Things I wish I knew 16 years ago (EP#79)
What do you wish you could tell yourself when you first started your business? From a chance conversation that led to her very first client, to building a business that has evolved over more than a decade and a half, Fi shares the honest, human lessons she's learned along the way.
In this episode of Money Secrets, Fi celebrates 16 years in business by looking back at the lessons she wishes she'd known when she first started Peach Business Management in 2010.
Listen to Episode 79
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
Why being good at what you do isn't enough. Learn why marketing your expertise is essential for building a successful business.
Why relying on referrals can be risky. Discover how consistent marketing gives you more control over your client pipeline.
Why you should build an email list early. Learn why an engaged email audience can become one of your most valuable business assets.
Why getting support can accelerate your growth. Discover how coaching and expert advice can help you develop skills outside your expertise.
Why making money starts in your mind. Learn how your mindset and behaviour can influence the results you create in business.
Why your natural strengths matter. Hear how Fi's ability to build genuine relationships became part of her secret sauce.
Why you need to create your own opportunities. Learn why putting yourself forward can open doors to stages, podcasts, awards and more.
Why collaboration can build courage. Hear how working with others can give you the confidence to pursue bigger ideas.
Why your health is a business priority. Learn why protecting your physical and mental wellbeing is essential for long-term success.
Why making space for joy matters. Discover why a successful business should support a fulfilling life outside of work.
How your definition of success can evolve. Explore why sustainable success includes money, connection, wellbeing, courage and joy.
Things I wish I knew 16 years ago (EP#79)
Introduction
We've made a lot of progress as a society in many areas, but one thing that hasn’t changed enough is our relationship with money. If we want to tip the scales in favour of marginalised people, we need to understand the secrets to making money in small business.
The more we talk about money — especially the secrets that usually stay behind closed doors or on the golf course — the more empowered we become. My mission is to get more money into the hands of good people, specifically business owners like you.
Because I believe small business can change the world. And to do that, we need to be making more money.
Acknowledgement of Country
This episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. 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 pay my respects to Elders past and present, and recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded. This always was, and always will be, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
16 Years in Business: What I Wish I Knew When I Started
Sixteen years ago, Fi Johnston started Peach without a detailed business plan, a huge savings buffer or a perfectly mapped out strategy.
What she did have was experience, enthusiasm, a love of small business and a belief that she had skills people needed.
A lot has happened since then.
Peach has grown and evolved. Fi has worked with purpose led businesses across Australia, launched Money Secrets, created Good Money Club, co-founded Ripple Festival and spent 16 years learning what actually makes a small business work.
So, to celebrate Peach's 16th business birthday, Fi is doing something a little different.
Rather than sharing another pricing strategy or money management lesson, she's looking back at the things she wishes she'd understood when she started.
From marketing and email lists to mindset, relationships, creating your own opportunities and protecting your health, these are the lessons that only really become clear after you've been in the game for a while.
Sometimes a Business Starts Before You Have a Plan
Peach began with a very wet weekend in the Grampians.
In 2010, Fi was 31 and feeling disconnected from her career. She loved what she did, but something was missing.
During a weekend away with friends, a freezing and very rainy hike led the group to Mount Zero Olives, where Fi met founder Jane Seymour.
Over cups of tea, the two started talking.
Fi shared her background as a chartered accountant, her years working in tax and her experience at Mountain Goat Brewery, where she'd fallen in love with independent, community led business.
Jane's response was simple:
How do I get to work with you?
By the time Fi returned home, she'd decided to start her own consulting business. Shortly afterwards, Peach Business Management was registered, and Jane became Fi's first client. Sixteen years later, Mount Zero remains part of the Peach story.
There wasn't a detailed five year plan behind it.
Fi simply knew she had useful skills, loved working with small businesses and was good at building relationships.
Sometimes that's enough to begin.
Being Great at What You Do Isn't Enough
One of Fi's biggest early business lessons is also one that can be difficult for skilled service providers to accept.
Being really good at what you do doesn't mean people will automatically find you.
In the early years, Fi relied heavily on networking, referrals and letting people in her community know she was available.
And while that generated clients, there wasn't a clear marketing strategy behind it.
Like many people coming from employment, Fi had internalised the idea that doing excellent work would lead to being noticed, acknowledged and rewarded.
Business doesn't quite work that way.
As Fi puts it, "if you build it, they will come" isn't the full story.
You need to build it, tell people about it, explain why they should care and then deliver an experience worth coming back for.
Learn How to Market Yourself
Over the past 16 years, Fi has developed her marketing skills significantly, including through her work with Mia Fileman from Campaign Del Mar.
That work taught Fi how to get clearer about her target audience, communicate what she does, create campaigns and build marketing systems that give her more control over where the next client comes from.
Because referrals are wonderful.
But referrals alone aren't a strategy you can control.
If your calendar suddenly has availability, you can't simply switch referrals on.
Marketing gives you another option.
You can communicate with your audience. You can run a campaign. You can nurture potential clients. You can tell people what you have available and why it matters.
That's a very different position from waiting and hoping somebody recommends you.
Start Building Your Email List Now
If Fi could go back to 2010 and tell herself to do one practical marketing task, it would be this:
Start an email list.
At the time, she knew email lists existed. What she couldn't understand was why anyone would want an email from her.
Eventually, she worked it out.
Today, The Peach Weekly allows Fi to regularly share business lessons, money making strategies and examples of businesses doing interesting things.
And unlike a social media following, an email list gives a business a direct channel to the people who have actively chosen to hear from it.
Fi now sees that list as one of the most valuable assets in her business and wishes she'd started building it from day one.
So if you're currently thinking:
"But what would I even email people about?"
You don't need the next 16 years of newsletters planned.
Start with something useful.
Then keep going.
Good Money Club
If this conversation resonated, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
Good Money Club is open right now.
Inside Good Money Club, women business owners:
Learn to understand and manage their own money
Build financial roadmaps
Develop sustainable pricing strategies
Get accountability and support
Increase revenue and take-home pay
Make bold, ethical money decisions
If you’re ready to:
Earn more
Pay yourself properly
Build a sustainable business
Reduce money stress
Close your own revenue gap
You can learn more about Good Money Club while doors are open.
You Don't Have to Know Everything Yourself
Fi entered business with significant expertise.
She was a chartered accountant. She understood tax. She understood finance. She had worked with businesses.
And looking back, she thinks some of that expertise made her slower to seek help.
There's a particular trap skilled professionals can fall into when they start a business.
You know a lot.
You're used to being the expert.
And that can make it surprisingly difficult to admit how much you don't know about running and growing a business.
Fi outsourced practical things like branding and design early on, but she didn't invest in coaching, advice and expanding her own business skills as quickly as she now wishes she had.
Her lesson after 16 years?
Get support earlier.
You don't need to become an expert in every part of business yourself.
Making Money Starts in Your Mind
Knowing how money works and being able to make more of it are not necessarily the same skill.
Even with Fi's accounting and financial background, she eventually realised that her own thinking was sometimes limiting what she believed was possible in her business.
That's why money psychology has become such an important part of her work today.
The way you think influences how you price, sell, market yourself, invest, ask for opportunities and respond when something doesn't work.
Two people can have similar skills and experience and still create very different financial results because of how they approach those decisions.
For Fi, one of the biggest lessons of the past 16 years has been understanding that changing how you think and behave around money can change the results you create.
The Thing You Thought Was "Too Personal" Might Be Your Secret Sauce
Fi has always wanted genuine connection with her clients.
For a long time, she wasn't sure whether that was a strength.
Should business be less personal?
Should she be able to work with anyone?
Sixteen years later, she sees it differently.
Her desire to create genuine relationships is one of the things that makes her work hers.
It allows clients to have conversations they may not feel comfortable having elsewhere. It creates trust. It creates long term relationships. And it helps Fi understand the businesses and people she's working with at a much deeper level.
The lesson isn't that every business owner needs to work this way.
It's that sometimes the quality you've been trying to tone down is actually the thing that differentiates you.
Your business doesn't need to look like somebody else's.
It needs to make the most of what you do particularly well.
Create the Opportunities You Want
Want to speak on a stage?
Tell people.
Want to be on a podcast?
Pitch yourself.
Want to win an award?
You might need to actually enter it.
Fi spent years looking at other people receiving opportunities she wanted and wondering why the same things weren't happening for her.
Eventually, she realised that many opportunities don't simply arrive because you've quietly been doing good work.
You have to put yourself forward.
That can feel awkward.
It can feel self promotional.
It can feel cringey.
But being uncomfortable doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.
Sometimes creating the opportunity is the work.
Build the Stage You Want to Stand On
Ripple Festival is perhaps the biggest example of this lesson.
Fi and Mia didn't just want more opportunities to speak.
They decided to create the kind of stage they wanted to stand on, while also building a platform for other small business owners.
It wasn't easy.
Creating a live festival brought financial pressure, physical demands and plenty of stressful moments.
But Fi and Mia were able to do something together that each might not have felt brave enough to tackle alone.
Fi describes it as being able to borrow courage from each other until experience created confidence.
There's something useful in that for any business owner with an idea that feels slightly too big.
You don't necessarily have to wait until you feel confident.
Sometimes you find the right people, borrow a little courage and build the thing anyway.
Your Health Is Part of Your Business Strategy
Perhaps the most important lesson Fi wishes she'd understood earlier has nothing to do with marketing, pricing or profit.
It's this:
Your health matters more than your business.
In the early years, it can be incredibly easy to work yourself into the ground.
Work can feel satisfying. Being needed feels good. There's always another email to answer, another problem to solve and another thing you could be doing.
And sometimes, work can even become an escape from the harder things happening outside of it.
Over 16 years, Fi has experienced the toll that carrying the stress of a business, and sometimes the stress of her clients' businesses, can take.
She now sees investing in her physical health, mental health and wellbeing as being every bit as important as investing in any other part of Peach.
That means strong relationships.
Eating well.
Moving your body.
Looking after your mental health.
Making space outside of work.
And actively seeking joy.
Not because every walk on the beach needs to somehow make you a more productive entrepreneur.
But because you are a human being before you are a business owner.
Final Thoughts
Sixteen years of business hasn't taught Fi that there's one perfect strategy for success.
If anything, it's taught her something much more human.
Learn how to market yourself instead of relying on great work to speak for itself.
Build the email list earlier.
Ask for help before you think you need it.
Pay attention to the beliefs shaping your financial decisions.
Recognise the qualities that make your way of doing business different.
Create the opportunities you wish someone else would offer you.
Find people you can borrow courage from when the idea feels too big.
And don't build a successful business at the expense of the person who has to run it.
Peach started without much of a plan.
Sixteen years later, Fi is still learning, experimenting, changing and finding better ways to do business.
Maybe that's the point.
You don't need to know what the next 16 years will look like.
You just need to start, stay curious, ask for support and make sure you're building a business that leaves enough room for you to enjoy the life happening alongside it.
Outro
Thank you for listening to Money Secrets. If you loved this episode, please subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a review. Your support helps us get these conversations into the hands of more good people who deserve to thrive in business.
We’ve come so far as a society in many ways, but money is one of the areas where progress hasn’t been enough. If we want to tip the scales in favour of marginalised people, it starts with understanding the secret: money in small business.
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 have the power to change the world, and the key to making a bigger impact is to make—and manage—more money.
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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.
Want to find out more about Good Money Club? It's for female and non-binary business owners ready to make more money and impact. Join us?
Check out my FREE Pricing Training you need to set your prices for profitability.
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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. Productivity and automation aren’t the answer
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