Have you ever considered a bigger investment in your small business? Maybe a $2000 program or a hefty coaching fee? In this solo episode, Britt helps walk you through what investing is and helps you decipher if now is the right time for you to start investing in yourself and/or your business.
In this episode, Britt chats about:
- Her investment mistakes, and what she wishes she'd done differently.
- What is investing, and why you should, eventually, invest.
- Hard truths about investing that everyone should know.
- 8 ways to invest in yourself and your business, and where Britt recommends you start.
- 4 key questions to ask yourself before you invest.
Want the downloadable worksheet? Click here or go to www.newaltitudesllc.com
Want to invest in the ROMCOM workshop? Click here or go to www.newaltitudesllc.com
Vote for Britt in the Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year program here, or go to https://msoy.afi.org/ and search for Britt when you register to vote!
Check out MilSO Box here: www.milsobox.com
Have you ever considered a bigger investment in your small business? Maybe a $2000 program or a hefty coaching fee? In this solo episode, Britt helps walk you through what investing is and helps you decipher if now is the right time for you to start investing in yourself and/or your business.
In this episode, Britt chats about:
- Her investment mistakes, and what she wishes she'd done differently.
- What is investing, and why you should, eventually, invest.
- Hard truths about investing that everyone should know.
- 8 ways to invest in yourself and your business, and where Britt recommends you start.
- 4 key questions to ask yourself before you invest.
Want the downloadable worksheet? Click here or go to www.newaltitudesllc.com
Want to invest in the ROMCOM workshop? Click here or go to www.newaltitudesllc.com
Vote for Britt in the Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year program here, or go to https://msoy.afi.org/ and search for Britt when you register to vote!
Check out MilSO Box here: www.milsobox.com
Britt 0:00
There are many definitions for invest. The first one that I see when I ask Google is to expend money, the expectation of achieving a profit or material results by putting it into financial plans, shares or property or by using it to develop a commercial venture. That is one definition. My favorite definition, invest means to establish a right or power in which means investing is establishing a power within yourself.
Good morning, amigos. And welcome to another soul of sewed with moments within me O podcast. I am so excited about this topic today. It was not what I was originally going to talk about, I was originally going to talk further expanding the conversation that we had with Lauren, in the last episode about respecting your space. But I did an Instagram poll, and you guys all wanted this topic instead. So today, we're going to be talking about investing in you and your business. Investing is something that I fully believe every business should do eventually. It's really just about like, when it's going to happen for you and for your business. And I'm going to break down like before you invest what you need to know what you need to figure out, and all that. And I'm gonna teach you some of the mistakes that I've personally made from investing too soon, or investing too much. And so we're going to talk about that. Before we get started. I did have a listener asked me if I was going to do like a, like a catch up thing beforehand. She really liked a few silicides ago. I did like this is what's going on in my life. And I like shared a couple of things. And she asked if I was going to be doing that again. So I figured I would bring it to you guys do you guys enjoy. When I share a little bit about my own personal life before we get started on a topic, let me know send me an email. I'm not going to be offended either way, but it really does help. I'm also going to have a pull up on my Instagram. So if you're over on Instagram, it's at New Altitude's. There's an underscore in between new and Altitude's. But if you head on over there today, on my stories, there will be a poll and you guys can vote. And we'll see. We'll see if you guys like it, but I'll do it today, just because I've been asked to. So in my world what's been going on, I have made it officially one week without a limp. For those of you that are new to the podcast, back in July of 2021, so seven months ago, now, I fell while hiking. It wasn't actually a hike, it was actually just a watering hole. And so I was not wearing like hiking gear. I mean, we were in our bathing suits, we were going to go swimming, this is in Vermont, and it down poured like as soon as we got there. So we're trying to walk around and it's super muddy, and I slipped in the mud. And I fell and I basically did the splits, but like totally wrong and not prepared. And I broke my pinky toe. I injured my hip, my knee, my ankle and like everything in between. I was on crutches for like four months. Long story short, I started walking again in December. And this has been the first week now we're in February. And it's been the first week without a limp. And that's all because of my chiropractor. So very, very thankful. For Jenna, if you're at Davis Monthan and you need a chiropractor hit me up, I will connect you because she is amazing. So that's the number one thing is that I have gotten a whole week, Saturday to Saturday without a limp, which is really exciting. Another really exciting thing that's happening is that I was nominated to be military spouse of the year advocating for entrepreneurship in the military community.
I don't know about you guys, but entrepreneurship completely changed my life. I got myself back, I got my financial situation in check. I am beyond thankful for the gift of entrepreneurship. And that's really what drove me to share how important I think entrepreneurship is and that's really what this whole platform is about is about helping you all with your entrepreneurship journey and your goals. And so if that resonates with you, and you would like to vote voting is open February 7 of 2022 until February 11. So this Monday through Friday, you can vote once a day. I'll put a link in the show notes. If you want to vote for me, that's great. If there's somebody else on that list that you think fits it better. Please vote for them. I'm not here to advocate only for myself. We are a community definitely Go check them out. Round One is honestly all about the most popular vote, which I'm not a huge fan of. But I understand they want to check in on your influence, I get it. So if you want to help support someone's influence, and help them become military spouse of the year, you can do that there is a link in the show notes. So that's really what's going on in my life. Nick was supposed to TDY to Korea, that didn't happen. And then he was supposed to TDY to Florida, that didn't happen. And now with everything going on with like Ukraine, and all these other crazy things, we're pretty sure he's not going anywhere, which I'm, I'm okay with, like, don't get me wrong, I love drill weekend, we just had a weekend. And I got to spend the whole weekend working on my business and just doing what I wanted to do, and having the house alone, like, don't get me wrong, that was great. But I'm glad that it was like, just another work day.
I don't enjoy having him gone overnight for multiple nights, it's not fun for me. So that's my brief little catch up of everything going on in my world. Now let's get to today's topic, which is investing in yourself and your business. And there's a reason I put a differentiator between you and your business, because these are two totally different things. And I think it's important to invest in both you as a person, as a human as a leader, and also your business for what it is. So we're going to get talking about that, I want to start by going over the definition of invest, because I find this so cool. There are many definitions for invest. The first one that I see, when I ask Google is to expend money, the expectation of achieving a profit, or material results by putting it into financial plans, shares or property or by using it to develop a commercial venture. An example of this is the company is to invest $12 million in its new manufacturing site. That is one definition. My favorite definition is actually let's see, 123456 down. And I love this definition. It says invest means to establish a right or power in an I love that definition, I'm just gonna say one more time to establish a right or power in, which means when you invest in you, as a person, when you invest in you, you are establishing a right or power in you. Investing is establishing a power within yourself. It's establishing a right within yourself. When you are investing in your business, you're establishing a right or a power in your business. Did anybody else get goosebumps, like that's huge. So investing is truly the power within that we are establishing that we are growing, that we are nurturing. And so when you are investing in yourself, you're just building up the power within you. You're becoming stronger, you're becoming more educated, of course, but you're becoming more powerful, both in the impact you can make and your influence, but also in the ability to procure the dreams and the goals that you have envisioned for yourself and for your business. And this is just one of the many ways why I think investing is so important. But before you can invest, you have to know three things. Before you invest. You have to know your business finances, your personal finances, and your goals. And the reason you need to know this is because you have to be able to answer three very important questions. The first is how much can you afford to invest? You have to know forecasting. I've talked about this before forecasting for your year. Is it feasible? And what kind of investment opportunities are feasible based on this forecasting? You also have to understand a basic understanding of your cash flow, what comes in what goes out and when. So again, more forecasting stuff, but it's so important. Through this podcast episode it may seem, you're like oh, well, my accountant should know that or my accountant should do that. But here's the thing. You are the CEO of your business. You are the CEO of your business. And so therefore, it's up to you to make the best decisions financially for yourself and for your business. Your accountant cannot be in charge of that. Pretty sure there are like rules and clauses and contracts there. And you also have to keep in mind that the money that you invest has to come from somewhere, which is why understanding your financials, both your business, and your personal is so huge. Other questions to ask yourself before you invest to get to understand your financials more, you really want to know, how much do you make annually? How much are business expenses and bills? How much will you pay yourself? Do you have a second income so that you don't have to pay yourself right away, and how much money is leftover? This is huge, because a lot of people forget about things like taxes, they forget about paying themselves in that equation. They're just like, oh, I'll just give myself whatever's leftover. A lot of times, we don't think about it annually, we think about it, like, oh, the
last three months have been so good, like, I'll be fine. And then you hit January and February, which are slump months for many entrepreneurs. And you can't afford the same investment unless you've saved and prepped for it. And if you're just paying yourself at the end of every month, whatever you've got left over, that's not gonna fly. So these four questions are huge. And these four questions are going to be on the free downloadable PDF, you can find the link in the show notes. And I'm going to be doing these PDFs for most of the podcast episodes, not all of them. But I'll let you know in the show notes if there is one or not. But all this will be on the downloadable PDF, the worksheet that you can just print off, and that you can just get and fill out these later. So if you're driving, if you're in the shower, you don't have to memorize these. You don't have to take notes. It'll all be on that PDF. Just to reiterate, how much do you make annually? How much are your business expenses and bills? How much do you pay yourself and how much money is leftover? Once you know your money situation, the next thing to understand is your goals because that's grossly going to shift where and how you invest. So what do you want to accomplish? What are your goals? And what's your definition of success? And that's another podcast episode for another day. But what is your definition of success? What are your goals? What do you want to accomplish? And this really, really big one is now the right time. Because here's the deal. It's not always the right time. It's not and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with saying you know what? Not today, maybe next year? You know what, I can't afford that. You know what, now's not the right time, my life is crazy. We're about to go through a deployment. Or we just got done with a deployment. We're working on reeducation. Like, girl, I feel you, it's okay. But understanding is now the right time is huge. I invested too early. The first time I invested it was before I knew anything. And I learned so much. But I didn't know what to do with that. Like, I spent all this money. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't have my foundation set. I didn't know who I wanted to help. I didn't know how I wanted to help them. I didn't know how I was going to make passive income versus working with people one on one versus group coaching. Like I had no idea what I wanted to do. And that really slowed down my ability to pay back that investment. I eventually did. But if I already knew the foundations before I invested too much too soon, it would have exponentially changed the trajectory of my business. And I fully believe that I would be much better off had I set those foundations in place first. Now. I do have a group coaching program for this. It's a three month group coaching program. It's called the MCS or the me Oh, cash squad. It is three months to solidify your foundations, we go over what's the mission statement and why you need one. What are your business goals and values, who your ideal client is how to talk to them social media, your website, all of these things. And so if that's something that you're interested in, it starts every January and every July, that will be available for you as well. So reach out to me if you're interested in that. Now I want to go over a few hard truths about investing. Because I feel like sometimes people are like, Oh, well, like I already had a coach for four months. And I learned all I could from her and now I need to go be my own person. Yes and no. I have always had a coach. And I've noticed when I am between coaches like when I feel like okay, I've sucked up all that I can from this person. I need to find somebody else or I need to find somebody who is really good at XYZ and this is what I need to focus on. And I need to find this person when I am in between coaches. That is when my business dips. That is when I don't do so well. And it's because I'm not being pushed. It's because my brain is not expanding. It's Because I am not learning and deciphering what's right for me, I'm not figuring out what is best for me. And I'm not utilizing somebody, even just as a sounding board to help me uncover what I need to do in my own business. A coach is not a crutch. Investing in yourself is not a crutch, it is a way to establish power within you. So no matter what type of investing in yourself, you do, it's all for the greater good. So I think we've all heard the saying, in order to make money, you have to spend money. Unfortunately, this is true.
In order to grow enough to really establish yourself, you have to learn certain investing opportunities are going to be more expensive than others. Some are just $14. Others are three grand, others are 20, grand, we've had people on the podcast who talk about their 20 grand investment, there's investing of all sizes for all types of people. Another hard truth, you have to take yourself and your business seriously. And the fun thing is, is that once you start investing in yourself, others start taking you seriously too. But you cannot expect others to take you seriously, if you don't take you seriously. Another hard truth. Investing may seem stressful. But once you invest, you actually get rid of that stress. Think of all the projects that you're putting off because you don't know how to do it, or because you're not really sure. And it's just exhausting, because you feel like you're spinning your wheels. Well imagine if you invested in that. Whatever it is social media, email marketing, for me, it's email marketing. And you decided, Okay, that's it, I'm going to take a course I'm going to pay $200, I'm going to figure all this out. And then you start email marketing and social media marketing correctly, you start expanding, you're more confident in what you do, and your sales triple. Well, you could definitely get back your $200, right, that you invested. And imagine the stress relief, when you find out that you don't have to post every day, you don't have to post a reel every day. You don't have to grow by 160,000 followers in three months in order to be a successful business owner. And you don't have to do all these different things, you figure out how to send an email. So you stop dreading sending emails or writing up the emails. And you really just establish what you need to do when you need to do it. And you do it. See how stress free that sounds. The fourth hard truth I want to give you is that investing will save you time, even if it's not right at first and time is money. Say you buy a program, I have someone I'm working with now. She's got this program, and it's gonna take time to get through. But imagine getting through it. And she came out the other side. And she knew exactly what she needed to do to triple her income by next month. And she did it all because of this program. Wouldn't it be worth the extra couple hours that it took to get through that program 100% Time is money. Now I want to go over eight different ways that you can invest. This is a pretty long list. I'm not going to dive into each one too carefully. If you guys want a podcast episode about each one of these, send me an email. New Altitude's llc@gmail.com, but eight ways to invest. Number one is through business improvement. This could be equipment, it could be improving customer experiences, infrastructure, etc. Number two is marketing, think ads, agencies that help you with social media. Number three is investing in your team. Increased productivity, increase wages, increase benefits and other areas. Think when your team is super motivated because they just got a raise, they're going to do better, right because they love what they do, and they're being compensated accordingly. Number four is investing in yourself. This is my favorite way to invest. This is things like classes and workshops, programs, things to make you more educated in the areas that you want so that you can continue to improve and grow on your own. Number five is hire help and outsource. Number six, consider coaching another one of my favorites. And coaching can look like a couple different things. It can be a year long program. It can be a couple month program. It can be a group program or one on one. It can be self paced courses. There's lots of different areas here. Numbers Seven, improving your SEO, this would be creating a website if you don't already have one. And it would be learning how best to expand your SEO expand your ability to show up and to pop up when someone searches for your business type for you to pop up first in Google. Now, SEO is a whole beast. If you guys know any experts on SEO, let me know. And I will have them on the podcast to chat about that. But that is not my expertise. And number eight, investing in your savings and creating a cash buffer. This is huge. This is something that
I again did not do when I first started out. To be honest, I wasn't making enough to create a cash buffer, I was making enough to pay my bills. And that was it. I was living paycheck to paycheck basically, just through my business, if you can, and as soon as you can, you should create a savings, a cash buffer of three months business expenses, three months of business expenses need to be in a savings account, just in case. Because imagine if the whole world shuts down again, and the economy crashes even more, and nobody can purchase anything for three months. Now those three months, you can at least depend on that cash buffer. So highly recommend that you have that. Another lesson that I had to learn the hard way, I don't recommend diversifying your investments too early. I recommend that you start with what you know, and you invest inward first. So you, your team, your direct business before you outsource, before you go pay for an agency to write all your ads. Before any of that happens. You should invest in word and you should invest in what you know, you want to learn first, something that I did that I loved and I still love is they have like these bundle courses where for like $100, you can get 100 courses, and they range from anything and everything. Well, if you get that it's a great deal. And these courses are amazing, but start with what you want to know. And then as you want to know more, go back to that bundle and see what's going to work for you. Something that really stinks is that I got my first bundle. And I just went like in order number one, number two, number three, number four. And I was just overloaded with information that didn't really pertain to my business or didn't really pertain to my business then. And so not only did I not retain it, but I was so burnt out from investing that I didn't want to learn anymore. I didn't want to listen to another module, I didn't want to do another course. It was just a mess. And it took me like six months before I wanted to pick up that bundle again. But the second time I picked it up, I said okay, what do I want to learn right now what's going to help me with my business today. And so I watched one course and only a few modules, learned what I needed, soaked it up, actually implemented it in my business. And it worked. And I was excited. And I was motivated to keep investing to keep learning to keep growing. And I went back to the bundle. And I said, Okay, what else can I learn about this topic? What else can I learn in this area. So when it comes to investing, don't diversify your investments too early, don't put too many dollars into different pots, you really want to make sure that you know what it is that your goals are and how to get there. And that'll help you determine where you want to invest and where you need to invest in order to grow. I've touched upon this, but I just want to reiterate that investing does not have to be expensive. It can be the average business coach is over $300 an hour. I'm very thankful in that I am half of that. I am $150 For your first session. But I know when I first started out my journey that $150 for one hour of someone's time, still made my eyebrows raised like that was still too much. And that's fine if that's where you're at. Another option that you have is group coaching. You can also do courses that are self paced that you can get to in your free time. You can also do things like programs or free groups that may not offer a whole lot of education and value. But if it's free, it might be worth hanging out there. And with that in mind, I want to encourage you guys to attend the rom com workshop that I am hosting on Valentine's Day. It is February 14, it is only $28. That's it. It's really inexpensive. It's less than a dinner for two.
So the rom com or romancing your community workshop. If you need replay option it is going to be available for anyone who has a ticket already. But if you use the coupon code podcast cast, you will get money off at checkout. The link to the rom com workshop is in the show notes. We're going to be going over how to romance your community in a way that will increase followers, increase engagement, and increase conversions from engaging followers to paid customers or clients all organically. I'm not talking about paid ads. I'm not talking about furthering and investment anywhere. This is all organic flirtation, if you will. But it's going to be how to flirt and date your audience to convert. So if you've been struggling with increasing your follower count, if you've been struggling with how do I increase my engagement on posts? How do I get people to actually follow my CTAs? Or what the heck is a CTA a call to action on a post? If you're curious how to talk to your ideal client or customer. And if you're looking at ways to organically grow on social media without taking up a whole lot of your time, then this workshop is for you. And it's $28. But use the coupon code podcast and get money off at the checkout. Alright guys, that is what I have for you on investing. If you have any comments, if you have any questions about this episode, please send me an email. That's new Altitude's llc@gmail.com. And please, if you are on any app that allows you to rate or review your podcast, like Apple podcasts, please take the time to review it. Because reviews mean a lot and that's how we grow in the charts. And that's how Apple podcasts and other things know to promote our show. So if you want to help in that feel free if you want to vote for military spouse of the year. All those links are in the show notes