What is a CEO Day? 

With less than 100 days left of the year, how do you know if you are on track to have one of the best or off track on experiencing the most defeating years of your business ownership? 

Wait- how do you know at all what success should look like by now? 

As a business consultant and marketing strategist for over 5 years and entrepreneur for the past 13 years, I can tell you that managing and directing yourself is one of the most challenging aspects of being self-employed. 

Whether you know that your efforts are converting to impact or falling flat to deliver, there must be a part of your journey that allows you to take a pause, reflect, realign, and refocus on what truly budges the needle. 

A CEO Day is the dedicated time to clear distractions to work ON your business, not in your business. 

Thinking like a CEO, you are making executive decisions on operations, sales, marketing, team, but most importantly: your vision and problem solving to get your business back on-track! 

CEO Days is a free monthly “work on your business” workshop that brings entrepreneurs from around the world together for 2 hours to focus on growing and improving. 

The folks who sign up for this program understand how difficult it is to create MORE time out of their busy late nights, early mornings, maybe even weekends, spent on their business to take a step back, and this workshop helps them to create the space they wouldn’t otherwise make for themselves. 

Signing up ensures this is sacred time locked in on their calendar to prioritize asking the important questions: 

1. What did I do this month that made the most impact?

2. What was holding me back? 

3. Where is my headspace and what is on my plate?

4. How can I push myself to learn something new or get a new perspective on my business?

And from there, we don’t just reflect, we DO: 

1. Getting work DONE for a few extra minutes on something I don’t usually get to work on while serving clients or running the operations

2. Creating a 30-Day plan for the month ahead so I am always focused on what matters most. 

3. And most important- connecting with other individuals who have come before me with the challenges I face or people I want to continue to talk with who brought up something powerful at this meeting! 

It’s rare to find an opportunity that has you feeling accomplished, focused, clarity, connected, and ready for MORE. This is why hundreds of business owners who are leading a mission-driven life and business make it a MUST to attend CEO Days each and every month! 

The mission of CEO Days

is to empower 100,000 entrepreneurs by 2030 to become sustainable business owners who achieve consistent year-over-year increases in profit, purpose, passion, and planning!

How did I come up with this?
CEO Days aims to challenge the statistic that nearly 50% of small businesses don’t last past 5 years in business. Having the time to improve and ease into the next month ahead ensures the success of the business with bite-sized wins, resources, encouragement, and direction. 

We hope you attend this communal workshop that is taking over the world of small business enterprises with empowerment at CEO Days!

Let’s talk about guiding principles, codes of ethics, and a framework for making decisions today. This is something I’ve been feeling like I wanted to talk about throughout 2020 as so many business owners are asking me what they should/ should not post on social media these days in a heated social climate. 

The solution is to know, live out, and stand by your Code of Ethics! 

As we approach the 2020 Election, I have seen so many people so hungry on social media to express the “do’s and don’ts” of life - what they believe, why they feel like they want to be heard about their beliefs, and who is on their ‘side’ of that particular set of beliefs. It’s incredible how many business owners also want to be more vocal about the causes, mission, and the concerns in the world they are connected to, but doesn’t feel like it is “professional” enough to do so. 

I am a professional business owner and marketer who leads a virtual community group called “Your Ethical Business” and it’s difficult to talk about individual issues without addressing the absence of a “code” of some sort. 

Why is a code of ethics important to have established?

1. TO GUIDE
   The first and most important reason a code of ethics exists is to create a framework of guiding principles that a group agrees to, lives out in full-action, and seeks to set an example for those around them to get inspired and motivated to follow as well. This helps to attract the right community, team, and clients to your brand as they understand how people in and around the organization are being treated and cared for.
   

2. TO HOLD YOURSELF & OTHERS RESPONSIBLE
   The second reason you’d want to have a code of ethics is that as your team grows, you can use this as a foundational reference to the type of conduct you are willing to tolerate and what specific actions you embrace.

   If a worker of your team thinks its not important to tell you that they are needing to take off time for their maternity leave or if they aren’t feeling good because they fear you will fire them for now showing up 100% of the time, that can get to be a very awkward conversation for you and them when something comes up. 

   Or for example, if a customer of yours is being mistreated by one of your team members and they just end up leaving as a client because there is no policy for open feedback or communication, that can leave you as the owner not responsible for correcting that action. Last but not least, if your team, including yourself, has a lot of very inappropriate social media engagement and misrepresenting the mission or ethos that ties back to the reputation at work- what does that look like and how can that harm you as a company? 

   So many scenarios paint a picture of unwanted outcomes when a code of ethics or code of conduct is not set in place. 

3. TO COMMUNICATE YOUR VALUES & ETHOS
   Last and not least, you want to have a code of ethics established to be proud of the systems and the ethos of your company that is used for marketing & advertising such as going for your B Corporation Certification.

   I’ve been working, slowly, toward my B Corporation certification and it is required that my company has a written out Code of Ethics to demonstrate what I promise to do to be the change I want to see in the world. 

Some more reflection of how a Code of Ethics in our personal lives can support our decisions as leaders & business owners

Something that religion does very well lays out this code of ethics - I grew up Catholic so we had this as our 10 Commandments. Other religions have something similar, and it just helps us to navigate what is right and wrong. Be nice to others, give to the less fortunate, don’t lie, steal, cheat, or kill, and respect your authority and parents. A framework to understand what to tolerate and not tolerate when it comes to looking at certain worldly situations. 

I think with the changing world we are living in, powers of influences shifting away from traditional settings and more modernized with the incredibly influential social media, these blurred lines of a social framework have been placed on political parties, peer influence, and money. Do you agree or disagree? 

This is an extremely complex question, feat, and assignment for some. Others feel like they can pinpoint 4-8 bullet-pointed ideas and be confident. 

Some of you may find that your code of ethics gets heavily involved in politics, social justice, and the powers in larger organizations. Others, may not. But this Sunday intention is simply to help you identify what it is that you stand for, what your business is responsible for, and how you can use that in your outward communications. 

Examples of Code of Ethics

As an example, here is more about Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream containing a way to describe their Code of Ethics as “values”

Here is Amazon’s

 Here is Best Buy’s

And a B Corporation Web Development company (scroll to Principles) Mangrove.

Regardless, if you were to journal about what your code of ethics looks like, maybe even make a list of what you would design it to be for your mission-driven business, I believe you would find yourself organized, level-headed, and so much more clear about what your business stands for, what you promise to act-out, and how to find a great balance of what to express loudly on social media as a business professional! 

I suppose I don’t talk often enough about the fact that businesses that prioritize ethics, humanity, the environment, and simply doing more good than harm to our planet by existing is working - working well!

You see, when we think about the way the world of business works, yes it is true that corporations & big powerful entities drive decisions and make the impact on global levels to either help or destroy our planet and the people inside of it. But who gives these entities the power?

Consumer trends, motivations, and values is among the first few steps to really understand when creating any marketing plan. Without knowing what society looks like and how it fits into the world of business, you will have a very hard time speaking to, engaging with, and being relevant to people who will be part of your business community as consumers, referrers, or just advocates of your movement.

Each Wednesday, I encourage us all to participate in #WorldViewWednesday to continue to expand our viewpoint around society. Have challenging arguments to really listen to the other side. Read books & do some research on projects or topic areas you find most interesting to dive into. Learn something new! Get out of your own way, and break some old habits of a belief system that limits your own perspective.

I like to think - there are nearly 8 billion people on the planet- we truly know NOTHING!

Furthermore, if you are looking at the way consumers are behaving and what they truly value, I believe it is social issues. Especially if you are marketing to the highly influential groups such as Gen Z and Millenials- they absolutely LOVE businesses with a great triple bottom line, or B Corporation certified businesses.

I found this lovely resource to give you some sharable, or tweetable, quotes to dive further into the mindset and values of these groups and how doing good in your business is actually the way to go.

As your mission-driven marketing planner, I encourage you to start reflecting on some of these statics and facts and ask yourself, “what is the opportunity for me?”

We want to always be innovating and looking ahead. I invite you to do so with a conversation with me- let’s chat about what is possible for your brand and how you can bring more good into the world!

Clients, community, and friends- this is ME.

I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a small business advocate, I’m an ethical business & Zero Waste advocate, and a creative brand strategist, but most of all- I’m on a mission to Change the World!

But the biggest part about me is that I’m SO passionate about the work that I do to help center “Mission-Driven Marketing” in our society and completely eradicate push-marketing strategies.

This passion caught the attention of Christina Frei who is the Creator The Innate Marketing Genius and host on the Marketing For Humans Podcast (subscribing to it will change you, I promise!)

Enjoy this interview about my joruney as a prospective CEO of a B Corporation!

Do you want to become a B Corporation?

CHICAGO - We have this incredible resource called B Corp Curious Women and meet every last Friday of the month at 9:30 - 12:00 noon. The goal of our gathering is to educate CEO’s and entrepreneurs what the journey of becoming a B Corporation looks like and how we can get our business to the NEXT LEVEL of badassery!