018: Learn the Art of Prioritizing & Get What You Need!

The Modern CEO Podcast Episode 18 hey, have you heard there's a new style of CEO on the block. The Modern CEO. And she is changing the way businesses are run. She's setting her own hours and her own salary. She's creating a business around what matters most to her. Freedom, family, and impact. And her corner office looks nothing like like what you'd see on Wall Street. It's a kitchen table, your grandma's lake house, a spacious home office, the living room floor maybe surrounded by kids and crayons or the local coffee shop. Your business, your way. This modern CEO is here to stay. Because when you embrace your role as modern CEO, you will have more freedom, more profit, and more fun. Most importantly, you'll fall in love with your life and a business in a way you've only dreamed. Trust. This isn't a pipe dream reserved for only a select few. You are the modern CEO. You are creating a business and life you love because a better business means a better life. Hey there. Welcome back to the Modern CEO podcast. I'm your host, Amber McHugh. And the last time we hung out, I was sitting in Los Angeles and it was a little bit colder than I thought it was going to be. It was raining there, guys, the whole time I was in Los Angeles, so that was a little bit of a bummer. But I'm back in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia right now, getting reintegrated with my family, getting reset, overcoming jet lag, and I'm continuing on and we are continuing on with our virtual planning experience to set you up for success in 2019. And I'm realizing as I get back into the swing of things in Ethiopia, how important is it is to know what you are focused on because what you focus on will grow. And for a hot minute, when I got back to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and I was re acclimating and resetting to this different way of living and let's be honest, overcoming a little bit of jet lag because it is a big time difference and it is a long travel time, it's a long flight to get back here from Los Angeles. I really had to reset on what my priorities are and I had to go back to my plans and recalibrate with my team and say, okay, what should I be focused on right now? Because I was spinning for a minute with jet lag waking up, what am I doing? Where am I? What time is it and what do I need to do and what do I need to focus on to grow my business and ensure I'm Doing things intentionally to build the life I want to build. Have you ever felt like that where you're sitting down, you're wondering, ah, I don't know what to do? What do I focus on? Or you find yourself in a situation and you think, how did I get here? This doesn't align at all with what I want. That's what we're gonna focus on in this episode. We're gonna focus on focus, because what you focus on will grow. And we are, in this episode of our Virtual Planning Experience series, really focused on the life aspects. Just like our last episode, we're building upon that and we're identifying what is it that we need in life, what is it that we want for our lives? And we're starting with life. Because a better business means a better life. And if we're disconnected from our life goals, when we pour into our business, when we get wrapped up in our business goals, it is so easy to get distracted, to get off track and for things to get out of alignment and to work on things that don't align with who you are or what you want in life or for your business. And frankly, it's part of your job as modern CEO and freedom seeking entrepreneur to ensure you and your team and the people around you who are supporting you in growing the business are focused on the right things. Because I know firsthand it is easy to get pulled in a million different directions. And it is easy when we're getting stretched every which way to get shiny object syndrome and to feel overwhelmed. So it's important that we reign it in and focus on what matters to you now and for you to bring your attention to those things. And heck, you might even rally your family and poll and collaborate with your family, your friends, your team, your colleagues for any masterminds or communities you're in to help ensure you keep the focus on those most important things. One analogy that often comes to mind for me is how many cars can you drive at once? One car. It's totally not a trick question. I wasn't trying to trick you there. We could focus on driving one car at a time. And that's the analogy we use in the business. What car am I driving right now? What car is gonna get us to our destination? Which car has gas in it? Right. What car is working right now and where do we want to be going? Take one car at a time. Focus on one thing at a time so you don't get off track. Now, for the longest time, I would say that family was a core value of Mine. But when I really looked at how I was showing up in life, I wasn't pouring into my family as much as I was pouring into my work, my clients, and my business. They knew it. It just took me a while to see it. And honestly, on this trip to Kenya that we took over the holidays between Christmas and New Year's, my sisters were crazy surprised. They said, don't you have work to do? Like, no, I have blocked out this time to be present in this experience and to be present with my family as we go through this maybe once in a lifetime trip together. And they were floored because that's not who I was before, who I was before. Even though I said I prioritized family, I would spend time checking in on slack with my team. I'd spend time in community with my clients, who I love, and I would spend time, right, taking calls, collaborating. But sometimes you have to step away to reset and refocus. And honestly, now there was a disconnect for me because family is a core value, but I wasn't fully embracing my clients as family. And that's been a shift I've made over the last year. Not only is family a core value for my core family, my biological blood or adopted extended family, but now my clients are a part of my family. And I engage and show up with my clients in the same way I do my sisters. Right. I want to pour into my clients the same way I love and pour into my sisters. And that was a big shift for me in how I show up and how I engaged. And I personally feel so much more aligned because I have shifted and expanded my focus and my intentions. Honestly, over break, it was actually my sister Maura, who was working a little bit more. She had some things that she wanted to prep before we went on the safari. And I kept saying, why are you still working? We want to play some games. We want to get our heads up. Game on. We need you, girl. And we need your phone. Because she had the heads up app at the time. And she was so right. She had a focus to get those important things that had to be done before we went on safari in Kenya done so that when we were on safari, she could be fully present. Right? So it's not about one or the other all the time. Sometimes it's about finding the integration and finding where things marry and just letting everyone know when she said, I need to get this done so our team can get paid while we are on safari in Kenya, we were there. That made so much sense. And then because she communicated what her focus was with us. We could help her prioritize, we could support her in that prioritization. And we were all in speaking of teams and my fabulous sister Maura, she is just one incredible player on our photography business team. You know, as many of you know, I also in addition to the consulting business@amber McHugh.com I also run a photography business called 3boudoir.com every time I say that, I want to give you the warning. Not suitable for children or work office spaces if you've got a conservative office space. Because yes, three Boudoir is creating a photography experience for women and it is such a bless if you're looking at it. If you're looking at thinking about Boudoir, find us. We'd love to work with you because. And our team is incredible. One of my focuses over the years in running my business has been building a team and that is so my partner Joanna and I can lead the business so we can lead growth and truly step into that leadership role as we're running our businesses and that we don't have to be in the weeds forever. Fast forward to today. Our photography business, Three Boudoir is a team of over 20 people. We're open in six cities, considering a seventh city this year. We have photographers and shoot stylists and a back end team that is all female because of the nature of our work. This all aligns and ties to one of my values of how to clone yourself. Because if you want to run a business and scale and grow and have balance and have freedom and flexibility, we're going to have to get you a little bit cloned, which is what I have been doing over the last 10 years as we have built that photography business and that has been a focus. And I've recently realized as we sat down at our Mastermind event last week with my clients in Accelerate, we had a couple of our team members, Malia from ambermceh.com, and Megan and Maura from 3boudoir.com we're hanging out and sharing the differences on each of the two different teams on how we've trained people up, how we have transitioned things over the years so that responsibility for certain tasks has shifted from me or my business partner Joanna to our team members so we can rise together, lift other people up so the entire business can elevate and we can serve more people and have more impact and contribute in both businesses, do something a little bit different clearly, so we can contribute and serve our clients in different ways. But at a higher level. And we've gotten good at building team and we've got good at building teams because we focused on it. Because what you focus on will grow. I've heard over and over from my mentors as I've been growing my business, as I've been partnering with leaders in business for the entirety of my career, that we can't focus on everything, right? It goes back to that one car analogy. You can only drive one car at a time. But oftentimes my mentors have said, across your life, you're probably going to be able to focus on three things at a time. In fact, Randy Zuckerberg follows and calls this the pick three rule because it's the entrepreneur's dilemma, she says, maintaining friendships, building a great company, spending time with family, staying fit, getting sleep. Right? The list of things that you may want to focus on goes on and on. But the rule of thumb is pick three, because when you're focusing beyond three, you're stretched too thin and nothing gets the right attention. Nothing gets the attention it needs for growth. So let's bring it back. What do you want to focus on developing in your life in 2019? We've got a specific exercise to take you through to help you identify the things you may want to focus on in life in 2019 and to accomplish this exercise as a part of our Virtual Planning Experience series as we set up for success in the year ahead, we've got a worksheet for you to go along with this and you can grab the worksheet@ambermcue.com FocusToGrow Focus t o grow ambermch.com FocusToGrow now, if you're not sitting at your computer right now, no stress. I'm going to walk through this worksheet so you can process it in your head. And when you are sitting at your computer, you can pop back over and grab your the worksheet and fill in the blanks very quickly to identify and help guide you to what you might want to be focusing on imminently in the near future so that you can get things in alignment and not feel like you are stretched so thin in your life and in your business because you know that there is carryover. And if you're stretched too thin or you're feeling guilty for not showing up with your family or you haven't seen your friends in forever, but friends are a priority for you and friends fuel you and you miss them, right? That is going to impact other areas of your life, including your business. So as you grab that worksheet@ambermceh.com focustogrow. You are going to see on the left hand side of the worksheet, a space to list the areas of your life that are important to you. Now, if you listened to the last episode, you may have already identified these areas in your wheel of life. So if you've already got them, pull those areas of life right over to this worksheet, this Focus to Grow worksheet, and identify the areas of your life that are important to you and that you wanna prioritize so that you wanna consider prioritizing. Areas may be family, friends, fitness, health, soul, fuel, money, balance, business or work, fun, and white space. And white space is a newly added priority for me. Moving to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where things move a little slower and we're operating at a different pace of life, I realized I got the message loud and clear that I needed more white space to be a better leader, to serve my clients better, and to show up as a better partner and mom for my family. So after you identify those areas of life that are important to you, I want you to prioritize them. And the next column on the worksheet is the priority level of each of these areas of life. But here's the catch. As you go through and prioritize, you can't have two ones as a number one priority. You can't have two twos, you can't have two threes. So if you've got 10 areas of life that you want to prioritize, you could only use each number once. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. One of each. So you might find yourself competing, thinking like, oh, no, family's a priority. No, no, no. I need soul Fuel. That's my priority. Soul Fuel is my priority. Only one. One is in the one spot, one is in the two spot. Then after you prioritize, I want you to grade yourself. How are you showing up in each of those areas of life that are important to you? Maybe you discover, like me, that no family is a high priority, but I'm not getting an A. I'm showing up with a C right now for my family. Or maybe you identify that Soul Fuel is a priority for you and you're rocking it a straight A, A. In fact, I'm getting my soul fuel on the regular. I feel good about this. And what's gonna happen is you're gonna start to see, hey, family is a number one priority for me, but I'm getting a C. I might need to focus and Take some action there or Soul Fuel is the number one priority. And I'm rocking it here. I need to just keep on keeping on. And instead I'm gonna pour into my second priority level. Maybe it's fitness, maybe it's health is your second priority, but maybe you're getting a D in that area right now. Right? So that's where you would start to take action. And what I want to invite you to do is after you've identified those areas of life, the priority levels, and you've graded yourself, I want to invite you to identify an action that you want to take in just three areas. Pick three. We're gonna follow Randy's rule, the pick three rule, so that we are not stretched too thin and so we can focus as we kick off the year ahead. Because what you focus on will grow. Are you in? So your challenge and your opportunity as Modern CEO is to identify those areas that you need to focus on now to live a better life. And when we kick off our next episode and our next series, our next episode in the virtual planning experience, we're going to start to pivot to evaluating areas of your business that you might want to focus on and draw more attention to. So this is the last episode in our life check part of the virtual planning experience. And in the next episode, we're picking up with business. So, of course, the song that comes to mind as I'm thinking about focus and as we're identifying what we're going to focus on to grow, I want to invite you to stop on something else in your business. You have permission. Vanilla Ice, Collaborate and listen. Ice is back with the brand new invention. Stop, Collaborate and Listen. Let's team up and partner as modern CEOs and focus to grow. Now, if you've identified something or three things that you are going to focus on in your life in the year ahead, I would love it if you would tag me on Instagram @amber McHugh using the hashtag ModernCEO to let us know know what your top three are. I cannot wait to hear from you. I can't wait for our next episode where we pivot into the life side of our virtual planning experience. And I am excited for your year ahead. Remember, you can have a fresh start at any time. And so if you're not listening to this at the start of the year, now is the time for your fresh start. Let's do this.