Making Conscious Choices: Deciding Where to Invest in Your Business
As we approach the end of the year, it’s a crucial time for entrepreneurs to look ahead and strategize where to invest in their businesses for the upcoming year. In a recent episode of the Soulful Entrepreneurs club, Kavita Melwani shared valuable insights on how to make conscious decisions when it comes to business investments. Here’s a breakdown of her advice and a guide to help you set your intentions for a successful year ahead.
Start with the End in Mind
The first step in deciding where to invest in your business is to envision what you want to create in the upcoming year. What is your vision for your business, and what are the goals you aim to achieve? By having a clear vision, you can determine the necessary steps to reach your objectives.
Identify Your Needs
Once you have established your vision and goals, consider what you need to achieve them. For example, if your goal is to increase your income, you may need to raise prices, enroll more clients, or explore new income streams. Understanding your needs will help you prioritize where to invest your resources.
Consider Investments
When deciding where to allocate resources, it’s essential to consider various types of investments. This could include investing in training to enhance your skills, tools to automate processes, or seeking the guidance of a mentor or coach. Each investment should align with your vision and goals for the business.
Budgeting and Financial Considerations
Budgeting plays a crucial role in making investment decisions. Calculate your expected income, allocate funds for personal compensation, and assess the remaining budget for business investments. While it’s important to stay within your comfort zone, be open to investing more if it aligns with your growth objectives.
Invest in Personal and Business Growth
Investing in your business should not be solely focused on financial gains. It’s also about personal and professional growth. Consider how each investment contributes to reducing stress, improving productivity, and enhancing your overall well-being as an entrepreneur.
Clarity and Intuition
Maintain clarity about your business goals and listen to your intuition when making investment decisions. Avoid the temptation to follow trends or shiny objects that may not align with your long-term vision. By staying true to your intentions, you can make conscious choices that benefit your business in the long run.
Prepare for a Successful Year Ahead
As you set your vision and goals for the upcoming year, remember that business growth is intertwined with personal development. Embrace conscious decision-making and intentional investments to become a more aligned and successful entrepreneur.
The decision of where to invest in your business is a vital aspect of planning for the future. By striking a balance between financial considerations and personal growth, you can set the stage for a fulfilling and prosperous year ahead. With the guidance shared by Kavita Melwani, it’s time to reflect on your vision, assess your needs, and make conscious choices to steer your business towards success. Here’s to a purposeful and rewarding journey as an entrepreneur.
To access more resources on visualizing your business goals and preparing for a successful 2024, be sure to check out the show notes for this episode. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes as we continue to provide valuable insights to empower your entrepreneurial journey.
Key Topics for this Episode: How to Decide Where to Invest in Your Business
Primary Topic: Assessing Your Business Needs for the Upcoming Year
- Importance of taking time to consider where to invest in your business
- Considering future income and setting goals for the upcoming year
Primary Topic: Setting Clear Vision and Goals - Starting with the end in mind and determining your vision for the next year
- Setting specific goals aligned with your vision
Primary Topic: Identifying Business Needs to Achieve Goals - Evaluating the need to increase income and potential strategies for achieving that
- Exploring the possibility of adding another income stream and considering the implications
Primary Topic: Budgeting for Business Investments - Considering past income to estimate future earnings
- Assessing the amount of money available for investment after paying yourself and covering expenses
- The option of investing beyond comfort zone for potential growth
Primary Topic: Types of Investments for Business Growth - Investing in training and tools to support new income strategies
- Considering investments in courses, books, coaches, mentors, or advisors for business growth
- Reflecting on the potential personal and financial growth from business investments
Primary Topic: Making Conscious Investment Decisions - Emphasizing the importance of clarity and conscious decision-making
- Encouraging soulful entrepreneurs to invest in personal growth alongside business growth
- Advising on making intuitive and conscious investment decisions to align with business vision and goals
- Avoiding following distractions and assessing investments based on their fit with goals and vision
Primary Topic: Conclusion and Call to Action - Wrap-up and summary of the key points
- Offering a resource for support in clarifying business vision and goals
- Mentioning upcoming episodes to prepare for a successful business year
- Encouraging self-care and well-being for entrepreneurs
These are the main topics and their sub-topics covered in the provided text. Let me know if you need any further assistance!
Analogy for this Episode: How to Decide Where to Invest in Your Business
Deciding where to invest in your business is like planning a road trip. First, you need to decide on your destination (your vision for next year) and map out the route to get there (your goals). Once you know where you want to go, you can decide what you’ll need for the journey – whether it’s a more fuel-efficient car (increasing income through better marketing), a GPS for navigation (systems and organization), or maybe even a travel guide (mentor or coach) to show you the best routes and shortcuts. And just like budgeting for a road trip, you’ll need to consider your resources and make conscious choices about how much you’re willing to invest in order to make the trip enjoyable and successful. So, pack your bags, set your sights on the horizon, and make sure to invest in the things that will make your journey both profitable and fulfilling!
Transcript for this Episode
Kavita Melwani [00:01:09]:
You. Okay, so for most of you, you may be taking some time off right now. So this is a great time for you to look at where to invest in your business in the upcoming year. And so today I’m going to give you a few steps that you can follow so you can make some decisions of where you’re going to best next year. And really, if you’re not sure about your income and what it’s going to be like, you can actually start to think about the first quarter or the first six months of next year and then go from there. So there’s certain things that you need to consider when you are deciding where to invest. And one of the biggest things is to start with the end in mind. Decide what it is that you want to create next year, what is your vision for next year, and then from that vision, what are the goals that you have for next year.
Kavita Melwani [00:02:08]:
And so having that vision from there and then what you want to create, then you can decide what you need in order to reach those goals. So some of the things you may decide that, okay, I want to increase my income next year. And in order to do that, I need to, one, maybe you need to raise your prices, or two, you need to enroll more customers or clients. And in order to do that, you need to learn to market and sell better or refine your brand, or you want to figure out a way to retain your clients for longer. Right? So there’s lots of ways that you can do that. Or maybe you are kind of feeling like you would like another income stream. So whatever it is that you choose, then you can say, well, based on that, the fact that I want to increase my income and I want to do it in the way that through a different income stream, you will then think about what’s a way that you want to do that and how are you going to market that and how is it going to integrate into your schedule. And so then if that’s the case, then once you know that, then you can invest in training to help you with that process.
Kavita Melwani [00:03:33]:
You can invest maybe in some tools to automate some things in your business so that you have the space and energy and time to be able to learn a new skill and to market something new. And as you make those decisions, of course, the budget you have is a consideration as well. Okay. And there’s multiple ways that you can look at your budget for investing in your business next year. One is by looking at the past and seeing generally how much income you generate. And kind of if you have multiple years in business, you can kind of average that out and do like a guesstimate of what you should expect. If you continue the same way moving forward and then from there, making sure that you’re paying yourself, if you pay yourself and then you have your expenses and you have an idea of what your expenses would be, then what amount of money is left. And so sometimes it’s not as much as you would like, you could go beyond your comfort zone and invest a little bit more.
Kavita Melwani [00:04:43]:
But that’s a personal choice, right? Because when you invest in your business, you want to invest in things that are going to grow. So that growth could be financial, that growth could be also personal. It could be just you feeling more less stress in your business. There are lots of ways that you can grow when you invest in your business. So if you are investing and you learn something new, you’re going to get the benefits of that, not just immediately, but going forward, right? As long as you actually put in the work and learn what you need to learn. So if it’s a course, if it’s a book, I usually recommend, if you can find someone that’s done what you’ve done or is really good at seeing things and seeing your blind spots, it’ll shorten that path to create what you would like in your business and your life. So if you can invest in a mentor, a coach, an advisor to help you with that process and really look at what you’re missing, right? So is it that you actually have a lot of systems in place and your mindset is challenging you? Or is it that you are doing things and it kind of scattered and you need support with figuring out your systems and organizing things. So a lot of times people automatically think that they need to market more and sell more.
Kavita Melwani [00:06:16]:
And that may be the case, but often there are other aspects of your business that are unclear and that you need to work on first in order. And that increase in sales and your improvement in marketing will happen once those things are put into place. So the clarity is really important, right? What do you want to create? Making sure that you are clear about how you want to do that, at least whatever you know, and then choosing the amount of money you have after you kind of guesstimate what your income is, pay yourself and see what is left. Or you can, of course, invest more. And then you can invest in courses, you can invest in books, coaches, of course mentors. Those are the things that will help you grow in more ways than one. And so when you’re setting your vision and you’re setting your goals for next year. Make sure that you are clear about how you want to grow in more ways than just your business.
Kavita Melwani [00:07:23]:
Because as soulful entrepreneurs, our businesses are part of who we are, right? They’re just part of ourselves that we’re sharing with the world. And if we are not working on being the best version of ourselves, managing our own selves, improving ourselves, then that’s going to show up in our business, right? It’s going to show up. So I’m going to encourage you to make conscious choices and invest. Decide what you’re going to invest in your business. And then look for those resources where you’re intuitively guided. Because if not, you can just repeat what you’ve already repeated. You may also end up following some bright, shiny objects that end up not working out in the way that you like and don’t match your goals. I know for a fact I did not do this last year.
Kavita Melwani [00:08:23]:
I did not sit and decide where I was going to invest. And so I ended up investing in things that actually were not what I needed, right? And they were things that maybe I followed because I thought that that was what I wanted. And so if I had checked in, like I said, with my intuition, I had said that in a previous episode. But also if I had a plan in place, and I could say that this doesn’t really fit my vision and my goals and my plan for this year, then that could allow me to delay that and maybe decide later on if it’s a good fit some of those investments. Okay? And so using that conscious process to make decisions in your business is going to help you become a better entrepreneur. You’re just going to be better making decisions and aligned. So this is Kavita with the soulful Entrepreneurs club. And I hope that you are taking something of value from this week’s episode.
Kavita Melwani [00:09:33]:
So if you are needing some support in your vision and you’re not sure what you want, I have a resource in the show notes. It is a visualization. As you can tell, I love visualization, but it will help you connect with what you want. There’s an exercise as well. So if you want that, that will be a link will be available in the show notes. And as I said, each week, including next week, I’m going to have these episodes getting you ready to have a great 2024 in your business. So, until next week, take good care. Bye.
