5 ways to invest in your business for growth

Transcript

We all know we need to invest in our business to get a return, but how do you know what to invest in? Today I’ll be sharing 5 great ways to invest in your business, especially if you are looking for growth towards the 7 figure mark.

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.

Raising people’s perception of your business through branding

The first thing I think is an amazing opportunity is your brand look and feel. How your potential clients see your brand is massive in terms of their perception of your business and your potential to serve them. You may think, why does the look matter? But wouldn’t you want people to have a higher perception of your brand than a lower one? If you do have the money to invest, I believe creating a new professional brand and colours of your business will be transformational in the way people perceive your business. You may want to update your website and socials to reflect this new look and feel.

Upleveling your brand is a huge way to indicate that you are more professional and next level.

Along with your brand, people will form perceptions of your business, based on how you come across in the written word, particularly on your website. This is ultimately the checkout for a service based business. If you aren’t a great writer, consider a copy writer for your newsletters and socials. Brand and client perception is everything.

Building a team

Who do I hire? Well, it really does depend on your business needs. As a good starting point, for small service based businesses, I think a VA (Virtual Assistant) is a good start. Essentially you outsource some of your administration tasks to them. The beautiful thing about working with a VA is that you can give them as much or as little work as you like, that you need support with.

The next role I suggest you invest in, is someone that makes you money. If you have a business, like a hairdresser, then bring in someone that adds revenue to your bottom line, like another hairdresser. That way, you will scale your business and make a profit off their service, without the input of your time. This will depend on your business model. For me, it doesn’t work because I am the brand/business and I love coaching, but I bring other people into my team to do certain function of my business to free me up to have more time to work on the business and serve my clients.

When you think about what that looks like for your business, think of your business model. Is your business all about brand you? Could you bring in other people to mimic that service so if becomes more scalable? Can you hire other people in your team to do the same kind of job you do? This is why I think it’s a fantastic role to invest in, after basic admin, because rather than being an expense, it delivers more revenue. As you know, as I am an accountant, I am all about making sure you are growing in a profitable way and not just growing for the sake of growing.

Invest into upleveling your peer group

Firstly, the reason why you want to uplevel your peer group is you become who you surround yourself with. Chances are you make the average of the 5 people you spend time with – how powerful is that. I’ve spoken a lot about mindset and the people you are around have such an impact of your beliefs around what is possible about you, your business and your wealth creation. So make sure you are getting into the energy of the right kind of people.

So how do I pay to be around the right peer group? You can invest into being in the company of the right people. For example, you can go to a retreat. By default the cost of the retreat often excludes people, but surrounds you with similar kinds of people that are of a higher level of income. You can go to networking events, functions, dinners, that you know the people there are the ones you want to be around. Or you can literally pay to be in the energy of people. For example, I am in a mastermind group of next level women – it costs me a fair bit of money, but I have a group of people I can bring my business challenges to, and share suggestions and ideas, and lift me up when things don’t go well. I also run my own Mastermind group. This group is full of incredible business owners who are really leaping to their next level.

The importance of systems and automations 

I know this doesn’t sound sexy at all but you are going to have to trust me on this. This is something I didn’t invest in, in the early stages and I’m only just catching up now, so I encourage you to build your business in a scalable way and think about the right systems and automations you need to have in place as you grow. If you don’t know what that looks like for your business, hire a systems and automations expert. That is what I’ve done multiple times, and you get the suggestions on the right CRM’s, email management databases, financial plugins etc to use. Another hint I have is, as you are growing, make sure your team is writing processes about things they do. I have gotten stuck here, because someone suddenly left my team and I have no notes of processes in place. Also, hand out passwords via platform like LastPass, so if someone does leave your team, you do have a way you can seamlessly handover their workload to someone new.

Investing in training and development

It sounds a bit corporate, but from a tech perspective, you need to think about the areas where you personally have a skills shortage, or your team have a skills shortage. Think about where you are great, and where you need support. Map it out and find a way to improve in those areas. As much as it is great to learn techy stuff, there is also another field called ‘soft skills’, which is investing in mindset, money mindset, leadership, manifestation etc. Investing in these skills are just as important of investing in the technical skills.

To sum up today, 5 great ways to invest in your business:

1. Your brand, look and feel and your copy
2. Build your dream team
3. Invest into upleveling your peer group
4. Systems and automations, to make sure your business is scalable and secure as it grows
5. Training and development, both the tech skills and the softer skills.

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!