5 Ways to Help Yourself with James Johnson of The Peer Effect

As 2023 is coming to an end, so is season 2 of Future Fit Founder Podcast.

Today, I am taking a moment to reflect on what I learned from the guests on this podcast.

Ultimately, it all starts with you as a founder.

Here are my top 5 ways to help yourself:

1. Be patient with yourself, as a founder, the journey you are embarking on will be longer than you are planning for
2. Be kind to yourself, the pressure you are feeling is often self-inflicted. 
3. Be fair to yourself, comparison is the thief of joy and grass is always greener on the other side. Water and take care of your garden first.
4. Prioritise yourself, you will survive longer and enjoy the journey more.
5. Trust yourself, your gut instinct will serve you more than listening to outside opinions.

Tune in and listen to the last episode of 2023, as I share my thoughts on how you can get more out of your business and create more sustainability in your day-to-day life, as a founder.

More from James:

Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi guys, this is the last episode of season 2. We'll be taking a break until January, for season 3 kicks off, and I thought I'd take the chance just to do an episode just with me and talk about what some of things will. I've learned over the last season and I think the big, big thing that comes out time and time again which is which is quite exciting is it's just all about you. It starts with you as the founder, but with that, I think that I think that opens up five opportunities and five things to look at which can really help us. So I say, here are my top five things that you can do if it starts with you.

Speaker 1: 0:49

So first one be patient with yourself. Now I know we like to set these, these crazy time frames and crazy expectations, but since current on the podcast time and time again is this idea that it's a longer journey than we plan for, and I think once you accept that it's going to be a longer journey, you make different decisions and often better decisions. We're not rushing, we're just allowing it to take the time and it takes and we can take different and better decisions. The second one is be kind to yourself, and it's kind of linked this, but I well indoctrinated this idea of stretch goals, like let's really put ourselves under pressure, and often we we set ourselves these insane stretch goals which, which, which, are just unnecessary, and all they really do is they put us under pressure and make us less likely to achieve them. So I think if we're kind to ourselves and actually set reasonable goals, we are much more likely to achieve them and much more likely to be successful in the end. The third one would be be fair to yourself, because I mean, there's so much stuff when you look around, like who are we really comparing ourselves to? We compare ourselves to stories we see on LinkedIn. We compare ourselves to an idealized version of ourselves that we we feel we should be living up to. And is that? Is that really fair? Are we being fair with ourselves? And I really don't think we are if we just let's compare ourselves to a good version of ourselves or a reasonable expectation of someone else, if we're going to do an external comparisons at all, because often the reality behind these kind of projections just just just don't match up to the truth.

Speaker 1: 2:45

A fourth one for me then we just prioritize yourself, because we hear this stuff about leaders eat last and kind of team first and and I think that's great, I think this is a this is a great reaction to some fairly outdated leadership styles. But if you look now, most founders, these fans I work with are so people focused and are so put themselves last. They really don't take take care of themselves at all and actually the one thing that we can control is ourselves. And looking after ourselves, both physically and mentally, means you make better decisions at the moment, but also means we can survive the whole journey. And the fifth one is just trust yourself.

Speaker 1: 3:34

No one really has the knowledge that we have about our businesses because, well, we've been living in them day-to-day. We get the strategy, we see the data, we have that gut feel and if everyone knew, everyone would do it, as it's very easy to find these opinions around. Should you be doing it? All these challenges on, or maybe should give that person longer, or a whole range of things? But often in my experience, certainly from coaching, is that there's often a good reason for that gut instinct.

Speaker 1: 4:08

By the time by time, at a stage you've grown business to a certain size. You know your business, you know what you're doing. You can listen to your, to your gut a bit more, and I think what's really exciting about these five things they do will start with us, and there's so much outside of our control as founders environmental impact, sort of customer behavior, employee behavior like systemic shocks, I mean this. There's just so much. But if we do control what we can control, and that's really starts with us, I think we've got a really great shot at being successful. And that's what I've really taken from this the season to is that's the word clients of the day, like how good a boss are you to yourself? Because often, often, my clients are great bosses to their teams and just really bad bosses to themselves. So I think it was going to be one thought, and this season to take into the break is be a great boss to yourself too. Have a great break, guys.