Episode 340

Hello and welcome to Unshakeable with Human Design, everybody. I’m your host, Nicole Laino, and we’re here today to talk about investing. You know, this is a new year, we have new goals, and that usually means new investments. We’re saying, I have these new goals, what do I need that’s going to help me get there?

High ticket, low ticket, do I join a group program? And. For many of us who have invested before, maybe some of those investments were wildly successful, and then some of them weren’t, we carry the baggage and the history of all of that with us. So I think that sometimes when we’ve been in this game for a little while, making investments can be a harder thing.

Especially if we haven’t found the ones that really worked for us. And whether you feel like you’ve been burned or maybe you’ve burned yourself, this episode, we’re going to explore how to make the investments that are right for you. Cause I talk to people all the time who are interested in my signature program, who they’re really, they’re looking for help.

And there are some people where I’m like, I don’t know if this is the right place for you because I don’t want you to be overwhelmed in here and you’re just not at the income level at this point where I think this investment will feel good to you. And if you’re stressed and overwhelmed about how you’re going to pay for it the whole time, I’m just very honest with them.

I’m never telling somebody who really feels focused and aligned and feels like it’s the right thing to join something like some people want to leapfrog and that’s fine, but I’m just very careful to keep the integrity on my end of it, to be really open and honest with them about where I think they are and what I think that they need.

And think that there’s so much information out there that we’re being sold to all the time now. It can be really hard to discern and understand which are the things that are going to make a difference for our business versus the ones that maybe worked for somebody else. This is one of the benefits of human design is that you can, you start to come from a place of groundedness and being centered in who you are, where when you’re not being led by your conditioning, it’s amazing how the decisions become so much easier.

It becomes so much more apparent what is and is not right for you. Because it’s the conditioning in a lot of instances that is driving us to make the decision that’s actually more aligned with our lack and our fear than with who we truly are. So that’s the benefit of human design, that if you’re following your strategy and authority, if you’re really coming back to that.

And I want to say that it also goes with, sometimes we hold back on making an investment that’s correct for us because we’re scared. Even when it is right and your human design will help you understand that. And I always try to work with people when they sit down with me for a clarity call. I’ll try to talk them through what their authority is.

And with emotional authorities, I’m always like, you take the time that you need and come back if you have questions. I really try to. them through making the decision without having my own agenda come into play.

We’re going to explore what it means to make aligned decisions. And not just from a human design perspective, but from a business perspective, because this shows about combining human design and business. 

For instance, we have this intensive program that I’m teaching coming up on the 22nd of January called Finding Your Cosmic Niche. Now, this is an intensive program. This is a piece of my Genius Brand process that I take people through when we’re building your brand and starting to align your business with your human design.

This is all about the Cosmic Niche. It’s all about the people that we were designed to serve. It’s part of my authority matrix. Now, that is a very human design and business , you know, baby, like they came together. It’s like, here’s your human design element and here’s how you work it into your business.

But human design and business, when we’re talking about those two things, sometimes they become separate a little bit. That we bring our aligned version of ourself through our human design to our business, but we still need to Have a strategy. We still need to be making sales and putting things out there and you need to know how to create an offer and you need to know how to create content and all of that stuff.

There is strategic work that’s involved and you have to be able to assess, do I know what I need to know strategically and do I feel aligned energetically. So if you want to join the Cosmic Niche Intensive, since I’ve talked about it, the Cosmic Niche Intensive is, teaching it live on January 22nd.

But even if you are listening to this episode after the 22nd of January, this will still be a program. I just happened to be teaching it live because I thought that would be fun to do, to teach with the group. But it is a program that we are offering. So all you have to do to get the details on that is DM me the word niche on Instagram.

I’m at Nicole Laino. Nicole Laino official. We’ll send you the details there or go to NicoleLaino. com forward slash niche and you can get the details on that registration page and you can sign up there. This is a paid program. This is a program that I’m teaching. So this is like a bigger thing normally.

And this is one of the things that we’re adding this year. These ways to kind of get your feet wet with us. See how I teach. Start to see if human design and business really starts to resonate for you. And if you want to go deeper. So, like I said, there’s human design and there’s business. I really want to talk about the business side here actually, because I think this is the part that sometimes overlook.

Or we put too much emphasis on it. And I want to show you how you can discern where you fall and what questions you need to be asking yourself so you can make aligned investments this year. You make the right ones for your business. There’s no right or wrong program, but there is a right or wrong program for you right now.

And in my experience, I don’t see people making decisions from the right place. They’re not asking themselves the right questions. you have to ask yourself, am I ready for the thing I just bought? I have absolutely bought things that were way over my head, that were not things I needed.

I didn’t know how to sell my offer to one person, and then I bought these systems that were trying to help me scale. Well, I need to sell to a few people before I figure out how to sell to thousands of people. I don’t need to know how to like, build out a team. I did that. I bought a whole program on how to get my time back and build a team and have these processes and build SOPs and all of this stuff.

And while it was valuable, I still go back to that information now. I did not need it for probably two years after I took that program. I was like, I don’t need any of this. It’s just me. What do I need all this information on a team for? Even, for those of you who know my business, Megan O was with me, but for just the two of us, I didn’t need all of that information.

And it was not a great investment for me at that time. So I want you to, this episode is going to be devoted to helping you make the decisions and the investments that are correct for you right now. And really that comes down to, does it solve the problem that you have right now? And are you in a position and place to implement the things that they are teaching?

Okay, so for instance, people join masterminds because they hear that really successful people will say like, what’s the one thing that changed everything for you? And they’ll say, it was when I joined this awesome mastermind and I was the dumbest person in the room, and it just exploded me. I met all these great people.

I got all this great advice. And honestly, if you are not making at least six figures, you should be at six figures at the very least before you join a mastermind. Now, community is wonderful, but there are lower ticket communities. If you’re joining, I’m talking about a high ticket mastermind. If you are not making six figures, then you should not be joining a high ticket mastermind.

You shouldn’t be trying. And quite frankly, they shouldn’t be taking your money because that’s not what you need. You need strategic help so that you can get to six figures. It is a very different game. Connections are great. But those connections, you could get in a community that is much less money if you just put the effort into really building community.

You could build your authority through content. There are other ways that you can do this and you can still collaborate with people. Rather than devoting a huge chunk of what you earn to these masterminds where you’re traveling to go to retreats and all this. It’s real fun, it’s awesome, but it’s probably not what you need.

And I’ve seen so many people regret those investments and that’s not how we should feel because a mastermind should be a wonderful experience. It should be just so awesome. It should not be like, Oh my God, I can’t believe I got to pay for this. Oh, they want more money from me. Oh, just makes it stressful and ruins the experience.

 One to one coaching. This is another mistake that I see people make. Everybody thinks they need one to one coaching. And I truly think that this comes from trauma of having invested in group programs that didn’t provide any support. So people think I just need one on one so that I can talk to somebody and they can guide me.

The truth is that the reason that one to one work, is so much more expensive than group programs is because it’s truly not meant for that. It’s not meant for people who are, just getting started or kind of at the middle of their business. You really come to somebody for one to one for mentorship.

You’ve got things going and now you want to ask somebody who’s further than you specific questions. So when I have a one to one mentor, it’s for something like I want to learn or. Be in the energy of that person for a specific reason. It might be an area of my identity that I’m looking to expand. I had a mentor where it was about relationships and it was about how you make relationships and building community because I’m not inherently good at that.

And I wanted to be in the energy of it. And I wanted to make connections and I wanted this feeling of sisterhood and I wanted to be able to message her. Whenever I needed to have that ability to just send her a voice memo and say, Hey, I’m going through this. And I had a question about this and get an answer on that specific thing.

But I didn’t need to learn anything from her. I didn’t need her to teach me systems. I didn’t need her to teach me, content. I didn’t need her. I didn’t need her for any of that. I needed to carry her in my pocket was really what I was paying for. And if you’re not at the, if you’re not. At the level of coming with questions where you have questions, where you’re running and creating, and when you have a question, you want somebody to ask if you’re not at that level, then that is a waste of your money.

Rejection is the universe’s protection. If you can’t afford one to one coaching with somebody, say, thank you for them pricing it that way, because it’s not the right place for you. Group programs exist. And like I said, I think that it’s trauma from group programs not being run well and people being treated like numbers and feeling like they got no support and nobody knew who they were and they felt lost in this big program that those people feel like they need one to one because it’s like, I just need somebody, if I pay you, I need to be able to ask you questions.

The truth is, group program that should be run in a way where you have plenty of places and plenty of ways to ask those questions. I know every single person in my business by design mentorship. I know their business. I know who they are. I have files on them so that I can review things while we’re on calls and I can catch myself up.

We have a telegram chat where they can ask me a question when we are not on calls. I know them. I know their stuff. I can call them out on their shit. And that is truly what most middle level entrepreneurs, low and middle level entrepreneurs need. They need somebody to call them out on their shit.

They need somebody to really look at what they have. Okay, let’s lay everything out. What do you have right now? What’s your offers? What’s your systems look like? How are you bringing clients in? How is this all working? And what do we need to fine tune? What do we need to get you going with in order to have this working better?

So, You have to start asking yourself better questions. If someone is selling systems and all of this big stuff and it’s just really focused on that, and you’re not making any money yet, then maybe you need something that’s a step before that. Like we created the activate your genius program for people who are really looking to start to get to know their brand and start to pull their brand and their content together through human design.

We started that this year for that purpose. Cause a lot of people were not ready for business by design, but they wanted to work with me and they wanted to start the process of building their offers and get their feet wet with this. And they wanted to do it in alignment. They knew that they had some soul searching to do.

So we created this specifically for them. If you’re interested in that, DM me genius on Instagram. I’ll send you the details on that. If you’re interested in that, that’s a shorter.

 More human design and business focused program versus business by design, which is much more geared toward building your systems, building your podcast and all of that, building your authority and really stepping up and hitting the gas on things. so. So, if you are that in that like middle stage of your journey, then you really need to look at, what is it that I need and what program or course or whatever it is, what is really going to move the needle for me right now?

You really need to be able to diagnose your own problems. So, you have to say, do I have an offer?, what have I bought before and didn’t take action on? Do I have something that exists in my digital library already that I could use and leverage right now to answer these questions for me, to get me past this point?

What will make me take action now? Where do I feel my weak point is in my business? Do I put myself out there and make sales and consistently ask people for the sale? Or is that a muscle I need to build? These are questions that will help you get to your correct answer and to the correct solution for you.

Do I have sales coming in regularly? No. Is that something that I need to figure out how I do? Okay. How do I want to do that?

 Rather than just looking at somebody’s testimonials and being like, I want what they say they can deliver.

I know that feels like the right way to make the decision, but it’s actually making a decision from lack. You feel like you don’t have it, you’re a bit desperate to get it, so you buy something. Rather than really looking at what do I already have, what have I already tried? Where do I really feel like my business needs help?

The analogy I have is how, we see commercials for all of these supplements and for these medications and things that we can take. So a lot of us can over prescribe ourselves some medications and supplements and we can go, Oh, I want to feel slimmer and healthier.

I want to have more energy. But is that the thing that I want? Is that the thing that I really need? I had blood work done recently so that I wasn’t self medicating in the wrong ways. And it turned out in my blood work, it turned out I was. There was something I was taking that was causing a major problem in my body.

And they flagged it when I told them I was taking a supplement. She was like, I need you to stop taking that immediately. Like yesterday, you are in overload. You need to get rid of that. I think it’s the same thing with our business. We have to, do the blood work and say, where am I? I have to diagnose this.

I can’t just prescribe something because the drug sounds good. I have to figure out, do I have misdirected energy? Do I feel like I’m kind of scattered in where I’m putting my energy? Do I need a system that’s going to help me leverage my time, leverage the work that I do and make it go further? you sell mostly one on one right now?

If you sell mostly one on one right now, and you feel like you’re maxed out and you’re hustling trying to make it all work. And you just find there’s not enough hours to make more money, then you need to figure out probably how you leverage your time, maybe with a group offer or a passive offer, figuring out, depending on your business, which one feels better.

If you have a transformational business, it’s probably going to be a group program versus a course. That’s a low ticket thing, simply because the transformation isn’t going to be there mostly for courses Realm 

you’ve got to look at your own business and say, what does my business need now? And you make the move that feels better for you at this moment the other thing I will say, and I want to close it out with this,, give yourself credit for what you did learn. I see so many people get so upset and really feel like they’re not worthy of investment anymore.

That they are not ready, that they are afraid they’re going to make another mistake, that they’ve bought things before and they didn’t see them through. Sometimes we picked up exactly what we needed and all that we could carry at that time. So give yourself credit for picking up what you could carry at that time.

And now create space for you to pick up something else. You are taking up that space with the guilt or that feeling of shame for not being able to see the whole thing through. It’s what you could do at the time. You’re different now. Again, assess yourself. Don’t just assess the stuff that’s on the table.

How are you different right now? That is such a valuable question. How are you different now than when you invested in that thing that you are now shaming yourself about not fully utilizing or getting your investment out of? You’re different. That question changed my life because I absolutely felt shame for not squeezing every dollar out of every dollar that I spent in investments on things.

But you know what? I got something out of all of them and it wasn’t until I got further down the road that I started to be able to use some of those things I picked up early on and I took for granted that I got what I got out of them. So we’re going to leave it there. If you want in on the Cosmic Niche Intensive, please DM me Niche , on Instagram.

I’m at Laino official or go to NicoleLaino. com forward slash niche. We’ll send it to you there. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great rest of your day. And remember in order to have an unshakable business, you must first become an unshakable human. So thanks for letting us help you become unshakable with human design, everybody.

We’ll see you next time.