In today’s episode, I’m going to be telling you to stop wasting money in your business.
I’m going to help you with five ways that you’re potentially wasting money right now, just so that you can be aware and make the decision of whether or not it’s time for you to stop that wastage.
Let’s dive in…
These days there are so many opportunities to buy solutions, buy courses, and invest in ways to grow your business. It becomes really difficult to tell if what we are investing in is the right decision for our business.
There are so many investments that have a potential return (that may not be there) or that feel like they’re a good idea but you’re not sure if you should be investing your money there right now.
There can be a lot of wastage in our business expenses in particular.
That is why I’m here to give you five ways that you might be wasting money so that you can keep an eye out for these things.
Something might jump to mind for you as you read along, so take some time to sit down and really assess whether it is the right investment for you right now.
Here are five ways in which you may be wasting your money:
1. Buying courses
This is particularly prominent in self-study courses when what you actually need is a mentor or a team member to outsource to.
I made this mistake several times when I was starting out. I bought a course on how to create a website when I should have just paid someone else to build me a website (which I ended up having to do anyway). Even though I knew enough about Facebook ads that I could have hired a Facebook Ads Manager and known basically what it was that they were doing and what they were talking about – but would have been able to tap into their expertise and have them managing everything – I paid for a course.
I should have outsourced Facebook ads stuff way sooner, but I did TWO separate courses on it.
For a lot of us, we look to courses when it’s actually not a skill we need to be learning.
It’s usually not something that’s going to be in our wheelhouse, it’s something that we should be getting someone else to do in our business.
Wasting money in your business during business start-up with online learning
Buying a self-study course when what you really need is someone to have a look at what you’re already doing in your business is definitely a big one where people are wasting money in their business.
I see this a lot when people are launching. They think that they need to do launching courses and all of the different bits that go into launching, such as how to:
- Run a challenge
- Do high conversion webinars
- Structure a launch
- Systemise a launch
- Do ads for launch
- Do freebies for launch
They spend money on all of these self-study courses when working with a launching mentor would have been a way smarter investment of both time and money.
Buying courses when you need to have a mentor or outsource it can be a really big source of wastage in businesses.
2. Investing in reach when you aren’t getting great conversion
I see this one with a lot of people. They’ll do their first launch of a course or program, and when it doesn’t particularly convert well, they blame it on the fact that they didn’t get enough leads or enough reach. Then they stick $10,000 in Facebook ads behind it, get 10 times the leads but still get really low conversion.
I would not be investing in something that’s giving you more reach – whether that be ads, funnels, freebies, SEO of your website or any of those opportunities that are getting you lots more reach – until you know that when you get people into your world, you’ve got good conversion rates.
For most people, whenever I say that, they don’t know what a good conversion rate is, or what conversion rate they’ve even gotten.
If that’s you, then go and find out what your conversion rate is first.
Instead of looking to someone else to tell you what a good conversion rate is, invest three months in trying to improve those conversion rates. Really feel like you’ve done everything you know and need to do in order to maximise that conversion.
THEN you can go and invest in reach.
That would be the order in which I would do those things to allow you to stop wasting money in your business.
3. Investing in things that you don’t use
How many people have got an online tool or a subscription to something, and they’ve been meaning to get to it but don’t actually use it?
Perhaps you’re in a membership but you’re not actually engaging in each month, or you have an online tool or a platform that you have been meaning to get around to setting up but you’re not actually using it.
Those things that you don’t use but you’re investing money in, it’s wastage.
Really get honest with yourself: Are you likely to fix it in the next 30 days?
If no then cancel it because you’re wasting money in your business.
Most online stuff when you go and cancel it, they try and keep you in by giving you a super-duper discount.
But make sure you just go and get rid of those things that you’re not using.
Most people don’t do it because they think that it’ll be more expensive when they come back to do it as a new customer. But for many things, when you cancel them, they’ll do everything in their power to get you back as a paying customer again in the future.
Once when I was cancelling something, I got given a 30% discount offer when I was leaving. I declined the offer, but saved the customer service email address. I then sent an email six months later asking for the discount because I was thinking about coming back, they gave it to me and I got back my membership at a discounted rate.
If there are things that you’re not using, go and cancel them. That wastage doesn’t need to be there in your business, and you’ll feel like such a grown-up if you do.
4. Investing in all education and no implementation
Again, this can be a big one with those self-study courses, but it also could be investing in going to conferences, virtual events, workshops, courses or anything where you’re just learning, learning, learning, and you’re not actually implementing or changing anything as a result of that learning.
Something that I do for myself is I balance the content I consume with the content I create and the things that I implement in my business.
If I enrol in a course and it’s three hours a week of learning time, then I put three hours a week into my calendar for implementing learnings from that course.
For every hour of consumption, I have an hour of creation.
If I don’t have the capacity to do the extra three hours of implementation, then I don’t have the capacity to do the three hours of learning.
Really focus on balancing consuming and creating – education versus implementation.
5. Trying to solve the same problem with similar solutions that don’t work
I reckon that this one is going to make a few people cringe.
I have had several issues in my business where I just keep spending money to try and solve the problem, but all of the solutions are kind of the same. It’s often just a different person with a better sales pitch or someone who’s convinced me that it’s going to be different in some way, yet it’s not actually different.
If you’ve got a particular problem that just keeps coming up over and over again, invest in a mentor and stop wasting money in your business.
For example, if you’ve done four courses on how to get your niche in your messaging right and nothing seems to be working, then invest some time with a VIP mentor and get one-on-one support.
Maybe you’ve been trying to put together a course or a program, and you’ve done six different launch courses but just need to get a different way of solving it, then perhaps you need to hire a Launch Manager instead and just get someone else to do it for you.
You could be trying to get your content up on social media, you’ve hired several different social media content VA’s, yet no one ever seems to get it right and it just doesn’t ever get fixed long term.
Stop trying to solve the problem with the same type of solution over and over again if that solution is not working for you.
Those are my five ways that you may be able to stop wasting money in your business quickly and easily.
Some leakage of money that might be going out of your business could help you to improve profitability if you stop it in its tracks.
If you are looking to grow your reach and grow your business without investing lots of money in it, I have a great free resource for you.
It’s called my $0 Facebook Marketing Strategy.
If you did resonate with point number 2 – Investing in reach when you haven’t got great conversion – this training will show you exactly how to with $0 ad spend. It will help you get high conversion strategies working on Facebook so that you can know what’s going to work before you start investing in that reach.
If that’s something that you’re looking to do, then go check that out.
I’d also love to hear YOUR confessions in the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook community on what lightbulbs you’ve had throughout this podcast and what actions you’re going to take. Head over there, use #podcastaha, let me know you’ve been reading episode 218 and share which of those five leakage areas you’re going to stop wasting money. If you have any questions, then please ask them as well.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
