Erin Thomas Wong (00:52)
In this episode, I'm going to give you a bit of behind the scenes of my own business and where I am investing my money to be able to streamline my business and run it in a life friendly way. So we're talking about how you support yourself in your business. Now I am quite averse to taking out big loans and those kinds of things. And so with my businesses, I've always
tried to bootstrap. So I've tried to only spend what I can afford to spend. And that means often reinvesting any income that I've had. And, you know, one thing I wanted to share is I did an interview recently with a young entrepreneur. And I said in that, you know, sometimes I still don't pay myself on a monthly basis because I'm reinvesting in things. And she looked really shocked. And I had this moment of thinking, should I have said that? Like, does that give the wrong impression?
But you know what, it's true. And I think for so many women, and we talked about this at my Momentum Day event as well, if you're not taking out big loans to be able to run your business, you probably are reinvesting any money that you're making. And you may well be investing family savings into it as well. So that's the approach that I've always taken. I've always bootstrapped. I've reinvested money that I've earned as well.
so that I can afford to do the things that I want to do in order to grow my business. But I thought I would just go through the different things that I spend money on on a monthly basis because it might be interesting to you, it might give you some ideas as well. And like I say, I'm all about adopting a life-friendly approach to my business. And so I know there are some areas that I want to streamline and I want to get support in.
so that I'm not tied to my desk all of the time. But I'm also very aware that there are some things that only I can do in my business. So it's really about finding that balance for yourself.
So these are in no particular order, but these are the different things that I spend money on. So number one, coffee. This isn't a joke. This is genuinely an expense in my business. So I work from home. I don't pay for a co-working space or anything like that. And so for me, the cost of buying coffee in cafes,
is what I need to spend in order to unlock my creativity, in order to beat the isolation of working on my own at home as well. So I kind of, reckon I probably buy about five coffees a week. Like sometimes, so when I do my CEO time on a Monday, I go to a coffee shop and kind of take that overview of, where are things now in my business? And I really, you know, spend at least two hours. So that's two coffees.
on a Monday. And then if I'm doing mentoring sessions in person, we meet in coffee shops as well. So I might be buying coffee then. And then every now and then I might just go to a cafe to work to kind of break up the day and buy a coffee then. So I've kind of worked that out to be around 80 to 90 pounds a month is spent on coffee. And to be honest, I think that's the one of the best, you know,
amounts of money that I spend in my business because being able to just get up with my laptop and leave the house really really helps me to be more creative, be more productive, not have the distractions of being at home as well. So coffee! The second thing is Kajabi. So that's what I use to power my online business. That is the
the website software, it's an all-in-one platform. So that includes my email marketing as well, my funnels, all these different kinds of things like my CRM, it's all there in Kajabi. And I pay annually, but monthly it works out at about 150 pounds a month. And that really allows me to streamline everything that I'm doing. So it's where I create my membership content, my mastermind content.
any freebies that I have as well. I have my podcast on there. I have my blog posts on there. So I love the fact that Kajabi allows me to be really dynamic with what I'm doing. And, you know, I don't have the overheads of a bricks and mortar shop. So for me, it's amazing that I can run my business with software that costs 150 pounds a month.
So there are obviously lots of different levels to Kajabi and I've been using it for five, six years now. If you want to chat to me about it, please do. I'm an affiliate because I do genuinely champion what they do there at Kajabi and all the innovation. And so I can give you a link to a free trial as well. So number three, my accountant. So I know my weakness is that, you know, I find finance quite boring.
and spreadsheets and all those things and so I realised quite early on that actually it's worth the money for me to outsource that so I pay not only for my limited company tax return but also for monthly bookkeeping. So all of my payments come through my Kajabi website but I have PayPal, have Stripe, I've got a Klarna option as well if people want to buy now and pay later.
So my accountant reconciles all of that and will provide me with a report and also a graph of how my income and how my profit margin is going as well. So that is really money well spent for me because I know when I did not have that in place, I just didn't give it the attention that it really needed. an accountant for me has been absolute game changer.
And, you know, obviously these are rough figures that I'm giving you and you need to get your own quotes for things, but I pay around 130 a month for that service. Number four, Carly. Carly is my online business manager and, you know, she really is a huge, huge support to me in my business and really does enable me to have this life-friendly approach and also feel supported when things in my life.
know, go out of control and or if I'm ill, you know, I know that I have got her support to back me up. So as my online business manager, she does all sorts of things. She looks after my social media. She does scheduling for me. She creates reels and lovely things in Canva. She'll also help me create my workbooks for lead magnets and for the different programs that I'm doing. You know, PowerPoint slides.
also client management as well, helping me with my events, helping me with my podcast episodes. So I create the podcast episodes and then I put it all in Asana and she, you know, basically helps me to distribute the podcast through social media, through email marketing, all those things. So Carly is an incredible support to me.
And, you know, I haven't always been able to afford having that support and having like a virtual assistant or an online business manager. And so I still massively appreciate it, even though we've been working together for about six years now. And the amount of money that I spend on that each month varies on how busy I am and how many hours I need her to do. But I would say the kind of rough range is between 300 and 600 pounds a month that I pay for her to help me.
in my business. So then there's lots of other little things. So little bits of software that I pay for, like Acuity Scheduling. So that's what I use for my online calendar. So people can book in for their mentoring calls with me, but also for discovery calls and things like that. I also pay, so that's about £20 a month. These are all really rough figures, rounded up. Buffer, we pay for buffer, which is like $15, I think, a month.
and we're able to then schedule across all our different channels and including Google Business Profile, which is well worth posting to as well. We also have Tockify, which is another calendar software, but it basically means that for my Cocoon membership and for the Visibility Commitment, all of the live dates are listed on Tockify and basically people can subscribe to that calendar.
so they can add it to their own calendar or they can see a really nice list of all the dates. So that's about 20 pounds a month. And then in order to do this podcast, I'm now using Riverside, which is I think 24 pounds a month. So there are all these different little bits of tools that I'm using, but all of them really, really help me to run my business in the most professional way and the most streamlined way. And you know, some of the ad hoc.
costs that I have as well. I have a graphic designer and you know she is amazing and if I want a new logo for a program that I'm doing or I want a nice brand asset then I can just contact her and she will do it now on an hourly basis for me. And also you know...
I won't forget at all because it's really important that I am investing in my own learning. So I am completely committed to continual learning as a small business owner. And even more so when I'm helping other people with their businesses, because I need to keep up my skills and I need to be on top of the latest trends, AI and all those things.
I am investing in my own learning so that I can then pass that on to you as well. And that comes in all different guises. Like I might go to conferences, I might buy online courses, I might have one-to-one mentoring or be in a coaching program. But these are all kind of ad hoc things rather than a monthly cost. But I would say it probably across a year, works out at about £200, £150 to £200 a month.
So I hope this is interesting. I'd love to know whether it's interesting knowing where I'm spending my money. But one thing I would say actually, and I forgot to say when I was talking about the online payments and taking payments through PayPal and Stripe is quite a lot of the time conversations that come up in the membership are around how can I avoid those costs? How can I avoid payment processing fees? And the truth is you don't need to avoid them. You need to...
you know, factor for them in the pricing, because all of these things are the costs of me running my business. So when I'm thinking about how I'm going to price things, I've got to be thinking about these monthly costs. So these monthly costs come to, I would say roughly between a thousand and 1200 a month. That's how much it costs me to run this business. Now I could definitely lower that by a few hundred pounds.
in a month if I needed to, if things are tight, or if I need to reinvest some of that money. But I would say roughly, you know, I need to allocate a thousand pounds for cost each month. And that might feel a little bit of money to you. It might feel a lot of money to you. It really depends kind of what scale your business is. it doesn't, you know, the fact is, is that we, it's going to look different for each of us. And
You know, one thing I will say is when you see people sharing their like revenue this month and you know, six figure revenue or whatever it is, you have no idea what their costs are. And I really, I really don't like that kind of toxic sharing of money stuff. But you know, the fact is, is that some of these bigger businesses, they're paying thousands of pounds a month for Facebook ads. And you know, everything I do is organic. I am playing a little bit with Facebook ads, but I'm literally spending like two pounds a day.
But so just be aware when you're seeing what people are saying that they're earning, that if they're not actually sharing what their profit is, you you don't actually know how much they're spending, what their outgoings are. So let's not be too carried away by comparing ourselves with what people's revenue is, because actually what's important is the profit at the end of the day and being able to pay yourself what you need to pay yourself. So these are the costs that I am spending.
And I would say that obviously as a small business owner, we need to be really mindful of where we are putting our money. And we need to be checking in with that and thinking, this worth me spending money on? Even if it's 10 pounds a month, we just need to double check with ourselves, is that the right thing for us to be spending that 10 pounds on? So this is where you can take some time in your CEO time, which you'll hopefully...
starting to implement on a regular basis. This is the kind of thing you need to do. You need to be thinking about the costs that are going out in your business and whether you've got costs coming up that mean that you have to tighten your belt or whether you realise that actually I could afford to get some more support or I could afford to pay for that software. We need to be thinking as well about how investing in something will free up time for us so that we can.
go and spend more time with clients, selling, marketing, and what that means in terms of income for our businesses. So for example, when people talk to me about outsourcing to a virtual assistant, well, I'd always say to them, when you're thinking about how much money you can afford to spend, think about the fact that if you're paying someone 30 pounds an hour to do the kind of tasks that are taking you so much time, and actually with that extra hour that you've gained,
you could be charging a hundred pounds for a call, then obviously it makes sense for you to outsource those tasks so that you can then be earning more money from having that extra hour. So have a think about it in those terms, but like I say, you know, I'm not the kind of person, I'm not going to be pushing you to be spending outside of your means. And I know that this is a very female trait. And when you look at the barriers to female entrepreneurship, you know, a risk.
aversion to taking out finance is one of the things that comes up and there's all these stats around the fact that male entrepreneurs will ask for a lot more money as well when they're going out to investors than women will. But this all depends on how you want to run your business and you know I am quite happy bootstrapping and reinvesting the money that I'm earning to grow my business without taking on debt.
And, you know, it depends what kind of business you've got. There are some businesses where you won't be able to grow your business unless you take out, you know, loans. And obviously grants are amazing if you can get them, but they're more and more sparse, you know, as the years go on. So I would say if you're looking for finance stuff, you know, check out things like the Small Business Britain website and Enterprise Nation as well is another one that you could look for for finance options.
So yeah, I'm going to leave it there. These are the things that I spend my money on. So coffee, Kajabi, my accountant, my lovely online business manager, and then all these little bits of software that help me really run a smooth ship and allow me to run my business in a life-friendly way. if you're not leveraging technology at the moment,
then really take a look at what you could be doing because you could be saving yourself hours of time which free you up to do other things that you enjoy doing more. Do let me know if this was helpful and please get in touch as well if you would like me to cover something in particular on the podcast. I really love hearing from you. I'd love you to reach out to me on social media at lifefriendlybiz or drop me an email at [email protected].
and you can visit the website, www.lifefriendlybusiness.com to find out about the different ways that you can work with me as well. I'll see you next time.
