and sleep deprived delirium that results in half-completed work on your laptop and half-finished meals on your worktop.
As someone who likes tidiness and order and control, I find the early days the hardest because all of a sudden, I can’t be productive or “perfect” at anything. It is like a massive right hook to my pride followed by an uppercut to my sanity. It feels terrible. Now, of course unpredictability and over-full days are not the exclusive domain of parents. At some point, all high-performers and mega-achievers and go-getters (like you!) find themselves oversubscribed and overwhelmed. And when that happens, some of the best advice we can live by is this: to set ourselves only ONE goal for each day. Because you see, when we are stressed and overwhelmed and have more tasks than time, it can become soul-destroying to think about how little we are getting done and how much we are not accomplishing. But if we take some of the pressure off (even just temporarily), and if we focus on getting just ONE super-high-value thing done each day, that can be enough to keep us going. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. In those early post-partem days, my “one thing” would sometimes be as small as making one phone call. Or writing one important email. Or going to one gym class. Just one small thing that reminded me that I wasn’t a failure and that micro-steps forward still count. And that approach to my days made ALL the difference in the world. It gave me my sense of accomplishment back. It helped me let go of any simmering resentment I felt. It allowed me to enjoy my time with my newborn and stop stressing (mostly) about everything else. One is a small, but mighty number. And enough “1s” can sustain our momentum just long enough to make sure that we never totally lose it when big changes come our way. We can’t always get the kind of time we want. But, focusing on just ONE thing allows us to get by, push on, and make sure that major life events or major pressures on our time don’t obliterate everything that came before, or everything that comes after. That is the power of one. |
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