Matt Ward’s new book, The High-Five Effect, is a groundbreaking business book that will be especially welcomed by seasoned business owners who are still operating from a startup mindset.
Matt begins by discussing the different stages of a business owner’s life: survival stage, safety stage, discovery stage, and respect stage. He clarifies how to determine what stage he is at and then how to move on to the next stage. As a business owner over the past two decades, he knows these stages all too well. He understands that when we first start a business, we are so desperate that we will say yes to any customer and do anything to keep their business. He understands how this dedication leads to working long hours, wasting time with family and friends, losing sleep, and ultimately causing our passion and joy for our business to wane.
Instead, for Matt, being in business should be about experiencing joy. The book’s title reflects that his greatest desire is to experience such a level of joy in his business and business relationships that he will want to high-five his customers. But to achieve that goal, a business owner must move from the survival stage to the respect stage where he learns to respect himself. They have to come to the same conclusion that Jason Cutter, a business owner and author of the book’s foreword, did. Jason states:
“Over the past two years, I’ve realized two things: 1) I know I can bring great value to my client’s business, and when I do my job right, I should be well compensated for it; and 2) life it’s too short to do things you hate. And life will feel really long and painful if you have to do business with people you don’t like.”
Matt wrote this book to help small business owners realize this and then move from a business that creates anxiety and controls them to a more fulfilling business that includes greater joy.
Finding that joy requires working through five phases. Matt dedicates a section of the book to each phase: Assess, Assess, Identify, Empower, and Engage. I won’t discuss them all here, but they start with assessing where your business is currently at so you can determine where you want to go. By working our way through these phases, we can find more time and freedom, earn more money doing what we do best, feel joy in what we do, and build relationships with the kinds of customers we enjoy doing business with.
Personally, I felt that the discussion of how to find the right clients was worth my investment of time in this book on its own. Matt defines the different types of customers, the warning signs of bad customers including, surprisingly but wisely, the importance of listening to your intuition and instincts, how to have tough conversations with customers that can help them become better customers, and how to value yourself and your services so that others value you and follow your joy and not just money.
A lot of this process also has to do with learning to value ourselves instead of just doing what we have to do to make money. When we come to value ourselves and overcome imposter syndrome, the questioning of ourselves and our worth, especially when unreasonable customers complain, we can become confident business owners who don’t let anyone take advantage of us.
The High-Five Effect is a refreshing voice among all the business books that too often teach us how to work hard for a living, but not how to be true to ourselves and what we need most in life. Ultimately, being a business owner is not just about business transactions and pleasing customers; it is about developing a lifestyle that makes us happy. It’s easy to lose sight of that initial goal as our business grows and takes over our lives, but Matt Ward brings us back to square one: our personal happiness is more important than any business and shows how balance can be found. The High-Five effect is the perfect place to start to find or rekindle the passion and joy that led you to start a business in the first place.
