0:00:00 - Michelle Pualani
Welcome to the Her First podcast, a platform to help online business owners, coaches and creators gain the confidence needed to build a successful business while creating sustainable lifestyle balance. We're here to help you prioritize yourself in your business and life. In this episode, Joanna is going to share her story of how she quit her nine to five to become an entrepreneur.
0:00:21 - Joanna Newton
Yeah, I'm really excited to share my story today and the process that I took to moving from working a corporate nine to five job into running my own business full time. And one of the reasons I thought about doing this episode is I was actually just on a podcast a couple of weeks ago I think it'll be released in a few more weeks and the interviewers asking me questions about that process and I thought, wow, we've never actually talked about this on our podcast like our own, our own personal entrepreneurial journeys. So I'm kind of excited to dig into that and talk more about that today.
0:00:57 - Michelle Pualani
Yeah, excellent, and you're coming from that corporate nine to five world. I have a really mixed history with my working environment bounced around from a lot of different things tried out a lot of different stuff really never fit into a nine to five full time job. I feel like my entrepreneurship journey was always something that was underlying. It was something that I tried and I have been thinking about this recently as I've applied to grants and pitch competitions is really thinking about my story of entrepreneurship and what that looks like. I'm excited about the tips and tricks that you're going to cover today and how we're going to talk about what it takes to really become an entrepreneur, because it's surprising when you think back to the lessons that you've learned along the way and things that were in your mind at the time unrelated to what it is that you were going to eventually do, but how it all kind of contributed and led to stepping out on your own and doing your own.
0:01:52 - Joanna Newton
What I think is a little bit unique about my story, compared to when I hear a lot of other entrepreneurs talk, is I had figured out how to be really successful in the corporate world. My last job that I left, I had an amazing boss. I had been promoted twice in the like two years that I was there. I was making a very good salary. Likely, you know, I was a director of sales and marketing at an ed tech company. I was likely going to move into if not there, a VP role somewhere else if not there shortly, you know hopefully moving up into the C-suite. Not long after that I was probably a couple years away from that type of opportunity.
So I know a lot of people who turn into an entrepreneur, or normally frustrated in their work environment, aren't feeling satisfied or compensated for their work. I was compensated for my work but I still wasn't satisfied. I so much wanted to do something that was my own and the first time I moved from a sort of a large corporate job into a startup. That was why I wanted to build something of my own, but I still wasn't. I was still working for someone else's dream, someone else's investment, and then I moved into this job, my last full-time job and it was really amazing experience Like I've had and I've talked about on this podcast some like crazy issues with bad bosses and layoffs and all of that but my last situation was fantastic. It was so great but I still had that desire to go out on my own and be an entrepreneur.
Actually, when I was interviewing for that job and you know when you're interviewing they always ask you like what do you see yourself doing in five years? And I know the right answer when you're interviewing is like promoted in your company, like doing really well growing my team? My answer was I hope to own my own business in five years. And I did it. In how long was I there? Like a year and a half, two years. That was really cool to be able to accomplish my five-year goal so quickly.
0:03:54 - Michelle Pualani
I feel the same way is I feel so grateful for the opportunities that I had when I was in an employment situation. I really loved aspects of my job and I worked well for a while. I was reading something recently about a starter versus a maintainer and realizing that I myself, in terms of my personality, I'm a starter, like I love getting things going, I love focusing on launching, I love the initial stages, I love ideation, I love initial strategy, but I am not so good at consistency and maintaining things over the long term. As I shifted from job to job to job, I always thought it was something that was wrong with me and why I couldn't stick something out. But I felt that exact same quality of feeling like I was always building somebody else's vision and working towards someone else's someday goal, and I just felt like, even if I had to accept less in the meantime, that I wanted to be building my own future and my own vision and my own eventual someday and goal. Yeah, that's amazing.
0:04:57 - Joanna Newton
And that's exactly what we're going to focus on talking about today, and I think the first thing I did, and I would recommend people do when starting their journey as an entrepreneur, is to actually identify if that's something they want. Do you want this and do you have the temperament for it? Because it's not easy. I know a lot of people on social media. They will be posting about working two hours a day and traveling and all of these things and that is all possible as an entrepreneur, but it might take time to get there and likely those people work a lot more than they say they do or try to admit they do on the internet. So I think some of the things is just actually identifying if you want to be your own boss, and it's something I always dreamed of.
What's really funny is I didn't grow up with a lot of money. I had to make a lot of choices really young that were focused on just doing what I needed to do to survive, to make sure I have enough money to pay basic bills and provide myself with super basic level of like food and clothing. I went to traditional employment to start because it felt like what I had to do Underneath. I knew I always wanted to be my own boss but really had a hard time seeing that path to getting there because I didn't have savings, I didn't have anything to fall back on. Identifying that you actually want to be an entrepreneur and for me I always knew I kind of wanted that but never felt like I had the means to do it. So I'm a big daydreamer. I think about situations in my head. I have conversations in my head In older years. I would like dream of some rich person needing someone to run their business for them and bestowing on me this entrepreneurial opportunity that I could take and run with it and change my life. But I always thought there had to be some sort of outside catalyst to get me there. I didn't understand. I could just do it myself and as we go through this we'll see that I did do that and figure that out. But I knew I always wanted it.
The other thing for me that told me I almost needed to be an entrepreneur was that I do not have the ability to not go above and beyond. So in any job I take, I'm just always going to do more. I'm always going to want to do my best to optimize a role Like I'm just not the kind of person who's going to come into a job, someone's going to give me my tasks and support to do and I'm just going to do that and go home. Just just not in my nature and I don't know how to turn it off.
And every time I start a job, I love it, I work really hard, I optimize it, I make more work for myself, and then I go nuts Like because I'm feeling undervalued, underappreciated and I'm part of the problem in that situation. But for me it's like I just worked so hard I needed to do it for myself because I didn't know how to not do it. I didn't know how to just give a small percentage of myself to my job. And this was even really telling. When I told my last boss that I was leaving, he said to me he said, Joanna, you work way too hard to not work for yourself, because if you're going to put this much in something, you should be putting it into something that's yours. So for me, that's really how I identified that it wasn't just something I wanted to do, but something I needed to do.
0:08:21 - Michelle Pualani
And glorifying the idea of a business owner is a big part of this conversation, right? We often think of business ownership as this amazing, wonderful thing that's so much better than being an employee, and I do see some content online that I have actually been celebrating recently of employees just celebrating their nine to five and being weekend warriors and doing their own thing, because there's so much safety and security in that, and there's a lot that's very honorable about that as well. So it's not to say that you have to quit your employee opportunity, because there's a lot of positives around that. In a big way.
Being a business owner is challenging, and I will say that the business also matters. I used to think that all business owners were created equal, and as I've learned more about entrepreneurship and I've learned more about business ownership, they are not. The type of business that you choose is incredibly important to whether you succeed or not, or whether you're financially viable or not, or whether you even enjoy what it is that you're doing there, and just deciding what it is that's going to work for you and whether you want that style of life and either one is okay and just identifying what that looks like.
0:09:34 - Joanna Newton
Do you want that life? Is it in you? Because you're creating an entity. It's almost like creating a child. You have a child. It's yours for life.
There's a lot of work and passion and energy that goes into raising a child. Owning a business becomes that. It's not something you can shut off and on like a nine to five job. It's very different, and so you really want to make sure your heart and soul is in there in that and wants that. I think the other really key quality to being a successful entrepreneur is actually being self-motivated. I think some people need someone giving them a deadline and something to do in order to get stuff done. You have to be able to hold yourself, accountable, yourself to deadlines and push yourself to move things forward, but also be good at setting realistic pace and expectation for yourself. You can go too far and want too much for yourself in one week and too much growth in one week and go overboard. Or you could also say well, I'm my boss, I wanted to get that done this week, but it doesn't matter, I'll do it next week.
0:10:38 - Michelle Pualani
You have to make sure you're that kind of person that can motivate yourself and that part's really challenging in fitness and health and wellness. That's a lot of what I did was accountability and coaching and guiding people through that. For us to own what it is that we're doing and then stick to that is really, really tough. And that comes into our mission and our theme of prioritizing yourself and your business and life is that when we're not set up to do that, oftentimes we will procrastinate, we will avoid, we will put something to the side because we haven't built up that accountability, that self resilience, that self motivation and what it is that you need to do in order to get that thing done, because you've had an employee situation for so long. Maybe that was built in school, maybe that was built in your environment, in the home, whatever that looks like. Usually you're showing up and doing something to fill a need for someone else and we have to shift that mindset if you're going to step into the space of being an entrepreneur and being a business owner and all the things that we're talking about today. Joanna, it makes me think of so.
Recently I've actually been doing an e-cournel course on women business ownership and getting a venture started and it's been incredibly enlightening.
It's something that I wish that I had when I actually started my coaching business in the first place. I'm doing it specifically for, to be honest, and making sure that this product-based business has the right foundation in order to get started. So much in the digital space. I feel like we discount, because it's almost like we're taking a hobby or something that we care about, something that we love, something we're passionate about, and then just trying to monetize it, trying to turn it into a course, turning it into something, and we forget all of the foundational business principles, some of which you're going to share today, that are so important to see that business through to fruition and success. And to ensure that you are going to stay diligent about each of those pieces and understanding the importance of each of those pieces as you walk through the process is really important, because if you don't think they're important, you're not going to do them and that motivation is going to fall away.
0:12:40 - Joanna Newton
And it really is interesting to think about all the different kinds of business you can start and think about, and I think that really gets me to In my mind, after you've decided I want to do this, I'm made to be an entrepreneur. You have to start monetizing and making money in some way, and I think for me personally, I was not in a position to just like quit my nine to five immediately and say, let me figure something out, right? I, my husband's a stay at home dad. I'm the you know only income source for our family right now. I have a child. I need to have insurance, like I have a mortgage. I have responsibilities and not a lot of savings, not a trust fund, nothing really helping me out. It's me on my own figuring this out. And so for me, I needed to know that I could earn an income, which I haven't yet but I would need, even if I wasn't going to fully replace my income. I needed to know that I could have a solid income from my business.
So the first thing I started doing was just figuring out how to monetize my skill, and my first iteration of my business is not what eventually became my full-time job, but I got together with a colleague of mine. We were both in need for some extra money, and we just started doing freelance marketing consulting. It was something that you know I'm very comfortable with creating digital marketing strategies, email campaign setup, social media strategies, social media posts and management. We just started working with education businesses we both have an education marketing product background and just started finding clients and doing some freelance work. The work was really really great. We identified a need that people had. We're able to sell our services and find clients that way.
The whole model for that, though, was definitely a direct trading time for money, so every new opportunity meant more hours of work, and it was great. But also I saw, when we were doing that freelancing, that there was definitely a ceiling in that exact model that I know would. I was like, yeah, I guess I could just keep getting clients and eventually quit my nine to five, but with that model, I knew I would be essentially replacing my nine to five with 10 nine to fives instead of like an actual business. But in that first step, I just got very comfortable selling myself, packaging a skill set, figuring out how to monetize a service. To just learn how to do that, I set up an LLC. I went through all that process business bank account, business accounting. Did that on a small to get started.
0:15:23 - Michelle Pualani
I think this is a mistake that a lot of people make when they're jumping from employee hood to entrepreneurship is that they think that they can just translate their employee position monetarily to an entrepreneurial position monetarily, and that's not the case. So if you were theoretically making I just heard the statistic is on average most bachelor credentialed working full-time professionals on average within the US are making around $45,000 a year annual. With an MBA you can make up to $56,000 a year and of course we have people all across the spectrum, like there are people making less, there are people making six figures, people making multiple six figures. So it depends on your position. But when you break down what you're probably making on an hourly basis and then you try to convert that to entrepreneurship, it doesn't work. You have to think about all of the additional related business costs that go along with it.
And this is a mistake that I made when I was first getting started.
Is I thought like oh, as an instructor, as a teacher, as a coach, I'm making $25 to $40 an hour by teaching and instructing at somebody else's facility.
I can just translate that to my own business and that's what I'm going to charge.
But there are so many costs to being an entrepreneur that you're covering with overhead and expenses and for yourself, when you were thinking about some of the things you mentioned, like insurance and startup costs and software costs and just being able to take money out for taxes, your taxes are a lot higher and there are a lot of aspects of being an entrepreneur that come with those expenses that people don't account for.
So I just want you to be mindful as a listener if you are thinking of taking that step. There's a lot more to a business that you have to be able to account for and you cannot just translate that over and say, oh well, I'm just going to charge $20 an hour for my work because that's what I'm making and that'll be fine. I'm just going to work 40 to 60 hours a week and I'll make the salary that I was making beforehand. You have to think very strategically about pricing your services in a way that are going to facilitate the other aspects of your business, so that you can grow, so that you can be successful, so that you can pay the bills and have take home.
0:17:37 - Joanna Newton
And thinking about that same concept, like you also, as you grow your business, and we'll talk more about actually creating a business model and what that looks like. But a lot of people want to go from full-time work to full-time freelance and that's like a slippery slope. How do you make as much income and how do you not make your day-to-day a daily grind of finding new clients? Your only way of growing your income is finding new clients. Now, one of the things that, as I was leaving my job, people would say to me. They would talk about security and be like well, aren't you worried about job security? What happens if your business fails? If you're not doing well, you have no money. What do you do?
The truth is, I think that full-time employment security is a myth. It's something that I think we get taught. Go find a really good job. You're going to be stable. But for the most part in the United States, people who have full-time jobs are at-will employees. If you have a full-time job right now, you could wake up tomorrow, go to work, get a meeting put on your calendar that's an all-hands call and lose your job right then and there. And not to scare people, but I talked about in a previous episode that I survived seven rounds of layoffs and seven years at a company. There were hundreds of people I worked with at one company that, throughout that seven years, woke up one day out of nowhere to find they lost a job. And while, yeah, you may or may not have severance not a requirement so I think thinking a nine to five is really really stable and secure is a myth that people need to get out of their heads, because I think about the opposite.
For a second, say, I have six social media clients I'm working with. I've diversified my income source across these six social media clients. If I lose one of those clients, yeah, my income may have gone down, but it didn't go to zero. I can then go find a replacement client. Maybe I'm making a little bit less for a few months while I find that replacement, but there can actually be more security even in freelancing just freelancing as your business model.
Now if you take that a step farther and you say, okay, I'm going to freelance and I'm going to have digital products and I'm going to have people doing design work for me that are under me and I'm going to create like a diverse ecosystem for my business where I have multiple income streams in that business or maybe even multiple businesses. Right, you have multiple businesses. Then you get even more secure, Because if you have three businesses that are making money, if one of them tanks because of regulation changes or change in market or COVID shuts the whole world down and your business is no longer relevant, well then you have two others that are keeping you afloat. So really rethinking how you make money and what income is and what the purpose of it all is can really help in this process, because it's not just about trading time for money and it's not just about having one great high salary income source. It's about really diversifying what's coming into your life.
0:20:53 - Michelle Pualani
Couple of things. You are so right about the safety and security of a full-time position. We are seeing massive layoffs right now, massive layoffs from big name companies, and thousands of people, if not tens of thousands of people at a time, are going out of work and it's nothing that I've ever seen before in the workforce. I know that it has happened in the past, but it's kind of incredible to seeing this kind of triple effect after the pandemic of seeing what's happening in our companies and large brand names and how they're wake up one day you're done and you need to find something different. So you're absolutely right, there are risks to both situations and it's really what you're willing to handle in terms of risk, because being an entrepreneur and starting a business is absolutely riskier, but the payout and the reward is often exponentially higher than having an employed position. So there are a lot of opportunities there. Also, acknowledging that ideas are prevalent.
I love talking to kind of new entrepreneurs, new business owners in the online space and they are so naive, for lack of a better word and it's really beautiful thing and I think it's a good thing and it should continue. But there is some naivety about you having this wonderful idea but bringing it to market. There's a totally different process from, like, ideation, brainstorming and having a good concept and actually bringing it to market and monetizing it. And there's a lot of rhetoric in the online space about, yeah, just create a digital product or create a course, and we are encouraging you to do that because it is the best way to scale and to monetize an online presence, but it's also not that simple. So, realizing that a lot of steps in the process are going to be energy, time, resources, thought, planning and commitment over a long period of time so it's not something that you can kind of just jump in and do easily, and I guess I will say it actually is simple, like the entire online space is really simple, like it's not complex.
The more that I learn about it, the more that I realize it's very simple principles and it really underlies creating an audience, driving traffic, presenting a good offer, making the sale, maybe nurturing that person Like it's all very simple but, again, it's not easy. So, when you are thinking about monetizing what it is that you're doing, there are opportunities out there to take anything, whether you like photography or quilting, or dog training or therapy or health and wellness, like pick your topic. You can monetize it Absolutely, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be really easy and you're going to be able to do it right away. So you have to plan strategically, you have to think ahead and you have to realize what you're investing into. It is going to take work, it's going to take diligent, it's going to take time, it's going to take attention, but is it worth it in the end? Because, again, that exponential potential, I absolutely think so.
0:23:55 - Joanna Newton
Yeah, and I definitely recommend that people who are interested in entrepreneurship, owning their own business, just get started with something right. You don't have to quit your nine to five, you don't have to change your whole life, but starting with something I think is really key for me. I just wish I started earlier. Like when I think back, if I just started freelancing earlier, my, I think, career would have skyrocketed faster. Because the truth is, when I started freelancing it made me a better employee and I actually started getting more promotions and raises and was able to express and like share my value with my corporate bosses at a better level. When I started marketing myself as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, as a freelancer, so those skills actually made me more valuable to my employer and in a lot of ways, I was able to test ideas and marketing concepts with my clients really freely and then use those strategies in my full-time job and actually vice versa, like I really was able to grow my growth in both areas simultaneously because of what I had to offer. So that was really cool to watch.
But the other thing, too, is just being an entrepreneur like doing things, putting yourself out there gets you more opportunities. So we talked earlier about like someone just bestowing opportunities on you. That's not necessarily gonna happen, but if you're doing the work, if you're putting yourself out there, you're going to get opportunities. I even think about this podcast, right? We wanted to start pitching ourselves to be on podcasts and said why don't we do it ourselves? Since we've started, someone reached out to me, had me on their podcast, right?
The other thing that's happening is I'm pitching my agency services to potential clients. They're checking out my LinkedIn, noticing that I'm doing the work. I'm putting content out there. It's a great example for me to share with potential clients and find potential clients who want to be entrepreneurs. Right, I'm talking about this. I'm doing the work. Entrepreneurial opportunities get you more entrepreneurial opportunities to flex those muscles and try those things. So the first thing you try is probably not gonna be your end game. It's not. And so if you're waiting on your head and I talk to people who wait they're just trying to get that perfect offer, that perfect idea, the perfect landing page set up, whatever it is. They wait and wait, and wait and wait and they're never gonna get anywhere. But if you just start, you're gonna be able to refine that idea until you get to your big idea. That's the one that's gonna be your baby.
0:26:38 - Michelle Pualani
I don't recommend anyone does entrepreneurship the way that I have done entrepreneurship because I was not like Joanna, I was not safe, I was not prepared and I should not have quit as soon as I did from my work. And I just again, I'm a starter, not a maintainer, so I cannot last and I get to a place where emotionally, physically, psychologically, like, I am not healthy or happy and so I have to, like I just have to jump in the deep end and like, figure it out and we have in an okay way and it's evolving and changing and growing and it's getting better all the time. But I do think that you just need to start with something and if I can't impart any wisdom from you know, behind the site is 2020, is building an audience. Like if you're gonna invest in anything, start building an audience, pick a platform and start gathering people around the topic and the idea of that you're thinking about. You may not have the offer yet, you may not have the skill, you may not have exactly what it is that you wanna be able to monetize, but start to build that audience, whether it's a podcast, whether it's a YouTube, whether it's a social media channel, whether it's just a newsletter, whether it's I don't know a phone call list, it doesn't matter what it is, but actually focusing on building an audience is such a great way to get started if you're considering leaving your nine to five and actually starting a business so that you can start to find people to sell to, because that's such a big part of being an entrepreneur and a business owner is being able to sell and market yourself, and you have to be able to do that.
Whether it's your personal brand or whether it's just a service or whether it's a product, you have to be able to market and sell. That is such a such a key piece to it that, again, I didn't understand. I just thought I'm a really great practitioner, I'm a really great coach, I'm a really great teacher. If I just do that well, people are gonna wanna work with me. Nope, not the case. So, starting to identify the ways in which you can kinda do it on a small scale, like Joanna did, start freelancing on the side, start actually building an audience, start figuring out what it is that you want to do, so starting small and being able to grow with growth and work from there and knowing that you're gonna have lots of iterations and lots of offers and lots of emails and lots of landing pages and lots of social media posts, so not fixating so much on perfecting each one of those things as you go.
0:28:58 - Joanna Newton
And I think that you're in those early stages. I love the idea of building an audience. That's something I wish I had done sooner and I've really just begun doing. But really building an audience in a brand for yourself makes a big difference, even if you're just applying for jobs, like if you wanna be in a nine to five, having a strong LinkedIn presence for your posting content like it helps, like it really does. And it's funny because sometimes I think you think if I'm not gonna be this big time influencer, I don't need to build an audience. But having that sort of presence puts you in just a different position and place in life. But once you've done those things, you've started monetizing your skills. You're like, okay, I wanna be all in in a few years. Like me, I was saying, okay, I wanna have my own business in five years. My initial plan was a full social media consulting business was my initial idea of what I wanted to do. It's not what I ended up doing, but we'll get into that. But I think you have to sit down and start thinking a plan what your actual business model is gonna be.
For me, what was really interesting as I was freelancing, I found my now business partner. So I met Brandon. He was running an online drone school through Kajabi and needed some help. He originally actually posted for YouTube ads. Like it was a job for YouTube ads. I'm not really great at YouTube ads, but I applied for the job anyway and I was like I can do YouTube ads and I'm looking at this.
It's like this these guys in Southern California who have like this cool online drone school, really flashy, smart videos, and I'm like a 30 year old mom in Western Pennsylvania Do you know what I'm like? I was like there's no way they're gonna wanna work with me. Do you know what I mean? But I remember having calls with Brandon. Like the first conversation was like a phone call and we were talking and we ended up not talking that much about YouTube ads and we're talking about like organic strategies and stuff like that. And then I didn't hear from him for weeks, thought we weren't gonna work together. And then we had another call and then another call and then eventually we figured out that I was gonna help him get started on TikTok and sort of optimize his YouTube channel. So we started working on those projects together. It was a lot of fun, but still like literally the whole time I was like I'm a 30 year old mom in Western Pennsylvania. Like why am I helping these people in Southern, like these, like cool young guys in Southern California building a drone school? Like what do I have to offer? The truth is, the whole time I worked for him I felt like I was doing nothing. I would do stuff, but I was like this isn't that cool. But like he would be like wow, this is amazing. And I'm like, okay, like it was a very weird experience. It was a weird like freelance experience.
But as we worked together, we started kind of coming up with this idea for Millennial Marketer, our company now, and what Millennial Marketer does is we help online course creators create their courses, build their systems, create landing pages, create their funnels and really grow their own online businesses. And we help with them with everything from ideation to actual execution, like all the full process, like from scripting their course, designing their offer, all of that to actually getting it out in the world. And we started just thinking like we could just help other people do this. You know we don't need to do this for drones or whatever it is. We could help with any industry.
So we really started sitting down and defining our business. We thought about our business model, what it would be, what it would offer, and we even have a picture of where we wanna be in five years, right, like, what is that long-term goal and how do we get there? But for us, you know, neither of us really had capital to put in the business, so our plan was all about how what's the fastest way we can get some revenue, you know, and we just started with some hourly consulting jobs. Then we started defining packages and like things more specifically and started pitching different packages and different price points and testing things and figuring it out. Then we started like defining packages, documenting them and really nailing them down, and then we started hiring people to help us. So what we did and we did this all while it was full-time we just really started to define and refine an actual business model that was beyond just two freelancers helping people build up online course businesses but would become eventually a business.
And it's been a struggle because, again, we did that with zero dollars. It was just our brains and our computers and figuring it out. But we needed to come up with an actual business model and then also try to understand the potential right Like is this something that could sustain me financially but also grow into something much bigger than just the two of this? And we quickly found there's such a need for our services. There's a need for quality services in this space. We talked to a lot of people that got burned by people who didn't really know what they were doing and broke things and ruined things or gave really bad advice or low quality products or missed deadlines, and as a corporate marketer, I worked with a lot of agencies that did that to me too. So we really just sat down and defined a business model, which, for me, I needed to leave a nine to five and go fully on my own.
0:34:37 - Michelle Pualani
A couple of things that Joanna talked about that I wanna highlight is one you gotta shoot your shot Like she could have not applied to this position and would have never met Brandon and had this entire business now that she's running together, which is a very successful business. Millennial marketer. Two people don't know as much as you think that they think they know, so you are always going to assume that you don't know as much as someone else, or that you can't help them or support them, or who am I? There's a lot of that imposter syndrome that comes up. Who am I to be doing this? I'm older than this person. They're younger than me. They should know everything about TikTok or social media or understand marketing.
So you have to realize that the more that you do what you do, you're going to run into people that have no idea what it is that you do and you have to just put yourself out there and act without the confidence, because you're not gonna have the confidence yet, especially as you're getting started. But you have to just assume that you are good at what you do, that you have the expertise, you can always get better and you can always build skill sets, but that you will continue to offer something of value, whether that's now or 10 days from now or a year from now or six years from now, and that you cannot allow yourself to get down on yourself or think that, oh well, what can I offer or how can I help or how can I be supportive when they're this amazing business. I have worked with clients as well that have, I don't know, over 600,000 followers, lots of followers online. Maybe they have multi-six figure business, but their systems are terrible or they're not very organized, or they're not monetizing correctly, or they don't have the leadership qualities or they don't know how to manage a team. It's like there's so much to business ownership and running a brand and building an audience, and there's a lot of pieces. So just recognizing that you probably have something to offer if you think that you have a skill and you wanna bring it to market. So Joanna could have again, never applied, never worked with this person who is now her amazing business partner and getting herself out there, if she didn't make that jump and take that leap and then, knowing that there was a foundation, knowing that building a business is about profit, I used to think that business was about service and about fulfilling a need and about connecting with people, and it is all of those things.
But a business is about profit and making money, because you can do all those things be of service, connect with people and the other things that I mentioned in an employee position working for someone else. So you need to understand your motivation and your why and what's driving you forward in order to create a business and then decide on what is that business? What does that offer? How am I gonna monetize it? And not just to cover costs or not just to replace my employee salary, because, again, we've already talked about that doesn't work.
You need to think of what's at least three times that that's gonna cover your overhead, cover your costs and help you grow into the future and become not just a freelancer who's trading your time for money, which I know Joanna is gonna talk about. But how are you gonna be a business owner? How are you gonna actually sit in that leadership seat and figure out a structure that's gonna continue to work for you even when you're not available? Because there is a lot of risk in that employee situation. There is a lot of risk in business ownership, but if you do go out, especially as a freelancer and you cannot provide your services. You need to be able to plan and equip yourself for that as well.
0:38:04 - Joanna Newton
Yeah, and working on that business model where you can get beyond time for money, I think includes a lot of things. When Brandon and I started, it was time for money. It was literally we were offering hourly rate packages time for money. Then we started to move into for ourselves value-based pricing, right. So we went from saying, okay, we'll work on this, it's going to take us about 10 hours, we're going to charge you hourly to okay, now we've defined some packages, we've said this is a system we have, we've coined, and we're going to take you through that process with that. Whether that's coaching for creating an offer or actually setting up a funnel or a sales page, we're going to take you through our system for that. Then you're doing value-based pricing where you say, okay, I know, a sales page is worth this much money, I'm charging this much money for a sales page, and then if you've created a system for it, right, some sort of baseline, template, baseline process for creating that, then you can do what might have taken you 20 hours and 10, because you have a system, but you're still charging the value of that service, not your necessary time, right? So we went from hourly to value-based pricing, then that next level for us and we're at right now is value-based pricing, with a team supporting us so I can be on this podcast focused on talking to you, creating content. My team is fulfilling a lot of the service. I still do a lot of work for our services, but I have team members dedicated to specific parts of our processes so they can be writing copy, building sales pages. Well, I'm focused on brand building, content building, creating more ways for people to come into our business.
So you have to kind of start thinking how do we start getting beyond time for money? And then we're still a fully service-based business. So there's still a limitation for growth, because if we grow, get more clients, get more people in our system, then our labor costs go up. Right, the more we sell, the more labor goes up. That's still limiting us. So we have plans to make that process even more efficient so that the agency side of what we do really grows, and then we have plans to add other revenue streams in the business even further.
So we're using the work that we do to fund our future build and our future things that we want to do that are going to get even farther from a service model direct time for money, even our employees' time for money situation. So I think that's the thing when you're thinking through a business model what are those phases, what are those things that are going to get you to that next level? So you're not just a freelancer or two trading time for money. You're an actual full ecosystem business. And I think my time in the corporate world really helped me figure that out, because I saw fully working businesses and how they worked and understood their business models. But actually establishing a business model, a business plan for yourself, I think is a really important step.
0:41:26 - Michelle Pualani
As a listener, identifying that Joanna didn't start out with a team and delegation. It's not to say that you can't do that. I believe in thinking forward and saying, okay, this is the big picture vision, this is where I want to go, and acting accordingly in relation to that. That is the eventual, but knowing that you can also grow with growth. So, starting with the hourly switching to the value base, everything that you talked about, Joanna, is knowing that you can take it step by step, so not overwhelming yourself. One thing that I did and this is again, this is a strength and also a weakness is kind of like future pacing, future thinking, and so, for me, I knew all of the ways in which I wanted to build my ascension model and my value ladder, and I wanted to do all of them at the same time, and so I was essentially building all the bridges at the same time, as opposed to focusing on the one bridge and then continuing to build after that was monetized and successful. So I look back at my content. I was just reviewing some of the things that I've done in the past and just seeing all of the email automations and all of the different landing pages and all of the different courses or PDFs or workshops or guides that I have and not really following any of them through to successful fruition, and just allowing that one funnel to be tweaked and shifted and changed and Brennan Richard was just talking about this in some of his content is a lot of the reasons that funnels don't work is because we don't give them enough time, we don't give them enough attention and we're not reiterating. We go to something else. We say, oh, that's not working, we want to throw it out, we want to start over, or we get distracted Again.
As a starter, as a visionary, as that kind of entrepreneurship mind, I tend to go from thing to thing. So I get excited about something, I focus on it for a little while and then I jump to the next thing and I'm working really, really hard to not do that anymore and be really conscious of that. If I have an idea again because ideas are prevalent you are going to have lots of really great ideas. Some of them are going to work, some of them aren't going to work, and ideas just come to you constantly and you can do so many different things, but the people who are successful and focused in their business are those ones who pick an idea and they run with it.
Sarah Blakely, spanx billion dollar company. She didn't also try to do bras at the time. She didn't also try to do scrunchies. She didn't also try to make pants. As the successful core of that business model grew, you could then start adding other products. You could then start adding other services. You can then start doing other things, but making sure that you have that one core model in place and you're getting that to a very successful status before you shift and move on to the next thing.
0:44:06 - Joanna Newton
I think that's really great advice and I think that's something I talk to a lot of our clients about is they have a hundred ideas, they have a hundred things that they want to make and they want to make them all. And I think sometimes I lose in talking to clients. Someone won't want to work with me because my advice is to start with one. I'm always like let's pick one of those projects, let's get that project done and then we'll make what. Then we'll do the next one, but let's focus on getting one course, one thing, up and running. And that can be really hard. You want to do everything, but I know that when I've tried doing everything with something, either they don't have the budget for any of it. If they do have the budget, they don't have the mental capacity to be working that well on that many things at the same time, and that can be really, really hard.
I love that idea of picking something, focusing on something, getting that done. Sometimes you do that and you might have to pivot. You might have made it and you're like whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, this isn't working. I got feedback. I need to pivot that thing and adjust it. You can do that. That's different than starting a whole. Pivoting is different than starting another project simultaneously.
0:45:21 - Michelle Pualani
And are you familiar with traction? The US worldwide model is something that I follow loosely for business creation and organization. So the visionary integrator kind of concept and idea and I really think that you are an integrator, Joanna, and I think that's one of the reasons why this partnership works as well and integrators are actually the smaller percentage of the populace, so visionaries are actually in more quantity and higher quantity. So, again, I hate to break it to you, but if you were that person who's like, oh my God, I have a million ideas and they're all really good ideas, I'm like, yeah, okay, you have a million, so do we? So do I? So everyone has a million ideas.
Again, ideas do not make businesses. It is the maintainers who make businesses, it is the integrators, it is the people boots on the ground actually doing the work. Visionaries are leaders and they have the capacity to see the bigger vision and the bigger picture and they have a totally different skill set. And it's not to say that that's not important, because of course it is important and most of the people at the forefront of what you see when it comes to business success are visionaries. But to the side of them, alongside them, right next to them is someone who can actually put things into practice, actually take the ideas and see them through to fruition and make them successful. So it's so, so important to have that skill and this whole this actually brings up for me the whole idea of a solopreneur.
I think that there's a lot of misinformation online about a solopreneur and whether you can be successful just running your own thing by yourself. I am a big believer in strengths and personality traits and natural tendencies and, as someone who, from a Gallup strength perspective, has very high strategy and very high influence, but very low execution and relationship building, I don't consider myself a successful solopreneur and it's taken me a long time to realize that. And now that I have realized it, I've identified that, oh, I need someone like Joanna, or I need another person who's going to help me put the rubber to the road and actually implement everything it is that I've tried to do on my own and organize it and structured in a way that is going to monetize, that is going to get that success, that is going to lead to what I want it to lead to. And for a long time, I felt really hard on myself and was really down on myself because I felt like I wasn't a successful solopreneur who could do this all on my own. And there are other people who can be. They have multi seven figure businesses in the million. So the multi-million dollar businesses and they're a solopreneur. And, yes, they probably have contractors and maybe a personal assistant or an executive assistant helping them. So, even a solopreneur like what makes you a solopreneur Does that mean that you don't have anyone that you've contracted, you don't have any virtual assistants, you don't have anyone who's actually doing additional work for you. Because even if they're not an employee, if you're paying someone to support you in some way, I don't think you're a solopreneur, right. So, solo one single, that's it.
Again, I've been really hard on myself in the past and, I think, dispelling that notion that you have to do everything by yourself and that if you aren't good at everything and wearing all the hats in your business, that you're not going to be successful, because that just isn't true.
And I've just realized that I needed a different business model.
I needed to actually figure out the costs of my business in advance and be able to delegate and lead and manage and have team members in place that were going to support me.
Bring on someone like Millennial Marketer, who was a really great agency, because I've hired agencies in the past. I've hired a minimum of two other agencies that were in the $7.5 to $10,000 range, as well as other high-level coaches high-level quote unquote and really expensive coaches is the other term for that that have not supported me or not gotten the results that I hired them to do, and so that can be really challenging because you can feel like you get burnt. You can feel like what's wrong with me? What did I do wrong? You kind of get into your head and then also think, oh, I made a bad financial investment and that was the wrong choice for my business, and it just can kind of lead you down this spiral, just understanding that you don't have to do everything by yourself, understanding that recognizing your skill set and finding people to support you and it may take time to find those people, but finding those people who can support you in the process is a really important part of business ownership and entrepreneurship.
0:49:51 - Joanna Newton
And I would suggest and this will actually motivate me to finish reading whichever one of the EOS model books that I bought and purchased Don't remember the title, I think it's Traction. This will encourage me to finish it if we say the next episode we film or the one after that. Let's break down the model and, as the integrator, I can tell you what I think is missing from it, because it's actually very interesting. As I'm reading it I'm actually realizing why I've frustrated in the workplace and I think it stems from the EOS model is written for visionaries by visionaries, and it's missing some, I think, integral pieces to that model that would make a business run much more cohesively for both people and we'll talk about that because I think that'll be really interesting.
But switching gears a little bit, I want to talk about some of the nitty gritty about quitting a nine to five, because whenever you talk to people who are in regular full time employment about entrepreneurship, certain things will come up. What about? We talked about job security kind of being a myth and how there's risks from being an entrepreneur, but there are also benefits to job security. But things like insurance, your 401k, matching your taxes, other benefits, pto, all of those things when you're thinking about making that move from nine to five to entrepreneur. These are things you need to think about and sit down and write out, because you can live in fear of like, well, I can't afford insurance, so I'm never going to do it. You can just think that's the case. But what if you actually knew how much it cost? What's that difference? So for me, that was one of the first things I did. I'm an insurance holder. I have a small child. I also have a chronic illness. I need insurance is something that's really important to me, and so I looked it up. I was paying a premium at my employer, like it wasn't free. They were obviously covering some of the costs, but in Pennsylvania we have a state marketplace that if you meet certain income requirements or certain things and one of them is being self-employed, that you qualify for. So I looked it up, did an estimate and for me, the cost difference from what I was paying to what I'm paying now is about $300 a month and that is a lot of money. $300 more is a lot of money, but honestly, I thought it was going to be more than that of a difference from the way people talk about it. What about insurance? It felt so scary, but then when I thought, $300 more a month, that's something I can figure out, that's something I can budget for. So for insurance, that was the case.
Something I lost is a 401k matching program. My employer matched a percentage of that income, making sure you're aware of that. What that difference is? Obviously, as being self-employed, you don't have PTO. You don't have some of those things that you may rely upon. But for me, that was a wash, because I can make my own schedule. I can take a morning off if I need to. I don't have a limited number of days. I can actually travel as much as I want and work as much as I want in the process. There's all of that now that's available to me. But that is a difference. That's something you have to consider before you quit. Is this something I need? Is this something I can live without?
The other big thing to factor in is your employment taxes. So one thing your employer covers a portion of what an employment tax is. I'm not going to talk percentages, I'm not going to tell you what to say, but I'm not a CPA. If you are considering quitting a nine to five and going on your own. I recommend having a CPA do your taxes, talking to them, going through the process, because something you do have to do as a self-employed you have to make quarterly tax payments based on an estimate of what you're going to be earning. This is something you need to do to not base penalties. So understanding that process, having a CPA is really important.
I'm really lucky my father-in-law is a CPA, so I had an end to talk to to do those things and be set up for that. But knowing what I needed to be putting aside for my income to pay those taxes is really important. To not get a big surprise bill in February and it is a lot of money and it feels kind of like it sucks, but if you plan for it and you put it aside, you have that money to pay your taxes. It won't be a stressful thing. You just have to go into it, knowing so, if these are things, if you're seriously considering making that switch, look into your insurance, look into your taxes, think about what you're losing from your job and not to make it a reason to not do it. As I went down that list I never came back with I shouldn't do this. I just came back with. This is what I have to plan and budget for.
0:54:40 - Michelle Pualani
Breaking it down that way makes it possible, it makes it more approachable, it makes it something that feels reasonable. There's a lot of shame and guilt around hiding things and not knowing. When people throw out those ideas of what about insurance and what about taxes? And oh my gosh, it's so much more. You have those kind of running belief systems in your head and it'll inhibit you from taking the action and doing the things that just need to make it happen. But when you bring them to the light, it changes the game. And also, again thinking in terms of what you're charging, it's important to take those into account.
I used to make this mistake as a consumer. I used to look at the cost of something and say, oh well, that's so expensive because of the cost of goods or the cost of services. For example, if something was $100, I would say, oh, that's $100. Well, the cost of that is actually only $20. Why is it marked up so much? Businesses are for profit. You have to account for the profit within that $100, not to mention the likely. Joanne didn't mention percentages, but even just assuming you're about 25%, you have that $100, you take out the 25% for taxes. You take out your additional costs on top of that, any of your overhead expenses you take about the time actually invested. You take out any contractors or anything else. That was a part of the process and you might actually only be left with $10 out of that $100. Again, not to scare, but that's a big part of the process. You have to think about the business model. You have to think about the expenses that are going to be related to it. You have to think about your take home.
I used to think that a six-figure business was a big deal. It's really not. When you look at expenses and when you look at paying yourself out, if you want to pay yourself out a reasonable salary especially if you want to pay yourself out six figures you have to make multiple six figures a lot of times in order to do that realistically the type of business that you're creating and what that team looks like or what the resources look like for that. Just being really cognizant of the financials and thinking about your personal life along with your professional success.
For me, my ideal is $30,000 a month in the business. $30,000 a month in the business covers all of my overhead and expenses, while also meeting my personal needs when it comes to savings and retirement and all these other pieces. I'm not there yet hopefully soon. But just knowing that again, I can't just replace my salary. I can't just have a $10,000 a month business and think that that'll cover all of my costs, because it doesn't always. So make sure it's not an arbitrary number. Make sure it's actually related to the things that Joanne is talking about.
0:57:25 - Joanna Newton
And that really brings me to sort of the next step in the process. Right, you've figured out your insurance costs, your taxes, all of that. I think there's two big pieces to that One. So now, how much money do you actually need to make? And there's an interesting thing, people talk about that as your salary grows, you naturally spend more money. So I really knew and realized I did not need to be able to replace my salary in order to quit my job, as much as nice as that would have been. I was making a really great salary, like over six figures from employment. Even with taxes and take home, I was making more than six figures a year. To be able to replace that right off the bat was going to be hard. So instead of thinking I need to make that much or more than that much to cover my taxes, I thought about what I actually need each month to cover my necessities, not my wants, but like what do I need to be able to pay my mortgage, feed my family, pay my insurance? You know I have to have internet, I have to have power, I have to have. These are things I have to have.
What is that number Like? What is that number to cover and that's where it was when I was looking at my business, like PNL's and goals and all of that. That's what I was looking for. When can I see that I know I will make that number for three months straight, like when I can see in our forecast. When can I know that I can take that for three months straight? Because I think that will give me enough time, because I knew if I switched focus and focus only on my business, I could make that number go up. So what was like the minimum? It's just like an MVP, almost like a minimum viable product. What is the minimum amount of money I need to be making for my business to move on, knowing that, yeah, maybe I'm going to have to go out to eat less, maybe I have to spend less money on clothing or getting my nails done. Where is that break even point for me that I need to cover my expenses? So I figured out that what that number was for me and luckily I live in an area that has a lower cost of living, so it was actually a pretty reasonable number and then I saved that much. I wanted to have that number times three in the bank account.
Before I quit Again. I have a child, I have a husband, like some people don't need that. Some people could say they're single, they don't have many expenses. You might be able to just quit and do it. For me that was just not an option. So I said I'm going to save and because I was working two jobs, I was making money for millennial marketer and my full time job. I was working a million hours. But it did put me in a position where actually pretty quickly saved that that number for three months. So that put me in the headspace where I could say, okay, if I quit and this doesn't work out, I have three months to figure it out, right. So I did that for myself.
The other thing that I did is actually build out I think this is something not all business owners do but I build out like a full revenue and expense forecast. So I built out the whole year what are all of the things we're going to be spending money on? What's our expected revenue, how much does it need to cover those costs? Like figure that out. And especially in the first full year of business.
This is a spreadsheet that's evolving and changing. It looks very different than when it looked like when I quit. But I built that out and saw okay, well, we have this client bill coming in, this client bill coming in, this client bill, this software bill, this expense bill what's coming out? How much can I expect to make in March? How much can I expect to make in April? How much can I expect to make in May?
And when I saw, okay, it looks like I can make that number that covers my expenses and I have three months, that's when I was like it's time, right, like that was for me what I needed to make that move and actually give my two weeks notice. And lots of people when I did that, they're like are you scared, are you nervous? And I was like, no, because it's here, right, it works. And plus, I'm going to be giving it more attention in time, which means all of those revenue numbers should go up. Also, all of the expense numbers went up too, just so you know. I know I can make that stronger and better if I'm focused on it full time.
1:01:52 - Michelle Pualani
This is so important because I really, really think this is something that we don't discuss in the online space. When you look at traditional business building, you were looking at putting together an actual business plan that has all of these financials built into it, and they suggest that you have at least a year's worth of startup capital in order to be successful. Most startups, most businesses, most what I would call more traditional businesses they have a financial plan for moving forward and then they're also getting capital in other ways. So think of venture capital funding, think of pitch competitions, think of grants, think of loans, think of lines of credit, think of credit cards all of those things and in the online space, we don't talk about this.
In the online space, we talk about make hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Oh, I'm a seven figure business owner. Oh, you can just monetize your passion and charge people money for what it is that you're already doing. All those things are possible and all of those things are great and they happen every single day, but we don't talk about these technical things and traditional business practices that really should apply to your coaching business, that should apply to your freelance business, that should apply to your course building business and thinking about it more strategically as you're getting started, so that you don't set yourself up for failure, so that you don't set yourself up for debt, so that you don't set yourself up for frustration or grief or stress. That then inhibits your creativity, it inhibits your ability to sell it, it inhibits your ability to market. So, really thinking through some of these things as you're planning for that switch, or as you're considering the switch from your work to your job, or if you're in a place in your business already where you hadn't thought about these things, it's never too late to sit down and work this out.
1:03:44 - Joanna Newton
Yeah, and we recently just made a pretty big financial investment choice for our business that's going to be investing in some of the future things that we're talking about. So we're going to be spending a significant amount of money on something that's not going to make us money today but we believe will make us more money like next year. This is the point where we're saying we're investing money back into our business to do this. That kind of decision could be really scary if you don't have a handle on your financials. But because I already have that system set up, it was literally a do we have money for this? Okay, let me plug it in to my spreadsheet. I have all the money. Everything calculates for me, so let me plug it into my spreadsheet. Do the math this is our expected income. You're laughing because you're like oh my gosh, you're such an integrator, I can see it in your face. Put it in my spreadsheet. Do we have the money for it? Oh, we do have the money for it, okay. So the do we have a money for? Question is gone because we know we have the money. Now we can just decide is this the right business move? We know we have the money. Okay, problem solved, we can still pay ourselves, pay our team and invest in this.
We might say, okay, we need to sell this much more in November to do that, right, but we know this is what we know is expected. We need this much more to cover that. Do we feel like we can sell that? Yeah, that's an easy number for us to sell. So, no problem, right. And so thinking like that takes some of that stress away, because you have a model and a thought to go back. To go back to financial budgeting as something like no one ever teaches anybody, and it was something like I had to learn when I was super poor, because how else do you pay your bills unless you know where every single dollar is? So I learned how to do it for myself and then you know through my work in the corporate world, learn how to do it on a corporate level and then now do it, you know, for my business, and it gives you a lot more confidence to invest money into yourself if you can see that it can work out.
1:05:50 - Michelle Pualani
And you want to see your business as an investment. You are investing in yourself, you're investing in your future, you're investing in that exponential potential of what business ownership really offers and I truly believe in like. I'd rather go into debt now to meet my future goals than sacrifice again the 40, 50 hour work week of a nine to five to just get a paycheck. Have you read? Rich Dad, poor Dad.
1:06:15 - Joanna Newton
I haven't read it, but I know the concepts yeah yeah.
1:06:19 - Michelle Pualani
So Rich Dad, poor Dad. One of the initial lessons that's learned and shared in the book is the idea of being able to work for free conflicting advice, right, because you want to always have value in what it is that you do and what it is that you offer. But as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, you're pretty much working for free, like, unless, for some reason, you've got tons of VC, like capital invested in your startup and you're paying yourself out of reasonable salary because you have to do that, which you should plan for, even as a freelancer or as an online business owner. But a lot of times, the things that you're doing now are not always going to equate to money. Right, you are investing in something, Joanna, that you might see the results from next year. I'm investing in products and programs that I won't see the return for until later.
Even with a product based business, we have to invest a minimum of $10,000 just to get this business started before we can actually sell anything. I mean, obviously we are presale and so there is something to be said for that. But even go fund me campaigns. There's a lot of rhetoric about. Oh yeah, just do a Kickstarter or get people to pitch in money, and the best advice that I've heard about those campaigns is you've got to spend money to make money.
So it actually takes a good amount of money to create a healthy campaign that's going to generate the capital that you want for your business. Being able to think strategically about the financials, being able to think what am I investing in? Am I going to invest free, like for free my time, my energy, my focus, so that I don't need to get paid right away. I don't need that paycheck, I don't need that immediate gratification in order to have the scale or have the exponential growth or invest in the future or not, because that's a really, really important thing to recognize about yourself and about how you're spending your time and your energy now.
1:08:12 - Joanna Newton
Yeah, and that actually leads me to kind of my last thought on this process. Right, we've gone through, identified I want to be an entrepreneur, this is for me. I have the right temperament. Then you've started monetizing your skills, getting an idea of what you can sell, getting more opportunities by just doing it and going through that process. You've made a business plan, you've defined your business model that goes beyond time for money, and are starting to think like that. You've calculated your cost of quitting your job. You've made a plan, you've saved, you have all of those things and you've maybe quit or about to quit.
You really need to change your mindset toward income, because when you're in full-time employment, your income is something that shows up in your bank account every two weeks and now, all of a sudden, you're on your own. Your income is about sustaining you, paying your necessary expenses so that you can invest right and for someone, we could probably talk a lot about the concept of building generational wealth and what that is, but I grew up with a family living paycheck to paycheck, no investment opportunities and anything like that. This is not something we did. Saving for retirement, this is not something we did and I'll admit and say out loud to the world. Right now, this is not something I have really been able to do is invest in the stock market or build up a really large 401k, because I don't have a like never really had a lot of free money. But for me, starting a business is the beginning of that investment. For me, I'm investing because I actually bet on my return, even more than the stock market or even more in the 401k. For me, because I've proven to myself that I can take zero dollars and make a company that's made multiple six figures this year right, like I turned zero into a lot of money. Yes, I'm spending a lot of that money on a team on investment, but that's the best. That return on investment rate is nothing you can get anywhere else not in a savings account, not in a 401k. And for me, while my future self, I 100% plan to do stock investing do those things as well.
For me right now not being someone who had any capital to start with, not having anything to go on for me, this is my best bet for building generational wealth so that my daughter can start off life with some money. You know what I mean. Well, actually, the one place I do invest is a college fund for her. I started that when she was a baby. She has a lot of money for college already.
This is my investment. It's not just income Like I'm investing. So I'm taking what I need to survive and I'm investing the rest in my future to potentially build that generational wealth where I can be making money while I'm retiring. I can have existing businesses working for me when it's time for me to retire, I can eventually get to the point where I am investing in other places and building that future and building a different life for my child when she, when she's 18 or 19 and moving out in the world, has choices that I didn't feel like I had. And that's a mindset shift. That can be hard because it's not a guaranteed amount of money in my bank every two weeks. It's just a mindset shift I think people have to get comfortable with when moving to this world and the mindset of being an employee versus being a business owner.
1:11:51 - Michelle Pualani
Right, it's very different. The way that you think about investments and spending money needs to change. The way that you think about managing your time needs to change. We cover a lot of these topics on this podcast for a reason because the choices that you make throughout the day, the way that you think about yourself, the belief systems that you have, the actions that you take and how you think, invest, act, choose all of those things create your life. They create your success, they create your energy, they create your mood, they create your relationships. It's everything that determines how we show up in the world and it's so, so, incredibly important. So that shift in mindset does take a good amount, and it's about being conscious of it. It doesn't mean that it's not possible. It doesn't mean that it's gonna happen overnight. It doesn't mean that you're never gonna think like an employee again. It simply means that you have to think about the investment, and I love that income versus investment is.
You're not necessarily focused on the income, you're thinking about the investment. What am I investing in and what's the potential reward for that? What's the payout? Where am I headed? What's the future plan? How is this going to enable me to do things that I've never been able to do before in my life? And what does that mean for me? And it really comes down to that putting yourself first. You are prioritizing yourself, you are prioritizing your financial success, you are prioritizing your family, you are prioritizing how you wanna wake up in the morning and how you wanna start your day and how you wanna move through your day and your schedule, feeling confident in what you're doing, feeling satisfied in what you're doing and feeling the purpose that you have and what you're bringing to the world, and whatever that mission might look like and I feel like that can really align with an entrepreneurship path. It can also align with an employed path, so that's up for you to decide. And how you're putting yourself first in either situation.
1:13:46 - Joanna Newton
After this conversation, the last thought that I wanna bring is just that, like figuring out. It all comes down to figuring out what it is that you want, and there's a reality that with single source income full-time employment you have a ceiling and, depending on the career path you chose, your skill set, what that is. You will only ever make as much as someone values what you do, exactly right. And so there are ways I talk in my tech talk about, like how to get promotions, how to raise that income, that something you can strategize and do, but it's going to stop somewhere. As single, you have one source of income person and so I think, when thinking about being an entrepreneur, building that generational wealth, trying to make changes, you can go about it by being a full-time business owner, going it on your own.
You can also just start thinking about ways to have multiple streams of income for yourself, and that can look like a lot of things probably something we could talk about in another episode like different types of secondary income sources and how that is. We think about that in our business, right, we have referral links and affiliate partnerships and things like that that help us pay some of our bills. Right, that's a way for us as a business to diversify income. That's something you can do as an individual to earn a couple hundred dollars extra a month through different things. So I think there's a reality that if you are only going to focus on nine to five employment, you are limiting your potential a little bit and starting to think outside the box. If you want that for yourself, right. If you're in a nine to five thinking I get promotions, I get raises, but I never seem to be able to get ahead financially you might need to think differently about your income.
1:15:36 - Michelle Pualani
Thank you so much for sharing everything today, Joanna, about leaving that nine to five and starting your own thing. As we start to wrap up, I think that my last and final thought really is that it comes down to your locus of control. Where do you want to place that? Do you want to be in charge of your income? Do you want to be in charge of your day-to-day choices? Do you want to be in charge of the work that you're doing? Do you have that autonomy? Do you have that accountability?
Do you have that sense of self in order to drive yourself to do the things that you need to do in order to see a business succeed, in order to be on your own, maybe, maybe not, and either is okay. Just deciding where you want that control to be, whether you want it to be in someone else and invest in the security and safety that maybe is a facade, with an employment position but that feels good and supports your needs and exactly where you are at right now, or whether you want to take that risk and take that jump. So thanks again, Joanna, and thank you for tuning in and thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with your friends and leave us a review. We'd love to hear from you, and what is one thing that you can do today to prioritize you in business and life?
