How do you feel about spending money in your business? If you truly know me, you know that my Profit First brain kicks in all of the time! I don’t like to spend money on things I shouldn’t need to spend money on.
So, I want to talk about the simple things you can do to grow your firm. After all, you need to get things incorporated and bring on a team. But before you can do that, you must have certain things in place.
Thankfully, there are ways you can do all of that in a cost-effective way.
Cost-Effective Options for Growing Your Firm
Intake FormsYou can create intake forms on any program you can find for free. Google Forms in my favorite out of them all. It allows you to set up your intake form with all of the questions you need answered.
Yes, you will expand later on and pay for something that allows you to automate this process. But until you reach that point, take advantage of the free programs out there.
WorkflowQBO, ClickUp, Asana, and Trello are amazing free programs that will allow you to grow your business. Some don’t have all of the bells and whistles,but they will allow you to create and follow a process, while tracking things and checking things off.In the future, you may need more features (Clickup grows with you!). At that time, you can worry about paying for these. But until then, use the free features that are helping you now.
ProposalsGoogle Forms makes it easy to create your intake forms, so it shouldn’t be surprising that Google Docs is the perfect solution for creating proposals. I recommend creating the proposal in Google Docs and then sharing your screen with a potential client during a Zoom call. This will allow you to walk a potential client through the proposal to use your price juxtapositioning.
Paid programs are not necessary for this part of your business until you are ready to automate.
Canned EmailsThere are so many paid options out there for canned emails, but you can do these for free utilizing your Gmail account. Save your canned emails as a template and then personalize them before sending them out.
GraphicsWe both know that graphics are important on Facebook and websites. But that doesn’t mean you must spend thousands of dollars on graphics. I recommend using Canva for free. There are numerous templates on Canva. Plus, you can grab free images from the website, Unsplash, and drop them right into the Canva template of your choice.
If you do need a little help with graphics, head over to Fiverr and pay someone to do it for you.
Social Media ContentEveryone struggles with content ideas for social media. Thankfully, there’s a million people selling 365 day content calendars out there. Go buy one and then use those ideas for your social media posts. You can even recycle them, because no one is going to remember what you had on your social media a year ago.
You don’t even have to follow the content calendar you purchase. Just flip through it to find topic ideas and switch things up.
Team CommunicationsSlack and ClickUp both offer free versions for team communications. My team is all on Slack and we love how easy it is to communicate.
VideosLoom is a program you can use for free to make videos for your clients, website, and emails. It is so easy to show your client what you are talking about when you have a simple to make video visual. This is an excellent option when you are not quite at the point where you want to shell out money for Bomb Bomb.
Going LiveI always say to be present, because people won’t know you exist if they can’t find you. You may be saying that you are present, because you are sending emails. Well, no one wants generic emails. Everyone wants to see you live. They want to learn more about you and what you are all about. They also want to make sure you know what you are talking about and that they can trust you.
Don’t be scared to go live and don’t think you need all of this fancy equipment either. You really don’t need a fancy setup with all of the lights and microphones. All you need is your iPhone and a light. A light from your living room will work just fine in front of you. So, I recommend using that instead of overhead or natural lighting, which both create shadows. You can also face a window, but make sure there is nothing behind you that will give a reflection.
SystemsI always recommend the PBS system, because it’s the absolute bomb of compliance systemization. When you invest in this system, you are always offered implementation support and mentoring. And if you’re in the A2A mastermind program, make that 10x support!
Statement FetchingHub Doc allows you to screen share with your client. You can easily have them set up their banking information and when they share their screen, it will automatically go into separate folders in your account.
Graphics and VideoI know I just talked about graphics and video above, but here I want to discuss creation and even editing. Teenagers love to do this type of stuff and they are good at it! My daughter does all of my video editing. It takes her 5 minutes and I pay her $20. You will be amazed at how much more you can accomplish if you hand over certain aspects of your social media, videos, and other tech stuff to teens.
TeamBuilding out a team may seem expensive, but it doesn’t need to be. If you can’t really afford to hire someone right now, but need a team member, look into hiring interns from a local college. Then go check out what government funding is available to pay your student intern. There are so many options out there, you just need to look for them.
Everyone will gradually move to paid options, but you don’t need to do that any sooner than you should. And then when you do start paying for certain programs, make sure your new costs are reflected in what you are charging your clients.You should always be aware of what you are spending money on in your business. I am big on making sure every expense you have is adding value to what you are giving to your client.