Money mindset: how to set sales targets without fear or overwhelm. Episode 93

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Today’s talking point:

Money is a complicated and emotional topic, but it's crucial if we want to run a successful business. In today's episode, I'm sharing some of my own money mindset challenges and the small shifts I've made to overcome them. Then I'll walk you through the 'times 3' game, an exercise I use in the Busy to Boss Academy to help students set sales targets without feeling overwhelmed.

Money is something I haven’t talked much about on the Busy to Boss podcast. And I think it’s something we can all be a little scared to discuss.

It’s a subject my clients and I will often cover, but there’s still a bit of a taboo about money talk.

I thought the easiest way to approach the discussion around setting sales targets would be to first share my own experiences with you. So, I’m going to take you through the biggest money mindset blocks I’ve overcome. Then, I’ll share how overcoming these blocks helped my business grow and a simple exercise I do with clients to help take the fear out of sales targets.

5 biggest money blocks I’ve faced

Part of the reason I became an entrepreneur is that I wanted to have total control over my financial future. Because even though that also means taking a greater risk, I knew that could also equal greater rewards.

As individuals, we all have money stories based on our experiences. My financial situation wasn’t always great and I would say I had a few destructive money beliefs that kept me stuck for a long time. Maybe these sound familiar to you, or maybe yours are different. But I hope by sharing these, it will encourage you to start examining some of your own deep-held beliefs around finance.

1: success only comes from hard work

The first belief is that you have to work really hard in order to be successful in the long run. And that's just not true!

Something that took me way too long to figure out was the law of diminishing returns. Ultimately, it led me to severe burnout.

The law of diminishing returns says that after optimal input, the returns you see will slowly decrease. In entrepreneurship, I look at it in terms of workload vs profit. So, at the beginning, you put in a lot of work to get any output. But there’s an optimal amount of work and you can’t keep continually increasing your workload. If you do, your returns won’t reflect that. They’ll slowly drop (and you probably will too!).

One of the things I had to realise was that hard work isn't always necessary and the same level of work isn't a guarantee for sustained long-term financial freedom and success. ‘Hustling’ and working too hard actually hinders you.

When I was starting out, I was putting in so much effort and getting a negative return on what I was doing. So my work, my constant hustle and grind started to actually lead to me producing poor quality work. Plus, I was exhausted all the time.

If you lift weights 24 hours a day, you're going to get injured and it's just not healthy.

That belief that hard work was the only way to success played a big role in me staying very small for a long time in my business.

I had to flip it and understand that, at a certain point, you have to get help. You have to bring on a team, you have to get a mentor, you have to focus on only the things that are actually pushing the needle in your business. You're not meant to be doing everything! And you're not meant to be working at the same pace every single day, because ultimately it hurts you more than it helps you.

2: Control and scarcity

I used to be a total control freak in my business (and my life). It definitely hindered me in a lot of ways because feeling like I had to do everything myself kept me with this stranglehold on every activity I was doing. I couldn't fathom how somebody else could do it or take it over from me.

But when you’re new in a business, it's hard to get to a place where you can accept that other people are more than capable than you at some tasks.

For me, this control went hand-in-hand with scarcity. It took me a long time to get to a place where I understood that no matter what position I was in, I had enough and I was going to be okay.

I had to stop operating from a place of running to get another client and feeling like I just couldn't make enough money. That thinking also kept me on the hamster wheel cycle of constantly burning myself out.

First, I had to learn to let go of control so I wasn’t doing absolutely everything. Second, I had to shift to gratitude for what I did have. Because otherwise, it wouldn’t have mattered whether I was making £10,000 a year or £100,000, it wouldn’t have felt like enough.

That simple shift made a massive difference because I could focus on the things that were good in my life and the clients I did have, so that I could do an amazing job for them. When I did that, it led to more clients, which allowed me to grow, outsource and release control.

3: ignoring the numbers

I was the queen of saying ‘I'm just not good with numbers’. And I hear this all the time from clients and other business owners. It pains me because I was that person.

But actually, knowing your numbers is an act of self-care and allows you to live from a place of abundance rather than scarcity.

Because for me financial freedom doesn't mean that you have all the money in the world. It means that you are good with what you do have. So I really had to get to a place where I was super aware of what I needed to function in my life and live from a place of mental freedom. That for me, was financial freedom.

If you're sitting there going, “Ugh, I don't want to”, I'm telling you the moment I did this, everything changed.

Knowing my numbers also allowed me to set up my own ‘runway’. This means that you have money in the bank so that if everything were to stop today, your business could still operate and you could pay for your expenses personally and professionally.

If you have debts, make sure you enter that into the total of what you need to be making monthly to get by. Based on these numbers, what does your minimum monthly income need to be?

We don’t want to go month to month living under constant stress and pressure, which really never leads to that sense of financial freedom. But I couldn’t free up that mental space without knowing what I needed to get by and to pay for my bills.

If you’ve got big things you need to save or prepare for, you’ll also be able to plan for them more effectively. This is how I got sorted for my maternity leave so the business still functioned without me. Planning for a big goal like this can be daunting, so break it into little steps. How much can you start putting away on a monthly basis to start accumulating that level of runway, that safety net?

4: rich people are evil and wealth is bad

This is something truthfully I thought deep down. I don't think I even knew this consciously, but it's something I've talked to a lot of my clients about and friends as well. I think one of the reasons I believed money was bad is because of what we see in society and how people operate sometimes with money that we don’t agree with.

What I realised was if I continue to live well below my means, which makes me feel most comfortable and is a personal choice for me, money is actually an incredible vehicle to do good and give back and create a positive impact on your own terms.

So I had to flip my mindset from ‘money is bad’. If I'm forever saying that and believing that, I'm blocking it from ever coming to me. Instead, I started to think about it as just a tool to be able to do a lot of good.

5: my net worth = my self worth

I tied my self-worth to my net worth for too long, and that's a dangerous game to play. This is a big mistake I see a lot of new entrepreneurs make because it puts you in the position where you have to work really, really hard in order to be financially free.

The guidance I've had from mentors and people I admire is that people who are the most successful and most financially free really aren't working harder, they're working smarter. More than anything, they don't associate their self-worth with their net worth because that comes from a place of ego. And you keep thinking to yourself, “I need more, more, more, more, more”.

I realised through trial and error I really didn't need much to achieve the impact and the income that I envisioned for myself. And truthfully, I feel like I've become kind of a minimalist in work and life. That’s helped me understand that I don't need much to be happy and I don't need much to feel free.

The most important thing for me is that what I'm working on has true value behind it. It's making a difference and creating a result.

Once I understood the value of the work, that's when I achieved financial freedom because I was no longer tying myself to my work. I was no longer charging for my time. I was charging for the value of the outcome of what I was doing. And I was ensuring that with the money that I was bringing in, I was also putting it to work for me.

6 mindset shifts that transformed my business

Now I want to share the six shifts that helped me get to where I am today. Hopefully, these will help you remove any money mindset blocks you might experience.

Of course, there's more to becoming a millionaire than just your mindset. But as someone who's been through a lot of different levels in my business, I can tell you mindset is vital.

We're either coming from a place of scarcity or a place of abundance. Often, that is rooted in childhood and from our stories around money.

When it comes to our finances, scarcity means that you're constantly in fear and feeling like there's never enough and you're never going to be able to have what you want.

Abundance means that you are set up to receive and you truly believe there's more than enough for everyone.

I used to come from a place of scarcity and that's a really hard place to build a business from. The best thing that illustrated this point for me is a book called The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.

Money is really a symbol of the life energy we exchange and the life energy we use as a result of the service we provide to the universe. Another word for money is currency, which also reflects the flowing nature of energy. The word currency comes from the Latin word Koror, which means to run or to flow. Therefore, if we stop the circulation of money, if our only intention is to hold onto our money and hoard it, since it is life energy, we will stop its circulation back into our lives. In order to keep that energy coming to us, we have to keep the energy circulating like a river - money must keep flowing. Otherwise it begins to stagnate, to clog, to suffocate and to strangle its very own life force.

Shift 1: generosity

Even if you don't have a dime to your name right now, my brand is a prime example of how well generosity will work in creating what you want and creating abundance in your life.

I started my blog with no intent to build a business around it. But because I started my brand (and my blog particularly) from a place of providing value and helping people through my content, it created this ripple effect of giving knowledge and receiving in return.

There were a lot of people that really tuned into my blog in the early days and that’s what ultimately built my audience base.

So this isn't even just about money. It's about energy: what you put out, you get back.

Shift 2: accountability

There’s a question I ask myself every single day. And when I started asking myself this question in the morning, it marked a massive shift in revenue growth in my business. So the question is: what have you done today to make more money?

Have you built relationships? Have you knocked on doors? Have you posted content with a call to action to get people to work with you? Have you built a network around you? Have you started to direct messages and provide value? Have you created content that's going to help people and make them want to work with you?

shift 3: pretend

I know that sounds strange, but you have to visualise and act like you're already rich. It’s not about the material things so much as visualising achieving the goal, getting it and upleveling your energy.

So ask yourself: when you're rich, what is the one thing that you plan on doing? And then practice doing it, go to the store, test, drive the car, do whatever you have to do to see it actually come to life and to feel what that's going to feel like. Because the universe doesn't know the difference between pretend and real.

Shift 4: remove fear

The fourth shift is spending habits and this comes down to how you feel when you spend money. For example, how do you feel when you buy a coffee? Do you feel nervous? Are you worried about how much money you have in the bank? Are you fearful about money? Does it make you feel scared?

How you feel ultimately becomes a mirror for how money is going to show up for you. So as hard as it is, even when you are having to penny pinch, try when you make a purchase to put yourself in a position of “I’ve got this, I have all the money in the world. I can do this”. That’s going to trick your brain into feeling abundant, which shifts your energy to bring in more abundance in your life.

Shift 5: gratitude

The fifth shift is gratitude: in order to receive more, being the financial position that you want to be in, you have to first see and appreciate what you already have. I had to shift my mindset around this in a big way. And I started by doing a gratitude journal every single day.

The more you find things to be grateful for, the more you're going to receive.

Shift 6: mindful investments

When I first had to hire my very first team member, I was terrified. I thought to myself, “how am I going to pay this person? how am I going to continue to grow if I'm dealing with the financial stress of this?”.

But one of my biggest mistakes as an entrepreneur was not investing in a team earlier to help me grow. The moment I was able to bring somebody into the business, it freed up my mental space to focus on the things I was really good at.

So don't look at investments or things you need to spend money on as wasting money. Think about them mindfully and think to yourself, “is this going to help me in the long run?”

The ‘times 3’ game to set sales targets

Imagine if you were really unclear on where you wanted your energy to go. You would be spraying your energy everywhere, right? If you have one sales target, all of your energy would be like a laser beam – and that’s what we want.

The first piece of advice I have is to try and stay completely detached from whatever number you write down as your sales target.

For instance, I’ve been looking at my sales targets for 2022 and I have a monthly sales target in mind that I want to hit consistently and what I’ve been practising is that when I set numbers I neutralise my emotional response to them. It’s hard, but it’s a practice I want you to work on because in reality, it’s just maths.

So, let me introduce to you the ‘times 3’ game…

Step 1: choose your number

I want you to choose a number that you want to hit every single month. Do not overthink this number. If you do start to overthink, then you find yourself in a perfectionism cycle where nothing gets done. So pick a number, whatever your gut tells you, listen to your intuition and pick a number.

We want to make this fun, there’s no black or white way to do this. It’s important for you to experiment with money in a fun way, so you can think about “okay, let’s see how much money I COULD make”.

Step 2: multiply by three

So if you wrote down £1000 in the last step, that becomes £3000. If you wrote down £5000, that becomes £15,000.

The reason I want you to do this is it gets you thinking differently. So what is that number? Was your immediate thought “how can I do this? There’s no way I can make that much money”?

Our initial reactions to thinking big are really powerful. So if you immediately go into thinking “oh I can’t do this”, then you won’t. So I want you to be really aware of what you’re thinking right now whenever that big number pops up on the paper and instead think “okay, great let's figure this out, let's do this”.

Multiplying your monthly income goal by 3 should get you *insanely excited* for three simple reasons:⁣

It gets you thinking bigger⁣
It shows you what's possible⁣
It doesn't matter if you don't hit it because it's JUST a number⁣

⁣Yes, we need to be realistic. And I know it's scary jumping in the deep end.⁣ But if we picture that x3 number and instantly think "I could never hit that"....⁣ (which if you do, that's totally normal)⁣

⁣...you are putting it out there that you don't believe there is more coming your way.⁣

⁣Wanna hit £1k a month consistently? Multiply that by 3 and think about £3k. Want to hit £3k a month consistently? Multiply that by 3 and think about £9k.⁣

How would you think differently if you were to hit that bigger number? What would you do differently?⁣

Annual vs monthly goals

Most people set a ‘good, better, best’ annual goal and then divide it by 12. I used to do that too!

But I think this promotes thinking small because in your business, so much can change every single month. We’re moving fast. So that’s why I choose to think on a monthly and quarterly basis.

We also want to look at consistent income, which is why I always look at payment plans instead of people paying in full.

Then it’s about starting to visualise this number and see what this will actually look like and I want you to view projections as a really fun game. I don't want you to put all this emotion into it, I don't want you to approach your protection with “I need this money and if I don't get it I’m not gonna be able to pay off my car”. This is a fun game, this is exciting. Be thankful, be so grateful and just follow through on your projection.

If you approach it like this your business will completely change. Projections are not meant to be hit. It’s the process of getting there that’s important, not really the money.

When you start thinking abundantly, that's when you start to say “I'm not gonna go and chase the money. I'm gonna chase what's fun in my business.”

And truth bomb alert: multiple @busytobossacademy students have hit their x3 target. Some have even hit it two or three months in a row.⁣ So if this is something you want to dive into and create a plan that will drive you towards these goals so you know what to focus on in your business, join the academy waitlist!