Donna Hann
I want you to succeed as a business owner and really grow your business so that you can live an amazing lifestyle. And making money is a very important element of running your business. So, I'm going to share with you 10 ways to make more money, ranging from low cost to high cost ideas, I'm going to be sharing with you three ways to save money within your business, and the most impactful way to make more money that will have a return for many, many years to come.
Donna Hann
Hello, I'm Donna Hann, a business coach, and an online course creator. And this is the She's in Business podcast. You can think of me as your business bestie, who's a few steps ahead of where you are right now. As a monk fueled with ambition and determination, I've created and sold three businesses. I've learned the lessons made mistakes, and I understand the daily juggle in the hustle. I also know what it's like when relationships fray and burnout taps you on the shoulder. That was my world until I reshaped and transformed the way I ran my six figure business. Today I help women to transform their businesses and go from being the overwhelmed entrepreneur to becoming the thriving entrepreneur feeling energized, empowered and fulfilled within their business lifestyle. I want to inspire your business journey and help you ever stopped spinning your wheels, because I want you to burn bright instead of burning out. And I'll invite other entrepreneurs to share their real life stories too, because I want you to know that you're not alone. You can be the savvy entrepreneur that you were born to be, and enjoy the freedom to do the things and be present with the people that mean the most to you. So if you're ready to rise to the next level and build a business by design, this is the shears in business podcast for moms who are made for more.
Donna Hann
Hey, there, it's Donna Hann, it's your business buddy back for another episode talking about money 10 ways to make more money in your business. Because let's be real, one of the reasons that you started your business was to make money. Otherwise, it turns out to be a pretty expensive hobby, I want you to succeed as a business owner and, and grow your business so that you can live an amazing lifestyle that is perfect just for you and your family. And making money is a really important element of running your business, of course. So I'm going to start with the low or no cost options, the low hanging fruit that you should absolutely be using to make more money in your business. Now let me preface this by saying that I am going to be talking about some options that are going to cost you money. How does that work when I'm talking about ways to make money, but telling you at the same time that you may need to spend money, it's all about making sure that there is a relative return upon investment. And you'll hear me comment lots of times as I go through this is you really need to be tracking and measuring and making sure that you have a set of metrics that is right for you and your business to ensure that whatever investment you're making, to make more money is actually going to be making you more money.
Donna Hann
So let's look at low or no cost options to start with. You can increase your customer loyalty by offering loyalty programs and the occasional discounts. Now this is twofold, it increases your revenue. But secondly, it also rewards those rewards. And those discounts are showing appreciation for your clients. So you're also giving customer love, which is so important in running your business is making sure that you're always really loving up on your customers because we want that repeat customer reciprocity. And we also want our clients and customers to be referring new clients and customers back into our business, which is the second part of this one is leveraging existing customer relationships to generate referrals. It's a great strategy. Make sure of course, that you're thanking them for any referrals that they send your way that that is a really low or even no cost way of bringing more money through the doors of your business.
Donna Hann
The next one is to utilize low cost digital tools and software to streamline your operations and reduce your overhead costs. I also love this one because streamlining your operations can save you lots of time. And as we know time is money and it also adds value to your business. So if you want to sell your business in the future, you actually have the operations the procedures in place so that someone else can step into your shoes and start making money straightaway. So that makes your business valuable.
Donna Hann
The third one I've got for you today in the low or no cost area is leveraging online marketplaces and platforms to increase your reach and visibility. So how can you take what you already do to promote your business on social media and on your website, and really optimize it. To be really effective at this, you should be tracking your numbers to know which levers to pull and drive up your results when it comes to digital marketing to new clients and customers. And also to your existing customers, you don't want to break what's not broken. So that's why it's really important to be tracking and measuring your numbers.
Donna Hann
The fourth thing you can do is take advantage of local business resources. So there are lots of grants available, both on a state level and a national level and also in a local level that will help you to really grow your business. Last year, I worked with a private client for 16 weeks, she was successful in securing a grant and we created an intensive business coaching package that included weekly sessions for 16 weeks, she paid for all of it with a small business grant. So it's definitely worthwhile doing a bit of research, finding what grants would be suitable for you and your business and throwing your hat in the ring and putting an application in for them. My fifth idea here in the low or no cost area, is to increase your prices. If your prices are currently below market value, in that you haven't maxed out what people are willing to pay for it, then you could look at raising your prices. If you haven't already listened to Episode 41 of this podcast, it's called Getting your pricing right with my guest, Lauren law, it's a really great podcast to listen to. So maybe jump to that one next, in that we talk about value based pricing versus cost based pricing and how you can use pricing psychology to make sure that the price point that you're setting for your goods or your services are making you the most money. So go check that one out. Now I want to move on to high and medium cost options.
Donna Hann
Now, as I said at the beginning of the podcast, yes, these things are costing you money, but sometimes you need to spend money to make money. The secret to that though, is making sure that you are measuring the results the whole way along to ensure that your return on investment or your ROI is what it should be. So the first one here is to expand your product or service offering to increase revenue, there can be upfront costs associated with creating a new product or a new service. So presuming that you have worked through a feasibility study to ensure that you get that ROI on the investment of money and time that it takes to set something new up. And to make sure that there is demand for it in the marketplace, this can be a really great way to make more money. So have a little think about how you could serve your current ideal clients and customers with something new that you haven't presented to them before. Another one is to offer subscription services to create reoccurring revenue. Again, there can be upfront costs associated here, there might be specific software that you need to invest in, potentially, you might need to increase your team especially if you are a product based subscription service. Maybe you might need to increase or update the equipment that you have in order to meet the needs of the subscription model when it goes really well.
Donna Hann
But again, there needs to be a feasibility study so that you can ensure that you're not wasting time and money in developing something that either is already you know flooded in the market or that there isn't market demand for it. Next is paid digital marketing strategies to reach more of your customers. So I've put this in as a medium level cost which can easily expand out to a high level cost. In order for you to get an ROI or return on investment. You need to have a reasonable marketing budget and also be really conscious of what you are measuring. When you are looking at if this is the right avenue for you to put money into.
Donna Hann
So this can be a really can be quite complicated, you know, setting up digital ads through Facebook and Instagram, it can be so easy to just to throw money literally throw spaghetti at the wall, and hope that it sticks. It can cost you a lot of money and a lot of time, a lot of frustration. And that can be really damaging to your business. So if you haven't set up paid digital marketing strategies before, specifically, Instagram and Facebook advertising, I think that it's worthwhile using the services of a really great social media ads strategist to ensure that your marketing budget is well spent in targeting your ideal customers who will buy from you. Because there's no point in creating an ad that runs for $10 a day if you are literally throwing it up the wall. Ideally, you want to run ad campaigns that is generating more sales than the ads are costing you. And like I said, this ties back into knowing your numbers, tracking your results for sales and conversions and understanding either the average value per sale if you're a product based business, or the lifetime value of a customer if your service based business to know that the advertising investment that you're making, is going to return back to you in sales.
Donna Hann
The next thing I want to talk to you about is if you have a large marketing budget, you could invest that with a sales and marketing agency to really help lift your visibility, and get deeper into ways that you can create a strategy around conversions and sales. Or you could take that and invest it into possibly growing your team so that you can hire so that you can speed up the scaling of your business to get more sales and revenue through the door.
Donna Hann
Now when you're hiring look thinking about hiring a team, you need to be really, really mindful as to how that team member is actually going to serve your customers or improve what what it is that you're doing within your business. A team it's great to help you to increase the amount of customers you can serve. Again, you want to be tracking your numbers to ensure that you're getting a return on the wages and the superannuation and the taxes that you'll need to pay to employ people. So yes, your expenses will go up, but your revenue, and therefore your profit should also be going up to it should be relative. So you need to be reviewing your profit, annual and loss statements, your profit and loss your p&l, you need to be reviewing that at least once a month to make sure that your profit is growing, and you're not bleeding your business dry. We want to make sure that your profit percentage is really really healthy, especially when you're making investments into team or agencies and things like that. So just things to be mindful of. Now when I come back from the break, I'm going to share three ways to save money in your business. And the most impactful way to make more money in your business which will generate a return for years to come.
Donna Hann
One of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and your business is to surround yourself with like minded women who will support you, inspire you, and celebrate with you when you reach your goals. I'm creating a community of savvy women in business. And I'd like to invite you to join my free Facebook group. In the group, I share free templates I check in with the members of the group on a regular basis. And I jump in live every week for coffee and coaching. And that's where I share some extra business tips. I answer any burning business questions you might have and help to connect you with other members of the group. It's free to join and I'd love to see you there. Use the group search function in Facebook, type in she's in business with Donna Hann and you'll be sure to find it.
Donna Hann
Okay, so we've talked about 10 ways to make more money. But how about three ways to save money in your business? The first thing is to establish relationships with vendors and suppliers and see if you can negotiate better deals. It's often the small expenses that really add up so you know bank fees, shop around for a zero fee account. Talk to your suppliers and vendors and build a relationship with them become one of their preferred clients and then start to negotiate better deals with them. Again, also, you might like to shop around. You want to take advantage of tax and deductions, tax credits and deductions to reduce your tax burden. Now this is really one that you need to discuss with your accountant. Ask loads of questions and start to plan for tax time now what deductions can you be making? What can you claim? What can't you claim, get really clear on those things. So those, that's the first few ways that you can save money in your business.
Donna Hann
The third way that you can save money in your business is to look at increasing efficiency, and reducing costs by streamlining your processes, and automating your tasks. Time has money. And you can reduce the cost of your time and the time that perhaps you're paying in staff wages, if you can systemize and streamline regular processes. And the chances are that it won't take you too long to sit down and really work out what the processes are. Once you've documented them, often, it's like, oh, my goodness, we could do that so much better, we could shortcut here, or we could add this system in here. And, you know, it can end up being that you can save yourself a lot of time, which then means you will save wages at the end of the pay period as well. The other thing you can do here in line with increasing efficiency and reducing costs, is automations. There are so many great tools available that can completely automate some of your business processes, you'd be crazy not to take advantage of that to save time and money.
Donna Hann
So those are my three ways to save money in your business, establishing relationships with your vendors and suppliers to negotiate better deals, taking advantage of tax credits and deductions to reduce your tax burden and increasing efficiency and reducing costs by streamlining processes and automatic automating tasks. Now my final thought to share with you today is what I believe to be the most impactful way for you to make more money in your business, which is going to generate a return for years and years to come. And that is investing in yourself and your business with training and professional development. There are different tiers of this, again, I'm going to go through a no cost, low cost, medium and high cost option for you to really level up your training and professional development. So low cost training, podcast, great way to learn from others. free webinars is something that I often offer. And I've got one coming up very soon. So make sure you're on my mailing list or follow me on on Instagram if you want to know about that. But those are two really affordable no cost options, a podcast, tuning into any free webinars that you can having a look on YouTube, seeing what's around really great ways for you to start to get some professional development training. If you can't currently afford to invest in any a low cost option is reading books, how great are books for, you know, 35 bucks, sometimes less you can buy a business book that will absolutely teach you so many things that you can implement into your business, online masterclasses summits, workshops, doing short courses like my ready to rise program, you know, it's finding things that are affordable to you, but also I'm going to get you the results.
Donna Hann
So my ready to rise program is a hybrid. So it's an online course and a group coaching program that runs for eight weeks, it will help you to get clarity on your direction and take your business to the next level. The third or medium cost I guess level that you could look at is potentially joining a membership. This is generally a monthly subscription model or perhaps even an annual model, where you are getting a whole bundle of training, which can be masterclasses planning sessions. Sometimes it includes online networking, and sometimes even group coaching. So those kinds of memberships are usually more expensive than your short courses. But definitely an amazing thing to be a part of. I do have a membership at the moment it is only available to those who have already completed my ready to rise program. It's called soaring to success. And yeah, you if you want to jump in, you're going to have to do ready to rise first because one leads into the other. The high cost option is moving into private coaching. So again, this is available to you if you prefer to work with me in that way. It's the fastest and most effective way to progress your business because it's tailored specifically to your needs your wants and your desires. And you know we can really get to the the base of the problem if there's something going on within your finances that you're unsure of what's you know what's happening? How do you increase your profit margins, all of that kind of stuff, you know, when you do your private coaching sessions, it can really fast track your business towards more profitability. So all of these things are available to you. And it's not just me, you know, like there are other people who offer these things as well. So I think my advice here would be to find the right type of training the right person to take you from where you are to where you want to go. And, you know, really allow yourself to step in with both feet, and know that the investment that you're making today will return back to you not only on a personal level, but of course, on a business level for many, many years to come. You can discover all of the things that I have mentioned, if you want to work with me, they're all there on my website. So I would love to work with you.
Donna Hann
I'm pretty sure that was more than 10 ways to make more money in your business. But I always like to over deliver, because I truly appreciate your time in tuning into the podcast each week. And I would love it if you would take the time to write and review the shooting business podcast and maybe even share it with one of your business buddies. Because together we can make a really positive impact on women in small business business. And that means the world to me, and I'm sure it would mean the world to them as well if you could share it with them. So go make some money. Have an amazing day, and I'll see you next time. Bye.
Donna Hann
Thank you for listening to this episode of The She's in Business podcast.I hope you enjoyed it. Please share it on Instagram and Facebook and I'd be so grateful if you could leave me a review on iTunes. Be sure to include your business name and your Insta handles so I can give you a shout out to if you want to know more about what I do the programs that I offer and how you can work with me then head over to donnahann.com and follow me on Instagram at donna Hann_coach. I hope this podcast inspires you to be courageous to step into your potential and take action on building a successful and profitable business beyond what you thought was possible.
