I Want Happiness in Business, Do You?

My goal this year is to be happy – that’s it! It’s not much to ask, but try and talk to those around you, how many of your friends, co-workers, or even family are really happy?

When I met with my business coach last week, we focused on personal and professional purpose. Our session was centered around spreading happiness and how I can introduce it into my business.

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: Who are we? Why do we exist?

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.

I started to take a look at what makes me happy, a happy business owner is an essential component of the happiness business model.

• 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?
• Send more thank you gifts, there is nothing like rewarding loyal customers to spread a smile.
• We are completely focused on business and professional processes, this needs to change! We need to ensure our personal purpose is aligned with what our team and clients 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).

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?

Happiness as a business model

My goal this year is to be happy – that’s it! It’s not much to ask, but try and talk to those around you, how many of your friends, co-workers, or even family are really happy?

When I met with my business coach last week, we focused on personal and professional purpose, our session was centered around spreading happiness and how I can introduce it into my business. We came across this great article “Make Happiness Your Business Model” and were instantly inspired.

“Have fun, do good and the money will come.”
-Richard Branson

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:

1. Who are we?
2. Why do we exist?

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.

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!

The next step in my pursuit of happiness was to 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.

What can we do to spread more happiness?

1. 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? Questions need to be asked!
2. Does every email, message, skype, or face-to-face interaction convey happiness? Even a “no” can be phrased positively. 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?
3. Send more thank you gifts, there is nothing like rewarding loyal customers to spread a smile.
4. Currently, we are completely focused on business and professional processes, this needs to change! We need to ensure our personal purpose is aligned with what our team and clients are doing on a day-to-day basis.
5. 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).

“Moross believed that employees that are happy make customers happy, and everything will fall into place after that.”

~ Rean of Hongkiat

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?