Do you ever fantasise about having an office?
I do.
As much as I love my life in Hobbitshire, and as much as I’ve designed all my businesses to give me control over my time, so that I can just drop everything and spend the morning on the beach if I want…
I sometimes daydream about how great it would be to have my whole team together in a physical office.
Now, I don’t think it makes sense in 99% of the analysis:
- large overhead
- lose the ability to hire remotely
- you gonna for your people to relocate?
- office politics
- crap coffee
- whatever (the list could be long)
I do feel that there are certain things that only tend to get done when you’re all together.
Every year I get a sense of what these benefits might be during our StoryLearning team retreat.
In-amongst the frolicking, the negronis and the excursions…
There are always special insights that come up from conversation.
For example, we spent a lot of time last week talking about our VIP Coaching programme, and about some emerging customer insights that represent a big potential change in direction.
Sure, this stuff can come up in Zoom meetings.
But there’s something about the expansive nature of a morning-long brainstorm that teases stuff out.
Anyway…
Something else that we finally did this year is:
A soup-to-nuts review of recurring expenses.
Talk about a task nobody wants to do…
Reviewing your subscriptions is a task so unappealing it makes reading YouTube comments feel intellectually stimulating.
Perhaps that explains why the last time we did a thorough review of subscriptions was…
The 10th of NEVERuary.
I mean…
Obviously, I’ve known for years that doing these reviews is important…
But for a combination of reasons, we’ve always managed to put it off:
- It’s not that much money really
- It’s better to put that time into growth activities
- It’s going to be more work to switch
And guess what…
This is all true!
But what happens when you spin this story for 12+ years?
Well, I found out last week as I sat down with my CEO and went line-by-line through every single damn recurring expense in the entire company.
What we found was somewhat eye-watering…
Here’s a list of what we were able to cut, what we did instead, and the annual saving.
Segmetrics (tracking software) > moving to Revtrack. Saving: $6,000
Calendly > removing dozens of seats and moving to Tidycal. Saving: $5,700 Google Workspace > Moving coaches from email to Circle for student comms. Saving: $4,000
Zoom > removing old student accounts. Saving: $3,000
ClickFunnels > finally moving off it altogether. Saving: $3,000
Zoom > Moving team meetings to Google Meet. Saving: $1,500
Zendesk > removing two unused seats and replacing with AI workflow. Saving $1,400
Zapier > moving from an arbitrary tier to a level we actually need. Saving: c.$1,400
Shopify > we’re not using it. Saving: $,1020
Web domains x20 > don’t need them, not renewing. Saving: $440
Software we’re not using or had completely forgotten about:
- VidIQ > Saving: $360
- Dropbox > Saving: $250
- Patreon > Saving: $240
- 1of10 > Saving: $199
- Convert Pro > Saving: $89
- Teleprompter app > Saving: $80
- Elementor > Saving: $49
We were able to cut / migrate ALL of these.
How much did we save?
Drumroll please…
Well, actually you already know from the subject of the email, but this created savings of an astonishing:
$28,727 per year
Now, granted, we’re perhaps an unusual case.
And yes, there’s going to be some work involved in migration to new tools.
But it gives you pause for thought, doesn’t it?
And it only took a couple of hours.
Often, it’s easier to generate more profit in your business by cutting than by adding.
(As we found in my work with Orzy)
Nothing new.
But food for thought.
These things make me wonder how much other stuff we’d get done if we had an office.
But…
Probably wouldn’t be as fun.
I prefer a different kind of office…
If you want to do this your business, simply copy the following text and email it to your bookkeeper / accountant:
Hey, can you please send me a list of all recurring expenses in the last 12 months? Thanks.
Then, schedule a morning with someone on your team to go through it from top to bottom, and don’t leave the room till you’ve finished.
Namaste,
Olly