financial investments

Conscious Money Challenge: How Are You Investing?

July 27, 2016 by influexwp

Conscious Money Challenge. Are you willing to open your eyes?

If you have investment money in the stock market, whether through a retirement account or a straight brokerage account, I challenge you today to find out what your money is invested in and make a conscious choice about what you are supporting in the world.

If you aren’t sure how to do this, grab your last account statement (or go online) and find the 5 letter code that indicates where your money is invested.

Then, type that into Google and review the breakdown of holdings.

For example, AGTHX, the Growth Fund of America. It sounds so nice.

I might have even picked it myself back in the day when I worked for the big law firm said, “Hey Alexis, you’ve got a 401k, how do you want it invested?”

I looked at the options on the paper they gave me, closed my eyes, put my finger down and filled in the little bubbles on my form. Totally blind.

Ridiculous, but I didn’t know any better. And my guess is you don’t either.

So, are you willing to stay blind? Or are you ready to wake up?

We vote with our dollars, but not just with what we buy, but with HOW WE INVEST.

Most of us, though, are investing blindly.

Using robo-funds, or financial advisors who only care about their own commissions or getting your money under management, or simply ignoring it because it’s too complex.

But, really, it’s not. For example …

Type AGTHX into google and you can see that if you are invested in what they call the Growth Fund of America, you are investing in Phillip Morris (the tobacco company that hid data on nicotine’s addictive properties), EOG Resources (fracking!), and Amgen (a company that may be suppressing a true cure for cancer to promote it’s own bottom line — unverified).

Come on, people.

Are you really desiring to support big tobacco, fracking and big pharma?

Or do you think we can do something better with your money?

Wake up, please. Let’s take back control and not invest blindly just because we want that “safe” 5% return for our retirement. It’s not safe, it’s a lie.

What will your retirement be anyway if we are living in a world without clean water (fracking), where we cannot get access to our own natural healing (big pharma), and where lying to addict people is considered acceptable (big tobacco)?

We can change this, but we have to wake up to do it.

Message me at support@eyeswideopenlife if you want help looking at how you are using your resources. It’s time we made a change. And it starts with you.

My Next Big Investment

May 1, 2015 by influexwp

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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.

Holy Shizz…Am I Really Doing This? (Facing My Fear of Investing in Myself)

April 29, 2015 by influexwp

I’ve made a lot of big investments over the life of my career.

Each time, I was scared to death.

The first was when I was still a lawyer in a big law firm and while I was making a nice, steady, reliable paycheck, I NEVER spent any money on myself.

And, after taxes, insurance, mortgage payments, stuff for the baby, and my husband’s daily trips to Starbucks with the baby (he was a stay at home dad), there was nothing left over.

So how COULD I start investing in myself?

I didn’t think I could.

That changed when I came across my very first coach and realized that if I didn’t hire her and get help, I was going to be stuck in misery.

I had worked my buttinski off to get the job at the big law firm and yet there I was with all the “success” in the world and I wanted to die every day I had to leave my husband and baby to go into the office.

Fortunately, I came across a coach I knew could help me (how I came across her is a really good story for another day), but I was scared to make the investment.

Spend money on myself? Never.

But after some conversation with her, she helped me to see that if I didn’t make investments in myself (not just financial, but other investments too — more about that another day as well), I’d be stuck.

And if I did make investments in myself, they would pay back every time.

So I did it. I took a deep breath, swallowed hard and paid her more money than I thought I had for coaching. And it wasn’t even that much.

But back then, it felt like so much. (It was only $347/mo., but it felt like a million dollars because I was SURE I didn’t have the extra $347/mo.)

And it’s all relative …

Just a few years later in 2008, I invested $100,000 (yes, you read that right!) to participate in a coaching/mastermind program.

$100,000!?! But I’m telling ya, it truly is all relative.

That $347/mo. investment felt as scary as the $100,000 investment.

My businesses were on track to make a couple million and anything less than $100,000 wouldn’t have been enough to stretch me beyond my comfort zone at that point.

And that’s exactly where I needed to be.

Stretched.

Outside my comfort zone.

Today, I am right back there again … about to make a huge investment that is scaring me to death. Stretching

But it’s definitely the right next thing. I’ll share the details of it with you tomorrow and how I know it’s the next right stretch for me.

To your eyes (and heart) wide open life,

Ali

PS — If you know that our packing course is for you, enrollment is now open. There’s space for 10 folks. If you read my last email and know that it’s time to move from hourly to packages with your services and to easily enroll people into working with you and reaching your Money Map Number, this is the course for you. Enroll now.