values

Your Business Values: Foundation For A Successful Spa Business

When running your own spa business, you have to juggle many things every single day. Getting clear on your business values will certainly give you a solid foundation to help you run a successful spa.

It’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Or get caught up in the next latest, greatest gadget, you may find yourself a bit lost or overspending on something that isn’t in alignment with your business values.

It’s not just about writing down your values on a piece of paper, put it aside, and never see it again. I’m talking about knowing your values and constantly referring back to them to help you make better business decisions.

If you’re thinking, “I already know this stuff” but you’re still having challenges in your business, you’re not turning your values into action yet.

Let’s get to the core of this recipe for success:

Your Personal and Professional Values

As a small or micro-business owner, we’re very involved in the day-to-day operation of our businesses. You interact with your clients and team every day so your personal values will have a big impact on your business.

In a way, we are an extension of our businesses. As such, your personal and professional values need to be in alignment for better clarity and deeper understanding in any business decision.

If you haven’t considered your personal values, you probably haven’t thought about your professional values either.

When I work with spa owners on their vision and mission for their businesses, we often have to backtrack and clarify their personal values because they go hand-in-hand with their business values.

Why You Need To Define Your Business Values

It’s important to know what do you stand for. When you know what you stand for, your clients will too. They will feel you.

Defining values often comes up when spa owners need to create a business plan. As owners go down the list of planning and come across questions like these:, “What’s a mission statement?” and “what is your vision? What is your 5-10 year plan?” or, “What are your core values?” Begin head spinning now…

Even if a spa owner works through some exercises to write up their business plans, they often gloss over the section on business values because that information doesn’t immediately affect the operation of the business.

Or, does it?

If you plan to gloss over writing out your business values, you’re building your business on quicksand. You need that foundation.

When you establish your personal and professional values, you’re putting a stake in the ground by declaring what your business is about, what you stand for, and what you believe in.

You’re setting up a non-negotiable set of values against which form your business decisions and help you run your business.

When you’re grounded in your values, you won’t get distracted by bright shiny objects, swayed by opinions, or get lost in this noisy digital world.

You’ll be able to make better investments in your business and avoid wasting money on things that don’t contribute to your vision or what you stand for.

In addition, when you’re solid in your values and vision, your marketing message will become super clear so you can stand out and attract your ideal clients.

Putting Your Values Into Action

One of the foundational exercises I do with my clients is to write out their mission statements and core values.

These aren’t just some sound bites that look good on paper.

You need to put some heart and soul into the process because you’re exposing who you truly are, what you believe in, and how you want to show up in your community.

Your actions are a reflection of your values, whether you realize it or not. When you have a clear set of values to guide your actions, you can become the business leader that you want to be.

Here’s a quote from Martin Luther King to illustrate this point,

“If we are to go forward we must go backward and rediscover our precious values, because all reality hinges on the moral foundation.”

Now you may wonder, where to begin?

Here is a example list of some core values courtesy of Scott Jeffrey:

Acceptance
Accomplishment
Accountability
Boldness
Bravery
Brilliance
Calm
Candor
Capable
Clever
Comfort
Decisive
Decisiveness
Dedication
Dependability
Determination
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Empathy
Empower
Endurance
Energy
Enjoyment
Enthusiasm
Equality
Ethical
Excellence
Experience
Fairness
Family
Famous
Fearless
Focus
Foresight
Fortitude
Freedom
Friendship
Fun
Generosity
Genius
Giving
Goodness

Grace
Gratitude
Greatness
Growth
Happiness
Hard work
Harmony
Health
Honesty
Honor
Hope
Humility
Imagination
Improvement
Independence
Individuality
Innovation
Inquisitive
Insightful
Inspiring
Integrity
Intelligence
Intensity
Intuitive
Irreverent
Joy
Justice
Kindness
Knowledge
Lawful
Leadership
Learning
Liberty
Logic
Love
Loyalty
Mastery
Maturity
Meaning
Moderation
Motivation
Openness

Optimism
Order
Organization
Originality
Passion
Patience
Peace
Performance
Persistence
Playfulness
Poise
Potential
Power
Present
Productivity
Professionalism
Prosperity
Purpose
Quality
Realistic
Reason
Recognition
Recreation
Reflective
Respect
Responsibility
Restraint
Results-oriented
Reverence
Rigor
Risk
Satisfaction
Security
Self-reliance
Selfless
Sensitivity
Serenity
Service
Sharing
Significance
Silence
Simplicity

Sincerity
Skill
Skillfulness
Smart
Solitude
Spirit
Spirituality
Spontaneous
Stability
Status
Stewardship
Strength
Structure
Success
Support
Surprise
Sustainability
Talent
Teamwork
Temperance
Thankful
Thorough
Thoughtful
Timeliness
Tolerance
Toughness
Traditional
Tranquility
Transparency
Trust
Trustworthy
Truth
Understanding
Uniqueness
Unity
Valor
Victory
Vitality
Wealth
Welcoming
Wisdom
Wonder

Select ten core values or so and then whittle down your list to five top values!

Display your values on a whiteboard or your vision board and put it in a place where you can see it every day.

 

Examples of Business Values

I want to give you some examples to show what personal and business values could look like by sharing some of my core values:

  • Learn something new every day: I encourage my clients to do this and I, of course, practice what I preach (because that’s my core value as well!)
  • Learn from my failures quickly: when we hit a roadblock, it’s tempting to wallow in the failures. We could get so discouraged that we’d throw the baby out with the bathwater. I move through my failures quickly, take the golden nuggets out of the experience, and identify opportunities to pivot without compromising my core values.
  • Not to take failures personally: failures really aren’t a reflection of who you are! Beating yourself up for one mistake can affect your self-confidence and prevent you from trying again.
  • Celebrate the wins: as entrepreneurs, we’re often so busy beating ourselves up that we forget to acknowledge what’s working (so we can do more of it!)

 

What are your personal and professional core values? How do they affect your business decisions? Leave a comment below and share your experience:

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