Bonus: To Spend or Not To Spend? How To Evaluate Your Expenses + The Questions Every Business Owner Should Ask Before A Big Financial Decision

Cubicle to CEO

Ellen Yin

Business, Marketing, Entrepreneurship

5.0 • 580 Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2026

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Is your next business expense an investment or a mistake? The answer is always nuanced, but the right questions can help you make wiser spending decisions that actually align with your ROI expectations and overarching business goals. With nearly 20 years of experience across multiple sectors of the financial industry (banking, lending, and now financial planning and investment/wealth management), founder of independent adviser Divergent Financial Advisory Services, Alicia Martinez knows exactly how to navigate those tough spending decisions that move your business forward while protecting your budget. Back as a returning guest on our show, she goes meta in today’s episode by walking us through her own decision tree and how she evaluated a recent marketing expense of her own (our offer, Instant Influence). What questions did she ask in the consideration process? How is she defining and tracking success? How can business owners effectively evaluate a financial commitment when the outcome isn't guaranteed? This is the episode to tune into before you make your next big purchase for your business. Connect with Alicia: ⁠https://difiadvisory.com ⁠https://www.instagram.com/difiadvisory ⁠https://www.facebook.com/DiFiAdvisory/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/difiadvisory/ Check out Alicia's freebie & 27 other free resources available for download in our Freebie Fest: https://cubicletoceo.co/freebiefest Our last episode with Alicia: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cubicle-to-ceo/id1470966370?i=1000712399762 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/44nj7IVLPBcz3eTIXdqGPZ?si=wAu98ZqyRtWywBXSzkF7ag Loving our bonus content and want more Cubicle to CEO in your ears? Join us every Monday on our subscriber-only premium feed for case study–style interviews with successful entrepreneurs debriefing their real-time growth experiments and results. Subscribe to get insider access to what's actually been working for businesses in the last 3-18 months: ⁠cubicletoceo.co/podcast⁠ If you enjoyed today's episode, please: Post a screenshot & key takeaway on your IG story and tag us ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@cubicletoceo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ so we can repost you. ⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to ⁠our premium feed⁠ for case-study style interviews every Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Some follow the noise.
0:03.0	Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion
0:07.7	dollar swings.
0:09.0	There's a money side to every story.
0:11.4	Get the money side of the story.
0:13.5	Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.
0:18.5	The following is a sponsored episode.
0:28.6	Hello, welcome back to Cibicle to CEO.
0:31.5	Returning to the show today is my friend Alicia Martinez.
0:35.5	And if you haven't heard Alicia's first interview on our podcast, highly
0:39.0	recommend. I'm going to link it below. It is absolutely essential, especially if you are a woman and
0:45.1	you want to know how to protect your business and your assets. If you ever plan to get married,
0:49.9	or if you are currently married, or even if you are going through a divorce, I think it's going to be
0:54.3	an incredibly helpful resource for you. So definitely check that out after this interview. But today's
1:00.5	conversation, I think, is even more applicable to all of us as business owners who daily,
1:06.4	weekly, yearly, have to make decisions around where we spend our money, how much of our money we spend,
1:12.2	and whether or not the expenses in our business return the ROI that we are looking for.
1:18.1	And so that's really what this conversation is about today, how to make those decisions,
1:22.5	how to know when to spend the money, what to spend the money on, and how to track and measure
1:26.6	that ROI. So we'll get
1:28.1	into that in just a moment. But first, Alicia, hi. Hi, Alan. Hi, everyone. My name is Alicia Martinez from
1:34.5	Divergent Financial Advisory Services. For those of you, I haven't met yet. Hopefully you're
	...

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