[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.
Today on the Money Secrets Podcast, I wanna ask a question that's probably on a lot of your lips, and that is, is the economy impacting us as small business owners? So this is a question that I think about often. Every week I meet with my good money club members and my one-on-one clients as well.
They're all small business owners, and I'm constantly assessing and reviewing and trying to understand what is happening out there in the small business landscape. Now, this question, is the economy impacting us? It's an interesting question because first of all, I wanna indicate that I am not an economist.
I am a chartered accountant, so I do not [00:02:00] have credentials in the area of economics or kind of demographics and anthropology and all of those sorts of topics that go along with the economic, uh, situation and circumstances that we're in. So I do not claim to be an. Expert in the economy, but I am an expert in small business.
I've been working alongside small business owners for 25 years, and I have been a small business owner in multiple businesses for the last 15 years. So I know small business and the short answer about is the economy impacting us, the short answer is. It depends. So in some industries, the economy is absolutely having an impact on consumer confidence and spending, but there are other parts of the economy that are still growing and doing really well.
There's also a lot of differentiation even within the same industry where we're seeing some businesses still doing really well and [00:03:00] others are closing their doors. I wanna also highlight a conversation that I had. At an event that I went to recently, so it was a small business event for local small business owners.
I knew quite a lot of the people there. It was a social event to celebrate the end of the financial year, and I was talking to a lot of business owners I hadn't seen for a long time because I'm a curious person and I love us. Asking questions, especially to small business owners. I was asking people how they're going.
Some of them were telling me that things were going really well, but most of the people in that room were telling me that right now it feels as though business is more difficult. Sales are slow times are feeling a bit tough, and they felt that consumer spending had definitely changed. Now, I definitely think that that is happening across certain categories.
But I also wanna highlight the second part of a conversation I had at that same event. So I was talking with a small business owner. I know quite well. They told [00:04:00] me that things were feeling quite difficult, so it was really difficult to get people to. Sign up for the particular offers that this business owner sells.
So they're really having a lot of trouble getting people over the line, and they said that things just feel really different this year than they have in past years. Now my follow up question was, what marketing are you finding is working best for you at the moment? The answer in all honesty, was a little bit unclear to me.
I suspect that maybe I was probing into an area that that. Business owner didn't want to go into, but this is really at the heart of how we become successful and stay successful in business. We need to adapt. Being a small business owner, being self-employed has never. Been easy no matter what you read on Instagram or what you see on blogs that you read, or different things that you are hearing, small business and [00:05:00] self-employment has always been difficult, and that's also part of what makes it so satisfying when you get it right, because it's not easy to get it right.
So small business has always been difficult. Now a lot of small businesses. In Australia and around the world launched in 2020 and 2021. Now, the market conditions in those years were really unusual, and in some industries they were very favorable. The reality is that things are not as they were in 2020 or 2021, they're probably not even as they were in 2018 or 2019 for a lot of.
Businesses in a lot of industries, but we need to adapt. We need to be able to see what is happening out there in the market and make changes to whatever marketing we're doing. We need to make changes to our messaging. We need to change our pricing. We need to look at the packages and the offers that we're putting out there.
And this is something that we do every single week [00:06:00] in Good Money Club. And what's really interesting to me is that when I'm asked. Asking my good money club members whether or not the economy feels like it's impacting them negatively. Every single one of them is saying no, because they are actually taking the actions required to make and keep their businesses successful.
Where am I going with this conversation? I am not trying to. Poo on anyone's small business. I'm not trying to lessen or make fun of how difficult small business can be, but what I do wanna highlight is that as a business owner, we really need a certain set of. Skills and mindset. We also need to be highly adaptable.
If we can't change, it is not possible for us to stay in business. And by the way, self-employment is actually not for everyone. I think what we're going to see this year, and we have been seeing in the last. Few years is that a lot of people who started their [00:07:00] business perhaps 3, 4, 5 years ago, will be deciding to close their business now because the market has changed.
The market conditions are different, and that may have identified that small business ownership is just not for you or it's not for that person. And that's okay. But I think that if we want to stay in business, if we want to be a business owner, we need to be able to be adaptable. We need to have different personality traits, but we also need to lean towards optimism.
It's incredibly difficult to plan for the future and to be feeling motivated and positive about the future of your business if you don't have that tendency to towards optimism. But something that is really important about being a small business owner is you need to be a proactive action taker. You cannot.
Think your way to being successful. I really wish that you could, because trust me, I am an overthinker and I really [00:08:00] wish that I could sit there on my own thinking in my own mind about how to become successful. But actually you need to be a person who is. Successful. You need to be somebody who says, I am going to deal with the cringe, the embarrassment, the shame, the difficulty of trying new things in my business, and I'm gonna get comfortable with the discomfort that is inevitable when the economy is changing.
So all of this may feel perhaps a little challenging. Maybe you don't like what I'm saying and I totally get it. If I could make business easier for every good small business owner, I would do it in a heartbeat. But what I do wanna leave you with is something that is really uplifting and that is that it is possible to take control of your business.
Now, we don't have control over everything in our business, but we do have control over lots of things. The sort of things we don't have control over are the economy, consumer sentiment, political [00:09:00] conditions, and the laws of the day, but the things that we do have control over, there's actually a lot of things that we have control over.
I'm going to run through 10 things that we do have control over, and I wanna really encourage you to. Think about how you could think about and take action on these 10 different elements of your business. I'm gonna put some really great show notes together so that you can follow along. Use a checklist to go through these 10 different areas of your business that you absolutely have control of.
Starting with number one. How much marketing you do? Are you somebody who just posts on Instagram every now and then and hopes for the best? Or are you somebody who is looking at your marketing as something that is part of the every day of your job? My business changed completely when I decided that marketing was part of my job. I used to wonder how people found the time to do marketing until I [00:10:00] realized that marketing was. As important, if not more important than the work I do for my clients. So we absolutely have control over how much marketing we do for our business.
The second thing that we definitely have control over is what marketing platforms we use.
There are. So many marketing platforms out there, and you do not need to use all of them. I think that if you are a marketer or you come from a marketing background, you can apply your knowledge and skills to more marketing platforms than the rest of us. But if you are a small business owner who does your own marketing and is not a marketing professional, I think that you should be using no more than three. Platforms. What do I mean by marketing platforms? I mean things like working on your website, using Instagram as one of your marketing platforms, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, podcasting, blogging. What [00:11:00] are the different platforms that you use? In your business to market yourself? So personally, I have decided to work on podcasting, email marketing, and Instagram. They are my three main channels. Occasionally I play a little bit in LinkedIn and right now I am doing quite a lot of work on my website because that is a. Thing that has been the most neglected along the way, but I've chosen podcasting, email marketing, and Instagram as my three main platforms because that is where my audience is, and that is where I'm getting the biggest return for my effort.
The third thing that you absolutely have control over in your business is the words and imagery you use in your marketing. Now, I'm not talking about getting it perfect or presenting some kind of perfect. Vision or perfect pretense to the world. But what I'm talking about is making sure that the words you use in your marketing actually feel good and resonate with your [00:12:00] customers, your clients, or your audience. So are you using the sort of words that your clients use or are you accidentally being hit with the curse of knowledge? So if you are quite a smart, intelligent business owner, or a very. Experienced business owner, you probably fall into this same trap of the curse of knowledge, which is that you are so knowledgeable about your particular area of the world that you forget that others aren't. So oftentimes what happens is we're using words that are jargony or don't actually make sense in kind of day-to-day sentences. So when our potential customers and clients read those words, they're not resonating. Right. So the curse of knowledge is something that affects lots of very intelligent and experienced business owners. So making sure that the words we are using are the kind of words that our clients actually respond to, and the kind of words that they use to describe the problems that you solve or the way that you can improve their lives.
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We also have control over the imagery we use in our marketing, whether that's using photography, videography, whether it's hand drawn illustrations or [00:14:00] graphics that you create in Canva, the words and the images that we put with them make a really big difference to the effectiveness of our marketing, and that is something that we can absolutely control.
The fourth thing that I think we can absolutely control, and you're probably gonna hate this one, so get ready for it. How many times do you chase up a proposal? This is something we talk about in Good Money Club a lot because there is so much cringe and shame that comes with following up a proposal for the eighth time, but you actually. Choice and agency over how many times you chase up your proposals. Most small business owners do not chase up their proposals or their leads anywhere near enough times. How many times are you chasing up your warm leads? Are you stopping with one follow up, or are you actually thinking about the different reasons why your potential client may not have? Said Yes yet, and following them up with appropriate conversation and [00:15:00] communication after the proposal to get them to a point where they just feel they absolutely are ready to say yes. So how many times we chase up a lead or a proposal is something we absolutely have control over.
The fifth thing that I want to talk about that we have control over, which may feel surprising to some of you, is that we have control over the thoughts we have about money.
So did you know that you can change the thoughts that you have about money? Most people don't realize that that is possible, and in fact, a lot of small business owners don't actually know what their money thoughts. Ah, we're gonna talk about that in a Future Money Secrets episode. But for today, I wanna leave you with this idea that you do have control over the thoughts you have about money. It is possible to change the way that you think about money, and this is, again, something that we do every single week in good Money clubs. So I encourage you to find a safe space. It might be Good Money [00:16:00] club, or it might be a friend or. Some sort of a confidant that you can start practicing the thoughts that you have about money with and starting to work on how could I change the way that I think and feel about money so that I can operate differently in my business?
The sixth thing that you absolutely have. Control over in your business is how much networking, upskilling, or learning you choose to do. So you don't have to market your business on Instagram, you can go to networking events. And in fact, in the first couple of years of my business back in 2010, I went to a lot of in-person networking events, and some of those events actually led to really fantastic clients and relationships. Going to networking events is still something that you absolutely have control over. Also, the amount of time or money you decide to invest in upskilling or learning. Now, I'm not talking about using learning as a procrastination tool because chances are you probably [00:17:00] do actually already have a lot of credentials and experience in what you do, but there's always. Other things that you can learn in business, you could be upskilling in your marketing. You could be learning how to make or manage money. With me. In Good Money Club, you could be learning about how to write better emails, how to create a better proposal. You could be learning about how to use Instagram. There are so many things that you can up. Skill in as a business owner and you have control over the time you put into that.
The seventh item on my list of 10 things that you have control over in your business is your prices. So you absolutely have control over the prices you set and the way that you present them to the world. Now, you might think that that is untrue, and what I wanna clarify is that you get to choose your price. And your client gets to choose whether they're saying yes or no, right? So you have control over the way you present your pricing. [00:18:00] Are you doing that in a document or on a website that actually sings your praises? The way that it should is your document, your proposal, your. Site, your Google Doc, whatever it is that you are using, is it actually presenting your prices in a way that makes them absolutely irresistible to your clients? So the prices you set and the way that you present them to the world is something that you have control over.
The eighth thing that you have control over as a business owner is which clients you are targeting. Now, this is something that we often need to shift. When times are changing, it might be that because of, um, things out of your control, which could be the economy, it could be the law of the time, it could be changing politics, you know, the sort of things that affect particularly health and medical practices is something that is. Not controllable by the practice. It's all about what the kind of government of the [00:19:00] day is deciding to prioritize. But you can control which clients you are targeting. So it might be that right now as the economy is shifting and moving, as it always does, the clients that you are best targeting might be different from who you were targeting last year or last.
Decade. So you absolutely have control over which clients you are choosing to market to and who your ideal client that you are chasing after is.
The ninth thing that we absolutely have control over in our business is how we manage and spend our money. Now, we do not have control over how much money we make, but we do have control over lots of the levers. To make that happen, including a lot of the things that I've listed already. How many times we chase up a proposal, how much marketing we do, our prices, and how well we present them. We have control over a lot of the things that cause us to make money, but we don't have control over how much money we [00:20:00] make. But the thing that is very exciting, we absolutely do have control over how we manage and. Spend our money. So this is a skill that all business owners need to learn, and that is what do I do with the money once it's hit my bank account? How do I spend it? What are the decisions that I make? What do I prioritize with spending my money? These are skills that you can learn. There are. So many different tools out there to help you to manage and spend your money. And again, it's absolutely something that we focus on in Good Money Club.
The final thing that I wanna highlight today as something that we definitely have control over as a business owner is the way that we do business.
What are the principles that go into the way we do business? Who do we associate with? What are the tactics or strategies that we are putting into place to try to be successful in business? What are our values? What are the things that we want to be known for? And what are the things that we [00:21:00] stand for? Or what are the things that we stand against as business owners? Are we somebody who's willing to put our own reputation on the line for somebody else? Are we somebody who shines a spotlight onto others? Are we somebody who shares that sort of spotlight or limelight or tries to bring other business owners up with us?
Or are we somebody who works in a silo and doesn't collaborate with others? There are so many different things that go into how we do business, and we have control over so many of them.
So I don't know what you thought about my 10 items that we definitely have control over as a small business owner. I'd really, really love to hear from you about it. You can send an email anytime to [email protected]. AU and we will get back to you as soon as we can. But what I wanna know is, do you feel that you have control over these 10 items in your [00:22:00] business? Does it make you feel more, uh, like you have agency?
Does it make you feel more motivated when you start to think about the fact that you can actually be really proactive with so many different things in your business just by taking action? So I'm gonna run through the 10 items that you have control over. Before we wrap up,
number one, how much marketing we do.
Number two, what marketing platforms we choose to use.
Number three, the words and imagery we use in our marketing.
Number four, how many times we chase up a proposal?
Number five. The thoughts we have about money.
Number six, how much networking, upskilling, or learning we actually do. Number seven, the prices we set and how we present them.
Number eight, which clients are we targeting?
Number nine, how we manage and spend our money are
number 10, how we choose to do business.
I really hope this episode [00:23:00] has been helpful. I hope it's given you a different perspective or a new way of thinking about things. If you feel that the economy is negatively impacting your business, I want you to go through these 10 core parts of your business and ask yourself, am I taking as much action and being as proactive as I can with these 10 things?
And if not, let's get started.
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.
