Financial and Lifestyle Freedom for UK Business Owners

I speak to high six and seven-figure business owners who are employing fancy tactics and forgetting the timeless basics that are needed in any online business. So I wanted to do a recap here to make sure that you are not forgetting the basic things that are a part of running a successful online business. Number one, remember to email your list frequently, delivering pure value, and not just during launches or when you have something you are selling. There is no better way to turn off your list and increase your unsubscribes then to always be launching and selling to them rather than providing them pure value.

Number two, keep your list clean. Make sure you are doing list cleanups, merging duplicates and the like. Otherwise you really cannot get a true picture of your list growth. Number three, always be building your audience and your list regardless of its current size. If you are not growing your audience all the time, then your prospects will be shrinking, because of unsubscribes or unfollows, or because people are moving to buyers and so there are less prospects in that pool.

Number four, manage your team. I mean actually managing them, being a leader. Not just chucking task lists at them, but being their coach and their mentor. You need to make sure that your team is being fully managed if you want to truly step into that CEO role. It will also help them perform for you and love working with you. Number five, make plans and stick to them. Evaluate their effectiveness to find out what you should do more of or should stop, but make plans and stick to them. Do not strategy hop and tactic hop the whole time. The data does not lie. See what the data is telling you about what’s worked and what hasn’t and tweak accordingly, but do not flip flop. Number six, profit. Make sure your business spending is as lean as it can be for this stage of business and your goals. Episode six of Uncover Wealth Radio goes into this a bit more if you are not sure how to do that, but make sure that all your programmes are profitable. Don’t run things that are unprofitable or that you hate.

And number seven, your vision. Your business should be supporting the vision you have for your life. I spoke to a client today and halfway through our call they said to me, “This was not the vision I had for my business. I didn’t want my business to look anything like this,” and they were not happy with how their business was. It wasn’t like they’d moved to a better place, they’d moved to a worse place and they were pining for their vision. So we needed to work out a plan of how on earth they can get back to the business that they actually wanted to run. If your business is not supporting the vision you have for your life, something is wrong and needs to be reassessed and changed. Perhaps you need to make a pivot now before you start resenting your business.

I hope that this episode has given you a bit of a memory jog around the basics. Whilst we are here, I would love to let you know about the next Wealth Lab that we have happening inside the Uncover Wealth community. The Wealth Lab runs from November 11 to 15, and during it we will be building out your profit plan to release your next six-figure take home in your business. Head to annetteandco.co.uk/wealthlabnov19, which is a very big URL so you can have a look in the show notes and click onto it from there to register your place. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth, and get more money in your pockets.

In today’s episode, I’m speaking about how to live your purpose. Let’s dive in.

We hear it all the time, live your purpose. We are desperate to discover the one thing that will light us up and motivate us to work hard and spread our passion to millions. We spend time looking for it in books for some people they’re looking for it in church or in a course after course, in meditation. But our purpose, seems to be elusive. I know this because I spent years chasing it too. Purpose is defined as the reason why something exists. Your purpose is the reason why you exist. Your brain immediately tells you that you don’t know why and that you’d better figure it out or it will all be wasted.

Your brain tells you that it had better be good. It had better help the planet or those who are less fortunate, it had better matter so you can justify your existence. We look to others for inspiration. Look at Mother Teresa who obviously had a purpose. Her life obviously mattered. And then we start spiralling into guilt because we’re pretty sure that she didn’t drink wine the Saturday nights or secretly by a sharing bag of chocolate buttons and eat them all herself. We’re pretty sure that we are failing at living a purposeful life. We have no idea what the point of our existence is, but we’re pretty sure that we’re doing it wrong. We like the idea of saving the world, but we’re exhausted from raising kids and doing the laundry and running a business. We better just keep looking for that perfect flavour of purpose that will make it all effortless.

And so we keep searching and we never find the answer. Wait, that is not entirely true. We find our purpose a few times, like when we had our children or worked with that one client, we thought was it. But it wasn’t. The unicorns didn’t prance around and life didn’t become effortless. That for sure wasn’t it. Back to searching. What is your purpose? I’m going to tell you, are you ready? Your reason for existing is to exist. That is your purpose. You don’t have to do anything to fulfil your purpose in life. Your life is purpose. You are a result, a product. You are an evolved human being and being alive is enough. Being alive is enough. You are already enough and completely complete. You don’t have to be better, give more or save the planet. Your purpose is humanness. No one is taking notes to see if you did it right.

No one is judging you to see if you are good enough. No one is about to give you a grade on how you are doing. That’s your job. You are the only one whose opinion matters. Whatever relationship you have with the spirit within you, no matter what you call it, that’s the only purpose that is. And that purpose, I’m here to tell you, has already been fulfilled. You are done. You are complete. You are already purposeful. You are already awesome because not because of anything you did or didn’t do, but just because you were born and you’re here and you are a 100% lovable. You have already arrived so stop trying to arrive at a place where you will prove that you are good enough. Relax. You are already completely good enough. There is nothing you can be do or have to be more purposeful or complete. Your life will never be more valuable than someone else’s.

So now what? So now you know the secret to life. You don’t have to be, to do it better or smarter or more lovingly, unless of course you want to. But the reason to want to is not what you think. It won’t make you better in the eyes of some external watcher. You’re already as better as you can be. It won’t earn you a treasure or a prize that will make everything make sense. But what it will do is make your experience on the planet way more fun. You see, you can spend your life sitting on the couch watching Netflix or you can build a school in Africa. You’ll still be a perfect human, but your experience of the world will be different while you’re here. Many of us are trying to find a way to matter, not realising that we cannot matter more than we already do, so we chase purpose.

We desperately try to find the success that other people already seem to have. So many of us trying to find a way to matter, not realising that we can’t matter more than we already do. Look at Oprah, and we’re sure she has lived a better life than we have. She has done it right. She’s one of those purposeful ones, but the truth is that Oprah has the exact same values as you do. She has chosen to fulfil a purpose that has made her life way more fun and meaningful to her. It’s changed her experience. You see, you don’t have to do anything to be more worthy. You get to choose what you want to do with your life simply because you want to. You get to pick the reason.

Here’s what I figured out. It might seem that once we understand that we don’t have to do anything to make our life matter, we wouldn’t do anything, but actually the opposite is true. Once you realise there’s nothing that you have to do and your entire life can be about what you want to do, you choose a purpose that matters to you and only you. We think that if we do what we want, we’ll only eat pasta and bread and drink wine on the patio, but that’s not what happens. In fact, we only seek false pleasures when we think that we aren’t good enough as we are.

Here’s how I created my purpose. I accepted that I am already complete as a human and I don’t need to fix myself or make myself more worthy. And two, I decided that I wanted to have a super fun life by being an example of what is possible. Three, I want to push my limits of possibility with my mind, my emotions, and my actions because it makes my life more interesting and it helps us evolve as a species. I wanted to enjoy getting better at things for the sake of enjoying it full stop. And that was it. Once I realised that getting better is fun and that growing and evolving is interesting, I felt even more alive. I wasn’t more alive. I was always as alive as I am now, but it was the experience I enjoyed so much more. And it all came from a place of knowing that it was just a bonus. I was already good enough. My accomplishment was about showing who I already was, not being a better human.

If your purpose is winning a golf championship, playing professional football, or making millions of pounds, the reason for doing it will determine how you experience it in your life. Once you realise there is nothing you have to do and your entire life can be about what you want it to be about, you choose a purpose that matters to you. Your purpose for existing is existing. How you want to use that time existing is your choice. You simply decide.

I hope that this episode has been useful for thinking about how to live your purpose. And while you are here, I would love to let you know about the next Wealth Lab that we have happening inside the Uncover Wealth community. The Wealth Lab runs from November 11th to the 15th and during it we will be building out your profit plan to release the next six figure take home from your business. Head over to annetteandco.co.uk/wealthlabnov19, which is a ridiculously long URL so you can just click on the link in the show notes, to register your place. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity and your numbers, increase your wealth and get more money in your pockets.

In today’s episode, I’m speaking about creating your profit leap. 

Let’s dive in.

We are heading towards the end of 2019 which means it’s time to start thinking about different ways you can increase your profit leap before the end of the year and have a higher baseline heading into 2020. The first way to create your profit leap is to remember that people are already buying from you and are the very same people who are most likely to continue buying from you and buy more if you are delivering a great service. Making a list of every active customer and thinking strategically about their situation, how you are serving them now, how you are working together and what they are spending, then asking yourself, what is the next level that I can offer these people that would increase their spend with me, but also would help them achieve their next level goals and generate even bigger and better results for them?

It’s maybe adding in accountability or increasing the work that you’re doing together. Perhaps adding in an extra component that gives them more robust result or adds an extra layer of support. This and any other add ons that you can think of is what you could package together into a next level. Get that list and go person by person and think really strategically. Then go one by one and schedule a phone conversation with each person. Commit to having a couple of calls every day for the rest of the year and then you’ll be able to get through everyone. And you can speak through what they’ve achieved now, what might still be possible, and then what their next steps could and perhaps should be to get them to where they want to be.

You have to also think of the fact that people will get bored when they stay in programmes for a long period of time and that causes them to leave. When they are presented with something new and exciting and intriguing, then they get more excited again, they get reenergized. Giving your current clients something to get excited about again can be a really interesting thing to do. If you do just this one thing, then that in itself can help create a massive profit leap in your business. If you have five or even 500 clients, there is money being left on the table if you do not employ this strategy.

The second most underutilised strategy is following back up with your previous clients. Making reactivations. Clients lapse for dozens of reasons, but studies show that the vast majority of lapses are not for negative reasons, it’s because of the client’s own stuff that’s going on, whether it be a life situation, a major distraction. These people have already experienced how great you are and it can be good to go back to them and let them know that you would love to support them again. And people make buying decisions based on that. You are following up and working to get their business. Why would they not want to work with somebody actively following up rather than the alternatives on the table? Which are those people who are not showing massive interest in them.

People want to work with people who want to work with them. Does each of your past customers know that you want to work with them again? Are you or your team in front of your past customers every other week in a proper way? Why are you killing yourself online to get in front of new leads when you’re not working the ones you already have when working your previous customer base? Sometimes it gets to where someone needs to experience something outside of what you have to offer to really appreciate what they’re missing when they left you. Don’t forget this group of X clients.

And the third thing I want to speak about today is putting together a new, different and exciting offer that is time sensitive and your audience can grasp onto right away and feels like the next big thing for them. We all want to get our clients awesome results, but the thing is that people buy sizzle. You need a combination of the meat and this is when you are selling your next thing. Maybe you teach what you are teaching and present it in a new and different way. Perhaps it takes a work you’ve already done and presents it differently or creates an experience out of it for them. Maybe it’s an intensive or something like that.

I hope that this episode is giving you some things to think about when creating your profit leap before the new year and has given you some ideas to put into place before 2020 hits. And whilst I’m here, I would love to let you know about the next Wealth Lab we have happening inside the Uncover Wealth community. The Wealth Lab runs from November 11th to the 15th and during it, we will be building out your profit plan to release the next six figure take home from your business. Head over to annetteandco.co.uk/wealthlabnov19, which I realise is a very long URL so you can just click the link in the show notes for this episode. And that will register you your place. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth and get more money in your pocket.

In today’s episode, I am speaking about setting wealth boundaries, boundaries that will result in you having a wealthier life.

First of all, we need to speak about what a boundary actually is. It’s only a boundary if it is enforced. If you don’t enforce it, it is not a boundary. It’s your actions that matter here and not your words. Boundaries are necessary in all areas of our life, and strong wealth boundaries results in strong finances in the same way that strong health boundaries result in strong health. So setting wealth boundaries is one of the most valuable things you can do to ensure greater wealth in your life. As I said, boundaries are set and kept not by what you say, but what you do. You train others to respect your boundaries by your actions around those boundaries. If you let your boundaries slide, other people will too.

Let me give you a recent example. I recently told someone that it was not appropriate to contact me via WhatsApp. I was not available via that contact method. They did not respect that boundary, and they kept doing it. Anytime they would message me on WhatsApp, I did not reply. I stuck to my words and I stuck to my boundary with my actions.

Now, if I had started to replying to them, if I had got fed up of speaking to them in another medium when they messaged me on WhatsApp, then I would have weakened my boundary. They would have continued to do the thing that I had explicitly asked them not to. When they realised that I was being serious and I was sticking to my boundary, they adhered to it at their end as well.

If you uphold your boundaries to your actions, they will be respected. But if you don’t, then no matter what you claim, no one else will respect them either. You need to uphold them so that you personally will respect your own boundaries. Setting boundaries is serious and powerful, and I encourage you to set some serious boundaries. It can cause huge breakthroughs for you. How you set and stick to your boundaries will let you and others know how serious you are about having a wealthy life or not for yourself.

If you have set goals before and you’ve not achieved them, if you have certain milestones and you’ve fallen short, have you been firm with your boundaries or have you been lax with them? There is usually a link between achieving our goals and not achieving them, and upholding our boundaries and not upholding them. If you’ve always set a boundary that, for example, you will pay yourself 50% of your revenue as take home, whether that’s salary or profits or a mix of the two, but you have not always done that, you have not always followed through as a non-negotiable, then that’s not a boundary, that’s just a wish.

If you’ve set a boundary that you’re going to run your business on, say the Profit First methodology, but then you haven’t always followed through as a non-negotiable, then that’s not a boundary, that’s a wish. Upholding a boundary to always pay yourself first to take home a certain percentage of your revenue, and running your business on whatever is left over would make you exponentially better off, but only if you actually uphold that boundary.

But setting that and not following through shows that you’re not serious about it yet. It makes you feel like you failed when in actual fact, did you try? Did you really set a clear boundary around it? So, let’s say that paying yourself first is one of your wealthy boundaries. How do you actually do that? Well, you need to implement Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. You can get that book, you can get the core chapters by heading over to annetteandco.co.uk/pfbook. That’s annetteandco.co.uk/pfbook. Learning from there, that is a boundary that you are creating. If you want to pay yourself first from your business, you need to read that book because that is basically what the book is all about.

So, set that boundary around that action of paying yourself first. Set up an auto payment so that it happens so that you do do it. What about boundaries that you’ve set around your expenses in your business, around the budget that you have for courses and programmes, the budget that you have for ad spend, or your team? Setting up budgets to make sure that you end up with a profit you predict, it is so crucial so you don’t, quite frankly, run out of money and your business.

Regardless if you are a startup or an eight figure business, budgets are crucial boundary in your business. If it’s not in the budget, you don’t buy it. It stops that shiny object syndrome. Do you have a budget around who you take financial advice or coaching from? Would you take financial advice from a broke financial advisor? Does it make sense to take financial advice from someone who is in a worse financial position than you? Would you take relationship advice from someone who’s in a worse relationship than you? Would you take business advice from someone who has a much smaller business than you?

No, why would you? They haven’t been there and done it yet. The same boundary goes for you. Who are you taking your financial advice or coaching advice from? If your parents are not where you want to be when you retire, don’t take retirement advice from them. I wouldn’t take advice from someone who has not been there and not done it yet because it shows to me that they’re not able to use their own advice yet. So, why would I use their advice?

Set strong boundaries around who you will listen to you and who you won’t when it comes to your business and your finances. All of these boundaries have long-term on your wealth. And remember, it’s only a boundary when you enforce it. I hope this episode has given you some things to think around setting wealth boundaries.

Whilst we are here, I would love to let you know the next wealth lab that we have happening inside the Uncover Wealth community. The wealth lab runs from November the 11th to the 15th, and during it, we will be building out your profit plan to release the next six figure take home from your business. Head over to annetteandco.co.uk/weathlabnov19, which I realise is a mouthful, but the link will also be in the show notes, and you can register your place there.

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth, and get more money in your pockets.

In today’s episode, I am speaking about when it is the right time to take on a CFO, a chief financial officer, also known as an FD, a financial director. So let’s dive in. If you’ve been around the online business space for any time, I’m sure you will have heard the phrase, if you don’t have an assistant, you are one. And the same is true of a CFO, FD, numbers person. If you don’t have someone all over the numbers in your business, then that person needs to be, and is, you. We all know that thousands of businesses fail every single year due to running out of cash and that is not just start-ups.

Hundreds of well-established businesses run out of cash too because they don’t have anyone in this role. The business owner is too busy to do it. Their bookkeeper or accountant hasn’t been tasked with it, and is not being managed to do it, and this is not the type of thing that typically many accountants or bookkeepers would generally do as standard. When I speak about someone being all over the numbers, what I mean is that at least weekly they’re reviewing sales and expenses against budget, they are preparing and reviewing forecasts, they’re examining financial dashboards and matrix against plan. There is much more to it than just reconciling the bank and entering your data into QuickBooks or Xero. That can be a really scary thing for many business owners who perhaps find it much more comfortable to bury their head in the sand when it comes to their finances and data, and maybe that’s you. Or maybe you’re okay with looking at the finances and data, but there’s just not enough hours in the day for you to do it justice and really get the learnings you need from it.

If you are either of these people, if you’re in either of these positions, then in all honesty it is the right time for you to get a CFO, FD, numbers person, whatever you want to call it, into your business. Now this doesn’t need to be a 200K a year full-time hire, which is what a full-time FD or CFO with a decent experience would cost you. This can be an accountant stepping into that role for you, and it’s a role that we fulfil for the majority of our clients. But many accountants are not commercially strategic enough to do this role properly either, so you need to assess if yours is, if you are considering using your current accountant to step up. 

Now when you get to a revenue of upwards of 500K a year, it becomes an absolute necessity that someone other than you is all over the numbers, someone who has the background and professional expertise in finance and accounting. Now even with a CFO in place, you still need to know the numbers yourself. You cannot absolve yourself of all responsibility. You are the CEO after all. But you can hand over a lot of the day-to-day management of that kind of thing. You still need regular check-ins with your CFO and can expect things to be highlighted to you when targets are not being met. Absolving yourself of responsibility of the money side of the business however, as a business owner, is not acceptable. I have seen business owners fall into this trap and I promise you it does not end well. 

So I hope that this episode has been useful in giving you something to think about when you’re thinking about whether taking on a CFO, FD, numbers person in your business. And whilst we are here, I would love to let you know about the next Wealth Lab we have happening inside the Uncover Wealth community. The Wealth Lab runs from November the 11th to the 15th, and during it we’ll be building out your profit plan to release your next six figure take home from your business. So you can head over to annetteandco.co.uk/wealthlabnov19, which I realise is a bit of a handful, but will be in the show notes, and you can register your place. So that’s annetteandco.co.uk/wealthlabnov19, all one word, also in the show notes, and register your place. 

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth and get more money in your pocket.