Why Chasing Revenue Targets Left Me Empty – Until I Aligned My Values | Ep 289

Please note: This transcript was generated using automated transcription tools and may contain typographical errors or inaccurately captured words or phrases.

Dr Steve Day: In 2023, I hit a revenue target that I\'ve been chasing my entire adult life. I was suddenly able to pay all my bills, have a great lifestyle, and put money aside for the future. Why then, at that time, did I feel least connected with my work than I ever have? Why did I feel I had no purpose in life? And what was it that was gonna actually change that?

Because the thing I\'d been driving for up until that point had always been this monetary goal. This milestone that I\'d set arbitrarily that I was gonna get to and suddenly life would be good. For me, it was a massive wake-up call. Realizing that I\'d been chasing the wrong targets. That I hadn\'t been focusing on what actually would make me happy.

And today, I wanna talk about how that instant to me. Of when I felt probably the lowest I have in my life at a time where I thought I would be the highest. Because of my success on paper, and what that did to help me reframe what success means. And by doing so, start feeling successful in the moment. Start actually enjoying life. And how hopefully by listening to this, you will see that possibly some of the targets you\'re chasing may be not rooted on things that will make you truly happy today and in the future.

And there\'s a very easy way, technique that I wanna share later in this episode that you can start reframing the way you are seeing your life today. To start enjoying it more and living with more presence, purpose, and peace.

I\'ve worked with a number of business coaches over the years. And often they\'ve told me to set big goals, typically financial, revenue, profit. Things that actually you can document on paper and you can say, \"Yes, I\'ve got there. I\'ve made it.\" The problem I believe with that philosophy is those goals shift.

They continually move away from you. A book I read a while ago called, The Gap and The Gain, talks about this and explains it very well. As soon as we hit any sort of arbitrarily goal we set, we\'re only gonna, as entrepreneurs and people that are successful, we\'re only gonna push that further away. Because we need something to move towards.

And so I believe that by me chasing that kind of goal, I lost focus on what was truly important in life. On the things that matter, that actually give us joy, that make us happy, that are the reasons that many of us start businesses.

Like we often say, \"Oh, I start the business to have freedom. When I hit a certain monetary goal, whatever that may be, I\'ll do X, Y, and Z. I\'ll work less time, I\'ll spend more time with the kids. I\'ll go back to my running or my exercise, I\'ll take back up that hobby that I dropped to be able to focus on the work.\"

But as I just mentioned, those goals you set, they move. You change them all the time. And the elation you feel when you hit an arbitrary target is something that\'s very transient. And that we, yes, we may feel joy in the moment and say, \"Wow, I\'ve just hit this new sale. I\'ve just, scored this new client,\" or whatever it is.

But those feelings in the first instance may be very quite big and they may last a few days. But as we start hitting more and more of them as we progress with our business, the actual joy you feel from those monetary based. Or milestone basings within a business context, I believe become less and less rewarding.

And I was in a position where I\'ve been helping people to free their time. To create better lives for themselves, to have that time to do whatever they wanted to do with it. But I didn\'t see the connection between what I was helping other people do. And how that was reflecting on my own happiness. Like was I actually living with presence, with purpose, and with peace?

And I use those words now very freely. They\'re words that actually it was this moment in my life, three years ago roughly now at the time of recording, where I had to find what it was for me that would make me happy. For me, it was those three words.

If I can live with more presence, to have time with my kids, with my family, with my friends. To enjoy the things I was doing each and every day, including the work I was doing, then that would actually make me happy.

If I could live with more purpose and feel that actually the work I was doing was more than just creating money. Or more than just hitting an arbitrary target. If I had a real purpose to change the future, to change, well, the now, but also the future. To see that actually the work I do or the person I am or what I spread and the contribution I give to the world. If that could actually have a lasting impact for generations, that gives me true purpose.

And peace in that, unless I\'m doing that in a state of actually peace without stress. Without it actually becoming a detriment to my own health, my own wellbeing, my own mindset, or my own mental health. Unless I was able to do all of those things and actually feel peace in where I am. Not worrying about money, not worrying about the next target, not worrying about clients. That had to be part of it.

And so figuring that out is the moment, or figuring that out was the moment in my nearly five decades of living. That I suddenly started appreciating what I actually did. And appreciating the people around me, and appreciating where I lived, and appreciating the time I had. And starting to make changes to improve the things that needed to be improved in my life.

I have by no means made it, I am not an enlightened being sitting on a mountainside somewhere meditating all day. I still have massive amounts of struggles. Whether it\'s with drinking a bit too much, whether it\'s with not sleeping right sometimes. Whether it\'s be not focusing on my work, whether it\'s challenging with relationships, challenges with relationships, whatever it is.

Those things still exist. But I\'m doing that in a way or from a place of understanding that is part of who I am. And then working each day to actually become a better person. Because I\'ve got time, I\'ve got the energy, I\'ve got the patience to actually forgive myself. To work on myself to become better.

And that\'s the point of this, is if I find joy in all of those things, in the becoming as much as the arrival. That old, cliché phrase of, enjoy the journey as much as the destination or whatever it is. Realizing now that the truth in that, that has just been life-changing to me.

So even though I\'d heard so much of that in the past that you\'ve got to enjoy the present moment. Life is not a dress rehearsal, there\'s so many things you read in books. But to actually to feel it, to actually start appreciating the truth behind that, that\'s a fundamental shift. And it took me to stop focusing entirely on arbitrary goals in my business. And to start looking much more holistically at life. To actually appreciate that to find real joy is nothing about just simply accomplishing something.

It\'s actually about living in this moment we\'re in. Living in with the presence that we need to actually see the beauty of the world around us. The people, the places, the time we have to do things, the joy we get from simple hobbies that we do. For example, I love doing DIY. I love building and creating. I love doing stuff for my kids and whether it\'s building a GraviTrax or building a new toy. Or we\'ve just started designing a assault course for our hamster.

That\'s the kind of stuff that actually you\'ve gotta have time and be present to be able to do it. And not be distracted by, \"Oh, I\'ve now gotta hit this sales target. Let me just jump back into work for a bit and actually get this done.\" Like just actually focus on the moment we\'re in and actually having the patience and time to do it. And that\'s been a huge, huge shift for me.

And in doing that, I realized that the purpose of my work was far greater than I ever thought it was. And again, I\'m not trying to say that what I do is the most important thing in the world and everyone should be listening to me. Not at all. But what I\'m saying is that what I used to do was to help people to create systems in their business. To offload stuff they didn\'t like doing, to create a little bit more time for themselves. To do whatever they love to do in life. That was my old expression, the catchphrase, if you like, for the business.

But the problem was that many of those people use that time to do more in business. They would double down on their sales because they had more time. They would spend all their time doing new business development stuff. Because they hadn\'t actually broken out of the self-worth being linked directly to the success of their business.

And that is a fundamental shift that I had to make. And I worked with two amazing coaches on this. Who took me through an exercise I\'m gonna share in a few minutes, which was literally the thing that changed my mindset. That shifted me suddenly from realizing that no matter how much success I had in business.

No matter how much money I made, no matter how many clients I got or whatever target I was actually chasing. That it was never actually gonna give me the joy that I was so desperate to find. Or the peace or the presence or the purpose. Because it was not linked to something that actually was fundamentally making me happier today.

And if we defer happiness for the future, it\'s, there\'s a very good chance it will never arrive. Same if we defer freedom. If we say, \"I\'ll just work this extra today so that I can have some freedom tomorrow.\" There\'s some examples that may actually come to light at some point. But most cases I\'ve ever seen, including myself, what that means is we\'ll work a little bit harder today to get a little bit more freedom. And then we do the same thing again and the same thing again.

And so there\'s a phrase that I picked up or I created, I can\'t remember which, where it came from. But to create, to live with freedom, you have to create from freedom. And what that means is that actually the moments in my life where suddenly there\'s been a monumental shift in actually having more freedom. Is when I create that freedom before anything else happened.

So the example I\'ve given many times probably on this podcast and to my clients is that I was working super hard, probably 60, sometimes 70 hours a week. And in the business that I\'m currently in. And this is going back, oh, seven odd years now. I\'ve already been living in Sweden for three or four years, something like that.

And the near to Stockholm there are ski slopes within 20 minutes. There\'s a whole ski resort within two and a half hours, which you can jump on a coach to get to. Yet I\'d never done any of that. Yet despite skiing being one of the biggest passions I have in life. I moved to Sweden thinking, \"Hey, it\'s somewhere with lots of snow. Maybe I can go skiing there.\" Not really knowing the logistics of it. And I didn\'t take it, well, sorry, it took me three years or three and a half years to actually figure out how easy it was for me to do that on a regular basis.

And in that moment, I realized what a shame that living in a place where skiing is so accessible. It\'s one of my highest passions in life, something I love to do. And it gives me so much joy, and something I now share with my kids. And then really proficient, well, one of them is proficient skier. One of them hasn\'t actually skied ever yet because he\'s only four.

But in realizing this, that I was just missing out on what I had right at my fingertips. Because I was so laser focused on this business being everything. And when I hit a certain point, I was gonna then go and do all this cool stuff.

I was saying like, one of the things I wrote down in a piece of work that I did with a business coach many years ago. Which was future projecting, like where do you see yourself 20 years from now? Write down like what you\'ve got, what you do with your time, where you go on holiday? How you spend your time with your friends and family and all this stuff.

And I put in there about owning a ski lodge in the Alps, and I would bring my family there, and it\'d all be amazing. And that was gonna cost this amount of money, and therefore I had to get the business to this point before I could afford to do it. But all of that was fantastic in terms of, yeah, it\'s a vision that can drive my energy.

But the realization was what I actually wanted was to go skiing and spend time with my family. And both those things, the things that would actually bring me joy rather than having a posh ski lodge in the middle of the Alps or whatever. That\'s just the icing on the cake, so to speak. It\'s yeah, that\'s one place I could get the joy from skiing and spending time with my family.

But actually, the spending time with family and doing the skiing are the things that mattered. And that was right in front of me in that moment, and I was ignoring it, because I was chasing this arbitrary target that was externally driven properly. And I would say definitely. It was monetary driven.

It was about feeling self-worth from getting a certain amount of revenue from having or owning a ski lodge in the Alps. There was some sort of status thing around there. That would be cool when I could do that and I could look at what, look at me, look at what I\'ve achieved.

But actually, it meant deferring the real thing that I was trying to actually achieve, which was time with my family doing something I love, skiing. So, in that moment or about that time, I then went into my diary and cleared out every single Friday for the entire ski season. And said, \"On those Fridays, if the weather is good enough to ski, I will go skiing.\"

And this would involve me getting up super early, jumping on a coach, driving to the ski resort on the coach, driving back, and coming back for dinner. It wasn\'t a huge commitment for my family. So my wife could drop off the kids and pick them up that day. For work, actually didn\'t make a huge difference. Because it actually gave me two hours of super focused time on the way there and two hours on the way back on the coach. I could work on my laptop, on my phone or whatever.

And so it wasn\'t really a huge ask when I thought about it. Yes, it meant I had to shift my meetings. I had no staff meetings that day. I had no client meetings that day. And so it was a little bit of mixing or juggling around of things to begin with.

But as soon as I got into a rhythm of it, and literally I had just blocked out the entire Fridays to go skiing, everything else had to fit into the four-day week. So that meant not doing quite as much. It didn\'t mean that I was gonna work on Saturdays and Sundays even harder. I made a commitment to do this without it affecting the rest of my life.

And so by creating the freedom or working from the freedom, creating from freedom, by enforcing that, it forced me to look at other areas and say, \"What is important, what should I keep, what can I streamline, what can I optimize? What can I actually let go of to give me this time to do this one thing that actually gave me energy, gave me joy?\"

I used to go back from, well, whenever I go skiing, even now, I come back from skiing feeling completely elated. It\'s like I spent the entire day doing something I love. And I come back in a great mood to start a weekend with my family in a place of feeling incredible gratitude for everything that I have.

And that is an amazing way to start spending time with your family. And so, that was a knock-on effect. I didn\'t do it because of that. But it actually meant that other areas of my life started improving. And I was doing something for me, for my health. Skiing is an active sport, so it\'s like all of these things started actually compounding together to actually be the start of something that was fundamentally a huge, huge shift for me.

Despite all of that, that I\'ve talked about many times with my clients, it\'s never been an integral part to what I actually see as the work that I do. And helping people to see that actually by shifting the mindset around what it is that they\'re chasing. About where they get their self-worth from, about how they can have joy and happiness today. That is actually a fundamental piece of my work that was missing. And when I realized that and started looking to my existing clients and actually starting opening up conversations.

About these more deeper personal things, and reframing the work we did. To be around actually creating space, creating time, and creating energy for people to start enjoying the existence they have today. Rather than just, \"Hey, I can scale your business through systems. I can free your time so you can do more high value work.\"

And actually reframing it to being, \"Hey, I can help you live with more presence, with more purpose, and more peace. To live a more happy and free life.\" That, to me, suddenly made me realize that, \"Hey, there is probably more purpose in the work I\'m doing.\"

And the next evolution of that was to realize, look, I\'m actually a happier person because of this. The people around me, I believe, now get a better version of me. Because I\'m happier. If I can help other people do that, there\'s a ripple effect. And if each of us can actually spread a bit more joy into other people\'s lives. And each of us can help other people live with more presence, purpose, and peace, then that ripple effect can go on and on. Both of this generation and the next generations as well.

So I suddenly found a huge or greater purpose in the work I was doing. That energized me to do more of it, to double down on this work and find out, okay, how can I learn more about this? How can it become an integral part of not only my life. But also how I can help other people to find this for themselves as well? So my work hasn\'t fundamentally shifted. I still help people build systems.

I still help people outsource, I still help people use AI and automation. But instead of that being just a business thing, it\'s now become a holistic look at life. It\'s saying, \"Hey, how can we apply these things to all parts of your business, to all parts of your life. So that you live a happier existence today?\" And shifting that goal away from monetary, away from scalability, away from anything to do with work.

To actually thinking about things on a holistic level of life. About thinking about the spirit, about the body, about the mind, about friendships, about your energy, like all of that part of it as well. And actually just being able to live more in the present and enjoy the moment we have right now. Because it is the only moment that exists.

And that to me has been a shift that has fundamentally changed the way I see, not only my work. But also the world as large. And I promised I was gonna share the exercise that I went through with my amazing coaches on this. And this was a mind exercise that we went through in a very early session I did on their Impact Accelerator program. That I actually joined about two and a half years ago now.

And this is the moment when I suddenly realized that the shift needs to happen in me today. In order for me to start living with happiness and joy and freedom tomorrow. And the exercise is really simple, and encourage you just to, if you haven\'t got 10 minutes now to come back and do this in a little bit of time. When you\'ve got a nice peaceful area you can sit in. And you can just shut your eyes and be able to go through this simple exercise.

So imagine you\'re walking down the beach or your happy place. It could be a field, it could be a mountain. Somewhere in nature where you are just feeling content. Maybe you\'ve been on holidays before and you\'ve had an amazing time. And you can take yourself back to that place and think, \"This is where I feel joy. This is where I feel peace.\"

And in that moment, you\'re walking along and in the distance, maybe a bit, maybe a mile off or something, you see a figure coming towards you. As they come further towards you, you start recognizing them. They are somebody that you maybe you\'ve seen before. They come closer and you realize it\'s you. But not you now. You 10 years from now.

Yet you look happier. You look more content, you look more that you\'ve found peace in life and you are feeling fulfilled. You radiate this energy, this youthfulness that you only could hope for today. But yet this person\'s 10 years older. And you get this moment as they come towards you and you embrace them, and you have a conversation with them.

And you get the opportunity to ask them, \"What changed, what did you change about your behaviors today? What did you focus on, what was the change in your life that allowed you to become the best version that I could possibly imagine for myself?\"

And you get this opportunity in this moment to ask those questions and to see how those lessons could be applied to your life today. To start living in the journey towards that future. And not deferring the goals, the deferring the peace, deferring the happiness.

But actually realizing that it comes from making those changes today to allow you to get to that future that you so desire. And then after the conversation\'s over, you embrace one more time. And instead of walking away, that person dissolves into you. And becomes part of you. So you have everything that you need inside of you in order to enact on this today and start living that future self in this moment.

That\'s the exercise I went through. And it was through doing that and realizing that, hey, what I need to find in my life is more presence, more purpose, and more peace. If I can nail those three things today. In even just a small amount, incrementally and better on each day that I live. Then I will live a happier, more fulfilled, and more joyful life.

Hope you found this useful. I hope you found this interesting. And if you have, I invite you to try that exercise and see what comes up for you. See if there are any shifts you could make in your current goals you\'re chasing. In your current habits you have, in the mindset you have about self-worth. That may just be tipping point, may just be that small incremental change you need to create a better life for yourself today and in the future as well.

Thank you very much indeed. Please do hit subscribe if you would like to listen to more episodes like this. Take care. Bye.

Why Chasing Revenue Targets Left Me Empty – Until I Aligned My Values | Ep 289

KEY TAKEAWAYS: Business Values That Create Lasting Freedom

BEST MOMENTS: Lessons That Shaped My Business Values

TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW

Episode Transcript

VALUABLE RESOURCES

LINKS TO CONNECT WITH THE HOST

ABOUT THE HOST

For more articles related to business values and redefining success, you may also like:

SYS 126: The Holy Trinity of Company Meetings: Optimizing Effective Communication, Collaboration, and Results

SYS 164: Encouraging Innovation: Fostering a Culture of Continual Improvement in Small Businesses

SYS 068: How not to bore your team to death during company meetings

Discover How Small Business Owners Leverage The SixR System To Achieve Time Freedom In Under 90 Days

How Small Business Owners
Leverage The SixR System
To Achieve Time Freedom
In Under 90 Days

Free On-Demand Masterclass

Why Chasing Revenue Targets Left Me Empty – Until I Aligned My Values | Ep 289

​KEY TAKEAWAYS: Business Values That Create Lasting Freedom

BEST MOMENTS: Lessons That Shaped My Business Values

TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW

Episode Transcript

VALUABLE RESOURCES

LINKS TO CONNECT WITH THE HOST

ABOUT THE HOST

For more articles related to business values and redefining success, you may also like:

SYS 126: The Holy Trinity of Company Meetings: Optimizing Effective Communication, Collaboration, and Results

SYS 164: Encouraging Innovation: Fostering a Culture of Continual Improvement in Small Businesses

SYS 068: How not to bore your team to death during company meetings

How Small Business Owners Leverage The SixR System To Achieve Time Freedom In Under 90 Days

Free On-Demand Masterclass

KEY TAKEAWAYS: Business Values That Create Lasting Freedom

How Small Business Owners
Leverage The SixR System
To Achieve Time Freedom
In Under 90 Days