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In yesterday’s blog post, I shared that I’m about to make my next big investment in my business and I’m in the midst of that ‘big gulp’ that comes right before it.

My mind is going nuts with all the reasons this is a BAD idea.

I could lose all my money.

It could fail.

I could get ripped off.

Maybe it won’t work.

What if I fail?

I’m sure you are intimately familiar with these stories yourself.

So now, I’m going to let you know how I get beyond these stories and keep moving forward, confidently saying yes to the next right thing that is going to take my life and business to the next level.

First, the investment …

I’m about to invest $25,000 up front + $10,000 per month for a company to build out and manage the entire marketing funnel that will lead more people deeper into my work.

I looked into working with this company a year ago and did not make the decision to hire them then because I knew my company wasn’t ready for the influx they would bring.

I spent the past year getting ready. Building up the team, the infrastructure, knowing we could provide the support to our members.

And now that we know the product rocks, what’s next is creating an influx of a lot more people.

I see a lot of people who do this all backwards (and heck, I’ve done it backward myself in the past).

They want to invest in marketing before knowing that they have a great product.

They want to invest in getting more traffic to their website before even ensuring their website converts.

They want to invest in learning how to speak to sell before they even have a clear offer (packages) nailed down.

They want to learn how to have enrollment conversations before they even know what they are enrolling people into.

They want to learn how to bring their business online to reach millions before ensuring the model even works on a small scale.

I get it. It all sounds so exciting! And it can be hard to know what order to do things in when you are getting marketed to from all directions.

Often, whoever is best at marketing their stuff wins your attention and so you find yourself doing the wrong things first (mostly around sales and marketing because the people who market the best are usually teaching that) and wasting a lot of time, energy and money in the process.

I only know because I’ve been there myself.

It’s why I created the Money Map. I needed to map out the straightest line possible from where I was, to where I wanted to go, so I could stop circling my success and systematically get to the next vista point as quickly and with as much clarity as possible.

And, stop investing in things I wasn’t ready for while at the same time knowing what I DID need to invest in next. What I see a lot of people doing and what I did myself after I made a few “I wasn’t ready for that” investments is freeze up and do nothing.

Freezing up and doing nothing is almost worse than making the wrong investments because at least you learn from the wrong investments.

When you freeze up and do nothing, you don’t learn, you simply get stuck. Deer in the headlights. Not going anywhere. And that can be far worse.

So I knew that last year was not the right time to make a big, scary investment in a team to build out my marketing funnel. I needed to hire a CEO first and get my team and product straightened out.

Now we’re ready for the marketing.

So while this investment is scary, I know that building out our marketing funnels is next because we’ve got clear offers, great products, great results, great customer service and a super foundation to support it all.

But I’m still scared.

I don’t think that part goes away, ever.

And, I am not even entirely sure where the money is going to come from for this investment. Sure, the company brings in $135,000-$150,000 every month, but we use it all to pay our existing team and expenses.

I have some ideas though, and one thing I know for certain is that every single time I have committed to an investment, even (especially?!?) when I haven’t known where the money would come from to pay for it, the resources have shown up.

In my next post, I’ll share with you where I think the money may come from to support this investment and how I’m going to make it all work.

For now though, I’d love for you to consider — what’s your next big investment?

If you are currently providing one to one services (sage guide archetype) and still charging hourly or don’t have clear packages so that it’s easy for people to say yes to working with you, consider our packaging course starting Monday.

To your eyes (and heart) wide open life,

Ali

PS — Want to know if the packaging course is right for you? Consider this:

The packaging course is for anyone who knows who they serve and how they serve them, but you aren’t enrolling (enough) people in your services because you don’t have a fluid, easy, clear way to say to people — this is how we work together and here’s how you’ll pay for it.

• You either think your services can’t be packaged because they are too individual for each person (I guarantee I can change that thinking and create packages out of what you do);

• Or you think you have to charge hourly because each engagement is simply too variable (yep, that’s what a lot of the lawyers I work with think too — I can fix that right quick);

• Or perhaps you think that you must charge by the hour because your license or regulations require it (I’m pretty good at finding a way around that one too).

So if you are ready to move beyond hourly billing (and any focus on trading your time for money) plus be ready to enroll the folks who are interested in your services into paid work with you, make this your next big investment. It’ll pay off in spades.