Run Your Life as a Corporation

Every week I document plenty of discussions, thoughts, realizations, goals, feelings, and experiences. Some of them have really changed the game for me, so are a few notes on encounters with productivity and growth.

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Productivity Champ

This week’s productivity mention is the amazing motivational goal planner You Squared by Athena. Check it out and create a life of purpose and success!

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I am fortunate to be born a human during one of the most peaceful and technologically equipped times on Earth (considering the millions of years of history before us.)

With such enhancements and potential empowerment, you can truly run yourself (and your household, if possible) as a corporation. Your time, financial worth, health, and relationships are your resources. Your talent, skills, and connections are your human resource potential. Your friends, family members, and well-wishers are your clients/partners. Your debt and expenses are your liabilities.

You may not be selling a product or service, but there’s a transaction of value happening with every meaningful interaction in your life. One may not have the experience of running a multi-million dollar company, yet one can strive to run the material and measurable aspects of their personal life in a “profitable” way.

Now the question is - if your personal finances were that of a publicly traded company (say You Corp.), would your peers want to invest into it?

Learn from thriving companies

I have zero stakes in promoting Airbnb, but I've learned a few things from their journey, that have worked well for me in my career and personal venture. Like it or not, you can't deny their growth-mindset. So better learn from them and use these lessons to your advantage.

Resource Management

Needless to say, life is extremely precious. What most people forget though is that it can be extremely delicate too. For me, it was bothering to realize how many men neglect mental health, chronic back issues, workforce fatalities, and suicide.

Moreover, certain cultures promote the image of a man where it’s unacceptable for him to be sensitive to his emotional needs, or where he is denied the space to heal and share. The truth is that men have diverse ways to practice social support too. So, guys.. have at it and live fully!

Build a culture of Trust

The right culture of trust, collaboration, accountability and responsibility leads to empowerment in any professional or personal ecosystem. Here’s something on collective impact where we put community before profit. After all, we can go faster alone, but much farther together.

The toughest times expose how deep the culture of trust is within an organization. The same applies to our individual and family situations. Trust and proper alignment not only make change smoother, but help with buy-in and activation once a decision has been made. It could be trust among family members or friends, or simply your faith in your own ability to navigate through challenges.

A quick snippet from one of the Growth2.0 Talks episodes on the multiple layers of trust in our lives.

Being bullish on personal growth and productivity

I know that you know - you are an asset for yourself. And just like any tangible asset, you as a human (with your body and mind) are also depreciating with each birthday. I’d dare to say that in a span of 10 years, there is a high probability of an event in your life that will obstruct the performance of you as an asset. What are you doing to sharpen/upgrade your body and mind? What are you doing to insure for such an event?

Here are a few resources I found useful while managing my personal productivity.

Here’s the problem though; it takes patience and decent degree of self-management. The world has many highly inspired people who are poor self-managers.

A key piece of advice I received from several top executives and senior-level professionals was that to grow one’s financial net worth they not only have to budget properly and reduce expenses, but also add consistently to their household income. If you look at your personal balance sheet, you’ll find that you can only cut your expenses so much. After a point, the only way to increase the bottom-line is to increase your income.

One of my personal goals is to gear every product, software or service I use to my advantage. I try to use every minute and every dollar to help me progress towards my vision in life. That’s not saying that we become calculative or transactional with everything, but that we treat ourselves with dignity and respect. Instead of mindlessly consuming and/or creating data on social media for free, we can strive to connect and build communities to create value in the marketplace. It’s about time laymen evolve from being consumer products on the internet to being profit-sharing producers.

Some of you work very hard to help your employer’s business grow. I’m glad you are a hard working contributor to society. But do you have systems, checks and balances in place in your life to help you grow the same way in all your personal priorities? In the end, don’t we all desire growth and joy for ourselves?

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What have you learned from big/small companies that you can apply in your life? Feel free to share your thoughts. And whatever you think about my content, reach out and tell me how I can make it better. I promise I keep an open heart and mind.