Investing wisely in your business

Transcript

Investing into your business can feel terrifying. How do you know if you’re making the right decision? If this course program, coach or mentor is going to be the right fit for you? In today’s episode, I share my 3 step framework for deciding if an investment is the right fit for you and your business to take you to the next level.

You’re listening to the Clare Wood podcast, where we talk all things business, finance, marketing, and mindset for entrepreneurs, sharing practical tips, and actionable advice to help you take your business to the next level. Introducing your host: me! I’m Clare Wood, I’m a numbers geek, a travel lover, and a reality tv addict, and I’m here to empower you to create an extraordinary business and an amazing life, because I believe you don’t have to choose between the two. Now let’s dive right in to today’s episode.

Before I get started, I probably should apologise that I might not sound the best tonight. I’m not well at the moment, nothing serious, I’ve just got a common cold, but nonetheless, it’s been sticking around for a while and I obviously need to keep recording the podcast. So you’ll have to forgive me if I sound a little bit more nasal.

Anyway, I’m super excited to be chatting to you guys tonight about something that I’m really passionate about, which is about investing in your business. But before I get into it, I’d like to do something that I haven’t done for a while, which is do a shout out to someone that has shared a review of The Clare Wood Podcast. So, first of all, I want to say a massive thank you to everyone that’s ever left a review of the podcast, but tonight I want I want to do a special shout out to Lucinda from Lucinda Everlastings.

Her review says “This is a great podcast. It covers all aspects of business. And I like the honest advice and simple information covering marketing of my business. I’ve been able to put into action so many bits and pieces over time I’ve been listening.”

Thank you. Well, it’s my pleasure. And it makes me so happy that people that haven’t worked with me as yet are able to take things that they listen to here and go and implement in their business and see changes. It absolutely lights me up to hear about that. So thanks for sharing Lucinda.

Today’s episode is all about investing in your business. Now, this is something that I really had to learn about because as you guys might know, I’m a qualified accountant, I’m a CPA and my training as a CPA is to increase your sales and lower your expenses. And it’s a big error of mine. It’s something that I talk about so much in my business, about profit. I talk about how important profit is compared to sales, because profit is the money that you get to keep inside your business. So it felt really counterintuitive to an accountant like me to spend money inside my business.

My realisation ‘moment’ about why I should invest in my business

So when did the big shift happen? Truthfully, I guess it happened the hard way, because at the time that I started my business, I started around the same time as a number of other business coaches. But what happened was that I started to see a lot of people taking massive leaps and bounds ahead of me. And I’m one of those people that if someone’s doing something amazing, I get super curious and I’m like, well, what are they doing? What are they doing differently to me, that’s getting them a different result?

One of the common things that I noticed was that they were working with these really expensive masterminds or high end coaches they were investing in courses and programs like crazy. They were going on all these retreats, they were traveling around the world, going to these conferences. And I started to think maybe there’s something in this. And it was really challenging for me, challenging some of the foundations, and all of the education that I had learned about ensuring that you keep your cost base low. However, what I was seeing was that their profits were growing exponentially to mine because as much as their expenses were growing, their sales were growing a lot faster too. And that’s when I had a big wake up call. I can either keep playing small or I can really lean in and work with experts and fast track my path to success over the time of running my own business.

I have invested with one on one coaches. I’ve worked with mindset coaches. I have done so many different courses. I’ve been along to an amazing retreat. I’ve attended seminars, but the big shifts I’ve noticed happen when I choose to invest to be in the energy of people who inspire me. So today I want to talk to you a little bit about investing and the factors that I have used to play into my decisions around how to invest wisely in my business and how you could use these principles to make decisions about investments in your business.

Finding the balance between logic and emotion

Now, something that I’m a big believer in is that people make decisions based on a spectrum. There are two ends to the spectrum, one being logic and the other end being emotion or their gut. Even the most logical people will have some sort of play of emotion come into their decision making process. You can pick up the most functional piece of clothing, even if you’re the most logical person and go, yes, this is the most structurally sound ski suit that I want to wear for my skiing expedition, but there’s this tiny part of you that will be like, but I look like a massive dork and I want to have something that kind of still looks a bit nice. So they’ll always be this emotive side that plays in, even if it’s much, much smaller for some people. I remember my very first business coach was explaining this in the context of buying a car. And he was a male business coach. And he said, “I’m a guy, I just want to buy something that goes fast and that’s powerful and that’s well respected” but he goes “you can tick all those boxes, if you sit inside a car and it doesn’t feel sexy, he’s like, you still don’t want to buy it.”

And equally on the other end, you can have all of the emotive fields and I’m sure you guys can relate to this. You know, when you really want to work with a person they’re super lovely or super nice, but yet you go and have a look and that don’t really have any reviews or any testimonials. And you kind of look at their work and you’re like, Oh, I don’t know if it’s that great. And even though it feels really amazing, there still has to be a component of logic that plays into your decision making process.

The 3 part framework of making an investment into your business

So if you are looking down the barrel of making an investment, the first thing you need to consider is – Will it serve you now? This is really playing into the logical component of it. Does it get results? Whether it’s a course, a mastermind working with a coach, hiring a web developer, investing with a copywriter on a practical basis, you need to have a look at if this person delivers. Go and check out their testimonials, check out their reviews, check out what people are saying, check out the quality of their work and find out, does it get results?

Once you are satisfied that it gets result, there’s something else that you really need to consider, which is, do I need this thing? So all of us will find something and think I really want to do this. This seems really fun. Or this is something I’d really love to learn more about. Before you lean right in and make that choice just from a logical perspective as well, check, if it’s something that you actually need support with, is your copy actually in a state that it needs to be rewritten. There’s no right or wrong here. It’s just really stepping back from your business and going, what do I need to shift me from where I am to where I want to be. So even if this person ticks the logical boxes, can they deliver what I’m looking at? Is this something that I really need as a business owner.

If you’ve taped those first two boxes, then I’d really encourage you to lean into this last one, which is how does it feel? What does your gut say about this investment? I’ve spoken about this before. There are two things that can play into this. There can be a feeling of fear that comes up and trust me, every time I’ve made a big investment in my business, it doesn’t feel good, but it’s not that it doesn’t feel good to work with that person or to be in the energy of that space or to be part of that mastermind… it just feels scary to spend that much money to do it.

So my gut is saying to me, yes, it’s totally right. You want to work with this person. You want to be in their energy. You want to get your website upgraded by this person. You need to invest in a new branding. But then when you look at the price, you think, Oh, that’s kind of overwhelming. And this is where it’s really important to start to learn that distinction between what your gut is telling you, and what your intuition is telling you. Or whether it’s fear, whether fear is saying, this is a lot of money to go and spend on a new website or some copy or to be part of a program. So really check in. Something that I found really helpful when trying to distinguish between the two is that your intuition is a bit more long lasting and fear is something that’s short lasting.

So if when you go to make that payment and you go, Oh, that’s so much money, that’s probably a short term fear kicking in. That’s your body’s fight or flight response saying, are you really ready to go and do this? Whereas like your intuition or your gut is telling you something over a longer period of time. I don’t generally, before I work with someone, whether it’s a copywriter or a branding specialist, a web developer, a coach, I’m usually following them for a while and everything up until that point, we’ll be saying, yes, I love the energy. I love their style. I love their designs. I love everything they stand for. And whatever area of your business that investment might be. If over the long term you’re getting a yes, yes, yes, feeling that’s probably your intuition or your gut. And if, when, you actually go and commit to that decision.

If you have to pay a deposit or actually sign a contract and something inside goes “ahhh”, chances are, that’s probably more fear than your intuition. When you’re investing, it’s really, really important that it feels great. Sometimes feeling great can also be paired with it feeling really scary. And I definitely know for me that when I’ve gone and invested in a conference, or when I invested five figures to go on a retreat, it did feel scary, but I knew that it also felt really, really right for me. So to sum up what we’ve spoken about in today’s episode of the podcast, when you are going to make an investment in your business, there are a couple of things that I suggest that you check into. Number one, what’s the gap that you’re trying to fill? Is this something that you really need to serve in your business right now to uplevel? Number two, can this person, or this business deliver results? What do their reviews say, what have you seen as evidence of their work? Do you genuinely believe that this person or business or product can deliver the results that you were chasing? And then the third thing to consider is that emotive side. How does it feel? What’s your gut telling you, do you really want to lean in to what is being offered there?

If you like my energy and you want to work with me, I’d love to share with you how you can work with me, because I don’t actually talk about it very often. If you do want to learn more, please go and click on the show notes for today’s episode, which are available at clarewood.com.au/podcast/episode54. You can also just click on the link in the episode on Apple iTunes.

There are a couple of different ways that you can work with me. I can either be your one on one coach and literally work with you every single week. Be on call, be available to support and cheer you on the whole way. Very soon. I’m also introducing a mastermind. At this stage, it will be invite only, but there will be a waitlist available on my website. So please go and check that out and see if that’s a good fit.

The other way that you can work with me is through the maker’s membership, where I drop fresh new content, which is all of my frameworks and systems that I use in my high end business coaching clients. And I also do live group coaching calls. So you can come along and ask any questions that you have about the content or you can come along to the Q&A calls where I literally am just doing group coaching to support you, to uplevel and achieve amazing results in your business.

I am so proud of all of my clients and the results that I’ve achieved, both in the makers and with my one on one coaching clients. And if you’d like to learn a little bit more about what it’s like to work with me, please make sure you write. I’d love to have a chat.

I just want to say a massive thank you for listening to the podcast. I hope that whether it’s with me or someone else that you do make investments in your business and that you do it in a wise way and being mindful of your numbers and being excited and conscious about the growth that can occur when you really lean in, believe in yourself and invest in your business and in yourself have an amazing business.

Thank you so much for joining me today, if you enjoyed this episode, please make sure you subscribe to receive future episodes, and I’d be so grateful for a review on apple podcast! If you’d like a copy of the show notes or any of the links mentioned today, please jump over to clarewood.com.au/podcast and remember that Clare is spelled CLARE, have a wonderful week and look forward to chatting to you again soon!