L.I.V.E B.E.T.T.E.R Framework Part 2- “I” for INTEGRITY

“Think about how you can under-promise and over-deliver and excite people when you are able to do more for them rather than the other way around. Remember, it’s so much easier to build your business off referrals from making your clients and customers happy than having to go out from ground zero every single time.” -Kim Sutton

Sometimes, it’s easier to break a promise we made to ourselves than to others although deep down, we know this shouldn’t be. This week, Kim shares her own journey with integrity and how it changed the way she serves her clients. 

Often, we think of integrity as pertaining to other people. But there is also something called personal integrity. Kim talks about how developing integrity as entrepreneurs can help us under-promise and over-deliver so our clients stay happy and satisfied without us being stretched to the limit. 

Tune in for part 2 of the  L.I.V.E B.E.T.T.E.R Framework where Kim takes you on a fascinating transformational journey of Working Smarter Not Harder, one letter at a time!

Highlights:

02:09 “I” is for Integrity
04:50 Kim’s Integrity Journey
06:26 Under-Promise Over-Deliver
09:03 Say No!

Resources

• Sign up for the  10-Day Work Smarter Not Harder Challenge
• Work Smarter Not Harder Podcast with Kim Sutton Episode 731: I’m Rebranding the Podcast!
• Work Smarter Not Harder Podcast with Kim Sutton Episode 732: L.I.V.E B.E.T.T.E.R Framework Part 1
• PP 574: Design Your Dream Life with Lauren Zander

Inspirational Quotes:

02:41 ”Every time I broke a promise to myself, it made it easier to break my promises to myself in the future.” -Kim Sutton

05:34 “When we’re not following through on the things that we tell ourselves, our loved ones, or our clients, it’s going to be hard to take our personal or professional life to the next level.” -Kim Sutton

09:03 “Stick to what you know you can do. And when all else fails, just say no. It’s not a bad thing to say no, especially when you know you are already stretched too thin.” -Kim Sutton

10:00 “Think about how you can under-promise and over-deliver and excite people when you are able to do more for them rather than the other way around. Remember, it’s so much easier to build your business off referrals from making your clients and customers happy than having to go out from ground zero every single time.” -Kim Sutton

Meet Your Host!

Kim Sutton is a Business and Marketing Automation Mentor, Speaker, and Author. She is the host of the Positive Productivity Podcast. Having been through so much including depression, domestic violence, and lack of self-care, Kim’s mission is to help her clients be positively productive by empowering them to achieve success without the burnout. She believes that positive productivity stems from system+support+self-care. Positive productivity is not about perfection, it’s about having Prioritized Purposeful Actions. Today, Kim is out to help fellow entrepreneurs reclaim their lives and make their business work. 

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Have you ever considered your personal integrity rather than only the integrity of others? Well, on today’s episode of the Work Smarter, Not Harder Podcast, I’m going to share my own journey of integrity with you, as well as how you can improve your integrity to improve your business and your personal life. Stay tuned!

Hey, hey! Welcome back to another episode. I’m excited to have you here and to continue our journey through the LIVE BETTER Framework of working smarter, instead of harder. In the last two episodes, I shared the rebrand from the Positive Productivity Podcast to Work Smarter, Not Harder, so you’re gonna want to listen to that episode if you haven’t already. And then in the last episode, I talked about the first letter L of the LIVE BETTER Framework, which was the word Love. Today, we’re going to dive into the letter I, which is a discussion about Integrity. 

For years, I thought that integrity was limited to other people, I was wrong. If you haven’t listened to the episode already, Lauren Zander was on the podcast a few 100 episodes ago, and she introduced me to the concept of Personal Integrity, and it changed my life. It had never occurred to me before that every time I broke a promise to myself (For example, “I’m going to eat better.”, “I’m going to exercise.”) every time I broke one of those promises, it made it easier to break my promises to myself in the future. And since that episode, I have been much more conscious of what I tell myself I’m going to do. 

I’ve also been a lot more conscious of what I want to do in the first place. Am I doing something? Am I telling myself I’m going to do something because gurus on the internet, or the books I read, tell me I should? Or am I doing something, am I telling myself I’m going to start a new routine or implement a new habit because it is something that I feel deeply connected to, and I know in my soul is going to change my life personally and/or professionally by eliminating all the influences from outside? Which by the way is never possible, but let me just say, maybe it’s eliminating 95% of the influences from the outside and making my own decisions on what I should do and what I should not do. I’ve been able to get much more clear on what feels right to me, my day, my business and my personal life. 

As a mom, I found myself all the time saying one more minute. “One more minute.”, “We’ll do it tomorrow.”, “We’ll do it this weekend.” And unfortunately, I let my business take control of my life. My kids are constantly cast off, and when they would come back to remind me that I had promised them of something, I would have to make an excuse. 

Well, I wouldn’t have to but I would because I hadn’t put that much of a commitment into what I said I was going to do. 

I was always at the mercy of what did my clients need? And what invoice am I waiting to get paid? What work do I need to pay the bills? And it became more about money than it did about spending quality time with my family and fulfilling the promises that I had made. 

Following the episode with Lauren, I started to realize that stemming from childhood, I found it really easy to let myself off the hook based upon what I saw, witnessed and experienced as a child. Now, I don’t want to throw them underneath the bus, my family circumstances were complicated as I think every family’s is. But my dad lived about an hour away, and he would often tell me that he would be at something, like a basketball game or performance, and then he wouldn’t show. Time and time again, I was told that he would be there and he didn’t show up, so I’ve forgiven him for this, I just want to let that be known, but I didn’t have a great example of what it meant to follow through stemming from early childhood. That’s a problem. 

When we’re not following through on the things that we tell ourselves, our loved ones, or our clients, it’s going to be really hard to take our personal or professional life to the next level. As an example, when we tell our clients that we’re going to deliver a project or a task to them at a certain time on a certain day, and then we don’t, we’re breaking trust. And when we do that consistently, we’re going to lose all trust from the client, to the extent that they likely won’t refer us to their friends or their colleagues in the future. 

It is so much easier to build a business based on referrals than it is to have to keep on going out there and build relationships from scratch over,

and over, and over. 

I’ve learned that for myself. When it comes to integrity for clients, I need to multiply the timeframe, which I think something’s going to take me by four to make sure I get it to the client in time. Because I am a giver, I love to say yes to my clients even after I cut out the activities that I don’t like to do, I have a tendency to over-commit from time to time. So by multiplying the time that I estimate, something will take by four, I can pretty much guarantee that I will under promise and over deliver by coming in before the deadline.

I want you to commit today on not promising yourself, your loved ones, or your clients that you’re going to do anything which you know that you can’t do. Stick to what you know you can do, and when all else fails, just say No. It’s not a bad thing to say No, especially when you know you are already stretched too thin. When I know I can’t do something for my kids, for example, I will just tell them No. And when it’s a maybe, I still say No. 

For example, yesterday, my son Robert asked me if I could pick him up from school and I thought I had a call scheduled, so I said No. It felt so much better to go back after the fact and be able to say, “Hey, I can pick you up after all” than to tell him Yes upfront and then have to go back after and say, “Oh, something came up. I’m sorry, I won’t be able to be there.” The exclamations in his text back to me after I told him, “Yeah, I can come after all!” were so much better than the “Uhg!” I would have received if I had to go back and retract my offer to pick them up. 

Think about how you can under promise and over deliver, and excite people when you are able to do more for them, rather than the other way around. Remember, it’s so much easier to build your business off referrals, from making your clients and customers happy, than having to go out from ground zero every single time. 

I would love to hear how you have perhaps failed in the integrity department in the past, and what it will look like or does look like now that you’ve changed your methodology of promising, now. I know my grammar wasn’t right there, but I’m not perfect. 

Anyway, go on over to the website at thekimsutton.com/podcast and leave your comments down below the notes for this episode. Until the next episode, go forth and work smarter, not harder my friend.