Loving Your Business Book Summary - Loving Your Business Book explained in key points

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Loving Your Business summary

Name: Loving Your Business
Rating: 4.3 (68 reviews)
Author: Debbie King

Debbie King

Rethink Your Relationship with Your Company and Make it Work for You

4.3 (68 ratings)

24 mins

Brief summary

'Loving Your Business' by Debbie King is a guidebook that helps entrepreneurs create and sustain a business they love. With practical advice and personal anecdotes, King encourages readers to find their passion, build a strong foundation, and prioritize self-care to achieve success.

Topics

Entrepreneurship Stress Reduction Self-Help Emotional Intelligence

Table of Contents

Loving Your Business
Summary of 7 key ideas

Audio & text in the Blinkist app

Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? Change your business from a source of stress to an asset you’re proud of.

Running your own business can be intensely rewarding, but for too many people it’s overwhelming. It can be easy to get trapped in a spiral of stress and frustration, constantly putting out fires, and feeling like you’re surviving one crisis after another. If it gets bad enough, you can end up hating your business and yourself.

These blinks will teach you that it doesn’t have to be that way. They highlight a model developed by successful businesswoman Debbie King. Her model teaches you to see emotional reaction to events as a choice, and by changing your thinking you can radically shift your outlook and your chances of success.

Follow the actionable advice to make your company a valuable asset.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how to think about thinking;
why the primitive brain holds you back; and
that some problems can’t be solved – and that’s ok.

You have an internal instruction manual that guides your life – but it isn’t perfect.

How often do you think about how you think?

The human brain is a marvel; it lets you do all kinds of high-level complicated thinking. Without it, you couldn’t write business reports, or think strategically. But your brain does a lot more than you think. Along with all these conscious processes, your brain is also working – subconsciously – to keep you alive.

This subconscious part of your brain is often called the primitive brain because it handles basic fundamental survival. Think of your pet dog – it wants to avoid scary stuff, stay comfortable, and seek out pleasurable experiences like food and belly rubs. That’s the primitive brain in action.

The key message of this blink is: You have an internal instruction manual that guides your life – but it isn’t perfect.

So, what does this have to do with your business? Well, one of the primitive brain’s most essential functions is scanning for danger. It’s constantly on the alert for negative stimuli. When it senses danger, it activates your fight-or-flight survival instinct.

This was great when early humans had to avoid saber-toothed tigers, but nowadays it’s a little outdated. After all, there aren’t many saber-toothed tigers out there today. Unfortunately, when forced to look for danger when there isn’t any, the primitive brain channels fear into negative beliefs. For example, it makes us think, this will never work, or, there’s too much to do. And this thinking can hold us back from trying new things or changing our lives. It can also prevent you from running a business successfully.

Your primitive brain isn’t the only thing influencing your thinking without you being aware of it. You also have an “instruction manual” that you’ve been building over your entire life. Your upbringing gave you the outline – when your parents taught you to be polite and wash your hands, they were adding to the manual. As you grew up, you added more instructions on how to behave both personally and professionally.

Every business owner has their own internal manual. It’s the thing telling them not to trust competitors, to always show confidence, and set a good example by working hard.

Having an internal manual isn’t a bad thing. Problems arise when we break our internal rules. This can lead to guilt and stress. For example, if your manual says there’s always more work to be done, then taking a mental health day can make you feel like you’ve failed.

But don’t worry, you can change your instruction manual. In the next blink, we’ll look at how.

Rewrite your internal instruction manual to eliminate harmful assumptions and break negative patterns.

Now that you know what your instruction manual is, how do you go about changing it?

There’s no secret formula here – the process is exactly the same as giving someone instructions on how to build a table or bake a cake. By writing out the steps you need to take, you’ll learn what processes are needed and which ones aren’t.

Negativity comes from how you think about facts, not the facts themselves. You can choose to avoid negative thinking.

Imagine something happens at work that makes your life more difficult – for example, a top employee resigns without warning. How would you react? Chances are you’d be upset that the employee’s leaving and stressed out about the new work you need to do to replace them.

But here’s the thing: an employee leaving doesn’t have to stress you out. It may feel like the natural and automatic reaction, but don’t be fooled. It’s not a law of nature like the sun rising in the east or water boiling at 100 degrees Celsius – you can change your reaction to these events.

Minimize interference and thoughts of blame to avoid negative feelings that drag you down.

Knowing how to rewrite your internal instruction manual is only half the battle; actually doing so is a process of its own. There are common pitfalls that come when you’re trying to put a new mindset into action. Recognizing these traps will help you turn purpose into action.

The key message here is: Minimize interference and thoughts of blame to avoid negative feelings that drag you down.

Become a conscious watcher of your thoughts to manage polarities.

By now, you understand that being in control of your thoughts is essential to feeling better about yourself and your business. But even after you’ve made the decision to look for solutions instead of wallowing in negativity, there’ll be situations where answers aren’t so easy to come by. For example, when it comes time to choose between prioritizing price or quality on a project, it’s easy to feel like no matter what you do you can’t find a solution.

But here’s the thing: in some cases, there are no permanent solutions. The price/quality tradeoff is called a polarity, and part of loving your business is learning how to manage these. The important thing here is to remain aware of your thoughts and go with the flow.

To avoid the lifestyle trap, treat your business as an asset and focus on increasing value.

Would you buy your business? Think about it. If you were an outsider learning about your business with an eye toward purchasing it, would you be interested? It’s an important question because it reveals a lot about what kind of business you run. If you lose sight of the fact that your business is an asset, you can fall into the lifestyle business trap – when the business owns you, instead of you owning your business.

The key message of this blink is: To avoid the lifestyle trap, treat your business as an asset and focus on increasing value.

When it’s time to sell, don’t be afraid of uncertainty and let your love for your business shine through.

Picture it: you’ve got a company with consistent revenue, an attractive product, and a sterling reputation. It has a well-trained staff that doesn’t depend on any one person to keep things running. In short, it’s a company that’s as attractive to a potential buyer as it is to the person who created it. So what do you do when you’ve made it?

Deciding whether to sell or not is a good problem, but a problem nonetheless. Luckily, the same skills and thought practices that turned your business into an attractive asset can help you decide.

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What is Loving Your Business about?

Loving Your Business (2020) is a guide for people who feel overwhelmed by their business. Debbie King offers new strategies for thinking about your business and managing your emotions in order to avoid unnecessary stress and achieve positive outcomes.

Loving Your Business Review

Loving Your Business (2021) by Debbie King is a valuable guide that offers practical advice and insights to help entrepreneurs thrive in their business ventures. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It provides actionable strategies and tips that can be applied immediately, helping business owners overcome challenges and achieve success.
Combining personal experiences with interviews of successful entrepreneurs, the book offers relatable stories that inspire and motivate readers.
With its engaging and conversational tone, the book keeps readers hooked from start to finish, making the journey of building a business an enjoyable one.

Who should read Loving Your Business?

Business owners
Potential entrepreneurs
Anyone tired of getting trapped in negative thinking

About the Author

Debbie King is an expert at applying tools based on cognitive psychology to transform your relationship with your business while you scale. She successfully transformed her business, Association Analytics, from a service-based technical consulting model to a leader in the field of productized solutions. After scaling and selling that business, Debbie created the coaching company, Loving Your Business. She has a Master's degree in Leadership from Georgetown University, and more than 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and a coach.

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Entrepreneurship

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