I'm sick of success being measured by financials

Can we consider success as more than monetary gain

Everywhere I look success is measured out by a figure. Earning this much money, how an entrepreneur turned their business into a billion-dollar company or whatever. And I’m fed up with it. Of course, a business needs to be financially viable to continue, but there are so many other values I feel should be recognised alongside financial gain. Now, this isn’t me coming at it from a place of bitterness as I have a company which isn’t currently financially profitable. As don’t forget, I have another company which has been consistently financially viable since I launched it seven years ago. But, even in this company, we often forgo financial profit in favour of other things.

In my group of childhood best friends, many of us are self-employed individuals or run businesses that we own, and a common thread I see, is that we consider people before profit. That could mean bringing in extra people so our staff don’t feel overwhelmed, even if on paper, the capacity of the team is saying they should be able to do more. Or, it could mean a four day week (we don’t do this in my business fyi), or it could just simply be willingness to be ultra-flexible - whether that be different daily, weekly or monthly hours for different people’s needs. Allowing people to take time off at short notice when they need to without any issues, enabling people to come back to work around other personal circumstances, like having children, or to be able to take month long holidays, work abroad and so on. There are lots of ways to be accommodating to everyone’s individual needs.

Now I am not saying we have the perfect set ups, because if our businesses were more profitable, then we could pay higher salaries or offer bonuses to benefit our staff. But, I’m just really bored of seeing financial figures signposted as the seemingly only measure of what success in business can look like.

Of course, we all need money to survive, and I am not saying that if you don’t have enough money that this isn’t extremely hard and stressful. But, I would just like to see success celebrated or measured in a wider way. Why can’t we celebrate success as feeling happy to go to work every day and not having the Sunday scaries, or liking your co-workers, bonding and having feel good relationships, or, feeling appreciated and nurtured, or being able to nurture others, or progressing in your personal development be it emotionally or learning a new skill, or just old fashioned, doing a really bloody good job. There are so many things that success can be attributed to and I would just like to see more of that.

How do you define success?