I spent the first quarter of 2017 investing into new contractors, systems, and services to help scale my business and automate a sales funnel. Everything is built out and now we’re moving into running Facebook ads. This also means its time for me to wait for my return on investment.
If you’re anything like me, then waiting for your return on investment can cause you a lot of stress. Simply put, returns don’t happen overnight and when you’ve invested time and money into something it’s almost painful to have to wait to see whether or not it will work.
See it as an Experiment
One of the things that have helped me as I wait for my return on investment is to see the entire process as an experiment.The entire process has become fun to me because I almost see it as a game. How can I improve? How can I get better ROI from my ads? What gender and age group are responding well to my ad?
All of these data points fascinate me as I become a better market and better business person.
Realize it’s Just Money
This may sound absurd coming from a personal finance blogger, but when you’re in the process of investing money you need to realize that it’s just money.Additionally, money is just a tool that really doesn’t need us to interject our own emotions into it. That’s actually what gets people into trouble.
Realize Investing is a Long Game
Investing in the stock market is a long game, and I’d venture to say that investing in your business isn’t much different. Remembering this will help you during that period when you’re waiting for a return on investment.Granted, you could have much higher returns with your business and it may not take you as long as investing in the stock market for 30 years, but the point I’m trying to make is investing of any kind takes some time to manifest into returns.
Since I’ve been on this ride a couple of times already, I know I have to give it at least three to six months upon implementing new strategies before I really should start seeing a return on investment.
Know Where the Return is Supposed to Come From
If you know how an investment is supposed to lead to more money, then it will be easier to wait for the return on investment.For instance, I know Facebook ads will give me a return in email opt-ins, coaching clients and product sales.
I also know that spending $200 to test ads won’t seem like much if I can land a $1500 a month contract just from the test ads. In other words, the potential to make money is there even if I’m still in a testing stage.
I also wouldn’t have started running Facebook ends if I didn’t know what the end goal was. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes business owners make when investing money is not having clarity about where the return is supposed to come from.
Actually, Use What you Invested in
I spent the last few weeks building out every part of an email sales funnel, testing copy, creating a presentation and connecting everything via my email marketing system. This all cost time and money so you can bet I’m going to use it.I also started implementing everything I’d learned at a business retreat in Puerto Rico so that I’d be ready to start running ads in the second quarter. This also cost money, so I wanted to make sure I actually used what I spent money to learn.
One of the issues I sometimes see with business owners is they don’t actually use what they pay for. They hire coaches without showing up to sessions, they buy courses but don’t actually take them and they take an eternity to implement the things they learned at an event.