I have been a broken record for as long as I’ve been an entrepreneur that investing in yourself is hands-down the greatest source of growth and ROI you can find.
But I believe my message gets lost in translation for many business owners.
You see, investing in your business is NOT the same thing as investing in you, the business owner.
Like all business owners, I spend money on my business to have it operate. Zoom and Canva accounts, an assistant, an associate employee, marketing/branding and social media consulting, etc. … all of these kinds of investments that I make in my business every year serve the sustainability of my business. What’s important to distinguish, however, is that these expenses grow as my income grows.
Meaning: after my income is at a level to afford more of these services, I bring them on.
I maintain a budget in my business that’s based on percentage of my revenue, and I mostly stay within that percentage. So when my revenue rises, my business expenses rise.
Investing in ME, however, looks completely different. Instead of waiting for my income to reach a certain level in order to budget for a coach or personal/professional development program, I invest FORWARD in myself.
Meaning, before my income grows, I reach into savings or trim some profit distributions in order to hire a coach and grow.
When I’m ready to grow to another level in my business, I spend more money than what makes sense for my current budget. I spend based on what’s aligned with my goal income, rather than my current income.
In this blog, I’ll share with you the exact numbers I spent and earned to make this crystal clear and drive home my point. I hope this allows you to see how investing in yourself to any degree could impact your business growth.
As you can see in the chart below, I have calculated the REAL percentages of my revenue increase as well as what I spent on SOLELY personal investments (meaning a coach or personal/professional development program that helped me grow – this does not include any normal business expenses or contractors).
You can see how much I invested, what I invested in, and what impact that had on my income.
As you can see in the bolded years, every time I substantially increased my spending in me, my revenue grew substantially.
When I entered 2018, my revenue had averaged about $2k/mo. I chose to invest almost that same amount per month in life coaching & training, and by the end of the year, I tripled my revenue. The BIG LEAP I took in making that investment felt like the biggest bet I had ever placed on anything – it scared the actual shit out of me.
I had to develop the self-trust and resilience necessary to make that investment worth it by fully leaning into the coaching process.
In 2020, you can see I more than doubled my investment in me. After having maintained my income from 2018 to 2019, I then took another QUANTUM LEAP by investing in coaching, a coaching mastermind, a business coach, and a business course at the start of the year. When March 2020 hit, I was genuinely petrified that I had made a grave mistake to invest this heavily in me. But because I had so much support from all sides, I leaned in and trusted the process… and while the world locked down and my husband’s business closed its doors for months, my revenue more than tripled.
The two years of the pandemic happened to also be the first two years of my marriage, so while the front end of 2020 was dedicated to scaling my business, the tail end of 2020 and throughout 2021, the most important financial and energetic investment for me was taking on my own trauma healing work and improving my communication with my husband. Because my priorities shifted, my investments changed and, in turn, so did my revenue.
Thankfully, after rigorous work on my marriage and inner healing, I entered 2022 with fresh eyes and an open heart, ready to grow again in my business.
This year, I again elevated my investment in my personal growth, and the result is that my revenue is projected to reach the highest it’s ever been.
Every time I take a big leap, it gets a little bit easier to trust myself and the process – but no matter what, growth is uncomfortable. Spending money that’s not predictable based on the past is deeply uncomfortable. Investing in my growth, without any promise or guarantee that it’ll impact my business, is profoundly uncomfortable.
But as the saying goes, you can only get comfortable with being uncomfortable… by getting uncomfortable over and over again.
This concept of INVESTING FORWARD in themselves is the #1 scariest thing I think business owners face.
Most prospects I meet tell me they can’t afford a coach, and what they really need to do is grow their income first before they can afford me.
What they don’t understand is that the investment in themselves CAUSES the quantum leap in income.
This is not glib copy, a slimy sales tactic, or brainwashing bullshit.
You can look at the cold, hard numbers I shared above to see it and believe it.
Investing in you is truly the best way to grow in a way you’ve never grown before.
And based on my experience and the experience of my clients, when we wait to invest in personal growth after the percentage revenue makes sense, after you feel ready, or after you work hard on your own using what you already know… in my experience, you’re going to be waiting a hell of a lot longer to see those results than if you took the quantum leap with a coach.
One very hefty and passionate caveat is: all coaches are not created equal.
A note on hiring coaches – there are LOT of charlatans in the field. I am under no delusion that you can spend a LOT of money on a coach, and you basically get someone who gives you advice and cheerleading.
THAT. IS. NOT. COACHING.
Not every great coach is certified, and not every certified coach is great. But, when you work with someone who has ICF credentialing and who feels like a great fit for you, the odds are in your favor that this person is going to help you grow.
Another note – business coaches are not coaches.
If you ever want to hear me rant on a soap box, bring up how many people call themselves coaches (when there is very clear, global definition of what coaching as a profession stands for) who are actually consultants.
Consultants are great – but they are not coaches.
If you hire someone who calls themselves a business coach, you are actually hiring a consultant to share with you how they grew their business so you can adopt their strategy and framework.
In all of my investments over the years, the truth is that a “business coach” (i.e. business consultant) produced the lowest ROI to my business growth. Out of all the material and strategies my business consultant shared with me, about 5-10% of it made a difference to me.
There are SO MANY business “coaches” (consultants) out there selling their formula to grow. But just because it worked for them doesn’t mean it will work for you. That’s the thing about advice… great advice doesn’t always mean it’s the right thing for you to do.
My life experience tells me that the more I have invested in a great life coach (someone trained to reflect, inquire, and derive the answers from me), the more my business has bloomed. The more I looked outside of myself to tell me how to grow, the less I got out of it. That’s not the case for everyone, and that’s not to say a business consultant or program isn’t worth your investment… That’s just my real and honest experience.
My talk is my walk, folks.
I pay a lot of money for my leadership, my entrepreneurship, and my relationship with myself to grow and evolve… and I reap the rewards because I lean into the work.
I take big risks that are rooted in self-trust, intuition, and rigorous commitment.
I invite my prospective, past, current, and future clients into a courageous container for transformation because I myself am committed to the discomfort of growth.
So take this into consideration as you head into the latter half of 2022: investing in you provides the greatest ROI.
A strategy, formula, or method may take you a few steps further than you’d get on your own… but true self-knowing, self-trust, and self-growth will help you soar.
You don’t have to believe me. Believe my results.
Oh, and did I mention we have 2 remaining spots in our Powerhouse Entrepreneur Program?
We start next week. 🙂
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