248: Are You Spending or Investing in Business Growth?

Welcome to the She Thinks Big podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross, coach, speaker, life balance architect, and strategic thought partner for high-achieving women who want to think differently, lead confidently, and create success on their own terms.

As an entrepreneur myself and the bestselling author of She Thinks Big, here's what I know: You've been at this for a while, but somehow you can still feel stuck in the day-to-day. And running your business like a to-do list does not fulfill the vision.

So around here, we're not about more hustle, we're about smarter strategy, bolder thinking, and leading a business that fits your life. Each week, you'll hear the mindset shifts, real-world tools, and CEO-level conversations that help you reclaim your time, grow with intention, and elevate your leadership. Now, let's dive in.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the She Thinks Big Podcast. How are you today? What are you doing? Where are you listening from? As always, go to your Instagram DMs and tell me where you are right now. I always want to know.

So I don't know about you, but I tend to pay all the bills, personal and professional, over weekends. Don't ask. Maybe that's not a good habit I've gotten myself into. But inevitably, I always am asking myself, "Is this something that we really need to spend money on?" I ask myself the same question in my business all the time too.

So I think it's about time I do an episode on solving the question that I think even trips up the most ambitious and smartest leaders, which is how do you know when something is a cost that you can cut or an investment you protect? Okay, so this is the whole cost versus investment debate. By the end of this episode, I want you to have a short, repeatable checklist. I'm even going to give you that in a downloadable format, like a three-step plan that you can use this week. You can use it today to decide whether something is a cost or an investment with clarity and not with fear.

So take a deep breath. We are going to start, first, by clearly identifying what I would say the problem is. Here we go. The brain loves neat answers, right? It wants to simplify complicated decisions into yes-no boxes. So it loves questions like: Can I afford it? Yes or no? Do I need it? Yes or no? That shortcut to how we're phrasing the question feels safe, but I think it's not that simple, right? It often hides the real question that you need to ask, which is, "Is this a smart investment in where I'm going?"

I see it all the time. A CEO, a leader pauses coaching, they're going to take a break, or they freeze a project, or they put off hiring because it feels expensive in the moment. They are asking themselves, "Can I afford this?" But three months later, they're back, and they're paying more, actually, to restart that momentum that they had.

There's a momentum that you have when you're even contemplating these types of questions, thinking about the project, thinking about hiring, engaged in coaching. So if you're going to, three months later, come back and restart it, there's a cost to that. So sometimes I say you can pay now or you can pay later, and this isn't really a failure of will or ambition; it's really a failure of framing.

This question, the "Can I afford it?" question, is really a failure of framing. So I want to reframe it. Here is the checklist that I use with clients to help reframe what seemingly seems like a very simple "Can I afford it?" question. I want to give you five short questions. I want you, as you're listening here, you might want to take out your pencil, but you also can download this, if you go to the show notes, take out your pencil, I want to give you these five questions, and I want you to run the thing that you're debating about through these questions, and you can answer yes or no.

These questions you can answer yes or no. I think you're going to instantly see if you're leaning towards thinking about this as a cost or an investment.

Okay, let's get to the list. You ready? Here we go. Number one, whatever you're debating about, engaging in the project, making the hire, coaching, will this generate revenue, efficiency, or growth? Will this thing, this person, this project, this use of your time, money, or energy, will it generate revenue, efficiency, or growth? If the answer is yes, that's a strong tilt towards putting this in the investment category.

Here's an example. If you have a sales funnel that converts leads into clients, that's measurable growth. Okay, if we contrast that with random boosted posts with no follow-up, that's often just a spend. Okay, so random boosted posts with no follow-up, that's a cost. A funnel that converts leads into clients, that's an investment.

Okay, so question one was, will this generate revenue, efficiency, or growth? Isn't this good? Isn't this good stuff, you guys? I love this conversation. All right, ready for question number two. Does this free up high-impact time or create leverage?

So if paying someone for eight hours a week takes you off admin and back into selling, that's an investment. If it only moves low-level tasks around without strategy, that's likely a cost. So if paying someone for eight hours a week takes you off the admin part and back into selling, that's an investment, okay? If it's only just checking things off the box with no strategy, that's a cost.

All right, so that was question two. Does this free up high-impact time or create leverage? Question three: Will this help you make faster, better decisions and avoid costly delays? I think coaching is a great example here. Having a trusted strategic thinking partner 100% shortens the decision cycle.

I mean, this morning I'm recording this, it's 8:41 AM. I have already Voxered back and forth with a client who already made a decision before 9:00 AM. I'm recording this on a Monday, and she doesn't have to think about that at all for the rest of the week. So faster decisions often equal saved opportunity cost.

Whatever you're thinking about, is it going to help you make faster, better decisions and avoid costly delays? If it is, then that's an investment. Okay, number four, are you keeping, are you holding onto something because it's familiar but not because it's effective?

So if your tools or subscriptions or processes live on autopilot because "we've always done it that way," that's a red flag. Are you assessing all of your tools and subscriptions, and processes regularly? Because if you're not and you're keeping them just because it's default, then that's probably a cost and a red flag.

Okay, number five. Is this solving short-term survival, or is it setting you up for long-term scale? Now, there is nothing wrong with survival spending, but label it as that. If it's survival, don't mistake it for an investment. So if this is just a fix in the short term, okay, but notice that it's probably just a cost then for the survival. It's not setting you up for long-term scale.

So if you get more yes answers than no answers to those five questions, you're looking at an investment. If there are no answers, that's a cost. If you're squarely in the maybe, then okay, let's go to this next section or the next discussion we're going to have here. This is for you.

Let me give you a quick reality check. I don't think this is just my opinion. Coaching and strategic investment often pay off in measurable ways. For example, ICF, which is the International Coaching Federation, they have researched this, and they show that the average return on coaching investment is roughly seven times the initial cost.

Okay, so these are some stats that are going to back up your thoughts about investments. So that was just a coaching one. Other studies report very high returns in certain contexts. If we're talking about executive coaching, there was this MetrixGlobal study, and they showed that the ROI is sometimes as high as 788% in specific coaching instances, but usually falls between the 500% and 700% range.

Now, that's just coaching. I want you to notice that this is not only dollars. Any type of investment you're making, if you're making it regularly and it improves performance and communication, and leadership effectiveness, then you are recouping your investment in so many different ways.

I'm mentioning these numbers not to guilt you into saying yes to something, but to give you context. Investments often return more than the sticker shock suggests. So let's practice with four things you're probably looking at right now. Okay, I'm going to give you some four really concrete examples.

Number one, a design subscription to something like Canva Pro. Okay, I'm sure a lot of you subscribe to Canva. So if you subscribe because it speeds up your content system and saves you probably four to six hours a week, that's an investment. But if you subscribe and rarely use it or don't have a content system, it's probably a cost.

Okay, so are you using that subscription? Example number two, Meta ads—Facebook ads, Instagram ads. If you're boosting posts without tracking or a funnel, it's a cost. If ads are part of a funnel with landing pages, tracking, and follow-up questions, and they convert to paying clients, then that's an investment.

Here's a third example. A virtual assistant or an operations hire. If hiring this person frees you up to take on high-value clients or to create more product, that's an investment. If they're doing busy work that doesn't free up your time for revenue activities, that's a cost.

Here's the last example, coaching. Coaching can be a cost if the sessions are reactive and unfocused, but it becomes an investment when it creates clarity, it prevents mistakes, it accelerates decisions, it creates a community for you, or it helps you set pricing and packaging that increases revenue.

So I want you right now to run one thing you're debating through the five questions. Okay, so those five questions again: Will this generate revenue, efficiency, or growth? Does this free up high-impact time or create leverage? Will this help you make faster, better decisions and avoid costly delays? Are you keeping this because it's familiar and not because it's effective? Is this solving short-term survival, or is it setting you up for long-term scale?

So run things through it like a Canva subscription, like a Meta ad, like hiring someone, like investing in coaching. So when you run those things through, what'd you get? If you mostly said yes, congratulations, that is something you want to protect. If you answered mostly no, plan to cut it or redesign it. If you get maybe, let's go to this next section.

Here's a brutal question I ask my clients who are on the fence: If you already know that you might come back to whatever this is, if you might come back to the subscription, if you might come back to the question of whether you should hire, if you might come back to coaching, what's the real cost in pausing?

So a lot of times our brain wants to say, "I'm just going to pause. I'm going to take a little break." But that cost isn't just dollars. It's momentum. It's the time to reset the energy of explaining something or convincing your team. It's the opportunity cost of slowed decisions.

So if you are right now engaged in some human support system, and you said to me, "I'm going to pause it," I want you to imagine pausing it. Then six months later, you rejoin. How long is it going to take you to regain the pace you had? I think that often the restart is more expensive than simply continuing.

So if you suspect that you're going to come back, make that arithmetic explicit. What will it cost to pause and restart? Or do you really just need to get your head in the game right now while you're in it? I want you to test out the "if I'll come back" test plus pause cost, right? So even a subscription. I just did this. I paused my Loom subscription, or I think I didn’t renew it. Then I came back, and they're charging me more for coming back, right? So I should have just stayed in it.

All right, so I'm going to give you now this simple three-step process. It's like a simple decision architecture that you can use today, and I'm going to call it the three-step test. I want you right now to look at your numbers. If you can't figure this out quickly, then that's another problem that we need to chat, but I want you to pick your top three recurring spends.

In your business, what are your top three recurring spends? So for me, it would be the people. It would be my coaching. So it would be my 1099s. It would be my coaching. It probably is this content management tool I have. I would suggest that you identify those top three. Then I want you to run each of them through the five-question checklist.

If an item gets three or more yes responses, I want you to treat it as an investment. But if it doesn’t get any yeses or only one yes, it's a cost. For anything in that maybe category, set up a 90-day experiment with a measurable outcome. So an example might be, if this tool doesn't help us generate one new client or save six hours a week by January 1st, we're going to cancel it.

So I want you to define the metric, the timeframe, and the decision owner. I even have done this with things that I've started to put my time into, like a networking group. So if this doesn't help me or turn into a yes as it's an investment within 90 days, then it's out. But I had to define the metric and the timeframe. I had to define who was going to make that decision. Was it me or someone on my team? So for networking, it's me, right? I had to define the metric. If it didn't bring me one new client within 90 days, then I was out.

So if you choose to pause, don't leave it fuzzy. Two, create a restart plan with a timeline and a measurable trigger so the pause is strategic and not accidental. So this networking group, I paused it, and I said, "I would not even think about revisiting it for one full year." So then it became strategic.

All right, so there's a three-step process. Pick your top three recurring spends, run each through this five-question checklist, and then for anything that's a maybe, set a 90-day experiment with a measurable outcome so that you can clearly, after 90 days, put it into a cost or an investment category.

Here's what I want to leave you with. Stop asking, "Can I afford it?" Instead, ask yourself, "Will it pay me back in time or clarity or dollars?" Here are three micro actions that you can do this week.

Number one, go to the show notes and download that strategic decision guide that's going to help you. Number two, I want you to run your top three recurring spends through the checklist. Then number three, schedule a 15-minute call with me if you're having trouble figuring any of this out. Like a 15-minute accountability call. In that 15 minutes, I'm going to help you decide.

Because let's let your business and not your fear choose what you protect next. Let the business and not fear guide the decision. When you make these kinds of choices, anchored in time and clarity and measurable outcomes, you're protecting your momentum and building this business that you actually want, right?

So many times, this "Can I afford it?" thing, we make the decision on that question just out of fear, versus having a process and a checklist to help us answer that question. I feel like it's the wrong question. I think the question really is, "Is this a cost or is this an investment?" Because if it's an investment, then we're going to make the money to pay for it.

Okay, friends. So if this episode helped you, do me a favor, consider what you want to invest in. If coaching is something that you've been considering, I would highly encourage you to jump on that right now and join us inside our Ascension Collective. We are about to head into our bi-annual in-person retreat. I would love to have you there.

I am inviting you into it. It is an investment. What you need to do in order to get into it is you do need to schedule a call with me. We've got to talk about it, make sure it's the right fit. If it's not, I'm going to help you figure out what is so that you can have this strategic thought partner who gives you things like this strategic decision guide.

So if you're like, "Andrea, I need more of this," stop being a passive listener of this podcast and start taking massive action, taking the action from the podcast and having someone to help you do it. So the podcast is just a teeny, teeny glimpse of some of the things that we talk about in coaching.

If you want more of this, if you want to 10x the results that you're getting from just listening to the podcast, then you need to be inside one of my coaching containers. I'm inviting you in with open arms. Use the link in the show notes. Come schedule a call with me. I can't wait to talk to you. Just DM me on Instagram too, if that's easier, and we'll find a time. All right, my friends, I will see you next week. Keep thinking big. This is a great way to do it.

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