Ep #40: Uncommon Perspective: Business Investments
Episode Summary
In this episode, Jenna shares the investment opportunities that have made the most impactful changes to her business.
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Show Notes
Investing in education and mentorship is essential to grow, expand, and thrive in business. But women are often told that we should be careful with money, or that we can’t be trusted with money.
This pervasive scarcity mentality can trigger an agitated nervous system response. We delay, we say no, we experience shame and fear that holds us back. We have a belief that we won’t actually accomplish our goals, pay off debt, or build our business fast enough, so we wait for an existential crisis before investing in ourselves.
This week I share my uncommon investment experiences. I share how I relate to my body, use my tools, leverage desire, and how to learn from past experiences. Where there is a will there's a way. Hear how to make the decision to invest in your business for yourself and lean into where your soul seeks to grow.
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
Why investing in a business is not the same as consumer purchases.
Why an agitated nervous system doesn't mean it’s a bad business plan.
What the opportunity cost of time is.
The power of consistently accomplishing goals.
The difference between what I want and what I need while investing.
The power of tuning into where my soul wants to go.
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Full Episode Transcript:
What if you never again based your business investment decisions on whether or not you had to do that thing in order for your business to be successful? What if you never made the decisions based on money or whether you deserved it or not? And what if you never again bounced back and forth between ‘should I’ and ‘shouldn’t I’? Today, we're talking about an uncommon way of investing.
You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach, and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.
Hey, everyone, welcome back to The Uncommon Way. We are in full cherry blossom season here in Pennsylvania, right now. And it's something that I really, really came to appreciate when we lived in Japan, because there it’s a very deep ritual viewing the cherry blossoms.
It's all about the fleetingness of life and the cyclical nature of the environment and really honoring beauty and just kind of the “is” of it all in that moment. Like, it just “is”. It's, I guess, a mindfulness practice. And people, they go out and celebrate with picnics and walks and viewings, it's an event.
So, ever since I've been completely enamored with cherry blossoms. I even have this coin purse that I carry, and it has a little cherry blossom that dangles from it. And it's just a reminder to me to be in the moment. I love it. So, that is the surrounding as I sit down now to record this.
I teased this episode a while back. I had just invested with a new coach and I said I'd be creating an episode about investing, since I noticed myself doing it differently than most people around me. And since then, something else has happened. My coach just announced that for her next round of this mastermind, and I assume I'll be working with her again, because I do like to work with people for a long time.
But she said that it's now going to be a year long and a $50,000 investment pay in advance. Which means, I now have an extra $25,000 in business expenses that I need to pay this year that I was not anticipating, which is perfect timing for this episode. Because it puts me right back with a lot of my listeners. I'm noticing a bunch of thoughts coming up, and I've been observing how I talk to myself about them, so that now I can present it all to you in real time. And then hopefully serve you in some way.
I know for me, it's always been so helpful to have others talking openly about these topics. Because that's a big part of me then being able to reshape my own thoughts and beliefs. And there's a part of me that says, “Every business coach on the planet has done an episode on investing, do we need another episode on investing?”
I just know that for me, it was really helpful to hear it from different people in different ways, and maybe even hear it over and over again even if I'd heard it before. I'd want to tune in to someone else's just to really shore up my beliefs or help that really land more in my body. So, here I am doing my part.
I think it is such an important topic for women to think about; any entrepreneur to think about, but especially women. I just think that I've taken it a little further than many other people are talking about. So, I want to share this radical view of investing with you in case it serves. And, by the way, throughout the episode, if I say something like, “In the beginning or earlier in your journey,” I mean newer to investing with coaches. I don't mean new to business.
Because you might remember from… For instance, I had a podcast episode with Lindy, and she talked about how she's at seven figures, but had never invested in coaching before. So, there are a lot of people out there like that. That are doing really well in their business, but the thought of investing in this way, with coaching, feels very, I don't know, dangerous.
It's really because of what's considered normal and acceptable in our society. You know, many of us have invested hundreds of thousands in a house. Maybe hundreds of thousands in an education. Maybe even close to $100,000 in a car, who knows. But there's a big warning signal that rises up in our minds when we're making a decision about education or mentorship for ourselves.
And especially for women, it can feel like we're doing something very selfish or foolhardy. So first, let's just neutralize that shame a little bit. Let's just bring that down a notch. Because investing in a business is not the same as consumer purchases. Right?
When you invest in your brain, it's not the same as investing in a car that depreciates as soon as you drive it off the lot, or a fountain for your front yard. I’ve got to laugh because I heard someone say that a long time ago, I don't remember who it was, and it just stuck with me. It just makes me laugh, even though I don't know anyone that has a fountain in their front yard.
But I just imagine some big white monstrosity, like in the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Have you guys seen that? It just makes me smile to myself. So, I keep reminding myself, “I'm not buying a fountain for my front yard.” No offense to anyone that has a fountain in their front yard, of course.
So, back to the story. Almost all companies do this, they all invest in the beginning. Why? Because it's a smart business move. You are leveraging current capital in exchange for a little less capital in the future having to pay back the interest or whatever. Or maybe you're paying a percentage of your business, if you bring on an investor and you give them a percentage of your business.
But you make so, so, so much more than if you hadn't borrowed the money in the first place and if you hadn't made the investment. But we don't think that way for our own businesses. For some reason, we treat it like some indulgent luxury, or some guilty secret that proves that we weren't smart enough to do it on our own.
And to think that you'd hold back on getting support and knowledge until you can do the thing that you don't know how to do yet, is really ludicrous, right? In my opinion, it comes from a combination of three very strong conditionings that we have been brought up with. We were brought up in scarcity. We're brought up in patriarchy. And we are brought up being told that debt specifically is bad.
So, we're being brought up with debt shame. I grew up with a dad who was a lot older than my mom, and he had grown up right after the depression, so he lived in a lot of fear about financial cataclysm, I guess, and a lot of distrust of institutions. And was just really always counting pennies, and being very, very careful with money.
And of course, then we learned, and I know that a lot of you can relate, then we learned that that is the responsible way to be or that is the best way to be. And we just start modeling that behavior. And really all of us grew up in a very different time when business usually required a large capital investment, and tons of sweat equity. Right?
And it wasn't always impossible; the quintessential immigrant story about coming with nothing and then living out the American dream. There are always these spots of possibility. But really, it wasn't something that a lot of people were doing. And it definitely wasn't something that people felt comfortable doing. It hasn't been that long since we lived in a society where you would just work 30 years, then get your pension and just rely on someone else to take care of you.
And even now, most of us in this world still think the safest way to be is to be receiving a paycheck from somebody else, which I strongly disagree with. Of course, we're all brought up being told that there's not enough money to go around, that money doesn't grow on trees. And especially in this country, that you have to be really careful with your money, or really terrible things could happen to you. You could really end up in a bad situation.
And then you layer on to that the patriarchy, which tells us that women are bad with money. Even though women are shown to actually be better with money in many studies. From an early age in math class, when little girls are not called upon as often as little boys to answer math questions. And when we're receiving all of the input about what women are and are not good at all the way up to later in life, we internalize a belief that we can't be trusted to make sound business decisions.
And then with debt shame, we all know about the very vocal and well-respected financial planners that have very large platforms talking about how bad debt is, and that the only acceptable debt is a mortgage. And so many people could dispute that, even that a mortgage is even something that you would necessarily want.
But basically, the message is, “Look, you either save in advance for that thing, or you don't buy the thing.” And that's where that belief comes from, with so many people who are thinking, “Well, I need to earn the money before I can make this business investment.” Even though, again, how are you supposed to save the money when you don't know how to earn the money?
But even when we understand this at a logical level, we understand, “Yeah, that's true, women are brought up to think this. And we all do operate in this scarcity mentality. And yeah, of course, people are talking about how debt is bad. And we have to remember that business debt is not like consumer debt.”
Even when you have that level of cognitive awareness, it doesn't change the fact that your body may have a really strong reaction to risk and discomfort, and that your mind is being triggered by all sorts of things going on all the time.
So, that is one important thing, I think, that separates me from others. Which is, I'm not surprised by that. I don't wait and expect myself to feel settled before taking action. I don't make an agitated nervous system mean that this is a bad business investment. I just make it mean that my nervous system is activated.
Now, I used to make it mean something terrible. I've told the story before on the podcast, about the first time I interviewed with a coach and I said yes to her on the phone, but then just felt so, so sick to my stomach. I actually wrote her back and said, “You know what? I think I'm just getting this feeling; I can't understand it, I can't describe it. But something is just telling me, I really shouldn't do this right now.” And she was like, “Whoa, whoa, okay. That's fine, whatever.”
But now, in hindsight, it's so clear to me that that feeling was really about my own personal shame about making this investment for myself. And I didn't, wasn't able to separate that out at the time. And even before that, I waited for four years on Marie Forleo's list before I ever invested in her business program.
And so, I think that just can really show you where I was at mentally, and how anything that I'm saying in this episode, it does not come from a place of judgment. I've been there, and perhaps in a more exaggerated way than you. But those experiences they really served me, right? Because I felt the pain of those six or so years. And the four years of waiting to even start the business. And then the couple years of kind of dilly dallying around with “Is this a real business?”
Pain can be a great teacher. Right? I felt the pain of no progress or snail like progress. I felt the pain of the ‘what ifs’. I felt the pain of not believing in myself. I felt the pain of watching others succeed more quickly. You know how rich I'd be right now if I'd started my business six years sooner? It would make my business twice as old as it is now.
But we don't think about that when we're making those decisions. Right? It has been demonstrated in countless economic studies, and my degree is in economics, so I knew this, but my brain helped me forget that I knew this when it was applicable to me.
The brain’s short sightedness with financial decisions is very well documented. It has been proven again and again, that when you add in the factor of time, we tend to not have the capacity to effectively employ logic. And that goes for men and women, too. So, we delay our decisions, because we think, “Okay, well, maybe I won't make any money from this investment. Maybe I'll just make, I don't know, $15,000 from this investment this year.”
And that spread, somewhere between maybe $0 and let's say $10,000, or whatever, it's just not enough to incentivize you to push past the fear, to move you into action.
So, we end up thinking, “Well, okay, now's not the right time. I'll just make that next year instead. It's not that big a deal. It's just this year versus next year, a few thousand dollars. It's okay. And especially, because maybe I won't even need to make the investment then, maybe I'll get there on my own. And then yeay, for me, because I've saved $2,000 or $5,000, or $25,000, or whatever.”
But what we don't realize is the opportunity cost of that time, right? So, we think we're saving $2,000, but we're actually costing ourselves a lot of money by waiting a year; business growth tends to accelerate over time. So, five years from now, you may, in that year jump from $500,000 in revenue to seven figures in revenue. Meaning that if you're a year behind, you just lost out on that difference, which is $500,000.
When people are evaluating an investment in the Clarity Accelerator, for instance, and they're like, “Well, I'll just wait six months or a year or something, to invest that money because I really don't like debt. I'm just totally anti-debt. I'm just totally anti-debt. I just want to work and pay off my credit cards for a bit so I can feel better when I invest again. I want to save the money up first.” That is very short-term thinking.
If I went to any financial advisor on Wall Street and said, “I know of an opportunity to invest a few thousand today and make $500,000 in five years. Do you want in?” People would be lining up around the block. None of them would be like, “Nah, I don't want to borrow that money and have to pay back interest. Yuck. I'd rather save the hundreds that I'll spend on interest now, and I'll give up that hundred thousands I'll gain in five years.”
People just don't like the feeling of carrying debt. Maybe their daddy told them that they were a better person if they didn't have debt. So, rather than feel worse in the short term, but then, really fucking amazing a few years from now, they're like, “Nah, I just want to feel really good right now.” Even though we don't feel really good, right? Because our brain’s doing the ‘what ifs’ and feeling frustrated in the business and all the things.
And so, here's where we draw out the true belief that is keeping us from taking action. And the true belief usually is, we don't fully believe in our capacity to get that return on investment. Right? Our brains go to, “We're the financial advisor evaluating this decision,” saying, “Yeah, show me the proof. Show me the proof that you're going to have$ 500,000 in five years.”
And that's natural. It is very hard for our brains to believe in something that we haven't personally experienced. Which is why, if you don't know how to build belief for yourself and set goals that you will stick with and always accomplish, no matter what, then you should, first thing’s first, work with someone who can teach you those essential life skills. Which will transform the trajectory of your life because we don't learn this in school. Which completely blows my mind.
You do need to work with someone who can teach you those things. Because the crazy thing about our fears is that if we follow them to their logical conclusion, keep asking yourself, “And then what? And then what?” they usually just lead you right back to where you are.
So, maybe you will say, “I'm terrified of quitting corporate and starting a business because I might fail.” Now, you all may not be thinking that, but I bet you remember yourself at a certain time when you were thinking something like that, right?
And just ask yourself, and then what? And then I'd have no money, and I'd have to go and get a job. Okay, so you'd be right back where you are now, right? So, you'd rather fail in advance and not try, because you might end up returning to having a job, which is exactly where you are.
And then people might say, “Yeah, but then I'd feel ashamed.” So, I get it. Shame isn't a feeling most of us enjoy feeling. But what is a feeling really? Come on. It's a slush of neurochemicals in your bloodstream. That's it, it doesn't make your skin peel off in hideous boils. It's just a sensation of discomfort.
So, are you really going to let a sensation… Actually, it's not even a sensation, it's the thought of the possibility of a future sensation. Are you going to let that determine the course of your life? For most humans, unfortunately, the answer is yes. But I hope that's not the case for you.
There are some of you listening I know, who are in this space right now, because you and I have been talking for maybe a year or two, and you keep telling me you definitely for sure want to work with me, just not quite yet. And that's fine. My friend, you are an adult woman who is allowed to make your own choices.
I just want you to have eyes wide open and know that there is a cost to that choice. I have a client, a very, very new client, who was in that situation. We talked to each other a couple years ago for the first time and her fear and doubt at the time outweighed her belief. Again, no judgment. I have absolutely been there myself.
But it's interesting when you can see someone outside and see them in a way that they don't see themselves; and she is a rock star. Right? I knew it from the first time we talked. She reminds me so much of another client I worked with who, two years in, had a multiple six-figure business. They’re even the same age, they have the same type of business.
But meanwhile my current client, these last two years, she went back to corporate and got a job. She didn't pursue her business and her soul has been dying inside because it knows she doesn't belong there. It took the pain getting strong enough to finally hop back on the phone with me and get this party started.
Y'all, when do we get to start being kind to ourselves, and move from love for ourselves and not force ourselves to get into an existential crisis before we're allowed to make investments in our future and in our desires? You know what finally got me to invest big in my business for the first time, when I joined a mastermind that cost, I think, like $25,000 a year, after so much time of me just blogging in the background and “giving value” in Facebook groups and watching every webinar available in the online space?
It was me having my son and thinking, “Oh, my God, how did I get in this situation where I have a child, and I'm not earning enough to support us if something happened to my husband?” It was like all my demons reared up and said, “I will not be like my mother.”
I can laugh in hindsight because my mom had a super happy life. And she and my dad were perfectly happy with their arrangement. The only thing going on was my fear and judgment about their situation. But still, it was that kind of come-to-Jesus moment that got me to get over myself and start taking this seriously.
I just wish that it didn't have to be that way for so many women. I wish we allowed this of ourselves. And looking back, I just imagine that point in time, and I imagine the universe and my higher self and probably my audience, and definitely my mom and husband, who were my biggest supporters, I imagine them all being like, “Finally, she's taking herself seriously.” And that's when things really started to take off for me.
Which is another way that I invest differently than other people, I don't get surprised when a large part of my brain is in doubt about my own abilities. For so many early years in my business, I secretly feared that coaching or online entrepreneurship in general was just a huge pyramid scheme. I feared that the only way to make money was by selling to people that hadn't yet made as much money. And that at some point, it would all dry up, because there'd be nobody else to sell to.
It set me up for fearful investments and fearful selling. Because how could I sell with integrity when I didn't really know if my clients would be able to scratch their way up to the top of that crab pile and become one of the chosen people? So, I didn't start making money, surprise, surprise, until I convinced my brain otherwise. And it took a lot of active evidence building on my part, because at first, of course, my brain kept bringing me more and more evidence of the old belief.
It keeps showing me statistics of how many small businesses fail, in articles where journalists questioned the validity or usefulness of coaches, and on and on and on and on. And then over time, I started to see new evidence and new evidence and new evidence. And it helped me shore up the beliefs that I wanted, that I was hoping for, but I could never quite access. It was like, “Oh, if only I could believe that.”
And as I did that, I was able to see dramatic differences. And of course, now I think about it completely, completely differently. I am 100% assured that anyone can have a business if they're willing to put in the work to have a business.
So, just to rehash, I don't expect my body to feel comfortable in an investment. I just use my tools to resettle my mind and my nervous system to the best of my ability. And then, I sit and watch my tolerance grow over time. Because that happens, too. The sums that once freaked me out, don't freak me out anymore. But that took building into it and stretching myself even when it felt uncomfortable, or I was in doubt.
Now I choose to believe that even though I don't know the how, or even the exact timeline. Where there's a will, there's a way. And if I remain resourceful and I just don't give up. That's really what all of this comes down to. People who are ahead of you in business and making more, they, more likely, just started earlier and didn't give up. Of course, some people are unicorns, hurray for them. They have different life lessons to learn from you.
Or maybe they did a lot of visibility work or whatever, before they even started a business. But for most of us, we have to stick with things a little longer than we would have preferred. If we'd scripted out exactly how this journey would go down, it would have happened faster. But luckily, with each new iteration of entrepreneurs, it actually is happening faster and faster.
Marie Forleo took much longer than me to get to my level of income. I took much longer than my clients are taking. But all of us are learning the lessons we need to learn, and the sooner we can embody those, the better. And it does work out in the end. Right now, Marie Forleo, she's doing fine, right? I don't think she's crying into her soup about the time it took her to get started. I think she's loving her life and living pretty well.
Another thing I do is I think about what I want instead of what I need. And this, I think, is probably the biggest difference that I see when I look around and see how other people, including my peers, are investing. Because I think that decisions that are based on need usually come from scarcity. Like, I need to fill in this current lack that I have. I need to know how to do this, otherwise I won't be able to get ahead.
Versus decisions that are based on desire, those come from sufficiency. I'm good where I am and as I am, and I'm expanding from there. So, if I ever notice that sense of need within myself, I take a pause. I question that. Like, right now I could have done something on scaling out and hiring team members; probably, that is a need in my business, and it's definitely a hole in my knowledge. I will do that.
But right now, that is not where my desire lies. My desire lies in dramatically increasing the amount of pleasure in my life, and in my business, and increasing my capacity to receive and to allow which I'm already okay at. I'm a little inconsistent sometimes, but I'm dialing it in.
And most of my clients have moments of clarity and groundedness in their own power, they don't come to me with nothing, right? But they want to dial it in, they want to go deeper. So, I trust that whenever I spend money from a clean place, it comes back to me amplified. I expect to 5x my investments, minimum. And I expect every client of mine, too.
When I sign a private coaching client, for instance, I expect that they're going to receive 5x ROI, like $125,000 in value back, over the course of their lifetime; no ifs, ands, or buts. And that even if they never made a single cent, it would still be $125,000 worth of value. Because what I teach is that life changing. So, it's easy for me to sell because I know it's such a no-brainer. If you don't fully believe your offer is a no-brainer for your clients, you need to get in the Clarity Accelerator.
Something I watch out for is, I tune in to see if this desire that I'm talking about, if it's kind of an impulse candy bar from the checkout line, or a bad boy in high school kind of impulse. Those wants aren't true desires for expansion of your soul, right? That's just some weird amygdala shit, where I'm on autopilot and there's some primal need or something, or some wound that I'm healing or something, right?
If you're a person who has been buy-buy-buying based on every sales page that comes your way, you could probably benefit from some awareness work; as could we all. But we want to move forward from desire, not from lust. We want to tune into the expansive impulse of our soul that is seeking to grow and to amplify its strengths.
A lot of times that'll look like not doing the thing that's the shiny, shiny object, the quick high, that your primitive brain craves. Instead, we specifically do the thing that we know will be harder work internally and will challenge us. So, tune into where your soul seeks to grow and unravel any parts that feel like quick-fixes, or the desperate need of ‘I'll never get there on my own, I need to do this.’
When I invest, I never think, “If I don't do this, I won't get there.” I think, “Obviously, I'll get there because I have the desire and I'm working on it to the best of my ability.” But I can accelerate my journey if I work with someone who can share their proven process, their thoughts that I don't yet embody, and their energy with me.
It's like I won the lottery when I invest, because what took them, I don't know how many years, to trial and error their way through, I get in condensed form. Distilled and curated, and then applied to me specifically by my coach. Who can see my situation, in my mind, objectively. In a way that I can't. And that is money beyond valuable, because time is still our single most scarce and precious resource.
I also choose to trust heavily in my intuition, even if I don't know the why. When I signed up with this coach, I didn't have the way that I've been reflecting about that investment now. I didn't have that at the time. I just knew that something was calling to me. I couldn't quite explain it. My intuition was on fire that I needed to do that thing.
And when you can move from that place, it means you don't get into FOMO. Will I be missing out on something else if I do this? Or I don't start interviewing a bunch of coaches because maybe there's some better offer out there? That really just tends to keep you in research mode and out of taking action.
I feel like if the timing is right, this is something I've been interested in growing into or expanding into and I've kind of started playing with it, and then I cross paths with someone that can help with that, then it's all good. And that comes from a few things. Believing the universe is conspiring with me to bring these people into my conscious vision. I met my current coach in another mastermind. She was a coach of mine in there working for somebody else.
So, it was not love at first sight. I was not like, “Oh, I need to work with her immediately.” But there were some things that happened over time that made my radar kind of tune in and pay attention. And then there was a day where it was just absolutely obvious to me that I needed to go that direction.
And then, I've had clients, I think I've mentioned this before. I had a client who opened up her drawer and took out a shirt that said, An Uncommon Way of Life, and thought, “Oh, that would be cool,” and googled it. I thought the name was cool, decided to google it, and then found me. So, I do believe that the universe is conspiring in the same way we are conspiring, to bring us the people we need for the next step we need to take.
And I know that I'm the one that makes my investments back. So, I will make anything work. Even the things that aren't what I expected end up serving me. I had a coach that, at the time, seemed like a huge investment to me, I think it was like $3,000 or $3,500. And then it seemed like a failure because this coach had a nervous breakdown in the middle of the program, and was just like, “I'm out, peace out. I just can't do it. I'm in the hospital.”
So, we were all just kind of left floundering. This actually happened, I can't make this stuff up. And then also, in that program, she had really been encouraging me to, the way to build credibility for myself was to really play off my past with the military and kind of sell myself as this drill sergeant that would whip people into shape, which is so not me. And it's kind of the antithesis of everything I believe about motivation.
And so, I could say that kind of knocked me off course for a limited amount of time, but I can see so clearly now that that is what made me question that and dive deeper into my beliefs about what my gifts actually are and what I do believe in. I wouldn't have had that opportunity if not for that.
And also, I do have a tendency, and even back then had more of a tendency, to overwork and push myself too hard. I think that seeing somebody, who was kind of a role model, do that to herself, really taught me from very early on in my business, that I need to be cognizant of what can happen, and really just give myself some time to not work.
So, I choose not to question my decisions in hindsight, or beat myself up for anything that happens, because I know I made the best decision at the time with the information and the experience that I had. And I'm always winning or learning anyway so the experience ends up giving me more wisdom to make even better investment decisions going forward. And those lead me to exactly where I need to go.
When I'm making investment decisions, I try to quiet my fears, relax my nervous system, and really find choice neutrality. I talked about this in the episode on intuition, which was called, “Should I Say YES or Should I Say NO?” So, if you want to know more about choice neutrality, but you're basically seeing that either way you'll be fine. This kind of ties into my other episode on “Business Sufficiency”, which is you’re good, you've got this.
And then from there, when I'm in that place of neutrality and sufficiency, then I have an honest conversation with my future self, who has already accomplished the results. And I ask for guidance about my greatest growth opportunity in this moment. I ask for guidance and clarity on whether this offer is an aligned one for me.
Now, at this point, you might be thinking, “Oh, I wish I could invest like that.” Once, someone told me, “I wish I could just take your brain and implant it into my head and feel that confident. Because I really, really wish I did.” And you also might be thinking, because I used to think this way too, “If I were making money like you, then I would be investing that way. But right now, I can't kind of afford to play in that way. I need to be really serious.”
I used to think that, like I said, and when I was listening to podcasts, just like this one, I would have the belief that those people were somehow different than me, right? They somehow had it easier than me when it came to the circumstances and my mindset surrounding these decisions.
But if you take any one thing away from this episode, take this: Where I am now in my business is not what created my ability to invest like this. What created my ability to invest like this was practicing investing like this and practicing the thoughts of investing like this. I constructed this mindset piece by piece. Being the kind of person who would bet on myself and allow myself such high-level support.
I've worked with some of the best minds in the industry, I'm convinced, and people that have in turn, themselves, invested with some of the best minds in the industry. So, I know I'm getting the benefit of all of that wisdom and knowledge.
There was a coach that I wanted to work with, and I got turned down for her program. So, what did I do? Within a week, I signed up to work with one of her protegees, because I knew I'd still benefit from her teaching. Not in the same way, but I'd still get a lot.
So, I invest with these people, and I often choose to work with them in kind of a high tier offer of theirs, so that I get maximum interaction and support. I tend to outspend my colleagues who are at my current level of income. That was certainly the case when I put the $25,000 onto the credit card to invest in that first mastermind for myself.
And therefore, in those rooms, I was almost always the lowest earner in the room, until recently. That let me be around people who were further ahead. And it could really normalize everything for me and help me start to see myself as one of them, and just the same as them.
Because of these investments, I didn't make as much profit from my business. I reinvested everything back into my mind, because I knew that was the one thing no one could ever take away from me. Right? And that was the one thing that would generate me income for the rest of my life.
So, it took me years until I was able to pay off my business debt and get to the point where my business would cover my investments. But I did that in one year, which is super fun. Meaning, I carried the net negative on my books for several years. And then in my first six-figure year, I earned more in that year than the sum of my entire investments up until that point.
And I created that through thinking about it long before it ever manifested. I started thinking to myself, “Yeah, okay, body, it feels scary to have invested $25,000 in my business,” or later, it was $50,000 in my business, and then $100,000 in my business. “But you know what? Someday I'll have a six-figure year or a six-figure month. And then, I'll continue to do that for the rest of my life. So, it's all good. I can tolerate this discomfort.”
That is what entrepreneurs do. They think long term, and they assume risk. And therefore, they reap larger financial rewards than their ex-colleagues in corporate who stick with the safety of earning a salary. And they also reap larger lifestyle rewards. Which we all know, really is at the heart of why we're even doing all this in the first place. Right?
So yeah, I mean, to be honest, this is the first year that I'll be taking a six-figure salary out of my business for myself. Now, obviously, I'm in a huge place of privilege and married to someone in the military, so we have a lot of expenses covered.
But those decisions haven't totally come without cost to us, right? There are things that I would have liked to have invested in or bought. I knew that I could be living more lavishly if I wanted, rather than investing back into the business. I could quell some shame around not contributing as much to the family income if I reinvested less in my business. I might not have carried kind of a low-grade stress, but that is the choice I made; not the right choice for everyone.
But this episode is really just about me sharing how I think whenever I do these uncommon perspective episodes. It's just like, hey, this is a different way that I've noticed, compared to other people. Maybe it'll serve you.
So, to be clear, I wasn't carrying $100,000 on a credit card until the year I paid it off. I was making some money and paying it down along the way, and then making money or investing again, making money, and paying it down. But cumulatively, I've spent well over $100,000 on investments.
And if you're wondering, “Well, why aren't you carrying $100,000 on a credit card right now, if you believe so much in investments generating future income?” It's because last year and this year, I wanted to practice sitting on larger sums of money, and specifically self-earned money; $50,000, $60,000.
Because my personal money history, as a working girl, was to always spend what I earned. And I wanted to build that tolerance and comfort for myself. So, that money is the nest egg for my business as I move forward. When I have employees, when I'm making and spend anything that is already there, and it will help me not move into scarcity around needing to sell in order to cover bills. Right?
So, that is, in fact, an investment in my future. But it's also an investment in my future because it was an investment in my mindset to be comfortable holding that money without spending it. If all of that is a little like, “What? Why would you sacrifice long-term revenue just for some mindset thing that you want to learn?”
You might want to go back and listen to my episode on Uncommon Goals. Because I talk about how to evaluate where your true growth edge is at the moment, even if it goes against maximizing revenue and why you might want to do that. Again, these are just my own thoughts.
But yes, being someone who is willing to not just invest in premium support to accelerate my timeline, but to consistently do the work to increase my beliefs and increase my nervous systems tolerance for all of this. That is what created my ability to invest like this. And it helped me create a really lovely business.
The interesting thing is that when I listen to billionaires and multimillionaires talking about business investments, they sound a lot like mine. They do talk about the gut, right? Following their gut or even intuition. And they do talk about leveraging current cash for future potential. So, this has all been working out really well for me, so I think I'm onto something.
And now it's for you to make your own decisions. I think some questions for you to consider this week are: Just what are your deepest fears about investing in yourself? What is the worst case that your brain is holding onto? And is that sensation of discomfort enough to keep you from moving forward?
Maybe you're in a place where your credit is so shot, and you have absolutely no items of yours that you could sell, and no people that would loan you money, and you absolutely can't get the money; everything is accounted for. Then, you are probably focused on making very smart plans to remove yourself from that situation.
But so many of the people that are holding back from making decisions are holding back because of beliefs that don't serve them, and their preference for feeling a little better, and their preference for avoiding discomfort.
All right, my friends, that's it for today. Always remember, on a certain level you know who you are. And, each day, you're stepping further into what you are here to create.
Hey, if you're a coach who wants true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business, and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this. Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to TheUncommonWay.com/schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach.
Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the Clarity First Strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit TheUncommonWay.com. See you next time.
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