Sometimes we say to ourselves...
“I want to join a course, hire a virtual assistant or a coach... but I don’t make enough money to invest in my business yet.”
And I get that. A lot of us want to invest in ourselves and our businesses but we feel like we can’t because of our finances.
I remember making my first big financial investment in my business and it was freakin’ scary!
It was a $500 course and I remember thinking, “that’s SO much money, I’ve never spent this much money on something like this before. What if it isn’t worth it? What if I know everything it teaches already? What if I don’t even use it? What if there’s something more important I should be spending money on?”
It was scary investing $500 in my business (and therefore myself.)
But I was able to understand that I could afford to invest in myself…
I was just scared to let go of that money because I was too focused on temporarily losing that financial investment, and not focused on what I would gain from the investment.
Click “play” on the podcast player below OR keep reading to learn more!
I’ll talk all about why you probably CAN afford to invest in your business (you just don’t because you’re scared or acting from a scarcity mindset.)
But first, I do want to say:
If you are really struggling to pay your bills and put food on the table, then no, I don't personally believe that you should be making big investments in your business right now.
I know that some other business owners would say differently, but I personally find that icky and untrustworthy. If you are struggling to afford things like groceries or struggling to even keep the heat on, now is not the right time to make a big investment in your biz.
But if you're NOT at that level of desperate struggle, it's fear that is holding you back from investing in yourself and growing. I want to take this episode to discuss four reasons why you may have this fear of investing in yourself.
1. You have a fear of spending money that you most likely developed from your parents
A fear of spending or investing money in yourself is really common. So don't feel like it makes you a bad business owner because this fear is normal.
But if you want to grow as a business owner, you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable investing in yourself.
Instead of viewing it as a “risky” investment, view it as a necessity for your own growth because without investing in yourself or your business, you will stay stuck in one place.
I've noticed two types of people in the online entrepreneurial world:
People who are willing to invest in their business because they see it as investing in their growth.
People who are not willing to invest in their business, so it becomes stagnant and doesn't grow. Or it grows, but so does their overwhelm because they're not willing to invest money in courses, tools, mentors or team members required to create a business that is not only wildly profitable but also sustainable.
Those are the people that you'll see spending two months trying to teach themselves how to do something instead of investing $300, $500 or $1000 on a course that will help them to do it in a week.
It's not easy to just drop your fear of investing money in yourself though. I know that, especially if you've had parents who have had very limiting beliefs around money.
Your parents might have said things like…
“We don't have enough money”
“We can't afford that”
“Money doesn't grow on trees for me.”
If you’ve spent years listening to this and adapting this money mindset, you’ll find it hard to drop - even when you DO have the money to invest in yourself.
I grew up with Incredible parents who did their best and every way they could my mom worked part-time and she made less than 500 pounds a month. So growing up. She always encouraged me to go straight to the sale rails when we went shopping or to not even bother looking at full price codes or when would go food shopping. We would go for the reductions if I saw something full price, she'd always make me wait until it was on the sale. Or if I wanted to pay a lot of money for something should be really shocked and she would tell me how much money that was. That was too much many even now. She still does the same thing.
Let’s move on to the next reason you may find it hard to invest real money into your business and your own GROWTH…
2. Your brain is trying to keep you safe
When you think of doing something you are not used to doing, your brain will pull the brakes and try to stop you from doing it because it sees this as a risk and is trying to keep you safe.
I don't know if you guys have ever heard of the five-second rule, but Mel Robbins talks about it quite a lot and she's sums it up like this…
She says, “if you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it.”
That is your brains way of working against you because it wants to keep you safe and it doesn't realize that it is working against you.
Like, have you ever been at a show or something where people ask you to come up on the stage and for a few seconds you want to… but then you chicken out? That's the five second rule in action, keeping you stuck in your comfort zone.
Ever since ancient days when mankind has had to fight bears and make fires to survive, your brain has been set on keeping you safe.
Even if it means stopping you from investing financially in something that will help you grow and improve your life, your brain would rather keep you stuck in your comfort zone because it's safe. Nothing exciting ever happens in there and nothing grows in there, but it's safe.
But let me ask you, would you rather grow to beautiful new heights? Would you rather experience excitement? Would you rather experience happiness and more money and freedom and time?
Or would you just rather stay stuck and safe in your comfort zone?
I know which one I want.
And I know that that takes investment and a little bit of risk sometimes comes with investments. But there ARE ways to minimize risk. If you’re joining a course like mine for instance, check the testimonials and watch the case studies to make sure that other people have experienced results from the course that you want to join.
Check if there is a refund policy just in case it's SO awful that you want to get your money back.
These kinds of things will help to reduce the “risk” your brain senses when you’re about to invest in yourself.
3. Your priorities are skewed
It always confuses me why we do this, but we'll spend $40,000 on high-level education or $1000+ on the latest iPhone.
But we won't spend $500 on a course to develop our business.
If you change your money-spending priorities, just think of where you could be in one year. Imagine where your business will be. Imagine where your income, peace of mind or happiness will be.
Whenever I tell myself “I can't afford this”, I do three things:
I check my bank accounts to see if this is really true or if it's just a lie that I am telling myself to keep myself safe from risk.
I look at the amount of money that I'm hoping to invest in the course that I'm looking at and I list five ways that I can make that money back.
I repeat this Mantra to myself: money is an infinite resource and it multiplies where I invest it. This is actually a quote that I got from Caitlin Bacher’s Instagram account, and I thought that it was pure gold because we often focus on the money we are temporarily losing when we invest in our business and ourselves, but we forget about everything that we will gain from that investment.
So when it comes to spending money on organizing your business, for example, what will you gain from investing a small amount of money and time in this?
You'll get more referrals and repeat work because you'll have new, impressive client processes.
You'll get peace of mind and sanity. No more stress, tiredness and overwhelm.
You’ll free up hours of your time because you no longer waste it on busybody tasks or reinventing the wheel like you did before you organized your business.
And you'll also get the rewards of whatever you do with that free time.
Let’s look at my example. When I first invested in organizing my business, I was scared to pay money for tools and help that didn't seem to give me anything back except time and my peace of mind.
I didn't realize that my investment would bring in money and that I would make back a hundred times what I spent on organizing my business.
When I organized my biz, I freed up hours each week and decided to use that time to launch an online course.
I've now made over 200,000 US dollars from one course and I've impacted over 600 incredible students and their families.
I would not have had the time to do that if I hadn’t invested a small amount of time and money on organizing my business.
When you focus on what you gain from an investment and not what you temporarily lose, the investment suddenly doesn't seem so scary.
I want you to feel the fear and do it anyway, because just the simple act of investing in myself and making a commitment to myself and my business has always been one of the greatest rewards of investing in myself.
After I invest, I show up for myself at a higher level because I made a commitment and I put money on it. I can't afford for it to not work. So it makes me put in more effort than I would if I just attended a free webinar or something. It doesn't matter if I don’t put effort into that or act on that because I'm not losing anything, I have no skin in the game. But if I don't show up for myself and put effort into something I've invested money in, I'm doing myself wrong because I'm losing the money that I invested. So every time I invest in a course for my business, I do the work and I make the most of what I've invested in and because of that, I always make the money back that I invested within a few months.
One of the courses that I enrolled in was about five hundred dollars and I made back two hundred times that from what I learned from that course.
And returns on investment aren’t always money. You can also get time and happiness back as well.
I know that in my course, Organize & Automate, I have a student who got back 40 hours each month and another who doubled her income from what she learned in the course.
So when you're thinking of investing in your business, always ask yourself:
What will I gain?
What will the return on investment be?
It's something that we all forget about in the face of making an investment in ourselves. If someone said to you, “if you invest $500 in this thing, you're going to get $10K back, would you do it?
I would because it's a no-brainer.
Or if they said, “if you invest $500 in this, you're going to get back 40 hours of your time each month.” Well then yes, I’d invest. It's another no-brainer.
If you’re tired of feeling stressed and overwhelmed and you’re ready for a business that feels fun and simple to run, click here to learn more and join my online course, Organize & Automate.
Or watch my FREE one-hour masterclass to see a preview of the course!
More From Nesha
Hey there! I’m Nesha, the host of The Simple Business Show. I teach solopreneurs how to organize and simplify their business so they can do less and earn more. When I’m not podcasting or helping my course students, you’ll find me sipping caramel lattes in Starbucks, binge-watching This Is Us or traveling the world with my backpack and my laptop!
Looking for more ways I can help you? Here they are:
Organize & Automate - Use my premium course to organize your entire service-based business in just two weeks (on the side of your regular routine!) so you can stop stressing and fall back in love with your business.
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