Episode 378: I got scammed. Here's why it helped my small business
Are your business expenses aligned with your goals? In this episode, Fiona shares her experience of falling victim to a scam. She also explores crucial questions every business owner should ask about their financial outflows. Tune in!
You’ll Learn How to:
The impact of personal financial experiences on business decisions
Reflecting on business expenses
Aligning expenses with business goals
The role of budget tracking tools
Reducing non-essential expenses to increase overall business profitability
Reallocating saved funds into areas that align more closely with business growth
Encouraging a strategic mindset in business
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Mentioned Links/Resources:
“Really think about what you are doing with the money in your business, in particular, your expenses. What is going out of the business? Why is it going out? How does that align with your goals? How often are you using these platforms or these people or whatever it is that you're paying for? Is it worth it? Does it have a return on investment?”
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Welcome to episode 378 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today it is a coaching episode and it's the very first coaching episode of 2024. I have to say that I actually had recorded a different episode to launch with for 2024 first coaching episode, and I changed it at the last minute to this one because something happened to me at the end of 2023 and it has had a massive impact on how I've started this year for my business and in particular for financial sort of goals and everything else in my business. I wanted to share that today and I thought, let's kick off the new year with something super practical and something that I think a lot of people, particularly the longer you're in business can get complacent about. Before we get stuck into that, I want to let you know that group coaching is officially open to apply.
If you are keen to make this year an incredible one for your business and connect and work with other small business owners and get out of that sense of feeling like you're trying to do it all by yourself, you're trying to figure out all the answers, you are Googling everything, then why not join us in group coaching? This, for anyone who doesn't know, is a year-long program. We run a few of them every single year. We do cap the numbers and we only open them twice a year. It starts in March, and then the next one starts in September. Now, if you're keen to get into the one in March, just know that you can apply from anywhere in the world. We have had a couple of people in the US who have contacted us about this coming group that is launching in March.
We usually always have at least one person from overseas in there and from overseas, I mean people outside of Australia. As long as you've got an internet connection and you are keen and eager to learn and to share and to be part of a connected community for a year, then go and check out what it entails and what you get and all of the good things.
At mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching, now applications are open and we interview people on a first come first serve basis. We also do cap it. It is a small group and that is intentionally small so that everyone gets their time, everyone gets to understand and connect and become friends with each other and you get time with myself. I have been part of groups myself where there's been 40 or 50 people, or even 20 or 30, and you just feel like one, you don't necessarily always want to speak up in a group like that. You don't get to know people well, and you often don't get that sense of really connecting with the coach or the facilitator that you've been investing in. If you want to check it out, just go to mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching and if you've got any questions at all, just email us hello@mydailybusiness.com.
The other thing I wanted to mention is, of course, I want to acknowledge where I'm coming from and pay my respects to the traditional owners and custodians of this land. That is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. I'd urge anyone, particularly those in Australia, to think about how you are going to show up and what January 26th means to you. There are so many amazing resources out there, and so many educators, there's no reason not to be educated on this sort of stuff. We'll link to some of those in the show notes. I would just urge everyone to consider that, especially if you are not First Nations. If you are First Nations, I'm sure that this time of year, particularly coming off the back of last year, has a lot of complexity, emotions, and feelings around it. Please know that you can always reach out to 13 Yarn, and we'll link to that in the show notes. Let's get into today's coaching episode.
As I said at the start of this episode, something happened to me at the tail end of 2023, and it has had a huge impact on me and my business already, and it's only a couple of weeks into the new year. What happened is, I'm quite embarrassed to admit this, but I got scammed. I got scammed on Christmas Day and I don't think that you're like better than that, but I think that I've avoided some real near misses with scams in the past, and I have worked in the online space for a long time and I just feel like I can spot these things. I swear, I don't know what was in my head that morning. I don't know if I was just really tired or what, but this scam was not even that sophisticated.
I mean, they are getting more and more sophisticated, but this one when I look back was not that sophisticated, I got lured into something on social media and I put in my work card, so my work debit card, and as soon as I'd paid, as soon as the payment had gone through, I thought, you idiot Killackey, that is a complete scam. I googled it, and usually, that is what I do. Whenever I feel like something's a little too good to be true or just has an off-ness about it, I will usually Google the brand or whatever it is, plus the word scam, and you'll suddenly see all of these reviews and you just know, and this time I don't know what I was thinking, but I did not do it. As soon as I hit pay, I was like, “You idiot, you idiot.”
Anyway, it's my work card as well. I was like, “God.” What I did was I called the bank that my work accounts and my business accounts are with, and the guy was lovely. Firstly, it was Christmas day, so I didn't even know if anyone would be answering the phone, but this guy answered the phone and he was nice and I said to him, “I feel like the biggest idiot.” He said, “I actually work in the scams department.” He is like, “I just got scammed.” He said, “I was waiting for a parcel, it's Christmas.” I thought this must be it. Even though I look at all of these all day long, and all I do is talk to people who've been scammed, I fell for it. He's like, “I clicked the link, I did the thing.”
Anyway, I went down this whole issue and challenge of having to cancel this card and put a block on the card, but also because it's a business account, you can't change things. There were just some things that needed to be changed for them to send out a new card. You couldn't do that without going into a physical location. Of course, it being Christmas and then Boxing Day, there were public holidays, they're like, “You can't go in and see anybody until the 27th of December.” My husband was also going away for weeks, and I was just like, “This is the worst possible timing.” But alas, I went in, I waited in line. How many people go to the physical bank? I never go to one ever. I was a bit shocked that there was this big line out the front before they opened.
I have to say, the person in front of me and the person behind me were both there because they had also been scammed. It is just rampant. What happened was I had to get a new card and in the process, because it was New Year's and Boxing Day and all the public holidays, they were like, “This card is going to take a while to get to you.” They were like, “You might have to deal with direct debits and all these things.” This is what I want to talk about today in the process of this happening, what I have learned is that I have gotten complacent about my expenses and in particular direct debits that are coming out of my work account. Now I have really clear cash flow projection reports and everything that I look at.
I know all of my expenses and I have a number in mind every month that we don't go over. Sometimes we'll hire different people or we'll be spending more on XYZ, but most of the time I can pretty much say, “This is how much we spend every month and this is what we spend it on.” However, I'm not looking every single day at the detail of my expenses. What I didn't realise was literally how much some of the subscriptions that we pay for have gone up over the last couple of months. Also, certain frequencies of things have gone up. Also, things that I thought, do we use this? Do we not use it? I hadn't clarified if we still used certain workarounds or certain platforms, especially after we moved from my daily business coach to my daily business.
We stopped using a few workarounds that had been used with the old site. We were still paying for them anyway. What's happened is that because my card no longer worked, I started receiving emails, obviously all the automated emails from different platforms saying, “Hey, your payment did not go through or Hey, we can't process this. Can you please get in touch with us? Can you update your billing details?” And what's been fascinating is to work through all of the things that I've been paying for as a business owner. Now, some of these were just a no-brainer. There were certain platforms that we needed to keep paying for. But what also happened is that I realized how many of these platforms I would save on if we just paid annually. Now these are platforms that we've been using for eight years or six years.
They're not ones that we're just using and let's see how it goes for six months. It's stuff we know we are using. I have not because I started on a monthly plan and I didn't go onto annual for a lot of these. There's been so many learnings. I wanted to kind of go through a few of the things and a few of the questions that I've asked myself through this process in case it helps you when it comes to your expenses as a business owner. Now, you may have a CFO, you may have somebody who does your accounts, or you might have a bookkeeper that you work with. This is important because I think the longer you're in business and then you hire these other people to help with these sorts of things, you don't look at the details all of the time.
Where you might be saving thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, you are just leaving that money on the table because you're not looking at the details. Now I'm not saying you need to be looking at every single thing that goes in and out of your business every single day, but looking at it, say on a weekly basis in the same way that you'd look at your family budget and make sure that you are not going over, not going under, you need to have that level of detail. It takes a couple of minutes at most to be able to look at this stuff. As I said, I got quite complacent. You hire in other people, other people are doing things for you and you can sort of detach yourself from this. The moment when the cost of living is just ever-increasing and expenses are coming here and everywhere, the Australian dollar is just diving, it feels like everything is more expensive, particularly if you're playing for platforms in US dollars and you're from a country outside of the US.
These are some of the questions that I asked myself that I thought might be useful for you to ask yourself when it comes to your expenses and spending in your business. These are in no particular order, but these are things that came to mind when I thought about recording this episode. The first was, and it's pretty clear from what I've just said as well, what am I spending? I had a number in my head roughly of what our expenses are each month. Now one thing that you don't always equate for is, say if you're paying something weekly or you're paying something over time, you may not remember or realize that there are sometimes five weeks in a month, even though we tend to think of months as four weeks, but they're not really, it's 28 days.
Sometimes you're going to be charged five times in one month as opposed to four times. It's the same if you pay a mortgage monthly, sometimes you really should be budgeting for five weeks of paying each five weeks of mortgage repayment in a month as opposed to just four. But looking at things like subscriptions, looking at things like even just certain contractors and other people that are working in the business and looking at like, “Do we need to give them a pay rise?” But also are they still necessary in the business as tools get more extensive in what they can do for you? We, for example, have started using certain AI tools for certain parts of the business, which means that, for example, different contractors or people that we've hired in the past, we may not be using up all the hours every, every month with those people because we are now using AI to do something or they're using AI and it's taking them less time.
It's not a case of necessarily cutting those people's hours, but it's about thinking, “If we are paying for this, what are they working on? And also are there other things we could give them to work on because their time has come down because of the use of AI in our business?” Looking at what am I actually spending and also tracking that. I have to give a shout-out to Money with Jess. I've followed this woman for a long time on Instagram /MoneywithJess/. I follow a lot of kinds of wealth financial experts and Money with Jess is just a budgeting expert. She has this book that I bought myself as a Christmas present for myself to Mummy from Mummy. I bought it just before Christmas, wrapped it up, put it under the tree, and completely forgot about it until Christmas morning when I got it.
The book is called The Money Diary and it's by Jessica Irvine. We'll link to that in the show notes and it's a budgeting tracker and I'd bought that for our personal life. I love this sort of stuff. I love it. Anyone who's worked with me knows that I love budgets, I love looking at these things. I love people tracking their money all the time. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to do this year and write it down like in Pen. I love, she's as highlighters and everything else. If you follow me on TikTok or Instagram, you may have seen that I put up a post about my highlighters with all of my little like labels on them. I had that book and then I thought I'm going to buy another one of those books and start tracking it in my business because maybe what I've got in my cash flow is a rough estimate, even though it's not a rough estimate.
But for example, we use Kajabi. It's a platform for housing group coaching and any other co kind of group coaching stuff we do plus our courses. Kajabi charges in US dollars. Now, when the US dollar fluctuates, I have cashflow projections, I have a rough idea of how much money per month we're spending on Kajabi, however it changes according to the currency and the exchange rate. Now, when that goes up and down, then that number that I've put in there as a monthly expense, maybe very different, not hugely different, but let's say might be a hundred dollars difference a month. That over time adds up. That's $1,200 and that's only one of maybe 22 platforms that we are using or subscriptions that we have. If all of those things are going over and I'm not calculating that correctly, then you may have quite a discrepancy at the end of the year.
That was the first thing to think about what am I spending? The reason I brought up Money with Jess book called The Money Diary is that once I had the one for my business, I have been tracking every single day the money that has been coming out of that account. Especially even now because some of those platforms were not able to take out a payment in December because of the card that had been scammed. That had to change. They took out a lump sum. But as I said earlier, one of the things that came up is that when they were taking that out, I looked at the annual versus what I was paying monthly. In some cases, I think one of them the highest was a $358 saving if I went annual. I was like, I use this platform all the time, I just have been paying monthly for years.
That was smart because it's almost become a game of like, “What am I actually spending and then how can I save?” The second point was once I was more familiar, I'm not going to say once I got familiar or once I know what I'm spending because I do roughly know the platforms and how much they cost, but once I had started getting all of these notifications of we can't take the payment, I thought about, “With that platform or with that contractor or with whatever it is that we're doing a membership, do I use it? How often in the last six months?” For example, with certain subscriptions to membership groups or to other things that I'm paying for it's thinking like, “Ah.” In some cases, “That was helpful for a time, but I don't need it anymore.”
For example, there is an amazing Squarespace tool that is called, I think it's called Squarespace Pro Plugin. I don't know for sure I should look it up. But when you are moving from one Squarespace site to another, this is like the most amazing Chrome plugin and it's about $28 a month. We were using it for a couple of months there when we were transferring from my daily business coach to my daily business. What had happened was that I just hadn't switched it off. Then I thought that it might be useful for somebody who works with me to have access to that for other things that they do. Yet I don't think they were using it either. It was just like in the last six months, I mean our new website went live, I think in April or May of this year or last year I should say.
It was like, “We haven't used that for like seven months and we are just paying, we're just paying this money out.” This is the thing, you can get caught up thinking, “It's only $28, it's only $28”, but you're like, “We'll add it up.” That is all money that could be back in my profit margin or it could be going to something else that we want to use in the business or it could be going to a bonus or something else that is a better use of that rather than going to a platform that we don't even use. That was the sort of second thing to think about, “Do I use this?” If so, how often in the last six months? And really kind of rate yourself out of 10 as to why you are paying for this and if you are using it.
If you're using it like for example, Canva, anything like that, of course, we're like, “Yep, I use I'm in Canva every single day.” If not, I can't wait till they get listed as a public company and you can buy shares because they are just killing it. Anyway, that's the second question. The third was, “Can I put a deadline in if I'm not using it or can I just cancel it straight away?” One of the things I did was, there were a couple of things that we were paying for that I thought, “We are paying for that, but I haven't been using it lately.” However, what I want to see is in this new year when we come back, will we start using more of that? And if we haven't used it by let's say the end of March, it's going.
Setting a deadline, and this could be for things like for example, one of the things that we are paying for at the moment is a TikTok app. An app that helps with TikTok. Now I'm loving TikTok, I've loved TikTok for the last year as a user. We are starting to experiment. I just feel like there's a lot to say about TikTok. I know a lot of people knock on TikTok especially since you're in your forties, what are you doing on TikTok? I love it. I was looking at the breakdown of my audience and the analytics behind TikTok the other day for a brand collaboration. A company contacted me and they wanted some more information about my TikTok which is even in itself, I'm like I've got maybe 400 followers. It's not a huge platform for us in terms of followers, but the reach and the DMS, I've sold multiple copies of my book now through TikTok, which is from one TikTok that I put out that I think has had more than a thousand saves now.
And I wish to God that I'd had some sort of link in there, but I get DMS about that book. I have to say all of them have been from the US so far. We are using this one app for TikTok, right? Haven't been using it, but we're paying monthly. That is an example of, “Okay, let's keep it till March. If we are not, we have not used it,” I've got an actual in my Gmail in my Google calendar, and now I have a reminder every two weeks are you using this because I want to use it because I want to learn from this one particular TikTok app, but I'm not using it. It's sort of like if you're not using it, then set a deadline and if you start using it, great, and you can keep paying for it.
If you are not using it by that deadline, then get rid of it. That was the next thing to consider, “Okay, you've gone through, what am I spending on? You've gone through maybe do I use these things? How often have I used them in the last six months?” And then the third is if I want to keep paying for it, but I'm not using it that much right now, can I set a deadline? And after that deadline, it goes, if you're not using it so that you stop paying for it. The fourth question that I ask myself around all of this is, “Do these costs align with my goals?” Now always, I've pretty much found in the last ninth year, I'm coming into my ninth year of business and I could count on one hand the amount of people I've worked with who don't need to make any money at all and who are not in business to make money.
Now, most people that I work with are in business for lots of other reasons outside of just making money, freedom, creativity, all of that. But a lot of them will also have a financial goal each year. In terms of this, I had to go with that expense. Is that preventing me from doing something else or is it in line with my goals? For example, TikTok paying for something to do with TikTok might be in line with one of my marketing goals because I'm really enjoying TikTok and I always say that marketing should be enjoyable. You should find the platforms that you enjoy being on. For me, podcasting is so enjoyable and I love it and it's done wonders for our business. That aligns with my goals. Anything to do with podcasting, I'm happy to pay for it.
But if it was, for example, something to do with, let's say another marketing channel that I wasn't that excited about, maybe I'd used it for years, it wasn't that great for our audience anymore, then it's like, it's not aligning with my goals. Is that cost something that we can cull because we could then put that money towards something else. Thinking about do these costs align with my goals. For example, you might also decide that, okay, I'm going to pay myself a bit more out of the company, or maybe you're giving yourself dividends or more of a bonus or something else and that money is going straight into your shareholder account and you're going to buy some stocks from that. It may be you might think, “It's only $28, or it's only $30,” but you're like, “huh, for that much I could buy a share from XYZ company and see that grow and prosper over the next X amount of years.”
It's thinking like that and getting a bit more strategic as opposed to this sort of thinking of, “It's only $30, it's only this, it's only that.” I'm sure people might be reading going you earn good money, what are you worried about $30 a month for? But that $30 all adds up and I want to be smarter. I want my money to be working for me. I don't want to just be paying for stuff that I'm not using or that is giving no return to the business. That is the fourth question. Then the fifth question, which again kind of sums up everything, but also I have to shout out again, Jessica Irvine and her book, The Money Diary is that in the money diary, there is a kind of budgeting spreadsheet tracker thing that you fill in and there is a few questions that you have to sort of fill in per line.
And one of them at the end is, “Is this essential yes or no?” And I think that is an amazing question. I have been interested to see the spending that we're doing as a family this month in January 2024, and how much of it's not essential and I have to give myself some leeway. It is the school holidays, it's my son's birthday this month, my husband's been overseas, and I've been solo parenting. But a lot of it, I would say the majority is not essential spending. I have to say, I know that I'm massively privileged to even say that I understand and appreciate that a lot of people are out there right now struggling. I shouldn't be laughing about, “Look how much is not essential.” But I think that just seeing that literally on paper, the amount of nose or ends in that column has been eye-opening.
And the other thing that Jessica uses is colour coding. Also seeing a particular colour that stands for lifestyle, which is non-essential stuff. Seeing that colour predominantly through my tracker is not worrying because we are in school holidays and summer and all of that. But if I were to see that every single month, it would be like, “Okay, we need to make some changes.” But I think in business that concept of is this essential yes or no has been interesting to look at when, particularly when it comes to these direct debits, it's like, “No, that's not essential.” Even that TikTok app that I was talking about is not essential either. However, right now I'm enjoying it. But even just tracking things, “Is this essential? Is this not?” It allows you to then look at the ends for the not-essential and decide which ones will bring forward and which ones will leave behind.
Because a lot of the time people want to make more money in their business. I hear this all the time. They'll always look for more sales, new people. I feel like I bash people over the head with you don't always need new people. You need to nurture people that you already have. But outside of that, another way to increase your profit is to reduce your expenses. I don't think people talk about that enough, cutting back and not cutting back on massive things like cutting all your staff tomorrow. But so often it's these small things that when added up, actually create a large impact on your business and a large expense to your business if they're not checked. That is it for today's coaching episode to really think about what you are doing with the money in your business in particular, your expenses, what is going out of the business, and why is it going out?
How does that align with your goals? How often are you using these platforms or these people or whatever it is that you're paying for, is it worth it? Does it have a return on investment? And I think sometimes the hope that we have with things means that we keep paying for them even though they're not doing anything for us. I have been in membership groups where I paid for stuff for way longer than I should have because I knew that I wasn't getting that much out of them, but I either knew the person that had started them, so I kind of felt a bit bad, or I knew people in the group and I didn't want to leave. I mean, all sorts of things can go on, but at the end of the day, I'd rather leave something and then take my money back and be able to invest it into creating wealth creation outside of my business as opposed to spending things because I think I have to or I don't want to have a confronting conversation with somebody or I don't want to have to write an email asking to get out of that program or platform or whatever it is.
It has been amazing to go through this. I have to say that I do think that often we can learn from kind of crappy situations. That scam, even though it wasn't fun at all, and the paperwork and the admin having to come up with all of it to get a new card number has been annoying. However, it has been like a blessing in disguise because honestly, I would've just kept paying for all of these things, not questioning anything. Now it's getting me to question a lot of stuff in my business in terms of finances. That is it for today. I just want to also say that I've had quite a few people contact me in my Sunday email. I gave away a little gift at the end of last year, and that was my money mapping course.
And that was only available for the people on my Sunday email and for a very limited time. But I have had a few other people reach out now because their friends have done the course and have been on the Sunday email. If you want to do the money mapping course, you can find it just at mydailybusiness.com/courses. That money mapping course has been done by hundreds of people. It takes about an hour. I've had incredible feedback from people being like, “This is the most important thing that I've done in terms of finances and my business.” If you want to get onto that, it's affordable, you can go and check it out at like I said, mydailybusiness.com/courses. It's just called the Money Mapping course. If you have a question about it, just email us hello@mydailybusiness.com. But I want 2024 to be an amazing year for my business, and I feel like it's already started that way.
And one of those things is that I am taking the active ownership over my expenses. I hope this has been helpful for you. I'd love to know what expenses you are going to cut this year and why, or what expenses you're happy to keep because they're just so great. Whichever platforms you absolutely love and would shout all about from the mountaintops. That is it for today's coaching episode. You'll find the links to everything we mentioned, including this great money diary from Jessica Irvine over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/378. As I said at the start, group coaching is open, so go on over to mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching and apply and I can't wait to meet you. Take care. Bye.
