The Create Your Day Podcast

106. Are you building a business or building a prison?

• Jenn Cody • Season 1 • Episode 106

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Ever look around your business and think, “This is what I wanted… so why do I feel miserable?” You’re not alone. Too many entrepreneurs wake up every day in businesses that look successful on paper but feel like a prison in reality. In this episode, I’m breaking down how to create a values-based business—one that aligns with who you are, attracts the right clients, and gives you back your life.

If you’ve ever felt like success without alignment is failure, this conversation will change how you run your business (and how you feel inside it).

Key Takeaways

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • The difference between a reactive business and a values-based business
  • Why values aren’t just pretty words on your About page—they’re decision-making criteria
  • How aligning with your core values can actually increase profitability
  • A simple exercise to uncover your top 3–5 values today
  • How to filter clients, offers, and opportunities through your values
  • Why it’s never too late to realign your business, no matter how far off track you feel


Thanks for listening!

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SPEAKER_00:

Hey friends, welcome to this week's episode of the Create Your Day Podcast. I'm your host, Jen Cody. Thank you so much for being here. If it's your first time, welcome. If it is not your first time, welcome back. Thank you so much for choosing to spend some of your very precious time with me this week. So I want to jump right in and I would like to share a story with you. And then what I want you to do is see if anything in this story feels, I don't know, like triggering for you or brings up feelings that you may or may not be able to identify. But can you relate to any of it? What sounds familiar? What makes you stop and say, eesh, I think that might be me? So this is not a story about a real person, truth be told. I am just walking through what I see. So what I'm going to walk through is something that I've seen with a lot of my clients, but it is not actually one person's story. I'm kind of synthesizing synthesizing them into this story I want to share with you. So just imagine that there is a person. I'm going to give her a name. Let's call her Michelle. So Michelle is really exhausted. Like the kind of exhausted that doesn't matter how much sleep you're getting, you wake up exhausted, right? Like that your brain is so overloaded all of the time that even though your body is resting, you're still really tired, even after a good night's sleep. And Michelle is really successful. She's making a ton of money, she's got the revenue growing, she's maybe even growing a team, right? She has people working for her, she can delegate. She has all of the things, all of the external markers, I should say, of a success. But when I sit and I ask Michelle how does she feel about this success? How does she feel about her life, about her business? She just kind of disappears, right? She she's deflated. That kind of question asking her to put her attention on how she feels about her excess, about her success, makes her feel like withdrawn if she goes into herself. And then what she says is this I thought this was what I wanted, but I'm miserable. I'm working more than I was when I was working in some corporate job when I had a nine to five. I never see my family, I never see my kids, and to be honest, I don't even like the people I'm working with. Half my clients don't even like them. Can you relate to that? This is something I actually hear really often. And what I've learned through these conversations is that there is a version of success that is not necessarily in alignment. And that type of success actually feels like failure. So that's what we're going to dive into today, the difference that it makes when you build a business that is based on values versus, well, I guess whatever it is that accidentally gets created when we just build things because we're trying to survive. So let's start by talking about what I mean when I say a business based based on values. I'm not talking about having pretty words on your about page. I'm not talking about building a vision board with your value words glued to it. That's not what this is about. A values-based business is one where your personal values, the things that matter most to you in your life, they are actively baked into how you operate every day, how you make your decisions, how you spend your time, who you work with, what and who you say yes to, and who you say no to, and what you say no to. It's the difference between having values and actually living your values. Because I can tell you, as an entrepreneur, we are all about values. We have got our values written down somewhere, probably in a journal from a workshop that you took like a couple of years ago. But those values, they're not necessarily driving anything. So instead, maybe your decisions are being based on fear, or based on money, or based on whatever you think you're supposed to do, whatever fire is burning the brightest that day, the hottest that day. And I totally understand this because when you are in survival mode, values kind of feel like a luxury that's available for other people, like something that you'll eventually get to when things calm down. But here's the thing, and this really did change everything for me. I there was a moment that I realized that you know what? Things don't calm down, at least not on their own. We have to intentionally create the calm, and that starts with our values. So let me talk some stories again. I'm gonna paint you two different pictures. They're about two very different businesses, but they have they're in the same industry, they make the same amount of money, their revenue is super similar, but there's two completely different experiences. So the first one, business A, this business is reactive. So this person, she starts her day checking her email, she immediately gets pulled into someone else's emergency. So she says yes to a client project that doesn't excite her because she's worried about her cash flow. She works through lunch because she's always feeling behind. She cancels dinner with her family or postpones it indefinitely until they eventually just eat without her because of a last-minute client request. You know what exactly what I'm talking about, right? I'm just gonna take five minutes to have this quick client call. And before you know it, it's 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 35 minutes, 45 minutes, 60 minutes later, and your family's sitting at the kitchen table while you're on a Zoom call. Then maybe you fall asleep checking the phone, anxious about what the next day is going to bring. This day in the life of a reactive business is exhausting. It's as exhausting as it sounds. Honestly, even just saying it out loud kind of made me a little anxious. And then we have business B. And business B is a values-based business. So this person is starting her day with a non-negotiable morning routine. And guess what? This morning routine, it doesn't have to start at five o'clock in the morning, if that's not what feels good to you. But there's a morning routine that is non-negotiable. You know why? Because you value your well-being. Then this person maybe has a client inquiry, but they decline it because the money, great, but the project or the person does not align with her values. Maybe it's the impact that she wants to make. So she protects that space by declining something not in alignment. This person also has really high values about around integrity, around family. So when a last-minute request comes in, it's easy for her to uphold her boundaries because of those values. She closes her laptop at the end of her day and is able to be fully present with her family because she built a business that serves those values. Business A, reactive, business B, values-based. Same industry, same revenue, completely different lives. And that is the power of a values-based business. And I know exactly what you're thinking: that it sounds great in theory, but I can't just turn money away. I have bills to pay. I hear you, I'm not suggesting you operate recklessly and ignore your financial reality. Here's what I've seen happen over and over and over again. When you get clear on your values and you make your decisions based on them, I can almost promise you that something remarkable will happen. You will make more money and not less. And I'm going to tell you why, because clarity is magnetic. When you're clear about who you serve and why you serve them, you attract the clients that are aligned with you. When you're clear about your boundaries, you're commanding the time that belongs to you to be protected. When you're clear about your worth, you feel comfortable charging the prices that you know will sustain your business. When you're clear about your worth, you will also stop undercharging and over-delivering, which is an exhausting cycle. How many of you are afraid to raise your prices? But in order to then be okay financially, you need to work so much more, so much harder, because the work that you're doing is not bringing in the revenue that you know that you need because you're not comfortable yet with your worth. Okay, so let's talk about how values actually need to function in business. Because I said earlier, it's super common for entrepreneurs to be based in values somewhere in their life. They have explored it. They know that it's part of the process when they want to create a business that is aligned with who they are and how they want to live their lives. So values come up often in entrepreneurship, but are they actually functioning in your business? Or, like we said before, are they just written in a journal somewhere from a workshop that you took? This is where we have to figure out practically how to make things work. So our values need to be the decision makers. They need to be the criteria, the filter that we're putting every opportunity, every client, every project, every commitment, they have to pass through these filters to see if they are aligned with the values that we have. So so many conversations that I have about values always end up bringing in the word family. Every entrepreneur I speak to, part of their thought process in actually becoming an entrepreneur was the freedom to spend more time with their family. So, what does that actually mean, though, if that's your value? It pretty much means that you're not going to schedule a client call during an activity that your child has that you want to be at. You're going to build a business that offers allow for family time, not working around family time. So maybe that means you do need to charge a little bit more so that you can have fewer clients to hit your revenue goals. And maybe it means you're turning down opportunities that were would require you to, I don't know, maybe travel too much or um be on the phone at different hours, right? Like working in different time zones. So if you're working in a time zone that is not the same as where you are, it can present a challenge if your client is always only available during, you know, like your dinner time or your time that you're driving your kids to basketball practice, that kind of thing. So you want to create boundaries that protect family. And how does that work in your business? The value isn't just a word on the wall. It needs to actively shape how you operate. And that's just with family. There's so many other things. So let's say you value honesty, integrity, things like that. That means that maybe you're only selling services that you genuinely believe will be helpful to people. You're honest about your timelines, what results people can expect. You address problems head on instead of avoiding like those funky, difficult conversations that nobody enjoys, um, but many people actively avoid them altogether. You're not going to be manipulative in your marketing tactics. You're going to honor your commitments even when it's inconvenient. So your values must become the framework for everything. Now, I want to put a little caveat in here because does this mean that you are never going to have to take a call during a soccer game? No. Of course, there are going to be things that happen. But if you put this filter in place and start to create your business and make your decisions through this filter, those things will happen less and less and less. So I actually held a retreat last week and one of the women that was there really had never thought too much about her values. She was like, I don't even know what words do I have to choose from when it comes to my values and how do I decide which ones are important and which ones aren't. So if that's something that you're thinking, it's okay. There are a lot of people who don't know where to go with this values work because we're so busy reacting to our life that we never really stop to identify the things that matter. So I'm going to walk you through a little bit of an exercise. You could do this right now if you're in a place where you can, or save it for later. Not a big deal. But make sure you come back to it if you're not going to do it with us right now. So I want you to think back to a time that you felt really aligned and energized by your work. And I don't mean happy, I mean energized, alive, like, ah, this is what I want to do. This is, you know, when you're in that flow state and time just is, you don't even know six hours went by while you were doing something. So do you have a moment in your mind? Can you picture something you were doing at that time? Yes? Great. Okay, so ask yourself, what values were being honored in that moment? So think about someone who um maybe is a photographer or I don't know why this just came to my mind, but like somebody, a baker who makes beautiful wedding cakes, things like that. So when they are in that moment where time is just flowing and they're not even realizing it because they're so aligned with what they're doing, there's probably a value of creativity that exists for them. Right? So think about for you what values are being honored in the moments where you feel most energized. If you were having someone like have a breakthrough, that might point to a value like impact, growth, service. Like I said, with the wedding cakes, and that could be creativity, artistry, um, or someone who is a little more uh cerebral, right? Solving a really complex problem, maybe in financial um spreadsheets or coding on the computer, you know, like there's there's so many things that people do spend their time on, that can point to innovation, challenge, mastery. You know, there's so many things. And when you think about being energized with your work, that's one way to do it. Now think about the people around you. When you're around other people, who makes you feel energized there? You know, so when I had this conversation with this woman on the retreat, I was explaining that one of my core values is growth, evolution, expansion. Um, I just, it's something that always makes me feel good. When I'm doing work on an offer for my business that I know will help someone grow, I am just lit up by that. When I am doing work on myself that helps me to grow and evolve, I am lit up by that. And when I spend time with people who share that value, I also feel super very, very energized. It's hard for me to spend time around people who don't value their growth and evolution and expansion, people who are just happy to be where they are, comfortable, staying in that comfort zone. I don't really feel aligned with that. So that would not be someone that I choose to spend a lot of my time with. So think about the people and the things that make you feel energized. That will help you figure out like what those value words may be for you. And then at the same time, we want to spend time thinking about the opposite. So, what is a time in your business or a person that you've been around that just drains you, makes you feel resentful, like, oh, why the heck am I even doing this? Why am I spending any time with this person? Why am I spending any time trying to make this work in my business? What values were being compromised in that moment? Because it's not always, you know, just recognizing what lights us up, it's also recognizing what drains up, what the excuse me, what drains us. So what are the values that may be compromised in those moments? If you're doing work that feels meaningless, then valuing your purpose is being ignored. If you are working with a difficult client, maybe there's somebody who always just calls during dinner time or doesn't respect your time when you say, okay, I have 10 minutes to speak, and then they're still rambling on 15 minutes later, 20 minutes later, your values of respect, autonomy, um, boundaries, those are all being violated. So these are the things to pay attention to. You want to see what is being compromised and what lights you up. And that's how you'll start to recognize your values. Those patterns in the energized moments, those are your values. The pattern in the drain moments, those are also your values that are being ignored. This is how you can begin to find them because it is a process. It's not something that's going to happen overnight. You know, like it may be really easy for some of you to sit down and just write down what your values are, but for a lot of people, they need to spend some time going through the motions and figuring out what rises to the top for them. Okay, so I'd like to walk you through a little bit of an example here, too. There is a person that I have worked with and we've done a lot of work on her core values. And for her, once we started talking about it and seeing what rose to the top, her three words that she came up with were freedom, connection, and excellence. One thing I want to say here too is there's no wrong answer. Just be I don't want you to hear like someone else's value words and be like, oh wait, should mine be different? What they are is exactly what they need to be. So that's that. So this person that I worked with, her words were freedom, connection, and excellence. So I want to dive in a little bit and explain to you what that means so you can start to recognize how your values should be operating in your business. So for freedom, that means she needed flexibility in her schedule, right? She needed autonomy in how she worked. It was all about her controlling her time. Connection means that she wants deep, meaningful relationships with her clients, not just transactional interactions and things that are fleeting, right? And then excellence. Excellence to me means that she wants to do exceptional work. She does not want to be just checking boxes off and like crossing the T's and dotting the I's. She wants to do excellence, rising above really exceptional work. So when we sat down and looked at her current business through that filter, almost nothing aligned. She had way too many clients that wanted quick and cheap solutions. No one was looking for a relationship with her. It was very, very transactional. So that actually violated all three of her values. But it really, she didn't realize that that's what was happening. She was scheduling calls all hours of the day because she wanted to accommodate everyone. This was violating freedom for her. She was saying yes to projects that were outside of what she normally does because she needed the money. And that violated excellence. You know, she was not able to turn anyone away because she was so focused on needing that revenue that she said yes to everything. And so I was like, oh my gosh, you know, no wonder you're miserable. We need to rebuild this. And we don't need to go back and rebuild it from scratch, but we do need to have strategy. We need to be strategic on how you can take these values and rebuild your business into something that is a beautiful revenue-producing machine for you that feels good and in alignment. So it took some work, but she was able to get to a place where she was raising her prices in a way that she could work with fewer clients who actually valued excellence. This was a huge moment because so many people are so afraid to raise those prices. You know, they don't want to turn anyone away. Figuring out how to work with the people who see your value is going to be a game changer for you. Then what she did was she was able to create a program that built in the connection over time. So it was no longer these one-off projects. She went from like quick and easy solutions that were super transactional to still providing those solutions, but through a program that invited people in to have a relationship with her. Really, really remarkable, I have to say. And then that all both of those things, right? The price difference and the program part made it easier for her to monitor her time, set work hours that gave her freedom to live her life. So she was in this great place, right? She was like, oh, I'm I'm doing exactly what I want to do with the people I want to do it with and making the money that I need to make. And things were going along super smoothly. And then all of a sudden, I saw that she was kind of creeping back into that place of like deflation and withdrawn and just not lighting up the way that she had been before. So we had more conversation, and it turned out that there were three clients that she had identified as really sucking her dry when it came to her energy and her values. So we did a lot of work around that, and she needed to let go of those three people. So fire the clients, right? Fire the clients who are sucking your energy. These things were not easy, but they were strategic and they were necessary. And within six months, her revenue was up. She loved her business again. She said to me that she was excited, not because everything was perfect, but because she actually felt that she was building something that was in alignment with her and reflected who she was. This is the power of having a values-based business. When we look at our businesses about just making money, it's it's not going to work. We have to figure out how do we build something sustainable, something that we can maintain for the long haul without burning out. So when you don't have a values-based business, I want to talk about what happens there because I really do think this is important. Without values as your guide, you will end up making decisions that are based on whatever feels urgent in the moment. Urgency is a terrible framework. Okay? Please understand that. Urgency is a terrible framework. You will say yes to clients who are not a good fit. You'll create offers based on what you just think is gonna sell and have no thought around what do you actually want to be delivering? You know, like I'm sure there are guaranteed revenue streams out there that I can go do, but that's not what I want to be doing. This is what I want to be doing. And if it means it takes longer, I would rather have it take longer. So if you find that you're like copying other people's work because you feel like you don't know how you want to operate yourself, that's a trigger. That's that should be an alarm bell for you. If you're violating your own boundaries because you don't want to disappoint anyone, you are slowly over time building a business that is going to feel like a prison. And I see this all the time. People who look so successful on paper, but they are just miserable. Their businesses require them to betray who they are every single day. Eventually, something's going to break there. And that can be a relationship in your life, it could be your mental well-being, your health, your physical health, or it the business, right? Something has to give in those situations. So I'm telling you today, it does not have to be that way. When you lead with values, everything is going to change. You'll attract those better clients. They're going to resonate with what you stand for. Your decision making is faster because you have criteria, you have a filter to put things through. Your boundaries are being are easier to enforce because you know what you're protecting. It makes sense to you. You're not having boundaries that are in place because you think they're supposed to be. You actually know why they're there. You're charging appropriately because you understand how much you're worth. And of course, you're building something sustainable because it's aligned with who you actually are. Okay, so what do you do? Right? This all sounds great, but what do you actually do? Go back to that exercise about being energized, being drained. Identify your top three to five core values. Not 20, not 10, 3. These are your non-negotiables. The things that, like if they're violated, it makes you miserable. I will give you some examples, but use Chat GPT. Get in there and ask ChatGPT. Tell them what you feel energy, energized by, what you feel drained by, and ask Chat GPT. Give me some values, value words that are aligned with this. Some examples that I see often: integrity, freedom, creativity, family, impact, growth, excellence, adventure, authenticity, wealth, service, um, collaboration, communication. Like there's so many different words. And so I want you to pick the ones that make you feel something, not the ones you think you should have. Okay? The ones you actually do have. And then you're going to run your current business through the values filter. Look at your clients, look at your offers, look at your schedule, the way you operate, and ask yourself honestly, is this aligned with my values or not? You're probably going to find some uncomfortable things that are not aligned. And that's okay, it's normal. Don't panic, just notice them. And then I want you to make one value-based decision this week. So, what could that be? Do you need to say no to an opportunity that doesn't align with you? Is it setting a boundary that you've been afraid to set? Maybe there's a difficult conversation that you've been avoiding, or do you need to create some space in your schedule for something that matters? Like one decision based on values and just see how that feels. Then you're going to build values into your systems because this is where it actually becomes permanent and part of your operations. Your values shouldn't just live in your head or in your journal. They need to actually be embedded in how you operate your life and business. So if you value family, build your calendar around family time first. You know how you plot a doctor's appointment on your calendar and then you just do things around that block. We could do the same thing for our family. You want to have dinner with your family every single night at 6.30? Put it on your calendar. And if that means you need to take a call after dinner or before dinner, fine. But protect that time if it is a value of yours. If you value excellence, what are the systems that you need to put in place that can create quality control? What's going to ensure that excellence? So many people value freedom, right? But we need to design offers that don't trap us in hourly work. What are the things that are going to give us that freedom? Connection, client experience. What's going to deepen that connection, deepen the relationships? Your systems should make it easy for you to honor your values, not hard. Okay? Easy, not hard. So when I talk about value-based business, people worry that they are going to make less money because somehow we've been conditioned to think that values and profit are somehow opposing forces. I can only speak to my own experience, and in my experience, the opposite is true. Values-based businesses are more profitable because of so many things. But let's just name the top three. One, you attract the people who are going to pay the prices that you demand because you believe in your worth, and that attracts the people who also believe in your worth. When you're clear about what you stand for, you magnetize people who share those values. And guess what? Those people, they're not going to nickel and dime you. They invest because they believe in what you are building. Number two, you waste less time, less energy on misaligned work. Every single hour you spend with a client that's violating your values is an hour you can't spend on energizing work that is aligned. So cut out the misaligned. Stuff, you're freeing up your capacity for better opportunities. You know, when you're so focused on filling every hour because every hour is tied to a dollar amount, you're missing the opportunities out there that are better for you. And third, you're gonna make faster decisions, you're gonna make better decisions. Decision fatigue, we have talked about it. It's real and expensive. When you have clear values, you are not going to agonize over these choices. You're gonna know what aligns and what doesn't. Speed is valuable. Fourth, build something sustainable. This is so important because burnout, probably the most expensive values killer, spirit killer. When you quit and have to take months off to recover, that costs money. A values-based business prevents burnout, keeps you aligned and energized. So, no, leading with values, it should not hurt your profitability. It enhances it. Even more importantly, it makes that profit so much more meaningful. Because honestly, what is the point of making six figures? What's the point of making seven figures if you are miserable, if you never see your family, your health is falling apart, you're dreading every Monday morning. This is not success. That's a well-paid prison. Get out of it. Before we wrap up, I want one more thing I want to address. So some of you might be thinking, what if my business is built already? What if I've already made decisions that don't align? Is it too late? And it is never too late for anything. Absolutely not. I have worked with people who've completely pivoted to align with their values. We spoke about that last week, right? When to pivot, when to persist. If nothing's aligned, it's time to pivot. That takes courage and it takes time, but it's always possible. So some of the things you might need to do if you are someone who's living in this prison already, there's difficult conversations with existing clients. You have to have them. You have to get rid of offers that are not aligned with what you want to be doing and rebuild your marketing around that, right? And around your values. Does your marketing now reflect who you are at your core? Does it reflect anything about your values? Relook at that. Set new boundaries. Uncomfortable, right? Boundaries are uncomfortable. We have to enforce them. And if there's revenue in your business that is costing you your soul, walk away from it. It is not worth it. It's so hard to do. But making room for the revenue that is aligned is a life-changing thing for you to do. None of it is easy. But what's harder is spending another year, another five years, another 10 years building something that doesn't reflect who you are. Every single day that you spend out of alignment is a day you can't get back. The sooner you start the realignment process, the sooner you get your life back. You don't have to burn everything down. You don't have to start over from scratch, but you do have to start making different decisions. Decisions based on values, not on fears. All right, so let's wrap this up. What is the actual difference between a values-based business and one that's just existing? Values-based feels like alignment. You're energized, you're not anxious. Values-based, attracting the right people. The clients find you because they resonate with who you are, what you stand for. Values-based decisions are easier. There's a criteria, a filter for yes and no. Business is sustainable this way. You can maintain it for years. There's no burnout. And a values-based business serves your life. It does not consume it. That is the difference. And honestly, that's everything. That is everything. So if you take nothing else from today's episode, take this. Your business should amplify who you are in a positive way, not require you to betray yourself. If you're building something that demands you compromise every single day, what's important to you, you're building a prison, not a business. You deserve better. Okay, so you want some homework? I'm going to give it to you. This week, I want you to identify your top three core values. Look at one decision you're facing, run it through that values filter. Does it align? Does it not? Make the values-based choice, even if it's scary, even if it's risky, and even if it means saying no to money. Make one values-based decision and just see what happens, see how it feels. I would love to hear how it goes. So you can reach out to me on Instagram, reach out to me in email, just reach out. Let me know. I read every single message. Thank you so much for being here today. Hopefully, you can take this information, go out there, create your day, create your life, create your business in the best way possible. And do me a favor, if this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone else who needs to hear it. Screenshot it, post it to your stories, link a friend, leave a review. Honestly, that's like the greatest thing you guys can do to help this podcast reach more people. Rate it, leave it a review. It will help it get into the ears of more people who need to hear what we're sharing. Okay, let's spread the message. Business does not have to be soul crushing. So if you want more things like this, deliver it into your inbox. You can absolutely get my weekly email. Just go to gencodysolutions.com. I share insights, frameworks, real talk about businesses that are actually going to serve your life. So until next time, remember you are building something that should honor who you are, not erase you. Take care of yourself, take care of each other, and I will see you guys next week. Have a good one.