You’re listening to the Flourish + Grow to CEO Podcast, episode 13.

Pam (00:26): Are you a lady boss making $50-$100,000 in your business, and you’re ready to break through that six figure barrier?

Jane (00:34):

Have you done a great job of creating a nice life as the ultimate gig master, but know your inner CEO is calling you to greater heights? You’re in the right place if you want to create and implement solid fundamentals in your business, without sacrificing fun.

Pam (00:48): I’m Pam Ivey, I’m certified in small business management and I concentrate in the areas of training and certifying real estate assistance, coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs in online business, marketing, growth and profit acceleration. And I take men and women business owners aged 40 plus two bucket list destinations around the world for a month at a time to work, explore, and live in community.

Jane (01:14): And I’m Jane Garee, known as the sales strategist for the non-salesperson, and I work with business owners who want to increase their conversion rate, shorten their sales cycle and have more impact and influence with the work they do, all while having more fun with selling.

Pam (01:29): Hello everyone. And welcome back to the Flourish & Grow to CEO Podcast. Today, we’re talking about how and what to invest in for your business. More specifically, investing out of order. You’ve got to be intentional about the business you’re building, which also means being intentional about the tools and the programs that you invest in to build and grow a sustainable business. It’s so easy to look for that magic bullet that promises to make us a huge sensation overnight. I really think it’s human nature. We see what someone else in our industry is doing. Maybe a well-known influencer. And we see on the outside, of course, that they’re really successful. So we want to follow in their footsteps. And by the thing that they tell it as the thing that pushes their business into the stratosphere, most of the time they’ve tried a hundred different things before they got there. If what you see on the outside is even really true. Remember you’re often just seeing their highlight reel the one. They really want us to see that perfect business and life they showcase on Facebook or Instagram.

Jane (02:34): Yeah, really this topic of conversation today is all about investing and investing out of order. So I’ve had the luxury of 10 years in the coaching and consulting industry. And when I first got started, I was a contract sales person for a lot of the big names in the coaching industry. And I did that for many, many years. And I can tell you that it was very easy to start seeing these patterns that were emerging from the prospective clients that I would talk to on the phone. And here’s really what was going on. So these prospects would show up and they’d be all excited because they had been following so-and-so and it was usually multiple people and the multiple people that they were following, most of them would say something along the lines of, if you just buy my thing, if you just enroll in this particular program, then, Oh, your business woes and worries are over because this is the magic pill.

Jane (03:31): And none of that was done with any ill intent. In fact, having worked with a lot of those people and knowing some of the others, it was all from a place of really good intention because they knew that what they did would help the business owner get over a particular hump. So that’s the good news there. So for any of you who have invested in anything and you’re thinking, why didn’t it work? It’s not that it didn’t work. Here’s what I’m going to venture to guess. But I think I’m onto something here after sitting in that seat and listening to prospective clients who had made investments over and over again in programs and were still wondering why they weren’t further along. So here’s the deal. I’m going to give this to you. Number one, probably everything that you purchased or invested in actually does work.

Jane (04:14): There are some amazing coaches out there. They know what they’re doing, their process or system that’s particular to them. What they’ve created, the thing that they’re an expert in doing it probably works. In fact, it most likely does. And that’s why they’re excited about going out and offering it to other people. So you have not done anything wrong. You have not made an unwise decision in deciding that you want to purchase whatever it was that you purchased a program, a group program one-on-one coaching, whatever the situation was. I believe you probably got some value from it. If you didn’t. It’s just because it wasn’t quite time. So point number one is everything that you’ve already enrolled in or already invested in. I want you to know it actually is going to be a great thing for you, but here’s point number two, I actually about 10 years ago, coined this term investing out of order because that’s what I saw was happening to business owners over and over again.

Jane (05:09): The thing, what I enrolled in was fine. It worked, it would work, but it was a bad time because it was out of order. Let me give you one of the easiest examples. People love to write books. Everybody is there’s a writer in all of us. And I think that is true. And I think that is good because we all have a story to tell. So in the coaching industry, almost 100% of the coaches that I talked to had a deep desire to write a book. I think that’s a beautiful thing. Most of them had invested a lot of money into writing the book or learning how to write the book or paying for learning, how to do publicity around selling the book. That’s all good. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, here, here comes the problem. They didn’t have a core message. They hadn’t truly fleshed out their avatar.

Jane (06:06): They really didn’t have any language around describing their ideal client’s problems or pain or what their client really desired, or how working with them, the coach who was writing a book, would it be transformative? So let me give you a specific example. I don’t know how many people I talked to that they were all excited about writing a book because it was going to be a best seller. And it had things in there that everybody needed to learn. And I would say, okay, well, who is this book for? Who’s going to read it. And they would say, well, people who would be my ideal clients. And I would say, great, describe your ideal client to me. And they would say, well, women over 40 who are stuck or college age people who want to figure out what they want to do with their life or women who are in transition.

Jane (06:55): That’s okay. But that is not nearly enough information women over 40, who are stuck people or who are in transition, or, you know, one of my favorites is people who, who can afford to buy my coaching. It’s kind of like what, you know, this is not, this is not a marketing message. And so what I really want people to understand is you, 100%, I can guarantee you I’ve done it. Pam ‘s done it. Everybody I know has done it. 100% guarantee. You have invested out of order at some point and probably more than once we’ve done it.

Pam (07:30): Absolutely. I have an awesome example when I started out in the online world, which you know, is 20 years ago now, 2001, I had heard all these great things when Infusionsoft came on the market, God, that must have been 2009, 2010, something like that. And infusion soft was a thing that all the big coaches and, you know, the big people out there with their highlight reels, with these amazing businesses, they were all jumping on board with infusion soft. So I thought I need to have it too. I was a virtual assistant. I was helping other people to build these incredibly large businesses though. Don’t get me wrong. I built a huge business as a virtual assistant, and there was a point in time or there can be a point in time where Infusionsoft is a great idea, but it certainly wasn’t when I invested in it.

Pam (08:23): And I’ll tell you at that time, I was spending $200 a month on this program. That was way too powerful for me. It was so difficult to learn. I even spent a bunch of money to go to their infusion soft university in Florida for a week. And I became a certified and fusion soft sales and marketing expert. And then I learned that that program was way too powerful for what I needed. I just didn’t need it yet. Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, infusion soft or keep as they call themselves is a fantastic program. It’s really powerful. And it’s really useful for many businesses too. But my point is, I just wasn’t ready for it. So I was spending $2,400 per year on something I really couldn’t afford because the really successful business owners that I saw out there were using it and they were seeing success with it, but I honestly wasn’t ready for it.

Pam (09:21): So, I think the most important takeaways that we can really stress in this podcast episode is you’ve got it invest in your foundations first. I mean, we’re all about foundations at flourish. Those foundations are your inner game or your mindset. Get yourself ready to in your mind, except that success that’s coming for you. Vision and strategy, branding and messaging. You got to get your messaging clear. You know, Jane, you mentioned really knowing who your ideal client is. And in an earlier episode, we talked all about your client avatar, your ideal client avatar. And we have a resource in our show notes that would help you really hone who your ideal client is. It’s so important. You need that as your basis, so that your message lands with people and people can’t wait to work with you. So that’s another foundation. Of course, there’s marketing, of course, there’s sales and then leadership and team.

Pam (10:27): When you get to that point that you hire that team and of course your operations, you need the basics set up, invest in those foundations. Before you decide that you’re going to create a book. I mean, keep notes on that darn book as you’re going along, but build those foundations. So you know who you’re targeting with that book and what message you want to get across in that book that really attracts your ideal client to you. Or you’re investing in say a social media manager or somebody who creates social media for you, but you’re not really ready for it because you don’t have that message nailed down. You don’t have that vision and strategy of where exactly you want to go. So I think that’s so important that we invest in our foundations, get those rock solid before we invest in the other things that move our business along.

Jane (11:21): Yeah, that’s really it. Pam, when you invest in the foundations first, it’s like anything, building a house, developing a relationship, the foundational pieces. They have to be there. They have to be put into place and they have to be shored up because without the strength of those foundational pillars or pieces, everything else is it’s just not going to be able to be supported. So what, what are the foundations? Well, we talk about this all the time. That was one of the reasons why we wanted to create flourish and grow to CEO. It’s first. It actually, first is your mindset. You got to work on your mindset, then vision and strategy. Then branding, then marketing and marketing is both your message and then your tactics, but the marketing message has to happen first, then sales and then operations and leadership. So your foundations, when you’re getting going, they really have got to be in place or else you’re going to be in.

Jane (12:16): You’re going to get yourself in a loop where you’re investing in things that you’re not quite ready to implement yet. And here’s the big problem with that. Number one, you start spending a lot of money that you probably don’t have, or that’s really stretching you if your business is new and you’re still trying to get it to a place where it can pay your bills consistently. So number one, you’re spending a lot of money. Number two, you’re spending a lot of time because you’re trying to say, create a Facebook group when you really still, aren’t very, very sure on the demographics and more importantly, the psychographics of your ideal clients. So if these people showed up to get into your Facebook group, they’re not going to know who you are, what you stand for, or why in the world, they would want to be involved in the Facebook group.

Jane (12:57): So number one, you’re spending a lot of money. Number two, you’re spending a lot of time and number three, and this is where it’s really dam and damaging. Number three is you’re going to start questioning yourself. Am I not able to do this? Am I just not cut out to be a business owner is what I’m doing, not working. Do I need to do something different? Do I need to do something else? Is it me? And here’s where the craziness starts. You’re going to continue to invest in the next thing. That seems like if you just put that into place, everything will fall into place. So you invest more and more and more money. You spend more and more and more time and it’s not you. And it’s not the programs. None of that is the problem. The problem is you just never had the foundations put into place so that what you’re investing in now actually supports that.

Jane (13:47): So you’re starting at the end and hoping you can create a beginning from it. We want you to create a beginning with a solid foundation so that you can make strategic investment decisions. And so that you have the confidence to know that what you’re doing does matter. That the way that you’re doing it is going to work. And that yes, you are 100% fully equipped and capable to do the calling that you feel has been put upon you, but you can’t do it on your own and you can’t do it when you’re spending money left and right on the next, super slick thing that if you put it into place, everything’s going to fall into place.

Pam (14:24): And we have both been there. I know I have spent oodles and oodles and oodles of money looking for that silver bullet, if you will. And the good thing is most of these programs that you buy, you have lifetime access to. So when you’re ready, go back to them. But when you lay the foundations, when you really create that solid bedrock for your business, you’re going to know what you need to invest next. It’s not that shiny object that you see everybody talking about. Like something that’s really popular right now is the live launch. For instance, there’s a number of people that are teaching you how to do the live launch, the things like in Facebook groups, where you come in and you do live videos, but you might not be ready for that yet. Do you have a product or program that will support the investment that you need to make in order to create and learn, you know, that launch system. And it’s very fatty, the internet as well. And I don’t mean fatty is in I’m gaining weight, but fad, you know, there’s the next best thing is always coming around the corner and technology changes so quickly. So really keep that in mind before you invest as well.

Jane (15:44): Yeah. I think that was all really well said, Pam. All right. So what are we saying? As far as wrapping up this episode, number one, just know that anything that you’ve invested in and anything that you’ve spent time trying to implement, if it didn’t work for you, it’s okay. You didn’t know, it’s not you, it’s not the thing that you invested in. It’s just out of order. That’s what’s causing the problem. So number one, that’s all very normal. Give yourself some grace and mercy on that. Number two, go back and take a look at your foundations. Do you have the foundations in place? You can use our chart, our graph that will show you kind of in a linear fashion where you want to start mindset, then move into strategy and vision. Vision and strategy actually is the proper order and then so on and so forth.

Jane (16:29): So the foundational pillars, they are linear on a perfect day. However, they are circular because they’re all interconnected. Here’s the thing though, just start at the beginning with the foundations. Where is your mindset when it comes to building and creating the business, what is your vision? What is your strategy? What have you done for your branding? What kind of marketing message have you created? Just start with those before you do anything else. And then finally the third point is make sure that you’re getting the guidance and the mentorship that you need to put those foundations in place. That’s where your time should be going. That’s where your investment dollars should be going. What are the foundational pieces that you need to either shore up and strengthen in your business? Or you need to kind of tear down and rebuild and Pam and I have both done both of those.

Jane (17:21): Yeah, absolutely. So get the guidance and the support and the mentorship. You need to make sure that your foundation is in place and that it is strong. And then from there, you can start thinking about writing the book, doing group programs, social media strategies, you know, all the fun and sexy splashy stuff that makes it look like having an online business is just woo. You’re better than life itself. And it can be, but without your foundation in place, it’s not going to be so fun and it’s not going to be so sexy and it’s not going to be so splashy. It’s going to feel like you’re just pushing the Boulder up Hill and we don’t want that for you.

Pam (17:58): So true. Jane, and I just want to say foundations can be sexy. Cause they, I mean, sometimes it sounds like, Oh my God, we have to go back to the basics, but they’re really sexy when it’s setting up the foundation for you to grow a really amazing business for you and perhaps your family. If you have one and you know, provide a really great income for yourself and a source of pride as well. So having those strong foundations is just that the foundations for really building an awesome sustainable business. So it is,

Jane (18:38): It is. That’s very true. Thank you for bringing that up. Foundations are definitely sexy.

Pam (18:42): All right, everybody. So I hope that this helped you to know that we’ve all been there. We’ve all invested out of order and it’s Oh, Kay. Let’s just get back to the basics. So on that note, I want to wish you an amazing rest of your week and Jane, I guess until next time

Jane (19:03): Until the next time. Thanks for joining us.

Pam (19:06): Well, that’s a wrap everyone. Thanks for joining us this week on the flourishing, grow to CEO podcast, be sure to visit our website@flourish.biz. That’s F L O U R I S h.biz, where you can subscribe to the shows in iTunes, Stitcher, or via RSS. So you’ll never miss an episode. You can also find our show notes and resources there too. And while you’re at it, if you found value in this show, we’d love for you to leave a rating on iTunes. Or if you’d simply tell a friend about the show that would sure help us out to0. Now, get out there and flourish!