The #1 thing my business taught me about running a household
Episode 207
In this episode of Integrative You Radio, Dr. Nicole dives deep into the fundamental elements that shape great cultures, both within businesses and homes. Drawing from her extensive experience running a successful business and managing a household, she emphasizes the importance of proactivity versus reactivity. The key, she reveals, lies in clear communication, transparency, and setting expectations. By creating detailed manuals outlining roles and responsibilities, families and businesses can foster accountability and eliminate confusion. The episode highlights the significance of aligning core values, being true to one's unique identity, and embracing individuality. For more actionable insights and resources mentioned in this episode, be sure to check the links below. Discover the tools that can help you implement positive changes in your family dynamics and business operations. Join us in reshaping the way we approach culture and find inspiration in creating spaces where authenticity and joy reign supreme. Interested in learning more about Dr. Nick & Dr. Nicole’s courses, memberships, or private work? Learn more at Integrative You . Have a quick question, Would you like to schedule a call, or just want to say hi? Text us at 732.913.0009. Our mission to innovate humans & Healthcare does NOT start and stop with us! This is why we are also dedicated to helping other practitioners in evolving healthcare too! If you are a healthcare leader and are looking to up-level your clinical + business excellence Learn more about our course membership: Limitless Healthprenuer and start boldly disrupting this industry! What you’ll learn: Clarity is Key: Clear roles and expectations are crucial for success in business and family life. Be Proactive, Not Reactive: Prioritize understanding your values and uniqueness to prevent chaotic situations. Prioritize Enjoyment: Focus on what brings you joy and fulfillment to lead a more satisfying life in both business and family. Quotes: "Pro
Topics: business, family, values, unknown, running, household, integrative, core
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## The #1 Thing My Business Taught Me About Running a Household
- Proactive vs. Reactive:** Understanding your core values and unique identity allows you to anticipate needs and prevent reactive chaos, both at home and in business.
- Clarity is King:** Establishing clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations through detailed "manuals" eliminates confusion and fosters accountability in any group setting.
- Value Alignment:** A shared understanding and commitment to core values are essential for creating a cohesive and functional environment, whether it's a family or a company.
- Embrace Individuality:** Recognizing and celebrating the unique contributions of each member leads to a more authentic and joyful shared experience.
Pull quotes
This is the place where you become limitless. **Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior.
We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare.
If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place. **Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive.
Transcript
**Unknown:** Welcome to Integrative U Radio, hosted by Dr. Nick Carruthers and yours truly, Dr. Nicole Rivera. This is the place where you become limitless.
**Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior. We are also covering how those topics affect the human and family dynamics. We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare. If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place.
**Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive. This is Integrative U Radio. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrative U Radio.
**Unknown:** So this topic is inspired by a question that I was asked the other day, and I was asked to respond in the shortest way possible. And the question was: What creates great culture inside of a business but also inside of a home? And I thought that it was such a great question. And after having a business for 12 years and having many phases of that business, and at our peak having 25 employees, and now running a household, I really sat back to think about what's the one, what's the one thing?
**Unknown:** And for those of you, quickly as I, I preface, that are trying to understand business and home, I talk about this a lot, that there is a major synchronicity when it comes to running a successful business and running a successful home. And I was talking about this with one of my healthpreneurs the other day, and I was just using basic examples, is that if you didn't do your job inside of a company, your boss wouldn't just do it for you. He would hold you accountable and say, "This is your job duty, and here are the outcomes if you don't do your job." And he would hold you, or she would hold you accountable to that. And so in households, we don't practice the same principles, but if your child doesn't do something and you just do it for them, there's no level of accountability.
**Unknown:** But also at the foundation of that is your children have never been presented exactly what is their role in the family. What is the function for them to, to be a team player inside of the family? Have you ever given them an actual written breakdown of, "This is your role in the family so that you are contributing and being a collaborative team player"? And this isn't about the verbal, 'cause parents will say to me all the time, "Oh, well, I tell my kids how they can help me.
**Unknown:** I tell them." Imagine you started a job, and they just told you what you should do. They never gave you a job description. They never gave you anything on paper, and they never did any reviews. Or they gave you a review, and the review was completely subjective because there's nothing on paper.
**Unknown:** You would be, you'd be like, "This is bullshit," or, "You can't hold me accountable to that because that was never clear. You didn't... Yeah, I didn't understand that I was supposed to do that. I didn't know you wanted me to do it that way." And this became very evident to me when I was hiring externally.
**Unknown:** I was hiring a nanny to help us, uh, with Q, and I created a very s- very rigorous manual. Um, well, I f- I started with a job description, and then I also, after she passed the test, essentially, 'cause I had created a whole competency test around it. Uh, and that competency test was to assure that she was in alignment with who we were as a family, our beliefs on health and wellness. She was in alignment essentially with the core values of our family.
**Unknown:** Because if you're not in alignment, everyone's gonna be pretty uncomfortable. So took her through a competency test just to see if there was alignment there in our thoughts, our ideas, our beliefs, our values. From there, going through the job description, you know, is this something that you have skillsets in? Is this something that you're willing to do?
**Unknown:** Yes? Great. Okay, now I'm gonna give you the rigor- rigorous manual. But I think about it in a way of, I'm gonna be extremely transparent on what my expectations are, and if I want something done a very hyper-specific way, I'm gonna put it on paper so there's no confusion.
**Unknown:** And the reason I do this is because, yes, it's time up front, but it is a lot of time that is saved later. And it is time that is saved byNot being frustrated, uh, there- energy saved because I'm not frustrated because everything is clear, everything is transparent, and also there's no time wasted by sitting down, "Oh, we need to talk about this. We need to have a meeting," because everything is black and white. And when it's black and white, accountability is extremely easy.
**Unknown:** Accountability is not emotional because it's just matter of fact. Here is your job description, here's your duties, here's your responsibilities, and you didn't do them, end of story. There's no, uh, ambiguity, there's no confusion, and that's something that happens in households a lot. So kind of piggybacking off of what I'm talking about with this, this idea of this manual, this idea of being extremely transparent with what each family member's role is, and literally getting to the point of having it on paper, having an actual manual.
**Unknown:** This is the key to great culture, great people that still manage to enjoy what they're doing and have fun inside of a business or inside of a home. Proactivity versus reactivity, that is the key. And I will tell you one of the major reasons why this was my light bulb moment is when I think about... When I first started my business, there-- it was fun.
**Unknown:** There was a l-- there-- we had this big, bold vision. We were in creation mode. We were in growth mode, and we, we had a small team, and we were just creating. We were just having so much fun, and it was, it was just so fulfilling.
**Unknown:** And then we grew significantly. And of course, that was the intention, but no one educated us on growth with lack of structure, with lack of foundation. And so there just kept being m- probl- problem after problem, fire after fire, and you almost don't even know what's happening anymore. You don't know why it's happening.
**Unknown:** You don't know what's happening. You don't know how to make it better, and you find that the bulk of your energy is spent on putting these fires out, which is not fun. It's so draining. It, it, it makes you burnt out, it makes you overwhelmed, and it sure as heck doesn't-- takes away fun from your life, from your purpose, from your mission, from everything.
**Unknown:** And I know that a lot of families go through this too. They start their family, and maybe there's one kid, maybe there's two, and they're young, and they're exploring and figuring it out. And then the kids start getting a little older, and now there's other people. There's play dates.
**Unknown:** There's school. There's, um, you know, other families that your kids are observing, and there's sports, and there's music, and there's a- all these extracurricular activities. And then all of a sudden, you're just running around with your head cut off, and you don't even know what's happening anymore. And, you know, nobody's prioritizing fun.
**Unknown:** The house always seems chaotic. Everybody's frantic. Gotta get this person out of bed. They don't wanna go to school.
**Unknown:** They're not excelling here, and he's fighting me to play soccer. And, and it just becomes essentially a shit show, and I know exactly what that's like because I experienced it in my business. And I haven't experienced that in my household because I'm doing things so differently now. And really what it comes down to is it's all about being proactive and getting ahead of things that will create a drain on your time and your energy.
**Unknown:** And so the proactivity to s- to start, before you can truly, truly start being proactive, you need clarity. You need clarity on who you are as a company or who you are as a family. You need clarity on what makes you unique that might, that might make you stand out in a good way or a bad way to other people. And so what I mean by that is, you know, if you guys follow us, you know that I'm pretty bold, and yeah, I curse, and I'm rough around the edges, and I don't care.
**Unknown:** That is who I am. There are many people that will not follow this podcast, and there are many people that want nothing to do with my style. And then there are other people that are 100% in alignment, and that very much goes for my family. We are weirdos when it comes to how we approach health, education, and learning, and we're not doing anything conventional.
**Unknown:** We are not doing any type of conventional m- medications. We're not going to be doing conventional education. And this is going to open up conversations when we're out with friends or our kid is being introduced to other families that don't think the way that we do. And now we're gonna be able to be proactive in those conversations.
**Unknown:** We're proactive in knowing that when he goes to other people's homes, that they're not gonna get it. They're not gonna understand why maybe he's not gonna eat the Oreos. And being able to be proactive in the conversations, be proactive in the education, be proactive in the benefits and the drawbacks of our uniquenessBecause it's not for us to say, "We are just who we are, and that's it." Like, that doesn't mean that my son's never gonna get pushback. That doesn't mean I'm never gonna get pushback.
**Unknown:** It just means that I just need to be better equipped to know how to handle those situations. And the same thing goes for understanding your values. If you-- Like, we, we have a set of family values, and we have a set of values in our company, and I will say their similarity is 100% because we are who we are. We are our authentic selves in our business, and we're our authentic selves in our household.
**Unknown:** So there's, there-- We're not different people in our homes versus in our, in our company. So the core values that we have, it's extremely important for our employees to be aligned with that. Because in the past, before we did competency tests to test people on their alignment to our values, we had people that c-came into our company that created a shit ton of turmoil because they were 100% out of alignment with our core values. They didn't hold themselves to a high standard.
**Unknown:** They didn't, they didn't exercise clear communication. They didn't exercise ownership. They didn't like that we were bold. They didn't like that we were disrupting healthcare.
**Unknown:** They were very uncomfortable with the way that we went about some of our diagnostic testing. They were not in alignment with it, and there was nothing wrong with that. They're not bad people. It just wasn't a fit.
**Unknown:** And the thing about core values when it comes to a family is that this gives you a compass of how you spend your time and who you invite into your life. And when families get frantic and chaotic and they're being pulled in a million different directions, if you sit back and you start really looking at that, you're gonna find that chances are you're doing, you and your kids are doing a lot of things that you don't really wanna do. It's what you're supposed to do. It's what you grew up doing.
**Unknown:** It's what the kids in the neighborhood are doing. It's what your, your relatives' kids are doing. It's what the school said you should do, whatever. And w- your kids are being pulled in a million directions, and then especially if you're not having open dialogue and your kids don't feel comfortable to speak up, they might hate doing some of the sports that you think they love.
**Unknown:** They might be struggling in school because they're ch- purely visual or purely artistic, and they are not allowed to exercise that. They're not allowed to learn visually because everything is auditory. They're not allowed to exercise their creativity because they just have to follow the textbook. They're not allowed to exercise critical thinking because you just follow what the teacher says.
**Unknown:** And then we wonder why kids are struggling in schools. And then you're getting phone calls, getting stressed out that your kid, you know, is, is, uh, pushing back or not following directions or, you know, quote unquote, "not being a good kid" when really at the end of the day, your kid is struggling because of the deficits of the school, the deficits of the teacher, or at the end of the day, it's just your, your kid is, is asking questions. Your kid is, is exercising his freedom of speech. He is exercising his common sense and saying, "That doesn't make sense." And so this is where understanding who you are as a family, you get very hyper-specific on where the kids do go to school.
**Unknown:** Do they not go to school? Do they get homeschooled? You know, who are you hanging out with? What types of activities are you guys embarking on?
**Unknown:** Because so many families, so many companies have lost track of having fun. They have lost track of that being such an important part of life, of success, of happiness. And if we can set up our businesses, if we could set up our families to have more fun and have more fun on our terms, have more fun according to our values, to embrace our uniqueness and not feel shamed about our uniqueness, that is where we are going to start to change the world. But right now, we are very far from this.
**Unknown:** And you know why I say that? Is because there are so many individuals, especially children, with anxiety, with depression, with other mental health disorders. And we can blame it on social media, and we can blame it on tech, and we can blame it on those things, and I'm sure that there is a layer there. You know, just getting into the nitty-gritty of the blue light on all these devices, that can affect the brain 100%.
**Unknown:** You know, kids being on social media and playing comparison game, that will play a role, of course. But also at the same time is we're living in an era where there's just so much pressure to do this, to be this, to act this way, and to subscribe to what society tells us is normal and accepted, to subscribe to what our cultures or our religion tells us is accepted and normal, to subscribe to even what other families or businesses are doing in the neighborhood, in the community, in the county, in the state. And we lose sight of who we are. We lose sight of our identity.
**Unknown:** We lose sight of our passions. We lose sight of our values. And we live in the should'ves. We live in the have tos.And we don't live in the I get to's and I want to's.
**Unknown:** And if we can shift to being more in alignment with who we are and what our values are, life is more enjoyable because we get to and we want to. So if you're looking for a resource, we have an entire values course that helps you as an individual figure out what's important to you. We also have a family framework which allows you to understand and go through a workshop on who are you as a family? What is your vision of family?
**Unknown:** What is your uniqueness as a family? What are your core values as a family? And get really specific on how you are going to change the priorities of your family, change the dynamics of your family in order to start creating that. And if you are the entrepreneur, I have a very similar framework for businesses.
**Unknown:** And I created this, I have a lot of resources for entrepreneurs, but one of my resources that I made more recently, because I find that so many of my healthpreneurs especially, they're in the trenches taking grenades. And I know families are, are, are doing the same. So y- there are similarities in the, in these two tools. But when you're in the trenches and you feel like your entire day, your entire week, your entire month is putting out fires, it's really hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
**Unknown:** It's really hard to implement anything big. It is really hard to, to feel like you can get out of the situation that you're in. So I've put something together that allows you to take one micro step to get yourself and your business to a better place with more clarity so that you can start moving the company in the right direction. And it's just, it's super simple, it's super digestible, and it's very, very applicable.
**Unknown:** So I invite you guys to check out these resources. I will make sure that they are linked below. But again, we need to have more fun. What is life all about?
**Unknown:** And we need to understand that time and energy are our two biggest assets, and we need to stop wasting time on things that we don't enjoy and stop spending our energy on things that are draining and soul-sucking. And that might seem very out of touch, but I promise you that these tools are gonna get you one step closer to that. We thank you so much for being an avid listener of Integrative U Radio, formerly known as Integrative Wellness Radio. We appreciate all of your support.
**Unknown:** We love your comments. Please visit us on social media as well as our website to see all of the fun things happening behind the scenes and the new amazing content and courses that is being rolled out on a monthly basis. We hope to see you there.
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
Further reading
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