Money Secrets

If your customers can’t see themselves, will they buy? The Cue Clothing problem

~ Are you actually showing customers what you sell and how to buy it?

~ Does your marketing reflect the people you want to buy from you?

~ Are you clearly communicating what makes your product worth paying more for?

When an iconic Australian fashion brand with more than 60 years of history goes into voluntary administration, there’s plenty to unpack.

In this episode of Money Secrets, Fi takes a closer look at Cue Clothing and asks a question she thinks is missing from the conversation around its voluntary administration: does Cue really understand who its customer is?

Cue sells up to a size 16, yet its marketing rarely reflects those customers. Women responding to Fi’s posts even said they had no idea Cue stocked their size. So if customers can’t see themselves in your brand, how will they know your product is for them?

Fi also questions Cue’s premium positioning. If you're asking customers to spend $200 to $400 on a garment, you need to clearly communicate why it's worth it. That means telling the story behind the quality, design, manufacturing and people who create the product.

Then Fi turns the conversation back to small business: show people what you sell, make it easy to buy, understand your target market and bring customers behind the scenes of what makes your business different.

Because even a brilliant product is hard to sell if the right customers don't know it's for them.

🎧 Tune in for Fi’s take on Cue Clothing and the marketing lessons every small business owner can learn from it.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Show people what you actually sell. Customers need to see your products or understand your services and know exactly how to buy from you.

Representation can affect who sees themselves as your customer. If you sell to different sizes or types of customers, consider whether your marketing actually shows them.

Your target market needs enough demand. Being specific is useful, but your chosen audience still needs to be large enough to support the business you're building.

Premium pricing needs a clear value story. If you're asking customers to invest more, help them understand the quality, process and thinking behind what they're buying.

Show the process behind your work. Bring customers into the decisions, craftsmanship and expertise that make your product or service different.

Your customers can be some of your best marketing. Reviews, customer stories and user-generated content can show prospective buyers what your product looks like in real life.

Listen to what customers think you offer. If people who fit your target market don't realise you sell something for them, there may be a gap between your offer and your marketing.

Know where your money is actually being made. Look at which locations, products and channels are profitable instead of treating every part of the business equally.

Make your customers the hero. Show the real people who buy from you and help future customers recognise themselves in your brand.

💡 If this conversation resonates and you want hands-on support, you can work with Fi one-on-one or join Good Money Club, where small business owners learn how to make and manage money with clarity, confidence, and impact.

- Good Money Club (doors are open now)

Peach Weekly - Sign up for sharp, practical business thinking delivered straight to your inbox.

Say hi: hello@peachbm.com.au

________________________________________________________________________

In this podcast, Money Secrets, host Fiona (Fi) Johnston, Chartered Accountant, small business advocate, and impact enthusiast, dives into the conversations we need to have about money. The secrets that once stayed behind closed doors (or on the golf course) are finally out in the open.

Fi’s mission? To get more money into the hands of good people, like you. She believes small businesses can change the world, but only if we're making money and managing it well.

________________________________________________________________________

Thank you to everyone involved for bringing this podcast together. We are excited to hear from you with any questions, feedback or suggestions for future episodes that you might have. Send a Direct Message to @peach.business

If you are excited for what’s to come, please like this episode, follow the podcast and share it with your friends. We are thrilled you're here.

Check out my FREE Pricing Training you need to set your prices for profitability.

________________________________________________________________________

This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation and I'd like to acknowledge them as the Traditional Owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work and play on. I'd like to pay respect to elders both past and present, and note that sovereignty has never been ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.

Auntie Fi’s advice line: Pricing, positioning and charging what you’re worth

~ Should I lower my prices to win the work or back myself from the beginning?

~ How do I move customers away from just talking about price, so I can explain how I'm different?

~ How do I add more premium hair services without losing my existing customers and revenue?

These are questions asked my real small business owners like you.

In this episode Fi opens up Auntie Fi’s advice line, answering questions recorded during the Q&A from her Make More Money Without Working Harder masterclass.

From competing with businesses that charge less, to phasing out unprofitable services, finding the right price when you’re new in business and wondering whether to put your prices on your website, Fi answers the questions so many business owners wrestle with.

One business owner asks how to communicate her value when competitors are undercutting her on price. Fi’s advice is to stop trying to prove you’re better and start showing customers why you’re different. Your marketing should communicate the experience, process, service and value customers receive when they choose you.

Another business owner is moving into a bigger salon and wants to replace less profitable kids’ haircuts with higher value services. Rather than cutting off an existing revenue stream overnight, Fi explains how to make the transition gradually by marketing premium services first and adjusting pricing as demand changes.

Then there’s the question almost every new business owner has asked themselves: Should I charge less while I build my reputation? Fi explores when lower priced work can provide valuable experience and testimonials, while explaining why your own marketing is ultimately what helps you attract the right clients and charge more appropriate prices.

Fi also tackles bespoke quoting, pricing your services publicly and that familiar temptation to knock a couple of thousand dollars off a proposal just to win the job. Her recommendation? Productise your services, create clear options and make it easier for potential customers to decide whether you’re right for them.

Whether you’re questioning your prices, comparing yourself to cheaper competitors or trying to work out how to communicate why your business is worth paying more for, this episode is packed with practical advice you can apply to your own business.

🎧 Tune in for Auntie Fi’s advice on pricing, positioning, marketing and building a business where you don’t have to undervalue yourself to win the work.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Being cheaper isn’t the answer. Show customers what makes your business different through your marketing, process and customer experience.

You can transition away from less profitable services. Build demand for premium services before gradually changing your existing offer and pricing.

Lower priced work can still have value. Early clients can give you experience and testimonials, but start charging appropriately as soon as possible.

Premium prices require your own marketing. Get clear on your ideal customer, where to find them and the outcome you create for them.

Your gut isn’t always telling you to say no. Sometimes discomfort around spending money is anxiety about doing something unfamiliar.

Bespoke quoting can make business harder. Productising your services into clear options can simplify selling for you and buying for your customers.

Putting prices on your website can improve your leads. You may get fewer discovery calls, but the people booking already know what to expect.

Your story can justify a premium position. Handmade, small batch or highly considered work gives customers meaningful reasons to choose your product.

Don’t discount yourself just to win the work. Build an offer and price that reflects the service you actually want to deliver.

💡 If this conversation resonates and you want hands-on support, you can work with Fi one-on-one or join Good Money Club, where small business owners learn how to make and manage money with clarity, confidence, and impact.

- Good Money Club (doors are open now)

Peach Weekly - Sign up for sharp, practical business thinking delivered straight to your inbox.

Say hi: hello@peachbm.com.au

________________________________________________________________________

In this podcast, Money Secrets, host Fiona (Fi) Johnston, Chartered Accountant, small business advocate, and impact enthusiast, dives into the conversations we need to have about money. The secrets that once stayed behind closed doors (or on the golf course) are finally out in the open.

Fi’s mission? To get more money into the hands of good people, like you. She believes small businesses can change the world, but only if we're making money and managing it well.

________________________________________________________________________

Thank you to everyone involved for bringing this podcast together. We are excited to hear from you with any questions, feedback or suggestions for future episodes that you might have. Send a Direct Message to @peach.business

If you are excited for what’s to come, please like this episode, follow the podcast and share it with your friends. We are thrilled you're here.

Check out my FREE Pricing Training you need to set your prices for profitability.

________________________________________________________________________

This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation and I'd like to acknowledge them as the Traditional Owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work and play on. I'd like to pay respect to elders both past and present, and note that sovereignty has never been ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.

Your business doesn't need to be complicated to make money.

But so many businesses are complicated, and it slows us down.

In this episode of Money Secrets, Fi shares her live keynote from the inaugural Ripple Festival in Melbourne, exploring how small business owners can make business easier without sacrificing growth, money or impact.

From trying to serve everyone and creating bespoke everything, to working seven days a week and holding onto plans that clearly aren’t working, Fi explored the ways business owners make running their business harder than it needs to be.

The vision needs to be stronger than the plan. Know where you want to go, but stay flexible enough to change how you get there.

Fi explores our relationship with money and why money itself isn’t good or bad. It’s a tool that amplifies who you already are. If you want to build a successful business that creates positive change, learning to become more comfortable with money is part of the job.

Then it’s time to simplify: fewer target markets, fewer offers, stronger boundaries and getting really bloody good at solving a specific problem for a specific customer. Fi also challenges the belief that you need to do everything yourself, encouraging business owners to surround themselves with people whose character and strengths complement their own.

Whether your business feels unnecessarily complicated, you’re trying to do everything yourself, or you’ve become so focused on how you’ll reach your goals that you’ve lost sight of what you actually want, this episode will help you zoom back out.

🎧 Tune in to simplify your business, rethink your relationship with money and build a vision strong enough to guide where you’re going next.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Your vision needs to be stronger than your plan. Get clear on what you want to create before becoming consumed by exactly how you’ll make it happen.

Be more interested in getting it right than being right. Staying flexible and letting go of your ego can help you change course when the original plan stops working.

Money is a tool, not the enemy. Money amplifies who you already are, and getting comfortable with money makes everything easier.

Over-complication is everywhere. Bespoke everything, no boundaries, too many customers and being available 7 days a week makes business unnecessarily hard.

Simple is successful. Focusing on one type of customer can help you become exceptionally good at understanding their problems, desires and language.

You probably don’t need fourteen different offers. Imagine the simplicity of selling one brilliant thing to one type of customer and doing it extraordinarily well.

Choose people who complement you. Skills can be learned, but character matters. What kind of people and strengths do you need beside you?

You don’t have to do everything yourself. Letting someone else help could start with just five hours a week and grow from there.

Picture where you actually want to go. Fi finishes with a visualisation exercise to help you imagine what you’re celebrating, who’s there and why it matters.

💡 If this conversation resonates and you want hands-on support, you can work with Fi one-on-one or join Good Money Club, where small business owners learn how to make and manage money with clarity, confidence, and impact.

- Good Money Club (doors are open now)

Peach Weekly - Sign up for sharp, practical business thinking delivered straight to your inbox.

Say hi: hello@peachbm.com.au

________________________________________________________________________

In this podcast, Money Secrets, host Fiona (Fi) Johnston, Chartered Accountant, small business advocate, and impact enthusiast, dives into the conversations we need to have about money. The secrets that once stayed behind closed doors (or on the golf course) are finally out in the open.

Fi’s mission? To get more money into the hands of good people, like you. She believes small businesses can change the world, but only if we're making money and managing it well.

________________________________________________________________________

Thank you to everyone involved for bringing this podcast together. We are excited to hear from you with any questions, feedback or suggestions for future episodes that you might have. Send a Direct Message to @peach.business

If you are excited for what’s to come, please like this episode, follow the podcast and share it with your friends. We are thrilled you're here.

Check out my FREE Pricing Training you need to set your prices for profitability.

________________________________________________________________________

This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation and I'd like to acknowledge them as the Traditional Owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work and play on. I'd like to pay respect to elders both past and present, and note that sovereignty has never been ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.

What you do with your money is powerful.

For Carmen Hawker, money isn’t the end goal. It’s a tool for redistributing wealth, creating opportunity and building the kind of world she wants to see.

In this episode of Money Secrets, Fi is joined by Carmen Hawker, impact communicator, brand strategist and founder of certified B Corp Carmen Get It, a personality-driven copy and campaigns studio for purpose-led businesses. Carmen is also the co-founder of not-for-profit The Global Women’s Project and financial education platform Ladies Talk Money.

Carmen’s relationship with money has evolved throughout a career grounded in gender equity, human rights and social justice. Early experiences working in women’s health and family violence exposed her to the financial consequences women face when they don’t have access to money, opportunity and financial education. This was the motivation for Carmen to become financially literate.

Fi and Carmen explore what it actually means to run a purpose-led business. Why values need to be lived, not just laminated. And how even the smallest businesses can measure, communicate and grow their impact. They discuss impact reporting, sustainable marketing, productising services and the feast-and-famine cycle that so many freelancers accept as inevitable.

Carmen shares how she went from being “allergic” to talking about money to making financial literacy a major part of her life and work. Fi and Carmen challenge the story that women are bad with money, explore why women experience risk differently, and make a pact to actively support other women taking financial, business and visibility risks.

Whether you’re building an impact-led business, trying to escape the feast-and-famine cycle or working through your own money stories, this episode is a reminder that making money and doing good don’t have to be competing goals.

🎧 Tune in for a powerful conversation about money, impact, risk and what becomes possible when we show up as part of each other’s village.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Purpose-led business is more than a mission statement. Your impact goals should shape how you make decisions.

Your values need to show up in action. Measure, demonstrate and communicate what they actually look like in your business.

Small businesses can create meaningful impact. You don’t need to be a huge organisation to track and share your contribution.

Impact reporting can take many forms. Focus on what matters to your audience and share the wins and non-shiny bits.

Feast and famine isn't inevitable as a freelancer. Sustainable, ongoing marketing helps keep leads coming in, even when you’re busy.

Productising your services creates predictability. Clear offers help customers feel confident while making your capacity easier to manage.

Your money stories shape your business. Unchallenged beliefs about money can become self-fulfilling patterns.

Money and impact can work together. Earning more money creates more capacity to redistribute wealth and opportunity.

Risk doesn’t happen on a level playing field. Women and marginalised people face greater consequences when taking risks.

We can make risk safer for other women. Sharing knowledge, capital, encouragement and support gives others a safer place to land.

It’s not your job to be affordable; it’s your job to be valuable. Don’t make assumptions about what your customers are willing to pay.

If you want a village, show up as a villager. Community and reciprocity are about what we contribute, not just what we receive.

💡 If this conversation resonates and you want hands-on support, you can work with Fi one-on-one or join Good Money Club, where small business owners learn how to make and manage money with clarity, confidence, and impact.

- Good Money Club (doors are open now)

Peach Weekly - Sign up for sharp, practical business thinking delivered straight to your inbox.

Say hi: hello@peachbm.com.au

________________________________________________________________________

In this podcast, Money Secrets, host Fiona (Fi) Johnston, Chartered Accountant, small business advocate, and impact enthusiast, dives into the conversations we need to have about money. The secrets that once stayed behind closed doors (or on the golf course) are finally out in the open.

Fi’s mission? To get more money into the hands of good people, like you. She believes small businesses can change the world, but only if we're making money and managing it well.

________________________________________________________________________

Thank you to everyone involved for bringing this podcast together. We are excited to hear from you with any questions, feedback or suggestions for future episodes that you might have. Send a Direct Message to @peach.business

If you are excited for what’s to come, please like this episode, follow the podcast and share it with your friends. We are thrilled you're here.

Check out my FREE Pricing Training you need to set your prices for profitability.

________________________________________________________________________

This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation and I'd like to acknowledge them as the Traditional Owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work and play on. I'd like to pay respect to elders both past and present, and note that sovereignty has never been ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.

Funding Your Next Business Expansion

So many founders don't go after opportunities because they don't know how to fund them.

In this episode of Money Secrets, Fi explores how to think differently about funding a new revenue stream, buying another business, opening a new location or launching a new product line.

There's many ways that growth can be funded; from bank finance and investors to joint ventures, vendor finance and pre-selling to your existing customers.

Through these practical examples:

~ an agency looking to buy another business,

~ a massage therapist dreaming of opening a wellness space,

~ and a homewares brand wanting to expand its product range

Fi breaks down how to get creative about finding the funds to take advantage of opportunities.

She also looks at the relationship between risk and growth, and why knowing your breakeven number is only part of the picture. Instead of focusing solely on what your business needs to survive, Fi encourages business owners to think about the revenue, investment and calculated risk required to reach where they actually want to go.

If you're considering a major expansion or wondering what's possible for your business, this episode is a reminder that funding doesn't always have to come from your own pocket. The first step is simply considering options you didn't know were available to you.

🎧 Tune in to rethink how you could fund your next stage of growth and discover the different ways you can turn a big business idea into a real opportunity.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Growing your business may require calculated risks. Think beyond your existing cash flow to fund bigger growth.

How to fund the purchase of another business. Explore options including your own cash reserves, vendor finance and pre-selling services to existing customers.

Vendor finance is an option worth exploring. Discover how, in some circumstances, the person selling a business may finance the purchase and be repaid over time.

Your customers could help fund your growth. Learn how pre-selling products, services or founding memberships can generate the capital needed to bring a new idea to life.

When bank finance is the right option. Banks are more willing to lend against tangible investments such as equipment or a fit-out.

What to consider before bringing on an investor. Investment can fuel growth, but it also means giving up equity.

Funding a new product or revenue stream. Explore pre-orders, lines of credit and other ways to cover the upfront costs of developing something new.

How collaboration can be a growth strategy. Discover how a joint venture partner can contribute skills, time or expertise in exchange for a share of future revenue.

Big ideas are worth exploring. Don’t assume an opportunity is out of reach just because you don’t have the money yet.

💡 If this conversation resonates and you want hands-on support, you can work with Fi one-on-one or join Good Money Club, where small business owners learn how to make and manage money with clarity, confidence, and impact.

- Good Money Club (doors are open now)

Peach Weekly - Sign up for sharp, practical business thinking delivered straight to your inbox.

Say hi: hello@peachbm.com.au

________________________________________________________________________

In this podcast, Money Secrets, host Fiona (Fi) Johnston, Chartered Accountant, small business advocate, and impact enthusiast, dives into the conversations we need to have about money. The secrets that once stayed behind closed doors (or on the golf course) are finally out in the open.

Fi’s mission? To get more money into the hands of good people, like you. She believes small businesses can change the world, but only if we're making money and managing it well.

________________________________________________________________________

Thank you to everyone involved for bringing this podcast together. We are excited to hear from you with any questions, feedback or suggestions for future episodes that you might have. Send a Direct Message to @peach.business

If you are excited for what’s to come, please like this episode, follow the podcast and share it with your friends. We are thrilled you're here.

Check out my FREE Pricing Training you need to set your prices for profitability.

________________________________________________________________________

This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation and I'd like to acknowledge them as the Traditional Owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work and play on. I'd like to pay respect to elders both past and present, and note that sovereignty has never been ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.