ļ»æEpisode 224
Title: The #1 thing for aligned culture in your business + family - yes, they are the same
Host: Dr. Nicole Rivera
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Transcription:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrated You Radio.
So, this topic is inspired by a question that I was asked the other day. And I was asked to respond in the shortest way possible. And the question was, what creates great culture? Inside of a business, but also inside of a home. And I thought that it was such a great question.
After having a business for twelve years and having many phases of that business, and at our peak having twenty-five employees, and now running a household, I really sat back to think about what's the one thing? What's the one thing? And for those of you quickly, as I preface that are trying to understand business and home, I talk about this a lot that there is a major synchronicity when it comes to running a successful business and running a successful home.
And I was talking about this with one of my healthpreneurs the other day, and I was just using basic examples, is that if you didn't do your job inside of a company, your boss wouldn't just do it for you. He would hold you accountable. And say, this is your job duty. And here are the outcomes if you don't do your job. And he would hold you, or she would hold you accountable to that.
And so when households, we don't practice the same principles. But if your child doesn't do something and you just do it for them, there's no level of accountability. But also, at the foundation of that is your children have never been presented exactly what is their role in the family. Family. What is the function for them to be a team player inside of the family? Have you ever given them an actual written breakdown of this is your role in the family so that you are contributing and being a collaborative team player?
And this isn't about the verbal, because parents will say to me all the time. Oh, well, I tell my kids how they can help me. I tell them. Imagine you started a job, and they just told you what you should do. They never gave you a job description. They never gave you anything on paper. And they never did any reviews, or they gave you a review, and the review was completely subjective. Because there's nothing on paper. You would be you'd be like, this is bullshit, or you can't hold me accountable to that because that was never clear. You didn't, yeah, I didn't understand that I was supposed to do that. I didn't know you wanted me to do it that way.
This became very evident to me when I was hiring externally. I was hiring a nanny to help us, with queue. And I created a very, very rigorous manual. Well, I started with a job description, and then I also So after she passed the test, essentially, because I had created a whole competency test around it. And that competency test was to assure that she was in alignment with who we were as a family. Our beliefs on health and wellness. She was in alignment essentially with the core values of our family. Because if you're not in alignment, everyone's gonna be pretty uncomfortable.
So, took her through a competency test just to see if there was alignment there in our thoughts, our ideas, our beliefs, our values. From there, going through the job description, you know, is this something that you have skill sets in? Is this something that you're willing to do? Yes. Great. Okay. Now I'm gonna give you the rigorous manual, but I think about it in a way of I'm gonna be extremely transparent on what my expectations are. And if I want something done a very hyper-specific way, I'm gonna put it on paper so there's no confusion.
And the reason I do this is because, yes, it's time upfront, but it is a lot of time that is saved later. And it is time that is saved by not being frustrated. Their energy saved because I'm not frustrated because everything is clear. Everything is transparent. And also, there's no time wasted by sitting down. Oh, we need to talk about this. We need to have a meeting because everything is black and white. And when it's black and white, accountability is extremely easy. Accountability is not emotional. Because it's just matter of fact, here is your job description, here's your duties, here's your responsibilities, and you didn't do them. End of story. There's no ambiguity. There's no confusion. And that's something that happens in households a lot.
So kind of piggybacking off of what I'm talking about with this idea of this manual, this idea of being extremely transparent with what each family member's role is. And literally getting to the point of having it on paper, having an actual manual. This is the key to great culture, great people, that still manage to enjoy what they're doing and have fun inside of a business or inside of a home. Proactivity versus reactivity. That is the key.
And I will tell you one of the major reasons why this was my light bulb moment is when I think about when I first started my business, there it was fun. There was a there we had this big bold vision. We were in creation mode. We were in growth mode. We had a small team and we were just creating. We were just having so much fun, and it was it was just so fulfilling. And then we grew significantly. And, of course, that was the intention But no one educated us on growth with lack of structure, with lack of foundation.
And so there just kept being problem after problem, fire, after fire, and you almost don't even know what's happening anymore. You don't know why it's happening. You don't know what's happening. You don't know how to make it better. And you find that the bulk of your energy is spent on putting these fires out, which is not fun. It's so draining. It makes you burnt out. It makes you overwhelmed and it sure as heck, doesn't takes away fun from your life, from your purpose, from your mission, from everything. And I know that a lot of families go through this too.
They start their family, and maybe there's one kid, maybe there's two and they're young and they're exploring and figuring it out. Then the kids start getting older, and now there's other people, there's playdates, there's school, there's, you know, other families that your kids are observing, and there's sports, and there's music, and there's all these extracurricular activities. And then all of a sudden, you're just running around with your head cut off, and you don't even know what's happening anymore. And, you know, nobody's prioritizing fun, the house. So we see chaotic. Everybody's frantic. Gotta get this person out of bed. They don't wanna go to school. They're not excelling here, and he's fighting me to play soccer, and it just becomes essentially a shit show.
And I know exactly what that's like because I experienced it in my business. I haven't experienced that in my household because I'm doing things so differently now. And really what it comes down to is It's all about being proactive and getting ahead of things that will create a drain on your time and your energy.
And so the proactivity to start. Before you can truly, truly start being proactive, you need clarity. You need clarity on who you are as a company or who you are as a family. You need clarity on what makes you unique that might that might make you stand out in a good way or a bad way.
To other people. And so what I mean by that is, you know, if you guys follow us, you know, that I'm pretty bold. And, yeah, I curse, and I'm rough around the edges, and I don't care. That is who I am. There are many people that will not follow this podcast, and there are many people that want nothing to do with my style. And then there are other people that are a hundred percent in alignment.
And that very much goes for my family. We are weirdos when it comes to how we approach health, education, and learning, and we're not doing anything conventional. We are not doing any type of conventional medications. We're not going to be doing conventional education. This is going to open up conversations when we are out with friends or our kid is being introduced to other families that don't think the way that we do. And now we're gonna be able to be proactive those conversations. We're proactive in knowing that when he goes to other people's homes, that they're not gonna get it. They're not gonna understand why maybe he's not gonna eat the Oreos.
Being able to be proactive in the conversations, be proactive in the education, be proactive in the benefits and the drawbacks of our uniqueness because it's not for us to say, we are just who we are, and that's it. Like, that doesn't mean that my son's never gonna get pushback. That doesn't mean I'm never gonna get pushback. It just means that I just need to be better equipped to know how to handle those situations.
And the same thing goes for understanding your values. If you, like, we, we have a set of family values, and we have a set of values in our company. And I will say their similarities a hundred percent because we are who we are. We are our authentic selves in our business, and we're our authentic selves in household. So there's there we're not different people in our homes versus in our company.
So the core values that we have, it's extremely important for our employees to be aligned with that because in the past before we did competency test to test people on their alignment to our values We had people that came into our company that created a shit ton of turmoil because they were a hundred percent out of alignment with our core value. They didn't hold themselves to a high standard. They didn't exercise clear communication. They didn't exercise ownership. They didn't like that we were bold. They didn't like that we were disrupting health care. They were very uncomfortable with the way that we went about some of our diagnostic testing. They were not in alignment with it. And there was nothing wrong with that. They're not bad people. It's just wasn't a fit.
And the thing about core values when it comes to a family is that this gives you a compass of how you spend your time and who you invite into your life. And when families get frantic and chaotic and they're being pulled in a million different directions, if you sit back and you start really looking at that, you're gonna find that chances are you're doing, you and your kids are doing a lot of things that you don't really wanna do. It's what you're supposed to do. It's what you grew up doing. It's what the kids in the neighborhood are doing. It's what your relatives, kids are doing. It's what the school said you should do. Whatever. And your kids are being pulled in a million directions.
And then especially if you're not having open dialogue and your kids don't feel comfortable to speak up, they might hate doing some of the sports that you think they love. They might be struggling in school because they're purely visual or purely artistic, they are not allowed to exercise that they're not allowed to learn visually because everything is auditory. They're not allowed to exercise their creativity because they just have to follow the textbook. They're not allowed to exercise critical thinking because you just follow what the teacher says. And then we wonder why kids are struggling in school And then you're getting phone calls, getting stressed out that your kid, you know, is pushing back or not following directions, or you know, quote unquote not being a good kid. When really at the end of the day, your kid is struggling because of the deficits of the school, the deficits of the teacher, Or at the end of the day, it's just your kid is asking questions. Your kid is exercising his freedom of speech. He is exercising his common sense and saying that doesn't make sense.
And so this is where understanding who you are as a family, you get very high specific on where the kids do go to school. Do they not go to school? Do they get homeschooled? You know, who are you hanging out with? What types of activities are you guys embarking on? Because so many families so many companies have lost track of having fun. They have lost track of that being such an important part of life of success, of happiness. And if we can set up our businesses if we could set up our families to have more fun and have more fun on our terms. Have more fun according to our values, to embrace our uniqueness, and not feel ashamed about our uniqueness. That is where we are going to start to change the world.
But right now, we are very far from this. And you know why I say that is because there are so many individuals, especially children with anxiety, with depression. With other mental health disorders. And we can blame it on social media, and we can blame it on tech, and we can blame it on those things. And I'm sure that there is there, you know, just getting into the nitty gritty of the blue light on all these devices, that can affect the brain a hundred percent. You know, kids being on social media and playing the comparison game. That will play a role, of course.
But also at the same time is we're living in an era where there's so much pressure to do this, to be this, to act this way, and to subscribe to what society tells us is normal and accepted to subscribe to what our cultures or our religion tells us is accepted and normal, to subscribe to even what other families or businesses are doing in the neighborhood, in the community, in the county, in the state. And we lose sight of who we are. We lose sight of our identity. We lose sight of our passions. We lose sight of our values. And we live in the should've. We live in the half dues. And we don't live in the, I get to's and I want to's.
And if we can shift to being more in alignment with who we are and what our values are. Life is more enjoyable because we get to. And we want to. So if you're looking for a resource, we have an entire values course that helps you as an individual figure out what's important to you. We also have a family framework, which allows you to understand and go through a workshop on who are you as a family? What is your vision of family? What is your uniqueness as a family? What are your core values as a family? Get really specific on how you are going to change the priorities of your family. Change the dynamics of your family in order to start creating that.
And if you are the entrepreneur, I have a very similar framework for businesses. And I created this I have a lot of resources for entrepreneurs, but one of my resources that I made more recently because I find that so many of my healthpreneurs, especially they're in the trenches taking grenades. And I know families are doing the same. So there are similarities in these two tools. But when you're in the trenches and you feel like your entire day, your entire week, your entire month is putting out fires. It's really hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's really hard to implement anything big. It is really hard to feel like you can get out of the situation that you're in. So I've put something together that allows you to take one micro step to get yourself and your business to a better place. With more clarity so that you can start moving the company in the right direction. And it's just it's super simple. It's super digestible, and it's very, very applicable. So I invite you guys to check out these resources. I will make sure that they are linked below. But, again, we need to have more fun. What is life all about? And we need to understand that time and energy are our two biggest assets. And we need to stop wasting time on things that we don't enjoy and stop spending our energy on things that are draining soul-sucking. And that might seem very out of touch, but I promise you that these tools are gonna get you one step closer to that.
