266 – The Business-Transforming Benefits of Investing in Yourself

You're listening to the Make It British podcast. I'm Kate Hills,

and I'm on a one woman mission to save UK manufacturing.

because I was disillusioned with how much was being sourced overseas,

And I set out to uncover some of the amazing businesses that

are still making in the UK. Since founding Make It

British, I've discovered That there is not only still tons of

manufacturing taking place in Britain, but that it's a

thriving industry. I invite you to join me each

week when I'll be chatting to inspiring British made brands

and UK manufacturers and offering advice to product

based businesses that make in the UK. So with no further

ado, let's get on with the show.

Hello, and welcome to episode number 266 of

the Make It British Podcast. So I've got something a little bit different

for you today. I know many of you that listen to this

show are small business owners, And you may be

going through a bit of a hard time in your business right now.

It's really not that easy for anyone at the moment.

There is no doubt that energy price is still being

higher and mortgage rates still being high, that a lot of

people are feeling the pinch, that they are taking longer to

make purchasing decisions than they were a couple of years ago when they

had more disposable income. But that doesn't mean you should throw

in the towel and give up altogether. The best

businesses are those that have been through a hard time, Been through

an economic downturn or a recession, and they've come out fighting

and stronger than ever. But it does mean you need to be a

little bit smarter about how you operate and how you do

things. It certainly doesn't mean you should give up

investing in yourself. In fact, if anything, now is the

best time to invest in yourself and in your business.

So what do I mean by investing in yourself? So as an

example, over the years, I've invested a significant amount of

money in personal development. I've invested in myself.

I've invested in my business. In fact, I think it's one

of the main reasons that Make It British is still in business

today 12 years after I originally founded it.

Now for those of you that don't already know, my original idea for

Make It British was a marketplace Selling British made

goods. I'd come from a buying background, bricks and mortar

stores. I knew nothing about selling online, But I spotted that there

was a potential gap in the market for a marketplace selling

British made goods. Now at that point, I could have

invested my life savings and set about setting up

this marketplace, or instead, what I actually did

was invested In training, I

enrolled on a master's degree in

Internet retailing part time. Most of it was distance

learning Over 3 years, I learned everything I needed

to know about selling online, digital marketing,

and how I would go about setting up this online

marketplace that I had an idea for. I learned so much on

the course. It's given me skills that I learn and use

to this very day. But the main thing I actually learned by

doing this master's degree was that that If I was gonna set

up an online marketplace, if I'd done it at that time in

2011, I basically would have gone bankrupt very

quickly. So what I learned by doing that course

was how much money was needed to invest in digital

marketing To get traffic to a marketplace because the

margins are so low, you need to make an incredibly large amount of

sales. Amazon is a great example of that. So

to really make it work, I needed a lot of traffic. And the only way

of getting a significant amount of traffic to your website is to pay for

it, and I certainly didn't have the budget for that. But what I

did learn from being on the course was other skills That

enabled me to set up Make It Patricia's blog and organically

get the traffic to that blog, and then work out later on

how I was gonna monetize The Make It British platform. I

don't regret for one moment the money that I invested in

that course. In fact, It saved me a lot of money

and a lot of heartache, and it saved me from making a lot of mistakes

in the long run. And since then, I've gone on to invest

year after year in all sorts of different courses,

coaching programs, and mentoring to help me at

various different stages of my business. If you're gonna move your business

forward, you need to invest in some form of training.

Otherwise, you grow stale, you run out of ideas, and you risk

getting left behind. In the 12 years I've been running Make It British,

There's probably only a couple of things that I regret when it comes to

investing in personal development and coaching. One of those

was investing in a coach who I didn't do enough research

on before I signed up with him. He was a great salesperson,

But he wasn't a great coach. I didn't do enough due

diligence beforehand about this particular person before I

signed up. Even then even then, I don't regret signing up

with him. I made some great connections in the group because it was a group

coaching program, And one of my best business buddies to

this day was someone I met in that coaching group. And

then the other thing I regret in terms of Investing in coaching and

development is not investing in a mentor to help me with my

trade show. Had I done that, Maybe to this day, I

would still be running that show, but setting up a trade show, going

into an industry I knew nothing about, events, was

really hard, and I learned a lot of hard lessons because of all the

mistakes I made along the way. And I probably wouldn't have made those mistakes

If I'd had a mentor who knew all about the events industry,

he could have helped me when I got to sticky stages in the business

where I made these terrible mistakes. So in hindsight, I just wish I

found someone to help me through running that trade show. I was foolish thinking I

could do All on my own, knowing nothing about that industry. So that was a

massive lesson learned and also a very expensive mistake I made because

I lost a lot of money when I had to close my trade show. Anyway,

moving on. Currently, at the moment, I have invested in training

to help me gain a level 7 qualification in coaching.

Once I've got the qualification, I will be able to register as an

accredited coach mentor with the EMCC, which

is the European Mentoring Coaching Council. And

although I've been mentoring for a few years now, I wanted to

help make myself a better coach. Meet other coaches as

well so I could make connections there, and learn how to

be the very best coach and mentor that I can be.

So that I can mentor and coach small businesses that manufacture their

products in the UK. So that's my experience of investing

thing in myself, my business, and personal development. But what

are the benefits to you if it's something that you'll think about doing?

Why should you invest in personal development? How is it

gonna help your business? Because as a small business, when you've got

So many other outgoings and areas in which to spend your

money, why would you invest in coaching or training?

Firstly, the main thing is to learn new skills,

to learn new skills from someone who's already been there and done

it and can walk you through the steps of how to do it. It's

far better to do that than struggling on your own and trying to

teach yourself how to do something. So for instance, in a couple of

weeks time, I'm going on a training day to learn how

to make better Instagram reels. It's a one off training

day. I can already make an Instagram reel. It's kinda so so. I

wouldn't say my technical skills with it are very good. So it takes me

ages to make each one. I'm hoping by going on this

course, long term, I'll be able to churn out the reels

much quicker. It will Save me time in the long run. I'm also hoping to

be inspired by the other people that I meet on the course and get new

ideas for Instagram reels that I can do. Also, being able

to edit short video is handy not only for Instagram Reels,

but across other platforms as well. So it's a win win as far as I'm

concerned. I'm meeting people in person. I get to learn some

new technical skills. And in the long long run, I'm hoping it's gonna

save me A whole lot of time. And even if I do end up outsourcing

someone else making short video content for me in the

future, At least I know what I'm briefing them into

because I've already learned how to do it myself, which makes it much easier

to know if someone's pulling the wool over my eyes When they tell me how

long it's gonna take them to create short videos for me. So one of the

main reasons to invest in some form of personal development is to learn

new skills. One of the other reasons is so that you're not

stabbing around in the dark trying to work things out for yourself.

Far better to go to someone who can show you how to do

it, then try and work it out for yourself. We've all been there.

We've all thought, oh, I'm not gonna read the instructions. I'm just gonna try and

work it out. 3 hours later, you're resorting to the instructions

anyway, and you could have saved yourself all the time by just looking at

the instructions in the 1st place. It also means that you're able to

make better informed decisions. One of the other

reasons for particularly signing up with a

mentor or a coach or a group group coaching program

Is it forces you out of your comfort zone. So it's

all too easy when you're running a business to get really comfortable

with what you're doing And continue to do what you've

always done because doing something new

can sometimes be really scary. Stop it.

Because doing something new can be really scary.

But if someone's holding you accountable, whether As a mentor

or someone else that's in a group that's doing the same thing as

you, you're much more likely to end up actually doing

it. Not only that, but it gives you the confidence,

whereas you before making a decision about

something new or which direction to take your business in can

feel confusing, and you don't know which way to turn.

If you've got someone helping you to make that decision so that you can make

more informed decisions, It makes it so much easier.

Like they say, doing something on your own can be really scary, but

having someone else guiding you can really help and can make the

whole process and the whole problem seem much easier. So

another thing that's really helped me When I've invested in some form of

personal development, particularly when I first signed up for

my master's degree, and it was just after I'd had my 2nd

baby, and I suppose I was lacking in confidence a bit because I was

very confident when it came to My previous

role as a buyer, I knew exactly what I was doing when it came to

developing products and buying for bricks and mortar stores,

I didn't know that much about Internet retailing, and I

was willing to put my hand up and admit

that I didn't really know where to start with that. And so I

didn't have the confidence to do things like approach web

developers and to approach the other people that

I needed, the other stakeholders that I needed to start that

project. And I wouldn't have started Make It British,

which started originally as a blog, had I not invested

in that master's degree when I did, because it gave me the

confidence more than anything else. That's what it gave me, was the confidence

to think, right. I can do this. I definitely can do it. I can

go in a new direction, which can be hard if you've

been working in the same business or doing the same thing

in the same sort of role like I had for 20

years. I'd had my own business early on when I first left

college, but was a lot of years ago, and starting a new

business in particular can be really scary. So it gave me the confidence

to Pivot into something new and to think

outside the box, and I wouldn't have done any of that if I'd been

trying to do the research on my own, Sitting at home

with a small baby, trying to research how I was gonna set up this

business, I was just going out of my mind. So it was by far The

one of the best things I ever did. The other great thing, if you sign

up for something which is a group program or some sort of group

course, It's the networking opportunities and the people that

you meet along the way. When you're running a small business on your

own, Particularly if you're you are on your own, you're not

doing it with a business partner, it can feel really lonely.

So Being in a group of other like minded business owners can really

help because you're all in the same boat. You get to meet with other like

minded people They are in the say at the same stage as you are. They've

got the same concerns that you've got. They got the same fears that you've

got. You can cheer each other along the way, And it means you can

make some great contacts that probably wouldn't have happened if you'd been trying to

struggle along on your own. So not Just group

coaching programs, getting out to in person events,

getting out to conferences where you learn, Going

to networking events as well, that's all a form of personal

development. Things that you're doing where you're working on your business

and not in down in the weeds day to day on the stuff that you're

doing, day to day in your business where you can't see the wood for the

trees. So those are some of the benefits of why it is

worth investing in some form of personal development. But are there what

are the risks if you don't invest? Like I said

before, one of my biggest regrets was not

investing in a mentor that could help me with my trade show. My

lack of knowledge about the events industry led to some really expensive

mistakes. I've also seen clients who, prior to

working with me, have made expensive mistakes by

going to the wrong manufacturer, being told that it's

cheaper to manufacture in China, only to discover after

you've spent a hell of a lot of money on sampling that you could have

found a local manufacturer in the UK Who would have worked

out better and cheaper for you in the long run? Product

development in particular can lead to some really expensive

mistakes you don't have the skills. Sample development can be

really expensive, and you can end up spending a lot of money on it if

you don't know what you're doing, if you're not properly prepared

because you don't know how to prepare. You don't know what the whole

production process is. You learn on the way, but

can be really expensive. Raw materials wasted,

patterns made for, prototypes made, Quality

control issues, all of those can be avoided

if you learnt the process and you learnt those skills before

you started. It can be a false economy not

investing in learning those skills before

you start, particularly when it comes to product development. The other risk

associated with not investing in your own personal

development is that you just end up stagnating. You end up staying

the same, doing what you've always done. And one of my favorite phrases,

which I'm always telling my clients, If you do what you've always done,

you will get what you've always got. In other words, if you

carry on as you've always been doing, Nothing's

gonna change. And if anything, your business will get

worse. Particularly at the moment, now is a time when you need

to take risks. You need to try things and do new things.

If something's not working, for instance, if a product is not selling,

it's not gonna get any better, and sales are not Suddenly

gonna happen out of thin air if you just carry on doing

exactly the same, posting on Instagram, Hoping,

fingers crossed, that someone at some point will come to your website and

buy something. You need to think outside of the box, and

chances are You need some sort of inspiration and kick up

the arse to tell you to do that, someone that can look at your

business in a new light and get you thinking about different things that

you could try. Because if you don't try new things,

nothing new is gonna happen. So maybe now is the time

to learn. So it might sound really scary, particularly at the

moment, if you're not doing as well as you were this time last

year. Maybe you're too scared to try new things. Now is

the best time to learn a new skill and to learn something

new. Try out something new in your business. Get someone to

look at it and give you some fresh ideas. It may be that you've been

working with your head down. In fact, you could even have been bearing your head

in the stand about things going wrong, and you've not been looking

around, you've fallen behind on where the market is going, what your

competitors are doing, they're getting ahead of you now Because they're trying

new things, there's no point sticking your head in the sand about

it. You've gotta try new things. You've also gotta keep up to date

with what's happening. It may be that Instagram as a social

media marketing platform used to be fantastic for you. But if

your audience have now gone over to TikTok, Maybe now is

the time to invest in a course to teach you how to use

TikTok to try out that platform. There's no point

hoping That if you carry on doing what you've always done,

that somehow it will get better because it won't. So now

is the time to start investing in yourself. So how can

you do that? Where do you even start? There are so many

trainings, online courses, Coaching programs,

group coaching programs, 1 to 1 mentoring,

conferences that you could be going to. You could spend a fortune.

Where do you even start with choosing what it is that you should

invest in first? Because you could spend a fortune. And, also,

as entrepreneurs, it's really easy to get distracted by the

next shiny thing. Something pops up when it sounds like it's a

fantastic thing to do, and next thing you know, you've invested in

5 different courses, and you've not got the time to do any of them. We've

all done it. Really, you could say it's a form of procrastination

as well. Because if you are constantly

buying lots of courses to do, but not never finishing any of

them, never any of them. There's it's just pointless.

There's just no reason to have bought them in the 1st place if you're not

gonna invest in these things and actually take action on them.

So firstly, if you're trying to decide where you need

to invest in your personal development, look at where your

weaknesses are, And look at what stage you're at in your

business and what you most need help with in order to move

on to the next step. For instance, if you're setting up a clothing brand, but

you know nothing about garment production, you wouldn't sign up to a sales

course or someone to teach you Instagram Reels. What

you need is someone to mentor you through the steps in order to get your

1st garments made. So don't get swayed by

Adverts for Pinterest courses that you've spotted when you haven't

even got your 1st product to sell. So think about what

stage are you at And where do you most need the help? And what

are your goals? What are your long term goal? So if your focus

in the coming year is to increase your sales, what Gaps

in your knowledge do you need to fill in order to achieve the

goal of increasing your sales? Maybe your sales

strategy is that you plan to do more in person events. So who

can mentor you through that process of doing those in person

events? Maybe someone that has done a lot of in person

events before, has trodden that path, someone that can

teach you face to face selling skills, or someone that can help

you build your confidence to be able to do those events. Maybe it's someone

that financially can help you out with the logistics of

how to ensure that those events that you're doing are profitable.

Or maybe the goal is increase sales,

but to hire a salesperson to do those events

for you. In that case, maybe you need to learn

about Hiring people and team development and building a

team or maybe some training or advice that can help you

To hire the best sales team that's out there,

to think about what it is that you most want to achieve. Don't

be distracted if you see a course and you think it looks great if

it's not what you need right now. Park it. It

will always come back round again, or something similar will be

available. Make a note of it, but make sure what you do

sign up for is something you really need and that you can truly

commit to. So talking of committing, one of the biggest challenges that

many people find When it comes to investing in their

own personal development and for their business,

is finding the time in order to commit

to properly doing the thing that they've signed up for.

It's all too easy to get Bogged down in the day to day

running of your business and to think that you can't find

the time for any form of personal development. Having been through

this myself many times, I would say it's well

worth making sure you do find that time, that you

do carve out the time Specifically, to work

on growing your business and to work on yourself and

how you as the business leader are gonna grow the business. So my

advice for this is it is always possible to

find the time. I've done it in the past by getting up 2

hours earlier and working on the courses or the

programs that I'm in before I start work for the day.

Or set aside a day a month specifically to work on

training and self development. It's all too easy to say, oh, I haven't got

time to do it today. So just block it out in your calendar and

make sure you do find the time. Pretty much everyone that

I'm mentoring at the moment has got a lot of other things going on.

They're either working full time in their business. They might be a

solopreneur. They haven't even got any team members to help them, Or

they're already working on another business, and they're starting up something

new, or they've got a full time or part time job, or they've

got A busy family life or, sick

parents that they need to look after, but they all make sure they find

the time to learn new skills and to invest themselves.

Because if you don't carve out the time to invest in yourself and your business,

then you're pretty soon Gonna find yourself out of business.

It's a false economy not to do it. Are there

some other things that you do that Take up your time that you

could forego for a bit, like watching the telly or scrolling on

Instagram, that you could forego in order to find the

time for some personal development. What I've done that I'd highly

recommend is you do an audit of your time over a typical week

to see exactly how you do spend your time. What you'll

find is you'll be really surprised at how much time you're spending on

some of those things that aren't really moving the needle in your business

or aren't really helping you with your plans to launch a business.

So now that you've found the time, the other barrier

That gets in the way of entrepreneurs investing in themselves

is money, cash flow. Maybe you

shied away from investing in a course or a program or go into a

training event because you were too scared to spend the money.

So instead, you decided to wing it and learn something

new For free. Now there's no doubt that with the

Internet, YouTube, podcasts, you can learn a lot

of stuff for free these days, But there's several drawbacks to

that. Firstly, the sort of free training that you

find online won't be tailored to your specific situation and

problem. So you'll still need to figure a lot of it out, and,

potentially, you're gonna make mistakes if you do that. And

secondly, you're gonna be waiting through a whole load of info to

actually get the results you need, which is fine if you've

got tons of time on your But if you wanna achieve results

quickly, you definitely get what you pay for if you sign up for

someone to help you get there. So for instance, I've done 260

odd episodes of this podcast. A 130 hours, I

reckon that is, if you listen to all 260.

You could probably learn most of what you needed to know to start or

grow a British made brand if you listened to all 130

hours' worth And you made copious notes. But you're not gonna get the

same results or experience that you get if you buy one of my courses or

sign up to my mentoring program just by listening to to

all 260 episodes. Because when you pay for 1 of the

courses offered to be in the program, the information is delivered in a

specific order. And in the case of the mentoring program,

it's highly targeted to your particular situation, your products that

you're developing, and the goals that you've got for your business.

Also, there's also definitely truth in the phrase, people

that pay, pay attention. In other words, If you've

spent money and you've invested in something, you're much more likely to

take action. Hands up if, like me,

you've signed up to a free course, Requested a free download

or bookmarked a training video and then just left it to gather

dust on the digital shelf. We've all done it. We've all

downloaded something, think that sounds really useful because we didn't

pay for it. We don't end up Actually, looking at the

information and using it in our business. And that is one of the

reasons why if you pay for something, you're much more

likely to hold yourself accountable to get the return on

that money that you've spent. Now if you think you're gonna find it hard To

afford to invest in any form of personal development, put aside

a small amount of money every month to save up for something in the

future, Or ask if there's a way you could pay in installments

rather than paying everything upfront. Think of investing in yourself

as investing in your future and the long term future of your

business. And remember, any new skills you learn, you're gonna have

those for life, And you can continue to use them again and

again. So the return on investment that you'll get

if you Sign up for the right things or invest in the right form of

personal development is gonna pay off dividends in the long

run. So think of it in terms of the return on investment that you're gonna

get in the long term, not just the short term. So if you've listened

this far and you've decided now is the time to invest in yourself,

Make sure that you do your research first so that you get the

very best out of that investment in personal development.

Find courses or coaching that's been recommended by someone you know

or someone you admire. Look at reviews and testimonials so you can get

some sort of idea of the results that have been achieved by others

that have tread trod that path. Finding a mentor in particular can

be a bit like finding a manufacturer. You need to find someone that

you get on with, who's on the same wavelength as you and who

gets you. And, also, make sure Any

mentor or coach that you do sign up with has experience in

the areas that you need help with most at this specific

moment in time. So I hope you found this episode useful, a

little bit different to the normal episodes, as I said. If you've

got any experience of personal development, maybe you've taken a

course. You've attended a training event. You've been in a

mastermind. Something you found has really helped your business. I'd love to know

what it is. If you're interested in finding out more about how we could work

together by either taking one of my courses, joining in

my mentoring program or my mastermind, Drop me a

DM on Instagram at make it British, or check out

the work with me link in the show notes of this podcast, and I will

be in touch. So thanks once again for listening to this

episode of the podcast, and I will be back again next

week. Take care. Bye