#36 - 3 of the best investments you can make in your business

You need to invest in your business for it to grow, but you need to do it the right way. You need to be smart about it.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit, too. Are you ready? Let's do it It.

Hey. Hey, everybody. And welcome Back to episode 36 of the Doing It Online podcast. I'm Kate McKibbon, your host and today we are talking about one of the probably scarier parts of business, but something that is also worth it. And we are talking about investing and making the right investments in your business. These are three things that, you know, I definitely put off for way too long and that I find over and over again. When people do step up, put on the big girl and or boy pants and decide to make investments in this area, it can make such a huge difference. So I wanted to talk about these with you. Now. I also want to just say, just as a super quick caveat, that none of these things are necessarily big investments either. And they're definitely areas that you can gradually increase with time. And I'll explain as we go through. So before you go reaching for that brown paper bag and thinking, oh, my gosh, she's, you know, everything's tight and I'm stressed and now they're saying I have to go spend more money. No, no, no, no. I'm, I'm not about just, you know, putting yourself into debt or anything like that. These, you know, you need to invest in your business for it to grow, but you need to do it the right way. You need to be smart about it. And I think that these are definitely when the time is right and the finances are right, these are definitely three areas you can invest in your business that pay you back again and again. So let's dive on in. So, number one, the very first thing that I think a lot of people think probably underestimate just how impactful it can be in your business. And one that's so simple to get fixed is getting professional photos taken. Particularly if you are on the Internet, there's not much we can do about it. Our images are out there. We have to show up with multiple images. We have to be able to show our story, our personality. We have to connect with our audience. Now, as much as I love a good selfie, I love A good on the fly kind of in the moment sort of, you know, rough and real and ready image. And I think they definitely are important and they have their place. Having some, you know, beautiful professional images that are, you know, on brand and help to tell your story how you want to tell it. It really, it, it does make a difference when people land on your website, when people land on your social media presence, when you're, you know, speaking on someone's podcast, when you're being listed on a summit, all of those things you so many times you need to be able to provide a headshot or a photo of yourself at least. And just that little, you know, that selfie with the kids taken in the backyard on Christmas Eve, it just won't do. It might be such a lovely photo. But you know, being able to have that professional photo that you are really proud of, it is something that it, it helps you feel more confident, it helps to put you out there in a more professional way. And I said it's not necessarily a big investment. Now that's sort of like the minimum would be to go and get a beautiful headshot taken. That would probably be like your step one. And a lot of great photographers offer what they call like headshot days or mini sessions where you go in, it's probably a couple of hundred dollars. You get your hair, your makeup done and they might give you anywhere, you know, roughly 10 to to 20 photos depending on what their package is. And it might take like 30 minutes to an hour. Like it's not, doesn't take a lot of time, doesn't cost a lot of money. So that would be your, your minimum. Everyone needs to have a good couple of photos that they can, I said you can sprinkle around, you can give out when you speak. That is going to show on your website that you can use in social media. That's just that, that's that first level then. However, usually we need a few more than that, right? Particularly like content never ends. You're always needing to be coming up with new images to help tell your stories. So that's like level one is getting that first photo. And that's great. Like once you've done that, tick that off. The next level is okay, how can I start to get some really great images regularly? And again, the frequency of this is going to change over time. So I used to get new photos taken every two to three years and then I try to do it annually and now right now I'm trying to do it roughly every quarter. I know some people who do it every month. It really comes down to your time and to your budget. But again, it doesn't have to be the big scary investment I think a lot of people think it is. And it is one that is so worth it. Like you can. There's services online, the sun called Flytographer. There's a few other ones out there which will help to. It's almost like Tinder for photographers. They will help match you up with local people in the area who can come and do a quick photo shoot for you. And it might be a couple of hundred bucks and then you might pay extra to get them edited and things like it. It's all different. But I said this, these aren't big investments. They do make a really, really big difference. And hey, if you're a bit more of a DIY style person, if you're like, yeah, I'll, you know, this is kind of what I found. My sort of like happy hybrid for a while was I went, like I said, like every couple of years and got some, you know, did a proper shoot, got a bunch of photos, but then in between to, you know, have that sort of, you know, that social media content and all that kind of stuff. I actually invested in a new camera and taught myself how to, you know, the basic settings. And I just use the Olympus Pen 8, I think it's called. Great Little Camera. Super easy to use. It has a little remote on it that connects to your phone, so you can kind of line yourself up on your phone and make sure it looks okay and then, you know, set it onto time and mode. But, you know, there's lots of different ways that you can do this, that you can invest in just incrementally making those images better, making them seem more pro and just having a bigger range of beautiful images that are, you know, on brand, that show you in all different scenarios and that can keep your feed fresh and your content fresh. It does, it makes, it makes a big difference. And another little investment that you can make when it comes to photos, like, even if you are going down that DIY route at the moment, if you're not ready to invest in a proper shoot or regular shoots anyway, is getting the Lightroom app on your phone or on your computer. You can start with it free and then you just go and find a couple of presets that you might love. Like, I know Jenna Kutcher's got some. There's some other websites that are just dedicated to Lightroom presets. You upload them into it for free and Then pretty much any photo that you take, you can upload it into Lightroom, apply those presets and all of a sudden they look like 50 times better. So again, simple things, not big money wise. But having a good bank that is updated regularly of on brand photos is makes a big difference, I promise. And once you do it and you can't, you'll start getting addicted to it as well. And you can't start seeing photos that you have to start repeating photos like, oh gosh, it's time to go and make some new ones. So that is tip number one. Get some pro photos peeps. Number two is better tech. My gosh, of course I was going to say this. You're probably surprised it wasn't tip number one. So for us, you know, this was something I was super stubborn about for quite a while. We used to have our website built on WordPress. I DIYed it all. Then we started selling products. We figured out plugins that would do, you know, the checkout and the delivery. And then we started doing courses. So we had other plugins to do that and, or like it was just a nightmare. And I, you know, the amount of time and money that we then had to spend on getting developers to try and do little custom bits and pieces for us or every time it broke, whenever there was a WordPress update or a plugin update or something happened or we'd get hacked or there'd be a brute force attack or something else crazy would go on, or just the customer service time, like the time and money spent with my VA having to deal with all the issues when people's logins didn't work or things were broken or access wasn't working, it was, by the time we sort of actually made the decision to move away from that setup, it was ridiculous. And the amount of money that had been absolutely set on fire by being stubborn and refusing to move earlier, I didn't want to think about it, to be honest. So what did we do? We went, okay, how can we make this more stable? What is the problem here? Is WordPress that it, yes, it is a great platform, but once you start trying to do a whole bunch of different things on it, like it's the themes, the plugins, all of that stuff, they, it just the more sort of more complicated you made it, the more likely it was going to crash and burn. So we're like, okay, well how can we simplify this? How can we still have, you know, this outcome which we want, which is something that is beautiful, something that has these features that we love. But ideally something that is stable, something that's vast, something that doesn't crash, something that is a good experience for our users and our customers. And what we ended up doing was we moved our website over to ShowIt, which still does have WordPress as part of it. So our just our blogs remained on WordPress which meant that we could get rid of 95% of the plugins we had. And now we just have a couple like some SEO and a couple of security ones and just like super bare minimum like you, I think we've got like five now and that's it. And then you know, all the pages are on ShowIt, which is again it's a separate platform so you don't have to worry about needing plugins or things clashing or themes needing to be updated. It just works. And then the third step was moving our online courses and our checkout and those really, really crucial, you know, need them to be working for your business to be working kind of pieces again onto a third party hosted software. And I am such a big advocate for having, you know, the pieces of your business that need to work on a platform that is stable and reliable. I mean unless you are a WordPress developer, like unless you know how to fix things when they break and I don't mean you know how to Google it and then spend the next three days kind of band aiding it together, unless you actually know like JavaScript and HTML and all of that stuff, then you shouldn't have your business relying on that platform working because it's just, it's not, yeah, it's, it's not stable, it's dangerous, it's setting you up for, you know, potentially a rather costly and embarrassing stuff up when it all becomes burning down, let down the track. And I don't say that to be dramatic, but that's just kind of the facts unfortunately. So yeah, number two, as I said, investing in better tech and usually again this is not a big investment, it's more an investment of time just in that, you know, going okay, I'm going to have to move things over, that's going to be annoying. And investing in maybe getting someone to actually help you with that process but at the end of the day making sure it's set up properly, having those few crucial important pieces of that are actually using software that is reliable and stable and fast and delivers a great experience that is super, super, super important. So number three is, and this is one that you know, again is this is a no brainer but it's One that you don't have to def necessarily go all in right from the start. But the third thing that pays you back every single time you invest in it is getting support. So by support I mean both get investing in teams. So getting people onto your bus to help you go where you're going and also in getting coaching, training, you know those people who are able to support your growth and your knowledge and your, your, your skill up leveling as well. Not just people who are able to take the physical tasks off your plate. So again you don't need to go, all right, I'm going to spend $10,000 on team right up front. I'm going to go get a marketing director or an anything director. Like nobody starts there and you shouldn't start there. Usually the very first person on your team. You know, with my clients what I recommend is going, okay, where can you free up just to start with. Sit down and figure out how you can free up 5 hours a week off your take 5 hours a week off your own plate and find a person who can do that for you. And that in itself can be game changing and you know, also quite addicting. But just start there. Start simple. Start with, you know, usually it's best to start with someone who is going to be able to grow with you. Someone who's a little bit of an all rounder, who can do a few different things, who can help out a bit with social, help out a bit with content, with customer service, that kind of thing. And then as you grow and as your business grows and as they help you to grow, you'll see more specific roles that kind of come up later. But just start there. I said free up five hours. It makes a huge, huge difference. It doesn't have to be a big investment. You could get someone who's like 10, 15, $20 an hour to come in and do that for you and the like what you can then go and do with that free five hours, the being able to do the right work on your business, working on creating a new offer, actually spending time, you know, delivering at a higher level to your clients. There's so much more important stuff you could be doing with that free time. So that would be tip number three guys. So just to recap, number one, pro photos every time it makes a huge difference. It's not expensive. Number two, better tech because my God, life is too short to be stuck on, you know, one of those chat hold things on your website service on your. Yeah. On your server's website when something crashes like there's just no, no one has time for that. And three support. And again when it comes to, as I said, there's this team but there's also obviously there's coaching, there's training, there's people who are going to help just support you and champion you and uplevel you and push you and challenge you when you need it. And that comes again in all different levels. You know, I invest so much in this part of myself and my business, but I definitely didn't start here. And there's programs out there like our program eCourseMmpire is designed to deliver, you know, access to amazing support. Hot seat style calls twice a week with myself and with experts to great training and it does it at an accessible price. There's, you know, there's different tiers out there depending on what you need. So don't think that you have to go and you know, go all in on a 20k a year mastermind if that's not where you are yet or what is going to actually beneficial for you. So yeah, last piece of advice when it comes to any of these investments is always set a budget. Think about, you know, when I do invest in this, like when I do improve my photos, when I do improve my tech, what you know, what is the payback, what is going to happen? And if the, you know, if the good massively outweighs the the investment, which it usually does, then in my book is a good investment every day of the week. So if you have loved these tips guys, make sure you give me a shout out on social at hellofunnels and if there's any other area that you think is a winner every time when you invest in it, hit me up in the DMs. I can't wait to hear otherwise. Guys, thank you so much for joining me this week. I hope you have an awesome rest of your week and I'll see you all next time. In the meantime guys, keep doing what you do and I'll see you online. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@stealmyfunnel.com Sam.