9 ideas for a cash injection now

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

Whether cash is feeling tight right now, or you might just be looking for ways that you can bring extra cash into your business in today’s episode of the podcast, I’m gonna share with you 9 ideas that you can try it for a cash injection into your business right now.

So the ideas for today’s episode, this is based around who my usual target audience is. So this is for business owners. You know, you might be a solopreneur, having a small team as well. These are just some ideas that you can inject some cash into your service based or creative business. So let’s think about some ideas that you can try to bring in some cash right now. Alright, the first idea is to run a flash sale with a limited time.[00:01:00]

So this is something, this can be one of your usual services that you offer and you come in with this epic flash sale that people really wanna jump on. It might be a discounted rate, it might be an add-on bonus, like, “Hey, sign up for this, and you get this other thing as well.” But the important thing about this flash sale is that it needs to be something very compelling, whether it’s the add-on or the discount.

And let me tell you how this works from the consumer perspective. So I want you to think about something that you might’ve been sitting on the fence for for a while and thinking, I really need to go and do that thing. And then suddenly you see that it is, I don’t know, 40 or 50% off, and they say for 48 hours, we are now offering this at half the usual price.

You jump on it, right? And so this is how this [00:02:00] offer works. Now, I am certainly not suggesting that everyone should be discounting their prices. I’m not suggesting that that’s the only way that you can make money. All I’m doing in this episode of the podcast is throwing out some ideas. So if you are ever feeling like, “Hey, I’m so close to my target for this month, I wanna bring a little bit of a boost in.”

Or perhaps you are struggling for cash flow. This can be a really effective way of bringing in more cash, and it also doesn’t mean that you have to discount. Like I said, you could throw in a bonus, sign up for this thing and get this for free. So think about what that might look like for your business.

The next thing is a limited number of VIP days or intensive ways of working together. So some ideas about this is a done for you or even a done with you. [00:03:00] So an example of this might be, I’m trying to think of examples off the top of my head, but right now we are still exploring how we can renovate or build our dream home.

If you haven’t been around for a while, my husband and I have bought a beautiful waterfront home in our absolute dream location. However, the house itself is definitely not the dream house. So, if I could sit down with someone and basically pick their brains, play around with some design ideas or do some sums around the most cost effective way that we could move forward, that would be so invaluable to me.

So think about your product or service. What’s something that people would pay a premium price for to be able to sit down and work through something with you? I know I recently invested in a VIP day on copywriting and what we did, we sat down, we did the [00:04:00] session, we talked through my landing page, she reviewed some of the copy.

Some of it we worked through together on the spot. Some of it she sent me afterwards, but for me it was such a great way to save time instead of having to go and hire a copywriter. Gosh, only knows how long you’d have to wait for someone to write a landing page from scratch. It could have taken me weeks and instead I got to turn it around really quickly and I was happy to pay a premium price for that experience.

So think about what’s a way that you could offer a VIP day and Intensive that would really support your clients. Alrighty, the next one, offer a payment plan. A lot of times an inhibiting factor for people to work with you is the price. I might be like, “Yeah, really keen to go ahead, but I just don’t have the cash flow right now.”

[00:05:00] Payment plans are a fantastic way to overcome this objection because it allows people to pay for something over time. Now, the one thing that I would say on this big disclaimer, make sure that you are doing this in a clever way, because I know in the past I ran a retreat and I let people pay for the retreat afterwards.

And I won’t be doing that again. I mean, everyone paid me. It was fine, but I was finding that I was having to chase people and chase people because they’d already had the experience. So it was a bit harder to get the payment out of them. What I would suggest is get people to pay in advance, and that is certainly what I did on my latest retreat.

I’m like, “Hey, sign up now. Start paying off the retreat within six months time.” And that way you are not chasing people for money after the fact. The other, you know, this can be applicable to a [00:06:00] lot of businesses who don’t even think about it. For example, if you are an interior designer, you might think, well, how does that even work?

If someone wants to work with you and they’re like, “Yes, I really wanna do that, but not quite in the position to do so yet,” why not say, “Hey, why don’t you start a 12 month payment plan now? Then in a year’s time when you are ready to go ahead with a bill, you’ve already paid the interior design fee. It’s one less thing to think about.”

So a payment plan can be a really great win-win for your clients and a way that you can start bringing in cash right now. Now this next one is a cash injection idea. If you already have people on payment plans or if you are offering a service that traditionally is paid over time. So let me share an example of what a pay in full bonus can look like.

I love payment plans because obviously I’m a numbers [00:07:00] gal. I like to look at my cash flow, and I really love to smooth my cash flow out over time, rather than paying $2,000 for a course straight up. I love to smooth it out over time. So one particular course that I was on, I was on a payment plan and they sent me an email and said, “Hey, if you pay in full for it, you get,” and it was quite a significant discount, and I saw that and went, oh, I’ll jump on that.

I had the cash and so I paid in advance of my payment plan. Another idea for this. I know that a lot of project based type work, things like developing websites traditionally there is an upfront payment and then progress payments along the way, but perhaps you could offer some sort of incentive to pay in advance.

So for example, “Hey, if you pay me for the whole project now, I’ll also give you a one-on-one call,” or [00:08:00] I’ll also give you. Whatever it might be. So a pay in full bonus is a great incentive to inject future cash flows into the month or week right now. All right, the next one is a low ticket offer as an entry point for new clients.

Now you might be thinking, hang on, Clare, you talk about pricing all the time. I don’t wanna be doing things at low ticket. This is just a way of playing around with money of saying, “Hey, I’m gonna try something and see if it works.” But one of the cool things about using a low ticket offer as an entry point is that it might actually incentivize more people to come and work with you.

So an example of this might be that you say, like if you’re running a digital marketing agency, you might say, “Hey, we will for, I don’t know, I’m just picking a number, [00:09:00] $49. Do an audit of your social media.” And then you go and do this incredible value add audit for them. And they might have this aha realization, “Oh my goodness, my social media does need some work.

Maybe I need to work with these people to get my social media back on track.” You might also run a masterclass and in the free or low cost masterclass, people really get to experience your energy, realize how much value you add, and then say, “Actually I wanna go ahead and work with this person.” So that can be a really fabulous way.

Another idea that’s similar but a little bit different is clients of mine have used over the years and they love it, which is a pick my brain session at a low cost commitment. So a pick your [00:10:00] brain session can be something along the lines of you just show up to the call and they ask you questions.

They might be like “I really need to know. Can you please have a look at my Facebook ads? Copy. Have you got any ideas or suggestions around this.” With the pick your brain session? Again, a lot of times you might have the experience where someone sits down with you, gets to experience your energy, your expertise, and they say, “Do you know what?

I actually wanna go ahead and hire you.” I know for me, I’ve over the years paid for these and I’ve often gone on to hire them for the service or go and invest in their course or program because I get a bit of a taster and then realize I actually need a bit more. The next idea, we’re up to idea number seven now, if you are not keeping track, but the next idea is to pre-sell a course, [00:11:00] product or service that you plan to build. So perhaps you’ve thought about launching an online course for years. What you can do is pre-sell the program. “Hey, for years I’ve been thinking about running a Facebook ads course. If you jump in now, here’s what you get.”

You might have a discounted price, you might have an add-on bonus, but if there are people in your world who’ve been thinking, “Oh my goodness, I’ve been waiting for this for so long.” They will actually jump in and pay for something before it’s even been created. A great way to get a cash injection out. Of course,

please make sure that you are ethical around this, that you are making sure that you’ll deliver on the promise, and of course, giving them a commitment or timeframe around when it can be done. One thing that I will also say a great little idea about this is there’s [00:12:00] an added benefit of accountability. So you have to actually go and build or create the thing that you’ve pre-sold.

I know I use this little trick for myself all the time. I say, “I’m hosting a retreat, who’s keen?” And then I feel I’ve actually gotta go and build this thing. Now, the next idea for cash injection is to individually contact your loyal followers personally with an invitation to work together. There’s a lot of people who are lurking in your audience, who are watching all the things you’re doing, who are liking, who are commenting, who are sending you dms.

Have you ever actually reached out to them and said, “Hey, I noticed that you engage with my content all the time. I’d love to chat to you about how we could work together.” Sometimes this direct [00:13:00] approach is really effective because people have been watching, thinking about it, and then when you actually reach out to them, it gives them that confidence to make the decision to move forward.

So just an idea there. And the ninth or final idea for a cash injection is to turn your tools or templates into a digital pack. Don’t underestimate. Things to you that you think you have really simple, straightforward, or just easy tools that you use. I know for me, I have a course called Confident Cash Flow.

I’ll actually share a link for it in the show notes for today’s episode. But this course is at a really accessible price point. It’s, it’s simply taking you through my cashflow forecasting process and it’s got my Cashflow Forecast Excel spreadsheet that I’ve used myself [00:14:00] personally for many years, and that clients of mine say is an absolute game changer for them.

To me, I thought, it’s just a cashflow forecast. Doesn’t everyone do this? But the feedback that I hear is that just because this is something that’s straightforward and intuitive to me, a lot of people in my audience really benefited from having this tool. And similarly things to you that you might think, doesn’t everyone know how to do that?

I’ll give you an example. If you’re a stylist and you think, well, everyone knows how to build a basic wardrobe. No. Well, you don’t. I’m clueless when it comes to fashion, and I wouldn’t even know what basic things I need in a wardrobe. So I’m just guessing things off the back of, off the top of my head here.

But, you know, everyone should have a pair of light and dark colored denim jeans. Everyone should have a staple, a set of white t-shirts. I don’t know. You can see clearly I don’t know what I’m [00:15:00] talking about, but if there was a template that I could go and buy that would say, “Here’s what you need for your staple autumn wardrobe.”

Fantastic. I can just go and buy the things. Super easy for me. People pay for things that to you seem really simple, intuitive, easy. Oh, another thing that I’ve thought of, I have a social media planner. And again, to me I’m like, it’s just my posts in advance. I’ve written out captions when I’m gonna post it.

Everyone who I’ve showed this to has said, “Wow, that tool is really cool. Do you have like, can I buy it from you?” So a lot of times the things to ask that we’re just using in our businesses, we’re using in our practice day-to-day life, we think are really straightforward to other people. They are really wow and value add. So how can you bundle that up and actually sell those templates or tools? [00:16:00] Again, a really great way to make a cash injection from something you’ve already got there. So there you have it, 9 ideas to inject some cash into your business right now. I would love to know if this has inspired you to take some action.

And to bring in some more cash into your business. So please drop me a DM and let me know, if you’ve gone and implemented one of these things and you’ve made some money, drop me a DM and say, “Hey Clare, guess what? I did the thing and I made this much money.” I am sure if you went and tried all of these out, that you would be able to bring some cash into your business.

Alright, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of The Clare Wood Podcast. Have a fabulous week and I’ll chat to you again very soon.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio