[00:00:00] Fiona Johnston
The gender revenue gap lacking in confidence and no money strategy. I see these money problems for female businesses every single day, and the truth is that we can overcome these money problems when we put some attention into them. So let's talk a little bit more about these money problems and what we can do about them.
Intro
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 secrets 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. Let's go.[00:01:00]
Acknowledgement of Country
This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wie people of the KU Nation, and I'd like to acknowledge them as the traditional owners and 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.
Hi there. My name's v Johnston and I am the host of the Money Secrets podcast, and my goal is to share some of the secrets of successful small business with you, my listener, because I believe that small business can change the world, but if we're gonna change the world, we need to be making money.
So today we are gonna be talking about the money problems of female, small business owners. I see there being three main categories of money problems for female small business owners. [00:02:00] The first is the gender revenue gap. Female businesses are simply not making as much revenue as male owned businesses.
The second money problem for female small business owners is that we are lacking in confidence. So many women have not received the right financial or money education. On top of that, we've been socialized to believe that money is bad. The third money problem for female small business owners is that we have no strategy.
We are not strategic with our money because we're scared of it. We need to take risks if we want to grow our business, our revenue, and our bank account. But we're confused, we're overwhelmed, and we're stuck. So let's talk a little bit more about these money problems and what we can do about them. So the first one is the gender revenue gap.
Now, something that really boils my buttons is how much we talk [00:03:00] about the gender funding gap and not about the gender revenue gap. I think it's pretty clear and it is talked about a lot, that there is a huge gap between funding received for female and male in the startup world, in the venture capital world, and I agree that is terrible.
Something like four or even less percent of funding is currently going to female owned startups. Absolutely terrible. But the startups or the female small businesses who require startup capital or venture funding or venture capital, it's a really small percentage of female small businesses. So what I think we should be talking more about is the gender revenue gap.
So every female small business owner needs to grow revenue. They need to be earning revenue, but not all female, small business owners need capital or venture capital [00:04:00] or to be lent or invested in, in order to make their business grow. But we all need to be making revenue. So female businesses, from my anecdotal evidence of 25 years working with small business owners.
Female businesses do not tend to make anywhere near as much revenue as male owned businesses. Why? I think it is mainly because we undercharge and over service our clients. Why do we undercharge? I think one of the reasons why we are chronic under chargers as female, small business owners. Is because first of all, a lot of us don't actually know how much revenue we need to bring into our business to be able to hit our goals.
Another reason why we undercharge is because we want our clients to like us, and we have this idea that if we charge a fair price for the work that we are doing, that our clients won't like us, [00:05:00] our people pleasing tendencies. Which a lot of female business owners have leads to over servicing our clients.
I see this every day on Instagram. I see it in my Good Money Club conversations. I see it with my one-to-one clients that we are chronically over servicing our clients. Now, how to get around this, the first thing to think about is, do you actually have a really well-defined scope? When your clients engage you, are you and are they really clear about what you are going to be doing for them, what your deliverables are, what the outcome they can likely experience is, and then when you are working for your clients, you need to be brave enough to go back to that scoping document as you are working for that client and make sure that you are delivering exactly what you said you would.
And that you are doing it to the [00:06:00] best of your ability, but that it matches the value that you said you were going to give, which matches the price that you charged your client. So the gender revenue gap is about undercharging and it's about over servicing. I think there's probably also something at play here is the visibility gap.
I think in a lot of ways it is harder in particular industries for women to be as visible as men. And we see this on stages. We see it on podcast guests. Hello, diary of a CEO. Actually hardly ever has female business owners on. He has a lot of female health professionals on, which is awesome, but most of the business professionals that he brings on are male.
It's just one example. I still really enjoy some of the episodes. There's a visibility problem for females in small business, and when we are less visible, it is much harder for us to [00:07:00] charge premium prices, and when we are not charging premium prices, we will not be able to hit the revenue goals that we need to.
We won't be hitting the same revenue goals as our male counterparts. So if you feel that you have a gender revenue gap, a couple of things to consider. How do I work on pricing myself at the price that my value matches? How do I actually put a price next to my product or service that truly matches the value that I have to offer, but also, how do I perfectly service my clients?
How do I stop over servicing my clients overdelivering, doing so much more work for my clients because I want them to like me. The truth is the goal of wanting your clients to like you is much less important than getting your clients to be satisfied with the work that you are [00:08:00] doing for them. We want happy, retained clients who want to continue to work with us.
What we don't want is clients who really like us, but aren't willing to pay for the value that we are delivering. The second money problem for female business owners that I wanna tap into is lacking confidence. So many women are lacking in financial and business confidence. Because to start with, we haven't had the right education.
Lots of women have ideas in their mind about being bad at maths, and when you think that you are bad at maths, you stop pursuing maths. So I know a lot of women who were either told by a voice in their own mind, which is really common, or perhaps they were told by a teacher or a classmate, or a parent, or a caregiver.
They were not good at maths. As soon as you start to believe that you are not good at numbers, that you are not good at money, [00:09:00] you block that part of your life. It's really hard to be confident about something that you don't understand. The main reason why we are lacking in confidence when it comes to money and finances and business is because we haven't had the right education.
Because we were told something when we were young about our ability to do maths. But another reason why we're really lacking in confidence when it comes to money and business is because we've been socialized as women to believe that money is bad. We've been socialized to believe that we need to be the good girl and the good girl doesn't arise above her station in life.
So many young women. Are told either explicitly or implicitly that we are supposed to be happy with our lot in life. We are not supposed to be greedy. We are not supposed to be aggressive. [00:10:00] We are not even supposed to be assertive in our pursuit of either making money or being successful in any part of our life.
So when these societal sort of expectations and norms, they seep into us, and there is such a belief among so many women in business that money is bad, that money is greed, that money is evil. People who make money are ruining the planet, that people who are making money are not interested in people. And I agree that there are a lot of really big businesses who are ruining the planet in the pursuit of money.
A lot of really big businesses who are much more interested in their bottom line than they are in the wellbeing of humans and society. But I really don't see that in small business. What I see in small business is that we take money and we turn it into impact. We do [00:11:00] things like employ local people. We invest in other local business owners.
We build our businesses because we are trying to create societal change. We see social problems and societal problems, and we think of ways that small business can overcome those problems, and that's how we are making money. So if this is really resonating with you, if you are lacking in financial confidence, either because you haven't received the right education or because you believe that you are not good at money, or you have been socialized to believe that money is bad, what I wanna offer you is that.
You can actually build money, confidence, even if you are bad at numbers. In inverted comm, are you a woman in business who wants to make more money and impact through your small business? Good Money Club could be for you. In Good Money Club, we have [00:12:00] no more than 45 members and in the community we are working on making and managing more money.
The doors to the club are open right now and they close on Sunday, the 5th of October, 2025. We won't be opening the doors again until next year, so if you are keen to join, the time is now. Even if you are not good with numbers, you can still build money, confidence, and it's all about seeking out information and education like you're doing right now by listening to this podcast.
It's about choosing to surround yourself with people who can both educate you and help you to feel confident and motivated. But another thing that I really want you to be considering is if you have been socialized to believe that money is bad. I want you to think about all the ways that money is good, all of the ways that you can use money and turn it [00:13:00] into a positive impact for the world.
Think about all of the ways that you make your clients lives and businesses better, and that is how you are going to start building confidence. Your ability to use money as a force for good. The third money problem for female small business owners that I wanna talk about is that we have no strategy. We have no money strategy, no financial strategy.
And the reason that we're not strategic with our money is because we are scared of it. We're scared of money, and we are scared of money because nobody taught us how to. Make it. Nobody taught us how to manage it, and nobody taught us about how to think about it. And the fact is, we need to take risks to be able to grow and be successful as small business owners.
And taking risks requires strategy in order for the risk to be worth it, [00:14:00] but instead of taking risks and being strategic with our money. So many of us female, small business owners are overwhelmed, confused, and stuck when it comes to money. What is strategy? Look, I think we can all agree that strategy is one of the most overused words on the interwebs strategy in its simplest form is saying, what do I want to achieve and how am I going to achieve it?
Strategy is as much about what you choose to do as it is about what you choose not to do. One of the things that creates overwhelm and confusion in our businesses is that we're trying to do too many things at once when you are trying to do too many things at once, and that might be offering too many services.
Offering too many options or products or having a bespoke offer, which means your client has [00:15:00] no idea how to work with you until they get on a discovery call and then receive a custom quote from you that's confusing for both you and your potential client. So when we are doing too much. We are overwhelmed, confused, and stuck.
And not only that, we're actually doing more work than we need to because for every level of complication that we have in our business, we need to do more work when we have multiple products or services that we need to market. That's more marketing. When we are trying to work with lots of different types of clients, that's more marketing when we are trying to create bespoke offers.
Rather than a strategic tailored offer that you know matches the goal of your ideal client. When we're working in a bespoke way, it is taking us so much more time to put a quote together. It's taking so much [00:16:00] more time to deliver the product or service because you're doing something different for every single client.
Now, I'm not saying that you can't customize and put high quality, highly considered, and incredible work out into the world, but if you were to be strategic about your money, you would think about what is the product or service that my perfect or my favorite, or my ideal client? What is the product or service that will deliver them exactly what they are looking for and when you are more interested in being strategic than you are about having lots of offers and being busy.
Because being busy is the opposite of being strategic. When we are focused on busy work, when we are focused on metrics that don't matter. We are not being strategic. The way [00:17:00] to be strategic with our money is first of all to try to get over the fear of money, and the only way through fear is with action.
So taking actions like. Putting your proposals out into the world, putting your prices on your website, talking with clients about what you have to offer. Every time you speak about your price. When you say the price and your process out loud, you become less scared of it because it starts to move from the unknown column of your brain to the known column.
So we want to get strategic by taking more risks, putting ourselves out there, taking action around our money, and we wanna get ourselves out of overwhelm, confusion, and feeling stuck by simplifying what we are doing with our money. Taking it back to its absolute [00:18:00] foundations, what is the product that I want people to buy from me?
When we move to being strategic and simple and clear, it makes it so much easier to overcome the money problems that come from not being strategic. So just to wrap up the episode, the three money problems that I've mentioned today are the gender revenue gap lacking in confidence and no money strategy.
We can overcome the gender revenue gap by pricing ourselves appropriately. And servicing our clients to the exact scope that we have provided to them. Rather than undercharging and over servicing our clients because we want to be liked, which is a natural human desire. Instead of pursuing being liked by our clients, we wanna pursue being valued, delivering value, and charging appropriately.
How do we tackle [00:19:00] lacking money, confidence we tackle, um, or we grow our confidence through building our education and our skills. Reminding ourselves that money is not bad, even if that is something we were taught as a child. That money is a tool that you can use to do anything you want to. And what I want you to do is focus in on how you improve the lives and businesses of your clients because that is how you are using money as a force for good.
How we overcome the third money problem of female business owners, which is that we do not have any money. Strategy is to simplify, clarify, and start focusing on what we do and don't want to do in our businesses so that we can make making money, managing money, and keeping money so much easier. A strategy is deciding [00:20:00] what you want and how you are going to achieve it.
And you can do that yourself. You can move from being overwhelmed, confused, and stuck simply by reducing the amount of products and services that you offer. I really hope this has given you some food for thought, some interesting insights into what I see as a chartered accountant and money coach. With 25 years under my belt, I see these money problems for female businesses every single day.
And the truth is that we can overcome these money problems when we put some attention into them. So I'd love to hear from you. Jump onto the Money Secrets Podcast Instagram account, and send me a dm. I wanna hear from you. I want to hear about how you are overcoming these money problems in your small business, and I will see you next week.
Outro
Thank you so much for listening right up to the end. I [00:21:00] 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.
