00:00:00] Fi Johnston
Are you a small business owner who is saying to yourself often that you never have time for any of the things that you want to do in your business? Me too. I feel like time is always this slippery running clock that just goes so much faster than I want it to. And I meet a lot of small business owners who really want to have the time to work on their business, to work on their marketing, but they just can't see how they are gonna find the time to do that.
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] 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 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 seated. This always was and always will be. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
Hi there. It's fee here, the host of the Money Secrets podcast. And for those of you who don't know me, I am a chartered accountant. A money coach and somebody who is completely obsessed with small business. I have been working with small business owners for 25 years, and I've been running Peach Business, which is my first business for 15 years.
So I know a few things about small business, and I know a [00:02:00] lot about the financial side of small business too. Today I wanna talk to you about this concept of time. Now, in my opinion, time is the most valuable and misunderstood resource of the small business world. Something happened recently, which just got me thinking about another way of coming at this concept of time.
So I was in a mentoring session with one of my client's team members. So for some of my really long-term CFO level clients, I actually work with their team members as well as the founder of the business. So this particular person that I was working with is the marketing manager of Mount Zero Olives.
Shout out to Ollie if you just happen to be listening. At the end of one of our recent strategy [00:03:00] sessions, Ollie said to me that he finds our time together really valuable, which is awesome. That is of course my goal, but he also said to me that he actually feels like he has less work to do after the end of a session with me than he did before.
And thank you, Ali, for explaining so perfectly the value of investing time in strategy, mentoring and coaching. So this is a really common story that we are saying out loud and in our minds as business owners, that we are just too busy. And so what Ollie said at the end of that marketing strategy session that we had is exactly right.
When you spend time getting clear about what are the most important things for you to do from that moment on, you actually end up with less work. You actually end up with less overwhelm, you end up with less things on your to-do list. Because talking [00:04:00] about strategy, which in uh, simple terms is what is the outcome I'm trying to achieve and what do I think the steps are to get from here to there?
So when you put time into talking to someone like me who is a strategist at heart, we actually help to take things off your list. What I also find is that just the mere act of talking about whatever is going on for you in your business, whether you are talking to a strategist, a friend, or even just talking out loud to yourself, it actually helps you to clear your thoughts so that you can then get on with the next bit.
So one of the most underrated reasons why I suggest that you consider getting some coaching, mentoring, or working with a strategist such as myself is because that time that you invest in talking about things like. Hey, fee. I can't seem to work [00:05:00] out why? I just cannot seem to pay myself for my business.
I'm working so hard. I don't have any time left in the day. I'm struggling to have a social life. I'm struggling to invest time in my family because everything is going into my business, but I'm still not paying myself enough and I don't know how to find the time to do more, to bring in more money and pay myself more.
And the truth is that what you actually need to do in this scenario is less. What you need to work out is what are the actions that I actually need to take in order to be able to pay myself well? And the kind of advice that I would give somebody in that scenario would be to say, are you actually working with the client that values what you do the most?
Are you working with the type of client or business or person who has the budget and the desire and [00:06:00] the need to be able to really take what you have got to offer and really turn it into something? So for example, you might currently be working with businesses in their first year of business. Look, we all love working with startups and that energy that comes from somebody who's just started out.
But the fact is most of those businesses don't actually have much budget, and they actually are not able to leverage really high quality advice and services at that point because they're still figuring it out. So a simple act for you if you are finding that you are working with a lot of really early stage businesses.
You might wanna consider repositioning yourself as a designer, a copywriter, a web developer, a coach, a consultant, whatever it is that you do for experienced or established business owners, that is instantly going to change the amount that you can [00:07:00] charge that client, because that client can actually leverage the advice or the service or the product that you are delivering to them so much more than a startup can.
Another thing that I would say to somebody who feels like they are just working all the time, especially a solo business owner, if you are just working all the time, but you feel like you are not able to pay yourself well, or there just doesn't seem to be enough money in your business. The first piece of advice I'd give you is go and get yourself on the Good Money Club wait list because we may have a few spots opening up before the end of the year, and we will definitely be doing an intake in early 2026.
So Good Money Club is where I meet with my Good Money Club members every single week on Zoom to talk about money. We talk about pricing ideal clients. We talk about how to manage and spend your money. We also talk about [00:08:00] how to think and behave with money so that it actually works for you. So that's my first piece of advice.
Go and jump on the Good Money Club wait list, which you can [email protected] au. My second piece of advice would be to say to you, are you actually charging the right prices? Because if you are working your guts out and you are somehow not making the sort of money that you want to. The first thing to look at is your price.
Are you actually charging for the value that you are creating? Are you competitive with other alternative service or product providers that are servicing a similar client to you?
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The next thing I'd get you to look at is are you over servicing or overdelivering? This is a huge problem in the small business world. Underpricing is a really big problem, and over servicing is the same problem on the other side of the coin. So be honest with yourself. Are you actually getting paid for all of the work you are doing for your clients?
Or are you doing unseen, [00:10:00] invisible out of scope work for your clients? That's not being paid for. Unfortunately. The person that is to blame for this is you. The really cool thing is that is something that you can change immediately. So you wanna think about things like having a really clear brief, having a really clear scope, understanding exactly what your client is paying you for, and then doing exactly that.
So that may mean that you are actually free up a huge amount of time to be able to do paid work for other clients. So see how, these are just a couple of examples of why when you talk to somebody like myself or another really qualified, experienced strategist or coach, they can actually help you to find time in your week to be able to do whatever you want to do with it.
That might be spending more time with your friends or family. [00:11:00] It might be investing more time into your physical or mental health, or it might be freeing up more hours to work on your business. So that you can be making more money into the future. But I hear from a lot of founders that they don't understand how other people are able to do so much marketing, and I get it.
I actually thought that for a really long time, at the start of my business, I couldn't understand how other people seem to be able to get so much marketing out the door and still deliver work for clients. So let me tell you how you do it. Every time you choose doing work for a client over doing work for yourself, you are making a financial decision.
The decision that you are making is to earn that short term fee from that client or earning that short term revenue from a product that you sell. [00:12:00] Over investing time in building assets such as great marketing, great branding, great copy, great communications, even just stopping and thinking about what you are doing with your business is investing into your future revenue.
So let me say that again. Every time you prioritize working for a client over investing time in your business. You are taking a short-term revenue hit in exchange for a long-term cost because it's impossible to be able to increase your value as a business owner if you spend all of your time delivering revenue for your clients, right?
So spending all of your time working for your clients might make you more money in the short term, but it makes you less money in the long term. Investing time into your marketing, your branding, your comms, your business [00:13:00] development, your sales process, investing money into your business strategy, who your ideal clients are, what you wanna do for them, and how you wanna invest and spend your money.
These are the kind of investments of time that are going to have a long term return for you. So looking at the return on effort, when we look at the return on effort of doing an extra project for a client, cool. We might make a short term couple of thousand dollars or whatever that looks like for you, but you may have lost the opportunity to generate an extra $20,000 of revenue over the next couple of years in your business by actually investing time in what is going to help your brand.
Your personal brand, your business brand, and your value as a service or product provider, those are the sort of things that are going to bring you revenue for a really long time. So back to the initial [00:14:00] question or the initial framing of this episode, which is that time is the most important resource, the most expensive resource that we have as business owners, especially if we have an established business.
In the first couple of years of business, I would say that money is more expensive than time because we have a lot of time because we haven't actually developed our business yet. But once you get to the point where you have a fairly full client load because you've done the work to build that, now you time is more expensive than your money.
So thinking about things like, how do I build a better business for the long term? And that might mean investing in things like coaching and strategy and mentoring. It might mean investing in things like a new website, some SEO, some great copy or words. It might mean investing in a [00:15:00] social media strategy.
It might mean investing in a campaign or however it is that you wanna market yourself. So when we make these investments of our time and money into our business, we are setting ourselves up for more revenue, more profit, and more take home pay in the future. And we just don't give ourselves that opportunity when we are spending all of our time week to week working for clients.
The other thing that I wanna mention before I wrap this short episode up is to say that one of the really cool benefits of being in a group program like My Good Money Club, or my business Bestie Mia's Marketing Circle, which I am a member of. One of the really cool benefits of being in a small community like that is that you actually get to talk about your business.
You get to say out loud what you're working on, what's coming up next, [00:16:00] what you're having challenges with, what you're really excited about, what you need advice around, who can help you with getting a connection or an introduction to somebody who knows a service provider who can do X, Y, or z. The benefit of being able to talk about what's happening in your business is an amazing return on your effort.
So if you are someone who knows that your business could benefit from more intention, I urge you to consider reaching out to a mentor or coach like me, by the way. You can contact me anytime. The Money Secrets podcast Instagram handle is just waiting there for you to send me a dm. Uh, send me a DM anytime.
Reach out to me or another coach or strategist that you are considering working with and really think about if I invest this time or this money into my business. What could [00:17:00] be the potential return? And if I invest my time into getting into a small group program where I actually get to talk about my business each week with a small group of people on Zoom.
The return that you will get on that effort and that time that you are investing in your business is huge. So if you are someone who is still telling yourselves that you are too busy to work on your business now you know why That is simply not true, and I really hope that you can start doing some more work on your business because that is how.
You are gonna make more money in the long term. Thanks for listening, and I will see you next week.
Outro
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 [00:18:00] 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.
