937: ACTION SATURDAY (establish a GROWTH FUND!)

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Hey, what is up?

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Wantrepreneurs and entrepreneurs all over the world.

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It's Brian LoFermento here, host of the WANTrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast, and this is an Action Saturday episode that, honestly, when I really think about what has been most impactful for me personally and professionally over the past let's call it 24 months-ish, maybe two and a half years it's today's action and, fortunately for you, today's action is a very, very simple one.

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It's really a commitment and there is one step that you can take.

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Of course, we love action, so we love steps here in these Action Saturday episodes, so I'll share that with you.

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But first things first, I wanna talk about the action, and that is to create a growth fund.

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Create a growth fund.

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I feel so strongly about this.

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This is the one piece of advice that I wish I got 10 years earlier in my entrepreneurial journey.

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Honestly, I genuinely think that since the day that I've taken this action, it has transformed all of my businesses.

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So what is a growth fund?

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For me personally, my growth fund it is a completely different account.

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It's a bank account where 10% of every single dollar that comes in across all of my businesses goes straight to the growth fund.

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And for me, that growth fund you all know I love building things.

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I love growing.

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My word of the year for 2024 is building, and I just find that it's so much easier to do.

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Growing and building is so much easier to do when you have money to do it with, and so I'm like most of you listeners in the fact that I started with nothing.

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In fact, I started my first business with about $100 when I was a college student and I was really scrappy, and I still still, to this day, I'm very scrappy.

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It's something that I'm really grateful that I've learned in life, not just in business.

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And, with that said, we all have limited resources, especially when it comes to money.

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A lot of you, I know that you relate to my story and my journey of starting out with literally nothing, and along those lines, that's why I think a growth fund is even more important, because if you start putting to the side 10% and if you're thinking to yourself, brian, I need that 10%, I needed to cover expenses, I needed to pay for my life, well then, okay, start out with 5%.

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If that's too high, okay, start out with 1%, one way or another.

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Today's Action Saturday is about getting you to make that commitment of saying look, 10% of what I make, 5% of what I make, 1% of what I make.

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Whatever it is, it's not for me, it's going to my future growth plans.

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It's going into all of the things that I want to execute on in the future to make even more money.

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And since I've started this, it's really been about two and a half years since I started my growth fund and I've just long committed to 10%.

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I don't even think about it.

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When money hits my business accounts, 10% automatically goes to the growth fund.

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And so you know, two and a half years later, that's a nice amount of money for me to pull the trigger on different investment things, whether it's working with branding specialists to focus on a rebrand, or making strategic hires to grow my team, or investing in tools that are going to move my businesses forward.

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Whatever it is, it's much easier to pull from that growth fund that has been set aside for that very reason, rather than, at worst, dipping into your personal expenses.

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That's never fun.

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Dipping into your personal accounts.

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It's a much more difficult proposition to say I really want to grow, but I don't want to see my personal accounts shrink, and I get that.

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That's exactly where I was before I had a growth fund.

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So at worst it's really difficult to pull out of your personal funds and at best it's really hard to also pull out of the same account that does cover your monthly business expenses.

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I think it's really important for you to have a healthy operating expenses account.

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And if you've ever studied Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, I think is how I pronounce his last name incredible author who wrote Profit First, then this is familiar to you.

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It's not me reinventing the wheel, this is very much.

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I'm a big advocate for the profit first approach and at the cornerstone of a lot of that yes, profit first, but I guess one of the byproducts it's not at the cornerstone is having a growth fund, having those funds automatically get deposited.

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So you might be thinking, brian, what does that look like?

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Well, it's really simple.

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Just have a different account, open a different checking account, whether it's a personal account because you haven't got your business finances set up just yet, or you do have business accounts already.

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Just create a different account and call it your growth fund account and that's the only purpose of it.

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And on a weekly or monthly basis, whatever it looks like, just transfer the appropriate amount based on that top line revenue and again, you need to know your numbers.

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Of course, if 10% is too much for you, don't do 10%.

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Maybe 5%, maybe 2.5%, maybe 1%.

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Whatever it is, it's going to feel and it should feel inconsequential today.

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But the point of the growth fund is that if you do it over time, a year from now you're gonna be sitting on a growth fund and thinking all the way back to this Action Saturday episode, thinking gosh.

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I'm so glad that Brian gave me that advice when he did.

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That's my goal from today's Action Saturday.

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But this only works if you do it.

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So go out there, take action, start your growth fund.

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I'll see you right back here tomorrow.