My goal this year is to be happy – with Happiness as a Business Model.
This is here to help you with your journey in making your business healthy and happy.
My journey started with meeting with my Business Coach, we started with focusing on my personal and professional purpose were. The conclusion was that spreading happiness was the place to start and how we would implement this into the business. Our inspiration started after researching and finding an inspiring article “Make Your Business Model”.
By placing happiness first, you create an incredibly strong culture. Where not only are employees more alert, open to new ideas and able to reach their full potential. They willfully go above and beyond to achieve customer happiness.
Happy customers will remain loyal and become brand evangelists, helping your business become scalable and grow in an environment that everyone genuinely enjoys and thrives in. As a business owner, everyone working happily together helps you achieve common and meaningful goals.
Now the hard part, where do we start?
My coach asked me two questions about Your Virtual Assistant as a business, they weren’t easy to answer, but they helped me draft our purpose:
Why do we exist?
Who are we?
Our purpose
Is to spread happiness with those we work with, both internally within our team and externally with our clients and partners.
Externally
We will achieve our purpose by responding to our client’s problems with solutions. Whilst filling in the gaps in their businesses using our multifaceted strength, smart, experienced thinkers and problem solvers with multi-faceted strengths.
Internally
We will continue to improve our company culture and align what we do with our personal purpose. Each member of our team has the right to feel fulfilled, appreciated, and supported by both a management level and by our co-workers.
Reflection
I started to take a look at what makes me happy, a happy business owner is an essential component of the happiness business model. I’ve been practising mindfulness in stop racing through life (and work). I make the time to go for that walk in the morning, every morning and also ensure I do not work all weekend, every weekend!
Next Steps
Identify what we are already doing to spread smiles. Only then could I keep this purpose front of mind (day in, day out) and identify weaknesses in both our culture and processes.
- A happiness audit for both our clients and our team. Does what we do align with the personal goals and purpose of those we work with?
- Does every email, message, skype, or face-to-face interaction convey happiness? So do we keep frustrations out of our communications? If we do have frustrations, are we looking at the source and finding ways to eliminate them?
- Send more thank you gifts, there is nothing like rewarding loyal customers to spread a smile.
- Our current focus in the business is process of both business and professional processes. We are looking to change this, to make sure our purposes alines with our team and clients and what they are doing on a day to day basis.
- Look at our onboarding process for both clients and contractors, is our culture and purpose reflected in each step? (Not yet, it will be though).
Helpful Materials
This article, “How happiness can help you in business” is well worth the read if you have a minute. The spotlight is on Moo.com and Zappos and how both companies core values are promoting happiness within their (lucky) staff and going above and beyond to delight their customers.
I want this.
For me, the biggest challenge is incorporating happiness into our day to day life. We get busy, we are met with challenges, and we have bad days. So creating a culture that incorporates happiness into everything we do isn’t easy – but it’s worth it. I want everyone who engages with our people to be infected with our happiness and I’m 100% determined to achieve this.
So reader, what drives you?