Building Success: The Time, Money, and Relationship Framework

Sheri Fluellen: so we're gonna use a framework that, quite frankly I use with investors. So I'm a real estate investor. I've been doing that for a long time, and some of the coaching and consulting that I've done over the years has been in the real estate space.
And so I just built a simple framework cuz a lot of real estate investors. They get the shiny objects syndrome. They get into real estate investing and there's like, you know, 29 different strategies you can use to invest. And they're like, I don't know what to start with.
And they, they're bouncing all over the place and they don't really get traction in any one thing. So most of us have heard it's time or money. If you have more time, then you need less money. And if you have less time, then you need to invest more money. And I do think that there is a huge amount of merit to that.
So that's part of the framework we're gonna use today is thinking about your own life. And we're gonna talk a little bit about our lives. How much time did we have? How much money did we have? What did that balance look like? But there's also a third area that I think is grossly overlooked and that's relationships.
Because if you have some very important and critical relationships, business relationships, you know, referral type relationships that you can depend on, that may not require a lot of your time or money, but that's something that also can help grow your business. So we're looking at time, money, and relationships.
Faisal Ensaun: Awesome. I love that framework because it's funny. I never thought of it in these ways, but like, had I been a little bit more intentional, I would understand that. Okay. When I was starting out, I didn't have a lot of money. Actually. I had no money. So on the negative cash flow side if there is such a thing.
So there is, in fact, my initial investment literally was when my wife and I, were at the conference with Brendon Burchard. He offers certified high-performance coaching, for 10 grand. We were already in debt. Being there, I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna do this on my own. And then I think my wife was wise enough to, she's like, no, we need this.
You don't know what you're doing. I didn't, I had no idea what I was thinking. I was so overwhelmed.
Sheri Fluellen: But you were gonna jump into coaching, but without a certification. Without training, you were just like, I'll figure it out.
Faisal Ensaun: So I wasn't just coaching cuz I went to Experts Academy. It was everything like it was, I just got fed with the fire hose of, oh, you can be a coach, you can be an author, you can be a speaker.
I had no idea what I was doing. I was so overloaded. But I'm like, you know what? I'll figure this out. I got this,
Sheri Fluellen: a little overconfident,
Faisal Ensaun: a little arrogant, a little overconfident and deep down I knew, I'm like I don't know what I'm doing. But I guess my wife saw that. Cause she had seen me for a few years until then, we need this.
This is important. And I even told her, I'm like, okay, if you wanna do it, you do it. I'll do this thing. I'll do the influencer thing. And she actually signed up for it. She'll be so happy that I'm sharing this story. So she signed up for it and I'm like, what the hell are we gonna do?
Get the money? She's like, I don't care. Call your mom. Like what? I don't wanna do that. I had to call her and I'm like, Mom, I'm gonna pay you this in a few months, gimme three months. She's like, okay, didn't you just spend a lot of money to get there and do all this stuff?
Why are you spending more money? I'll explain it after, but can we do this right now? I put her on three payments on her card and I'm like, okay, I better figure this out. So it moved forward and that was 10 grand, 10 K. And I thought, okay, that's all I needed. That wasn't true because when I came back I was still overwhelmed.
First of all, I'm still in the beginning stages of even learning what the hell coaching is. I didn't know coaching. I knew I had a predisposition to do this very well. But I didn't know coaching and I didn't realize how much was in there. And then one of the weird moments that came up to you, like a week of training versus four or five years of university, something is off here.
How am I gonna become a world-class coach after this much training? And then I heard Brendon Burchard say, it's one of those jobs they do one of those skills you're gonna learn on the job. I'm like, okay, I don't know what that means, but I'm gonna jump into it. So from that point on that initial, first of all, that initial 10 grand was not enough.
What ended up happening, I had to invest in multiple different courses to even understand, how the hell am I gonna market myself and then start hiring other coaches to get me to move forward. If I were to kind of fast forward up until today, it's well over it. If I was to do a wild guess, it's well over a hundred K in the past.
Seven years of investment in my business and my coaching well over. That would be a very conservative estimate. And also my wife started investing more in her own coaching. She went through that. We also got coaching and have done several business coaches too. So as I've gone through that journey, I realized how much I needed to invest.
Now, granted in the beginning, I didn't have a lot of money, but I needed to find a way to do that. I needed to find a way, and I had to, even at that time, I knew that when I came back from that event I knew that the business was not gonna pick up that fast, so I needed to do something. So I started driving Uber.
So that means I was a sole provider, so if I took all the hours of the week into account and also have some time with my family and start this new business, even if I put it down to it, and this is a good estimate If I worked on the business at least 10 to 12 hours, I would still need to do that work like my job to be able to sustain ourselves.
Without that, it wasn't gonna happen. Yeah. And that's with the 10,000 already in. And so that was sort of the beginning of it, and I didn't realize how much I needed to invest. And recently I had a conversation with one of our members. We didn't realize this cuz he was thinking about like, okay, which expenses do I need to remove for me to sustain my life better and what do I need to focus on?
And he asked me, he's like, how much did you focus on? I'm like, well, initially in the first couple years I invested $20,000 before my coaching, even my business even began to pick up, like with just a few members and a few clients that I had. He's like, oh shoot, I didn't know that.
Like I thought I didn't need to invest that much. I'm like, well, and that kind of made me realize I didn't have a lot of time, so I needed to leverage something else. I needed somebody to help me quickly go there. So it's either coaches, it's either course but ultimately it came down to it's like, who can help me implement this the fastest?
Absolutely. Cause you can shortcut that time. And I've shared this enough, it took me about two and a half years to pick up my business. I did not need to take that long. If I put in the kind of effort that I did in that first year, and I had the support and guidance and I had the feedback from the marketplace, it would've been one year, I would've had at least five or six clients, but it took me two and a half years that was not necessary.
And that, that was a lot of it was, I didn't know like what I should do to do that now. And you talked about your degree before. Like before jumping into engineering, you already know I'm spending about 50, 60,000 before you even start and that's not even paying me off.
But then being in debt after a while after that and then getting a job. Not the best job, but you are getting you're training under another engineer for a while, for a couple of years until you get to the next senior engineer position. That's when you can start to expect a six-figure salary.
And so that journey is about five to seven years. And very similarly in coaching, it took me about four years. Three, three and a half. I'd say three and a half to four years to get to six-figure. And then after that, multiple six figures as I've moved forward, but that became much faster.
Had I stayed in my career in engineering, that would not have been the case. I would've stuck at the six-figure for a while. I know I threw a lot in there, but what do you think, Sheri?
Sheri Fluellen: Yeah, there's some aspects of your story that I know will resonate with some of you that are listening and that is you were a sole provider and you.
I love this part. I didn't know this. You borrowed the money from your mom to get your certification in coaching and you're like, okay, I need to pay her credit card off in three months. Like, that's awesome. So there was a little bit of a wealth
Faisal Ensaun: paid more than that to pay her off just.
Sheri Fluellen: So a little well-placed necessity.
That's good. But I think that's fantastic because many people will be able to resonate with that story of being the sole provider, of needing to figure out a lot of the coaches we've worked with. They're already doing something else and they're like trying to transition, like they've got a foot in both worlds or you know, maybe there's a spouse that works as well and so they don't need the income.
Now they're able to kind of build into it. But then there are folks like you that are like, you know what, I'm all in. I'm bought in, like, let's do this. And so recognizing how much time. Do you have to really figure this out and do you really want to spend the time to figure this out? Because the best way to learn is by your own mistakes. But the second best way to learn is, By other people's mistakes. You don't know other people's mistakes unless you're kind of in a relationship and having conversations and getting coaching or consulting that helps kind of integrate that into kind of what you're doing.
So I see all of that stuff as kind of playing a factor into your first years of coaching
Faisal Ensaun: and I actually just realized that I didn't even think of that, but just a few years later, like I was talking to my wife. She's like, okay, where's all our money going here with all the work that you're doing constantly?
I'm like, you know what? I thought about it. I'm like, to be honest, half of our money is with the family members right now. And, I feel good about that because I mean, a lot of them needed help with their businesses as they were starting it or as they were shifting and they just need, and
I give them a lot more than I was given to me to help them get started. Cause I know the value of that, how important that was for me. Yeah. And that is a lot. But just, just being in a position to be able to do that. I think a lot of coaches relate to that. And investors talk about this too. You know what, I wanna be able to help the people in my life.
And to me, as I was starting out, I'm like, you know what, I know I'm gonna get to a point where I'm going to be able to support other people, but right now I need the help. Yeah, but whether that's a community, whether that's your family, whoever it is sometimes you kind of look at ourselves as this isolated thing.
When I was calling my mom I was like, yes, I needed to pay her back and everything, but I know that she wants to see me to be successful. And I know that she's rooting for me even though she might have all sorts of reservations and everything, and I'm not saying people should borrow or not borrow, that's their decision.
But what I'm saying is if stepping back from our own insecurities and our own challenges, being a little bit vulnerable, Hey, I need help. Whether that helps us in terms of time resources or something else. That's probably one of the biggest things that I've learned on this journey because I've constantly needed help.
And when you actually become vulnerable, ask for help, you actually recognize that a lot of people need help and they might not be open about it. And I can't tell you how many times I've had conversations with family and friends. I'm like, so one of the first things like, where do you need help?
They won't say, like, I literally have to pull it out of them. Like, where do you need help? Where are you struggling? And it's not that I want like I need them. Like, what do you need? Because it doesn't even cross people's minds. Oh, well I need to be independent. I need to be strong. I need to be this. We all rely on each other, and once you move up, then you get to help other people as well, and maybe even more people than those that helped you.
This is something like, it is funny I feel like as conscious adults, we should know that.
Sheri Fluellen: Welcome to adulthood, Faisal.
Faisal Ensaun: Well, thank you. Take took me a little bit.
Sheri Fluellen: Well, and what you're talking about is so important because it really is the value of relationships.
And again, I think this is the most under-recognized aspect of investing in your business and that is cultivating those relationships and calling on them when needed. Hey, I need some support. I need some help, you know, and sometimes that support is financial, like borrowing money.
And I will say that my husband and I, have borrowed probably besides from banks, I'm just kind of thinking through, probably close to. Four to five, like almost half a million dollars from different individuals over the years for real estate investing. But if we hadn't done that, we hadn't like had that, which was very awkward initially.
Can I borrow some money? Cuz I have this deal and I wanna do this thing, but I need more in my bank account. That's a very humbling experience. Or it can be depending on the mindset. And it was for us in the beginning, like we had to get over ourselves if we were gonna try to kinda achieve our goals in investing that way.
But if you can cultivate that regardless of if it's your coaching business or anything else. You know, sometimes it's money related, but sometimes it's just, Hey, I need some support. Do you know? Maybe you're a single mom and you really feel compelled to coach and you have a full-time job that's paying the bills for you and your kids.
And you're struggling because you're like, okay, I work all day. The only time I have to coach is nights or weekends or both. But I've got kids that quite can't be self-sufficient. So what do I do? This is a great opportunity to ask for help. Who in your life can you ask, Hey, could you come over for maybe, you know, a couple, even just a couple hours out of the week, maybe one night a week, you know, feed the kids?
Have some game night or whatever while you're in the other room, sequestered, working on your coaching business. You know, making calls, reaching out to people, doing strategy sessions. There is sometimes that relationship block that we have of feeling, whether it's pride or whatever. And sometimes, quite honestly, we say, oh well, we act out of humility or we say we're being so humble, but it's still pride.
The fact that I'm not asking for help is putting me in a position that's higher than other people. It's just kind of in reverse. But either way, like, get over yourself. You are here to serve other people. You're here to have an impact. And I could go on a rant on that. The last thing I'll say before I pass the baton to you Faisal is.
And I've tried to use this frame of reference on many people over the years, and it is this. When you deny the ability or deny somebody else the opportunity to help you, you're denying intimacy at a level of your relationship with them that they won't get otherwise. And so aren't you actually being selfish by not
offering an opportunity for somebody to come into your life and help you? Think about when somebody has asked for your help, who was really in a vulnerable position, they're like, ah, I really need your help. Did you not like excitingly feeling a sense of gratitude that you had the ability to have a positive impact on their life?
So if you're not allowing people into your life to do that, you're robbing them of that opportunity.
Faisal Ensaun: Yeah. That's such a simple idea, but it took me such a long time to kind of get a hold of it in my experience. And I actually had to go through, and that's the other thing I want to stress on here.
I had to go through a lot of coaching to understand that. And then this is why I know that there is power in coaching because most of the shifts have been created even before that moment, but afterward, and when I jumped into this world, was that somebody saw something either in me that I never got to see which was my potential.
I never saw that myself. Somebody else saw it, somebody else saw that in me. And you get to see that in other people as well, and other people that have been able to, my coaches, my mentors that have been able to kind of point out some key things. And I'm like, you know how you're messing around in this area, but it looks like you can do a lot in here. And I still reminded some very key conversations that allowed me to let go of a lot of things like being able to forgive, be able to move on, be able to be at peace. It was like very direct observations from people who I was able to be vulnerable with and most of those are my coaches. And they literally pointed out, okay, what will it take for you to let it go?
And I was like, just that question implies that I am the one holding this. Nobody else is forcing this on me. Like small moments, seemingly small moments allowed me to create so much space within myself too, okay, life is too short. I cannot hold onto that. It was affecting my relationship, so it was affecting so many years of my life.
Same thing in business. I was like, I kept telling myself over and over that, Hey, you know what? I'm putting out content. I'm doing this up. All it took was somebody to look at it. I'm like, it seems like you're doing a lot of stuff, but are you actually getting clients and what are you doing to get clients?
When I would hear that, I'd be like, huh, what am I doing to get clients? And then the conclusion in my head was that I was hoping to get clients. And then I always say this and like, hope is not a good strategy in business.
Sheri Fluellen: No, it should not be part of your business plan.
Faisal Ensaun: Hope is a really incredibly powerful thing to get started, but you need a strategy in business.
You need to, yeah, be proactive in business. You need to be consistent. And that requires a very different way of looking at your life. It does. Yeah.
Sheri Fluellen: Yeah. And so in putting a business in place and I love like the, the play on words busyness does not mean business. And so in creating a business, in creating your own coaching to be a true business that has systems, that has predictability, that has income, and the income results in profitability, all of that stuff requires either or a combination of your time.
You have to put in the time, even if you choose to invest more in money you have more money and you're like, okay, I need to get this to happen as quickly as possible. So I'm gonna invest in time, I'm gonna join the Coaching Mastery Community to get a lot of the support and information and all this sort of stuff.
There still is an amount of time because you're not gonna be a rockstar coach right from the get-go unless you have a very similar past career. And even as a psychologist, there was a big shift for me, and I still feel like I'm every day I am like, okay, I feel like I'm getting my coaching feet under me because there is still a shift for me even in that.
So you gotta spend the time, but if you don't have as much time, you gotta spend the money. Or if you don't have the money, you gotta spend the time. But then also the relationships, like these are the ways in which you invest in your business. And so as you're listening to this, think about yourself.
Think about your own situation. Do you have some extra cash? Like are you working another job? Do you have some savings? Do you have some extra money that you can use to hire mentors, and coaches, Be part of our community, and do these things so that you don't have to make the same painful mistakes for two and a half years, that Faisal did, and maybe you can shorten it to, you know, six months and be able to, have enough clients to feel like or to see that there is a foundation set.

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