There is a lot of noise happening in the coaching space, in the coaching industry and I’m just gonna go out and say it: A lot of it is highly annoying. When I say highly annoying, I don’t mean the people themselves are annoying, I mean that a lot of people are being annoying because they are doing something that is really getting under my skin… 

>>Trying to pass their opinion off as fact << 

One of the opinions that I have seen is that when you make an investment in yourself, it should always be almost instant and always intuitive. And I get it. You absolutely wanna have this intuitive ping as Lacey Phillips calls it. You definitely wanna feel called and magnetized towards any type of investment, whether it be investing in a mentor or investing in a home or stocks, but nobody goes and invests in stocks and says, “Hmm, my gut feels good about this.” No, you do research. 

Don’t get me wrong. I think energy is such an important part of business specifically when it comes to content creation, the energy that you show up with, the vibe, the mood, whatever you wanna call it, is crucial to being able to attract people that are on the same wavelength as you.

However, I think this whole concept of teaching, especially new entrepreneurs, that they shouldn’t think critically about the investments that they’re making is honestly just wrong. It’s wrong. You should always take a second to think. Is this investment going to actually move the needle in my life and in my business? 

Yes, it is good if you love the person, but we wanna make investments like entrepreneurs, not like fan girls, because at the end of the day, I see more people having negative experiences because they got caught up or swept up in the hype of somebody else’s results rather than thinking, is this the thing that is actually going to help me in the areas of business that I need help in?

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HOW TO MAKE SMART INVESTMENTS

Now I just wanna preface this by saying this is not trying to necessarily call anyone out. This is not trying to sit on any side of the fence. I just feel like specifically in the online business, female-driven specifically coaching space, there are a lot of conversations happening around investing and how one should invest. And I think it’s great that people are obviously backing themselves and they are trusting themselves more, and they are making these intuitive investments. 

However, what I’ve realized is that there really are also some people who like to not only invest intuitively and with their gut and with their emotions, but they also want to invest intellectually. And I fall into that camp. 

I am someone who is all about the energy, all about the vibes, but I still see myself as an entrepreneur– an entrepreneur who wants to train themselves to one day be able to run big organizations. I have goals and dreams of starting businesses that can operate without me. 

I wanna train myself to not only be able to make investments that are emotionally led and intuitive for myself as a person but also to train myself to invest as an entrepreneur. 

If you are running, let’s say a multimillion-dollar company with 50 employees, you can’t walk up and say, “Hey, I wanna hire this person or make this investment just because it feels good in my gut.” You also need to back it up with an intellectual decision. There needs to be reasoning behind it. There needs to be a projected return on investment. 

You can still make gut decisions. You can still be pulled in certain directions. You can still learn to listen to your intuition and listen to your gut, but also just pause for a moment and ask yourself, is this actually going to be a good investment for myself and my business? What is the return that I am going to get through this investment?

THE FRAMEWORK

My framework for investing in me & my business is based on Coleman’s pie theory of success.

Now, this isn’t something I invented. But it is something that I talk about often with my clients & the students inside my programs. Essentially, this guy Coleman came up with this pie theory of success. Namely, these are the three most important factors for any type of business success: performance, image, and exposure. 

So when I’m making investments, I ask myself, are these investments going to help me in these specific areas that I know are very important for my success? 

So although in Coleman’s pie theory of success, what he’s actually trying to show is that exposure is the most important part of one’s success. 

The systems that I use, the team that I hire, any type of coaching, any type of advertising or any type of personal development, I make sure that these investments fall within these categories. 

PERFORMANCE

This would be anything that helps to increase your skill set. I know that a lot of people are along the lines or have the belief that mastery is irrelevant these days, but I still believe in really having skills in the particular area that you are building your business around.

So any type of skill development would fall under the performance category. Now that is not just your direct skill as in the direct skill that you offer as a part of your business, but any other skill that you invest in. For example, I’m currently taking a course about passive income. It’s a skill that I already have. I make passive income a lot, but I also just want to continuously increase my skill and learn more. Maybe for you, it’s some type of Skillshare program about video editing. Maybe it’s a book about marketing.

Another example of a performance-related investment could be any systems tools or tools that helps your business run more effectively. So this could be hiring team. Absolutely. But this also could also be a project management system, website, or members space. 

These are a return of an investment because they help my business PERFORM more effectively & efficiently. 

Lastly, is any personal development that will help you in the performance category. So if you are having blocks and limitations around your particular skill set and you need help, whether it be through traditional therapy, whether it be through a mindset coach or a mentor, if there is something that is going to help you perform better, but it’s more along the mental side of things versus the physical side of things, then that would still fall under the performance category.

IMAGE

So the next one is image. Image is super, super important. This would be anything that helps with the reputation of you and your business. And of course, the main category that this would be anything that helps develop the reputation of your brand. So this would be things such as website development, copywriting. 

Image management, public relations, like anything like that that helps manage the image of you and your business or helps to increase the image of your business, would fall under the image category. 

EXPOSURE

And the final one is exposure, which to be honest, most entrepreneurs in the online service-based business will spend a lot of their money. And so I really think investments in this particular area are an amazing thing. They kind of can cross over with the skills in performance. 

So if you are putting any investments into learning particular skills that will help with exposure, it can fall into either category. And I guess if it falls into two, then that’s a great thing, but really this is anything that is going to help to increase your exposure. 

So if that’s gonna help you learn a specific skill, or if that’s gonna be advertising budget, marketing budget, if that’s gonna be anything again, around personal development. So you may need to either go see a therapist to help remove the blocks that you have around being seen, or maybe you have a lot of money, mindset limitations, and that’s holding you back from showing up and selling and doing the things that you need to do. And so therefore you hire a money mindset mentor, or maybe not even that maybe you hire an accountant and will, that will help you be more empowered with money. 

There are so many different avenues for investing as well. So one thing you wanna think about is obviously doing your research and finding which one is going to be the best for you.

DIVERSIFYING

Rather than putting all of my investing eggs into one basket, I like to diversify my investments. So I’ve seen a lot of people who put pressure on one specific investment to be the be-all end-all of their success.

What you have to recognize is nobody has the skills to be everything that you need in business. Putting all of your eggs into one specific basket without actually first assessing what it is that you really need to progress towards the business that you desire to have, I think is an extremely risky investment.

So what I do rather is that I personally identify where I’m stuck at this specific point in time or what my opportunities are. So one of my most recent investments was reworking with a coach that I had previously worked with. She has a very ethereal approach to money and mindset and personal development, but she also has a very practical and pragmatic approach to money management, which helps with the money mindset. So when I realized lately that I had so many blocks around money mindset, and that really was stopping me. I really realized that I needed to make an investment in helping me to manage my money better and to work on my money mindset because that’s the specific thing that I needed to change.  

I really am thinking about where I’m at and what I need. 

GOING “ALL IN”

Now. Another thing that I wanted to share with you is when you’re thinking about investments, and again, this is the part that may sound like I’m sort of, you know, dragging people or I’m not trying to, I’m just really trying to help educate you because I know that there are some people that love to just go all in.

They love to invest intuitively, and that’s fine. Like that corner of the market is doing their thing. I’m so happy for them. If, as long as they’re obviously putting their money to good use, let them do their thing. However, what I want you to realize is that just because there is one corner of the market that do it one way and as much as they make you feel like it’s the only way it’s not the only way there is in the entrepreneurship space. 

I want you to kind of like shift your focus a little bit. If you are someone who is a little bit more pragmatic or you wanna think a little bit more strategically, that’s fine. It just makes you someone who does things differently. And I wanna see you and honour you and assure you that that’s okay. If you wanna have some critical analysis of the investments that you wanna make, that’s okay. I do that. 

I have absolutely made investments that are, you know, shotgun investments, just feeling the intuition and they have worked out amazingly. But a lot of the time I realize that these have been backed by me, knowing myself and knowing, and understanding the industry. I’m constantly doing research and analysis of this industry. So I may make an intuitive decision in that moment, but a lot of the time I’ve already done the research just by paying attention. 

And so one thing that will help, and this is specifically when you’re thinking about mentorship because I know a lot of people make investments in mentorship based on the results that the person they’re investing at in has for themselves. And this is great. However, there’s another layer that I would like you to think about rather than just investing in someone for the results that they have. The other layer that I want you to maybe think about is how did they get those results and is that specific strategy attainable for you? And is what they’re teaching the actual strategy that got them the results in the first place?

So for example, I know there are a lot of mentors and coaches out there who they are teaching marketing and teaching strategies, and that’s fine. And that’s great. However, a lot of the time what I’ve realized is that a lot of their personal exposure has come through a sort of system. So their coach shouts them out and then a lot of the people who can’t afford to work with that coach will work with them. Or they get a lot of visibility through being a client of a specific coach. And so if that person is then going to teach marketing strategies, you need to ask yourself without that particular referral, is it attainable for me to achieve the same results that they have done? 

If you’re investing in someone, you need to ask yourself: 

• Will this investment enhance my performance, image, or exposure?

• Do they have the business model that I want? 

• Did they have the results that back the thing that they’re teaching, through the method that they’re teaching? 

• Do they have a replicable formula?

• Do they have the lifestyle that I want? Do they have similar values to me?

Copy My Business Plan

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