The Synergy of Profit & Pleasure in Business - EP 037

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In this episode, I dive into how profit and pleasure can go hand in hand to create a thriving and sustainable business. Too often, entrepreneurs feel like they have to choose between making money and enjoying their work, often feeling guilt or pressure to prioritize one over the other. But what if success didn’t have to come at the expense of joy? 

I’ll share personal stories and insights from working with entrepreneurs, exploring how cultural beliefs shape our views on success, money, and fulfillment. By shifting these mindsets and embracing the synergy between profit and pleasure, we can build businesses that not only grow but also bring us genuine satisfaction. Join me for a warm and insightful conversation on how to bring more ease and joy into your business while still achieving financial success.

Episode Takeaways:

• Profit and pleasure are not opposing forces—they can complement each other.
• Many entrepreneurs experience guilt about making money.
• The belief that success requires sacrifice is deeply ingrained in our culture.
• Aligning profit and pleasure leads to a more sustainable and fulfilling business.
• Cultural beliefs influence our understanding of money, success, and enjoyment.
• A disconnect between profit and pleasure can lead to burnout and instability.
• Winter is a great time to reflect on and reshape these beliefs.
• Pricing should reflect both the value of the work and the joy it brings.
• Prioritizing pleasure fosters greater creativity and innovation.
• Entrepreneurs can amplify their impact by embracing the synergy of profit and pleasure.
  

Key Insights:

“When we separate profit from pleasure, when we try to pursue one at the expense of the other, we actually diminish both.”

“When we understand that profit and pleasure are actually designed to work together, we open ourselves up to a whole new way of creating success, one that feels sustainable and aligned and deeply satisfying.”

“What becomes possible in your business and in your life when you stop seeing profit and pleasure as competing forces and start treating them as collaborative energies that fuel each other?”

Connect With Me:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @RachelAnzalone
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• LinkedIn: RachelAnzalone

Question for Your Reflection:

How do you currently balance profit and pleasure in your business? How can you incorporate more pleasure into your work while maintaining profitability?

Did this episode resonate with you? Share it with another visionary leader who needs to hear this message, and don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps other impact-driven entrepreneurs find their way to our community.

Remember: Your pleasure is your power. 💫

Ready to step into the pleasure revolution and transform how you do business? Let's explore how to maximize impact, profit, and pleasure in alignment with the new paradigm. Schedule a time to connect with me right here >>>

Episode Transcript

Hello and welcome back to Pleasure and Profits. Over the last few episodes, we've been exploring the satisfaction strategy. From understanding why this framework is so crucial in our current business landscape to diving deep into how impact shows up as the first essential element in creating a soul aligned and sustainable business. 

Today, we're focusing on something that might seem counterintuitive at first. The relationship between profit and pleasure and business. These two elements are often seen as being at odds with each other, as if we have to choose between making money or enjoying our work and we can't have both. In fact, I've had countless conversations with purpose-driven entrepreneurs who either feel guilty about wanting both of these things, or who refuse to admit that they want or that they need to make money at all, just completely avoiding that conversation, or often who will only allow themselves to want just enough, just enough to get by, just enough to survive, believing that anything beyond that is somehow dirty or taboo or that it will bring their integrity into question.

You might recognize one of these patterns in yourself. Maybe you've caught yourself thinking that if you're really committed to your mission, you shouldn't focus too much on making money or that the money should just happen. It should be a byproduct of the work without you having to focus too much on it. Or perhaps you believe that real success requires sacrifice, that you have to push through the discomfort and postpone pleasure until you've made it, whatever that means.

Or maybe that's not you at all, at least not consciously. Maybe you know that you need to be profitable. You know that you want to be profitable, but for some reason it's just not happening. And you're not exactly sure why.

We'll get to that a little later on as well. My experience has been that I spent years, many years, operating under the belief system that I had to work really, really hard and earn every single thing. Earn the position, earn the promotion, earn the raise. Even after gaining years and years of experience, I always felt like I was a beginner who had to earn the right to be there and had to earn the right to be compensated.

I also had a deeply embedded belief in me that I could only ever have just enough, that that's all that was acceptable, and that I could only have things if I needed them. That's the belief system I was raised with, that there was always just enough to make sure that we never went without anything or that we never needed anything, but there was also never anything extra and you didn't just get stuff just because you wanted it.

The idea that profit and pleasure could actually fuel each other, that they could work together synergistically to create something greater than either one could alone, that wasn't even on my radar. And I see this same disconnect playing out in the businesses of so many brilliant entrepreneurs who are trying to create meaningful change in the world.

But here's what I've discovered, both through my own journey and through working with countless other purpose-driven entrepreneurs. When we separate profit from pleasure, when we try to pursue one at the expense of the other, we actually diminish both. It's like trying to row a boat using one oar. You just end up going in circles and circles, exhausting yourself, and you never really reach your destination.

What's particularly interesting about exploring this topic right now in this winter season of rest and reflection is that we have a unique opportunity to examine our relationship with both profit and pleasure from a place of deeper wisdom. The quiet energy of winter supports us in questioning these inherited beliefs about money and about joy and success and satisfaction.

In today's episode, we're going to explore how profit and pleasure actually work together, how they amplify each other when they're properly aligned, and most importantly, how this synergy creates the kind of sustainable success that allows us to have the impact we're here to make in the world. We'll look at practical ways to identify where these elements might be out of alignment in your business and specific strategies for bringing them into harmony.

Because in the emerging paradigm we talked about at the beginning of this season, profit and pleasure aren't opposing forces. They're actually two aspects of the same energy, the energy of expansion, of creative flow, of sustainable growth. And when we learn to work with both of them intentionally, that's when something truly magical happens in our business and in our lives.

So it's really fascinating to look at how we got here to this place where we collectively believe that profit and pleasure are somehow mutually exclusive. This isn't just a random belief that we picked up along the way. It's deeply rooted in the culture of capitalism and patriarchy that we have been swimming in our entire lives. It's a way of keeping the working class working hard, not asking for more, just being grateful for whatever we're given.

Think about the language that we use around money and business. “Time is money.” “No pain, no gain.” “You have to spend money to make money.” “Money doesn't grow on trees.” These phrases aren't just sayings. They're programmed beliefs that shape how we think about and operate our businesses. And they don't sound very nurturing or sustainable, do they?

I see this show up in really specific ways with the entrepreneurs that I work with. There's often this underlying belief that if they're really enjoying their work, then they shouldn't be charging for it. If it's easy, if it lights them up, if it feels exciting, if they would do it for no money, then they should do it for no money. On the flip side, if they're making good money, they feel like they need to suffer for it in some way just to justify the income. And I know I've done this myself at times where I raised my prices and then found myself over delivering, subconsciously trying to justify the rate that I had charged and burning myself out in the process.

This separation between profit and pleasure creates a sustainability gap in our business. When we're operating from this place of disconnect, we tend to swing between two extremes. Either we're pushing really, really hard to make money, but feeling depleted and resentful, or we're following our joy, but struggling to create sustainable income. 

And here's what's really interesting. This false dichotomy doesn't just affect our individual businesses. It's actually part of a larger system that keeps us from accessing our full power as entrepreneurs and as women. Because when we believe that we have to choose between profit and pleasure, we're actually cutting ourselves off from the natural flow of creative energy that makes both things possible.

I had a client recently who came to me with a thriving wellness practice. On paper, everything looked great. Her business was making multiple six figures. She had a full client roster. She was doing work that she was really, really good at, but she was completely exhausted and had lost all the joy that originally drew her to this work to begin with. She bought into the belief that this was just the price of success. This was the price of having a business, that this was just part of what she had to do.

What's particularly relevant about examining this disconnect right now is that in this winter season, we're actually aligned with the energy of going inwards, of examining our foundations. So just like the earth appears to be dormant in the winter, it's actually doing essential regenerative work beneath the surface. This is our opportunity to look at these deep-seated beliefs about profit and pleasure and begin to transform them and do the foundational regenerative work for ourselves and for our businesses as well.

Because the reality is the separation between profit and pleasure is a construct of an old paradigm. The one we talked about in our first episode of the season that is currently collapsing around us. It's part of the hustle culture that's dying because it simply is not sustainable. And as that old paradigm crumbles, we have an opportunity to create something new, to be the leaders, to set an example, to create a way of doing business that honors both our need for financial sustainability and our birthright to experience joy in our work and in our lives. What's really exciting is that when we begin to see through this false dichotomy, when we understand that profit and pleasure are actually designed to work together, we open ourselves up to a whole new way of creating success, one that feels sustainable and aligned and deeply satisfying.

So what does it actually look like when we allow profit and pleasure to work together? How do these two elements support and amplify each other in business? Let's start with how pleasure creates the conditions for profit. 

And I wanna be really clear here. I'm not talking about surface level fun or temporary happiness. I'm not talking about frivolousness. I'm talking about that deep sense of alignment, that feeling of being in flow, that experience of genuine satisfaction in your work. When you're operating from this place of pleasure, several things, several things happen naturally. First, your creativity and innovation expand exponentially. 

So think about it. When was the last time that you had a brilliant idea while you were stressed out and pushing yourself to exhaustion? You probably never have. Our best ideas, our most innovative solutions, they come when we're relaxed, when we're enjoying ourselves, when we're in a state of open possibility. For me, that's usually when I'm outside in nature moving my body and not when I'm glued to my computer screen. This enhanced creativity directly impacts your bottom line because you start seeing opportunities that you might have missed before. You come up with unique solutions to problems. You design offers that excite both you and your market. And perhaps most importantly, you make better decisions because you're operating from a place of clarity rather than from scarcity or desperation.

I experienced this myself when I finally gave myself permission to restructure my business around what nourishes me. And I notice it again and again every time that I make a point of allowing for spaciousness, for joy, for the things that really light me up. I notice that I have more energy for work. And I also notice that I just naturally attract better opportunities. The number of times that I have stepped away, whether it was for a few hours to go to the botanical gardens and go for a walk, or whether it was to get out of town to go camping or hiking or go on a retreat. The number of times that I've done those things and in those moments where I'm not working is where a connection happens. It's where an opportunity shows up and it feels really magical. It's like the universe is saying, “Yeah, like this is how it's supposed to work. We've just been waiting for you to relax and let it happen.”

So now let's look at the other side of this relationship. How does profit enable greater pleasure? When your business is financially healthy, you have the resources to invest in brings you joy. You can hire support where you need it. You can take time for rest and restoration. You can say no to projects that don't align with your values. You can invest in your own growth and development. But here's what's really magical. When you start experiencing this freedom, when you have that financial breathing room, you actually become more magnetic to opportunities. Your energy shifts. Instead of operating from a place of “I need this work,” of trying to pull things towards you, you're operating from a place of “I choose this because it lights me up.” You start to attract opportunities to you instead of having to go chase them.

And all of this is true, if you really allow yourself to enjoy it and you're not subconsciously resisting or rejecting that experience or, you know, going and having what should be a joyful experience. And the whole time in the back of your head is the thought, “Well, I should be working. I should be doing something else.” You have to really allow yourself to be in the pleasure, to be in the joy and to be in the experience, to have that energy shift and open up those floodgates.

If you think about the entrepreneurs that you most admire, the ones who seem to have that perfect blend of success and satisfaction, I would be willing to bet that if you look closely, you'll see this synergy between profit and pleasure in action. They're not successful despite enjoying their work. They're successful because they've aligned their business with what brings them joy. And these are not always the shiniest people. So when I say that entrepreneurs you most admire, the first thing I would challenge you to do is to question who you admire and why. Because it's not always the people with the flashiest marketing. It's not always the people who are celebrating and pronouncing their freedom and prosperity for everyone to see, often the most aligned, satisfied, and profitable entrepreneurs are a little bit quieter, a little bit more subtle. And if you look closely, you can see that they're actually also really deeply satisfied.

I've seen this example again and again in my work. One client in particular came to me believing that she had to choose between maintaining her high-profit consulting business or pursuing her passion for creating intimate group experiences. What she discovered was that when she started integrating these experiences into her business model, not only did her joy increase, but her profits actually went up because she was operating from a place of authentic enthusiasm and her clients could feel that from her.

So coming back to this quiet introspective energy of winter, this season really gives us a perfect template for understanding this relationship between profit and pleasure because in nature, periods of rest and renewal aren't separate from periods of growth. They're essential in creating the conditions for growth and the same is true for our businesses.

So how do you know if profit and pleasure are out of alignment in your business? What are the signs that these two elements aren't working together synergistically? One of the most common indicators I see shows up around pricing. And if this is the case for you, you might notice that you get a knot in your stomach every time you quote your rates or you find yourself over-delivering to justify your prices, or you're constantly questioning whether you're charging too much or too little. These physical and emotional responses are your body's way of telling you that there's a disconnect between the value you're creating and how you're receiving compensation for that value.

The key difference here is that instead of managing or pushing through those feelings, we can use them as valuable information. They’re showing us exactly where we need to create better alignment between our profit structures and our natural way of working in the world.

Another clear signal is what happens in your body when you think about money in your business. Do you tense up? Do you find yourself holding your breath? Are you avoiding looking at it altogether? Do you wait until the end of the year to look at your finances instead of checking in on them monthly, weekly, daily?  This physical or subconscious mental resistance often points to a deeper misalignment between your relationship with profit and your capacity to experience pleasure in your work. I see this playing out in really interesting ways, especially with highly successful entrepreneurs. You might be hitting all your revenue targets, but if you're constantly exhausted, if you're not sleeping well, if you're disconnected from your creativity, that's a clear sign that profit and pleasure are not in harmony.

And the flip side of this is equally telling. Maybe you absolutely love the work that you're doing. You're lit up every time you work with your clients, but you're constantly stressed out about money. You find yourself taking on projects that you don't really want because you think you need the income or you're undercharging for work that you love because you feel guilty about making money doing something that brings you so much joy or seems really easy to you. 

What's particularly fascinating is how these misalignments often show up in our decision-making. So if you find yourself paralyzed about investing in your business, constantly second guessing expenses or willing to invest in the business, but not in yourself. That's a big one. Or making financial decisions from a place of fear rather than from confidence. These are all indicators that profit and pleasure aren't working together as they could be. 

The good news is that these signs of misalignment are actually invitations. They're showing us exactly where we need to focus our attention in order to create better integration.

So how do we actually create this alignment between profit and pleasure in our business? How do we transform what might be a vicious cycle of hustle and push and burnout into a virtuous cycle where profit and pleasure actually fuel each other? Well, it starts with something that might feel counterintuitive, which is looking at where you're already experiencing pleasure in your business. Not where you think you should be finding joy, but where you're actually genuinely lit up.

This might be in certain types of client interactions or specific aspects of your creative process or particular ways that you love to deliver your work. These points of natural pleasure are actually breadcrumbs leading us to our most profitable opportunities. Because when we're genuinely excited about what we're offering, when we're fully in our zone of genius, that energy is magnetic. It attracts aligned clients. It makes selling feel natural. It creates the conditions for premium pricing. 

Practically speaking, what I see so often, particularly with women who are experienced and have expertise in their field, who are transitioning into entrepreneurship from a corporate background perhaps, is that they start learning online marketing and often they're advised to start by creating a highly leveraged product or program. And so they're spending all of their time making stuff and marketing instead of actually doing the work that they love to do. And it doesn't bring them joy. In fact, it drains them quite often.

And so, you might be a person who feels really energized when you're working one-on-one with clients, being in the deep dive in the strategy, being hands-on and in the pure enjoyment of that work. And then if you find yourself forcing yourself to create offers or packages or programs because some coach told you that's the way to do it, that's the way to make more money or somehow it's going to be easier that way, but you're doing it because you feel like you should and not because you're actually excited to do it, then you're really defeating the purpose.

So figuring out what the aspects of the business are that you really enjoy, that really light you up because you'll be working your zone of genius and you can start to outsource or leverage the pieces that aren't the things that you love, the things that somebody else could be doing for you. And where this gets tricky sometimes is that as a business owner, sometimes what you really love is doing the creative work and not the actual running of the business. And so that's where we need to start to find ways to leverage aspects of the business. Things like bookkeeping that we might want to outsource or some of the administrative stuff that can become really heavy and start to take up a lot of time as an entrepreneur, but maybe aren't the best use of your energy and definitely aren't within your zone of genius.

Okay, so this brings us to pricing, which is where I see a lot of entrepreneurs struggle to integrate profit and pleasure. If you're undercharging for work that you love, eventually you're going to start to resent it. If you're overcharging for work that doesn't align with your values, you're probably gonna start to feel out of integrity. The sweet spot is setting prices that honor both your value and your joy, your happiness, your satisfaction. And it's not about setting your prices at the going rate. In any field, you can find examples of people charging wildly different amounts of money for the same or similar things. So how things are priced is often more about the experience and less about the product. 

Another crucial aspect of creating this virtuous cycle is how we invest our profits. When profit and pleasure are aligned, we make strategic investments that support both the bottom line and our wellbeing. And so this might look like hiring support for the task that’s draining your energy, like I just mentioned, or investing in systems that create more ease in your business, creating space for innovation and creativity, or building in regular time for restoration, for rest, for you and your team. And speaking of team, investing in developing your team in ways that amplify everybody's strengths for the greater good.

The key is that each investment should serve both profit and pleasure, either directly or indirectly. When we make decisions from this place of integration, we start to see how these elements naturally reinforce each other. And making the time to establish foundations that will support both profit and pleasure is a key factor in creating sustainable success in your business.

You might be wondering how this synergy between profit and pleasure connects back to what we discussed last week about impact. Because the reality is, for purpose-driven entrepreneurs like us, impact isn't just one element of the equation. It's the driving force behind everything that we do. What I've observed both in my business and with countless clients is that when profit and pleasure are in alignment, our capacity for impact naturally expands. It's like what happens when you finally stop struggling against the current and learn to flow with it. Suddenly you have so much more energy available for what really matters. 

Think about your own mission for a moment. Maybe you're bringing transformative approaches to education or to business or to the law, or you have a uniquely integrated perspective to mental health or personal wellness or healing modalities that you're bringing to individuals or the entire industry that will massively benefit from your work. 

Now, imagine for a moment that you're caught in that familiar trap, the one where you believe that making good money would somehow diminish the purity of your mission. You might find yourself charging below market rates, working yourself into exhaustion, carefully watching every expense because you believe that's what it means to be truly purpose-driven. But here's the irony. This approach actually limits your impact. When you don't have the resources to scale your work effectively, when you're too depleted to innovate new solutions, when you're constantly in survival mode, you can't serve your mission at the highest level.

Now imagine what becomes possible when you give yourself permission to align profit and pleasure with your impact. When you charge rates that reflect your value, design programs that energize you and invest in support that creates more ease. Something remarkable really happens. Not only does your own well being improve, but your impact actually multiplies. You have the resources to reach more people, the energy to show up fully in your work and you become a living example of what's possible when we refuse to buy into the myth that purpose and prosperity cannot coexist.

This is what I mean when I'm talking about the satisfaction strategy being a self-reinforcing cycle. When all three elements, impact, profit, and pleasure are working together, they create a kind of alchemical reaction. Your impact creates opportunity for profit. Profit enables you to amplify your impact, and pleasure sustains the whole system by keeping you energized and aligned. And circling back to the cycles of nature, in nature, there is no separation between nurturing the roots and producing the fruit. They're part of the same cycle of abundance. And the same is true in our businesses.

So let's talk about how to actually put this into practice in your business. Because understanding the synergy between profit and pleasure is one thing, but implementing it is another. And I want to make sure that this is really practical and actionable for you, wherever you are in your business journey.

The first step is to do a pleasure and profit audit of your current business activities. So take a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle so you have two columns. In one column, list the activities in your business that bring you the most joy, that light you up, that leave you feeling energized. In the other column, list your most profitable activities and then look for overlap between the two. These are your sweet spots. These are the areas where pleasure and profit are already working together. 

But here's where it gets really interesting. Look at the activities that appear only in one column and not the other. So for high profit activities that don't bring you pleasure, ask yourself, is there a way to deliver this that could feel more aligned? Or is this something that could be delegated or transformed entirely? For the high pleasure activities that aren't generating profit, consider how might you structure these to create more value? What would make these more sustainable financially? This isn't about making dramatic changes overnight. It's about making intentional shifts that gradually bring these elements into better alignment. Think of it like adjusting the temperature of the water. Just small changes can make a huge difference in how it feels over time.

The next step is looking at your pricing structure through this dual lens of profit and pleasure. For each of your offers, ask yourself, does this price feel good in my body when I say it out loud? And if not, why not? Does it reflect both the value I'm creating and the joy that I bring to this work? Does it allow me to deliver this work in a sustainable way? Does it give me the resources to continue growing and improving? If the answer to any of these is no, then that's an opportunity for realignment.

As we wrap up today's exploration of the synergy between profit and pleasure, I want to leave you with this thought. What becomes possible in your business and in your life when you stop seeing profit and pleasure as competing forces and start treating them as collaborative energies that fuel each other? Because here's what I know to be true. When we align these elements in our business, we're not just creating better results for ourselves, we're actually contributing to that larger shift we talked about at the beginning of this season, the emergence of a new paradigm in business, one where success isn't measured just by numbers in a bank account, but by the satisfaction we feel in our work and the impact that we're able to create.

I invite you to take some time this week to notice where profit and pleasure are already working together in your business and where there might be opportunities for better alignment. You might start by asking yourself, where am I making money, but I'm feeling drained? Where am I experiencing joy, but struggling with sustainability? What would it look like to bring these energies into harmony?

Next week, I have an incredible guest that I'm so excited to bring to you. We're talking about the future of feminine leadership and this brilliant woman has so much wisdom and experience to share. I loved our conversation so much and I think you're gonna love it too.

Until then, remember, your pleasure is your power. Take care.