How Creativity Without Limits Costs Your Business | 048

My oldest daughter is an artist. She's extraordinarily creative, and she's able to make something out of absolutely nothing. It is amazing to watch her create. It's been an amazing journey of watching her try different media, do different things, and find her own creative voice and

outlet, and now she is an art teacher, and she is a professional metal smith, and she just does a lot of really cool stuff. I am admittedly her biggest fan, and as amazing and creative and beautiful and awesome My daughter is as an adult, honestly, there were a lot of adjustments in being her

mother, in being her parents and helping her figure out, how does she Move in the world and not lose that lose that creative spark, and not be, you know, burdened down. But also, how do we help her get the most out of everything that she has in life, get the most out of her experience being a child? How do

we help her take this creativity and this energy and this effervescence and actually help her to figure out, how do you take that and find your way through the world and be successful? So what I developed with her is what I would call guardrails. They're kind of boundaries, but what we realized

is, if long as she knew what her guard rails were, how far she could go and no further, because as her parent, I was able to say, you can go no further than this. What were those boundaries? When she knew where those guard rails were, she felt really safe. She knew that within those guard rails she

could be everything that she wanted to be, and know that she wasn't going to spin out, she wasn't going to use too much energy. She was going to be able to rest. I'm going to talk a little bit about rest in a minute. She was she knew where she could go and how far that was, so that she could channel

all of her energy and her efforts within that safe zone, so that she was able to be successful in school. She was be able to be successful as a friend and and everything that she did, she was able to find a success because she knew what those boundaries were. And it wasn't just that. I told her,

Hey, that far and no further. I explained to her what those boundaries why they were in place. We had conversations about this is how we get the most out of everything that you are and everything that you do, and as business owners, especially as creative business owners, this is something that

we really need to get a handle on. If we can understand that created creativity thrives with boundaries, and so does your revenue. We will absolutely transform our businesses. A lot of creatives don't like the idea of having boundaries or limitations or anything, because creativity is creativity. It's

big and it's bold and it knows no bounds, and it is everything to everyone at all times, creativity just is creativity. And so we get lured into that, oh, we have to have this kind of creativity to be creative. It can't have any limitations. And that's absolutely not true, and especially when it comes to our

businesses, when we can figure out, what are those boundaries, what are those guard rails that we put into our business in different areas, so that we can have the energy that we need, so that we can create the excitement that we want to have in our business, so that we can be profitable and do the things

and make the difference in the world that we want to make with our creativity. Within boundaries, we actually go from the idea of, you know, whenever you a shotgun has throws pellets everywhere, right? It's, a wide ranging thing. A laser beam is very narrow. If we can pull in our creativity into these into

these guardrails, into these boundaries and laser focus, what we're doing. Our creativity is actually unleashed. We actually can. Be more creative within our safe zones. Then, if we were to just have absolutely no boundaries whatsoever. This is something that I found with my daughter, when she understood

where she could go, what she could do, how long she could do it, she was really successful. If I said to her, hey, you know what? It's a free day. Go do whatever you want. You have no restraints whatsoever. She could go out on a hike, and she could walk for, you know, happily and enthusiastically for a mile or

two miles, not recognizing that she would have to turn around and walk back home two miles. She didn't understand that the energy that it took to get there would have to be doubled to come back. And those are the kinds of things that we forget about whenever we are running our businesses and we're thinking

about creativity and how our creativity is stifled, we like to say, oh, it's stifled. Oh, I can't be creative if I have any limitations on me, I have to be completely free. And that is actually a trap, because when you can really pull that in and harness that creativity in the correct directions, that that

are correct for you, that give you the results that you want to have in your business, you are more powerful, you are more focused, you are more successful, and you will solve more people's problems, and you will make a bigger difference in the world, if you can figure out how to do that. So I wanted to

talk today about how to have boundaries with our creativity so that we can be really successful in our businesses. The first thing I want to talk about is rest, as I mentioned with my daughter, you need to know as a human being, as the business owner, as the physical business owner, you need to know

what it means to rest in your business. So many business owners will run and run and run and run until they are exhausted. I had a client who would literally fall asleep in his business because he was so exhausted, because he had, he actually had a full time job, and he ran his business, and he

would he just didn't have enough fuel left once he got into the office at night. We need to recognize that that rest is a boundary that we need to think about consciously, that we need to plan for, that we need to figure out what is rest and rejuvenation? Rest for some people is laying in bed and

doing nothing or reading a book and being still. Rest for someone else might be going on a jog or kayaking. Rest is different for different people. Now, physically, you do need to sleep. Sometimes, most human beings need rest and sleep, so don't discount that, but also think about rest as what fills

your cup back up. Because as business owners, when we are running and running and running and running and running and running and running, we are empty, and we keep trying to pour out of that empty cup, and we never fill ourselves back up. So what will rejuvenate you, what will restore you, what will

give you rest, and actually define that so that you can have that as a power move in your business, where you show up rested, you show up rejuvenated, so that you actually can do the things that you need to do in your business. You need to understand how much is too much. How much is too much, if you are

a publisher, and someone came to you with an amazing job, the job of a lifetime, and they said, I want to publish 10 books every month for an entire year, and I want you to be my publisher. We're going to do 10 books every single month, and we're going to do that for an entire year. That's my goal, and that's

you're the one I want to do it. And you as the business owner, might be like, yes, I've done it. I've hit the mother low. This is exactly what I want. This is going to set me up. This is an amazing opportunity, and I'm totally pumped, and this is going to be really great, and and you just jump in with both

feet, and then you get in month two and realize that this really was too big a project for you.

And when you get into those situations where you said yes because you were excited, or it was a lot of money, or this was a great opportunity, and you don't understand how much is too much, then you will put yourself in a position where you are not able to deliver the quality that you want. You're not able to

accomplish. Accomplish what you want if you don't understand what those limitations are. Now, if you take on too much, there's always ways that you can manage that and get it done. I was using it as an example of when we take on too much and we don't recognize that it's too much, and we don't put those extra

pieces in place, and we just keep trying to run on empty continually and doing things that are too much without figuring out that's too much. If I'm going to take on a job of that size, I'm going to need help, and this is the help that I'm going to put in place. We need to know what is too much.

How profitable Do you want to be in your business? Do you want to have a billion dollar business, or do you want to have $100,000 business? Those are two completely different business models. They are different effort, different energy, different everything. Structures. Everything is the

pillars are all the same, but they're, they're, they're operating at different levels whenever you're in those different things. So what is how profitable Do you want to be? How big of a business do you want to have, if you just if you want to have a business where you can be home for your kids

and be there when they get home from school. And that's your idea of success. You're making enough money to pay the bills and to pay the then had to have some, you know, fun money. And the goal of your business is to be there for your children and be home when they get home from school, be in their school

activities. And that's your idea of success. That's a successful business for you, and you need to know that that's your ideal of success. That is what you define success as. If you define success as having $100,000 profit, well, that's a different that's a different focus. And within those focuses, none of

them are wrong. They're all perfect. Whatever you want your business to be, what you want your level of success to be, that's perfect, and you need to understand what that is, and then put the boundaries in place to support that decision. How much does it take out of you to do what you do? Do you

understand how much energy you have? Do you understand what your what the best times of day for you to work are? Do you understand your physical as a human being, not just the business owner, but as a physical human being, what works for you? What are your rhythms? What are the the times when

you're most effective? When are you burnt out? When are you tired? My husband can get up really early in the morning and work all day long, and at 1045 his body clock goes off. He is done for the day, and he is off to bed at 1045 every night, like clockwork. I, on the other hand, can start a project at 10pm and

be as energized and enthusiastic as if he started something at 8am I can work in the evenings. I love working in the evenings. That's a fun time for me. When we we were first living together, I would get the vacuum cleaner out at 10pm at night, start vacuuming the apartment. And he, after a while, was like,

why are you starting it at 10pm and I was like, that's when I feel the energy to start vacuuming in the apartment. If you don't want me to vacuum at 10pm It's okay if you do it. PS, he was fine with me vacuuming at 10pm that is, I know that about myself. I know what those limitations are. What are those

boundaries we need to be understanding when are we at our peak? And when are we at exhausted? When are we really creative? And when are we just checking boxes and crossing things up and, you know, checking out mentally? We really need to have a handle on that as well. And is something too big

or too small? That's something we don't think about a lot in our business. We are like anything. Give me any job. I'll take anything. I'll sell. I'll sell anything, whatever it is, just go ahead and and I'll do it, because that's going to make me more money. And when we're very focused on that kind of

thing, without any boundaries, we really limit the amount of money we can make when we pull those things in, when we figure out what's too big and what's too small, we are actually more successful. We make more money and we have more profit because we understand those boundaries. For example, if I sold five.

Equipment, and what I sold was, you know, small things. And somebody came and said, Hey, here's a tractor. You should buy a tractor, and you should sell tractors. And, hey, I'll make more money if I sell a tractor. So, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to buy that tractor and I'm going to sell it. So I'm

going to buy it wholesale and I'm going to sell it, sell it for retail, not understanding that the amount of money that I have to put into that tractor, and the tractor might not move as quickly as the smaller things, then that's going to really affect how my business operates. We really need to know

is that thing too big for us? We need to know what's too small? And, you know, people will say, No, job is too small, and that's a totally fine way of running your business, as long as you are actually making money and you are happy. Because what I found with business owners is, if they take something that is

too small or doesn't make enough money, or they're, they're, it's, you know, not fitting their business model. It's too small. After a while, resentment will build, and you need to understand that, that that resentment will actually come back and affect your business negatively. So it's okay to say

that is a job that I am not going to do, that's a product I'm not going to sell, that is too small for the boundaries that I've set up for my business. All of these things that I've talked about, these boundaries, suggestions, these ideas, these are power tools in your business. As a creative

This is not a limitation. This is a focus. This is taking everything, all of your creativity, everything that you want to do, the big difference that you want to make in the world, and it's pulling it in to a focused area of optimization. And when you can be focused on where you are optimized, you

will be happier. You will be more profitable. And because you are those two things, your creativity will be renewed. It really does the better that you feel, and the more that you're doing, the things that you want to do, your creativity will will increase and improve. So now we have these boundaries. And we

talked about the different ways that you could have boundaries in your business. Another thing that I wanted to talk about is there's there's different levels of business. Right when you first start out, you are at what I call the foundation level. You're building your business. You're putting in your seven

pillars of profit. You're learning how to do your what you do. You're you are learning what your customers are buying. You're learning what they like. You're learning how to communicate with them. And you when you are in that area of your business, when you're in that phase of your business,

you're in your foundational phase you are building. You're figuring it out once you have you know, you you've run your business for a while, you've got it you've figured it out, then you'll move up to the acceleration phase. And the acceleration phase is when you start doing things more quickly.

You've figured it all out, you've got your systems in place, and now you can move you can move more quickly. You can make decisions more quickly. You can build your business at a greater rate of speed because you figured it all out. Now, in the acceleration phase, you you're probably doing things

similarly to your foundation phase. You've made some adjustments, but you're not, you know, making big changes. That's the innovation phase. When you get to the innovation phase, this is when you're scaling. This is when you're making big moves. This is when you're getting that next level goal,

and you're hitting that next stride that you want to do in your business. You're hitting your next if you're at $100,000 you're going to 500,000 or you're going to a million dollars. So those those big innovative steps, that scaling step, is innovation.

When you hit all of those different phases of your business, the boundaries change as well. The the job that was too big at the foundation level is going to be the right size at acceleration, the job that was too big at acceleration will be the right size at innovation, right so those boundaries will

adjust as you grow your business. And if you don't ever want to have multiple locations or so tractors, if whatever, if you don't want to have those things, that's okay too. You can still have innovation in whatever level you are. And this is how I like to describe innovation. When I got married,

my husband said to me that I had to learn to make his mother's spaghetti sauce. That was his one requirement was that I needed to learn how to make his mom's sauce. So I did. And I sat down with her, and we figured out the recipe. Because she didn't actually have a recipe, she just she. Put stuff in a

pot. So we figured out the recipe, and for years, I followed that recipe religiously. I made it exactly the way that she said to make it every single time. And after a while, I got really good at making her recipe. I was like, hmm, what if, instead of tomato sauce, I put in crushed tomatoes

and gave it a little bit of texture. Then I was started to innovate, right? I knew the recipe, I followed it, it was good. And then I started putting a little bit something different into it, a little bit of an experiment. And now I have changed her straight recipe has been innovated several times,

and now my sauce doesn't actually taste the exactly the same as my mother in law's sauce. It's close, and it's different because I've innovated it a little bit. I moved the boundaries a little bit to have something different that I wanted to have in my particular recipe, and now I still look at

my recipe card that I made in the kitchen with my mother in law that's stained with sauce and years of use. I look at it every time because I want to make sure I don't forget an ingredient. I don't med use the measurements anymore, but I do still use that boundary to make sure that I'm still going in the

direction that I want to go. So in your business, don't think about boundaries or guardrails as limitations. Think of them as focusing your creativity to its optimal power, putting your creativity into a laser situation so that you can have a business that spills your you creatively and still makes you

money, that is engaging everything about what you are and who you and who you bring to this business while still making money. So that's the power of having boundaries, because creativity thrives in boundaries, and so does your revenue. I want to make sure that you know that if you join

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