As an entrepreneur, what is the overarching goal that you are always striving toward, and why?
Achieving Motivational Alignment: All of my entrepreneurial pursuits are motivated by positively impacting specific communities. It’s important not to forget about overarching motivation as you dip into the weeds of pursuing a business outcome. This alignment ensures that the desired results remain in alignment with impact and motivation.
Creating Value: Everything I do is directly tied to the creation of value, whether it’s value for myself or for people that I work with and my company. Things like constant learning and striving to be the best at what I do are also dependent on the value creation for other people and businesses. Because at the end of the day, what’s the meaning of it all if you are not helping create more value for society?
Contributing to Economic Development: I live and work in a small city in Pennsylvania called Wilkes-Barre (it’s about 20 miles from Scranton). Over the years, I’ve realized that my success in hiring employees, expanding offices, investing in companies and supporting local businesses directly and positively impacts the economic development of the city. The end result is a higher tax base and more success and opportunities for others.
Building a Nurturing, Sustainable Business: My overarching goal is to grow and build a nurturing, sustainable business using ethical practices. The larger we get, the better able we are to serve our community and further our mission to help and heal through social outreach.
Making a Difference: My goal is always to make a difference in my customers’ lives, helping them in any way that I can. Having this as my overarching goal keeps me focused on continuing to improve because there is always more I could do in terms of making a difference and addressing pain points.
Getting Better Every Day: This goal can be easily forgotten in the everyday runnings of a small business, but it’s important. You should be focused on improving your business and/or yourself personally, at least in some small way, every single day.
Staying True to Your Standards: I think it’s important that you always stay true to your standards and principles. Keeping your own values close to your heart while you work is very important. It shapes the way you treat others, how you treat your business and, ultimately, the real intrinsic value of the money you are earning.
Making Yourself Obsolete: My goal is to become unnecessary within my own business. When I can create a role out of a subset of my responsibilities, I hire someone immediately. It’s for the better; your impulse may be to wear lots of hats, but it’s simply not sustainable in the long run. Specialization is the key to a well-oiled machine and creates more sorely needed time for big-picture thinking and optimization.
Furthering Educational Growth : Although personal financial growth and seeing my team members succeed are great outcomes of running a successful business, my true desire as an entrepreneur is to learn. It’s that singular goal of furthering my own educational growth by learning from my daily challenges that has pushed me forward and helped me maintain momentum in the industries within which I’ve operated.
Taking Care of Coworkers and Companies: My motivation to build creative alignments is intertwined with my desire to create a place for people to work where they feel respected, work-life balance is a reality and being yourself is honored and appreciated. I’m also motivated to offer companies a true recruiting partner that has their backs and treats them respectfully and fairly.