How They Do Business

This week, I talk about the downsides of rapid growth. Is there a downside? And if so, what is it?⁠ To be honest, I hadn’t found any “downsides” that wouldn’t exist in a smaller company. However, there a couple of things that you must have in place to cater for the rapid growth if you are trying to minimise the negatives.⁠

To be honest, I’m not inspired by much externally. I’m inspired by things like competition, I’m inspired by growth and development of the business. If someone enjoys their role 80%, I want to make that 85%. If you think you’re getting one thing, I always want to outdo that and that’s my kind of inspiration.

Something we pride ourselves in at Fuel Your Life is our culture and our values. They are so important to us – they are who we are, who we strive to be as a company and as individuals. And, I care a lot about what we do and how the people within the company feel.⁠ I work so much to make that happen, so it truly hurts me when I hear that it’s not quite working.⁠ It’s brutal, man.

First of all, let’s define what ruthless actually means. According to the Oxford Dictionary, it means to “have or show no pity or compassion for others,” so no, I don’t think anyone NEEDS to be ruthless in business by that brutal definition. That being said, the way that ruthless can be interpreted in many ways and there is room for a certain level of ruthlessness from time to time.

Compromising in business, compromising your appearance, compromising who you are… Should you ever do any of them?⁠ In my experiences, sometimes you have to compromise. I had to do a lot of compromising through university, and still today as a leader of our organisation. At the end of the day, it’s about knowing what you are willing to compromise on and what you’re not.⁠

Silence is NOT golden. If no one knows what’s going on, no one can actually help you. Get it? Hear my thoughts on speaking to your managers about what’s troubling you.

In some cases, the answer is always yes. Yes, I want more, yes I want to grow. When it comes to removing something, saying no, it might not be as simple as that. Our organisation is only three years old, so we’re still young but my decision-making process has played a large part in our growth.

“They don’t know that you know…” is the name of this week’s How They Do Business podcast. I chose to speak about dishonesty in the workplace for this episode. It is something that I’m sure every business owner has dealt with. It is entirely up to you, how you chose to handle it… But this is what I do.

“Honesty, honesty, honesty…” In this episode I cover dishonesty in the workplace, what I don’t like about the dietetics industry, how I help my staff level up, and my weaknesses (to name a few).

This week is all about the ins and outs of what true support is, how holding someone accountable is one of the best ways of providing that support and how you can do so without making the staff member feel personally attacked. A lot of managers struggle with it, but it is not as hard or daunting as you might think.