531: You Either Have One Of These Two Resources To Grow Your Business
For today’s episode, I’ll be diving into two key resources you can leverage to grow your business: time and money.
As we find ourselves approaching the halfway point of the year, it’s the perfect time to assess our progress toward our annual goals. Are we on track? Are we experiencing the growth we anticipated? These questions often lead us to reflect on how we’re utilizing our resources.
Throughout the episode, I’ll explore how the allocation of resources can vary depending on the stage of your business. I’ll also address the question of when to invest in paid ads and the importance of understanding your ideal customer and crafting a compelling offer.
I cannot emphasize enough the need to have realistic expectations and avoid making investments that could potentially jeopardize your business’s financial stability. Remember, every decision, even those that don’t go as planned, is an opportunity for growth and learning.
Let’s dive in and discover how you can strategically leverage your resources to grow your business!
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh
Hello everybody welcome back to the podcast happy Thursday if you’re tuning in when this episode comes out. This has been a really weird week for me, but not in a bad way. Um I don’t have a nanny for like ten days which is a big deal in our house because we’re so used to having that support. Um and she helps with our kids but she also helps with laundry and stuff around the house when our kids are in school. Um, and so it’s just it’s a long time in a row to not have support and that rarely happens but this time I really was intentional with like from the beginning of the month when I knew that this week was coming I was intentional in making sure I didn’t try to just survive the week which is what I would do in the past Of trying to like still have my schedule packed with calls and then have my three year olds and then they’re interrupting me like every 5 minutes and then I’m getting frustrated and then I feel bad that I’m getting frustrated if you’re a parent you know exactly what I’m talking about It’s really hard to be present in work. And be present with your kids. It’s almost impossible sometimes we’re in those situations and this week has not been perfect like I’ve definitely had to take meetings with my three year old in the background but I wanted to make sure that I use this time as a gift to have the extra time with my kids versus seeing it as an inconvenience that I don’t have support. And so I made my schedule lighter this week and my husband and I switched the days so I took the morning shift. He took the afternoon shift and during my shift I was able to plan things so into the park I took my kids with my bigger kids um to a splash pad today and just have had a great time and like put my phone away and it’s really hard for me to do that if I’m not on a trip like if I’m not on a trip and a vacation where i’m Active on that I’m hiking or I’m doing something and I’m exploring like I feel very busy doing that if I’m home and there’s a lot going on in the business There’s always a lot going on in the business I have a lot of clients in a big team and my slack is constantly filled with messages and so it takes discipline For me to be able to shut that off and be present in the past It’s been very challenging for me. Um, and it still is an effort. Ah but I’ve gotten so much better at it and it and it’s challenging for me even in the small times like when the workday ends because once I turn it on It’s really hard for me to turn it off. So I’ve been really proud of myself this week how intentional I’ve been and how I kind of see it through the perspective of gratitude for the extra time with my kids and you know the teamwork with my husband and getting through the week and we’re doing a great job and we’re having fun and it’s great and no, it’s not perfect. Like I said I still have had to work with them in the house. Hopefully they’re quiet during this podcast episode. But um, it’s not perfect. It’s still messy. It’s still chaotic like having 3 kids and a business and my husband has a business too and just all the things that we juggle. It’s not easy and then you remove another full-time piece of support that we usually have. It’s going to be more challenging but you can either take it. You know one of 2 ways you can allow yourself to be reactive and um, you know let things kind of get thrown at you and kind of live in that chaos and reactivity or you can be intentional. And you can choose that kind of mindset and it’s just been a beautiful gift this week and also really shown me my growth which is cool.
So today. What I want to talk about in the podcast is the 2 resources that you can pull from. To grow your business and I think this is a very timely episode because we’re getting into halfway through the year we’re about to go into quarter 3. You know we’re halfway through the year and when that happens a lot of businesses look at their annual goals And am I you know growing the way I wanted to? Am I hitting those goals? Am I having the months I want to? am I seeing the sales and what I need to shift and change in order to get there and this is something I talk about a lot. Um, but maybe not a specific container for it. So I want to share this with you so that you can intentionally choose What of the resources you’re going to leverage the most you’re probably going to leverage both of these. You won’t be surprised when I say what they are. They’re not a secret but I think there’s a lot of intentionality. We can bring to how we leverage them that isn’t often always thought about so the 2 resources you can use to grow your business is either time. Money and so when we specifically look at this through the lens of marketing what does that mean if you don’t have a big investment. You don’t have money to spend on ads on getting support on. You know, hiring a marketing strategist hiring experts. Then you have to use the resource of time and as you grow a business you get to invest money to buy back your time and get experts to do things that they can do better than you and then you have more time to be the visionary of your company. But if you don’t have that right now because of your bootstrapping it. Yourself and because you don’t have an investment or you don’t have any sales coming in or you don’t have the ability to fund your business. You have to invest your time and so what does that look like that oftentimes is organic marketing on your own without that support and showing up and creating a lot of content. Consistent valuable deep level content. It is um you know showing up on social media in people’s Dms networking in groups. It’s spending a lot of your time doing that to grow your business and My husband right? Now he is growing his business and he’s moving from an in-person training business to online training and it’s taken him this long to catch on to the online thing and I’m so excited for him because I’ve been wanting him to do this forever because it gives our family so much more freedom To travel because he’s not tied to in-person clients and anyways I’m watching him because he doesn’t want to really invest he has the time to put into it I’m watching him spend you know four or five hours a day creating social media content. Building his Facebook group going into the Dms with people and having conversations and that is like all of his time that he’s spending when he’s not with clients because he’s choosing to not have an investment in ad spend and so if you are looking at your business and you’re like I have 0 time. Or very little time to actually invest in its growth then it’s a good opportunity to take a step back and ask yourself. Okay, so what am I going to do if I don’t have the time I’m going to need to spend the money and so with that If you have the resource of time to invest in your business that ah a lot of times looks like organic marketing content and networking like I said everybody should be doing this It’s just at the scale that you should be doing it and the percentage of your new leads and your new sales and are they going to be coming all from that effort. Or do you only need a small amount to come from that effort? If I look at my own business I do all these things. I do content you know through my podcast through videos I have my social media. Um, and we do you know various ways of networking with the audience now. 1 of the things that only I can do that takes a lot of my time is actual strategic networking where I am connecting with strategic and intentional and valuable connections. Um that I think would benefit the business and benefit. Um, you know their audience or my audience. So that’s something I should do more of but I don’t because I don’t have as much time to do it but I would like to be more intentional with it. But then other than that I record the podcast and everything else I use the resource of money to outsource. I have a team who writes 95% of my social media. Um I do my stories. That’s it I have a team who plans it I have the team who edits the podcast and who you know puts it out there and repurposes it and all those things so I’m still using the resource of money even in my organic marketing because for me I’m at a stage where I want to buy back as much Of my time as possible so that I can live the life of freedom that I want but also that I can stay in the strategic visionary role and working on the bigger projects I’m working on. If you don’t have the money to invest It’s going to be you and it’s going to be a lot of work and if that has to be where 100% of your new leads and sales are coming from. You’re going to need to be spending ten plus hours a week doing that to actually grow like I see how much time my husband is spending on his organic marketing right now. It is a lot so you have that or you also have the resource of money now using money is obviously way faster because the amount of reach and leverage that you can get when you use ad spend and you leverage paid ads Is you could do in a week what would take you three months because your reach just skyrockets right? but it takes that investment of money and so when you look at your business right now and you look at how you are moving towards your goals. Are you hitting your goals that you set for yourself this year and if not are you using any either of these resources strategically and really getting real with yourself around. Okay, if I’m not spending money on paid ads right now. But I don’t have the ten plus hours a week to put into my business and the marketing and its growth. How do I expect my business to grow like what is my plan because that allows you to be realistic instead of frustrated. It’s not growing but you’re not actually You know able to put the time required in for it to grow and you know 10 hours is honestly conservative like if that’s your only way of generating leads and sales in your business. It’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of time that has to be put into it and so that’s where people ask Me Should I be running ads? When do I know if I should be running ads? There’s a couple of things I tell them. One of those things is I ask them what resources do they have more available or are willing to make more Available. You may not have either right now you may be like well I don’t have an investment and I don’t have money to put in my business but I Also don’t have time. And I believe that any good entrepreneur is going to go find the solution to that whether that is going to be just somehow creatively free up more time for you or somehow creatively create some revenue or an investment that will lead to you having the money to put into it because it’s one. Those 2 things and so when people come to me and ask me about ads. They usually say a couple things. I say one? What resources do you have to put into your business? How quickly do you want to move because paid ads is much faster but number 3 The bottom line on this which I’ll talk about like a side note before you run ads before you invest honestly tie more money into your business. You need to understand your ideal customer who you’re trying to attract with your organic and your paid marketing with that using those resources And the offer you’re going to sell and so it’s really the same of like should I put a ton of money into my organic marketing or should I put money into my paid well but with both of those you want to have those 2 things figured out now it feels like less of a loss when you spend time and something doesn’t work versus money but is it really. Because our time is the most valuable thing we have and I know I know super value my time but sometimes at the beginning stages of the business. It’s all you have so if you’re looking at okay, when is it time for me to start running ads? Measure those questions and another thing I ask people when they’re weighing this is I say what else are you going to do if you don’t run ads if you don’t use paid marketing. What else are you going to do like how are you going to create the results and generate the leads and the traffic and the sales. If. You don’t use paid ads and do you have a plan for that and then if you’re going to commit. Okay I’m going to create content. I’m going to build a community with a Facebook group. Whatever I am going to create a bunch of conversations in the Dms I’m going to do my organic social can you actually do that. Do you have the time capacity to do that because otherwise what’s going to happen is your business isn’t going to be growing and you’re going to be frustrated and confused by this but really, the reality is because you haven’t intentionally committed either of these resources now. Ideally
You’re going to have both of these resources being invested in your business but likely you use 1 more than the other. So for the stage of business I’m in I use money because I want to constantly be buying back my time so whether it’s team support paid ads. Whatever it is, I invest back in my business I have the ability to do that because I’ve created consistent revenue and I have you know the capital to continually invest back in my business and take what we make and put a percentage back in and that’s ultimately what leads to our growth in the beginning of my business. The first year in the first 6 to twelve months I spent all my time in Facebook groups which this was seven years ago so I’m not saying go copy this strategy because it’s drastically changed but that’s what I did in Facebook groups networking and using all of my time to build my business and so Right now I leverage money more. It hasn’t always been like this and so usually there’s 1 resource more than the other but the mistake that I see a lot of people make is for whatever reason they have no time. Maybe it’s that they’re working with clients and they’re trying to pivot their business. Maybe it’s because they have kids at home. Maybe it’s because they have a job. You obviously have to meet yourself with where you’re at but also be realistic with okay if I was to invest you know a thousand dollars into ads or $2000 into ads in support how much more progress would that create for me And results with that create for me that I’m not able to do with my time because I don’t have it right now or because my time is worth more to me and so therefore I’m willing to make that investment and I think that’s how people get to the place of being willing to invest in ads. And always when you invest back in your business. No matter what it is a team adds a coach. It should never be a make or break decision. You never want to be in a place where you’re like if I don’t make back this investment I’ll be out of business that is not a good place to come from for making an investment. So. When you do choose to go spend money on ads, one of the things I tell people is that initial budget that you choose is what is the amount that you would be okay with, if you didn’t make it back I’m not saying that’s going to happen but you would be okay. And so is that $500 is that $1000 is that $3000 that you have to spend and then you go and spend that as strategically as possible but you know I will be okay if I don’t make it back because otherwise you’re setting yourself up for even more chaos and overwhelm and so I think this is a good time. To look at your business to take inventory of this half of the year that we’re basically through and what you want the second half of this year to look like and what your capacity is, what your bandwidth is, what your goals are and how you’re going to reach them I think In a lot of cases The most successful people get the foundation down, the offer, the ideal customer, the somewhat messaging work. But it’s constantly being refined and then they go and invest and they invest back in their business and they amplify. What they’ve created with paid ads for rapid growth and if you listen to the podcast series I did about a month back three weeks back with our most successful clients. You’ll see that as a theme they all set the foundation. They got a few sales some sooner than others like Adrienne I think said she started ads three months in and then Mallory took a little bit longer but there’s not a set time period like it can vary but they all set a loose foundation, proved their offer or at least knew their ideal customer. And had that foundation and then they went and took the leap and they took the plunge with paid ads for every single one of them. It was a scary investment and it was something that felt like a leap and felt like a risk to them and then did pay off. And I think that also contributes to their success because they could have chosen to stay in the same place for however long before they chose to invest so take inventory of your business and then also you know a really powerful question to ask yourself is if you didn’t hit the goals. You had laid out This past six months this first half of the year Why Why? Do you think you didn’t? What’s missing is clarity. Is it time, is it investment like what’s missing and how can you fill that gap to achieve the goals in the second half of this year because we still have a lot of time you guys and. Just remember as you’re looking at this you have to understand you didn’t do anything wrong if you didn’t hit your goals because it’s all a part of the process and really leaning into like I don’t believe there’s ever a mistake in business because everything leads to a decision an opportunity a pivot a change a realization. And so don’t you know if you are down on yourself. I’m not saying you are but if you are of the past six months or you’re frustrated or you’re overwhelmed or whatever don’t stay in that place because that doesn’t help you instead look at okay, where do I want to be and what do I have to do to get there and why haven’t I gotten there yet and what do I need to change what I need to start doing and stop doing. In order to get there all right? you guys I would love to hear takeaways if you had any um I always always love to hear those if you want to send me a message on Instagram otherwise I’ll talk to you guys next week.