Episode 27: 3 Hidden Sources of Quick Cash for Your Business

Episode 27: 3 Hidden Sources of Quick Cash for Your Business

Sometimes you just need extra cash coming into your business. But if you feel like you’re already pedaling as fast as you can, where does that come from?

Most people overlook a few simple revenue sources that can create a ‘cash infusion’ and make a huge difference to your bottom line. In this episode of ‘A Profitable Impact,’ Pamela unpacks those 3 hidden sources of revenue.

• You’ll discover:3 ways to get money in your business more easily that you probably aren’t doing
• The mistake that most people make with this and how to avoid it
• A simple plug-and-play email template to get you started

Timecode Guide:

01:49: All about the hidden sources of cash in your business, and Pamela reveals three ways to get more money that most people don’t think about.
06:34: Discover the mistakes most people make with cash infusion offers, and how to avoid them.
09:35: Get a step-by-step walkthrough for a simple email template that will get you started progressing on this cash infusion journey.

Podcast Transcription

Episode 27:

Intro to Cash Infusion and Revenue Generators

Intro (00:00):
You’re listening to ‘A Profitable Impact.’

Pamela (00:02):
Most people overlook a few very simple revenue sources that can create a cash infusion in their business and make a huge difference in their bottom line.

Gene (00:12):
Welcome to ‘A Profitable Impact,’ where every single week we help experts like coaches, healers, course creators, and other online professionals to expand their reach, to increase their impact in the world, and to be well-paid for their extraordinary skills and talents. My name is Gene Monterastelli, and I am the lead coach in Pamela Bruner’s Impact Accelerator coaching program. Please welcome my friend, my colleague, and the CEO of Attract Clients Online, Pamela Bruner. How are you doing today, Pamela?

Pamela (00:41):
Cha-ching! Cha-ching! Cha-ching! Don’t you just love all the metaphors around cash, and money, and cash infusion. Well, you know what experts, coaches, and healers generally don’t. But today we’re going to talk about hidden sources of cash in the business, and so I thought it appropriate we started off with a “Cha-ching!”

Gene (01:00):
And for me, you know, one of my favorite things in the world is seeing those emails in my inbox when things have been sold or reoccurring payments are going through, it is not something I am scared of, but instead something I am personally excited about.

Pamela (01:14):
Yes. So today we’ll talk about three ways to get money in your business more easily, that you probably aren’t doing. The mistake that most people make with this, and how to avoid it. And a simple template to get you started with this process.

Gene (01:26):
So as we’re having this conversation today, if you’re in a situation where you’d like some more coaching and some personal guidance around this particular issue, we’d love for you to have a free conversation with one of our coaches. All you need to do is go to BookMyBreakthroughCall.com to get on the calendar of one of our coaches, and they would love to help you out to find more revenue in your business.

3 Hidden Sources of Cash in Your Business (aka, 3 Ways To Make More $$$)

Pamela (01:49):
Let’s talk about the three hidden sources of cash in your business, or three ways to get more money that most people don’t think about. So, when we teach this to our clients, what we talk about is this concept of cash infusion. Because sometimes, I mean, who doesn’t want or need extra cash in their business? But often you feel like you’re paddling as fast as you can. So, where does it come from? Often when we talk about cash infusion, we’re talking about getting started with your signature system, your high-ticket package. How can you come out of the gate and really take off and make money very quickly? But a more common source of cash infusion is something that you already have. It’s kind of the coaching or healing equivalent of eBay. Like, what have I already done? What about already offered people that I could trot out and say, “Hey, this is going to be sunsetted,” “This is going to go away, but you can still have access to it now.” So that idea of pulling something out of the back of the closet, so to speak, for cash infusion from a services standpoint is a very valid one.

Gene (03:00):
Pamela, I know exactly what you are talking about. A number of years ago, it’s almost close to a decade ago now, I was in a circumstance where I had some financial issues in my life that I needed to solve in a very quick way. And I knew that, because of the audience I had and my skill set, I could do a weight release program very, very easily, and it would generate cash. Now, if I never do another client where I’m doing weightloss and weight release ever again, I’m going to be okay with that. That is not necessarily the work that I love doing. I think it’s important work. When people come to me at this point in my life, I have amazing people that I can refer them out to who do awesome, awesome work. But I knew it was something that there was a desire for, I knew it was something that was easy for me to do, I knew it was something that I could offer in a very, very direct way. And so, I reached into the back catalog of my past resources. I shared that thing. I made $32,000 and it solved the problems in the short term, and it is something that I don’t have to do ever again.

Pamela (04:04):
So think of cash infusion as the eBay of your coaching or healing services, and recognize that you can pull something out that you might not want to do again. Now, that’s great. So thinking about what you could do as cash infusion is a useful thing.

Pamela (04:19):
We’ve also talked about “VIP days” or “VIP sessions” – it’s very easy cash infusion creation. This may not be something you’ve offered before, but if you say, “Hey, we’ll do a VIP session. It’s two hours around a certain promise and has a certain outcome,” that can be a really nice cash infusion offer as well. So now that you have this offer, whether it’s an eBay offer of fast services, or a VIP session, or you’ve got a signature system you really want to get out of the gate with and start making money quickly, the thing that people always say is, “Great, who do I sell this to? Because I had a problem with that in the past.” And this is really the juicy part of this whole “hidden sources of cash.”

Source #1: Past clients

Pamela (05:02):
So, one source is past clients. Now they may not have you on their radar, they may not be thinking about you, but when you come up with an offer, whether it’s an offer like Gene said, “I’m pulling this out of my closet, and I may not do this again, but here it is,” often that becomes a very juicy thing. There’s that scarcity and urgency of, “Ooh, if I don’t get this now, it’s just going away.” Past clients also may not be looking for, you know, a $5,000 system, but they might be happy to do $300 to $500 worth of work with you on a VIP session or something like that. So past clients can be a great, great source. And in a little bit, I’ll walk through a very simple template for how you can plug-and-play an email to them to get started in this process. So past clients.

Source #2: People from your past who said “no”

Pamela (05:47):
Another juicy source of potential clients is people who have said “no” to you in the past. Because just because they said “no” to you in the past, unless it was a terrible conversation (and it probably wasn’t), it doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t say “yes” to you now. So “no” doesn’t mean “no,” “no” means “not now.” So people who said “no” a month ago, or three months ago, or six months ago might be people who are like, “You know what, sure. I’ll do this little thing that you’re offering,” or, “I’ll take you up on this offer.”

Source #3: Current clients

Pamela (06:17):
And the third arena for this is current clients. So people who are seeing you for session work or seeing you for particular kind of work might be interested in, again, you know, the thing from your back closet. So current clients can be a great source of cash infusion.

Most Common Cash Infusion Offer Mistakes

Pamela (06:34):
So let’s talk about the mistake that most people make with this. Now, if you come up with a cash infusion offer, whether it’s a VIP session, or “Hey, I’m going to do this, this weight loss release thing, even though it’s not my main gig,” most people will then craft an email where they will say, “Hey, here’s what I’m offering. Here are all the calls that you get with it. And here’s how many modules are in it, or how many PDF downloads are in it. And it’s this much money. And do you want it? If so, email me back.” That’s way too much information in an email. So even people who trust you greatly may not buy from an email. They may need a sales page, which is a considerable amount of effort to create. And you may not want to create it for a cash infusion, it may feel like it takes too long. Or they may need some other kind of help to know that this is right for them.

Pamela (07:27):
So instead, I’m going to encourage you, when you write that email, to write it in a way that you know you’re not trying to get them to buy from an email. Here’s the way I like to think about this is that every communication you have with everyone – and in this case, we’re talking about these past clients, people who said “no,” or current clients – every communication that you have with them, you are focused on making the smallest possible sale that you can.

Pamela (08:01):
And when I say that, I don’t mean a “sale,” like making money. You write them an email with an intriguing subject line and they click on that email to open it – that’s a “sale.” You have “sold them” on the fact that there is something intriguing in that email. In the email, you intrigue them enough that they book a call with you. Great – you have sold them on booking a call with you with the body of your email. And then when you talk to them on the call, they can then see if they want to take the next step and actually engage with you in your cash infusion offer, and that’s going to be the third sale. So make the smallest possible sale you can, and don’t try to make all sales at once. That’s the big mistake that people make with it.

Gene (08:43):
And doing it that way makes it so much easier. Because oftentimes our clients get really hung up on the idea of coming up with the perfect subject line. As if I had the subject line that so perfect, you’d read the subject line, you’d reach into your pocket, and you would immediately pull out your credit card. When we’re able to break down what each step’s goal is, then it’s so much easier to do. Because I’m not trying to move you from doing nothing to buying from me, but I’m trying to move you from doing nothing to opening, to reading, to replying, to talking to me. And then it becomes this gentle path that we are walking with them down, which gets them to a place where it’s easy for them to say “yes,” because they’ve been saying “yes,” and “yes,” and “yes,” and “yes,” over and over again as we have been intriguing them, as we’ve been educating them, as we have been helping them in this process.

Feeling stuck? As a podcast listener, you can book an exclusive FREE Breakthrough Call with one of my expert coaches to get all your business questions answered.

4-Part Email Template for Cash Infusion Offers

Pamela (09:35):
Let’s bring this home with a demonstration of a simple email template that will get you started progressing on this cash infusion journey. So, this is what I think of as a four-part email. Now, one warning about any template. And of course, we’re speaking this template, so you’re going to be writing it down in your own words anyway. But a template is like a paint by numbers outline. And if you remember the old paint by numbers – I did a paint by numbers or two when I was 15 years old and really loved it, and I was very excited about the fact that it almost looked like a dog – but the paint by numbers, it’s not supposed to be a work of art. It is supposed to be fairly representational of whatever it is. So just because you have this template doesn’t mean that you don’t have to put some effort into making it sound like you and making it sound like something that you wrote with some thought, but also some friendliness and some character. Don’t make it just sound like a template.

Pamela (10:34):
Okay. Now that I’ve gotten that warning out of the way, let’s talk about the four-part email. The first part of the email is the subject line. And we’ve, we’ve talked about this. Well, I think Gene, you were the person who told me years ago that you spend 50% of the time on your email writing the subject line. Because if they don’t open the email, I don’t care how good the email is.

Step 1: Subject line

Pamela (10:56):
So the subject line is part one. And often, at least the way that I write, the subject line will lead to the next line in the email, so it’s pretty important. You could use a curiosity-based subject line, like “Thinking of you…” or, “Wondering about this…” or something like that. They’ll open it because they know your name and the subject line evokes curiosity. You don’t necessarily have to say, “Want to tell you about a new cash infusion offer,” which is probably not a good subject line. The idea about the subject line – and there are lots of different trainings on subject lines, we have a considerable one for our clients – but you do want to spend some time thinking about, “What is the subject line that might get the person I’m writing to open this email?”

Step 2: Establish a connection

Pamela (11:42):
The next thing to do in your email is establish a connection. So you might say, “Hey, I know we worked together over a year ago and I was thinking about you, blah, blah, blah.” So in the opening of the email, I’m going to say, basically, not, “This is why I’m writing you,” but to reinforce or reaffirm that connection that we have. “I met you at this event; I know we haven’t kept in touch, but I really would love to connect with you, blah, blah, blah.” So there’s some kind of personal connection in that opening paragraph.

Step 3: Clarify the reason

Pamela (12:17):
Then the next thing is the reason. So what’s the reason? And in this case, if it’s somebody who really trusts you, like a very, very happy past client, you might just say, “Look, I’ve got something I really want to talk to you about. It’s going to be fun, hop on a call with me,” so that reason is almost non-existent, you’re relying on the trust. For people who don’t know you as well, you want to give a little bit more of a reason. And it might be, “I’m looking for people who are struggling with this,” or, “because it’s the holidays,” or, “because I wanted to do something really powerful during the pandemic,” or, whatever it is, there is some kind of reason for you to be writing this email and doing what you’re doing.

Step 4: Call-to-action

Pamela (13:03):
And then the fourth part is the offer or the call-to-action. So what do you want them to do? And in this case, it’s probably, “Hit reply and let me know if you’d like to talk to me and I’ll send you my calendar link,” you know, or, “If you want to just pick up the phone, here’s my phone number,” or something like that. But there is an offer, or otherwise known as a call-to-action, that is the final and powerful part of the email. Now, of course, I didn’t say salutation, and I didn’t say signature, because I figure you know those, but those are the critical parts of the email.

Gene (13:32):
And the other thing I think is really important when we do this, Pamela, that we might have an email like this, where a significant chunk of it is a form email that we’re going to be sending over and over again. And the temptation is to blind carbon copy a bunch of people, or to send this out through our mail program like MailChimp or whatever we are using. When we’re doing this sort of invitation it makes a huge difference when it is a personal invitation that we are sending to someone, even if the reason, the offer part, the call-to-action, is the exact same thing for every single one, and there are times that it’s time-consuming. Last February, I was working on something new that I really wanted a specific type of engagement with, and so I sat down and I sent 147 emails one morning. And the bulk of the email was the same, but every single one of them was personal. And when you’re doing this, if you want to get true engagement with someone, it needs to be coming from you to them, not a broadcast like a newseltter.

Pamela (14:34):
Mmm… Such good advice, and I hope that you actually have 147 people to send this email to. But my invitation would be to maybe send out 10 of them and see what you get. And expect that you may get crickets for a lot of them, because people are busy, they don’t see emails, who knows if it went to spam. Don’t get offended. Don’t worry about it. Just send out another 10 or 20, and check the results on that one. So yes, this is definitely something that you want to spend some time on and send it out personally. Another thing: I had a client when I provided this template (in fact, a more detailed version of this template), they said, “Should I send the same thing to past clients versus current clients?” And no, probably not. If you want to get very granular on it, you’re going to set things up differently for people who were clients in the past than for people who you’re currently working for. So create two core emails, which you will then personalize. And if you create this email now, even if you don’t need a cash infusion now, it’ll be ready next time you do. So it’s a valuable thing to have around. And although it takes a couple of hours… what did that 147 emails take you, a couple of hours?

Gene (15:52):
It actually took me about 90 minutes, and because I had the basic email, that doesn’t count writing the email ahead of time. And I just turned on a couple of podcasts that I loved early in the morning, and just sat there and sent stuff out. And this was a circumstance where this was an offer to all former clients. So every single person I was sending it to was someone who had purchased a digital product from me in the past. And so it was really easy to frame a single email to all of them, with the personalization at the top.

Pamela (16:20):
So great. Such a great example. All right, well, that’s it. So think now: “What kind of cash infusion do I want to create in my business?” “Do I want to pull something out of my closet, or do I want to create a VIP session, or am I going to take my high-ticket offer and go to my past clients and my current clients, etc. with it?”

Next Steps

Gene (16:37):
And so, as you’ve heard this conversation, if you’re still in a circumstance where you’re not exactly sure what is the best approach and application for you at this particular moment, we would love for you to have a conversation, absolutely free, with one of our coaches. All you need to do is go to BookMyBreakthroughCall.com, that’s BookMyBreakthroughCall.com, get on the calendar of one of our coaches. They would love to help you to find some hidden revenue that is hiding in your business so that not only can you be more successful in your business, but you’ll have the opportunity to create more transformation and more impact in the world by using your gifts and talents.

Gene (17:16):
If you have any questions, or comments, or topics that you would like us to cover on a future episode of the podcast, we would love, love, love to hear from you. All you need to do is go to AttractClientsOnline.com. Click on that ‘Contact’ link. In your message, make sure you mention “question for the podcast.” And on a future episode, Pamela would love to circle around and share the information that’s most useful for you.

Gene (17:39):
We would encourage you also to Subscribe to the podcast. Remember ‘Subscribe’ in podcasting-parlance is absolutely free. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pandora, Amazon Music, Audible – go into the audio device of your choice, search for ‘A Profitable Impact,’ click ‘Follow,’ click ‘Subscribe,’ whatever the button is in that app. Make sure you turn on the ‘Notifications’ so that when a new episode comes out, you know, right away.

Gene (18:07):
If there is someone in your life who could use the information that we talked about today, please pass the episode along. Don’t spam your inbox and send it to everybody in the world. But if you know someone who would love to find some more revenue in their transformational business, pass this episode along, it might be exactly what they need to hear.

Gene (18:27):
For ‘A Profitable Impact,’ I am Gene Monterastelli. Until next time, I hope you have an impactful week.

ABOUT THE PODCAST

Building a business as a coach or expert is challenging, especially if you’re trying to find your clients online.

Join business coach and online marketing expert Pamela Bruner as she uncovers the secrets of successful transformational businesses. If you want to make a difference in people’s lives, expand your reach, and attract high-paying clients, you’ll love this show!