She Was Chasing 7 Figures, While $11,700 Was Leaking Out Of Her Business

Most business owners obsess over the top line: “How do I get to $500K… then $1M?” while their bottom line is bleeding from stuff they can fix in one afternoon. When I audited Phoebe’s business, she was shocked to see $11,700 leaking out through tools and subscriptions alone. Before we worked together, she was keeping about 19.5% of her revenue as profit. By cutting $11,700 in unnecessary tools and subscriptions, her profit margin jumped to roughly 29%, without a single extra client.

In this article, I’m going to walk you through the exact decisions we made to plug those leaks and boost her profit margin by 10% on our first day (!) of working together. But first, the 5 most common tools & subscription leaks I find in my clients’ businesses, which might be draining yours too.

If we haven’t met yet, I’m Rianna Hijlkema. I help high-achieving women who are making 10 to 20k months to build the infrastructure for their first seven figure year. I don’t just map out strategy. I build the systems that make the strategy work. Funnels, automation, tech, and conversion psychology all woven together into a business that feels simple, predictable, and scalable.

Let’s start with the biggest and easiest win. Just by switching monthly payments to annual payments for all the platforms my client was using consistently she already saved $2,000 USD. This is also the most common leak I see, and which makes total sense.

When you’re just starting your business, your cashflow is low, and so you want to stay in control of this. An annual expense feels big and you’re not sure yet about the platform. But then as years pass by, you forget. And the bigger your business gets, the more subscriptions creep into your business and then looking at your bank statement becomes more and more overwhelming. 

This is the weirdest leak I found when auditing tools and subscriptions for my clients. Especially with my clients who are already multiple years in business. Some were still paying a price for a plan from 7 years ago, and the company had never informed them there was an upgrade. I’m not going to call out names, but if you’re on a monthly or annual subscription with a company for several years I’d highly recommend going to their pricing page and take a look at what you can get for the price you’re currently paying. Shocking!

This is one of the strangest leaks I keep finding when I audit tools and subscriptions, especially for clients who’ve been in business for a few years. Some are still paying for plans they signed up for five to seven years ago. In the meantime, the company improved their newer plans. More features. Same price. But no one ever told them to update.

If you’ve been on the same monthly or annual subscription for years, go check the current pricing page. You might be surprised how much more you could be getting for what you’re already paying. And most often they upgrade you with one email.

When you first started your business, you probably chose the cheapest plan and thought, “I’ll upgrade when I need it.” Makes sense. The problem is that most platforms don’t actually work that way. Especially email and membership platforms. They don’t care which plan you picked years ago. They care about list size. And they charge accordingly. Over time, that can turn into hundreds of dollars per platform, per month.

This is where list cleaning comes in. I’ll go deeper on this in a future blog, but if you want a simple place to start:

1. Send an email to subscribers who haven’t opened anything in the last six months.

2. Make the subject line catchy. Give them a reason to engage.

3. If they still don’t open it, remove them from your list.

There’s no reason to keep paying for people who aren’t reading your emails.

This sounds obvious, right? Who would knowingly pay for two platforms that do the same thing? And yet, it happens all the time. Especially once you’ve been in business for a few years. Why? Because changing tools is annoying. Files need to be moved. Logins updated. Things might break. So you keep paying and tell yourself, “It’s not that much.” And that's where I come up, because I don't let my clients get away with this. I push them to do one round of uncomfortable clean-up that increases profit for years to come.

One of my clients found a $19.99 charge on her bank statement and had no idea what it was for. The description just said “From Text to Video.” It had been running for months.

She genuinely couldn’t remember signing up for it.

I gave her a simple three-step process to track it down and cancel it. Now, on its own, $19.99 feels insignificant. Especially when you’re making multiple six figures a year. But this is exactly how leaks compound.

That money should be working inside her business, not funding a tool she forgot existed. When my clients want to make a bigger impact, this is where it starts. Please don't neglect the small things.

Alright, those were the common profit leaks I’m helping my clients save, and here is your action plan, you can do this in one afternoon, and it will be SO worth it!:

“Numbers give me anxiety,” one of my clients told me. No, they don’t. What creates anxiety is not knowing (or worse 'ignoring') your numbers. The irony is that most people who say this aren’t anxious about numbers. They’re anxious because they’re guessing. Once my client started reviewing her numbers properly, the anxiety disappeared. Now she runs this process every quarter and feels completely in control. That’s the shift I want for my clients.

If you’re a six-figure service-based business owner, feeling proud of what you’ve built, but also ready to take your business to the next level...

Book your “Meant for More” session and let’s talk.

During our 30 minutes together we’ll dive into your vision for your business, then figure out your biggest bottleneck, and I’ll give you a clear next step to move your business forward. 

If working together makes sense, I”ll tell you how exactly. If not, you’ll walk away with a clear next step. Don’t stay stuck for another 6 months please! Time is precious..