Why It’s Safe to Invest In Yourself

Feel like your finances are on shaky ground?

Sometimes, things will happen or change financially that you won’t have control over.

But starting a side hustle opens the door to diversifying your income, which invites a little more peace and stability.

Plus, you also get the opportunity to build self-trust, self-reliance, and options in your financial future.

It’s time to get excited about your online income venture. Get all the inspiration you need in this podcast episode.

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Show Notes:

Hey, Risers. Welcome to episode 174 of Empathy Rising. It is that time of year again, friends, where we are gearing up for the open house for Side Hustle Support Group. This is going to be our third annual open house for the seventh round of Side Hustle. I had to think about that for a moment and say, which round are we on?

This is going to be lucky number seven. So if you are somebody who is interested in Side Hustle, wants to see what it is all about, go ahead and register for the open house. You will be able to speak with me directly. I'm gonna show you behind the scenes of the curriculum, all of the inclusions, like the templates, the trackers, the branding kits, the fully built website that we give you.

You'll also be able to talk with our support staff and there will be current students and alumni there as well. So you get to get just honest feedback and pick all of our brains and really determine if Side Hustle is the right step for you. So if you're somebody who likes to open the drawers, check out the cabinets, and give the handles a jiggle before you buy, you're definitely gonna wanna come and check out our open house to save your spot for that. 

You can just go over super simple marissalawton.com/openhouse. It's going to be October 19th at 7:00 PM. Eastern 4:00 PM Pacific. All right. So today we are going to get a little bit mind-setty, a little bit personal, and I really wanna share with you guys the fact that it's always safe to invest in yourself. 

You are always your safest bet. And I know that can feel maybe a little triggering or it might bring something up for you or you might be like, oh, wasn't expecting a body sensation that, or wasn't expecting an emotional response to that. But I wanna speak on this today because we can get really caught up in uncertainty, and we can get really caught up in doubt and self-doubt, but what I really love to demonstrate and one of the biggest things that I bring out inside of my Side Hustle students is this sense of self-trust. This sense of self-reliance. 

Yes, I am teaching tried and true business strategies and ways for you to bring to life something that you've always wanted to try or something that's been on your heart or something that's speaking to you—a new way of working. Yeah, that's all great. And we're gonna build a fully built business in our nine months together. You will go from idea to income. 

However, a deeper, more profound set of skills that I think comes out of this and that I think comes from entrepreneurship in general, and that is the self-reliance piece. So I really wanna talk about that today. I think what made me think of this topic is that all of us have been keeping a side eye on the economy lately. We have this yo-yo effect from COVID it's like things get better, but then they get worse again and then they get better, and then they get worse again.

And it is annoying as this phrase is, these are still unprecedented times, right? I studied finance in undergrad—that was my major. Which is actually just a glorified math degree. I just learned how to calculate all kinds of, like, rates of return and stuff. But in the degree, I took economics classes and I took marketing classes, and these things that have served me when I married that with my clinical expertise to start this coaching business.

My, what is this? My second coaching business. My second coaching business, my third online business. But yes, all of this, it goes to say that we have economic patterns that we can look at, right? We have, what is the definition of a recession? And according to economists, we have not met that definition yet, those benchmarks.

So they're not willing to call it a recession as of yet, but all of us are feeling these ups and downs. All of us are feeling these pushes and pulls. And it causes this underlying uncertainty, this underlying shakiness where the foundation is shaky. And so even though on the surface, we might feel like, okay, things are okay, they're getting better.

They're still like... the ground that we're walking on, the very thing that we're putting our feet on still feels unstable. So if you are feeling that right now, I'm feeling that right now. I think we're all feeling that right now. But there is something that we can trust regardless of this instability, and that's ourselves.

And that's what we're gonna get to today. One thing to mention, and one thing that's cool in its own way, but just, it's just interesting. Let's bring that word in. Interesting. Is that therapy, the therapy industry is an economy anomaly. I really enjoyed writing that on my outline and saying it out loud.

It's an economy anomaly industry, and what I mean by that is when the economy is bad, our businesses tend to be up, right? Because people are more stressed or people are more worried. And so they're seeking out more support. We've seen this like crazy for the last two-plus going on three, whatever years now.

And on this is where we get to that surface level. On the surface, we can feel good. We don't necessarily feel good about other people suffering, but we can relax in the sense that we won't necessarily be hurting financially if the economy takes a downswing because our businesses tend to be inverse of what's happening in the economy.

But going beneath this surface level, it appears okay on the surface. But what's underneath that is what we have been feeling these last couple of years is in the therapy industry, high demand directly equates to high output. We have a one-to-one ratio. We have a time-for-money ratio. 

So while the demand is high and it's lovely from maybe a financial standpoint, that high demand is really difficult for us in other ways. So the more people who want to see us the more time we have to give them we may not be financially drained. We actually might be financially filled from this happenstance, from this relationship, but we're drained in almost every other way.

We're drained physically, for sure. We're drained mentally, for sure. Emotionally, for sure, and spiritually. And something else that has come up in conversations with Side Hustle Students all year long is this idea of turning people away, right? When you have a helper's heart or when you're called to this profession, and you have people who are reaching out on a daily basis and you can't take them, it hurts.

It hurts us when we know we could be of service, when we could extend, but it's just not in our best interest to do that. It's not in our best interest physically or mentally or emotionally or spiritually to continue to extend ourselves. So we have to have boundaries and we have to care for ourselves.

I'm 100% in support of that, but it still sucks to know that it's wow, five people called me today and I can't help any of them. I can't help any of those people. And we just refer them out and trust that referral is taking them where they need to be. But it's still. It still can sting. It still can be heavy.

So we have this heaviness, whether we're seeing all the people, or we have this heaviness, whether we're not seeing the people so financially filled, isn't the only thing that we need to take away from our practices. And so when this ground underneath us is a little unstable, even if it's appearing okay on the surface, we have to be able to look at both. We have to say, okay, what's happening appearance-wise or what's happening surface level, and then what's happening underneath. And we can make changes on both levels. 

We can make changes to the outward appearance or the surface level, and we can make changes at the core level. And those core level changes can take longer, can be more drastic shifts, and might need more attention or might need more time. But those core shifts can take place. I think what else I see too, is when there's some instability or some shakiness going on is that as business owners, we can start to get into that scarcity mindset.

And this is really what we're going to combat today in this episode is this idea of scarcity mindset. Because even though our caseloads might not decline and we have this pipeline of people who are calling and so we can expand our practice, even if we want to, even though it probably wouldn't be healthy for us.

So we're not having this financial insecurity. That doesn't mean that, like, when we don't go to the grocery store or the gas pump, we're not starting to realize holy crap I am noticing a difference here. I'm noticing a squeeze at the store, or I'm noticing a squeeze at the gas pump.

So we can't deny that there are changes happening and we can't pretend that it doesn't exist or it doesn't affect us. But when we live with this feeling of having to pinch pennies, or when we live with this feeling of tightening up, it restricts us energetically. So we've got a push and a pull here.

Yes. This is very real. Prices are higher. I see differences. I'm seeing things around me. I notice that there is a shift happening economically, but yet I also don't want to have that. Push me into a scarcity mindset, have that push me into an energetically retract or constrictive space because that doesn't help me as a business owner either.

And it doesn't help me show up for my clients if I'm feeling restricted and not able to show up and not able to serve. So we can't deny it, but we also can't let it affect us or change us. I think that's a better word. It's going to affect us, but we can't let it change us. Because changing our mindset or our outlook on our ability to make money and our ability to provide ourselves with financial stability—that is giving our power away.

We can still pursue a lifestyle-based business. We can still prioritize our health, our wellness, our time, our financial freedom when the economy is up or down. Really that becomes an external factor, right? Whether the economy's up or down. Okay, cool. All we need to do is just adapt to that and to pivot to that. And how do we adapt and how do we pivot?

The first thing we need to know is that we can trust ourselves. We don't give our power away to these external forces and factors that we have no control over really anyway. Instead, we retain our power. We keep that, and we focus it into: Who can I trust? Who can I rely on? We know that answer is ourselves.

Cause when we get too caught up in these economic forecasts, or whatever the pundit happens to be saying at the time, we're opening ourselves up again to these things that we can't control. We can't control if gross domestic product, GDP, is down for two quarters in a row.

We have no control over that. We aren't working at the federal reserve, adjusting interest rates daily up and down. We don't have that in our grasp. We are simply... Sometimes it feels like at the mercy of those economic changes, but if we step out and realize, hey, I have no control over what happens here.

What I do have control over is my reaction and my response to that, right? So we can't deny the existing, external factors exist, but what we can control or what we can have influence over and sway over is our reaction-response. Okay? Because what do we know happens when we focus on the things we can't control?

What do we talk to our clients about? Anxiety, right? Anxiety, worry, internal locus of control, external locus of control. All of these things start to come up, right? And when you start to put out this lack energy, or this scarcity energy, what you put out, you invite back in, right? As within, so without. As, without, so within.

And so if you are putting out a scarcity mindset, you're going to receive scarcity back. The question remains, then how do we stay in an abundant mindset? Or how do we stay positive when things feel uncertain, when things feel shaky, when things feel negative? We shift to an internal focus instead of an external focus.

Okay. So we look at what our own needs are. What do I actually need? When there's an economic boom I don't think we think about need. I'm totally going off the cuff here, but when there's an economic boom, I think we think about want. I think we think the words like greed or more or ambition come up, and don't get me wrong, I love ambition and I love desire. And I love going after craving and wanting, like, I've seen nothing wrong with that. It is 100% okay to be money motivated. What I do believe though, is that money motivation being grounded in values, being grounded in integrity, and being grounded in reality, and not just wanting to hurt people to get more.

That's not the kind of ambition I'm a fan of, but when the economy is booming, it's much easier to get into that kind of mind frame. Oh, it's abundant without, so it can be abundant within, I can have more. So when we're having this economic downturn or just this economic instability, let's call it.

'Cause we don't have any evidence that it's a downturn yet. We have evidence that it's unstable. So when we have this economic instability, I think what we can do when we shift to this internal focus is take a look at what our needs are. I would love to gross $300,000 a year in my business.

That's my goal for this year. However, what do I need to gross in my business? What I need to gross in my business is probably more like 80 or 90, to now that I have people that I pay now that I have Shayna and Kristen and Hailey, it's a bit different because I'm not their sole provider. Like, I'm not their sole employer, but I do contribute to their livelihood.

So I would say it's a little more than 80 or 90 now off the top of my head. Let's put it at probably like 140, 150. That's what I would need to gross to be able to pay my team, and pay them well, and love on them, and provide the little economic support that I provide for their businesses. To pay my taxes, to pay my other expenses and obligations, and then to pay my family to contribute to what I need to contribute to the household.

So when we look at our needs versus our wants, they're often different. And I really wanna emphasize this again. I'm all about wanting and I'm all about ambition, but sometimes that takes us into the external focus. So how do we shift away from the anxiety and find our own sense of stability when things are unstable or uncertain? We go inside, and one way to go inside is to look at our needs. 

This is where I say we put our blinders on and we focus. Focus on: what do you need? Your number might look extremely different than somebody else's number, right? If you are partnered or single or the sole provider and breadwinner, or your partner fills that role, or whatever, every single one of us listening has a different situation. But what we can do is go inside, put our blinders on, find our needs and find our numbers. And not compare our numbers to somebody else's numbers. What does this start to do? It starts to help us cultivate a level of resilience, right?

When we say, okay, I'm gonna tune out all this other external noise. I'm gonna turn out what I'm being told I'm supposed to need, or I'm supposed to want, or how things are supposed to look. And I'm gonna go within, I'm gonna say, what do I actually need? Right there, that practice of tuning out and then tuning in is listening to yourself and cultivating resilience, knowing that I can handle this.

I can get through whatever I can make a plan A, plan B, a plan C, a plan D whatever needs to happen. I can do that. And this is what starts to happen when we start to come to an internal focus which ultimately results in a high level of trust in ourselves. And I think that is so powerful and so incredible.

I sell, for the most part, my signature offer, is a premium price program. However, let's say my premium price program no longer sells. Let the economy goes bad and people aren't spending that kind of money, whatever. My premium price program no longer sells. Okay. Do I have a freakout moment?

Of course, I have a freakout moment. We all will have a freakout moment, but having this level of trust in myself, when I'm done freaking out, I can then bring out the drawing board and say, okay. Maybe I split that program up, or maybe I offer it as a membership model for a year, or maybe I just do a bunch of live workshops and charge a lower price ticket and which makes the price point more accessible.

And I start playing a volume game instead of a touch game. The other thing that I really wanna stress too here is just, like, the economy goes up and down. Like all of this is cyclical, right? So when you trust in yourself and you trust in your ability to respond rather than react, when you trust in your ability to respond to what is happening.

It's not gonna be that way permanently. So we're running with this scenario that my premium price program doesn't sell anymore. I've decided that I'm gonna just do a live workshop every month at an accessible price point. And then I do that for 12 months, 18 months. And then the economy is like back up and people are spending like wallets are looser, pockets are looser.

 Then I bring my premium price program back. I think we very much get stuck in this one way or the highway, or it has to be right, or it has to be perfect, or this rigid thinking. And when you cultivate the trust in yourself, we don't have to think rigidly anymore. We know that no matter what happens, we'll be able to respond to that.

And it's not gonna surprise you when I say that this is where Side Hustle comes in, this is where you having a side hustle comes in. And this is where my program Side Hustle Support Group comes in. The first thing that you've heard me say over and over again, so this is not news, but there's so many benefits to diversifying your income stream, right?

The ones that we talk about all the time, we talk about the time freedom. We talk about the lifestyle freedom, and we talk about. stopping the dollar-for-hour cycle, right? We talk about stepping out of dollars for hours and trading your time for money. Those are things that I still think are true.

I think they're true as hell. Even if there's economic instability right? Time freedom is still important to you. We know that when the economy goes down, our therapy businesses go up, right? What are we gonna do? Are we gonna just start taking 32 and then 34 and then 36 clients? No, that's not the answer, right?

That's not the answer. We don't wanna emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually—all of those things—tax ourselves beyond means or beyond our measure. So time freedom is still important. Lifestyle freedom is still important, and not trading dollars for hours is still important. And sometimes when the economy's great it's yeah, I can think about those things all I want. It's like daydreaming almost. And with this instability that you might be feeling, you might not be able to daydream like that right now. We might be down Maslow's hierarchy a little bit. We might not be at the daydream stage.

We might be in the "crap I'm stressed" stage. Okay. But all of these things are still important. What I think, and I've been alluding to all episode, is I can teach you business skills. I can teach you how to market. I can teach you how to grow an audience. I can teach you how to build a program. I can teach you how to sell that program.

And those are skills that are gonna last you a lifetime, for sure. But what is actually happening? Remember surface versus deep, those are all the surface-level skills that you're learning. When you spend nine months with me. I teach them very well. I think I'm very good at it. I think my students would say the same, but what I think is even more profound is what's happening underneath.

And that is this ability to trust yourself. This capability that rises, and it gets challenged in the program. When you have to build your first funnel or you have to build your first thing and it feels hard or it feels scary, or it feels like "holy shit, why did I choose to do this again? Why don't I just go right back to my practice where things were easy and comfortable and safe?" Right?

So every challenge that you face inside of the program, you're cultivating this resilience. You're building more and more trust in yourself. So when you work with me in Side Hustle, yeah, you're gonna learn how to read the market and determine what offers we'll sell. And with this economy being up and down, that might be like, oh, should we go for something lower priced here?

Should we go for something easier and faster to deliver here? What's happening in the market? You're gonna learn how to do that. You're also gonna learn how to create a qualified audience of buyers, right? There's no point in building an audience if they're not gonna buy from you. So we make sure that we are qualifying that audience.

You're gonna learn how to sell ethically and with integrity, which during economic instability is a big deal, right? Because there's gonna be like... let's say we do hit a recession. You're gonna see all the slimy marketers and slimy sellers come out of the woodwork and just try and get their cash while they can and sell you promises and all this stuff.

And we're not about that here. We're not about that in Side Hustle. We're about selling with ethics and we're about selling with integrity and when you master that in economic uncertainty, then those skill sets are only gonna serve you. It's only gonna skyrocket when the economy is booming. Right?

So these are all things that we learn as a foundation that serve us, through the ups and downs, they serve us when it's down and then they just serve us that much better when it's up. So reading the market, building an audience, and selling all of those things are gonna serve you for the rest of your life.

I have so many students who are, like, the stuff that we're learning in Side Hustle, they're like, oh, I went back and I revamped my private practice website this weekend just because of what we learned last week. I wanted to put it into my practice. So business skills and this business acumen.

Yeah, our goal is to build your side hustle. But two years down the road, you might want a new program or your partner. This has happened in Side Hustle too. Their partners have started programs and they're like, oh my, I was so inspired by what you were doing in Side Hustle I decided to start my own business.

And then my students are like, you should reword that, or "I think it'd be better if you designed it like this" and it's so fun to see. Not only are they learning from me, but then they're transferring that skill set to others. I've had students where their kiddos—or I call 'em kiddos, 'cause mine are young,—but some of my students' kids are older and they've wanted to go out and do their own thing.

And so they're like, hey mom, how do I do this? And it's so fun because like their parent is teaching them instead of the other way around. So these skills are gonna serve you no matter where you go in business. But cultivating these skills, it depends on what happens underneath. It depends on the change that you're making and the belief in yourself that you're cultivating.

It's like carbon turning into a diamond. Like I know that's kind of cliche, but that's what just popped into my head. It's like you come into Side Hustle as carbon, and you're gonna go through nine months of hardening. And we're gonna talk about your imposter syndrome and we're gonna talk about all this stuff and then you're gonna come out a diamond, right?

I don't know. I know that's cliche, but it's making me smile. Once we've cultivated these longer-term skills in terms of marketing pricing, building an offer, selling, and finding the people you wanna sell to it becomes about using these skills when and how you're needed. These long-term principles, they never change.

Right? There are some short-term tactics that might change and I'm not really a tactic person. Over the summer I talked about TikTok... that sounded funny coming outta my mouth. Over the summer, I talked about TikTok which I would say is a tactic. Okay. Because TikTok is popular now just like Instagram was popular two, three years ago.

What did I just see an article on? Shuffles? Shuffles is something that's gonna be big apparently. So those are all tactics and we can jump on those tactics and we can jump on those trends. We can play around with them, but the long-term strategies and principles underneath those don't change.

And that's more about what I'm helping you learn and what is even underneath that is the self-trust. Knowing that you can look at a new trend and say: Is this for me or is this not for me? Do I wanna try this? Do I not wanna try this? Do I wanna play around with this? Knowing what you need and knowing that you can master whatever you need to master, or you can try or play around with whatever you want.

And then it all comes down to your ability to know that you can handle it, to know that you'll figure it out. And that is the key to everything we've been talking about. It can feel scary to make changes, especially because we've been talking like your practice. It is can be a stable income even with economic instability.

So it can be scary to walk away from this or to make changes with this. But I want to reiterate something here is that you don't have to do that with your side hustle, yes, a lot of my students, their goal is to make their side hustle their main hustle and to either walk away from therapy or to shrink their therapy caseload.

But remember what we're talking about here is self-reliance, self-mastery, and self-trust. With that comes the freaking ability to change your mind. So you might say, okay, I'm gonna really ramp up my side hustle and shrink my practice. And then you say, you know what? I miss therapy a little bit.

Let me bring some more clients on. And what you're giving yourself is fluidity. What you're giving yourself is flexibility. What you're giving yourself is options, right? Just because you launch a course, a group program, or membership tomorrow or membership doesn't mean you're giving up your license tomorrow, right?

You are giving yourself the gift of options. And man, that makes me tingle when I say that because the ability to, again, this piece of respond rather than react. That's what keeps coming up for me when I'm talking is like the ability to be able to just respond to curate, to design. Like we don't often think about, are we curating our life or are we curating our lifestyle?

Are we intentionally designing our life? Are we intentionally designing our lifestyle? A lot of times we're just putting our heads down and trying to make it, right? But what having a side hustle does is it gives you options. You have options of income, you have a brand new skill set, and you have strengthened your relationship with yourself and your trust in yourself more than probably any other time.

And this is why I really wanna say that you are always the safe bet, bringing this full circle to what I started talking about at the beginning. You are always the safe bet. So coming back to economics, right? One economic principle that's always true is we buy low, we sell high. We invest low so that we can recoup that when everything is up—when it's high. 

So yeah, this is commonly used for the stock market, buy stocks low and sell them when they're high. But let's think about this investment thing and let's think about investing in yourself, okay? When things are unstable or when things are shaky, that's when we go within.

That's when we invest in ourselves, and that's when we build our ability to pivot our ability to be resilient, our ability to give ourselves options because when the economy is booming again, and when it's "stable", quote-unquote in air quotes, right, stable again, we will be that much more secure, that much more secure in ourselves.

And I think that is the key here. When you invest in yourself, you get to learn new skills. You get to learn new ways of doing things, and it allows you to build this new foundation now. And then when things do loosen up financially, you're at the forefront, right? You've done your work and you're ready for the upswing, right?

When things are down, we do the work so that we can ride the wave up. So I guess what I just wanna leave you with today is if you bet on anyone bet on yourself, You are always the safe bet. It is always safe to invest in yourself. Okay? Know that. No matter what happens, you can count on yourself. And regardless you will be okay.

So if you've been thinking about joining us for the 2023 round of Side Hustle, if you're like, okay, not only do I wanna build a business, but I wanna be a diamond, man, I wanna go through the pressure and I wanna build the trust in myself, and I wanna prove to myself that I can do this. I would love for you to come and hang out with us at the open house.

It's gonna be October 19th. And again, this is our third annual open house. This program has been around the block, man, and I make it better every round, and it's so proven. It's so proven. The curriculum, the group, and the way we conduct things around here, it's so proven. So I would love for you to come October 19th, our third annual open house.I'm gonna take you behind the scenes. I'm gonna show you the curriculum. 

Literally, I open up the course and I show you what everything looks like. I'll show you the workbook. I'll show you the templates, the trackers, the cash injection strategies, the schedules, all of these things that we use to help you build an entire business in nine months.

Also, our support staff will be there. So you can ask them questions about their role in the program. So how they help with copywriting, how they help with graphic design, how they help facilitate this growth that our students see current students will be there. So you can literally ask them questions.

I encourage them all to be honest about the workload, honest about the ups and downs. Honest about what they're getting out of the program. And some alumni will be there as well. So from rounds past, and that way you get to hear these real honest experiences because I'm proud of my program and I think it's amazing, but I also have been doing this for a long time.

So to hear from the students who like they're in it now, or maybe they're one-year post graduation, to hear their stories is going to be much more close to what your experience is gonna be like. And so I think that part's really cool. Alright, so if you want to join us for the open house, head on over to marissalawton.com/openhouse, super simple. 

Save your spot, and that way you'll be able to get notified, join us in the zoom room, get the replays, and all that good stuff. So hope to see you there, and until then, keep on rising. 

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