CONNECT the DOTS
CONNECT the DOTS
Show Notes
I have three questions for you today.
- The first question I have for you is do you budget your money?
- The next question I have is do you know how much you have?
- The third question is do you know where your money goes?
In this episode, I share some super important things to pay attention to if you want more money.
And I promise you, this is different than anything I’ve shared before. You won’t want to miss this episode!
Listen to the show
Description:
The first question I have for you is do you budget your money? I had a client that was so resistant to the budgeting conversation. I don’t spend a lot of time in my program, for some clients I don’t spend ANY time, on budgeting.
But for the clients that this does make sense for, I have two general ways they respond to budgeting — either they resist budgeting with EVERY fiber of their being. Or they resist
This is how I think about it. Everything you do in your business and everything you decide NOT to do in your business — and in your life for that matter, is a budgeting decision. Everything you do or don’t do has a cost associated with it.
You are paying for everything – what you do and what you don’t do — in some way. If you decide not to invest in coaching. You’re paying in time. Without a coach, it will generally take you longer to figure it out.
I know some people bristle at the whole shortcut thing — the idea that hiring a coach helps you shortcut the process of building what you want to build, get whatever you want to get. I truly believe it is a shortcut.
I’m not going to get into that on this episode, but just one quick thing I will say here is that when you hire the right coach, they not only share their experience and bring that to your work together, but they also share their clients’ experience and bring that to the table. And both of those can save you a whole lot of time getting where you want to go.
What I’m saying is that everything you do and don’t do, you’re paying for. Not hiring a coach, not hiring a VA, whatever you don’t want to spend the money on, you’re paying for that decision with your time. Which, by the way, most of you think you don’t have enough of. Just sayin.
Everything you do or don’t do in your business, you’re paying for. The only question is are you making those decisions on purpose and do those decisions support YOUR purpose, as well as your vision, your mission and your goals?
The next question I have is do you know how much you have? Many of my clients don’t know how much they truly have. They may or may not have an idea. Some have some idea and others have no idea. Not knowing contributes to the feeling of not enough, because if something is uncertain, your brain will default to panic and not enough.
If you don’t know or you don’t know enough about your financial situation, that’s a simple fix. Just start gathering the information. There is no deadline, but can you just commit to working on it 5 minutes a day or 3 times a week, until you’ve put that 1,000 piece puzzle together and you know what it looks like?
Start tracking your net worth. Set a goal for your net worth each year. Net worth sounds like this complex scary thing, but it’s really super simple. So write this down:
To calculate your net worth, just write down and total everything you own. Everything: house, furniture, stocks, bonds, savings, 401k, car, wedding ring, everything you own. You can estimate the value of that based on what you think it would sell for if you had to sell it tomorrow. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Then write down everything you OWE — your mortgage, your balance on your car loan, credit card debt, student loan debt, everything you owe.
Then take the total you got from writing down everything you OWN and subtract the total you go by writing down everything you OWE and that’s your net worth.
This is a good thing to track so you can see your overall progress. Because what you have in the bank or any single number on this list doesn’t give you an accurate picture of your financial position and health.
The third question is do you know where your money goes?
If you don’t know, then you’re probably paying for things you don’t value.
All of these things have to do with paying attention to what you want.
My friend Fred Jones says,” The highest price you’ll ever pay is attention to the wrong things.”
He’s absolutely right. Tell me if I’m wrong, but you’re paying a high price, by paying attention to the wrong things.
What’s the high price you’re paying?
Not building your business,
Not building it as fast as you want
Not building the TYPE of business you truly want
Not building a business that supports the life you want
Those are just a few examples of what I mean by you’re paying a high price by paying attention to the wrong things.
You’re paying attention to what you’re doing wrong.
You’re paying attention to what’s not working
you’re paying attention to what you don’t have-time, money-energy-for
you’re paying attention to what you’re not getting-clients, consults, engagement
All of these are examples of paying attention to the wrong things.
Instead, the highest reward you’ll ever experience comes from paying attention to the right things.
Things that bring you joy
Things that make you feel engaged
Things that make you feel connected
Things that make you feel successful
Paying attention to what you’re doing right more than what you’re doing wrong.
Yes, we can gain valuable insight & lessons from glancing at those other things like what isn’t going well and what is going wrong, but those are things we should be only glancing at and not focusing on.
Think about when you’re driving.
What should you be FOCUSED on?
You should be focused on the road ahead of you.
You’ll want to glance at other things-
you’ll want to glance in the rear view mirror.
You’ll want to glance over your shoulder to your blindspot.
You’ll want to glance to one side and the other, but what would happen if you focused ONLY or MOSTLY on the rearview or side mirrors?
You would crash. Sure you would, because eventually you would drift into the other lane, you would be a hazard to oncoming traffic. And you would eventually crash if you kept focusing on those other things.
And it’s no different in your business.
Pay attention this week to what you are paying attention to. What are you focused on? Are you focused on the road ahead of you? i.e. what you want. or are you focused on what you don’t want or can’t do anything about? Focusing on and paying attention to the right things pays off in your business
It makes MONEY easier.