Top Ways to Save Money in Your Business RIGHT NOW

Today we’re gonna be talking about three ways to save money in your business right now.

Now, first, I just wanna acknowledge that the economy can feel really scary right now. I think we are all starting to feel it at the grocery store or getting gas. I feel like I’ve seen this already impacting so many business owners. Just as we’ve been having conversations about how do we save money?

Is it time to cut down on our contractors?
Should we DIY things more?
Should we cut out expenses that aren’t necessary?

I want to give you three of my money saving tips for your business.

If you’re feeling scared about how things are going. If you’re wondering if your business is gonna survive, that is very real! While we don’t talk about it that much as business owners, there are several people right now feeling those feelings. I want you to know that you’re not alone if you’re feeling scared, worried, afraid, or frustrated about how things are impacting your business. There are several people feeling that way right now.

First, we just need to acknowledge those feelings, and it’s okay to feel that way.
I think sometimes as business owners, we don’t really wanna show that what emotions are going on. We wanna put a good face on for our potential clients. But, let’s just all acknowledge that some of us are wondering is my business even gonna survive?

That is part of why I wanna bring you three of my money saving tips that might really be able to help you and just help you think through, okay, what are some next steps that I need to take in order to make my business survive and do really well in this season?

My first tip is before you purchase anything in your business, look for a coupon code, or a discount code or an affiliate link. Anything like that that would save you a little bit of money.

I’m curious if you are the kind of person that already scours the internet for codes when you’re buying something for your personal self? I do this all the time. Anytime I see a box that says promo code, I go and I look for one.

I also love using my fetch rewards app. If you’ve never heard of that, you just scan personal receipts and it will build up over time and get give you gift cards. It is a totally free app so I love that.

I am always the kind of person looking for a code. You can do the same thing for your business. I think we often forget about this. I’m pretty sure I only have one system that I use in my business that does not have a code.

All that to say, I am not trying to advise you on something that I don’t do myself.

I will link all of my codes in the show notes for anything like your CRM or your email service provider or even your bookkeeping software, hey, hey, I had to say it. All of those types of things will, for the most part, accept a code.

A lot of times, this often requires that you have friends or other connections so that they can give you your code. I really encourage you to reach out to your friends, other business owners, those in your community because typically it’s a mutual benefit, right?

Not only do you get a discount on whatever you’re signing up for, but your friend probably also gets some kind of perk for using her code. That is one thing I want you to think about before you make any purchases, especially for something that’s a subscription.

Like I mentioned, for a CRM or an email service provider or even my podcast hosting, I used a code for that. I searched for several different ones before I picked one. Just think about that before you’re signing up for something. Make sure that you couldn’t be saving just a little bit of money. At this point, every little bit really helps when things feel tight and you just need that boost.

So that is my first tip is before you make any purchase, look for a code.

My second tip is to cut expenses that you don’t really need.

Now, I’ve kind of mentioned this before, but this step requires that you are actually keeping up with your bookkeeping.

Otherwise, you won’t even know what expenses you are spending money on in your business. If you haven’t caught up with your bookkeeping to date, that’s okay.

You will find here that we’re not gonna be in shame, but I do want you to take a step towards getting your bookkeeping back on track. If you need any help with that, just go to my website, erikamillard.com and see how I might be able to help you if you are needing a little bit more support with getting that bookkeeping caught up.

But you need to be able to run some kind of report that shows what all your expenses are. Now, typically if you use a bookkeeping software, then you’re gonna run a profit and loss report. That is just a fancy term in the accounting world for a report that will show all of your income and all of your expenses in one report.

Now, if you use a spreadsheet for your bookkeeping, which is totally fine, you’re basically already creating that report for yourself while using your spreadsheet.

Because again, it’s gonna show all of your income and all of your expenses all in one thing. That is what we want to do is look at that report and then see, okay, what are my expenses? Are there things that I could cut out? Are there things that maybe I just need to switch?

One of my clients recently canceled her Zoom subscription and she instead started to use Google Meet because it was free.

These are small little things, but they do add up over time. So just think through. Is this networking group really getting my, am I getting the return out of it that I want to? Is it getting the education or the connections that I’m wanting it to?

What about subscriptions that you forgot about? One of my clients went through this exercise of just looking at all of her expenses. She messaged me and said she was able to save $100 a month because she had subscriptions that she had forgotten to cancel. She didn’t realize that she had forgotten about them.

These are again, money saving tips. $100 a month can be a lot in a business that is either struggling or you just need to cut back and really look at your expenses.

So that is my second tip is to cut any expenses that you don’t really need.

Sometimes I sign up for things and I’m not really sure if they’re gonna be serving me, right? Sometimes need a trial period and so what I do for myself, so this happened to me lately. I thought well maybe this networking group will bring me the right clients that I’m looking for. So I set a time frame for myself. Okay, I’m gonna join this group for three months, six months, nine months, whatever it is for you.
And in that time I’m gonna make myself a note in my I use ClickUp for task management. So in three months I’m gonna set a reminder to go look and see and think critically. Is this actually bringing me what I want it to or is it time to cancel that subscription? Sometimes there are times where you’re just trialing things and that’s okay. That’s all part of being a business owner but just don’t forget about it is my main point.

A lot of times we’ll do that, we’ll say, I’ll get back to it. Then we don’t get back to it and it’s been a year and we’ve been paying for something that we don’t actually need.

That is my second tip to cut expenses that you don’t really need.

Now, we’ve talked about getting codes before you purchase things, we’ve talked about cutting expenses.

The third way you can save money in your business right now is to plan for your bigger investments.

Okay, time to confess, have you ever purchased a course, mastermind, group program? And when you got into it you realize, shoot, this is really not what I needed in my business right now. I’ve been guilty of that and I’ve also been guilty of wanting to purchase things.

It is so easy as a business owner to fall into that shiny object syndrome. We get sold to and we are selling our own services but we also get sold to all day. If we’re online or on social media and so many things sound so good, right? They sound so helpful and so how do we know which things to be spending money in in our business?

One of my tips is to really plan for some of those bigger purchases. For one, this will allow you, if you’ve saved a good chunk of the money, a lot of the times programs and courses have a pay and full option that’s a little bit cheaper. So if you’ve saved that money you can save even more just because of the cheaper pay and full option.

I think it really helps you make a strategic decision of is this really the right investment for my business?

What I mean by this, some examples are, let’s say you want to join a $6,000 mastermind in six months
and so you could set aside $1,000 every month so that you are ready to pay in full for that mastermind in six months. This will also give you the opportunity to say, is this really what I need?

Most of the time you will be very clear. Yes, this is exactly what I need right now. I saved all the money and I’m so excited to join or you’ll really start to hesitate and think, is this actually what I need in my business right now?

Maybe I need to spend this money somewhere else. By saving it over time, it really makes you make a better decision instead of just getting caught up in this shiny object syndrome of, ooh, this sounds really good right now. I’m gonna buy that.

Another example of this, some of my clients before they hire a virtual assistant or any other kind of contractor or employee. They will start setting aside a small portion of that person salary. Let’s say three months worth or six months worth in a savings account. That way if they made no income for three months, they at least knew that they could pay their employees.

All of those things are very smart, very easy to implement, but hard to do to give yourself that discipline to actually do it. But again, it will help you really evaluate if things are the right investment at the right time and really give you that piece of mind knowing, okay, I have the money and it’s time to spend it.

A lot of times I talk to business owners and we can sometimes struggle spending money in our businesses. This is another way that can help you and motivate you to spend the money when it’s the right time. Make sure you stick around, listen to the show and you’ll have all the details soon.

To recap, to save money in your business right now before you make any purchases, use a coupon code, cut any expenses that you don’t really need and plan for those bigger investments in your business to prevent shiny objects syndrome and give you the confidence to actually purchase. 

At the end of each episode, we define and demystify financial terms around here.

Today we mentioned it a little bit before, but I wanna talk a little bit more about a profit and loss report.
Now you’ll hear this as P&L, which stands for the profit and loss. P&L, profit and loss, income statement, all of those are talking about the same report.

The basics of this report is it shows like we mentioned all of your income and all of your expenses and then it’s gonna show the net of that and that is how we get to the net income in your business
is by profit or sales minus expenses equaling your net income.

Sometimes these reports can get a little bit more complicated, the more complicated your categories are.

So sometimes you can break down your income by your different types, your different services or packages that you offer and any other types of income, whether you have products, digital products or other physical products in your business, whether you get affiliate income, all of those types of income can be shown in the top portion of the report.

You also might see things a little bit more broken down in the expense side when you have potentially any cost of good sold, which we’ll talk about in another episode or your different categories and expense types all broken down.

All of that in general will give you a total expense amount. Then you’ll be able to see your net income at the bottom. That is the purpose of a profit and loss report to show how your business is actually doing.

It will take all of that income minus all of your expenses and show if you are in the positive or negative. That’s what people mean by in the red or in the black, in the positive or the negative.

Those are all financial ways to describe if your business is making money or if your business is losing money. I hope that was helpful in defining and explaining a little bit more today about the profit and loss report.

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