[00:00:00] Marie Vakakis: Hello and welcome back to this collaboration with me, Marie Vakakis coming to you from the Inside Social Work podcast. And. 

[00:00:11] Ashton Hayes: Ashton? Yes, me. Ashton Hay is coming to you from becoming an A-M-H-S-W, the podcast. 

[00:00:16] Marie Vakakis: Yesterday we spoke about why do social workers feel guilty charging our worth? We had a little bit of a conversation about money, and today we are talking about how you can save money starting out and some of our.

[00:00:29] Marie Vakakis: Biggest money mess ups, biggest lenders. How about you, Ashton? How do we save money starting out? And we are thinking more, I guess, private practice context, but Sure. There’d be some useful tips, I guess for everybody. What are your money tips? 

[00:00:41] Ashton Hayes: Money saving tips. I think my money saving tips, particularly when you’re starting out, is to get your systems set up in place.

[00:00:51] Ashton Hayes: So I think one of the things that cost me. A lot of money because it took me a lot of time was to not have proper systems [00:01:00] set up. And I think one of the reasons that I didn’t do that, one because I didn’t have access to the information, but two, when I did have access to the. Information I got a little bit caught up in, oh, I shouldn’t outsource this, or I shouldn’t purchase, say for example, a case management system because I could quote unquote, save money by doing it myself.

[00:01:29] Ashton Hayes: I didn’t save money at all because it spent hours. Working things out and doing all of that work on my own. So one of the biggest money saves for me was to get a case management system or a client management system, I should say, and the one that I use is icky. And I know that there are a lot out there, but for me, that was an absolute game changer.

[00:01:50] Marie Vakakis: I agree. Cringe when I see people kind of getting really squabbling in those Facebook groups about, oh, but it’s, you know, $2 of processing fee and [00:02:00] how do I save money and can I do this? It’s like, I’m gonna be a little bit blunt here. You gotta put on your big girl pants. Mm-hmm. You are running a business.

[00:02:08] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. You have an A BN. You’re running a business and they are business expenses. Yeah. And so if you are worried about that $2 credit card fee, just pass it on. Factor that into your running costs. Mm-hmm. Just like you go for coffee, how annoying would it be to have to direct debit to transfer the cafe owner who then has to go at the end of the night and kind of match those things?

[00:02:33] Marie Vakakis: So depending on the scale, having some systems in place are so, so important and making that seamless for your clients. Mm-hmm. I absolutely hate having to pay by direct deposit. I can’t stand it. I get so annoyed when people invoice me and I have to go find, and it’s like, just can you just charge my credit card?

[00:02:52] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. So I mean, that’s just a little thing. But yeah, the, the system. Around setting that up is really [00:03:00] important, 

[00:03:00] Ashton Hayes: and you can save money on other things. You can paint your room yourself, or you can sew a cushion cover for your cushions in your room if that’s what you wanna do. But setting up systems, I have found saved hours of my time, which was billable time.

[00:03:19] Ashton Hayes: And allowed me to offer a service to my clients where they came in, they received the service, they paid, they got their rebate, and they left. 

[00:03:29] Marie Vakakis: One of the savings that I’ve discovered more recently is upgrading some things to include more features that make other things obsolete. So for example, I used to have Calendly, which was an online booking system for, mostly for podcast guests.

[00:03:46] Marie Vakakis: That’s how I used it. Mm-hmm. And then I would have something like Zoom for interviews, and then I had Gmail for my email. Mm-hmm. And then I had. Task [00:04:00] management app. Mm-hmm. So I had four things. If you upgrade your business Google account, it does all of those things in one. So it has its own inbuilt calendar booking system.

[00:04:11] Marie Vakakis: It has the task feature, which I showed you today. That is really cool. You can use that to replace Zoom because you have Google meets. Mm-hmm. And it does all the emails. And so that has evolved. When I first started, I needed all those different things. That technology, the, the software, the programs evolve quite quickly.

[00:04:31] Marie Vakakis: So that’s one thing to look at is what have you got that maybe has some upgrades that might cost you a little bit more per month, but then make some of the other things obsolete. So I think using like the whole suite of a service. So, and if you use, let’s say I, ’cause I’m a a G Suite person, I don’t need Microsoft Office because I have.

[00:04:50] Marie Vakakis: Google Sheets and Google Docs, and then I use the Gmail app, so it actually is, I still use Zoom because for webinars I prefer that. Mm-hmm. It [00:05:00] has meant that I’ve been able to cut out some other features and other things. That have saved money by spending a little bit more somewhere else. Mm. 

[00:05:07] Ashton Hayes: I think if we have a look at someone who’s very, very first starting out, so let’s say you are renting a room for two hours on a Wednesday morning, and that’s your very first foray into private practice.

[00:05:21] Ashton Hayes: It may seem as though I’m only seeing two clients a week. I’m only doing two hours a week. I don’t want to. Have to pay, you know, $300 a month for icky in galaxy credits, for example. But the beauty of offerings that are out there at the moment is that there’s often free trials. I personally went for icky.

[00:05:44] Ashton Hayes: And I just want to clarify, I am not affiliated in affiliated in any way. I’m just, but if, if Alex is listening and you do wanna sponsor the 

[00:05:51] Marie Vakakis: podcast, please get in touch. 

[00:05:54] Ashton Hayes: See that’s hashtag sponsor me. That’s running a business, isn’t it? The beauty of [00:06:00] Galaxy for me is that it did start out for free, and it was a buildable system that I could learn how to manage as my business progressed.

[00:06:10] Ashton Hayes: Doing those free trials and looking into all of the features like you just said, in G Suite there are so many features in icky. There are so many features. There are letters, templates, there are assessment templates, there is the Medicare rebate option, there’s the credit card option. So all of those kind of options are out there, and that is something that I found very much money saving because the more you spend on trying to save money.

[00:06:39] Ashton Hayes: Something that might take you three hours is essentially gonna cost you three hours worth of client fees. Uh, something that you pay for that costs you, half of that is ultimately going to save your money. I agree. And I used, back then it was called health 

[00:06:54] Marie Vakakis: kit. 

[00:06:55] Ashton Hayes: Oh, right. Remember, did you 

[00:06:56] Marie Vakakis: use it that one ago?

[00:06:57] Marie Vakakis: That’s pre, that predates 

[00:06:58] Ashton Hayes: me. I used 

[00:06:59] Marie Vakakis: another one [00:07:00] before that, and that’s one of those ones where as the features evolved, it’s meant you can cut out other things. So you can cut out a separate facts. Yes. You can cut out. There’s a few things as you were sort of talking about the investing in different things to save time.

[00:07:16] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. One of the other things that I’ve thought of is. It’s this tipping point. It’s almost like buying in bulk versus not wasting things. So at the start, I would be printing things out by the page at Officeworks, and then it got to the point where I thought if I buy. Quite a large Inkject printer. That was a big investment.

[00:07:35] Marie Vakakis: But then the printing cost per page dropped significantly. 

[00:07:38] Ashton Hayes: Yeah. 

[00:07:38] Marie Vakakis: So that after about a year, that balanced itself out. And then I bought like a binder and I bought the whole punch. So some of those things were bit of a strategic thing of, will I use it enough to make it worthwhile? Mm-hmm. And then always balancing time with.

[00:07:56] Marie Vakakis: Savings and the first expense. My [00:08:00] first thing was to get an admin person to do reconciling of my accounts because I hated it. And I thought I’d rather see one extra client than do an hour of bookkeeping. I see. And so then I started weighing up that, how much admin time would it take me? Verse seeing a client.

[00:08:15] Marie Vakakis: But when you’re first starting out, I know it can seem, it’s balancing risk and reward. So a casual booking of anything’s gonna cost more. Mm. So then you might go into, take the risk of. Subleasing so that you can have the room booked, but at a cheaper rate. It might be in co-sharing spaces, it could be in some of those DIY things, but picking strategically, I think, what you want to work on one.

[00:08:41] Marie Vakakis: Is group supervision. Mm-hmm. I attended and I still have group supervision, especially when I’m working towards an accreditation. So my EMDR supervision, I did a lot of that group. Mm-hmm. I do that with my Gottman supervision as well. So sometimes that can be a little bit more cost effective. 

[00:08:56] Ashton Hayes: Yeah. 

[00:08:56] Marie Vakakis: And even I’ve had people as a group get together [00:09:00] and then get me to come and deliver group supervision, so even if there’s not one readily available mm-hmm.

[00:09:05] Marie Vakakis: You can create it. 

[00:09:07] Ashton Hayes: Yeah, you absolutely can. And I think group supervision is great, particularly when you are working on something as a niche. So we offer very specialised individual group supervision, but we also offer the opportunity to come along into a drop in, drop out dropout group soup for those who are wanting.

[00:09:26] Ashton Hayes: For example, to write their practice standards. And I think the other way that you can save money with things is to purchase packages. So often people will offer a package that’s a little bit cheaper. So in training, for example, so I recently purchased a training in more in a package than by module because that was cheaper for me to do so.

[00:09:48] Ashton Hayes: But very early on, you do have to be quite thoughtful. About how you’re spending your money. That’s really important. I think you and I both get that, but it’s also worth [00:10:00] doing a little bit of an audit around the amount of money that you are saving by doing it yourself versus how many extra clients you need to have.

[00:10:09] Ashton Hayes: Like you said, it could be one or two extra clients and it saves you a fortune. 

[00:10:13] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. The other thing when it comes to money savings is having. A really good, well communicated attendance policy. Yes. Because if someone is a no-show and you’ve allocated time, that’s money you don’t get back. Mm-hmm. And so being able to support clients to attend appointments because they’re coming to you for treatment and they can’t get treated if their bumps not on the seat.

[00:10:41] Marie Vakakis: Mm. And so you allocate time for them to do that. How do we get them attending? And if they can’t or choose not to that they still pay And that, I know it’s confronting for some people, but if you buy a movie ticket and you get sick before the movie, the movie’s still playing. [00:11:00] If you buy tickets for a concert, the concert, the person’s still there singing so many things work on that.

[00:11:07] Marie Vakakis: And so another way to think about saving money is. Wastage, where are you losing it? 

[00:11:13] Ashton Hayes: Mm. I think that’s an excellent point. The concept of a cancellation policy is so confronting to so many social workers, particularly if you’ve gone from provision of a service of free counseling, for example, into private practice.

[00:11:31] Ashton Hayes: In a free counseling space, the client may not turn up for all kinds of reasons, but there’s no impact. They can still come the next week. Whereas in private practice, for example, if you’ve got 2, 3, 4 cancellations last minute in a row, you lose a day’s pay, and that’s a huge amount of money to lose when you explain to people clearly.

[00:11:54] Ashton Hayes: With transparency, you allow them to engage in their own accountability, [00:12:00] and it just makes you more available for people. If a client does say to you, you know what, I’ve realised it’s not right for me, I can’t commit right now, then a space opens up for somebody else who really is able to commit. It’s not about being punitive, it’s about making sure that your business runs smoothly and that you’re available to those who are able to come and see you.

[00:12:23] Ashton Hayes: Yeah, absolutely. So what 

[00:12:25] Marie Vakakis: about the blunders Marie? As someone who likes bright shiny objects, I have a collection of tech that probably has not been used. I have a big ring light and a little ring light and a hand how two handhold ring lights. My actual biggest wastage is getting excited by training that expires before I do it.

[00:12:45] Marie Vakakis: Oh 

[00:12:45] Ashton Hayes: my goodness. Yes. 

[00:12:47] Marie Vakakis: And so as we spoke about in. An earlier episode in the series around ongoing professional development, but having a skill or a niche. Once I started refining what I was [00:13:00] learning, I made less of those random purchases. But at the start, I kind of felt like I needed to, I felt under-resourced and maybe a little bit anxious about it.

[00:13:09] Marie Vakakis: So I did training in everything. Mm-hmm. And I would buy a training and then I’d forget about it, or I wasn’t really great at. Putting that into my diary and protecting time. For that. Right. And so I think wasted trainings as well was one under ring, several ring lights. So if anyone needs a ring light check out Facebook marketplace, I probably will have some on sale.

[00:13:32] Ashton Hayes: I think the training one is a classic. I think there are so many of us who see an on on-demand training or see a training that they think, yeah, that’s great. I can get that done within three months. And then. The three months passes. I think tech for me also, I will often think, yes, that’s a great solution for me.

[00:13:55] Ashton Hayes: Purchase it for 12 months and then realise. I’ve actually never used it. [00:14:00] I did get charmed by a particularly good salesperson in JB Hi-Fi and purchased what is quite a useless tripod and ring light all in one. That falls over every time I try and set it up. The lighting is far from flattering and my phone falls out of the little casing, so.

[00:14:21] Ashton Hayes: That was me falling for a really great sales tactic and more power to the sales person for getting me to buy it. But I do actually have a large ring light that I use and that works really well. So it is about, I think a lot of the time. I want to be able to provide well for those who come and see me.

[00:14:43] Ashton Hayes: And so I convince myself that I need this one extra thing. 

[00:14:46] Marie Vakakis: I’m a bit the same, and I fluctuate between what’s just getting started and then optimising and what is causing a traffic jam or road, like what’s the bottleneck. Mm-hmm. And [00:15:00] so like recently I updated my laptop because that started to become the bottleneck.

[00:15:04] Marie Vakakis: It couldn’t cope with. Editing podcasts, for example. So limited time when I was on commute or at the office. Mm-hmm. And I wanted to be able to edit a podcast. I couldn’t. I had to wait till I got home to my desktop. And so it was this balance of upgrading that made other things move through quicker.

[00:15:25] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. And I had the same with my phone for a long time. I had a really old phone. Right. And I was not using it for anything other than. Making phone calls and Spotify, which it’s fine. It’s probably what you know it’s for. But once I upgraded that, I could take more reels. I could take some notes, I could record a few things.

[00:15:44] Marie Vakakis: So I started to be able to use more features that reduce a bottleneck from somewhere else. So I’ve always tried to find that balance of what’s getting started and what’s optimising. And when you get into podcasting, one of the most Googled things is. What’s the best [00:16:00] microphone for podcasting? Yes. And yet, that’s the least important thing about podcasting.

[00:16:05] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. When you’re getting started, it’s what’s my topic? What’s my niche? Who’s going to listen to it? How do I ask questions? What about storytelling? There’s a million other things, and we’re very focused on the consumer thing. So I did have a very simple mic. I still have it. It’s my backup mic, and then I slowly.

[00:16:21] Marie Vakakis: Upgraded. But I had this one, I’ve heard this one analogy, analogy, I don’t know, visual for. So imagine a triangle. Mm-hmm. And I’ll, I’ll draw it for you here. ’cause you know you’re face to face. Mm-hmm. And so we have at the top of the triangle, you’ve got time, and then we’ve got price on one side and quality on the other.

[00:16:41] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. And you can only ever have two of those three things. Yeah. So you can have high quality and maybe it’s quick, but it can’t be low in price. Yeah. It can be low in price, maybe high quality, but it won’t be quick. Or you can get it done quickly. It can be cheap, but it won’t be high quality. Mm-hmm. And most things can [00:17:00] fit into some version of that.

[00:17:01] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. Podcast editing, for example. I can get it done reasonably well. High quality if I spend a lot, a lot of time editing it. 

[00:17:11] Ashton Hayes: Mm-hmm. 

[00:17:11] Marie Vakakis: It’s cheap, but it’s cost me time. Yeah. Or I can have a quick turnaround in high quality, but it’s going to cost me something. Yeah. And so once I sort of looked at that triangle, I started to think, what am I prepared to.

[00:17:26] Marie Vakakis: What’s it gonna cost me and monies when you’re in a business, time is money. And then I got to think, what am I prepared to save money on versus could I see another client in that hour? Mm. Could I do business development? And I think that’s relevant, whether you’re seeing two clients a week or 20, if you’ve got some of those systems in place and some of those templates and some of those automated payment features, maybe that two clients can be three.

[00:17:52] Ashton Hayes: Yeah, 

[00:17:52] Marie Vakakis: because you’ve been able to automate some of those things, and so it’s really, I think it’s a helpful way when you’re starting out to [00:18:00] think about what can you save time on that can get you doing more of the actual work that generates income. I would agree. Any last minute money tips? 

[00:18:12] Ashton Hayes: I think investing into things that will ultimately lead you to being better in your.

[00:18:20] Ashton Hayes: Role, good training, good supervision, good location. Those are the things that are ultimately going to save you in the long run. 

[00:18:30] Marie Vakakis: I agree. 

[00:18:30] Ashton Hayes: And one thing I’ve learned 

[00:18:31] Marie Vakakis: from the YouTubing space is just get started, get going, get consistent, and then optimise. So perhaps. Some of this stuff is for a few weeks or months down the track.

[00:18:44] Marie Vakakis: Just get started. Don’t let it overwhelm you. When you are starting out, you don’t actually need a whole lot. 

[00:18:50] Ashton Hayes: Mm-hmm. 

[00:18:51] Marie Vakakis: But keep in mind as it evolves and you get comfortable that you can make some adjustments and some changes to save money, increase revenue. [00:19:00] And have a good user experience. Great. And come and buy our, our ring lights.

[00:19:06] Marie Vakakis: We should have a, have a garage sale, should have a sale on ring lights and tech. I have, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has a draw full of all that expired tech and phones that need to be resold. Thanks for listening folks. Hope you enjoyed this episode about money savings, and tomorrow we will be talking a little bit about.

[00:19:25] Marie Vakakis: I don’t know the myth of we should work, do the work we love for free. So why do we have to work for free? Stay tuned for that. It’s coming up tomorrow. 

I.