[00:00:00] Fi Johnston
We've made a lot of progress as a society in many of the areas that we needed to in the last few hundred years. But one thing that has not changed enough is money. If we want to be able to tip the scales towards the favor of marginalized people, we need to understand the secrets to making money in small business.
The more we talk about money and the secret. That usually stay at the golf club, the more likely we are to be able to make money. My mission is to get more money into the hands of good people, specifically good business people like you. This is Money Secrets, the place to learn about the money secrets of successful small business owners.
Because I believe small business can change the world, and in order to do that, we need to be making lots of money. Let's go.
This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wie people of the KO nation, and I'd like to acknowledge them as the traditional owners and [00:01:00] custodians of this land and water that I live. Work and play on. I'd like to pay respects to elders both past and present, and note that sovereignty has never been seeded.
This always was and always will be. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
Have you ever wondered why some businesses just seem. So successful. And then you see other businesses that are closing their doors. It's no accident. Businesses that are successful are the ones who have unlocked their business model.
Now, business models might sound a little bit fancy, schmancy, or maybe a word that gets bantered around in corporate, or maybe it's not something that you've come across before. Essentially, your business model is how your business. Fits together so you can deliver your products and services in the most profitable way.
Great businesses are the creation of founders who amplify what makes them great, but they do it in a way that's always [00:02:00] profitable and customer centric. Another way of explaining it would be to say that successful companies have the right. Fit business model. This is something that I don't think small business owners are doing well, which is really cool because it means there is a huge opportunity for you to be somebody who takes the time to actually work on building your business model.
So some of the ways that redesigning or tweaking your business model can help you is that, for example, say you want to increase your prices, but you're feeling really. Stuck your business model is the thing that you next need to work on to be able to get to the point where you can increase your prices.
If you keep working with clients who don't appreciate what you do, or maybe you feel like you have to always be justifying your prices. Redesigning your business model is gonna help. If you've been spending all of your time and lots of your money on your marketing, but somehow it's still just not landing the [00:03:00] clients you want to.
Your business model is what needs to be looked at. I see a lot of business owners focusing on things like, how do I become more productive? How do I get my marketing to work better? How do I get my brand to help me stand out more in the market? Now, the thing about investing time in, let's start with marketing.
So when you are looking at investing time and money into marketing, if you haven't actually taken the time to understand things like what makes you uniquely positioned in your market, what is really valuable about the way that you deliver your products and services, what's your secret sauce? What is the thing that you are known for?
What are the reasons that your clients love working with you? How do you work differently from others providing similar products and services to you? So in other words, those things are your unique value proposition. So your unique value [00:04:00] proposition, the. Sort of things that you want your potential clients to know about you, because once they know, then they of course are going to want to come and buy from you.
So once you've worked out what your unique value proposition is, then what you wanna do is work out who are the customers that I want to work with, what are the different segments of customers that I work with? Who are my ideal clients? Where do they hang out? What other things do they buy? Who are they influenced by?
Once you understand what's uniquely valuable about your product or service to your ideal clients, then you can work out what are the most appropriate marketing channels for me to use to tell those clients about all of the ways that I am unique, different, or how I do things. What I see a lot of business owners doing is instead of doing that small part of work around your business model, they jump straight into marketing tactics like, should I be on Instagram?
What should I be doing on LinkedIn? Should I be investing in [00:05:00] Google Ads? But if you don't actually know what it is that you want to do and who you wanna do it for, your marketing is. Pretty much a waste of your time. Another thing that I see founders doing is investing in becoming more productive and automating what they do.
But when you think about it, if you haven't actually done the work to understand what is actually valuable about my product or service. What are the aspects of what I do that my customers just absolutely love? If you don't understand what those things are and you move straight into, how do I do this more productively?
What you are going to be doing is getting really fast at designing and delivering something that nobody wants. Right. So if you are somebody who has spent a lot of time or money investing in how to become more productive or how to automate the tasks that you are doing, but you don't actually understand which of your tasks are actually valuable, you are just spending time and money [00:06:00] getting fast at doing something that is not bringing you any value.
I see people debating between should I set myself up with dubs? Sodo or Moxie, and they spend so much time wondering about whether they should be using one of these particular platforms rather than working out what is the service or the product that I deliver and who wants it. So it's like spending all of this time getting your dub sodo or your mox.
Or whichever platform you want to use set up before doing the work to understand what is uniquely valuable about what you offer. It's kind of like getting the temperature of the bath water absolutely perfect with no plug in the bath. So if you are somebody who has. Gone down this road of spending time on marketing or working on automations.
Maybe you've gone deep into ai, you are trying to become really productive, but you haven't actually done the work on what is my unique value proposition? What is my business model? How do I actually want to deliver my [00:07:00] products? And services, who do I want to deliver them to? These are the sort of things that become the foundation of your business model.
Your business model is kind of like a little puzzle that looks at what are the different things that my customers see? For example, my marketing messages, my marketing platforms, who it is that I wanna work with. So who I'm targeting, what are the different things that I'm saying about what I do? So what are my unique value statements and the products and services that you sell and the revenue that you are able to bring into your business.
So those are the components of your business model that your customers or potential customers can see from the outside of your business. Then there's also components of your business model that sit behind the scenes. These are things like, what are the costs? To deliver the product or service that you want to deliver, who are the key partners, suppliers, or collaborators that you need to have sitting alongside you to be able to be delivering this incredible product or [00:08:00] service?
Who or what are the key resources that you need in your business? Do you need some operating cash flow in order to be able to get where you want to go? Do you need to have great people in your team? And when you think about your key human resources, you are number one baby. You are the most important resource and human in your business.
So what are you doing to actually keep yourself well and fresh and rested? We also wanna look at things like, what are the things that I need to do really well as a business in order to succeed? We also wanna think about some of those customer touch points. Like what kind of relationships do you want to have with your customers?
Do you wanna know their child's name and be invited to their wedding, or are you looking for it just to be quick and transactional? What is the level of professionalism or friendship that you wanna have in your communication with your customers? How long do you want them to be your customers? So when we start thinking about our business [00:09:00] as a kind of jigsaw puzzle or a beautiful little canvas that we can build, then we can start to see these are the ways that I need to work on my business in order to be able to make my business work for me.
So your business model is a key part of your business. Strategy and your business strategy is essentially what is the business that I want to have in the future and what are the steps between here and there? Once you actually understand what is your unique value proposition, who it is valuable to, how you are gonna deliver products and services to those target audience.
And you understand the things that you need to do in your backend to make your business successful, now you can start working on making that happen through your amazing marketing, automating the right things, becoming more productive at the tasks that are actually valuable for your customers, and using your branding and your reputation to actually build a business that you [00:10:00] want.
If you would really like to work on your business model design, right now is a really great time because until the 30th of June, 2025, you can access our three module business model design program for just $495. We are having a live training session that goes with that on the 22nd of July, 2025. People who've been through the program before have been absolutely blown away by the tools.
The tools inside the program are. So simple, but so useful in terms of mapping out the steps that you need to take in your business for the next 12 months. It does things like help you plan out your marketing so that you are actually ticking off your unique value statement. It helps you look at your numbers.
So how much revenue do I want to bring in and how am I going to do that? What will the cost be to deliver that revenue to my clients? If you wanna make your business work for you, you need to do some [00:11:00] work on your business model. And the best way that I know to do that is to join our business Model Design mini program before the 30th of June.
I would love to help you to design a business that really works for you.
Thank you so much for listening right up to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Money Secrets, where we talk about the money secrets of successful small business owners. If you enjoyed the episode, I'd love it if you subscribe to the podcast, but leave us a review or share this episode with one of your friends.
I hope you learned something. I hope you got a new perspective and I really hope you enjoyed the listening experience.
