Episode 382: The steps I work through to consistently make good money in my small business
How can you make money in a small business? In this episode, Fiona dives into the critical process of Money Mapping. She guides listeners through the steps. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Reflecting on personal business growth
The Significance of Money Mapping
Exploring the steps of reviewing the prior year
Discussing periods of reduced work availability
Mapping out revenue streams
Encouraging a strategic approach to financial planning
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“Figure out what your thrive rate or your thrive figure is. You've gone through the survival part of what is the absolute minimum that I need to be bringing to hit all the things that need to be paid for in the business, plus all the things that need to be paid for in your personal life. You then want to add to that the things you want to achieve this year and what they will mean on a financial basis.”
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Welcome to episode 382 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today it is a coaching episode and if you have ever worried about your money, if you've ever wondered how you can make more of it or how you map it out for the year, or even how I do as the person that you're reading to who also runs their own business, then today's episode is absolutely for you. Before I get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which I record this podcast and talk to people all about money. 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. Let's get into today's coaching episode.
If you are reading in real-time, I have just got back from a beautiful week away at a beach at this beach house that we get every single year. During that time I always work on my year ahead and the planning for the year ahead. One of the bigger things that is in that planning or one of the kind of starting points of that planning is my Money Mapping. Today I wanted to go through how I map out my money and walk you through the exact process. Because of this business of mine, we are in its ninth year. I cannot believe that it has consistently grown yearly from a financial perspective. I've been able to make more money in this business than I had thought possible, especially when I left my very lovely in terms of financials, not in terms of every other part, but left a job that was a head of marketing role in a large retailer here in Australia.
At the time, I was making more money than I'd ever been paid before. I remember when I started my business, I thought, I'm never going to make that money again, but that's okay because I had all these limiting beliefs around the idea that to make that much money I would have to work as hard as I had worked there and I wouldn't have time with my family, I wouldn't be able to see my kids. I'd sort of set myself up in that first year of, “Okay, well even if I earn half of what I was earning, then I'll be okay.” I've been able to consistently earn more than I earned at that job every single year, except for the first one, I think it took me a year to get going into that sort of financials. But today I want to walk through all of the steps that I've taken and what I do in each of those steps.
You might want to write notes, you might want to pause this and go and get a notebook or open the app on your phone if you so desire and you're able to, you're not driving or operating every machinery or something. But you can also always find the show notes for the podcast over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast. For today's episode, it'll be /382. That URL is mydailybusiness.com/podcast/382. I did have a lovely email recently or DM I think it was from a wonderful person who said, “I'm deaf and I appreciate that you have the show notes and you have the full transcript.” Shout out to her if she's reading the transcript for this and just for everyone to know that they are there. We do try and make this podcast as accessible as possible for everybody.
Again, any of the show notes you can find at mydailybusiness.com/podcast. The first thing when we're talking about money, the very first thing that I do is to do a review of the year prior. I look at everything from my actual map of the money that I had projected from that time the year prior. In January 2023 for example. I look at what I want from that year. Where did I put my estimations for all my revenue streams? How much profit did we have? What were the big expenses? What were also the big revenue streams that came in? Was there anything massive that was unexpected in there? Either way, either negative or positive. I look at a whole bunch of things. I do a bit of a review. Now those reviews are done every single month, it's not like I'm capturing something that I didn't know about.
But it's good to look at it and sort of remind me, especially if you are a kind of seasonal business or you're a business where you do have a consistent peak and throughout the year, it's good to know that in those months it typically goes down. The reason that you want to know that stuff is that there might be other revenue streams for you to bring in, such as passive income or maybe to be marketing or promoting yourself or your business a little bit more in the lead-up to those months, maybe more than you have previously. That's the first thing to go back and look at what happened last year, what were the learnings from last year? Where were the areas that I saved in, where were the areas that I kind of maybe went a bit too fun times, spending money splurging?
Also, things like staff, any staff changes that you've had over that year, any technical or equipment changes you've had, any kind of big subscriptions or big platforms or big outlays that you might have had that may have had a real impact on your profit. For example, if you have a new warehousing system or you have new machinery that you had to buy that might have been a huge dent. However, this year going forward you shouldn't have that same dent again because those things especially machinery, are going to stick around for a while. That is the first thing to sit down and do a full review of the year prior. If you have your system set up, whether you're using MYOB, QuickBooks, Zero or whatever it is, you should be able to have an easy way of looking at this information.
Likewise, if you go through a marketing course, you get access to a revenue tracker or if you work with us one-on-one or in group coaching, you will have access to a revenue tracker and that's a Google sheet. There's nothing wrong with having an old-school Excel or Google sheet. I worked on an Excel sheet for the first couple of years in my business even though I was also paying for zero just because I liked having the Excel sheet and it made sense to me. Whatever way you've tracked stuff, you should have a way of looking at this easily and it doesn't take that long. If you don't then that should be a big red flag to you that the first thing that you need to work on in your finances is a way of tracking it and a way of being able to look at that pretty easily, ideally even through some sort of digital way on your phone.
It shouldn't be something that you have to be at your physical desk or even on a laptop. It should be that you could use your phone using the apps from these different accounting software or using Google Drive or something else. That's the first thing doing a big review. Now the second thing, and this is just super important and I think it's a step that so many people miss, they miss it in their marketing, they miss it in their overall strategy and then they miss it, definitely when it comes to finance. That is to think about what the year ahead looks like. For example, if you are a service-based provider where a lot of your income is coming from you physically working with people. If you're a photographer or a house painter or a business coach, whatever it is, if you are physically needed for you to be able to get money in, then you need to be making sure that you've mapped out your year ahead because there might be times when you are on holidays or you are taking time off for health reasons or something else and you need to make sure that is in there because that may well lead to a dip in your finances.
Like I said before, it's then thinking about, “What other revenue streams are going to come in to stabilize this? Or where can I potentially get more money on either side of that dip to make sure that it doesn't have a huge impact financially on me?” When you're looking at your at-a-glance calendar or your 12 months ahead, I often just use an At-A-Glance calendar, which is literally at a glance, it's 12 boxes on a page. If you need a free version, we have a free download you can get at mydailybusiness.com/freestuff. You can find a whole bunch of things there just at the free stuff. We'll link it in the show notes, but you can get it at a glance calendar, it's just 12 boxes on a page, and you fill it out.
The first thing that you want to think about when you're looking at that is what are the big rocks? If you've thought about or ever heard of the rocks in the jar story, it's this story of a teacher who had a jar that had pebbles, big rocks, pebbles and sand, and they emptied the jar in front of their students and they're like, “Put everything back.” When the students put the sand and the pebbles in first, the big rocks did not fit. Whereas if they put the big rocks in first and then poured the pebbles and then poured the sand, the sand could fit around those big rocks. Now the big rocks represent important things in your life and your business. When you're looking at your at-a-glance calendar, there may be some really big things where you'll be needed in other areas of your life.
For example, if you have a child who is going through their final year of high school, then they may need you in more ways than potentially they've needed you in the past because this is their final year of school. Likewise, you might have a child who's having their first child, maybe it's your first grandchild that's coming this year. You want to put that into your calendar and make sure that you are going to be taken up with other things that are going on outside of your life. You might be trying to get pregnant, you might be getting married, you might be taking your first overseas holiday, or you might be signing up for a 10-week silent retreat meditation. But some things are important to each of us outside of our business and those need to be put in.
It could be this month we've got my mom's 70th birthday and the whole family's going on a cruise. You put that in. Likewise, you might have other health goals, maybe you are trying to run a marathon or a half marathon or one of those crazy people like one of my lovely clients, Boris, who does a hundred-kilometre sort of trail run or something. If you have something like that, you're going to have extra time to be training for that. Again, that needs to be on your calendar. It's one of your big rocks because it's an achievement or something that you're going for that is important to you. That needs to be in there first so that your other things can be built around that.
Because I always think about whether will this matter in five years. You being there, if you are going to become a grandparent for the first time you being there for your child who's having that first child is important and will matter in five years. Whereas you putting in, I don't know what you're going to write on the blog for this particular fortnight, not as important, maybe who knows, maybe that blog goes viral and you become a billionaire. But most of the time that's going to be different from you taking the time and being there for your family member. The first thing with your at a glance is to think about the big rocks and if the timing of some of these things, put them in. Put them into your calendar because there's no point in building this amazing marketing idea or building these big financial goals at a time when you just can't fulfil them because something else is happening.
The other thing with your at-a-glance calendar is to put in stuff that is also impacting your business. For example, if you are the primary caregiver of your children, then you might be putting in things like school holidays, which in Australia I think equates to 12 or 13 weeks of the year. In those weeks, particularly if you are a service provider or you run a retail shop or a cafe or something else and you are going to need to close early or start late or not be open certain days or have other people working in your place, that all needs to be in there as well. I will always start as well by adding in the school holidays. That also impacts some of my clients. A lot of my clients aren't parents, but some, a lot of them are.
They may not necessarily want to start a group coaching project or a course and coaching program for marketing for your small business at a time when it is school holidays. Those things need to go in, likewise, public holidays, anything that is impacting your business from a perspective of any kind of spiritual things that need to be put in so that at a glance calendar is super important. The other thing to put in there is any national or international dates. For example, International Women's Day or other things that are coming up because when we get to a later point that I'm going to go through, which is reverse engineering your marketing to hit your financial goals, these things are important to have put down first. That is what does my year look like?
The second point to that is what are the big expenses this year? Again, if you are going down the path of trying to conceive and you are going through IVF, that is a big expense. It depends on how your insurance works and everything else and where you're doing this in the world. But for a lot of people that is a big expense. Likewise, you might be doing renovations in your house, maybe you are saving up to buy your first house and you have a deadline in mind for the year when that's going to happen. But there might also be big expenses in the business. You might have a huge shift to a new warehouse that is going to be a huge expense to the business or a warehousing management inventory system that you are finally going to take on.
You might decide to pull your stock from a third-party logistics provider and have it in your storage or your facility. You might also be investing in staff and maybe this is the year that you are going to step away from doing your marketing and employ ahead of marketing, which is a large cost. Knowing any of those big expenses is important to list because that is going to have an impact on your overall financial goal financially. It could be that you are hiring people, it could be that you're getting new equipment, new machinery, new studio, new setup. It could be in your personal life that you are investing in property or something else that's big. You might also decide that this is the year that you're going to go on an international trip for a particular conference that you've wanted to go to or maybe gone to in the past.
You might also decide that you are going to invest in a stall at a trade show. All of these things need to be listed down as much as you know at this point. That is number three. What are the big expenses? Number four, again, this is important and if you've filled out your at-a-glance calendar as I've just gone through, then these things should be relatively easy for you to kind of understand. But thinking about where are the periods within this calendar or this coming year that I won't be working as much or I will not be as available. Even if you have, let's say an e-commerce site and you're a product-based business, you may not be as available for marketing campaigns, so for you to be on podcasts or you might not be as available for your staff at a certain point of the year.
This could look like holidays that you've already booked in, like I said before, conferences, trade shows, et cetera. But also it could look like other goals that you may have in the business. For example, writing a book. Last year 2023 and I'm still editing it at this stage with my publisher. My second business book will come out in September this year, September the fourth. We have a date, very exciting and that'll come out in Australia and New Zealand at that time and then it'll come out December the second, I'm pretty sure in the UK and US. That is being published with Hardie Grant. If anyone is a stockist of Hardie Grant books, please add my new book to your list. But the writing of that book last year was a big project.
Anyone who's written the book, it takes a lot out of you not just to write the book but to research things, fact check, do all the stuff, go through the designs, have all the meetings with the publishers, all of that takes a long time. That book took a chunk of time. We also moved last year, which I didn't know a year ago. I didn't know that we were going to, I thought we were going to go ahead with our renovation and we decided to sell the house and and move. But if you have a plan of writing a book, moving house, moving country, whatever it is, there will be periods that you're not going to be able to work business as usual because these other big things that are coming up that are not going to happen every single year.
Those are the periods that you have to know. For example, I had been given a book contract by the book publisher, Hardie Grant. I can't remember now, but I knew that the months of say April, may, June, I would need to be writing a lot. Then that got pushed out to the manuscript was due in August or September. I was also writing in July and checking things and chasing up people for photos, et cetera. In your money mapping you are also being putting in the periods that you may not be working business as usual. It may be that you are happy to take a cut in your finances at those periods or it might be that the work that you're doing such as writing a book is paying you the same amount or more or less.
Then also looking at, “Well if I am going to take a cut, then how do I look at my revenue streams and make sure that I'm not going to take too much of a hit?” That is number four. What are the periods that I won't be working as much? It could be you're working on a book or a house move or it could also be travel. As I said, I also travelled a lot last year, I went overseas twice and visited five different countries. That was also a period when Australia was so far away from everywhere. Outside of the actual time that I was travelling and meeting with people, I also had the flight times and just it took 30 hours to get to the US. There's a whole bunch of times when you just can't work, especially if you are say a photographer or somebody that you can't be doing photos in the air or maybe you can, who knows.
Those are the periods to think about when will I not be able to be working business as usual at that point. Now again, you may have a product, you might have something that doesn't require you to be there all the time, but even so, you might have things like packing orders or making sure that your third-party logistics are doing their work and you just won't be on top of it as much. Number four. This is where it starts then to get into the mapping of figures. Number four is figuring out my survival rate. I always talk to people about, you've got two numbers that you need to be complete across in your business. The first is your survival rate and the second is your thrive rate. The first figure, which is your survival, is literally what you need to survive.
Now this will change and it's something that you should be looking at pretty much quarterly, at least if not every six months in your business because of the way that things are constantly changing, especially now we've got mortgage rates going up, rent's going up, commercial rent going up, all sorts of things. We're seeing that trickle down to subscriptions and platforms where they are constantly raising their prices instead of it usually being once a year that people might put their prices up. I now know that some of the platforms I've used have increased their prices four times in a year. You want to be looking at your survival rate. Your survival rate encompasses kind of two areas. The first is what the business needs to survive. The business is what are all the key subscriptions. For example, if you're an e-commerce provider, you may have a Shopify subscription and all these other widgets and other things that you pay for.
You may also have your warehousing and your logistics and your pick and packers and all the other things. Your wrap, your gift, wrapping your boxes, your packaging, all of that, plus the people who work for you. That is the business, what the business needs to survive. That also encompasses saving for your tax, making sure that you've got all your insurances, all of that listed out. You've got that. Then you also have what you as a person need to survive. You have your own life outside of the business. You may have a family, you may not, you may have property, you may not have not. Everyone will have a different lifestyle that they're living. For some people, they may be in an amazing position where their business doesn't have to contribute to their lifestyle outside of work.
Other people, you might be the breadwinner in your family and you are contributing massively to the rest of the house and everything else. You want to figure out in your personal life what is the survival rate. Now you might be in a partnership with somebody and maybe they're also working and you're contributing equally 50/50, you might contribute 90, they might contribute 10, whatever it is. But you need to understand your survival costs as a family as a unit or as a solo person if that's your lifestyle at the moment. Figure out, “What do I need to survive in my life?” That isn't things like all your utility bills, your food, your insurance, your education like childcare, school fees, private school fees, et cetera. You have to have an understanding of your personal life and how much you are contributing to that because that will then be your survival wage or the survival amount that you as a person need to be drawing from the company.
When you've got your at-a-glance calendar, some people depend on how your business is set up. Some people will have a wage, I'm an employee of a company so I have a wage, I have my superannuation and all of that. It's paid monthly. Then other people may have whether a director of a company or trust or maybe they get their money through dividends a certain amount of times a year or just at the end of a financial year. If you just get paid at a certain time of the year or you get paid quarterly or whatever, that also needs to go into your at-a-glance calendar. But coming back to your survival rate, the other thing to think about is that why I said this has to be looked at frequently and not just once a year is that your survive rate, especially if you've got things like a mortgage or the increased cost of living with rental prices, I know that's a huge issue here in Australia, then the survive rate that you may have had previously might not cut it anymore.
I know even with our mortgage, we've probably had eight or nine interest rates or increases in 18 months. All of that contributes to your survival rate being more so and higher than it may have been in previous years. You may also have say, emergencies that have come up in the last year or a couple of years where that have depleted your emergency fund as a family or unit or a single person. You may be like, “Well my survival rate,” I've got to contribute a bit more because I need to have that emergency fund sitting there. After all, it got depleted from a car accident or something else that you had or a health issue or something else that came up out of the blue and took all of that emergency money in the last year.
That survival rate is key. The other thing that's important with the survival rate in terms of a business is to know what your survival rate is and what that looks like on a monthly or even weekly breakdown so that even if things are in a bit of a slump or maybe work isn't coming in as much as you had hoped, that you're able to meet all of your bills and all your expectations because you know you survive rate. I think sometimes that can be real, it can give a sense of relief to people where they're like, “Yep, I'm not hitting necessarily the numbers that I wanted to, however, I am absolutely above my survival rate.” That's the first number, your survival rate. The second number, which is much more fun, and this is where you can start mapping out your revenue streams, is to figure out what your thrive rate or your thrive figure is.
You've gone through the survival part of like what is the absolute minimum that I need to be bringing in to hit all the things that need to be paid for in the business, plus all the things that need to be paid for in your personal life? You then want to add to that the things you want to achieve this year and what they will mean on a financial basis. For example, if you decide this year I want to go to this conference in Palm Springs, or this year I want to go to this event in London or this year I want to sell my wares at a trade show in New York. That is going to cost and you'll put a cost associated with that and hopefully, your cost has been worked out.
It's just not some arbitrary number that you took out of the thin air. That becomes a number. Let's say you decided I want to go to this conference, it's in Palm Springs, I'm flying from Australia and I also need to get accommodation. That is going to cost let's say $10,000. If your survival rate was 150,000, you've now added 10 for the conference, that's 160,000. You might also decide, I want to contribute a lot more to my superannuation or my 401k and I'm going to add that chunk of money in because I'm going to pay myself more into super or your pension scheme. You might also decide that you just want to pay yourself more. Maybe your cost of living has gone up and you need to be paying yourself more from the company to make sure you've got that buffer and everything else.
You increase your wage, maybe you've had staff for some time and you need to increase their wages that needs to be put in there. Likewise, maybe you've got equipment that you'd like to upgrade. Those costs need to be there. You might have also some fun things that you want to do. Maybe you want to kid out your office or get a whole new uniform or get a new delivery truck or whatever it is. You then add all of those costs to the survival rate to come up with your Thrive figure. Your Thrive figure is your thrive figure and it should be worked out strategically rather than just some number that you think you should be earning because the business has been in business a certain amount of time or somebody told you, or you saw somebody on TikTok that earns that much.
Now you want to earn that much. It's surprising to me because I've been doing this, this is my ninth year and I'm used to it now, but the amount of people that I talk to who have a number in mind and there's no sort of planning behind that number, it's just, “I want to make a million dollars because everyone I know said that's what you should make. Or I see all these people talking about seven figures, so I want to be doing that.” But it's like, what does that look like in your life? What would seven figures bring you? Is it, “Yep, I'd be able to cut my mortgage in half.” Is it XYZ? Like what does that number mean to you? When you work through your finances in the way that I'm talking through today, you will come up with a number that is your number and that means something to you because if you hit that, yes, you'll be able to book those tickets to Palm Springs.
You'll be able to go and get that van for your business because you have a number that is your number and not just some arbitrary number that doesn't have any real attachment or meaning to you. That is number six, really figuring out your thrive rate. When I map this all out, I have certain things that I want to achieve, certain things I want to do and certain stuff that I want to contribute to in my personal life. Buying shares, doing different investments, whatever that needs to be in that thrive rate. Once you have your thrive rate, what I like to do, and again it sounds quite like that, it could take a while, but it doesn't, it can take like five minutes to get a piece of paper. I'm quite old school, I guess you could do it digitally as well.
Create a circle in the middle of the page and in that circle, you're going to put your thrive number. That total number that you've come up with, that's exciting. It's not just your survival rate, it's your exciting thrive number that has all the fun things included in it. You have that thrive number in a circle in the middle of a page. Then around that you have different circles. Each of those represents a revenue stream. Each of those single circles or whatever shape you choose, is equal to a revenue stream. For example, in my business, I would have one-on-one coaching as one revenue stream and group coaching as one revenue stream. What else do we sell? Courses as one revenue stream.
I do a lot of speaking gigs that are paid, that's another revenue stream or workshops, masterclasses. I have my books as another revenue stream. Anyway, so that you get the picture, each of these is a revenue stream. Now you need to have a goal attached to each revenue stream. Ideally, those financial goals for each revenue stream when added together, equate to your thrive number. Now what happens is often people realize, “Actually that thrive number is not that big of a stretch.”
I could either go up in that and have more profit in the business, or contribute more to my home life or superannuation or shares or whatever, or they get a real shake and wake-up call that they're not earning anywhere close to what they need to be. That is where we then look at things like your profitability and if these are the correct revenue streams for you and margins and all sorts of things, depending on what type of business. If you are in that stage please get in touch because this is what we work with people all the time and looking at their numbers. Sometimes people get embarrassed and like, “Oh my God, I can't believe I'm showing you this.” I'm like, “This is what I'm here for.” I'm not an accountant or a CFO or anything like that, but I've looked at many businesses and it is really easy sometimes to find, “This is where you need to cut, or this is what you need to do.”
Anyway, coming back to this kind of mapping out and how I map out my money, the seventh point is your revenue streams. You look at each revenue stream and you decide and calculate how that is going to perform in this year. For example, there will be some things in group coaching we run two groups every year. We cap those groups, we charge a certain amount per person per month. It's a 12-month program. If we have two groups, I roughly know how much money will come in from that. Now that's not a guarantee when you're putting these things in, there could be all sorts of things that happen in external forces or other things that come up. It's not saying this will happen, but you're going to do your absolute best to try to hit those numbers, if not exceed those numbers.
I will have a goal attached to group coaching. I will have a goal attached to one-on-one coaching of how many clients we can bring in. I'll have a goal attached to our courses and other products that we sell online. Then I have a goal attached to speaking. I have a goal attached to the books and the royalties that come from those books. All of those numbers, when they're added together, should hit that thrive number in the middle. The other thing to be looking at this is to assess the profitability of each of those revenue streams. This is where it's really important to look at this stuff frequently rather than just every few years. You may have a revenue stream that used to work well and that you used to be able to just turn it on and it flowed, but for some reason, it's not working as well.
Or you look at the last couple of years and you're like, “That is going down.” That is where you want to be looking at your profitability for each of these revenue streams as well. There might be a revenue stream that has a high margin and it's profitable, but you're not working on it that much anymore. Maybe some things kind of fell by the wayside because of COVID and lockdowns, and maybe it's just something that you haven't reignited. You want to get back into that. The only way that you'll know that is if you map these things out. The other thing here is that you might have a new revenue stream that you're like, “We are going to introduce this this year.” You have no data previously to kind of understand exactly how to calculate, that will be a bit of a guesstimate.
You may have some data points that you can look at for this or this is a brand new thing, “I'm just going to put it out there and see if it hits.” You might be doing some competitive analysis. I'm looking at the market, what will people pay, all of those kinds of things. That is number seven, to map out your revenue streams. That's exactly what I do. I map out mine, I look at mine about quarterly to make sure that the goals haven't changed or that we haven't got new revenue streams that we've brought in. Then number eight, I look at the marketing that I'll need to support these things. If I was bringing in a new category to your business. Let's say you're like a naturopath, right?
You work with people who deal with low energy. I'm not a naturopath. Let's say you have a real niche of low energy, can't sleep, and maybe new moms, let's say, I mean, that's a lot of mothers, I would say I am a mom putting my hand up that sometimes you have low energy and you can't sleep in, especially in those early years. Your main business has been naturopathy and consulting. Then you decide to introduce supplements, or you decide to introduce a meal delivery service or something else that's kind of quite different from all your other offerings previously. But you're able to look at the market, you're able to see what is selling, you've done your research, you'll have a revenue stream goal attached to that, but you'll have different marketing that has to go into that because maybe it's not just to your clients at the naturopathy agency firm clinic.
You may have a meal delivery service for anyone. Maybe you're collaborating with somebody, or you might have supplements that are beneficial to anybody, not just women who've just had a baby and are going through low energy. Your marketing will be quite different, and you might be looking at new channels and new platforms new collaborations and new experiences that you haven't done previously. Those sometimes come at a cost. That also needs to be factored in, especially if you are creating a new revenue stream or something else. The other part with that, and the marketing behind this is to make sure that when you're mapping out your revenue streams, you've got at least one recurrent revenue stream. A recurrent revenue stream is something that stabilizes your income and that comes in recurrent.
It could be a subscription. Let's say, for example, you do have these supplements, you would have a subscription model that people can buy a year-long subscription or a six-month or whatever the frequency is. That stabilizes the income because the more subscribers you have, the more amount of money is coming in every single month. Group coaching is one of the recurrent revenue streams for a lot of service-based providers. Some photographers might have a recurrent revenue stream of social media images that you buy. You buy like an image bank service. I know Jasmine Star in the US has a social curator, she offers people a certain amount of original images. She started as a photographer, took the images, and put them into a bank, you get access to that each month. She also offers social media tips.
I don't subscribe to Social Curator, but I know people who have in the past, I've interviewed Jasmine before, she's a lovely person. Do you want to work through those things and then figure out what is the marketing? For example, if you are launching into a new territory like the US or Asia or somewhere else, you might decide, I need to have somebody on the ground over there, or I need to work with an agency in that territory, in that location. Who knows a lot more about their local audience and can help us with this? That's a cost that needs to come in. But also just doing this, you may have all these new marketing ideas that come to you, so you need to list them out somewhere and capture that information whilst you're thinking about these things.
That is number eight. Where's the marketing and what are you going to do to support all of those revenue streams? When are you talking about them? This goes back to your at-a-glance yearly calendar. When will you start mentioning these things? For example, we launch Group Coaching. We pretty much run it in March. We open it in March and September each year. We know that in December we start talking about it in January, we ramp it up so that in February we are doing interviews for the new people coming into that group. Then number eight, you really want to think, and this is important, and I guess again, it can be something that just gets missed or not thought about at this stage, is to think about what needs to change from a really practical perspective. It could be that your banking setup needs to change.
It could be that you reviewed things and maybe you are spending way too much money on bank fees. I recently talked about it in a previous episode, I got scammed on Christmas with my business card, and I had to get a new card and everything else. One of the things that I saw was like, “I get a lot of bank fees, like with this company, I've never really looked into changing banks.” I've been with this one bank with my business, set up with them nine years ago now, and didn't change anything. I contacted them and I was like, “I have been this valued customer of yours. I've had lots of money sitting in there that you are you know how banks go, they're making money on our money all the time and then they're charging us for the experience.”
I said to them, “I shouldn't be paying you every single month.” The guy was so nice, he just instantly showed you what can happen when you call. He's like, “Oh yeah, you're so right. I'm just going to waive the last 12 months of all of your bank fees.” He's like, “I'm going to refund all of them today and I'm also going to put in a note that you don't want to pay bank fees anymore.” Unfortunately, I have to go into a physical location for them to do that like permanently. But he was great and instantly got all that money back. That was awesome. But one of the things that might be that you need to change your bank set up, it might be that your accountant is not as great as you had hoped it could be that your bookkeeper needs to either be fired or talk to, or maybe you love your bookkeeper and you want to talk to them more often than you are.
I'm going to email them, we're going to get into a weekly chat, or I'm going to get a financial planner, or I'm going to talk to my financial advisor a bit more about what I'm trying to achieve this year. Those kinds of practical support systems need to be considered. Number 10 is to really hone in on the numbers and the figures and the goals and spend some time really kind of meditating on those. This is something that I'll do when I map all my money out. I will go, “Okay,” and wait until I have that feeling that this will happen. Now, I have changed passwords in the past to have the Thrive number in there, and I've had that number so that every time I have to log into something, I'm putting that number into the universe.
To my mind, I'm reminding myself constantly that this is the number that we're going after Killackey. But the other thing in that space is to accept what I don't know and to think about, “Where is my financial knowledge? Am my financial literacy going to come from this year? So am I going to get more interested in the podcast that I used to listen to that I haven't listened to for a while, for example? Or maybe there's some financial books that you bought and you haven't read.” Listing those out as well. For example, there's a book, I think it's by Peter Thornhill, that I did a session years ago with a financial planner called Canna Campbell, and she used to do these one-off sessions and she is SugarMamma for a lot of people who may not know that she has a great podcast.
One is called Financial Fire Play and the other one is called How Do They Afford That? I did a session with her, it was before my second child was born, five or six years ago. I remember she said, “You need to read this book by Peter Thornhill called Motivated Money.” We'll look it up and put it into the show notes. That is a book that I have maybe started the first couple of pages and I've never read. I am reading that book this year. But there are other books that you might have bought and that you haven't read or that you've read and not actioned, or maybe even you've gone through courses and you haven't actioned the stuff. We have a course called the Money Mapping Course, and it goes through everything I've talked about today, but in more detail. You can find that at mydailybusiness.com/courses.
We've had hundreds of people do that course and we've had so much great feedback about it. I think because it's short and people can action things straight away, it's really easy to get through. I know of other courses that I just had, somebody two days ago was talking to me about a course that they did years ago, but they were like, at the time, our finances weren't super clear and super mapped out, I wasn't able to fully utilize the course, but they're going to go back through that course this year because they're like, now I'm at a point where I could utilize the stuff that they were talking about in that course. That is sort of number 10 to spend some time getting into a headspace of this will happen, this can happen, this is going to happen for me.
I think the biggest thing is when you break these things down and you look at the revenue stream and you see that it's possible, then it's like, “Okay, how do I market this? How do I track this? How do I make sure that it is going to happen?” Now, this is something that I've done in my business since day one. I've always had to manage budgets and everything else in all of the jobs that I've ever had. This is something that I have had some experience in doing previously to starting a business, but I do this religiously. I have to say I am incredibly fortunate that every single year my business has increased financially. It's been fantastic. Like I said at the start, I earn more than I ever thought possible. Especially since I work three days a week and have two children I feel like I have a lot of time for my family and a lot of time to go for walks, work on my health, be social, read, watch, trash, TV, all the things.
I've been able to do it, I would say hugely down to this mapping at the start of every year. I do it a few times throughout the year and it allows me to stay focused on what I'm trying to do, how much money is coming in, and how much money is going out. It's something that I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself for doing this. No one sat down with me and said, “This is how you do it.” I figured this stuff out and I've been able to make it even stronger over the years. And I think I've helped thousands of people in their small businesses. I sound so myself saying that, but one of the biggest things is doing this exercise with somebody who comes to me for coaching and us seeing what is possible for them in a really practical way.
Not in a, “Buy my course and you'll make $4 million tomorrow just in a really practical way,” and especially in a way that aligns with what else they want in their life. I don't want to work five days a week. I don't want to not see my kids. I don't want to work 24/7. I want my money to work for me and to have a life that I'm enjoying and have the freedom and choice of doing things that money provides, but also have the freedom of time. You can always make more money, you cannot get more time back. Time is hugely important to me, and it's something that I've talked about from day one in this business. I've always been anti-hussle. I've always been taking the time back, aligning with your business and your values because we only have one life.
You may as well enjoy it. Your business is important and yes, your business is meaningful, but it's not a hundred per cent of your life or who you are as a person. That is it for today. This is how I map out my money. I've just recently done it again for 2024, and it's then me figuring out the systems and the marketing to support these things that I'm trying to achieve financially in my business. As I said, we do have a course on Money Mapping. You can go and purchase that if you like, over at mydailybusiness.com/courses. It's reasonably priced, and as I said, we've had hundreds of people go through that course and have given such great feedback that it has been one of the best things they've done for their business. I just think it's great because it just maps it all out pretty easily and pretty practically.
That is it for today. If you want to go through this in text format, you can find the show notes over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/382, and we'll link to everything that we mentioned, including that book by Peter Thornhill and Canna Campbell over there. We may also link to Girls That Invest Simran Kaur, amazing wealth experts and some other people that I think are good in this space. Thanks for reading. Take care. If you found this useful, I would love it. If you could please leave a review. We watch and read every single review that comes in, whether on Apple or Spotify or Google Play or wherever you read this. If you think this is useful for a friend, please forward it to them so that they can learn and maybe it's going to be important for them and their money journey in 2024 and beyond. Thanks for reading. Bye.
