Protect Your #1 Resource: The Integrity of Self First

3 minute read

 
You embody the #1 resource for your career/business and your life. When you function optimally, your life works best. Entrepreneurs often lose sight of this simple truth. You will bleed for your company and give it everything. Every poor choice has costs and trade-offs.
 
There is a trade-off to not eating well. There is a cost to not exercising. There is a trade-off to working until 10 o’clock every night. Trade-offs follow ALL the choices you make. Each either leads you closer to or further from The Freedom Lifestyle. Whatever it is that “freedom” signifies to you. There are no neutral choices in life.
 
The sum of poor choices compromises your #1 resource. This includes every area of life including your business. Entrepreneurs appear to have a hard time seeing this. They begin to feel sick and they push themselves harder to work through it.
 
Think about your business as one entity and yourself the employee as another. Imagine your company is evaluating you the employee interacting with a customer. Would the business allow a customer to mistreat and drain the energy from your employee? I hope not! That’s a bad deal for the company and the employee.
 
Yet, entrepreneurs often think, “I’ll let my business drain and mistreat me for a while. I’ve invested a lot of time, money and/or energy so far”. The justification is that at some point things will take-off and it will all have been worth it. That way of thinking limits the viability of your company.
 
The same principle applies to your life at large. Don’t make bad deals. No statistics suggest that bad deals produce successful results down the road. Or they pay off later. In fact, evidence suggests the opposite. According to Inc. Magazine, “50 percent of businesses fail within five years, and 96 percent fail within 10 years.
 

You could make the argument that the entrepreneurial system is broken. It’s fair to state that a big part of this comes from the way business owners run their lives and their choices.

Businesses don’t fail because owners don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t fail because it’s inevitable or must follow that path. Entrepreneurs fail because they’re not set up to win, holistically.

Business owners know what they’re doing providing products and services to their customers. They need help discovering how to manage a company that keeps them healthy. It’s time for an end to entrepreneurs getting advice that tells them to do the opposite.

Bad coaching has them take their #1 resource, strip it down and drive it into the ground. It doesn’t work and has no integrity. It doesn’t provide freedom for the founders who give it all to accomplish their dreams. Sure, a few might make it, but most will fail.

Accepting this approach will almost certainly NOT develop your company the fastest. But, it is the pathway for producing a healthy business that will thrive. It is the pathway that enables success and The Freedom Lifestyle.

You CAN experience a healthy relationship between you and your business. And, you CAN also create healthy relationships with all the things that are important to you.

Your first job is to make sure you’re in a great place to contribute what your company requires. Of all the areas in the Entrepreneur’s 12 Key Areas of Life™, Business is the foundation. Having a thriving business provides access to resources like time, money and a team.

The other 11 Key Areas of Life supply the support to have you and your business thrive. It is an interrelated system that needs all its parts working. Your physical body functions best when all its systems are working optimally. Likewise, an entrepreneur functions best when the 12 Key Areas of Life are in equilibrium.

Your most important job as a CEO is to protect the integrity of your #1 resource…YOU! This is Habit #52 from my Amazon #1 international bestselling book, “Cure Entrepreneurialitis: 52 Habit to Earn the Freedom You Deserve.”

Follow these tips to practice taking care of yourself first:

•  Notice when you trade your personal integrity and your needs for your business. Quit making bad deals.
•  Listen to your body. When it asks for rest or time off, accept it.
•  Don’t work when you’re sick. Give yourself time to recover and heal with integrity.
•  Stop accepting any coaching that has you put your business needs before your own.
•  Focus on the freedom you deserve and costs and tradeoffs of every choice you make.