16 things I did to prepare my finances for parenthood part 2

So number nine, I worked with a friend of mine who is a business consultant in, like, a professional capacity.

Not like we had a coffee and talked about it.

I paid her money, and we did a consulting package.

And we looked at how I could formalize some of my services from the other side of my business, which was very behind the scenes, where I'm doing sort of consultancy for social media, um, [lips smack] individuals, I suppose, who run... not like influencers, but more expert service-led providers.

This kinda blends the experience that I've learned through my years of being on social media as the broke generation and broke media, but also what, through my work with, my, through my freelance work with financial service providers, and then also my social media experience beforehand when I was in a job.

So it's kind of my culmination of my, like, 12 years in social media.

I've been doing that sort of on the side a little bit, but I hadn't ever really offered it properly to, you know, as like a full business function in itself.

So I thought, this is really gonna be something that I'm probably gonna wanna do a bit more of once my, you know, time and energy and schedule is a little bit more determined by something other than me.

So I invested that money to understand what my services were going to be, to formalize those more.

Um, I ran an event, so I ran my full-day intensive, which kind of really prompted me to bring together a lot of the things that I'd been teaching in a one-on-one environment and put, kind of formalize that into frameworks and things that I could then deliver over and over again.

So it was a lot of groundwork [inhales] upfront that I will then hopefully benefit from when I return to working in my business in another capacity.

So I kinda talked in the part one of this, um, episode about how I really wanted to create options for myself, and that is really one of those things.

Obviously, my business and my business activities are very multifaceted.

Sometimes I'm making content.

Sometimes I'm doing sponsored content.

Sometimes I'm working with my freelance clients behind the scenes.

Sometimes I'm doing speaking.

Sometimes I'm running workshops.

And then sometimes I'm in that kind of consultant capacity.

And it really came down to giving myself as many options as possible to come back to, as many levers to pull.

I didn't want to have to come back and be like, "Oh, yeah, you know, you know, if a lot of my social media stuff, you know, maybe, maybe I have..." I don't wanna jinx it, but if things, you know, dry up, and there aren't those opportunities, I didn't wanna have to then go into the groundwork of like, [inhales] okay, well, how do I get this consulting stuff off the ground? I wanted to have done some of that groundwork.

So while that was an initial cost, because I was paying for help in formalizing what I was offering, it's something that I feel good, really good about in terms of paying off going forward.

So in terms of, I guess, what that could look like for you, obviously if you're self-employed, looking at your business model is gonna be really important and how you earn and how does that lend itself to what your new reality could be like or might be like or what your new capacity might be like.

[inhales] But even in a job, I think, you know, maybe working with, like, a career coach or doing a session with a career consultant or something, just to kind of think about what this new phase of your work will be like.

I am, ugh, I'm, honestly, I love paying for someone else's perspective.