Is Your Business Making You Happy?

About a year ago I came out to the Traffic & Conversion Summit just before launching PatRigsby.com, so hanging out Monday with Holly here in San Diego and then heading to the conference yesterday (and later today) has allowed me to reflect on the past year and how happy I’ve been with my business.

I think we’re all striving for that – right?

We all want to feel like we GET to go to work rather than that we’ve GOT to go to work.

And while I won’t try to tell you that every minute of my new business venture has been a blast (a lot of the transition stuff in the first couple of months was just really, really tedious) I want to share the things that I’ve focused on that have helped me really have as much fun professionally as I’ve ever had so you can employ them too:

1. Work with the clients you enjoy.

There is a direct correlation between the people you accept as clients or the people you work closely with and your day to day happiness.

For me – I’d rather part ways with a client…be it a private client or a member of Virtual Fitness Mastermind…than keep them around if I don’t enjoy them.

In fact, if someone asks to cancel VFM I’ve grown to actually be pleased with it because if they don’t want to build their Ideal Business and don’t feel connected to our community – I really don’t want folks like that around.

They may be great people…but they’re not the right people.

2. Play to your strengths.

I don’t want you to think that you don’t ever have to do things that you don’t like…frankly I don’t enjoy the time away from my family when I travel (so it’s great that Holly came on this trip with me) or some of the detail of project management…but I’ve built my business and 90% of how I spend my time around the things I do enjoy…coaching, creation, business strategy, marketing, sales, writing, networking and business development.

I do other things…but a very high percentage of my time is on these things…and even when I’m doing the stuff I don’t enjoy (being away from my family) it’s because I’m doing things or improving at things just listed.

3. Actively work to avoid and eliminate the things you don’t like.

This may be the most important of all. We all (hopefully) are trying to attract the right clients, do the things we like, etc…but are we really pruning away the stuff we don’t want in our business?

If there are clients we don’t want…are we severing ties?

Are we crafting our marketing to avoid attracting more of them?

Are we making our programs really reflective of what we want to be known for or are we tolerating just selling ‘stuff’?

Are we collaborating with people we don’t enjoy?

Doing a lot of tasks that stress us out?

I think that purging as much of the things you don’t like from your business is an act that can probably bring you as much professional happiness as anything you can do.

While there are plenty of other things that I think make you or I happy in business…we should both start with those 3.

And I don’t want you to think for a minute that I’ve got the market cornered on this ‘Ideal Business’ or business that makes me happy thing.

I’ve seen a lot of my friends and clients do the same.

And you can too.

But it won’t happen by accident.

Like anything worth having, you must pursue it aggressively.

But it’s worth it…that I can promise you.