How to Make Financial Freedom a Reality

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Never miss an episode and subscribe and listen at dawnmcgruer.com. Welcome to episode 49 of Dawn of a New Era, the business and marketing podcast with a real difference, because guess what? I'm going to share some real-life home truths about the world of being a business owner, an entrepreneur, or even a corporate leader, because it's not always easy.

And to show up authentically and share my advice in the world of marketing, motivation, and mindset makes me so happy because it's something that I craved when I started my business back at 21. Now, in today's episode, we're going to talk about how to make financial freedom a reality. Now, you hear this jargon bandied about day in, day out, but what does it actually mean? And, you know, is it true that we can achieve financial freedom?

And what does that actually mean to you and your world? Well, it's all about the factors of leveling up. And understanding money, because we were never taught about money in school. I certainly wasn't.

It wasn't something that I was ever shown to do, you know, talking about budgeting and talking about how to save money and also to invest. If you're like me, I grew up with the mindset and the ethos that, you know, work ethic was everything. And then I sort of grew to realize that it is an important factor, but work-life balance doesn't mean that I have to be in work nine till five, you know, working 16, 18 hours a day to just show that I am successful. Actually, the opposite is true.

And I've learned how to kind of break down some of the challenges and mindset barriers about working and how to show up in a way that I'm working smarter, but not harder. And this is what we're going to cover today. So I truly believe that you need to get a principle in your mind about what you feel about money. For me, I am definitely a spender.

I am not someone that you would ever kind of think about in terms of, you know, budgeting. But what I am good at is planning. So what I have to do is kind of balance my love for spending, because I do like buying clothes, I like going on holiday, I love experiences. And for me, I find, you know, money gives me choices.

But sometimes I can overspend and not really think things through. So I have to have a way that is sensible to me to kind of keep everything in good shape. And all I do is I just have a one-page spreadsheet where I have kind of all my profit and loss forecasts for my businesses in just kind of one view, and I have all my expenses in one view too. This really helps me because to see it all on one spreadsheet, I have literally all the outgoings, and then I have estimated forecasts.

For what I'm going to earn. So I'm constantly looking at how do I save more money and how do I make more money? And this is something that I would really, really encourage you to do. Just kind of get control of your finances by getting one spreadsheet and just charting out everything you spend in a month and doing it across your business, your personal, your joint, or your multiple businesses, and just get it into view.

And then just go through and do an exercise where you cull some of those expenses, you reduce some of those expenses, and then start looking at your sales forecast and looking at what your profit and loss is. Now, this is an easy way without kind of getting into, you know, real financial reporting of just kind of getting a grip on being able to spend less than you make. Because if you've got an eye on and you feel that you've got control of what you're spending and you are tuned in to what you are driving through the business as revenue, then it starts to make sense. Because guess what?

You know, there's this saying that we probably hear a lot, which is all about revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. And it is so true because you hear people talking about six-figure businesses, seven-figure businesses, eight-figure businesses, and do you know what? None of that matters because it doesn't matter if you're a startup, you're a business in growth, or you're a multi-million, huge, huge, huge enterprise. The profit is still the key because what makes a successful, sustainable business is profit.

So would you rather be earning, like, you know, six figures and have like an 80% profit, or do you want to be, you know, eight figures and a 10% profit? I mean, it's just all relative to what's coming in and what's going out. So forget getting caught up in the size of business. When people throw these figures out, it doesn't mean that they're taking home.

Anything maybe more than you are. It might mean that they're not even paying themselves a salary. I have seen six, seven, eight-figure businesses where business owners are absolutely maxed. They're working all the hours.

They are not even drawing the money they are worth. So I hope that makes you feel better because, for me, I concentrate on what I want to do in my business. And yes, my businesses are successful in terms of what they do across property, agencies, and things like that. But it's all about what you want to be paying yourself and also this spend less than you make, right?

So chart everything out. Start getting a sense of control. And honestly, it's such a cathartic feeling when you start dropping the expenses and you can start to see a little bit more, a little bit more, because these small steady actions, if you're getting this, you know, done even sort of weekly or monthly, you know, you imagine that even just five pounds saving a day, what that tots up to across a year, right? So you start making these shifts and you start to feel positive because you start to feel in control and you become the driving force of the success of your business.

Now this energy should shift from if you felt a negative mindset about money, this should start to make you feel like you are moving forward in a way that's comfortable to you. Now you'll have challenges along the way and you've got to think about, you know, what do you want to pay yourself? Because it's not what's left comes to you. You have to think about paying yourself first.

Your time is money. So the easiest way of kind of looking at this is, you know, if you are doing something and spending an hour of your day on a task that doesn't earn you money, can that be delegated? You know, if you are the revenue generator in your business, then you are the critical part of the success. So, even if you have passive income, recurring income, things like that, you have to think about whatever you are doing in your day, whether you work a six or an eight or a four-hour day, that time is money.

So, number one, think about what you're doing in your day. Chart it out. Can anything be moved out to free yourself up so that you can actually earn more cash? The second thing is, what are you going to pay yourself?

Now, if you want to take home £10,000 at the end of the month and you want that to be automated and you want to pay it out in one sum, how is that going to happen? So this kind of brings us on to what the maths of selling is. And the maths of selling is something I've used ever since I started my first business at 21, because you need to understand what you need to earn in a year, yeah, in a month, absolutely, in a week. But me, I work on a daily basis.

What money needs to come through the door of my businesses each and every day? And what are the activities that are associated with getting that cash in each and every day? And those are the only things I want my team and myself to be focused on as soon as we start our working day. Nothing else matters because guess what?

When the money's coming in, then you have a far more creative, flexible, freed-up day to be doing things that you want to be doing. So forget doing things you think you need to do and focus on what really matters: the maths of selling, what money needs to come in the door, and what can you do and what are the actions that you need to be doing that are going to absolutely make sure that happens, like focusing on if there was a lead that came into the business, that's got to be your priority. How do you move them further to becoming a paying customer? You know, posting on social media is lovely, but only if it's actually driving.

Revenue into the business.

So every action has to have an impact, and this is something that, you know, I would encourage you to do. Slow down, stop, look at what you're doing in a day, take out some of that waste time, make sure you've got some of me time, and start time blocking, and make sure that you address the important things head on first of all. Prioritize them that they are do or die. Normally three tasks a day will help you get closer to that goal.

So where are you getting leads from? What is actually converting customers right now? And you have to think about those actions. So chart it out and get an understanding of where people come from.

How did you get your customers? And then start looking at what you charge for your products or your services. And don't think about what people will pay for them. Think about the value that it gives that person, the ultimate goal.

Pricing should never be done on, well, the competitor is charging this, and I think the customers will pay that. So what we'll do is we'll undercut the customer. That is not a sensible price strategy. You would rather operate maybe in a premium market where there is no competition, but, you know, carve out a niche.

You know, think about what your pricing strategy is going to be. Now, coming on to a couple of more tactics, things that I think that will really help, things that I do in my business, and this hasn't changed over the past years. At the moment, I'm working on a financial plan, and this sounds crazy at the age of 42 that I'm charting out my life with a view of dying at 100 and looking at my retirement. But, you know, I have to think about this because my partner's 11 years older than me.

So when I am 55, my partner's going to be retired, right? So I need to think about what my working day is going to look like at the age of 45, 50, and 55, so that I start making plans now so that I don't just rock up at the age of 55 and think, Oh, my partner's retired now. Oh, I've got to be working, you know, a lot in my business. So what can I make now in terms of provisions and planning to make sure that I have financial security, but also financial freedom?

So this is something I start looking at, you know, things like pension forecasts. And, you know, I didn't even know that you could do this. You can actually go onto the government's website and make sure that all your national insurance contributions are are present and correct so that you'll get the maximum state pension. Looking at what personal pensions you have, what, you know, policies do you have?

Do you have critical illness? Do you have life insurance? You know, do you have pension pots that you're topping up? And more importantly, what do you need to be putting into those pension pots?

So get in control of a financial plan so that you know where your money is going to be coming from, that it's not going to be a surprise that when you retire that you think, I haven't got enough money, you know, to cover me. So it sounds crazy to do this now, but honestly, for me, I need clarity. And the most exciting thing is, is knowing that I have that vision, that excitement that I'm going to be able to live the life I want to with my partner and do the things that I want to, not have to live on a budget that is unreasonable, but have money, have savings, and have pots of certainty so that if things do crop up, that I don't have to panic. And that is a huge, huge mindset shift.

And, you know, it motivates me on because I know that I will always have money, I will always have security, and I will always have choices, and I can continue my journey to be enriched and to lead a life that, you know, I feel that I deserve and that, you know, I want to do other things. I don't just want to exist. And this is something that I'm really passionate about, and something that really has kind of come into play in my new program. And by developing this new program, which is called the Power Circle, it is launching in September 21.

I am so excited. It's just something so different, and it really does bring everything in my podcast into an actual program where, you know, it talks about financial freedom, it talks about how to have a powerful life and how to really, really get the all-important influence that you want, the ascendancy, and to leave a legacy in life, and how to show up in a way, you know, on social or online that that is, is elegant to you and that suits your personality. So all about challenging the status quo, which brings me on to my next point. So if you are used to kind of, you know, budgeting and thinking about saving, try switching up a little bit and automate some of your savings.

Now you can use tools like Moneybox or you can have Chip, whereby you connect these apps to your bank account and you put your card details in, and for everything you spend, it rounds it up. And you can choose to round it up in a low capacity, like to the nearest pound. You can five times it, ten times it, twenty times it. This mechanism of this automating and auto saving, you don't tend to miss these little increments of money.

But imagine what happens that, you know, you've got really good interest rates on accounts like Chip. I think it's like 1.25 at the moment if you go through Money Saving Expert, there's a code. Now you imagine then that you're putting these little savings in, it's not really causing you any issue, not really missing it.

But then it comes to the end of the year and you start thinking, Oh my goodness, I've got like £5,000. You know, for me, having a pot of money, which is your financial security pot, might be like three times your salary, and you can set a goal to, you know, try and top these up. And if you do have money left at the end of the month, pop it into these accounts, you know, and start thinking, what makes you feel safe? What makes you feel certain?

You know, having a pot of money that's three times your salary is a good idea. Having things like critical illness so that if anything happened to you, that you would have money to pay your bills and to, you know, help your family, etc., and to pay yourself money. You know, you have to think about your insurance policies.

I have a policy in my business with Hiscox. It means that if something happened to me, it hires someone in my place. You know, there's provisions to get other team members on board. So all of these things are vital to your success because you can't live on the it'll never happen to me because— We know with the pandemic, anything is possible.

And I don't want to frighten people, but you need to have things in place like wills. You need to be thinking about the worst case because honestly, I would rather have something in place knowing that was covered and maybe, you know, nothing happens. Great. But you don't want to be relying on, you know, other people if something happens.

You need to have that financial security yourself. Now, again, if you've got credit cards and things like that, you know, paying down debt, just, you know, make sure that if you have a card that you're paying 0%, you know, and start trying to think about how much you can clear down and how, you know, much you would need to do that until maybe the 0% came off and break it down into chunks. And then think about what is financial freedom to you. So we've talked about financial security as well, but freedom is basically how much money has to come into the business.

Now, I have myself and also clients who have recurring income, people who are paying monthly subscriptions or payment plans. That's a really nice way of knowing that money is coming in each and every month. And financial freedom is basically knowing that the money that comes in each month covers the bills and anything else in addition is extra. So when people talk about financial freedom, it doesn't necessarily mean not working.

And financial freedom is about having an element of income that's not just around your time. So having, you know, online courses or some form of passive-ish income. I mean, nothing's ever truly passive because there's an involvement somewhere along the line, but having something that is low intensity in terms of your time is what we're looking for. So if you're working one-to-one, start thinking about group programs, thinking about online instant access, pre-recorded programs.

So it's not about changing the world in a day. It's about really thinking through your business model and thinking, does this work? You know, does this give me the flexibility and freedom that That, you know, I wanted when I became an entrepreneur. And last but not least, this is something that I'm very passionate about, which is compound interest.

So even if you've got a certain amount of money to invest each day, right, let's say even if it was five pounds and you got like a 10% annual interest on that, and you did that every day, you imagine, like in 40 years' time, you'd have like nearly a million. I mean, it's huge, right? So for me, when you talk about saving and investing, right, it's not taking big chunks and going, right, I've got £10,000 to do here. You know, that's great if you do, if you've got dividends at the end of the year, but this is about daily incremental saving and investing, right?

So auto-saving every day and maybe investing every day, just small increments. You know, where can you put your money that's going to work the hardest and smartest for you? And it could be that you really want to get into property, but it feels really difficult to kind of save that sort of, you know, deposit up. Don't just stop.

Think about something different that you could start saving. You know, by doing daily auto-saves, you know, if you get to the end of the year and you had £5,000 saved and you could take another £5,000 in dividends, that £10,000 can go a long way. So start making a life plan. Start thinking about what makes you happy, what you want to do, and last but not—

Don't fall into the trap where, you know, we think that we have to buy bigger houses, better cars. You know, everything is driven by materialistic objects. If you've got a house and you love that house, why on earth do you need to move? Why can you not just make it your forever home?

People talk about it like, oh, you know, this is a short-term gap. I want to get to the next big thing. But do you really? Everyone is different and, you know, it's relative to what you want.

So why go and get bigger mortgages when maybe actually you want more money to go on holiday? So think about not what everyone else is doing and keeping up with the Joneses, because it only matters about what you want in life. Do not care about what others think. Too many times people are so quick to judge, so quick to give you their life vision.

It's your life, right? Don't care about what other people think. You know, if people judge you about something and they think that, you know, you've bought a nice house and they think you're all flash because you've got money, it's not. It's just honestly the trigger for them is it's jealousy.

And you have to think about it. If you want to do something and you want to go and buy that, you know, amazing sports car, do it, okay? If you don't and you're happy with just a little runaround that you can go on holiday and you can go and have lots of free time and 17 weeks holiday in a year, then blooming well do it, because life is too short. And if the pandemic has taught us nothing other than the fact that life is important, the people around you are important.

You want to be able to show up and spend time with your friends, your family. It's not all about work. Work should be something that spurs you on, motivates and inspires you, but you have to have that all-important balance. So my final thought here and my final word to you is that whatever you want to do in life, right, it's all possible, but you have to save and invest money, even if it's a nominal amount a day, right?

If you want to achieve financial security and ultimate— Ultimately, financial freedom, then you've got to think about what your life plan is going to be. So start getting control. Chart it out. Get a spreadsheet.

Start thinking about, remember, save less is not the right tactic, okay? Saving more, yeah. Saving money in terms of on your expenses is great. Saving money on an auto save is great, okay?

But not doing anything is not going to move you further forward. You're going to stay stuck in that position. So if you have a big pipeline dream, start saving now. Make little incremental changes.

And remember, spend less than you make. Start looking at what you're earning and what you're worth, and making sure that you have daily revenue, you know, or profit goals and targets in place that you can start seeing these changes. Because honestly, if you get this right, it means that you have got years, right? Years of fun to have.

And it doesn't have to start retirement. It can start in a matter of months, in a matter of days, because these small changes, you know, even if it's about taking two hours out of your day, just push things into a tighter time scale. And honestly, the tighter that I have my time scales to do things, and I time chunk and time block my time, I still get all the work done. I just do it in a really efficient way, because then I know I've got Wednesday afternoons off.

I've got Friday afternoons off. Because you made a business, you made a career, you made life choices, right? And life is for living. So do not get caught up in this whole entitlement trap.

If you want something, go and do it. Make it happen and dream big. So I'll see you in next week's episode, and I hope this was useful. And remember, get control.

Just get a chart out or whatever makes sense to you, a spreadsheet, and just get these ideas down and start making changes. Three things a day. One thing a day and make the changes that are going to make that momentum to make you happy. Thank you for listening to Dawn of a New Era podcast, and for your free checklist to find out how to boost your business for growth, profit, and success, and join our community.

Go to dawnmcgruer.com.