Five Money Mindset Issues That Will Stop You Growing Your Branding Agency
Everyone's got money mindset issues, whether they own a small business or not.
But there are specific money mindset issues that plague small branding agency owners and they can be the difference between growing with ease and profit and staying stuck exactly where you are.
Why your money mindset matters
Have you ever heard of the phrase “born on third thought they hit a triple”?
It refers to somebody who's born into wealth or privilege or has some sort of advantage over other people but they aren't recognising it. They think they got where they are exactly on their own.
Or have you ever admired somebody's success in business, only to find out later that they were able to start and grow their small business because they had a partner who had a successful corporate executive job, or because they came from wealth and they had a trust fund supporting them while they grew their business?
And you feel like they had something over you that made it so much easier for them to grow and do all of the things that you're trying to deal with so much less.
I've had that experience learning about other people and their business journey. And
I acknowledged that I came into building a small business with a certain amount of wealth and privilege.
I may not have had a financial trust fund or nest egg, but I did have a great education and the stability of parents who didn't need me to support them, but actually are good on their own and kind of could be a safety net, if I really got into dire straits.
All of these things represent a competitive advantage that you may have over other people and everybody's got some sort of competitive advantage.
Well, there's a competitive advantage that you can actually do something about and it has to do with having a good money mindset.
Because the truth is, you don't have to have wealth, if you have access to resources and capital that can help you grow your business.
But if your money mindset is in the gutter, it really doesn't matter what kind of resources are available to you, because you won't even look at them or use them.
So today I want to talk about five money mindset issues that I know so many one to two person branding agencies deal with, and how they are actually holding you back.
And I know they're holding you back because I had these money mindset issues too.
And when I started to overcome them, work on them and grow out of them, I quickly saw how much it helped me grow my business faster and with more ease.
So let's get into it.
Mindset Issue #1 - The scarcity mindset
Money mindset issue number one is scarcity mindset.
Having a scarcity mindset means no matter how well or badly you're doing, you're always focused on what you lack.
You always feel like you don't have enough money, you don't have enough resources or don't have enough time, even when you just had your highest paying client ever, or your best week or month or year ever.
Your mind still goes to “Well, yeah, but that was a fluke,” or “That was a special case” or “You know something special happened and I'm not going to be able to replicate that again.”
I'll give you a perfect example.
I have a student who came to me recently, and when he joined mastery, the highest year he had ever done was $40,000 in a year.
Then, he told me that in the previous two weeks, he had made $18,000 using our Intensives Model.
So, he did a couple of Intensives and he brought in $18,000 in two weeks.
That is almost twice the entire income that he generated the year before starting our Mastery Program.
Now, you would think this would be a cause of celebration. He has turned a corner and nothing but opportunity is in his future.
But instead, you know what he said to me? He said, “Yeah, but after next month, I don't have any clients on the books. And I'm really scared. And I think that that $18,000 In two weeks, like that was a special case. Like I'm not gonna be able to do that again.”
That is a perfect example of scarcity mindset.
And he is not alone.
So many people in our industry have that feeling probably because you've spent years struggling to make enough money to survive.
So even when you get out of the struggle, and even when you're selling much more profitable services, your mind still thinks “Yeah, but what if this could all go away?”
And that scarcity mindset is causing you to make decisions that are not in the best interest of your business.
Mindset Issue #2 - Thinking like an employee
Money mindset issue number two - thinking like an employee looking for a steady salary instead of thinking like a business owner.
Listen, I get it.
We live in a society that is telling us we should be looking for steady income, we have to pay our rent or mortgage on a monthly basis, we've got to pay our credit cards, we've got to pay our kids’ school or whatever bills you have, and most of them come every single month.
And so you probably think, “I need to generate that amount of money every month to cover my expenses.”
But I want you to think about it this way.
When you are your business and you showing up and delivering services is how you generate revenue, then in order to have that steady revenue every month, you're gonna have to be working at the same clip every single month.
You're gonna have to show up at least the same amount every month in order to keep that going.
But I wouldn't consider that a business full of freedom and profit.
Freedom to me is being able to make a lot of money in a short amount of time, and then have a lot of time and space available to work on other things, either growing my business, or enjoying my life.
Freedom to me is the time that Steve and I worked with a bunch of clients in a couple of months.
And then I spent three months head down writing my first book, ‘Badass Your Brand’.
And I didn't need to work with clients because I made enough money in the months before to support myself while I worked on that project.
That book ultimately helped me grow my authority and the value of my services exponentially so that I could double my prices after that.
Freedom to me is the time that Steve and I worked with five clients in a row very intensively for almost a month and a half, and then we went to Europe for two months, and we didn't have a single client we had to answer to or had to communicate with.
Now, if you are running a business that is able to support you in that way that's able to generate lots of money in certain months and give you time and space and freedom to vacation or work on your own projects, then your income is necessarily going to go up and down.
That's not steady revenue. But in the end, what ends up happening is you make a lot more money in the course of a year.
Business owners think annually, they have an amount of revenue and profit, they're looking to generate over 12 months, and they're not so concerned with the month to month.
If you focus only on month to month, you're gonna make certain decisions that are probably not in the best interest of the long term value of your business.
And you're gonna get stuck in this feast or famine cycle because you're just trying to make money this month and next month, as opposed to how can I build profitability and wealth in my business over the course of a year.
Mindset Issue #3 - Fear of borrowing money
Money mindset issue number three - fear of borrowing money to grow your business, even though that's how almost all businesses grow.
Because you're selling your services, you may not think of yourself as a business.
But if you want to grow like a business, and if you want to generate profit, like a business, you are going to need time to invest in the business and you're probably going to need to invest in certain tools or building certain skills in order to up your game.
Borrowing money can look like a lot of things. It could look like borrowing against savings you already have, it could look like using my favourite interest-free credit card, so free money to invest in yourself.
It could look like opening a line of credit or getting a personal loan.
If you have a fear of using money to grow your business, what you're going to do is you're going to say well, I'm just going to wait until I generate enough money to invest in growing my business.
The problem is, you're really putting off building the very skills that you need to generate the money you're looking to make to invest in your business.
So it's a chicken and the egg thing.
How are you supposed to make more money if you don't know how to make more money?
And how are you supposed to develop the skills to make more money if you don't have the time or money to invest in building those skills?
Say you start a “regular business”, like building a clothing line or creating a new line of organic teas, something you might consider a traditional business, you would of course, know that you're going to need upfront capital to invest in building it.
You’re going to need to buy inventory, you’re going to need marketing, you're going to need a website, you're maybe even going to need a storefront.
But since you don't think of yourself as the same kind of business, you probably aren't thinking that way.
But the concept of having an investment upfront to invest in growing the value of your business still applies.
So, why wouldn't it apply to you?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing money to grow your business, as long as you're making sharp, smart decisions and you're investing in the future potential of earning money.
And if you are so terrified of borrowing money in order to grow yourself, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage compared to the rest of your competitors, because the ones who are growing and growing fast, they are using investment in order to grow that fast.
Mindset Issue #4 - Making short-term decisions for short-term cashflow
Money mindset issue number four - making short term decisions to increase short term cash flow, which also comes from a scarcity mindset.
Let me give you an example.
If you are living off of your cash, so you only spend as much money as you bring in and you don't invest in yourself, then every month, you're going to have to generate that amount of money, right?
If you don't generate a certain amount of money, and you don't use outside credit or lines of credit, or whatever it is to help support you in the ups and the downs, then you won't be able to eat or pay your rent if you don't make a certain amount of money.
And so in order to generate that cash, you're going to start making decisions like taking small, one-off unprofitable projects in order just to bring the cash in.
The problem with doing that is every decision you make about what projects you're going to take on is going to determine how you spend your time, and time is your most valuable, most limited non renewable resource.
And if you spend your time doing one-off $100 designs for business cards, or even little updates to somebody's banner or website, and they're paying you an hourly rate of $50 an hour, and you're only charging them for the design time, but you're not charging them for the conversation that you had ahead of time to decide what the project was, or the emails back and forth, or the meetings that you're having to get their feedback to give them revisions, then you are spending all of that time to make a little bit of cash.
Instead, you could be saying no to those projects, and investing all of that time into growing yourself, your skills, your value and your business.
That scarcity mindset that leads to those short term cash decisions is prolonging how long it's going to take you to level up your business.
Because you're just going to be in workhorse mode and that might make you feel good, but it's not going to grow your business.
Mindset Issue #5 - Not looking at the data
Money mindset issue number five is not looking at the data, because you're scared.
People who are scared of money and scared of the numbers, they avoid looking at the numbers.
If you are somebody that avoids learning about your finances and avoids understanding the numbers, if you don't like to look at credit card statements, because you're scared of what you're going to find, or you're just avoiding having credit cards or considering even opening a line of credit to begin with, then you are tying your hands behind your back.
I have a whole section inside the Mastery Programme about how to use and manage capital to grow your business.
And one of the strategies that I love most is using an interest-free credit card to invest in your growth because it costs you no money, and you can use the money now to increase your value and can increase your ability to make more money in the future.
And then you can pay it off before the interest even kicks in with what you've learned.
And yet, so many of my Mastery students skip over this section completely.
They think, “Oh, that's not something that I am interested in doing. So I don't even want to look at it.”
And to me, that is one of the worst money mindset issues that is holding you back - you don't even want to look at the opportunity in front of you, because it scares you that much.
I get that it can be very scary, especially if you were raised to think that using credit cards and having “debt” makes you a bad person, or it makes you irresponsible, or whatever stories you were raised with. And so many people have those stories, but not even wanting to look at it that is holding you back.
I'm not here to preach that you should go into debt.
I'm definitely not here to preach that you should pay interest on any money that you borrow.
But I am here to tell you that there are tools available for you.
And if you want to grow, this is going to help you grow much faster and with much more ease.
Avoiding even learning about it means that you are not going to have access to crucial tools that people who are succeeding have at their disposal.
Money mindset issues are one of the core things holding most small branding agency owners back from growth.
And it is something that we talk about every single month inside the No BS Agency Mastery Program, because even though the Program is here to help you implement all these very unique strategies for one to two person branding agencies, where you can sell at higher more profitable prices and scale up to $30k+ months without hiring employees, part of that means that you're going to need to invest time and energy in yourself to grow.
Part of it means that you're going to actually be making more money and believe it or not money mindset and scarcity issues will stop you from having the very success that you're looking for.
I've watched plenty of people make more and more money in this Program and then immediately spend it because, unbeknownst to them, they're literally scared of having money. You think you want to make more money, but are you mentally prepared for it?
It's something we talk about alongside all of the strategies I teach inside the No BS Agency Master Program.
The Program is for one to two person branding agencies who want to scale up their profit, freedom and ease and if that's something that you're looking to do and if some of these money mindset issues are plaguing you go to nobsagencies.com/apply.
Tell us a bit about you and your business and let's see if now is the time for you to overcome some of these mindset issues and take the next step to growing your business and securing that lifestyle I know you want.
Here’s what you need to get…
No matter what level of success you reach in your branding agency, in order to get to the next level, you will need to over come your money mindset issues. That’s the biggest thing - more than any other tool or strategy or marketing technique.
Once you start to recognise what they are, you can deal with them, and be on track for building a profitable branding agency you love.
P.S. You can always jump on a call with my team if you want to fast-track your growth, and learn all my other tools and strategies to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!