Know Your Role in Your Business

Hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Or if this is your first time, then I’d like to welcome you to the podcast. I hope that you’re having an awesome day today and yeah, let’s jump to it y’all. So today I have an interesting topic that has been on my mind a lot over the past year with all of the fluctuations in my business, and I think it’s so relevant.

It’s something that. I think I’ve known at certain times of my business, but it’s become really g clearly obvious and important to think about at other times. So it’s really all about knowing your role in your business. I. I wanna talk about understanding your strengths and weaknesses and what you bring to the table and identifying the characteristics in your personality that really make you really good at a task, but also being able to identify maybe where your weaknesses are and certain tasks that you might not be as good at.

Now, this might sound kind of obvious, and sometimes it is for some people and sometimes it’s not. But I’m gonna go a lot deeper than that. This also applies to whether you are running a business by yourself or if you have a team member or if you’re working as a team. And it’s also good to know this just because it can help you understand your colleagues better and the people that you’re working with, your team members, just to better understand how you can work better together.

So know your role in your business? Well, I’ve always known that I am a type- person. You know, I used to be an accountant. I’m not the most creative type of person. I know that my strengths lie in implementation and working really hard. I know that I’m not the best kind of ideas person. I knew some of this about myself from the very beginning just because of my background in accounting and you know, the type of person that I am.

But I learned a lot along the way as well, working with my business partners and really just learning, you know, feeling these things that I was scared to do at certain times of my business, and then at other times feeling really happy about certain things that I was doing. And anyway. This first became pretty apparent when I was working with Alex, my former business partner, Alex, is the type of person that is so good at the ideas and the vision and the direction, and I am a much better person at taking that idea and that vision and just running with it and having a plan or creating a plan and figuring out how we’re gonna get there, and then putting in the work.

But I know that I’m not the best actually coming up with those ideas from the beginning, and I think that that’s why Alex and I were such a good team and why we found success so quickly, because these two parts of our personalities worked really, really well together. And I know that if you’re by yourself, that can be a little bit scary because you might feel like you’re not good at one of these things.

Maybe you’re good at one of them, but not the other. And that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to find success quickly. This is just about understanding that and understanding kind of where your role is. And we’re gonna figure out, you know, how to get you there. You might need some help from other people, right?

To fill in some of these gaps. But the first step is identifying where these gaps are. And I knew this when Alex and I were work first working together or you know, throughout our journey working together. But I also felt this very much reinforced over the last year when I started doing a side project of my own.

Things with Alex and I weren’t at a great place at the time with the business and I was faced with these thoughts of “Do I want to continue working on this business? Do I want to start something? On my own or you know, with other people? What do I really want to do?” I first started this other side hustle and I was faced with a lot of those imposter syndrome feelings of ‘Can I do this on my own?’ I knew that I had the qualifications because it was similar to other businesses that already started, but I did still feel very stuck at times when it came to trying to decide which direction I wanted to go in with this new project and how I was going to get there.

You know, I knew that I could easily put in all of the work to get there. That wasn’t the problem. It was just about which direction I wanted to go in and what kind of content I wanted to create, and all of those really high-level stuff that, you know, I did work through it, but I could tell that. I could feel that resistance and I could feel that it wasn’t coming easy to me and it wasn’t enjoyable either.

It really didn’t feel very good. And then, you know, fast forward, a little bit, a few months and Noah comes into the picture. Well, of course, he’s been in the picture because he’s been working with us. But when he and I started talking about, you know, him joining Create and Go when he and Alex were talking about him, you know, buying Alex out, and Noah and I started talking about what he and I would do with the business.

In the future, you know, going forward, well what are we gonna change? What are we gonna do? Of course, Noah wants to know that this business that he’s buying into, you know, has a future as well. So we talked about a lot of that high-level stuff, and I had already known that Noah himself was not very good at really communicating throughout his work process. That’s something that he and I struggle with a lot. Or one area that I suppose we, I wouldn’t say butt heads at, but on Slack, where I’m often kind of on his case about, Hey, can you communicate better with me? You know, ’cause he just kind of head down, does his thing.

He is a really hard worker, but I have realized since he and I started working together, since he took on this role of, you know, co-owner in the business, Noah is really good at the ideas and the vision stuff. He’s better at keeping. His head in other communities with other entrepreneurs and bloggers, he’s better at networking, way better at networking than I am, and he just has a little bit more of a pulse on some of these things than I do because I often find myself getting caught in the cog wheel of, you know, creating content, updating content.

There’s always something. That needs to be updated. I was thinking about doing a podcast episode about this entirely because at any given stage, after you’ve been in business for a couple of years, there’s always something that needs to be updated. Some landing page or some piece of content or some part of your paid product, and I’m often the one that kind of gets stuck in that.

That is also, you know, our fault because our content is very much about us. So anyway, I’ve realized that Noah is actually pretty good at this role and I was pretty excited when I realized this because this is something that I never really knew about him when he was working for us before, because he and Alex really worked most closely together on the s e o stuff and I worked with Kathy and, uh, this girl, Hannah, who used to work with us, they were kind of on my part of the team and I didn’t really know this.

And then when Noah and I really started working together and collaborating together, I thought, wow, this is great, because he is. Really stepping into this gap that Alex was going to be leaving, and it was a sore spot that I had been feeling. So anyway, it was a really good thing. And you know, I know that this very much sounds like this applies to a two-person team here or something, but it’s not that, even if it’s just you doing this on your own, I think that it’s so important to realize.

What you’re really good at and what you might not be so good at. And I don’t want to, you know, tell you to pigeonhole yourself here or create any limiting beliefs of, you know, I’m only good at this, but I’m not good at this. Rather than saying, you know, I’m not good at this, it’s probably better to try to instead, you know, shift that self-talk to, and this really isn’t my strong suit, right?

So I don’t want to make any of you think that, you know, you should identify something as something that you just suck at, and then just label that and put it away, you know, because really as a blogger or an entrepreneur, if you don’t have the resources to get help at the moment, and you don’t have a business partner, you do have to really do everything whether you like it or not.

But it can also help you really identify those areas that you should get help in. And even if it’s not, you know, hiring another team member to fill that gap or outsourcing in some way, it could be even just buying a course or, you know, seeking out the information, even free information online, to fill that gap.

So if you know that you’re not a great ideas person, Well take a look around and see what other people are doing, how they’re growing their businesses, you know, and it might not be as easy for you, but it’s still going to be better than being that person that just kind of keeps plowing through things and not realizing that they have a pretty big blind spot.

Because I’ve seen that in multiple businesses. I’ve seen it in the coffee shop that I used to work at, that was started by, um, a guy that I worked for. He started, you know, his own independent coffee shop and I kind of watched it start, but then kind of burn into the ground around three years later. And I’ve seen it in my friend’s businesses that I, you know, my friends from wifi tribe that own their own businesses. I’ve seen people have those blind spots and it’s funny because I often will talk to my husband about it and I realize that, oh, you know what, these are the same blind spots that I have. So it’s just really good to be aware of these things because you could be the reason why your business is not growing, right?

You could be that roadblock and it could be something as simple as just fear and not being sure of what the next step is, or it could be that you don’t actually know. You think that you know, but you’re so blindsided by this kind of other area of weakness of yours and anyway… Yeah, I think it’s important, and I could stereotype this up real good and say, you know, mostly type A people are gonna be your implementers and mostly type B people are going to be your creatives and your visionaries.

And I think that it, it often can be like that, but it’s definitely not that cut and dry. I think it’d be a good idea to get a pen and paper and actually just write down the things that you think that you’re really good at and the things that you don’t think that you’re good at, and maybe create another column or two for the things that you know you really like to do and the things that you really don’t like to do, and often find that there’s, you know, some cross between these things too.

I know that my strengths also often happen to be things that I really enjoy doing – and you know, there’s probably no surprise that there’s a correlation there, right? It becomes easier when you like to do it, and it becomes a strength, you know? Once you identify these things, You need to take a good, cold, hard look at the things that you know, you put in the weaknesses or the things that you’re not that good at, and then think about why.

Think about why these things might be because it’s not just about identifying. You know what you’re good at, and what you’re not good at. It’s also about understanding why you’re not good at these things or why you are good at these things, right? I think that’s how we start to really learn more about our personality and you know, our likes, our dislikes, but as well as the things that maybe we don’t think about, right?

These underlying characteristics about our personality that are driving our behavior and driving honestly our mental attitude and our motivation really everything that we are bringing to the table in our business, it’s so, so, so important and something that we often, I think, just don’t take a second to really think about.

And I don’t know. I think that it’s really important at any stage of your business, because if you find yourself stuck at all, or even if you think that you’re not stuck, it’s just good to just take a second to think about this and to think about whether you are the one holding you know, your business back, or is there someone else that is, you know, holding your business back.

It may be that someone that you have hired is the reason for this. And I think it’s important to think about anyone that you hire, you know, whether this is somebody that works for your team, you know, on a long, long-term basis, or whether this is somebody that you just outsource to. Let’s say, do you know your writing?

It’s really important to think about what they bring to the table and why they are, you know, good or not good at something. And it will help you work with this person, work with other people to, you know, realize their full potential. And also, of course, Make sure that you are getting the most of the money that you paid this person to work for you as well, but also to just understand how you can better work with people, how you can better delegate tasks.

For instance, you know, Noah and I definitely delegate tasks based on what suits each of us better, what we enjoy doing, but also just what we’re good at. And you know, it really clears up a lot of brain space to be able to just focus on what you. Know that you need to focus on and know then what you need to shift off to somebody else or what you need to write on your to-do list that you need to learn.

And you know, back to the whole pigeonholing thing, and why I don’t want you to pigeonhole yourself is because for so long I had a lot of limiting beliefs about getting on camera about podcasting, and I pushed that off to Alex as my business partner because he was better at those things. But there will come a time in your business when you might likely need to step into these roles whether you like it or not.

And just because you identify this thing as your weakness doesn’t mean that you are pushing it off. From your point, forever. It might be that you’re pushing it off for a little while, but it’s important to notice when you are pushing it off and remember that you may need to step into that role. So think about what this weakness might be and think about how you can challenge yourself to overcome this, how you can, you know, challenge yourself to do this better.

And for me, stepping into podcasting when I really didn’t want to or think that I would be good at it was really just about planning the crap out of getting it started because that is what made me feel more secure. It made me feel a little bit better and you know, it took a little bit longer, I think, to launch it than it should have, but it still made me feel better the way that I did it, and it helped me kind of jump into that and really tackle it and, yeah.

So y’all, I just, I just think it’s really important. Again, this has been something that has been on my mind a lot over the last year and it’s not the most comfortable topic to think about because. Sometimes it can be really hard to admit certain things about yourself, especially when you want to be in a certain role.

You know, I thought that after having run my business for this many years, I should be a leader. I should be someone that should be the more creative person, the visionary, and the one to lead this business to where it’s gonna go, and part of me feels bad for not being that person because of the experience that I’ve gained.

But then I remind myself that it’s not about that. If I had to, I do believe that I could step into this role, but I am so thankful that I have a business partner and when things with Alex and I weren’t going the best a year or two ago when we first started having talks about selling the business and this and that, I thought about what.

That I wanted to do, and I thought about starting my own business and I realized I don’t want to start my own business alone. Now that I’ve had a business partner for the last few years, and I know what that’s like – I don’t want to do it alone. I could if I wanted to and I have all the knowledge to do that, but I find it more enjoyable and because of the skills that I have, I do feel that I am better in the role of working with somebody else who can also help us to have that vision because it’s not my strongest suit.

So it really helps me a lot to kind of think about what direction I wanted to go personally with my business. And again, you know, no matter where you are at your stage, whether it’s the very beginning or whether it’s even somewhere down the line, it’s never too late to think about who you want to bring onto your team.

And again, not just as a business partner, but I’m talking about the other people that you will eventually need. You generally can’t run your business by yourself. Um, you know, For years and years to come. In this business, if you wanna keep growing, you’re gonna have to outsource content creation or social media marketing or customer service.

You know, you’re gonna have to outsource some bit of it, so, It’s about thinking about the people that you want to bring onto your team to fill in those gaps, to really grow your business. And y’all, one more thing that I want to circle back to before I sign off that I almost overlooked, is that I want you to remember that whether you are this visionary person or whether you are an implementer, or maybe you’re actually just a super creative person that perhaps isn’t, The best at either visionary or implementing, right?

Some people are just really, really good at creative content and they’re not good at the rest of the things. No matter which of these things you are, you have an incredible skill and you should be really grateful for this. This is about appreciating the person that you are, not just identifying the areas that you need to be better at or these gaps, right?

It’s about really focusing on what you can bring to the table and just know that, you know, being a visionary person, but not having the creative side or not having the implementation side, that person alone is going to fail or isn’t going to be successful as they ordinarily would be without these other things.

Right? It’s the same if you’re good at implementing if you don’t. Have some kind of vision. You’re also going to fall flat. And people who are super, super creative, they also need direction to guide them, you know, in the right direction. So no matter what thing you’re really, really good at, you have the ability to find great success with that.

This is just about really identifying what that thing is and then learning what other supportive tasks and supportive characteristics you can bring to the table. You know, to really support that thing that you’re good at and to make sure that it stays on, that you stay on the right path. So I just want to, I guess, end with that then that.

All of these things are fantastic skills and all of them are necessary to make a business successful, and none of these things without anything else is going to end up going anywhere. So, all right y’all, that is it for this one. I will see you on the next one.