Financial and Lifestyle Freedom for UK Business Owners

There are three steps that I like to look at, both in my own business and with clients, to evaluate whether or not you should actually stop one of your revenue streams in your business. The first thing to consider is, are you actually enjoying delivering that programme or service? Now, this might seem a little bit of a funny thing to start with, but actually, if you’re not enjoying it, then it’s going to be draining your energy. It’s going to be draining your resources and your creativity and your time and all those things. Firstly, ask yourself if you are personally delivering it or if your team is delivering it, do you or do they enjoy delivering the programme and service?

That is set one. Set one, ask yourself. Be really, really honest. Do you enjoy delivering this programme? Do you enjoy delivering this service? You want to look at, do you enjoy the content? Does it still excite you? Do you enjoy the type of people that you’re working with within that? Is that something that you actually like doing on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis? You can therefore see yourself continuing to do that or not. That is the first thing to consider. Do you actually enjoy it?

The second thing, what we want to do with the second point is evaluate whether delivering that programme or service is actually in line with your vision. Okay? What I mean by that is I don’t just mean the business vision. I mean the vision you have for your life as a whole because let’s say for example that delivering this programme is very intensive on your own personal time yet the vision you have for your life and for your business is to be working five-hour work weeks. Those two are just not going to come together properly. What we need to do is work out whether the programme that you’re thinking about, the service that you’re thinking about, does it actually stack up to the longterm vision you have for your business and the model that you’re running your business on, and whatever you want that to eventually be. Whatever product and type eventually is for you. Does it actually stack up?

Or are you building up this programme and actually when you think about what you want your business to look like in one year, two years, five years, 10 years, this can’t possibly fit in because there’s no way to deliver it in the way that you want in your life, the way you want your life to look. There’s no way to deliver that in the way you want your life to look. That is number two. First of all, do you enjoy it? Second of all, is it actually in line with the vision you have for your life? Does this business model and where this programme or service sits within this business model work for you in the longterm with the longterm vision that you have for your life?

These first two might sound much softer than you may have thought that I was going to speak about. But these are really, really important because these are the things that actually shape your day. These are things that actually shape your business and fundamentally shape your life. Unless these few things are actually working for you, you’re going to drain energy. You’re going to be resentful of your business. You’re going to be resentful of the time it takes up and all those types of things.

No matter how well people are paying you to deliver this programme or service, if you don’t enjoy it and it’s not in line with your vision, fundamentally, it’s not going to lead you to the place you want to get to. It’s not going to get you to where you want to be in business. That is why these two things are crucial when you are looking at which programmes, which services you might want to stop in your business. Actually, I really encourage you on a pretty regular basis to actually review your programmes and services, particularly with these two things in mind as well as the third thing that I’m about to share with you now.

The third thing, and this is probably more expected from an accountant, the question is, is your programme or service truly profitable? You need to sit down and say, “Okay, how much are people paying me for this? What is it costing me to deliver?” We want to make sure that you are putting in every cost there. For example, if it takes up three hours a week of your VA’s time within your private paid Facebook group to deliver this programme, you need to be factoring that in as well to the calculations. If you have a specific piece of software that you have purchased in order to help you run this programme, you need to be factoring that in as well. If you have people who are paying on Stripe, PayPal, you need to be factoring in your charges from those platforms, from those merchant processors in order to make sure that the programme or service is profitable as well.

If you are outsourcing any part of the delivery, you need to make sure you are including that. Last but not least, what about your time? Because this is really important as well. Once you work out kind of what the profit is, is that worth the time you’re spending on it? Is the profit per participant, the profit per client, the profit per customer, whatever you call them in your business, is that worth the time you’re actually putting in at the end of the day to each individual, to each person? Particularly if you have a one-to-one element, is that working for you? Do the numbers stack up? Is it profitable? Is it profitable enough to keep you engaged, to keep you wanting to turn up? Is it profitable enough so that as you grow and scale the programme, if that’s what you want to do, the numbers stack up and the numbers work. Because if you start to do that, you may need to bring extra team on board, for example, just help customer service inquiries, customer service, that kind of stuff.

You have to make sure is it profitable now? With the vision you have for this programme or service, is it leading to profitability in the future as well? You need to map that out and you need to work through that. If you cannot do that yourself, then I highly, highly suggest speaking to your accountant who should be able to be helping you with this stuff anyway, who should be able to map this stuff out for you anyway. You can work together to say, “Okay, what does that look like? Is this working for me?”

Those are the three things that I believe are incredibly important when looking at your programmes and your services in your business looking at where you are now and saying, “Do I enjoy delivering these? Are they in line with my vision? Are they profitable both now? As I grow and scale, will they continue to be profitable bearing in mind that you may often have to take on help to support as your programmes and services scale as well? Those are three massively important things.

Now, even if this revenue stream is delivering a million pounds to your top line revenue, this is still incredibly important to assess because if these three things are not in place, then fundamentally, you are leaving money on the table in your business because your energy could be directed somewhere better that will have a massively, massively positive impact rather than focusing on this thing that either you don’t enjoy, is not in line with your vision, or is not highly profitable for you. It doesn’t matter how much this revenue stream is worth for your business. If you don’t have these three things in place, then it’s time to think about pivoting. Is time to think about pivoting your offerings so that you can tick all three of those boxes with the products and services that you’re offering to your clients. The programmes and services that you’re offering to your clients.

I hope that this episode has been useful for understanding how to know when you should stop running one of your programmes. I also want to invite you to step into the Uncover Wealth Community. This is my private community on Facebook. You can search Uncover Wealth Community in the Facebook search bar or go to annetteandco.co.uk/fbgroup. I do a live teaching there every single Tuesday for Training Tuesday where we dig deep on a subject. I would love to have you there. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth, and get more money in your pockets.

Today I want to speak to you about cleaning up your money mindset to make way 40 cleaner, neater one that serves you and your business. The first step has to be to completely clear out and clean the old thoughts in your mind around money. If we were doing a spring cleaning on our wardrobe, the best way would be to get everything out, clean out the cupboard with nothing left in there. That way we can give it a really great clean and then we go through and decide what we let back in to our newly beautifully cleaned out wardrobe. 

And it’s the same with your money mindset and your approach to money. We need to get everything out, give it a good old clean out and only then let the thoughts back into the wardrobe, AKA our minds that will serve us going forward. 

So how do we decide what to keep and what to throw away? 

The best way is to spread everything out. It’s the same with our minds. We need to look at every item individually, everything in our mind individually. Here it’s important to speak about choices, because everything is a choice that you are going to re-decide about now. That means we can approach this from a much more deliberate way. So what we need to do now is look at each of the thoughts in your mind, the thoughts that come up around making money, about spending money, about saving money, about people with money, and about people without money. And write down all those thoughts. Get them all out of your mind. Write down every single thought. And I want you to set aside time after you’ve listened to this podcast to do that, to write down every single thought. 

Or if you have time just now, you can pause the podcast and you can start doing that now. You’ve got everything on paper. Then I want you to ask yourself these three questions. One, do I want this? Two, does it serve me? And three, is this thinking outdated? And interestingly, these are the questions that can also be asked when you’re clearing out your wardrobe as well.

And these questions only apply to the thoughts that you have around money, not the facts. It might be a fact that you only have 2P in your bank account, but that is not the thought. Apply this to the thought itself. The thing is some of these thoughts might have served you at some point in your life. However, if they are no longer serving you now than it is time to let them go. So if you ask three questions for each and every money thought you have brainstormed out, and if for any of the answers it is a no, then you can make a decision to say goodbye to that thought. 

Now, if you are a hoarder, either of thoughts or a physical things, then it might be very difficult for you to make a decision to let go and say goodbye to the thought because that is really hard for a hoarder and at some point these thoughts might have been comforting. At some point, these thoughts might have helped you, but they are not helping you now. I had one client who had an incredibly strong thought that you had to work very, very hard to make money. He often referred to his parent’s strict work ethic in our sessions together and his son was taking over his business as he was retiring. His son had a very different way of working to his father and the father felt that his way was the right way and that his son should adhere to that strict work ethic. He didn’t feel that his son could run his business successfully while working from home, for example. 

However, his son was incredibly capable with some great ideas, which I have no doubt would have moved the business forward to a great place. Yet the father was unwilling to change his thought. He was unwilling to adapt this outdated thought. And that meant it delayed his retirement for two years until he got to a place where he realised that his thoughts around this were no longer serving him.

But being a successful CEO means making very big decisions and then sticking to them. We put those off because we perceive it as a risk, even though the alternative means sticking with something I.e. our money thoughts that are outdated and don’t serve us. And that is not what we want. So the inability to make a decision about what you want to think about money means that things will never move forward in the direction you want them to move forward into and you will live in a default on thoughts and decisions you made when you were less wise on the subject.

And it is very challenging to create new ways of thinking, but you have to be willing to push out those old thoughts and let the new ones come in that will serve you better. And when you get to a place where your money thoughts are the ones you want, you let in more positive money thoughts and money because you are now thinking about money from a place of abundance and not lack.

When it comes to business growth we all want to make sure that we are maximising the revenue in our business. Well, here are the nine tips to do just that. One, create a client assessment chart. You can do this on a piece of paper or an Excel spreadsheet that will detail every single client you have. If you have less than a hundred clients you’ll want to do this for every single client that you have and you’ll want to write down their names in a list. Then beside that list you’ll want to write down how much revenue each client generates for you every single year. Have a number of columns that go across the page or the spreadsheet and grade each of those clients. Ask a few key questions to each.

So, across the top I want you to have the headings of client name, annual revenue. And then the next column I want you to have is the cringe factor. Grade every client. I want you to rate them on a basis of how much you love working with them or you don’t. Are they the type of person that when you see their name pop up on your phone or in your inbox you go, “Oh cool yeah, I want to interact with that person, I want to help them.” Or are they the kind of person that when you see their name come up on your phone or email you go, “Oh crap, there they are. I have to speak to them again.”

Which type of person are they? Put a one against the cringe factor for that individual if you love them, if they are awesome, and you love working with them, and then I want to scale that up to a five if you cannot stand working with them, you really hate them as a client in reality. And you put something in between if it’s an in between. But I want you to do that for every single client. Go down that list and write the cringe factor for that client. Do you love them? Do you hate them? Are they a one, two, three, four or five? Put that number against the client.

Then in the next column along I want you to head that up speed of payment. So are they somebody who pays by direct debit on time? Are they someone who the minute the invoice drops in their inbox they’re paying you straight away, they pay super, super fast? Or are they someone that you have to chase, and chase, and chase, they’re always in arrears, they are always behind? You have to threaten to stop service for them. You have to send them to debt collectors. That would be a five. The one who pays straight away that’s going to be a one.

The next column is four repeat revenue. Are they a repeat? Are they paying you month, on month, on month, year, on year, on year? Are they coming back regularly to buy from you or not? Are they just somebody who’s just a one off and then it feels like they just disappeared? So put a one for yes they are repeat client and two for no they are a one off.

Then the next column after that is referrals. Do they refer people to you? If the answer is yes they do refer people put a one and if the answer is no they don’t then put a two.

And the next column I want you to have is history. Are they an established client with you? Do they have an established history? Do you have a longterm relationship? If the answer to this is yes we put a one in the box and if the answer is no we put a two. At this point you now have a client assessment chart. Each client would basically have a score. Sort each client based on that score. So, add up the scores along the way and then have a look and see who’s got the lowest score and who has the highest score. The ones with the lowest score are the ones that are great clients for your business. They are the ones who pick quickly, who give you repeat revenue, they offer referral opportunities, you have a great history with them, you love working with them, those types of people.

Take a closer look at the set of people. Their score gives you really good insights into the types of services that you’re offering those clients and you can dig deep to find out what commonalities that type of client has and the types of services they’re buying from you to look into what you might want to be promoting more of in your business. Remember get really honest with yourself when you’re grading the clients and try not to let emotions get in the way.

Number two, clone your best clients. Based on the data from your assessment chart the clients that are scoring really well, that are not cringe-worthy, that are paying fast, that are repeat revenue clients, that are giving you referrals, and you have a great history with you want to work out how you can get more of those types of people. Work at how you can clone those best clients. Gather information about your prospects that can help you target more people like your great clients.

Speak to them and find out things like do they prefer to hang out on Facebook or LinkedIn? Do they read certain magazines? Do they watch certain TV programmes? Really get to know as much as you can about your great clients. Do they have kids? Don’t they have kids? Are they male or female? What are their beliefs and values? What industry events do they go to? What sector do they operate in? Are you finding that all your great clients are in a specific sector, or go to specific events, or like specific Facebook pages? Then you need to be involved in those things too if you want to get more of those amazing clients. Clone your best clients by finding out as much information about the people that are in that bracket right now so that it can help you find others just like them.

Number three, sack your worst clients. I know that you’ve spent time getting them on board and they’re paying you money. Well, they might be or they might be defaulting. We’ll know from the assessment chart whether they are or not. Sacking clients can be a really, really scary thing to do but we are looking here at your worst clients. Perhaps they’re ones that you hate or ones that never ever pay you on time and you’re always having to chase for money. They perhaps don’t offer you any repeat revenue very often, they don’t offer you referrals, you don’t maybe don’t even have an established history with them. It’s the ones that are scoring really high on the client assessment chart that you need to think about exiting. They’re going to be really near the bottom of that list. They are people who you do not enjoy working with.

And I know if you’re anything like me I really hate conflict. I avidly avoid it and I really, really hate it. So when it comes to sacking and exiting clients I really, really hate it because it feels like conflict to me and I sometimes particularly historically, less so nowadays, have put up with way worse behaviour from clients than I should. I know that I can sometimes let people off with a lot more things than I should do because of course it’s my business and I get to choose who I work with. You know there are people that you love working with and that light you up and it’s the same with me and you know that there are people who you cringe when you see their name. And if you want to preserve your energy and open up space for more awesome clients, then it really makes sense to get rid of those cringe-worthy ones.

Number four, ask your clients, ask your clients and your prospects what they want from you, what they want to buy from you, and they will usually tell you. If you asked them what their biggest pain point is they might even tell you exactly what it is and you can provide options for them off the back of that. Your clients and prospects will tell you what appeals to them the best and what appeals to them the most. And if that’s within your zone of genius and aligns with the kind of thing that you can offer them then offer them that.

You can ask your clients, “What would work for you in terms of us working together?” Or your prospects. And people might just say to you, “I just want a day with you. I want in a room with one day where we can just hammer out things for my business.” And the response can be, “Okay, let’s do that.” Whether it’s a course, an opt in, a freebie, a webinar, a live stream, a paid programme, a one-to-one. Ask your clients, and customers, and your prospects what they want from you and you might just be amazed by the answers. It can shape what you deliver them because they’re asking for it. And if they’re asking for it then they may just be very willing to pay for it. So it makes that you could deliver it if it’s within your zone of genius.

Five, be consistent with your message to the market. There is nothing that confuses the marketplace more than being inconsistent with the message you deliver. The messages I deliver are around maximising revenue, profitability, taking more money home. They are my messages. And when people think of me what I’m hoping is that they think of those things. If I start chatting about lots of other different things then people will start getting confused and not understand what I stand for and what my message is. Do I help clients in other areas? Yes, I do. But I don’t broadcast massively about those things.

I have on occasion helped clients with marketing strategy if it comes up in calls but I don’t speak about that publicly very often. I speak about the things that I want to be known for and the things that I am great at, financial mastery, financial strategy, profitability, revenue. You should have something that you are leading with too so that people know what to expect from you on their newsfeed or in their inbox, the kind of thing that people are expecting from you. What do you want that to be? Remember confused people don’t buy so if you’re consistent with your messaging that you deliver then people can understand what you stand for and that is key to maximising your revenue.

Six, get your clients to pay upfront, no cash, no sale. Get your clients and customers to pay you up front for services you’re going to deliver perhaps even before you’ve fully built out that service. That is when the sale is made is when the cash changes hands not before. If the services are delivered and there is no money exchange that is not making a sale that is a freebie. Make sure that you are at the very least getting a deposit for upfront services that you’re going to deliver. There’s a greater tie in from your client and customer to work with you because the money has exchanged hands, there is more commitment. It’s a psychological thing and results are going to be greater and better. You don’t want to drain all your energy by doing the work first, invoicing your client, and then ending up having to chase them. Learn to maximise your revenue by charging upfront.

Seven, nurture relationships with existing clients. We often overlook the importance of nurturing relationships with people we already have as clients or contacts. We tend to get busy attracting new people to the door, growing the list, getting new audiences, growing out our business. Little do we contact existing contacts, clients, people on our list, people who follow us on social media and even precious clients. Why? Because these people already know about you and they can help bring in more revenue. There is a certain trust factor from people who already know you and the truth is it’s much more easier to get those people to spend money with you than it is to get a cold audience. There are so many ways you can reach out to your existing contacts.

We all know that emailing our list on a consistent basis is key but you’d be absolutely surprised by the number of high profile entrepreneur’s email list I am on who do not email me consistently. They only email when they’re trying to sell me something and that just turns everybody off and it makes your list almost useless if you are not nurturing them on a consistent basis. You also of course can make yourself visible on social media by posting updates and sharing content. Again, consistency is so important here. Again, I have seen seven and eight figure entrepreneurs not being consistent in this and therefore leaving massive amounts of money on the table.

Go the extra mile to deliver messages that speak directly to the people on your list directly to your followers. Can you do a webinar to give them more information? Can you do a challenge exclusive to your community? What ways can you nurture relationships with your existing audience? Remember it’s the easiest way to generate revenue from those people who already know about you.

Nine, do not give stuff away for free unless. See, you could offer free things, options or services in your business up to a point but you could only do that if it is part of an overall strategy. Free stuff needs to be thought through, planned out, and part of a strategy, a bigger strategy for you to attack clients to longer term services. So, sometimes you’ll see for example a free event which is part of a longer term strategy. At the event something is sold and therefore getting people into paid programmes. But you need to understand how the numbers are going to stack up when you do this.

And that’s it. I whisked through nine tips for maximising the revenue in your business. I also want to invite you to step into the Uncover Wealth Community. That is my private community on Facebook. You can search Uncover Wealth Community or go to AnnetteandCo.coUK/FB group. I do a live teaching there every single Tuesday at four, training Tuesday. And I dig much deeper into all this kind of thing. I would love to have you there. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth, and get more money in your pockets.

Now, of course, we all know that we should be running some kind of lead generation ad in our business. That’s pretty kind of normal advice in terms of growing and scaling a business is that we want to have some kind of lead gens ad. And by lead gen ad I mean an ad that you are running that basically in some way gets people to interact with you and leave you their details. So usually their email address in exchange for something. That something might be direct to a call or it might be an opt-in, a PDF, whatever that is, but running some kind of ad in the business to generate leads.
Of course, we know that we should be running that kind of ad is standard. Some of the other ads that can make a big difference to our bottom line that we perhaps particularly if we are still running our ads ourselves, particularly we’ve not outsourced those, that it might be really good for us to have a think about running. So I’m going to run through those with you today.

First one that I want to speak about is running some sort of ad to people who are already on your list. They are already on your email list, but they’re not clients, they’re not customers. Inviting them to A, whatever your call is called, a fitting call, a discovery call, a consulting call, whatever that call is that you have that essentially that sales call. Inviting everyone on your list into one of those calls. You want to be running an ad like that all the time to the people on your list and of course you want to be making sure in Facebook that your custom audiences are set up so that you can run ads to people on your list and so that it is constantly being refreshed. So that as new people are added to your list, they’re getting added into this custom audience within Facebook. So that you can run adverts to them so that you can run Facebook ads to them and start trying to get them into the next stage.

So getting them on a call with you. If you’re not running ads to people who are already on your list, inviting them to the next stage, which is generally speaking of call, then you are leaving some money on the table with those people. Of course, you should, as part of your weekly email newsletters, be inviting them via email as well. That’s just another kind of by the by. If that is not part of your process, I highly encourage you to have that. What we do is we have it as a PS on our emails that go out. PS, you want to take the next steps. These are the various options for you and one of those things is to invite them to a call. So that is a big one.

The next ad and number two, that I highly recommend that you have a think about how you can implement in your business because again you’ll be leaving some money on the table if you don’t. Is retargeting those people who you have already spoken to on fitting call. Who were from your perspective a good fit but they were on the fence after the call. They were humming and hawing and they’ve gone away to think about it. They’re not quite sure. They need a little bit more time to decide. Running ads to those people and particularly things like case study ads or testimonial style ads can be a really good way to get them to be warming up to the idea of working with you a bit more.
And in those ads your call to action. Maybe for example, to get on another call, it might be a quick kind of 15 minute call rather than your … I say a usual 45 minute call or whatever that is, but you want again to be encouraging them to move along the next stage of the process. You already have spoken to them. You know that you’d be able to work well with them. You know they’re a good fit for your business. Inviting them, nudging them forward via retargeting ads can be a great ad to run as well.

Those are two we’ve covered so far. So people on your list. Inviting them into a fitting call, inviting them into sales call, inviting them into discovery call and two, retargeting those you’ve already spoken to on a fitting call who are pre-qualified, you know that you’d like to work with them, you know that you’d be able to do great things with them, but they were on the fence at the end of that call and you haven’t managed to move them forward. Running testimonial or case study style ads to those people could be a really good idea as well.

Now the third type of ad that might work well in your business is retargeting people who have visited the page to book a sales call with you but did not go ahead and book the call.

Now, there are lots of reasons that can happen. I have some people might visit that page and decide that actually they’re not right for your business that it didn’t speak to them but you know what it’s like we lead very busy lives. Some people may have gone to that page and they just haven’t had a chance to actually book it yet. Some people may have gone to that page and they just haven’t booked a call with you yet, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t want to. It doesn’t mean they don’t intend to. They may have gone to that page … What I sometimes do is I go to pages and I bookmark them so I can come back and look at them later. And then sometimes I forget to go back and look at them later.
So people that do things like that, it can be a really good idea to target those people that have visited that page to book a call but have not actually booked a call. And if you have a sophisticated CRM, you should be able to set all this up with tags so that, there’ll be pixeled when they go to the book a call page, but they won’t have a tag that says they’ve already booked a call with you, for example. So retargeting again, those people can be a really good thing to do because they’re the people that maybe visited your page and thought, “Oh yeah, I need to do that.” And got distracted by the 300 other things, whether it’s business, whether it’s kids, whatever it might be, and didn’t actually go through to booking a call. So that’s a third type of ad that can be really powerful to run in your business as well.

The fourth type of ad that I highly, highly recommend people run in their businesses is less of a direct call to action type ad. It’s a content sharing ad, essentially Making sure that your main piece of content for that week, whether it be your podcast, you’re weekly live show, a blog post, whatever that is. Making sure that that is shared to everyone who is on your list because even if you send it out by email, email, open rates are incredibly low. So getting it in front of those people on Facebook through Facebook ads, not spending a huge amount, maybe a pound or two pounds a day, just a very low amount, but to get it in front of some of those people on your list can be a really good idea as well.
Perhaps running it for seven days, so each seven days you run a new content. Share piece of content to everyone on your list via Facebook ad to get your good content in front of them and of course in your content you may have a call to action, so whatever that might be, then they would kind of pull in that way as well. So I highly recommend those four types of ad in your business. If you are not running those ads just now without a doubt, there will be some money being left on the table.

To recap those again, that is people on your list, inviting them into a fitting call, a sales call and making sure that you’re encouraging them. Take the next steps with you. Retargeting those you’ve spoken to you already on a fitting sales call … But we’re on the fence, but you know that you’re a good fit for them. Getting them testimonial style ads on case study ads in front of them can be a really good thing.

Retargeting those who have visited your page to book a call but have not yet booked a call with you. Again, getting some good things in front of them can be really helpful as well. Again, whether that be testimonials or whether that be just encouraging to come back and saying something like, “Oops, you didn’t book a call. Come, and let’s have a chat.”

And then the fourth one that content sharing. So making sure that your main pillar piece of content that you are producing each week is getting out in front of the people in your list. They may not open it in emails, they may not see it in emails. So making sure that that gets in front of them in some other way as well can be really incredibly helpful as well in your … I highly recommend if you are not running those types of ads to have a think about where these can fit into your business, how they can fit into the overall ecosystem of the marketing that you’re doing.

Of course, as I mentioned in the beginning, we all want to be running lead gen ads anyway regardless to get people into our list, to get people into our ecosystem, to get people to know, like, and trust us in our business. But on top of those, I think some of these other ads can be incredibly helpful. I’m not saying that you need to spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of pounds on ads on a monthly basis in your business, but it’s really a good idea in this day and age to have some budget for ad spend and evaluating what that needs to be in order to hit the targets that you need to hit.

So you know what is your conversions need to be, what do you need to be getting in terms of people on your list, people booking calls, people converting through. What does that all look like for you and understanding that so that you know how much you do have to spend on Facebook ads for every pound that you put in. How many pounds do you get back out? What does that look like?

I hope this episode has been useful in understanding some Facebook ads that you might want to consider running so you are not leaving money on the table. I also want to invite you to step into the, Uncover Wealth community. This is my private community. On Facebook, you can search, Uncover Wealth community in the Facebook search bar or go to annetteandco.co.uk/fbgroup. I do a live teaching there every single Tuesday. For training Tuesday where we dive deep into more subjects and I would love to have you in there. Thank you so much for listening. 

Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers. Increase your wealth and get more money in your pockets.

In today’s episode I’m covering 11 strategies to increase your profit and take home. 

Office space. 

It is the 21st century and there are loads of advances in technology, which means that everyone working for your business does not need to be in the same physical location as each other. Meetings with clients can be handled virtually via Zoom, GoToMeeting or many other systems that exist. Internal communication tools like Slack are awesome. Documents and notes can be shared in Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote. It really is easy to let your employees work from home. Everyone in my business works remotely. We do not have a big central office where everyone comes into every day. And more often than not, your clients and customers won’t care where you and your team are physically based. That can just be a worry in your head.

Staff. 

Over staffing or having over qualified staff in roles. I have spoken about this in episode 12 where I speak about the 25% rule or four X, where each staff member should be generating you four times their salary. What that means is that every staff member should be able to in some way impact the bottom line in your business, whether it be operations staff getting referrals, whether it be accountancy team saving you money on tax and maximising cash, whatever that might be staff members should be able to have a bottom line positive impact. If they are not, then their roles need to be examined. And if their roles can be tweaked so that they have a bottom line positive impact, then there needs to be a question about why they are there.

Non-measurable marketing, advertising and PR. 

Don’t believe those people that say that you have to spend money to make money. It is simply not true because so many business owners are taking up advertising opportunities because the salesperson comes knocking virtually or otherwise not because they are fully examined what the return on investment from a particular piece will be. Be savvy about your advertising and marketing spend. Make sure that you are going to get a return. Make sure you can measure that and track it to make sure that you are making the correct decision on continuing marketing, advertising and PR or discontinuing it.

Advertising before knowing key facts. 

Entrepreneurs often spend money on marketing before they can answer the most important question. Why should a prospective customer buy my product or service rather than my competitors? And two, how do I reach the segment of my market that would be interested in what I have to offer? I see this as a problem not just for startups, but I see this in seven figure business owners launching new revenue streams as well. So make sure you really understand before you start putting paid ad spend against things.

Running pay-per-click or Facebook ads without actually ever having studied how to do it. 

You will waste money if you don’t understand the nuances of the platform you are paying to play on. Make sure you are clear on what those are before you start chucking money their way.

Technology and tools without being really clear on the strategy you want to employ. 

I urge you to do a tech evaluation in your business. Have a look. Do you have any duplicate pieces of technology? Do you have three social media management tools? What do you have in your business and do they align with the strategy that you have for your business overall and for each area of your business; marketing, sales, delivery, et cetera? Making sure that the tech aligns with the strategy is really key.

Expenses that are neither necessary to keep the lights on nor give a positive return. 

I speak about this more in depth in episode six of Uncover Wealth Radio where I discuss that our expenses in our business should either be one, necessary to keep the lights on or two, giving you a positive return. And if they are neither, then what is the purpose of them? So if you have not listened to episode six, I really encourage you, once you finish this episode of course, to go back and listen to episode six of the podcast to get some more ideas about how to do that analysis on your business.

Buying courses when you have no time to implement and you are actually buying because of FOMO, fear of missing out. 

Again, I see this all the time; course junkies. A lot of my clients are course junkies and I have to say I used to be there too. But please don’t buy another course if you have no time whatsoever to implement and you’re just worried because they only open the doors once a year. That is not a good reason to spend money on something because if you have no time to implement and you don’t put a plan in place to implement, then you’ll never have time to implement it and therefore it is a complete waste of money and eroding your profit and meaning you take home less money.

Bad accounting. 

Now unfortunately, I see this in new clients that come to me way too often. The previous accountant is unable to give them any commercial advice, any commercial savvy around their business and how to operate it and how to operate the business strategically, how to operate the finances strategically and how to manage cash in their business. Make sure that you are not in that place because that does not help drive your business forward and it does not help you get more profit.

Expenses management. 

How much are you spending on food and coffee from your business each month? I have a few clients where when we evaluated the amount they were spending in Starbucks each month, they nearly cried. Now it may sound like small amounts, but two coffees a day, five days a week, four weeks a month, it all adds up. So perhaps give a rethink on just how much of those types of expenditure you are making. It might just have a nice effect on your dividends.

Promoting multiple streams of revenue in your business at the same time. 

My rule of thumb is that a revenue stream needs to reach 100K a year before you introduce a second. And the first and second streams should be generating 100K each a year until you introduce the third and so on. If you start introducing multiple revenue streams below that 100K year level minimum, you end up running into issues and you end up not reaching the potential of any one revenue stream.
I dig into this a lot more in Uncover Wealth Radio episode 16. So again, you can go back and listen to episode 16 to get some more information on that once you finish listening to this episode.

Phew, I ran through those incredibly fast, but I hope this episode has been useful in giving you at least one or two key takeaways to consider to increase your profit and take home. I also want to invite you to step into the Uncover Wealth community. This is my private community on Facebook. You can search Uncover Wealth community in the search bar in Facebook or go to annetteandco.co.uk/fbgroup. I do a live teaching there every single Tuesday for Training Tuesday, and I would love to have you there.

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth and get more money in your pockets.