Ep #46 Take Your Business to the Next Level

Posted on 25. Jun, 2008 by Elizabeth Potts Weinstein in Mindset, Radio Show

Elizabeth welcomes Alexandria Brown, CEO of Alexandria Brown International, Inc who shares what she’s learned about exponential business growth.  Ali shares how to get past your financial sticky points, what you need to grow your business and when to invest in yourself.  Elizabeth then answers a listener question about balancing your time, business and life while experiencing business growth and shares her Entrepreneur’s Success Tip of the Week:  Setting Goals.

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Transcript: Elizabeth Potts Weinstein welcomes small business owners, entrepreneurs and anyone who dreams of opening a business someday to this empowering hour of the Wealth Spa Radio Show where you’ll find answers to your most pressing financial and legal questions.  Now here is your host, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth:      Welcome everyone.  This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein your host for the Wealth Spa Radio Show and today this is episode #46, I believed.  We have a couple of things going on like usual.  First, we’re going to have a guest.  I’m very excited about having her on the call today Alexandria Brown and we’re going to talk about when your business is growing fast you have the wonderful challenge of exponential growth in your business, how do you deal with that without losing your mind or your business or losing complete of your life.  So, we’ll talk that first and then on the second half of the hour I’ll be answering questions from one of you.  This is very much on topic with this, which is you know when you’re having a lot of growth in your business how do you balance investing money and time back into that growth with you know taking the profit home and paying your bills and that kind of stuff.  So we’ll talk a little bit about that and then as a close to the top of the hour, I’ll be sharing with you my entrepreneur success tips for the week which is about setting goals.  Is it easier to reach this big huge gigantic goals than reaching kind of midsize realistic goals?  So, we’ll talk a little bit about that as we’re close to the top of the hour.  So first I wanted to go…well actually before we get started with our guest, I just wanted to remind you if you’re going to miss any part of the show you can always go to the wealthsparadioshow.com where you can signup to get the show.  This show or any future shows delivered to you automatically by email, RSS feed or even through iTunes.  You can also listen to past shows, we’re putting transcript to the shows up there and then in the future you’re going to be able to purchase CDs or printed copies of the transcript of shows, to the show you particularly like and you want to listen to all over again or give it to someone else.   So again, that’s the Wealth Spa Radio Show, 11 o’clock.  Excuse me, thewealthsparadioshow.com.

 

Okay so let’s get to our guest for today, I have Alexandra Brown on with us.  She is the CEO of the Alexandria Brown International Incorporated which is a multimillion dollar company devoted to empowering woman around the world with a tool to living the freedom based life of their dream via opening a successful business.  It’s interesting I got her bio and I haven’t read her bio in a long time and so she’s gone through a lot of changes in her business over the last couple of years since I first met her and so her bio is a lot different and ??? used to be.  And so many of you may…I’ve talked about Ali on the show before.  Many of you may know her as the eZine queen cause that was one of the first big thing she was known for as how to ??? and still does have an information product on teaching how to create an eZine and used that to help you make money.  Then she’s had this Online Success Blueprint Workshop for the last couple of years, incredibly successful and this year is her last one and now she’s moving on to all kinds of cool new stuff that I’m just still finding about.   And I want to tell a little bit of a story of how I met Ali.  Before I get into that Ali, I wanted to welcome you to the show and thank you, thank you for being on the show today.

 

Ali:                  Thank you.  I’m so excited to be here and it’s great to hear you’re on a roll.  This is fun.

 

Elizabeth:      So Ali I met or I’ve heard about and it was funny I was thinking about when did I first hear about Ali.  It’s actually only about two years ago.  It seems a lot longer than that, but its about two years ago she was a guest on someone else’s call that I was a member of, and I heard about her, I heard about the whole evening thing, I think I bought the eZine kit.  I can’t remember what its called, about how to do this business with your own eZine kit which was very helpful for me cause I had one of those eZine that no one read you know there was this huge amount of horrible work that I hated and no one read it.  It was totally un-useful so that was very helpful and cleaning that up, I went to the Online Success Blueprint Workshop and this is my second year in Ali’s platinum mastermind group so I’ve been connecting with her for a lot over the last couple of years.  So Ali what I wanted to talk a little bit about with you was you know you’ve…as I have said you’ve been growing a lot like you know what your business is today is very different than it was five years ago or even really two years ago and you’ve gone through all this huge changes, when was it that your business really went from kind of being enough just to pay the bill, you know, that pays the apartment that you have…

 

Ali:                  Right.

 

 

Elizabeth:      …to that next level.  When did you see it really changing?

 

Ali:                  I think 2000 its all a blurred now, 2006 was the year that I went  from a few hundred thousand dollar revenue to over a million, and that’s when I’ve  became really happy because and I’ll tell you why to, you know, I think when we all start a business we look at the revenues and we think that’s income and we think…cause like when we have jobs, you know, I would thinking wow a few hundred thousands dollar a year I’m going be rich, I’ll  be perfect, I’ll be home free, you know, I have the right to retire, you know you have this concept and then you realized when you’re actually owning a business, you have to have a lot of growth to have a good amount of net and that was the first year that I really kick things in the gear.   And that came along though with a whole new way of running my business because the new products and programs that I had introduced to generate that revenue suddenly required team members to help run them.  And I know that you know there’s probably many people in the call that are thinking that she’s…I so loved to have those problems Ali that would be great, you know.  But its really interesting I just learn so much the last two years cause since then it more than double that year, it double again and this year I’ll probably again so now I’m in for multiple million.  And now though that  that year that I made that jump I had two part-time virtual assistants I now have eight people working for me and two of them are full employee now.

 

Elizabeth:      Oh, wow.

 

Ali:                  That was the biggest shift I have to make I think in running the business.  Have you to your listeners about virtual assistants.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah, we talked a lot about the idea when you’re very small, it’s great to hire a VA cause then you can only you know ten hours a month or something very small.

 

Ali:                  And its so great and VAs got the ups to about a million dollars a year, I really did.  But this year is the first year I realized that I cannot grow to a $10 million company with the team, and I need full time employee.  And I think that’s a big piece of advice I want everyone listening to hear is that you can’t make decision from where you are, you have to look at where you want to be.  So when I made that jump through  a million that whole year you know as I was moving up and up I kept saying what would a million dollar business owner do.  What would she do?  Now I’m saying what would a $10 million business owner will do and then after that it’d be what’s a $50 million business owner would do.

 

Elizabeth:      Right.

 

Ali:                  And you know I don’t have the budget to always make the same decisions but I try to think how they would think and do what I can afford.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah and I think its, you know, I talked a lot about virtual assistants and things like that cause I’m sure a lot of people listening are either complete  solos or working from home or maybe they just have one or two VAs at this point.  But when you’re making that big jump that year you know from the 200 grand to a million, like when did you realize we need to hire more people.  I mean was it just, you know, everyone was getting you know completely overwhelm and then you just had to hire as time went on or was it something at the beginning of the year, you would strategically did.

 

Ali:                  It was a phone call from Liz who managed the one or two people I had on the team at that time saying we can’t handle anymore.  And I’m like what do you mean.  I throw stuff at them and here you need this done by this day and here’s a project and she says we can’t handle anymore.  And I said oh my gosh I think we need more people and that’s when it really started hitting me that you know I’m great at creating things but I need systems and a team to support what I create and  I make my money my business three ways in my particular business.  I have online product sales, which is the easiest income cause its very much passive except for some customer service issues.

 

Elizabeth:      Right cause people just buy it on line and they get this PDF file or the mp3 file  and then its automated.

 

Ali:                  Exactly and we do shift a lot of products though so that requires dealing the fulfilment house.

 

Elizabeth:      But it’s Ivan, for those of you who may know I just took my first full information product that was a printed copy of things and just hired a fulfillment house so I know exactly what you’re talking about.

 

Ali:                  That’s the income stream #1, income stream #2 is the coaching program and they required just a lot of you know care taking, making sure everyone is happy, everyone has a password for the call and things like that so ongoing meetings, planning, and then the third income stream is my big event I do once a year is the Online Success Blueprint Workshop.  As you mentioned, this is the last year we’re doing it and ??? can learn more and join us and Elizabeth will be there too on onlinesuccessfulblueprint.com and even though that’s once a year though it takes months of planning and marketing.  And so as I’m good at creating this product and programs of things I’ve gotten much better now and actually you know I laugh when I say this but thinking ahead and thinking what am I going to need to support this and how can I take good care of myself.  How can the team take care of me?

 

Elizabeth:      Well yeah and I think you know a lot of us as entrepreneurs we’re such big thinkers.   We loved to come up with new ideas and maybe the content for the eZine that we’re going to deliver to people, but you can have the wonderful problem that things started to get really big really fast for something new that you’re doing that totally hit your target market, and the marketing is perfect but the behind the scene of absolute chaos so you’re logistically  not ready for it.

 

Ali:                  Yeah and you know what it’s always better to launch first and then think latter but you’ve got to be quick and success is messy as they say.  Like you guys have no idea what goes down behind the curtain.  You know we launch and then we cleaned up the mess later but you have to be ready to do that.  You have to have a team in place to jump on board when they need to and take care of everything.

 

Elizabeth:      So how do you go about hiring staff especially now that you’re actually hiring full time real employees?

 

Ali:                  This is a whole new world for me cause I’m suddenly in shock that you know we’re providing health insurance and paying people you know holding their taxes I mean this is just all crazy so actually we hired a consultant to help.   We were very lucky to be referred to a woman who actually would do the searching for us and not for a high fee like a lot of headhunters.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah.

 

Ali:                  She places, helps us create the ads, placed them online, screen the people and then Liz and I end up meeting with maybe three people and its still a learning process honestly I’ll share that we made some mistake with the first hire that we won’t with the second hire.  And as you know Dan Kennedy you know one of our marketing mentors says you know hire slow, fire fast and I think we know for the first interview we did we realized well one of the three showed up on time and she dressed pretty well, lets hire this one.  Like really like we were desperate and I think you know the great thing is we now are looking before we’re desperate.  We’re looking for, we are going to be always looking out for new people for the team, the timing may not be right but we wanted to have them before we need them.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah.  I think it’s hard to as an employees.  It’s different with virtual assistant cause I feel its easier for me to let virtual assistants go cause like well they probably have their other client so I don’t feel responsible for them or something but with an employees its like oh my god I’m paying the person’s health insurance.

 

Ali:                  It is a big deal.  It’s like we’re their life from 9 to 5.  I can’t get over that you know they’re at their desk from 9 to 5 and I can reach them and I’m like this is pretty cool actually.  I turned a little bit on the employee thing you know.  Cause now we have the money to be able to do that.

 

Elizabeth:      Right and also you are able to get not have to you know be sitting there filing out payroll thing yourself and that stuff cause I have my assistant.  I have now all independent contractors but my sister was at one time my employee, I now have it.  Okay everybody we’re going to be going to our first break now.  After the break, we’ll still have Ali on the line talking about making those big up levels to the next level of your business.  So stay in tune for that after the break.

BREAK

Elizabeth:      Welcome back everyone.  This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein for host for the Wealth Spa radio show, and today we have Alexandria Brown on the line with us and we’ve been talking the you know big growth that you can have in a business and the changes you need to make in your business when you’re going from whether its 50 grand to 200 grand or 200 to million or million to 10 million.  So, we’ve talking about logistical things like having to hire full time employees as opposed to just virtual assistant but next I want to talk with you about Ali is on your side as the business owner and as the entrepreneur, the personal up level you have to make, I mean what changes do you have to start doing two years ago and how you thought and how you perceived your business.

 

Ali:                  I think an important thing for everyone to realize is that I am always out of my comfort zone.  And even just saying that you know I can feel it right now like oohhhh you know out of my comfort zone and whether its your business or your personal life if you weren’t continually growing then you’re dying and a lot of people and I see this in my students who will start a business and when they get to a point where they can really take it to the powerful level they get a little fearful because that involved being very unfamiliar and very uncomfortable with a lot of things that are required.  You suddenly have to have amazing self-confidence.  You have to be leader.  You have to set up people for life.  You have to take risk big risk often.  You know this still comes up, you know, during the break you and I were chatting that I’m going through period now of taking my business from 2 million to within the next two years I wanted to be probably at 10 million and that’s involving me to take some large risk right now in growing and do something’s that I have no idea how to do and I’ll give you guys a sneak previews listening, I’m launching a magazine and I’m talking about doing it next year but one of my coaches that I worked with is like no we’re going to do it next month then I’m “okay”.  I’m off the phone and I’m like what am I doing like but…when you know, when you’re clear what your path is and this is very very important, you have to extremely clear in what your path is what you’ll hear on this earth to do and that every opportunity for me that shows that this in line with that path and it makes me feel a really excited and amazing, I’ll go for it, I just go for it.  And a lot of people admitted can’t do that.  You know it requires a feeling of being able to step out and then the bridge will appear, you know.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah there’s a risk tolerance issue I think that people you know some entrepreneurs, they’re not entrepreneurs they’re business owners you know what I mean, and I especially can see it with people and I have some clients who are this who are doing pretty well who are making that 200, 300 grand a year, and its almost like then they became more risk adverse and I’m like cause they want to lose I think.

 

Ali:                  Yep, I’ve two kind of my breaking point in my students and one is probably around well you see some people that were doing right under 100 grand, I see a lot of people get stuck.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah.

 

Ali:                  More maybe between 200 and 300,000 for me in my observations is another sticking point.  I’m now thinking the same in some of your clients as well, but its just you know the step that takes to kind of push through that next level is too uncomfortable and they’re happy being as they are and that’s okay.

 

Elizabeth:      Oh yeah that’s really tempting.  If you’re business is making 300 grand that means high enough to pay the bills at home and so there’s this huge, you could just kind of hang up there in that place.

 

Ali:                  I’m working with an amazing mentor her name is Anne McKevitt and she runs a billion dollar worth of company.  I mean billion with a B and she’s just helping me…totally different…because I realized one of my blocks Elizabeth also was seeing that if I want to make more money then I must have to work harder and how can I worker cause right now I’m working really hard.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah.

 

Ali:                  And she’s helping step back you know its funny it’s the same thing I tell my students but it’s just a whole different level if someone who’s a billionaire telling me instead of you know me.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah.

 

Ali:                  Well we never listen to ourselves.  No.  How often do you have coach or something working will say tell me something that I could read out of my own book, you know.  I wrote this darn book for this.  Tell me what page that’s one.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah.

 

Ali:                  But you know we were joking about this cause she’s like I was…we’re talking launching this magazine and I panicked.  And she said what is wrong I see the look in your face, I’m going have to write all that content.  She’s like no you don’t you know but I’m used to doing things the certain way.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah.

 

Ali:                  That’s why it’s very important to have a coach or a mentor to pull you out of that muck cause you can’t see the forest from the tree.

 

Elizabeth:      Well one thing to think about and I know you done this Ali is as you’re going to that next level you may need to be getting a different coach than you’re currently working with now.  You know person who is taking…cause you know the person who takes you to 200 grand may not be the same person who takes you to 2 million.

 

Ali:                  Yes, definitely I agree and I always have more than one…I have mentors and friends and people in my life.  Some people are amazing with money blocks you know helping me talk about those.  Some people are great with personal things, relationship issue you know my new mentor Anne is helping me just build a big big company that’s going to make me a lot of money and help women around the world at the same time.  I think it’s important that people will realize that investing in yourself is one of the best ways to quickly both grow yourself and your business.  And you know hiring a mentor, hiring a coach someone like Elizabeth for money, you know, for money issues.

 

Elizabeth:      So for someone who’s listening and they have those business that’s at one of those sticking point like is making 200 grand a year, and they’ve been like that for a couple of years now, and they can see that they’re kind of not making progress, what would you recommend to them you know not knowing who they are but what would you recommend some stuff that they could take.

 

Ali:                  Well I would say look what you’ve been doing has gotten you to where you are.  If you keep doing that, you’re going to say where you are.  So you need to do something different.  So getting more client or just raising your rate a little bit won’t do it.  If you’re really ready to make a jump then you need to make a big move in your business.  This is why its really…when it really helps to have a coach or mentor to look at your business from the outside and say you know sometimes we can look at your business and identify completely new income stream that you hadn’t even seen before that can make you more money than your original business.

 

Elizabeth;      Yeah.

 

Ali:                  Cause there’s a lot of easy ways to transition from being a service provider or a regular type of business into a business with multiple income stream.  A lot of the things that I do with my workshop, the onlinesuccessblueprintworkshop.com is I helped service based professions add information marketing and internet marketing to their business which resolved in more passive income stream.  You know they can be making money online while they’re still working with clients they love.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah and build that business.  It’s almost kind of parallel and eventually can replace a lot of times.

 

Ali:                  Yeah and the great thing is you can still work with your client but just only the few that you loved and you charged very handsomely for them.

 

Elizabeth:      Well I think I feel a lot of times I see business owners who are at that level that 200, 300 grand and one of the big reason is because they’re actually still trading hours for dollars.  Maybe they’re doing it at higher dollar amount and more project fees and they’re thought of okay I want to be bigger so I’m going to hire more people like me or something.  I see that you know that you’ll grow you can definitely grow that way but since your adding so much more expense you’re only going to grow at this little incremental rate you know.

 

Ali:                  Exactly.

 

Elizabeth:      And taking this from 200 grand to 2 million or the big huge jump really means doing something fundamentally different.

 

Ali:                  Yeah.  Another thing you want to look at to is your lifestyle and you know admittedly I have some friends who don’t want to grow a company this big because they want to spend a lot of time with their families, they want to still work at home, they don’t want a big team to manage and all that so you know lifestyle plays a big part of it to.  But I know there realistically anybody right can be making a million dollar with the right type of business model from home with very few staff, you really can but information marketing is the key to doing that.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah and I think that is true too with people…I’ve been hearing this a lot lately so I know the message that’s going to me which is sometimes its easier to make a million dollar than to make like a $100,000 you know.  I keep hearing this message over and over again, and I’m like hmmm maybe I need to listen.  But I’m going to talk about this a little bit later on in this hour and you know a lot times the making of $100,000 or $200,000 is the hardest work because it’s the trading hours of dollars one on one stuff.  But the million dollars you can’t like a million dollars doing things one on one.  I mean that isn’t going to work that way.  Million dollar is the thinking outside the box kind of stuff and leveraging and passive revenue stream and all that.

 

Ali:                  I’d like to think you just add a zero, you know.  When you think of it that way it’s just kind of funny.  You just add a zero so what can do that would just add a zero to what you’re doing.  Everyone ponder that.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah it starts to really fun when you start thinking about that.  So what would you say if you could go back in time and talk to yourself two years ago what would say to yourself two years ago now knowing what you know now.

 

Ali:                  I think I would say you’re doing okay.  I would have cause I really think that I did everything sensibly.  I wasn’t afraid to spend money and hire people when I needed to do that.  I knew when to invest in myself.  I knew when to put money out.  You know, for me I got the money thing figured out now.  I’m really happy with that.  Now my personal life is another matter.  Dating is a whole other story.  We need another call for that.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah also dating when you have multimillion-dollar business that’s probably a tall like seminar.

 

Ali:                  Yeah but I think looking back you know I think looking  back earlier than that when I started my first business ten years ago that’s when I wanted to go to that little alley and hold her and say “oh, my god its going to be okay” cause I was terrified.  I was terrified.  I was broke.  I didn’t know how to get client but I knew I knew I wanted my own business more than anything in the world.

 

Elizabeth:      Yeah.  So before we go to the next break.  I wanted to give you a chance I know you’re doing a call with David Neagle tonight and some of you are listening live and so I want to give you a chance to say what the link is for that.

 

Ali:                  Oh, great.  There’s a call tonight and actually I didn’t realize you’ll be giving it out but its alexandriabrown.com/mindsetsecretdn.htm if you go to alexandriabrown.com you can also get on my list and there’s all my classes and programs and products and I’d love to work for you.

 

Elizabeth:      Okay well everyone I’ll talk a little bit after the break.  I’ll give those links again.  So thank you so much for being on the call today Ali.

 

Ali:                  You’re so welcome.  Thank you Elizabeth.

 

Elizabeth:      And we’ll be going to the next break after the break I’ll give out those links again and answer a question from one of you all.  So stay in tune for that after the break.

BREAK

Elizabeth:      Welcome back everyone this is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein your host for the Wealth Spa radio show and we had on Alexandria Brown in the last part of the show we were talking about the covering the parts about up leveling your business.  First, we were talking about the stuff you do your business specifically about staff and the second part we were talking about the personal up level that needs to happen.  So if you want any more information about Ali or about what she’s doing I want to give out a couple link first alexandriabrown.com that’s alexandriabrown.com that’s the link to go to her main website.  You can find out more about her, the kind of stuff that she does as well as get her free eZine, which is about internet marketing, marketing success and actually has personal success stuff in there too.  And then the Online Success Blueprint Workshop that’s what we were referring to a little bit about if you’re a small business owner you do a service based business, coach, consultant, homebased business and you want to add in passive revenue stream, online marketing, information products you can go to the onlinesuccessblueprintworkshop.com.  This is the last one that she’s going to do.  I’m going to be there and this will be my third year in a row and yes I still learned stuff every time I go and I think it’s in November like the second week or so of November of this fall.  It’s the last one she’s doing so you want…if you’re interested you want to ahead and go there.

 

Okay so I wanted to move on to the next thing we’re talking about which is very much staying within the same team which is up leveling your business when you’re going through exponential growth or at the beginning of big growth in your business.  The question is when do you know it’s the right time to invest money back into your business.  Whether this is adding additional staff or maybe your first staff member.  Whether it’s adding a bunch of money into up leveling your website.  It maybe up leveling your personal coaching or consulting or high-end mastermind group, maybe significant money into marketing or advertising.  You’re really stepping outside the box and how much money you’re spending on your business to take yourself to the next level, to enable that big growth to happen.  How do you make that work, how do you know it’s the right time.  Now of course there is no right time.  There’s an inherent craziness in the question because there will never be a right time.  But we also want to make sure you don’t declare bankruptcy so let’s not be stupid about it and figure out how do you make that work.  Now we alluded to a little bit in the last half an hour.  There are a couple of up level in your business.  Now typically a lot of you maybe thinking about starting a business or you have started a business and its just you.  The first big up level is when you first start adding staff.  It maybe an employee because the nature of your business maybe that employee is the only way you can do it or for a lot of you it maybe a virtual assistant.  But that first big expense for a lot of you is that big up level.  Then you have the next big up level where you have to add significant staff where you know going from the cheesy website to the real big grownup website, whatever it is that big up level to the next level.  And then it tends to jump like that from there on.  There’s those big level staff, up leveling all the logistic of your business, the website, maybe its going from a small building to a big building whatever it is.  Well wherever you are right now here’s how I would recommend analyzing it and of course I’m going refer to cash flow projections cause you know its all about cash flow projections.  You always want to go back to the real numbers, our best guess of the real numbers, and project that into the future if we do this things, if we invest money in the marketing, if we hire this new stuff, whatever it is, we get the bigger building then what do we think is going to happen, how do we think our income is going to grow up, go up over the month, how our expenses are going to change and get real numbers, stick it on the chart and see what happen, and maybe the answer is right in front of you.  You know it maybe if you have a small building or you’re thinking going to the big building and you ran the numbers, you may realize you know what the business right now can’t do it the way we’re thinking about doing it.  We can’t buy building.  We need to just rent or maybe you can’t rent and you need to buy a separate entity and get funding a different way.  Sometimes you crunch the numbers and it’s obvious.

 

So before you go into it or instead of going to a big analysis of how you may a cash flow projections I’m want to give you some of the down and dirty things you need to think about.  First especially if you’re small you need to look at your personal expenses before we even worry about the business I want to take you back to how are your personal bills getting paid, how are you living off your money.  It’s always nice and good to be able to invest money back into your business, to hire additional staff, to invest money in marketing, we want to make sure you can pay your personal bill.  You’re not going to be living off of credit card.  So I want before you invest more money into your business I want you to take a step back and look at your personal expenses.  Are your…is the mortgage getting paid by your spouse or partner.  Maybe you have a day job that the mortgage is getting paid by.  Maybe you have the business is able to pay your personal expenses and you’re going to use extra money from the business to invest or you’re going to be using a loan or outside investor to grow up your business.  How are you personal expenses getting paid.  Now it maybe true that you’re willing to you know live off credit cards for a certain amount of time or to get a loan or drawn off your savings for a certain amount of time so you can invest more money into the business.  You want to do that in a conscious way.  So, I recommend going back to your personal expenses and seeing how much does it take for you to live in a particular month.  Is it do you lived off of 2 grand a month, do you live off 20 grand a month wherever you are somewhere in between, well how much does it take for you to pay your personal expenses and where is that money going to come from if you’re reinvesting money back into your business that’s the first thing.  The second is you wan to be honest about your own risk tolerance and Ali and I alluded to this.  There’s some people who start a business who are not really naturally comfortable with risk and you know being an owner of the business, being an entrepreneur is incredibly risky because you’re putting not only your personal self out there and its personally risky but typically there’s a lot of financial risk involved.  And so if you’re going to be investing more money into your business either your own money, the business’ money or getting out a loan that you may or may not co-sign, how comfortable are you with that.  Now you’re never going to be completely comfortable.  But different people have different levels that they’re willing to go to.   You also may have a spouse or partner whether a business partner or a life partner who also has a say in this.  Now like many of you I’m the crazy entrepreneur who’s willing to take the risk.  My husband is much more conservative and so if I’m going to be investing a lot of money into the business, in a lot of ways he’s kind of my you know board of directors or something, you know, I go to him and justified this insane crazy idea that I have and why it makes sense to invest this more money or get this loan or whatever its going to be to take the business to the next level.  So even if you don’t have a person like that that maybe something that you want to sit down.  If you are very comfortable with risk, you also want to make the argument even to a hypothetical person of why this particular investment in your business makes sense.

 

The important thing is I know some people who are just in a place in their live where reinvesting money back to the business doesn’t make sense from the personal expense perspective.  So for instance, I have a client who was in the middle of getting divorce.  I mean literally in the middle of it and how was she going to pay the bills three months from now is very much up in the air, the divorce is pretty much up in the air.  Right now, it didn’t make sense for her to quit her job and started a business that I recommended starting business from a side maybe a great idea.  Spending a lot of time you know getting the business up and together so once the divorce is finalize she can go a 1000 miles an hour but right now it made sense to keep her day job and not stop everything and invest everything in the business.  So what I recommend is you know first looking at your personal expenses and see how much they are.  Second be honest about your debt tolerance, your risk tolerance, what you’re willing to invest in the business and what you have to justify to any spouse or partner whether its life or business partner and then third you want to really sit down and do some cash flow project and those of you…I talked about this before cash flow projection is just projecting out to the future what you think your income is going to be, what you think your expenses will be in any particular month.  So typically if I had a big idea of the money I wanted to put back into the business, I have something that’s going to be have a lot of money in front ended but it think its going to be a lot of income.  I would draw a new draft of a cash flow projection for that new project either separately or as part of my business cash flow projection that I already have and see.  Okay best-case scenario how much more money do I make.  Worst case scenario what could the downside be and see if it make sense if it’s worth the risk.  You know at some point where it make sense to just have a virtual assistant.  And like Ali was talking about there are some points where you need to go ahead and hire a full time employee much more expensive both logistically as well as financial in many cases but sometimes you actually need that.  Same kind of thing if you’re investing any other kind of thing into your business.  You wanted to use real numbers to help you make the decision and see if it’s a good idea.  And by the way for a lot of my people who are self-employed, who are true solo entrepreneur maybe their cash flow projections I have them put not just a business’ income and expenses but also your personal expenses.  Everything from taxes to your mortgage, to your gasoline, to groceries then you can see yeah maybe your business is making a profit but you don’t have enough money to pay your personal bill.  So that can be very helpful for those of you who are completely self-employed. 

 

Okay so were’ getting ready to go to the next break in a couple of minutes.  After that break we’re going be talking about the Entrepreneur Success Tip for the week.  As many of you know who have listened to the show before every week I go through a secret of successful entrepreneur tip of the week.  This week its going to be about is thinking really big and huge actually easier more attainable than thinking kind of medium or safe.  Don’t forget if you miss any part of the show you can always go to wealthsparadioshow.com there we’re not going to have just the audio recording of the show but all the links that we talked about we’ll be there too.  So if you also missed any of the html links that we gave out during the show, you can also go the wealthsparadioshow.com a couple hours after the show and that staff will be up there.  If you listen to the podcast you can go there too.  Re-listen to this afterwards.  I want to give Ali’s link again its alexandriabrown.com and also the onlinesuccessblueprintworkshop.com.  All right, we’re about ready to go to the next break after the break I’ll be talking about the entrepreneur’s success tips for the week.  So stay in tune for that after the break.

BREAK

Elizabeth:      Welcome back everyone.  This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein your host for the Wealth Spa radio show and right now we’re in the segment of the show we’re I talk about the entrepreneur success tip for the week.  And this is something you know I actually referred to it when I was talking to Ali earlier in this show.  I’ve been hearing this message over and over again so it must be meant for me right now.  This is the idea that it’s easier to obtain a gigantic huge big goal than it is to obtain a medium “realistic” goal.  What am I talking about?  I’ve been hearing this message a lot lately that people who said you know it’s easier to make a million dollars than it is to make a $100,000 and you’d probably have heard that concept before.  Well I used to always think when people said that to me that oh what they’re talking about is the first $100,000 is really hard and then to go from a hundred to a million dollars is much more easy.  You know, I actually don’t think that’s what people are talking about and I don’t think that’s the message to take home.  The message to take home is that its not that the incremental difference between a 100 grand to a million is easier than between zero to a hundred.  You know that may be true.  It’s that going from zero to million is easier than going from zero to a hundred.  So that sounds kind of completely insane right?  It sounds completely not intuitive.  I also heard people say it’s easier to get you know $10 million or even a $100 million in funding than it is to get a million dollars of funding for a new start up.  That sounds that…doesn’t make any sense right?  Shouldn’t it be really hard to get a $100 millions funding versus a million.  I mean a million is a lot less money shouldn’t there be you know more place to get it, its less risky for investor, etc.  But here’s the idea that people are talking about and this is what I’m starting to learn myself too is that at the “realistic” or medium size goal level whether this is the million dollars of funding, whether its making a hundred grand or 200 grand a year, whether it’s the medium size clients, at those levels there’s a gigantic amount of competition.  Why is it?  Why is that true.  Well a lot of people, a lot of people are trying to be realistic, are trying to stay in their comfort zone so they’re going from a kind of just medium size goals, a lot of people are going for the medium size client.  A lot of people are going for a couple 100 grand or a million dollars in funding for their new start up.  There’s a huge amount of competition because most people want to be realistic, they want to stay in their comfort zone, they want to do what’s safe, what seems doable so they think kind of just small or maybe a medium size and that’s what they think.  At the very top looking for a hundred million in funding, trying you know making a million dollars or $10 million a year, charging…you know going for the huge big client who has huge budgets who can pay you a lot of money.  There is less people going for that.  There’s less competition for the really really top high end.  And this may not be true in every single industry, but I’m saying I’m hearing this message a lot lately so I’m thinking this is something that I need to learn but the idea being that can be a lot work and there’s a lot more competition going for that small or even medium size goal or client or information products that you’re selling on the web or whatever it is than going for things that are really really big.  You know even think about getting press.  You know your local newspaper may actually get a gazillion inquiries because every local business is trying to go after them but it maybe that the host of the big giant television show or the Santa person who writes for a syndicated column may actually not get as many inquiries as you think.  Now going after the beautiful girl at the party, a lot of times you go to the bar the moderately attractive women are getting hit on a lot more than the most beautiful women in the entire bar and why is that because the most beautiful is seems unattainable and so no guys are hitting on her.  And so a lot of times those people actually got a better shot with the most beautiful room versus the moderately attractively attractive women in the room.  So what I’m recommending and this is something I’m doing right now in my business is going back to the ideas that you have and the current things that you have in your business and think would it actually be easier to think much more big.  If you have client like you have corporate client and you’re going after moderate size companies, would it actually be easier and more efficient and they be less competition to go for the biggest, the Top 10 in your industry.  If you’re looking at doing an event, is it easier to do an event where you charge doing $49 a head or should you go ahead and do the even that charges $5,000 a head and that may be you only need ten people in the room so you know, you only need to find ten people who can afford who can afford the five grand as opposed to a hundred people who can afford $49 which is actually sounds really hard, hundred people versus ten people.  The idea being there’s huge amount of competition at that lower price range.  If you’re a financial adviser and you’re looking for people who have $500,000 in investable asset or maybe you should look for people who have $10,000,000 in investable asset then you may say well but Elizabeth you know right now my typical client only has half a million or a million dollars.  The $10,000,000 client well they’re…they’re a bunch of fancy and wealthy people and that would be much more difficult to think about or the $100,000,000 of investable asset.  But here’s the thing there maybe a lot less people going after them.  You know the people who have a $100,000,000 investable asset most financial adviser are going to be intimated by and they’re not…its going to be completely out of their comfort zone to go after those big gigantic fish.  So what I recommend is going back and looking at things your business and thinking am I just thinking kind of either small or medium size where there’s a lot more competition or should I go back at the things that I’m offering clients, the services and products that I provide and just think really really big.

 

Okay so that’s my idea for the week and it’s something that I’m actually right now in the middle of doing in my business.  Now next week we have Mary Pat and I have no idea how to pronounce her last name and I’ve talked to her before.  Ka-va-nagh, Kavanagh…as I said Mary Pat, I always called her Mary Pat.  Okay she’s going to be on talking about joint ventures and specifically we’re going to be talking about how to create the perfect joint venture even if you don’t have a list or product.  Those of you who don’t know a joint venture is we’re going to be talking about this next week but the idea is that you maybe a person who has a product but no list to sell it to or you have a list of people you know email address in store but you have nothing to sell them and so what you do is you partner with someone who has the other thing.  You have a wonderful product, they have a big list of people who are on your target audience and they you know offer your product to their list and then they take a cut and you take a cut.  And let me tell you this is one of the fastest way to develop your business.  And why is that because very few people have both.  Have both an entire sweet of products and services as well as big huge giant list of people and contacts to sell it to.  So especially if you’re an entrepreneur, who sells their individual or small businesses this can be an excellent way to build a very large list so, a lot of your product or services even if you don’t have a big list yourself.  And you know actually this has been biggest way I built my list as well as sold a lot of my Cash Flow Boot Camp in a Box product.

 

Speaking of that and I don’t think I’ve talked about this product on the radio show.  I just want to let you all of you know I was talking earlier about cash flow projection.  If you’re having any sort of issues with cash flow, with managing the income and expenses of your business.  I have a new product that is just now shipping called the Cash Flow Boot Camp in a Box.  This is a home study course where you get four CDs, you get a binder with so much information, you get templates, all the stuff to help teach you a system to take control of cash flow in your business.  So if you don’t know what a cash flow projection is besides you know what the world mean, but you don’t have one, you’re not using that in your business that’s a great product to get to learn how to use it and it does have a guarantee.  So if you get it and it’s not good fit for you, you can always return it and get your money back.

 

The website for that is to get some more information about it is cashflowbootcampinabox.com that’s cashflowbootcampinabox.com.  And then I just wan to remind you if you’re going to miss next week show or you want to listen to any prior shows or even this show you can go to thewealthsparadioshow.com that’s thewealthsparadioshow.com where you can sign up to get the show delivered to you automatically by email by RSS feed.  Don’t worry if you don’t know what that is just do the email or even through iTunes if you’re an iPhone or iPod kind of person or even you can do iTunes just on your computer.  Again, that’s the wealthsparadioshow.com.  So next week we’re going to have Mary Pat on talking about joint venture and thank you very much for listening this week and I look forward to speaking with you next week.  Ba-bye.

 

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