Lazy ways to add more dollars to your bank account

Most people think that when they want to have more dollars in their bank account, they need to sell more. And of course, making more sales is a great way to add extra dollars into the bank account, but there are also some other ways that you can improve your bank balance without necessarily creating or selling more products. So in today’s episode, I’m going to be sharing some tips of how you can have more dollars in your bank account, and do it in a lazy way.

Hello and welcome to the Clare Wood podcast, where myself and incredible guests share about money mindset, financial successes and how to manage your money in a fun and practical way to create wealth and abundance in both your business and your life. I’m your host, Clare Wood. I’m a business coach and a money mentor. I strongly believe that money has the power to positively change the world. I can’t wait to help you transform your mindset around money, create a love of numbers and build the business of your dreams, so you can live a life of financial freedom, giving and global impact.

Before I dive into today’s episode, if you are wanting to increase the dollars in your bank account, I wanted to share a couple of ways that you can work with me right now. The first is my upcoming retreat, the Level Up Retreat. This is happening on the 16th and 17th of July at the beautiful Gold Coast Hinterland. Over two days, we’ll be really diving into how you can level up your income in an amazing and supportive environment of women entrepreneurs who are doing amazing things in their business. If you’d like to find out more about The Level Up Retreat you can do so via the link in the show notes for today’s episode.

The second way that you can work with me right now is that I do have a private coaching space available to work with me. These spots rarely pop up and private coaching is a really immersive way to work with me one-on-one, which, involves one-on-one private coaching calls and Voxer, which includes voice and text messaging access.

And the third way that is coming up is that I am launching my new program, the Profit Academy Foundations very soon, which will be teaching you everything you need to know about managing your money. If any of these are calling to you can find out more about them via the link in the show notes for today’s episode.

Now, let’s dive into some lazy ways to increase the dollars in your business bank account.

Here in Australia, July 1st marks the start of a new financial year. But even if where you are, you don’t start a new financial year right now, halfway through the year is a great time to reflect and reset for the second half of the year, to really think about those big financial goals that you’ve got. And importantly, to spend some time thinking about specifically how you can get there. Like I shared in the intro, today is not just going to be about increasing your sales, we’ll also be talking about some other strategies to add some dollars into your bank account.

Optimise your tax

So the first lazy strategy that I want to suggest is looking at your tax and making sure that it’s optimised. The best way to do this is to set up a tax planning meeting with your accountant. In this session, you can sit down and check that you are really optimizing your tax and not paying any more than you need to be. This can also be a great way to check in that you are paying yourself in the most tax-efficient way. Now, I’ve shared this many times before, I am certainly not a tax expert, but you know, I am an accountant and I had a recent tax planning session with my accountant and she actually shared some really fantastic legal tips for reducing my taxable income. So it’s really a worthwhile exercise to sit down with an expert and really say, are there opportunities for me to be more efficient with my taxation? Now, the reason why I think this is really lazy, it doesn’t require a lot of effort from you. You set up a meeting with your accountant and let them do the legwork.

Do a cost audit on your business

The second lazy way to get more dollars in your bank account is to do a cost audit. Now, if you are a regular listener of the podcast, you will know that I say all the time, you need to get into your numbers. And one of the great benefits of doing this is that you can actually end up with more money in your bank account. You can really examine all of the expenses in your business. Now, I want to be really clear about this, I am not about slashing expenses. In fact, if you listen to the podcast regularly, you’ll know that I am huge on investing into business. In fact, I think it’s imperative to get growth. But doing this cost audit is about cost creep. And there are some areas that I find that can particularly creep up that are worth keeping an eye on.

The first one is team cost creep. Sometimes what could happen when you are running a team is that the costs start to increase without you intentionally making a decision for that to happen. Contractors that are working for you might be increasing their prices, and perhaps beyond market rates. You might be finding that your team is working more hours than you are intending for them to do. So really checking in on those team costs is a great way to make sure that those costs aren’t accidentally creeping up. If they’re increasing and it’s intentional, if you are knowing that you are needing more support, or if perhaps you are bringing new people into the team, well, fantastic if you’re doing it in an intentional way. What we want to do is just make sure that they’re not accidentally creeping up.

The next area that I find that, again, cost can sort of creep up without you intending for it to happen like that, is in the space of systems. Now, I am definitely not bad-mouthing systems. In business, we need systems. I love systems. But sometimes the system costs can really add up, and particularly in the space of things that we don’t really need, and we perhaps have forgotten to cancel subscriptions. So some examples of this, perhaps you are using a program and the base program is free. And then you needed to do something, so you upgraded with the intention that it would be a one-off, and then you forgot to downgrade it to the free version of the system again. I don’t know if that’s ever happened to you, but it certainly happened to me.

Another example is where you sign up for something, a system, as a subscription, and then you don’t cancel it. So again, this is something that’s happened to me. I signed up for a quiz subscription because I wanted to run a lead magnet to a quiz. And in the time that I spent setting up the quiz and setting up the Facebook ads, I ended up paying for the subscription for six whole months. And I only ran the ads for a very short period of time. So this is an example of a subscription that I didn’t need to keep paying for. Going through, and doing a systems audit is a great way to make sure that you aren’t wasting your hard-earned dollars in your business.

When you are doing your cost audit, something helpful I use when determining where I want to spend money is breaking the costs up into sales drivers and overheads. So the way that I see overheads, these are things that the business needs to be running, and I call them a necessary evil. These are things that don’t add a direct amount of revenue into your business. And they include things like admin costs, accounting and systems, as I shared those examples earlier.

The other area that you might find you are investing into is what I call sales drivers. These are things like marketing costs, such as Facebook ads, coaching, or using team members who generate a revenue after you pay for their expenses. So these are investments that you make in your business that make money rather than cost money. And for me personally, this is where I want to be investing most of my expenditure in my business and trying to keep my overheads to a minimum. So doing a cost audit is a great way to add more dollars into your bank account.

Increase your prices or add a VIP offering

The next strategy I’ve got for you is one that will increase your overall sales amount, if it’s effective, and it’s to increase your prices. Halfway through the year is a great time to put your prices up. And I know this will bring up a heap of things for you. Usually when I share this, there is a bunch of reasons why people don’t want to put their prices up, and sometimes they’re valid and sometimes they’re not. Price increases are a really effective and lazy way to make more money without doing any extra work. Now, I understand there are a lot of mindset challenges when it comes to price increases, and we aren’t going to dive into all of those today, but I just want to challenge you to think about whether now is a good time to put those prices up.

The next little, lazy, money-making hack I’ve got for you, is to add a premium service or product offering. Now, the reason why this is lazy is because this is not about creating a whole new product. It’s simply about creating a premium experience. And you might think, “Well, why would people pay more for a premium experience?” And the truth is most people won’t and that’s okay. But over the years, I’ve helped many clients to create VIP offers because there are people that are happy to pay a premium price for a premium experience. Look at business class on planes, you’re getting on a plane and you’re both going to the same place. Why would you pay so much more money for it? Well, people do. And I know I certainly want to be doing that in my future life. So let’s talk about what VIP experiences could look like in your business.

If you are a coach or a copywriter or a graphic designer, you could create VIP days. So see how I’m not actually doing anything really different. You’re just literally offering your service, but bundling it up into a premium experience. If you run a product-based business, you could be offering gift wrapping and gift cards. I know that I’m happy to pay a premium price for that to all be done for me and to be taken care of. Some other ideas are personalization of the gifts. Again, people are happy to pay to have a gift personalized to the person that they’re sending it to. If you’re a photographer, you could really think about creating a done-for-you package. At the moment I’m organizing my next photo shoot, and my gosh, it’s a pain. I would love for someone to throw in a whole, photo shoot done-for-you package, where they organize hair, makeup, an assistant for the day, the venue, stylers, clothing, all of the things so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

So the point I’m trying to make here, there are lots of different ways that you can create a premium experience. You don’t need to create a landing page for it. This is not a whole new product or offering. It’s literally just adding a tag on to what you already do. You can simply add a line to the end of an email saying, “Hey, would you like to find out more about the done-for-you offer or my VIP days?” You don’t need to go overboard with the marketing for this. This is just a lazy way to make more money.

Expand your network

And the last lazy strategy that I have for you is to spend some time networking. Now, if you’re an introvert, maybe networking isn’t a lazy thing for you to do. But for an extrovert, like me, hanging out with cool people is super easy. And every time I expand my network, and getting the energy of amazing people, I find it literally so easy to make money because you’re expanding your circle. You’re getting more opportunities to get in front of new audiences and to be in the energy of either your dream clients or people who can recommend you to your dream clients.

I actually had a chat to someone today about my upcoming retreat, and she runs a digital marketing agency, and she was asking me about my retreat. And I said, “You will literally be in a room of your ideal clients.” I said, “I’ll be blown away if you don’t make back the cost of the retreat from someone in the room who then goes on to work with you.” Obviously, I can’t guarantee this. But I do know this, your circle and your network is everything. This is why I have the best biz friends. I have an incredible coach and I surround myself with amazing and inspiring business leaders. Expanding your network is a really easy and lazy way to make more money.

You’ll notice with the strategies that I shared today, that most of them aren’t about putting in a ton of more effort. It’s really just about getting more intimate with your financials and either looking to reduce your costs or thinking of easy ways that you can add more money into your business. Adding more dollars into your business bank account can be easy.

So to sum up today, the five, lazy hacks for adding more dollars to your bank account.

1. Checking that you are being efficient with your tax and that you aren’t paying more than you need to be.
2. Do a cost audit. Make sure that you go through those numbers and you aren’t throwing away those hard earned dollars.
3. Increase your prices. Now is a great time of the year to do a price review.
4. Add a premium service or product offering. We don’t need to go overboard with this. Think about doing it in a really lazy way.
5. Spend some time networking. You literally get to hang out with other people who can then become referral partners or even potentially clients of yours.

If you are wanting my help to make more money in the second half of 2022, as I shared at the start, there are a couple of ways that we can work together. You can come along for my upcoming retreat. I do have a private coaching space available right now, if you’d like to find out more about working one-on-one with me, or you can jump on the wait list for the Profit Academy Foundations, which is launching very soon.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and that you’ve been able to see how it can be easy to add more dollars into your bank account. And I look forward to chatting to you next week. Thanks for tuning in.

Thanks so much for listening. If you love this episode, please share it with your audience. And don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @clare_wood_coach. And also make sure you hit subscribe, so you never miss an episode. Have an abundant week and I look forward to talking to you again next week.