We're making small business harder than it needs to be (EP#67)

Season #3 May 12, 2026

In this episode of Money Secrets, Fi shares a real behind-the-scenes story from planning the Ripple Retreat and how a frustrating customer experience sparked this episode about sales, communication, and the way small business owners make things harder for themselves.

After trying to book a winery tour for a group retreat, Fi found herself receiving a $5,000 invoice before her questions had even been answered, followed by repeated payment reminders and no follow up info. This is a powerful example of how many businesses unintentionally lose trust, connection, and sales momentum during the inquiry process.

From proposals and follow-ups to personalisation and communication, this episode is packed with practical reminders about what actually helps people feel confident enough to buy.

🎧 Tune in to learn how thoughtful communication, stronger sales processes, and a more intentional customer experience can make making money feel easier.

The doors to Good Money Club are open right now. You deserve your own Board of Directors, and you'll get that and more inside this community for women business owners.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Why leads should be treated with more care and attention. A new enquiry is a real opportunity, and communication shapes whether someone chooses to work with you.
How poor communication can quietly lose sales. Sending invoices too early or failing to answer questions can create friction and reduce trust.
Why a proposal can strengthen your sales process. A thoughtful proposal helps clients feel confident and understand what makes your business different.
The importance of making clients feel seen and understood. Personalised communication and thoughtful follow-up help clients feel supported and respected.
How follow-ups can build trust instead of pressure. Great follow-ups answer questions, offer reassurance, and strengthen the relationship.
How small tweaks can make making money easier. Simple improvements to your systems and communication can significantly improve the client experience.
The role of customer experience in standing out from competitors. The way you guide people through the enquiry process matters more than you think.
How small business owners unintentionally make things harder for themselves. Many businesses focus on getting leads, but not enough on nurturing them.
Why respecting the size of a client investment matters. Clients spending thousands of dollars want to feel informed, reassured, and looked after.
How better systems can create calmer, more sustainable growth. Thoughtful sales processes reduce confusion and help business feel more intentional.

💡 If this conversation resonates and you want hands-on support, you can work with Fi one-on-one or join Good Money Club, where small business owners learn how to make and manage money with clarity, confidence, and impact.

- Good Money Club (doors are open now)

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We’ve come so far as a society in many ways, but money is one of the areas where progress hasn’t been enough. If we want to tip the scales in favour of marginalised people, it starts with understanding the secret: money in small business.

In this podcast, Money Secrets, host Fiona (Fi) Johnston, Chartered Accountant, small business advocate, and impact enthusiast, dives into the conversations we need to have about money. The secrets that once stayed behind closed doors (or on the golf course) are finally out in the open.

Fi’s mission? To get more money into the hands of good people, like you. She believes small businesses can change the world, but only if we're making money and managing it well.

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Thank you to everyone involved for bringing this podcast together. We are excited to hear from you with any questions, feedback or suggestions for future episodes that you might have. Send a Direct Message to @peach.business

If you are excited for what’s to come, please like this episode, follow the podcast and share it with your friends. We are thrilled you're here.

Check out my FREE Pricing Training you need to set your prices for profitability.

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This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin 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 respect to elders both past and present, and note that sovereignty has never been ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00 Fiona Johnston
We always hear this story, this rhetoric of how difficult it is to be a small business owner, and it is difficult to be a small business owner. But there are so many ways that we make it hard for ourselves. When we have a lead in our inbox, why do we not treat them with more reverence? Why do we not put more attention into trying to make sure that we are putting our best foot forward during that process?

Money Secrets Intro
Are you a small business owner who'd love to be making more money while making positive change in the world? You're in the right place, friend. Hi, I'm Fi Johnston, a chartered accountant and money coach obsessed with small business. In The Money Secrets Podcast, I share strategies that you can use to make more money without working harder. You'll hear successful small business owners share what they've learned about money and business, and I'll help you to think differently and shift your [00:01:00] perspectives about money so you can grow your business and your impact. My mission is to get more money into the hands of good business owners like you.

Acknowledgement of Country
This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin 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 ceded.
This always was and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.

Fi
I wanna tell you a little story about a business that I interacted with recently. So as you might know, Mia and I are running Ripple Festival at the Gold Coast, so I'm interacting with a lot of businesses for the first time. One of the things that we are doing alongside the festival is we're running a retreat for our members.

It'll be the third time we've done it, [00:02:00] and yeah, we, we know what we're doing this time. And, uh, one of the things that I've been trying to do is find a wine tour business. Now, because there's 25 of us, we need a pretty big bus. So I did some Googling. I've been looking for winery tours at the Gold Coast that will take us out to Tamborine Mountain and show us a good time.

I stumbled onto a website of a winery tour, I'm not gonna say the name of the business, and what I liked about it was that they explained how many people could go on a tour, and they literally laid out exactly, you know, this is the price per head for this many people, this is the price per head for that many people.

And so I was like, great. They had different options on the website. I chose an option that I thought would work. I got in touch with the organization and I said, "Hey"- Love to make a booking for 26 people for this winery tour on this date. I had a couple of questions, and they came back to me. They didn't really answer the [00:03:00] question.

One of the issues we had was the pickup time. So they wanted to pick us up quite early, and so I said, "Is there any chance before we go ahead of changing the pickup time to be more suitable for our group?" Um, they said, "Yep, we can be flexible on the time." I said something like, "I think we can handle that," and next minute I just got an invoice.

There was no other information, just an invoice for more than $5,000. There was no further communication about the tour. There was no information about anything else. They didn't ask me any other questions. They just sent me an invoice, and then over the, the next two weeks I received five reminders that that invoice was due, and no other correspondence.

When I finally did have the time to get back in touch with them, I said, um, you know, "Thanks for the follow-up, and we absolutely wanna go ahead with this tour, [00:04:00] but I still have quite a few questions unanswered, and I didn't actually confirm the booking with you. So can we work through these different questions that I have?"

Um, one of the questions was about pickup time. One of the questions was about the fact that we have some non-drinkers in our group, and how would that work in their tour. I had some questions around, what happens if we pay this whole invoice now, and then, you know, it doesn't end up going ahead due to the kind of situation that's happening in the world?

There's all sorts of stuff going on around the limited availability of fuel and, um, yeah, there's a, just a, a little risk in the back of my mind that, you know, what happens in the event of, you know, us paying for this tour and then it not being able to go ahead for various reasons. I also asked about, what happens if we need to make changes to the number of people in our booking, et cetera, et cetera.

So I'm yet [00:05:00] to hear back from them, and I really hope that they're able to get back to me with those questions so that we can go ahead with a booking. So I wanna break down what I think that they could have done better in their sales process, and this is something for all small business owners to think about.

Okay. So first of all, I kind of guesstimate that a 25 people booking on a random Saturday in autumn is probably a pretty decent-sized booking. So was it appropriate for them to just send a couple of sentences in an email back to my inquiry? What I think they could have done differently is rather than just responding with a couple of lines in an email, they could have potentially asked if we could have a phone call or a Zoom call to talk about more of the details, find out a little bit more about what we were wanting to do, et cetera.

Even if they didn't wanna have a conversation with me, I think what [00:06:00] they could have done, rather than just send me a few dot points in an email and then an invoice before I'd even confirmed that we definitely wanted to go ahead, they could have actually sent me through a really great proposal. They could have sent me through a document that talked me through, you know, "This is what we do differently from other tours.

Here's what the experience is gonna look like for you and your party. Here's some testimonials or some stories from past clients that we've worked with." And they could have gone on to explain a little bit more about the wineries that they work with, the breweries that they work with, and then they could have explained, "Here's the different pricing options that exist.

Here's the kind of FAQs. Here's what happens with your refund if the tour doesn't go ahead. Here's the, some information about pickup times and drop-off times," et cetera, et cetera. They could have created that document once, and then used it [00:07:00] every time somebody submits an inquiry through their website. I don't understand why small business owners are treating this part of the sales process as so unimportant.

There are many winery tour businesses at the Gold Coast, many that I can choose from. So they are competing for my business with other winery tour operators, but they're also competing against all of the other activities that I could choose to do with my group. So it's not set in stone that we need to go on a winery tour.

It's not set in stone that I need to go on a winery tour with this organization. So I'm still yet to be kind of sold to or convinced about why it is that I should be working with this particular organization.

Good Money Club Ad
I'm gonna guess that you are a small business owner who really cares about making money and impact.Me too. It's why I designed Good Money [00:08:00] Club, which is a place for female small business owners to come together and learn about financial literacy, how to make and manage more money, and how to think differently about money so that you get different results. We talk about money every single week, and I promise you, it doesn't feel gross The more you learn about money, the more you immerse yourself into the kind of strategies that work for small business owners. You are gonna see yourself feel calm with money, and that is gonna lead to you making more revenue, paying yourself more, and really thinking about money in a whole different way that feels good. Check out the link in the show notes to find out more about Good Money Club, and we would love to have you in there.

So I think they could have really improved that part of the proposal or getting to the point of booking in by either [00:09:00] having a Zoom or phone call with me and/or sending a beautiful proposal. Maybe it's six pages. It's something that you can create in a Canva document and then use over and over and over.

Another thing that they could have done in their follow-up, why send me a reminder about an invoice payment five times in two weeks before we've even discussed whether or not we are going ahead? There are so many different messages that they could have sent me in the follow-up to my initial inquiry.

They could have been asking was there any further information that I required before going ahead. Did I have any questions about how the invoice payment needed to be processed? Did I have any questions about their payment terms? Or, "Hey, did you know that we have a special policy for non-drinkers where we only charge half the normal ticket price?"

There are so many different [00:10:00] things they could have said in those follow-ups. One of the follow-ups could have been something like, "Hey, sometimes we find with our tour bookings that it can be a little bit overwhelming trying to decide about all of the activities you're taking your guests on. Here's three things we want you to know about coming on tour with us so that you can make a decision knowing exactly how we do things and what you can expect from a day with us."

They could have also potentially picked up the phone and called or sent a voice message or something like that to kind of try to connect a little more, uh, with me as the person wanting to invest money into their business. So I find it fascinating that we always hear this story, this rhetoric of how difficult it is to be a small business owner, and it is difficult to be a small business owner.

There are so many different things that we need to take care of. We need to be marketing [00:11:00] ourselves. We need to set our prices. We need to be constantly trying to stay visible and be remembered. We're trying to find team members. We're trying to find contractors, people to delegate and outsource to. There are so many different things that we are trying to do as business owners But there are so many ways that we make it hard for ourselves.

When we have a lead in our inbox, why do we not treat them with more reverence? Why do we not put more attention into trying to make sure that we are putting our best foot forward during that process? It's like sometimes I help my clients with recruitment, and it shocks me how little effort candidates put into their cover letters.

Now, I understand that when you are applying for a job, there's a lot of work involved, and you might be applying for multiple jobs at the same time. But taking that extra [00:12:00] few minutes to personalize a cover letter, even just mentioning the name of the company that you are trying to apply for a job with, is gonna put you so far ahead of other candidates.

So in the same vein, we've got a lead. We have somebody in our inbox who wants to book a winery tour, or they wanna book insert whatever it is that you do. Let's treat that with some reverence, and let's also think about what are the processes or the steps that I can put in place in this scenario to help me be able to make the best use of this person that is in front of me.

You know, they say, uh, two birds in the hand is better than one... No. One hand in the, in... One bird in the hand is better than two hands in, birds in the bush. Oh, I have absolutely mangled that, but you know what I mean. When you have a lead in your inbox, that is the person that you need to be putting your absolute focus on, making sure that, [00:13:00] that you have allowed them to feel that you understand what it is they're aiming to do, what it is that you can do that might be different from your competitors to actually help them, making them feel seen, respected.

Respect the amount of money they're about to drop with you. If somebody wants to drop $5,000 or $10,000 with you, that is a lot of money for a small business owner. It's a lot of money for anyone So we need to treat that amount of money with respect. We need to have sales processes that actually help support getting somebody from being interested in working with us to booking in to work with us.

So those are my thoughts from my little story of trying to book a winery tour for the Ripple Retreat. I think that small business owners sometimes make things harder for ourselves than they need to be. Sometimes I think we get stuck in this mindset that everything is hard and nothing is working. But actually there are so [00:14:00] many small tweaks that we can make to make money making easier.

I will see you in the next episode.

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, could 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.

We're making small business harder than it needs to be (EP#67)

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