Episode 454: 5 things I've stopped spending money on in my business
In this episode, Fiona dives into the importance of assessing the value of what you invest in. She also discusses why it’s crucial to question the true impact of these expenses on your bottom line. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Importance of actively engaging in memberships
How to manage business expenses
Overspending on tech tools and gadgets
Assessing large membership groups and their impact
The cost of online tech tools vs. their actual benefit
Evaluating new software tools and their promises
Importance of testing tools before committing to long-term plans
Transparency in affiliate marketing and tool recommendations
Managing stationery addiction in business spending
Monthly audits of app subscriptions and cutting unnecessary costs
The value of reinvesting saved money for business growth
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If you are in a large membership, think, am I actively part of this? Am I actively working to get feedback or knowledge? And am I doing the work that the mentor or the group is assigning me? Because if not, what are you paying for?
Welcome to episode 454 of the My Daily Business podcast. If you're reading real-time, it is the 10th of the 10th, which is World Mental Health Day and I hope that you are looking after your mental health. We will link our show notes to a couple of mental health episodes that we have done, including how I look after my mental health and some other good ones. We'll also link to Gen Bailey's interview. Jen Bailey is an incredible award-winning documentary filmmaker and one of her latest films called Happy Sad Man looks at Men's mental health and it's such an incredible film. I urge everyone to see it, whether you are here in Australia or whether you are overseas, it's such a good one. We'll link to our interview with Jen where she talks about mental health and looking after your mental health as well in the show notes, which for this episode you'll find at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/454.
Before we get stuck into today's coaching episode, which honestly is a good one, I should have done this years ago. I'm like, how have I never done this episode before? But, here we are. But before we get stuck, I want to remind you of two things. One is that the How to Get Your Book Published course is kicking off later this month. If you've ever wanted to get your book published by a traditional publisher, as in get paid to write your book and not do the whole have-to-self-publish thing, then you can join that at mydailybusiness.com/courses. The other thing is to of course acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this beautiful land. That is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to the elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
It is also almost exactly a year since the referendum in Australia. And I would urge you that all of us need to do our work to make sure that this country is as good as it possibly can be, but also that First Nations levels of equality and equity are raised. If you are a small business owner, look at your practices, whether that's looking at how you acknowledge and care for the country in terms of your waste management, your policies around that, as well as what you can do as a business. What causes you to get behind? What diversity practices are you putting in place? What are you doing to help ensure that future generations in this country feel that things are as equal as they possibly can be? And if you are First Nations, I'm sure that the anniversary of the referendum is quite painful and I hope that you are looking after yourself if you need help there. There is always 13Yarn. Let's get into today's coaching episode.
I was watching TikTok recently and was watching this one particular woman talking about the price of cucumbers here in Australia. And I think, I cannot remember exactly how much it was, I should have looked at the video before hitting record, but I think it was like $8 or something for a cucumber. I mean that seems ridiculous, but I know I've gone to buy things recently and just been like? Is that the price? I think it was $16 for some eggs. And no wonder lots of people are buying chickens. We should be looking at that in our house. We go through so many eggs, but the cost of living is insane at the moment. And I'm saying that from a privileged position of having a business that is in business that is making money, having a dual income household, having a house and a mortgage, being able to afford that.
I still feel like the pinch. I'm still absolutely feeling like, I'm checking things. I'm checking prices of things that I didn't check previously, and there are a lot of reasons for this, but today I wanted to talk about five things that I no longer buy in my business. If you are somebody who is looking at saving some dollars right now, these are things that I've stopped buying. I have to say I have stopped buying them over the last few years. It hasn't just been a recent thing. However, they have helped in terms of the expenses that we were putting out on things that just were not making an impact on the business. Some of them might be a little controversial and also some of them might be shooting myself in the foot given what I sell as a business.
But I'm going to go through them and just be honest because that's what I've always been with this podcast. In no particular order, the five things that I have stopped spending money on in my business include coming in at number one. And again, they're not in a particular order, but I just wrote them down quickly before hitting record. The first one is the latest tech tools. A couple of years ago now I bought an iWatch is that even what it's called? Apple Watch? At the time I think this was about $1,500 and I needed to also have a contract with a particular telco here so that I could use the watch when I was not at home, not near wifi, which was super annoying because I've always bought my phones outright.
I don't go into contracts. I have not had a contract with a telco for decades. It annoyed me to have to go back into a contract. But I bought the watch. What I have to say is that, and this is a couple of years ago, so maybe things have improved, but a lot of the apps that I use regularly were not upgraded, there was just no development of an app for the watch. Either you'd have this workaround where you usually were paying for some other developer to give you access. For example, WhatsApp. There was not a great WhatsApp watch version I just couldn't figure out how to get it to work. It just wasn't, I talked to a couple of other friends who had watched, and they were like, it doesn't work on them well.
I was paying for this workaround that I think was like $9 every two months or something. It was just frustrating. The text, I know you can change the text size, but a lot of the text sizes on apps are tiny. It's a watch, it's going to be small. And I just felt that it was not worth the money that I had paid for it to date. It sits on a standing charger and I rarely use it. I should probably sell it. But I think in the past I have gotten fooled into thinking I need this or I need that or I need an upgraded laptop or at one stage I bought an iPad Pro because I thought it would be better than my handwriting notes while I was on coaching calls and now I have AI tools, but that iPad Pro, I mean my son uses it again, could be something that I sell.
But there were lots of things like that that I have over time been like, I need this, or I need that. Or I would watch somebody's desk set up on social media and be like, I wonder what that is. Or maybe I need a new microphone or maybe I need this or maybe I need that. I bought, at the very start of my business, I went and spent about $2,000 on a fancy camera that I to date have used literally three or four times. Again, it is sitting in a pile of things that I need to sell. Maybe I should do an episode on the things that I've sold that I did not use in my business and how much money it brought in. But these are things that I got fooled into thinking, that I needed.
I think in business, especially when you're looking at things like, you should have a YouTube channel and you should create more content and you should do this and you should do that, that you need the fanciest setup, you need the fanciest film photography stuff. You need all of these lights, you need an incredible camera, you need so much stuff when in fact most of us have a lot of that stuff in our phones. Our phone is pretty incredible for what it can do. I get told all the time, what lighting system do you have set up? Like with coaching clients? I don't have a lighting system, I do not have a ring light. I sit in front of a window that is pretty big, it's like doors. That light, whatever the sunlight does a good job. I guess I have in the past spent money on lots of different things, like a giant ring light that I did all this research on, I got this big one, and I ended up selling that, yes, one thing that I did sell.
Then I got another ring light, like just a cheaper one from JB Hi-Fi, which is a tech store here in Australia. Again, it doesn't ever get used. That's a big one. I like tech tools, just do not feel like I have to buy all of this tech equipment to somehow run my business. And I know in some businesses of course you have to upgrade your tech or maybe you're a graphic designer and you're getting a different Wacom tablet, but I would be questioning, am I getting it because I think I need to get it or am I getting it? Because I've somehow fooled myself into thinking that if I have that, then I'm going to do the work. If I have the camera, then I'm going to film all these YouTube videos because so often we have the stuff and we still don't do the thing.
That is the first thing this tech equipment that I didn't need. Now if I'm going to buy something that is tech, I go through a thorough process of thinking how am I going to use it? When am I going to use it? When's that implementation deadline how will it better me and how is it going to help run my business? And if I can't clearly say that and if I think there's a little inkling thereof I'm just doing it because I think this is cool or this is something I should have or it's a fun little novelty thing, then no I'd rather put my money into shares. The second thing, and this one is a bit controversial and I'm just talking from my experience here is large membership groups. I know I can hear people going, did she say that?
I know some people listen to this. I'm friends with people who have membership groups and I'm not saying that all of them, but I think if you are going to pay to be in some membership, be questioning what are you getting from it. Also, read the fine print. I've had a couple of people recently that have joined big business groups and didn't understand that they were locked in not just for 12 months, but they were locked in and then a portion of the time through that 12 months, if they hadn't cancelled they would charge for a further 12 months and they could not get out of that or get a refund. If you're going to join a large membership group, be thinking, what am I getting out of this and do I have the time to put into this so I get what I want from it?
For example, a lot of these membership groups will run through some forum channel, like a Facebook group, a Slack channel, a Discord channel whatever it is, Voxer. And what you get is if you are part of that community, if you are regularly part of that community, I do not doubt that you're going to get a lot out of it. But you do get a lot if you're going to put in a lot. However, if you don't have the time or maybe that membership, the majority of the channel conversation is happening at a time that you are asleep because you're in a different time zone, I would be questioning, what are you getting from this? Is this going to be like buying a course where you think, I've just bought it so therefore I'm going to get better at that.
Even if I am not part of the group, I don't regularly communicate with them. I'm not asking questions, I'm not asking for the mentor to go through my stuff and I'm just this passive person. I'd be questioning a lot of those things. Also, if you're buying a membership because you want access to the person, the mentor or the person or the people who are running it, be thinking, is there another way to gain access? Is it better for me too, instead of paying for an annual membership to pay for a one-off hour with that person where they can be very specific to my particular questions or am I taking advantage of maybe they do like a call out for questions for their monthly Q and A live and am putting questions in there? I was part of the last one that I paid for was a US one and I like this person.
I've watched them for years on YouTube. I think they're good at what they do and I admire them. I think they're very clever. I bought this membership and won because they're in the US the time zone does not work. They are 4:00 AM calls that they do, but I realised after a couple of months that I wasn't even putting in questions for those calls. I was watching the replays occasionally and I wasn't even putting questions in. Then I was like, the least I could do is send in some questions. However, because I wasn't on the call, I just felt like that didn't work either. And yeah, I just felt like what am I paying for and what did I want? And would it have been a lot better, which it was? And now I've organised to have a one-off, one-on-one session with this person to look at my particular stuff as opposed to paying to hear about other people's problems.
Sometimes definitely that's helpful, but I think when you don't know those other people, you don't know the context. You're not in say a group coaching environment where you're with six or seven or 10 people for a year and you get to know each other and you understand their questions and you can relate. It's very different when you're in a group where there are hundreds of people and you're hearing from somebody for five minutes on a Zoom call and you don't know anything else about them that can be not that beneficial sometimes. With large memberships, I'd be questioning what am I joining for. Does it give me a false sense of community when could I reach out to any of the people in this group if she'd hit the fan and I needed, needed to vent or cry or phone somebody, do I know them that well?
Does it allow me to connect with people on a deeper level or is it just coming to a nameless, faceless Zoom or webinar once a month? That's something that I've stopped spending on and I can't say that I've felt any fear of missing out previously. I have spent the most, I guess on smaller group coaching and I've met one of my closest friends in the world from that who I talked to every single day. And we talked for years. We met up last year in Europe together. That was incredible. But that also wasn't a big group, there were 20 people. You have to understand those people. And I also put in the effort, I got up at three and 4:00 AM to be part of that for six months. I booked a hotel so that I could do the retreat overnight because it was from 10 p.m. until 7:00 AM I put the effort in.
But again, that was more like a group coaching group rather than a large membership. If you are in a large membership, think, am I actively part of this? Am I actively working to get feedback or the knowledge and am I doing the work that the mentor or the group is assigning me? Because if not, what are you paying for? That's the second one. Large memberships. The third one is online tools. I've talked about tech equipment, like physical tech equipment, cameras, lighting, and ring lights. But online tech tools. Often we hear about the latest project management system, the latest this, the latest that, and I have spent a lot of money on paying for these things that again, did I use it? Did something I already have work just as well. And am I getting fooled into thinking that just by buying something like a new project management software upgrading to the premium, I'm somehow going to create all the most perfect systems in my business because you still have to do the work?
It's much like AI. I love AI. I'm creating an AI monthly catchup accountability group. If you want to be part of it, just send us a DM or an email at hello@mydailybusiness.com. But AI is fantastic. It still can't do the work for you though for a lot of stuff. You still need to then implement what it's telling you to do or create those videos or do X, Y, Z. And I think with software tools sometimes we can think by just paying for it, we are somehow fixing things in our business. However, we are not, especially if that tool isn't working as well as you'd hoped. Case in point, I have recently paid quite a substantial amount of money to utilise a podcasting platform. I'm not going to name them because I'm in discussions with them on how we can improve this for both of us before I cancel.
If it does improve, then I'm more than happy to shout their praises. I won't shoot myself in the foot right now. However, I've been paying for this for months and it has not lived up to the hype. I watched all the tutorial videos, I did a lot of research, and I'm a researcher by nature, I did a lot of this because it was a chunk of money to be spending every month. It's in US dollars as well. Our dollar is not doing particularly well against the US here in Australia. I'd done a lot of research and I thought, but I couldn't test the platform properly until I paid for it. I did. And I have to say that it keeps being glitchy. When I had a look on forums and some other things, I saw that a lot of people, particularly from April this year onwards are having massive problems with this platform.
I have reached out to them, but it was another case of I reached out to them, they took forever to get back to me and then I just forgot about it. And you do. And then you just keep paying and you're paying. And I thought I'd just go back to what I was already using instead of using this platform. And that can be frustrating when you turn around and realise how much money is coming out because you thought that this new tool would do everything and it's not. If it comes to project software tools, whether it's for like mine with a podcast platform or something else, or an analytics tool or whatever else you want to be thinking about, do I have something that already does this? For example, with ours, I have Zoom, I've used Zoom, I use Zoom for coaching.
I've been using Zoom since, well before the pandemic. We used to have tutorial videos that we'd send people on what is Zoom. How to use Zoom for your coaching sessions. We use Zoom for recording this podcast when we record interviews. It's not perfect, absolutely not. However, it does the job. What I've found with this new one that I'm paying way more for is that it's not doing the job. It promised the world and it hasn't been delivering. That's something to think about when you're being excited about this new tool, think about whether have I utilised what I've already had and how much more return on investment am I going to get if I'm going to be forking out money for this. You also want to be thinking about the transparency of people who are telling you about these tools.
A lot of companies and a lot of coaches will make a chunk of their money through affiliates, which means they'll get a kickback from everything that they recommend. If I am ever getting a kickback from something, I will say it on this podcast. If I'm recommending people, I will often say I'm recommending I get no affiliate from them in 2025, we're going to be looking at affiliates more. However, I will be open and be like, I get a percentage If you buy these from them, a lot of the time when you're seeing these content creators or you're seeing people suddenly talk about a new platform, you have to think about how much they're all making from this. There are a huge number of content creators out there who will be spruiking anything so that they can get that affiliate money coming in.
I know there was one who's very well known and she talked about how 25% of her income was coming from affiliates. She was spruiking everything left, right and centre. And if you trust these people, often you want to buy into what they're telling you to get, which is why it's more important than ever to question, do I need this? Do I particularly need this in my business right now? Is it going to hit every mark? Also maybe I just sign up for a month as opposed to the annual fee and I see how well I use it, how well it works in your business, how much you're getting from it, and then go into something like an annual fee if you think it's going to work. And you might go, but if I go annual now I'll save $30, but you may well lose the rest of it if you don't use it for the next 11 months after the first month.
You realise how frustrating it is and you're not going to get your money back. That is number three, the latest tools, online tools. Number four, this is a big one for me, is Stationery. Stationery supplies, things to somehow give me an idea that I'm going to organize more than I will highlighters. I mean, I love this stuff. I love it. I think this is probably the hardest thing to raid myself in when it comes to spending in my business. I am somebody who loves a paper diary and I have a million of them. When I was moving in January, I moved this office to a different room in my house. And to do that I had to go through all my stuff, all the boxes, all these other things. And I found, I'm not even kidding, I think it was 12 unused notebooks.
They are nice notebooks and I'm like, this is a thing because it, It's like I can't walk past nice stationery without getting something. Whether it's pens, highlighters, little cute Post-it notes washy tape. I mean all of that. And the thing is that would maybe be fine if I was a graphic designer or if I was constantly sketching or if I don't know, but I just, I have so many of these things that I don't need to be buying anymore. And if I do, it has to be for something in particular. There will be a couple of things that I'll allow myself to buy when it comes to stationary, but I have mainly tried to stop and think, do I already have this? Can I use it as a case in point for a notebook? Yes, I have at least 12 that I can use that I have not even touched.
Or those could become nice little gifts for people that I can send out and that at least somebody else will use them. That is number four, which is, I think the hardest in all of this is stationary and giving out that Stationery addiction. And the start, I would buy these big journals, I would buy so much stuff and would I use it most of the time? No. The one thing that I do use and I use almost every single day is I have this desk agenda, which I did splurge and buy a nice one and I have to say that was a gift from my mother-in-law had said, to go and buy some something nice and I did and I will have it forever. That has an area for a notebook. That is what I use now and the notebook has to be a particular size and I use that every single day, that desk agenda.
I love it. However, I don't need to have all of these other things that I've had. Stationery as much as I hate saying that, that is something that I've had to curb and it's been a good thing to curb it. It has. Also just for the amount of clutter as well. And the fifth thing, which is also been huge in terms of the amount I've been able to save is to do an audit of my apps every single month. I know that might seem full-on, but we have a list of apps and tools that we use in our business. I'm not saying necessarily like the project management tools that I just talked about, but things that we pay for. I pay for Xero, which I'm not going to give up anytime soon. Xero is an accounting software.
All of my bookkeeping, my accountant, everyone logs into that. It's where we do all our invoices, everything out of, and I did do an episode about this, I had a scam on my business account. I had to change my business bank details and I had to go and get a new card and all of that and it was right around Christmas. It was annoying in that there were public holidays. I had to go to a physical bank, something I hadn't done for gosh years and years. And what it did make me do is realise how many direct debits we were signed up to as a business and I think there were 22 or 23 monthly subscriptions. Those add up if you think, but it's only $20, it's only this, it's only that that adds up quickly.
One, it was amazing to change my bank details because I just kept getting all the emails from all these different places saying, we have had an issue with your payment. And then I could decide whether I wanted to put in the new details or if I wanted to just stop paying for the subscription model that I was on with certain platforms. That is a big thing too, so each month I will look at our expenses and look at the apps that we are using and decide if have we been using them. For example, we use Later a scheduling tool for social media. However, metrical offers pretty much the same information, it doesn't offer the visuals as much, but Metrical is one that I had heard of through somebody in the US, the YouTube person that I watched and I had signed up once, but I'd forgotten about it until somebody in group coaching talked about it and she showed us how she was using it and I was like, it gives you this, it gives you that, it gives you a lot of analytics that you don't get even on a paid version of Later until you pay the even higher premium.
We are looking to potentially change everything over to that. Likewise, there are other tools that we were paying for and when I look at it every month it's like, did I utilise that or am I not utilising it at all? I mean even with say scheduling tools, if you are using Instagram or something like that, you can create all of the scheduling within that platform now as well. Not now, I mean it's been there for years, but looking at what are we getting from all of these different things that we pay for. Doing a subscription audit has been huge because honestly we've saved hundreds per month and you can take that money and either look at your profit but also take that money and think, well what is a better use of this for the business that's going to propel us forward and be in line with the business goals and objectives that we're trying to hit as opposed to, well one day I'll do this properly, or one day I'll need this tool.
It's like, great, if you do need it then that day you can pay for it then as opposed to paying for it. With this aspiration that at some point you'll get into, whether it's scheduling 60 days of content or the analytics that you want to have a look that you never use. Looking at everything that you're subscribed to as a business and interrogating it. If you had a CFO or you had somebody else coming in would they say that's a bad use of my money and as a founder ask that for yourself? Those are the five things amongst lots of other ways that we have been able to cut expenses in our business over the last nine years of running it. And things that I've taken on to go, where did that idea come from that I had to be paying for that or I had to be part of that group or I had to be doing X, Y, Z?
Because so often you are taking on other people's ideas of what you need in your business as opposed to asking yourself, what do I need? And honestly, it sounds so silly, but if you're saving it if you're saving $20, if you're saving $40 a month and then you took and put that into a share or put that into something else that is going to grow long-term for you, such a better use of your money. That is it for today's coaching episode. I'd love to know if there are things that you have stopped spending money on what those are and what has been the greatest thing that you've learned from it. You can always send us an email at hello@mydelibusiness.com or you can shoot us a DM @mydailybusiness_ on Instagram or @mydailybusiness on TikTok. I'll talk to you then. Bye.
