Ep #198 Money Drama and How I [mostly] Avoid Money Mistakes

I have been in own money drama recently about making an investment in my business and fear about making (yet another) money mistake.  Yep, I've made more than a few "mistakes" with money 😵‍💫. Most of them I would say were "learnings" and stepping stones, with only one really bad one that I still cringe about when I think about it. 

But, the good news is, you get to learn from my mistakes and how I consider and decide on the investments in my business. 

Post-script - I applied my own coaching and advice after recording this podcast and am now taking decisive action with facts to move through the drama and make an investment in my business I feel great about.  In fact, I just said YES today to one of the key "who's" I know will help me get to the next level.

Get the CEO checklist at https://www.foodbizsuccess.com/ceo and know exactly what to do when you put on the CEO hat 🎩 in your business.

If you would like help to create this foundation to create your own beautiful business, Master Your Business is now open for applications. We will officially start in January, but you don't want to miss the Q4 bonus classes to get your business ready!

Food Business Success is my signature program that helps you launch your delicious idea and grow it to $100K. Includes step-by-step videos, tools and 5 months inside the Fuel membership for coaching + community. And it's guaranteed to make your program fee back or I'll refund your money. Learn more at https://www.foodbizsuccess.com/program

Pick up your copy of "Key Ingredients" on Amazon here.

Check out my YouTube channel at www.foodbiz.tube for how to videos to start and grow a packaged food business.

Transcript

Sari  
Welcome to your Food Business Success. This podcast is for early stage entrepreneurs in the packaged food industry ready to finally turn that delicious idea into reality. I'm your host Sari Kimbell, I have guided hundreds of food brand founders to success as an industry expert and business coach and it's got to be fun. In this podcast, I share with you mindset tools to become a true entrepreneur and run your business like a boss, interviews with industry experts to help you understand the business you are actually in, and food founder journeys so you can learn what worked and didn't work, and not feel so alone in your own journey. Now, let's jump in!

Welcome back to the podcast, I am really glad you're here with me today, we're going to talk about money drama and fear of money mistakes today. You guys know I love to bring in my own circumstances, things I'm dealing with in my life and my business, and use my experiences to help you to avoid the mistakes that I made, or use the tools and kind of rethink it to help you be better entrepreneurs, to get there faster, and that's what this podcast is for to help you be more successful faster.

So last year, little over a year ago, I was in some real money drama. And I actually recorded a podcast called Money Mistakes. And I'm very grateful to my past self for having the foresight not to publish that, because I was in it and it was very emotional. And I was using the podcast more as probably venting than teaching. And so I'm glad that I did not publish that. But now I have perspective on it, I survived my money mistake. And now I'm in a place where I am looking at making an investment with a consultant who is telling me that he can help me in my business in certain ways. And so I'm looking at making a sizable investment, one that, you know, it's not huge, and in the scheme of things, a couple of $3,000 or so. But it's something that, you know, is still I want to do my work around it. And what I thought I could offer here on today's podcast, you know, both my money mistake, what I would call a mistake, although you know, mistakes are just learning opportunities. There's no failures, just learning. But nevertheless, there was definitely lots of learning and it was very challenging. And then how I'm applying that differently in this new circumstance. And maybe you can borrow some of the tools, the thoughts that I'm working through, and it can help you as you are making decisions about what to invest in because welcome to entrepreneurship, you will be bombarded for the rest of your career with people telling you that they can help you. And that's amazing. And also there are lots of stories of people saying, I've invested in this and this and this, and they promised this and nothing happened. And so I think that the fear of making money mistakes, making a mistake there is what really can hold you back. Because you're so worried that if you invest this money, that it could be a mistake; and it could. There's no foolproof, there's no 100% guarantee. What I have found in my experiences of running a business now for eight years is that every time I make an investment, almost every time, I should say, it gets me to a new learning, to a new level, it helps to make connections at the very least, I learned something about how to make decisions. But there is movement forward. And I think sometimes we just get stuck in stagnation and the analysis paralysis and not taking any action. And so sometimes, while they might be "mistakes", at least it got you into action. And I bet you can find the places where it did serve you and certainly even what I would call a money mistake served me. It certainly has served me now because I have some different filters and how I think about these investments. So number one is that you need to come to terms I believe as a business owner is that you are going to be making a lot of investments in your business. And there are so many ways that you can do that. And one of the skills that I help people with as far as becoming a CEO is deciding which investments you want to make based on a long term vision, and constraining so that we are for sure, at least staying in our lane. And not like ping ponging our investments all over the place. So as an example, and might be like, well, I'm going to make a little investment over here in social media, and then a little investment over here in YouTube, and then a little investment in this area, and then a little bit over in email, and a little bit over in Google Ads, and then I'm going to get on Amazon and make all these little investments. But you're not actually seeing anything through. And that I think, really slows people down as they make an investment. But maybe they don't make enough of an investment. 

I was in a training a couple of weeks ago, I put this up on a story that somebody was a financial training, and one of the participants totally had a mic drop moment, he said, most businesses borrow enough to fail, not enough to succeed. And I do see that where people are scared of making the money mistakes and so they don't actually invest enough into the strategies, into the consultants, into the platforms, whatever, like they don't do the whole thing. You think you can just like do a part of it, and then hope to see success. But really there are a lot of things, not everything. And I'm really good at saying no, no, you don't need to invest in all of that, just do this. And then there are some things where it's like, no, you really got to go all in. Otherwise, it is wasting your money to think you can just do 1/6 of the strategy and have it work. So I would say number one is like, coming to terms that you are going to have to make investments, your business does not just happen out of thin air with no financial investment. And it's a constant thing, for the lifecycle of the business you will be trying to get to the next level, there will always be a new problem to solve. When you finally solve one problem, you'll be like, oh, great, well, now we have a new problem. Now we need more customers, or we need a new co packer, we need new branding, we're going to do a new product, like welcome to entrepreneurship, that's what we do is solve problems. And there are people, there are services that can solve your problems way faster than you could ever do it on your own, and you might not even be able to do it without some support. And so come to terms with like, I will be making investments in my business, and constrain. Just avoid the ping pong effect and really don't over invest, like be really strategic about it. And that's one of my skill sets is really helping people have a strategy and a long term vision, and then aligning their investments with that and not doing the ping pong effect. The next thing I would say is do not expect there to be a one solution, Magic Bullet, fix all the problems all at once. Yes, I know, it's easy for people to promise you the moon. And I think most of the time it's coming from a good place. Although my money mistake, I would argue last year did not. But I do think generally we bet people, especially if you can get connected with people in the industry, and you're getting referrals, like that's one of the things you get when you come work with me in Food Business Success or as a one on one client, you get access to my network, and I have a ton of vetted referrals that I know are going to treat you really well, take care of you, give you more value for the dollar. But no matter what, just kind of have a perspective that people are going to potentially over promise. And it's not like this problem is going to be solved immediately. I think we get into magic bullet thinking and I am certainly guilty of it. And that's where I think we get really frustrated, we get angry, we get disappointed and then we're like I'm never going invest in another consultant again, right? Somebody who's like I'm going to get you a viral video and I'm going to get your follows up And I'm going to get your email rates to this, like, maybe, but a lot of times, that's just one piece of the puzzle. And so I think we just need to dispense with like this one thing is going to solve all my problems and know that it's a layered approach. And that it's probably going to take a multitude of things to really crack the code. Like let's say you want to get more sales through TikTok or Instagram or something like that, there will be somebody that comes along and says, I promise you, I can get you this. And then it's not going to happen the way that you hoped, it's not going to be quite the thing, it's going to move you further along. But you're probably going to need some other people, other tools, other strategies that create a cohesive whole. 

So I'm not saying like, be cynical about it, but understand that there's some over promising, and that's okay. My philosophy is that I really try to over deliver. And I try to be really transparent about what I offer. And I guarantee it, like there are guarantees on all of my programs because I really believe in my program and my products and my coaching so much, that if you show up and you do the work and you participate, that there's no way you can't be successful. But I'm not going to say that I am a one stop solve all your problems, the only thing you will need for the rest of your business. I do not believe that is true. And there are other programs or other coaches, there other mentors or other things you're going to have to invest in. So there's never just a one stop solution for your problem. The next thing is you got to build in some buffer and some tolerance for "mistakes or failures or things just not working out the way we hoped it would". Whether you give yourself a budget, or you just allow yourself maybe once a year you're going to experiment, try something different, make an investment, that you're going to keep trying things and not everything is going to work. And that's okay. Especially when it comes to the marketing side of things. That's where at least I make a lot of investments is like, once you have the product, which Food Business Success can definitely get you to that point, let's get the product launched. But after you are launched your whole job, or one of the big jobs is marketing and sales. It's the top of the funnel. We need to get people aware of your project really coming in and discovering it, trying it, getting hooked on it, like buying it frequently, whatever that is. Whether that's digitally ecommerce online, whether that's at a farmers market or on the store shelf, you need to be constantly bringing in new customers. And there are a lot of people who can help you with that and a lot of strategies. And once you choose your strategy, like the based on your end vision, then go ahead and try some things, like you got to give yourself the ability to fail and to not have it break the bank. So some of the rules that I learned after I made an investment. So I'll just tell you what happened. It's not really a big deal. But I was, I never I usually just delete these things. But for some reason it It caught my intention. So I'm sure many of you get lots of cold emails for services. I got one for a PR agency. And I you know, I liked what they were talking about. I looked at their testimonials, things like that, but it was a total cold call. And I should have done so what are some lessons learned, should have done a little bit more due diligence, for sure. Looking for reviews outside of their lovely curated testimonials. And then probably just made I made some big assumptions about the quality of press. And yes, they have all these amazing outlets. But then what if they don't get to, yes, they have guarantee which was amazing, but they only had to get you into one publication and they fulfilled their obligation. And I think we have a bias towards, they're going to get me into these big publications. And we don't think about well what if they only get me into this like one tiny one that doesn't matter. So I also don't believe in again, lessons learned from this. Having like, so much urgency that like the offer goes away tomorrow. I do believe in creating urgency through bonuses or other things. But I keep food business success open all the time. I'm not opening and shutting it and doing launches and things like that. It's like, when you're ready, when you need it, it's here. And yeah, there's sometimes I discounted a little bit or sometimes I offer bonuses. There's things that I do to try to drive urgency, because urgency does force you into action. But I don't believe in the hard like, this goes away, if you don't make a decision by tomorrow, whatever, those kind of hard deadlines. So those are just the no for me. And then I just made a rule after this, that if it's over $500, that I'm going to take some time to think about it, I'm going to do that due diligence. I'm going to really sit with it and look at like best case, worst case scenario, because I just did a classic thing, we all do it, there's nothing to be ashamed about it. It's like I only looked at best case scenario. It was like they guarantee it. So it's going to be amazing. And I was very unhappy with the quality of work and like did not get what I was promised. There was urgency, must decide by tomorrow in order to get this great deal. It was a lot of emotional roller coaster but I ended up fighting it and actually did get back some of my money, which was very surprising. But I dealt with a very hostile owner. And it turned pretty nasty for a little bit. So although I was kept trying to go high, but it was like a big emotional investment. And, you know, I had some friends that were like, would you rather have like the $2,000 back or get your emotional sanity back. So we have to think through those things. And my ego was maybe a little bit involved and my pride. But in any case, I decided to fight it. And I feel like I won in many ways, I didn't get a full refund, but I did get a partial refund. So in any case, I think the bad apples get a lot of the attention. And then we're scared to make the investments that we need to in our business. Because what I really truly believe is when I make investments in my business, even if it doesn't pay off immediately, even if I don't see the big promises right away. I still think that that keeps my business and I see it happened for other people where it keeps their businesses moving forward that they're getting momentum, there's things happening, there's action. And so there's things for people to there's like something for the universe, for God, for people to react to. Because things are happening, you're not just sitting around thinking about it, there's a business out in the world interacting with people. 

So I made an investment, I guess it was a couple of months after all of that wrapped up. And I followed my new rules. It came from a colleague who referred me and really helped guide the process. And I felt really confident about that. There was no urgency of sales, they were willing to break up the payments. What else? They didn't guarantee it. And that's okay. Many people are not going to guarantee especially on the marketing side of things. But we did give it some timeframes and some milestones so that I wasn't locked into like a long term contract. And so we tried this marketing strategy, and there was mediocre success. And ultimately, while some of you might be listening to this podcast or engaging on my email list, because of that marketing effort, you know, I gave myself time and I was like, yeah, I'm willing to take this, I think it was maybe a $3,500 investment. I'm willing to take this $3,500 investment, I'm willing to make that. I'm willing to lose it and learn from it. And so I decided I made a commitment to go all in on that and ultimately, two months in, we had a conversation and it was like the milestones weren't being met. And she knew it and she's like, man, I'm doing everything I know how to do but it's just not working based on your type of business. And so we ended it and it was fine. There was no hard feelings or anything. And it was like, okay, well, I got some things from this, I learned from it. So now fast forward, here we are about a year later. And I am looking at making you know, another investment into my business, into the marketing side of things because that's what it's all about over and over again, this never ends. You got to get people into your funnel who are potential qualified customers. 

And I'm having a lot of drama about it. And I have not committed even though I believe in the strategy, part of me is like, I don't know if this is the right person, or I need to get into more belief about, yes, I'm going to make this investment, I'm going to be okay, I can still pay my mortgage and my car payment and I can still eat. So I am not going into scarcity about it. But I am making sure I'm crunching the numbers, making sure I have that money to lose. You don't go to Vegas to win every time. So am I willing to risk this and willing to lose it and learn a lot from it? It's going to get me further, but I'm having to check my mental list of like, there is a part of me that is like, this is going to fix the thing. This is going to solve the problem. This is what will reduce the friction and get people to buy with ease and all the things that we want as entrepreneurs in our business. And so I'm having to, you know, check that and be like, okay, remember, it's not a magic bullet, this will help and you're going to learn something great from it, but it may not. And maybe most likely, it won't fix everything. And this was a referral from somebody I trust and know. And I've been able to have good conversations with this person, he's given me his time, he's offered value. And while he is not guaranteed, which I struggle a little bit with, again, in marketing stuff, people don't often guarantee their programs or their work. But my attitude has changed a lot on that. And I'm like, why wouldn't you? If you really believe in your services, why would you not guarantee them? As long as you know, you can put some parameters on it. But if your client shows up and does all the things and it doesn't work, why would you not give them a refund? So that's my aside, and I follow the 100 million dollar offer book and you would go on my website and see that every program is guaranteed, right? Because I believe in my stuff that much. And so I think maybe start pressuring service providers a little bit more on that, because they make a lot of promises. And oftentimes things don't measure up to all the hype. So when you're having this drama like I am, and I noticed that I'm spinning out about it, it's been a couple of weeks, I've had a follow up conversation with him, he had a great response. I ultimately I know that this is becoming a mental drain on my ability to do other things. And I need to give myself a deadline to decide. And I need to figure out in my brain, what is the information that I'm missing? Is there anything, any questions that I have, things I need to know? Is it the person? Do I need to go and find one or two other people that I can talk to who have similar services, and learn more about them, and it might just not be a great fit. He's seems like a great guy, but it may just be not a good fit for me. And so you know, I lean into my intuition, and I check in with my body. And I'm like, it's not a, you know, a heck, yes. I'm not saying it's a heck no, but I'm going to check it out. I'm not going to just jump into it. And I think one of the biggest things you really have to do is evaluate the ROI, that return on investment. So if I were to invest three grand with someone, I want to see a 10x return on investment. That would be my goal. Because ultimately, I least want it to pay for itself. But I want it to do way more than that. Every investment I make should have a return on it. Otherwise we're just throwing money away when we don't have measurables, when we're not thinking in this way, and so, I need to be in 100% belief that if I invest $3,000, it's going to get me back $30,000. That's what it's going to create for me, by going through, it's not just an investment of money, it's also an investment of my time. And my time is very valuable. I can spend it in a lot of ways. You know, there's many other ways I could spend it and many other options, especially if we just think about marketing efforts. So I'm kind of talking through it myself here with you guys. This is what I'm doing in my brain as I'm thinking about making investments in my business. But the one thing I am not going to do, which I see a lot of people do is just spin out on this forever. Either it's a yes or it's a no and it can be a no for now. But we close the story loop, as Donald Miller says, like there is an open story in my brain that is on repeat, I think about this daily and multiple times a day, should I do this? Should I not? Should I, shouldn't? And so I need to as a CEO, and as a business owner, and somebody who has a lot of things that she should be working on and doing. This is not useful. And so I'm going to go do what I'm telling you guys to do. I'm going to work through some of these questions, see what else I need to know about? Go and find some other people. That's my next action step. I love my friend's, as Kristen says the MINS right? It was the most important next step, I need to go find some other people and interview them and see is it just my own stuff? Or is it just not a good fit with this person? And maybe it's a better fit with someone else? I need to also evaluate my budget, am I willing to lose this? Like, what's the best case scenario? What's the worst case scenario? Worst case scenario is I invest all this time, invest this money, nothing changes. And I'm out three grand. Best case scenario, it works. It fixes the things, a lot of the things that are confusing. People are buying, and I get that 10x investment. And I'm really happy that I made that investment. And I have to be okay, I really believe I have to be okay, I have to have my own back. If I do make this investment, I'm going to show up, I'm going to do everything in my power to make it a 10x investment. And at the end of the day, if it doesn't go, if it goes the worst case scenario, that I'm going to have my own back and we say, okay, I learned from it. At least I have a podcast episode out of it, what are the things with that one last year, I was like, wow, it'll make a great podcast episode at the very least. So here we go. Here it is. Over a year later, you're learning from my 5k money mistake. Bottom line is you need to be making investments in your business. You need to have some systems and some things that you're asking yourself, some tools to help you filter and not just let your brain run amok, and keep you stuck. Because when we get stuck, nothing happens. No progress is made. And when we don't make progress, we give up. And so go and get into action. Start making some investments in your business. If you have been thinking about any of my programs, Food Business Success, the farmers market programs, or Master Your Business, go take the most important next step. Ask yourself, what's the best case scenario? What's the worst case scenario? What does success look like here? And am I willing to invest in myself and lose it? Am I willing to invest myself and show up and ultimately I know that it's going to get you further along than you are now. And I guarantee it, so you got nothing to lose, other than the same tired excuses that are keeping you stuck. All right. That's what I have for you today. I hope you have learned a little bit from my money mistakes and my money drama. And until next time, have an amazing week!

The smartest thing you can do as an entrepreneur is to invest in a who to help you with the how to speed up your journey and help you skip the line. When you are ready for more support and accountability to finally get this thing done. You can work with me in two ways. Get me all to yourself with one on one business coaching or join Food Business Success which includes membership inside Fuel our community of food business founders that includes monthly live group coaching calls and so much more. It's one of my favorite places to hang out and I would love to see you there. Go to foodbizsuccess.com to start your journey towards your own Food Business Success.