Flow State Business

What I Stopped Doing to Save $5K/Month and Scale Faster

• Ruby Lee

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For years, I thought growing meant doing more—more offers, more content, more systems. But what I’ve realized? Scaling isn’t about adding—it’s about subtracting.

In this episode, I’m sharing exactly how I simplified my business, cut unnecessary tasks, and created more space—all while increasing revenue.


We’ll talk about:

✔ Why doing less can actually grow your business faster
✔ The hidden energy leaks that might be slowing you down
✔ The step-by-step process I used to remove things that weren’t working
✔ How much money I saved by simplifying—and what that means for long-term growth


Plus, I’ve put together a 10-page workbook to help you do the same in your business. It includes:

→ A breakdown of tasks I eliminated and the cost savings
→ Reflection questions to help you identify what’s essential
→ My exact process for cutting back while still scaling


 So we're going to do something a little bit different today. You guys, as you listen to the episode, I am also going to direct you to the show notes, click through it, and you will see that there is a guide and workbook there. And it's actually going to be able to enhance your learning from this episode, because I talk about it in more detail.

There's a 10 page guide in there. It's got screenshots, it's got actual costings,  bunch of journal points and reflections that you can go away with after listening to this episode. I've actually never done something like this before. So if you know that you're someone who likes to consolidate. The learnings in this way, then definitely go ahead and grab it.

I promise you, it's probably less than the cost of your coffee today. And if you're not up for the workbook and you're good with just listening, that's absolutely fine too. All right, let's get chatting about all things, cutting back, simplifying, scaling. All the good things around earning more whilst doing less.

Hi guys. Welcome back to a brand new episode of the Flow State Business Podcast. Welcome. If you are new here and this is the first time you've ever tuned in, I've had this podcast now for gosh, I'd say six and a half, almost seven years. It's been the ride or die in my business in terms of how I chat to my clients and how I connect.

So I'm so glad you're here and that you've discovered this. If you've come through on Instagram or on LinkedIn, I definitely love an after the show conversation in my DMs. So make sure you reach out and let me know what has come to you the most from this episode. Now, I also, maybe you can hear if you know my voice, I have a little cold.

It's very annoying, but I think given the episode last week where I explained about all the things that have been happening, the big financial shock that we had, holding the energy around it. It's now come out in the physical form of a cold. It's nothing major, honestly, like I feel fine. Just my nose is a little snuffly.

So if you can hear that, then that's what that is. But also on that note, thank you so much for all of your amazing messages. I am so, I feel so lucky and so supported and so held up. So many of you were saying that you were crying listening to the episode and now knowing what's happened on the other side of it, I shared on my Instagram stories that an absolute miracle happened where they actually, the thieves came back and they returned 50 percent of our stuff.

And most importantly, they've returned the black Sapphire in my engagement ring, which is wild. Like, I don't know if you've ever heard that before, but I actually cannot believe that it's happened. And I'm so grateful. And there's just these beautiful little miracles that we can just be so happy to receive.

Okay. So I want to share something that's completely, completely transformed my business since the end of last year, around November, which is really where a lot of transformation happened. You would have heard me talk about how I decided to change a lot around my business model, how a lot of my passive income goals are to be at 50 50 this year.

So 50 percent passive, 50 percent active. I'd love for the 50 percent passive to be at around 750 to a million dollars this year. And then the other 50 percent would be active income where I'm coaching in my masterminds and all those wonderful things like VIP days and retreats and all of that. So a lot of that began to not just come into the vision of the business, but also it shifted the operational aspects of the way that I had been showing up in the business like six to seven years beforehand.

And I want to share.  What I've simplified, I've actually simplified almost everything. And I want to talk about how that's made me more money and given me more time than ever. And I I'm sort of giggling because I know a lot of you also feel this, but for the first seven years of my business, I was really scared to let a lot of this go because for years I thought growing meant doing more. 

More marketing, more content, more offers, more systems, fancier systems, upgrading systems. But what I've recently realized is that scaling has absolutely nothing to do with adding and everything to do with subtracting. This Was just this light bulb moment I had. I'm currently dog sitting my girlfriend's gorgeous, gorgeous pub.

And it's a Cavoodle by the way, some of you have been asking. And, um, I'm, I'm going on three walks a day. I now know why animals keep you really active, but this is when all the pings come when I'm like, Oh my God. So I thought to myself, Ruby. You're stripping back, you're simplifying, you're removing all the non essential things that I had been doing, and I was quite unaware of it.

That's the thing, it sneaks up on you, and there's just certain moments where I've just gone, Oh, I'm just doing it because that's the way I've always done it. And then when you sit down and ask yourself, like, why, and especially because a lot of my conversations that I have is around flow, flow, state, mastery, the non essential stuff is one of those subconscious hidden things that you do because you've always done it.

And I now realize that because I've stripped that back, I've gained back so much more time. incredible freedom in my day. I literally have maybe one or two key things that I definitely need to have done. Not even every day, maybe Monday to Wednesday. And then like, I have not experienced the freedom in my business like this ever.

And it's been incredible. And the best part is as a business owner, more revenue is coming in.  So let's discuss and, and also while this is what's working for me, I want to say this at this stage in my business, I want you to pause as you listen to this and really think about your business too. So I'm not directly coaching you right now.

I'm not in a one to one situation with you. I don't know your whole view on where your business is and your goals, but the reason why podcast episodes, when you're like leaning into other people who have done things before you, or they're trying out something that you would like to try out, it's just to give you those intuitive pings.

Okay. So. Be aware. That's what I'm trying to say. And like, obviously I know that these episodes are really interesting and I'm a bit like that too. Whenever I listen in on other people's stuff, I'm like, I'm going to do just that. And then when I stopped and realized, hang on, that's their business, not mine, then you can kind of find a happy medium.

So wherever you're at, whether you're scaling and you've hit multiple millions, like I have, or you're still building in your pre revenue, working in your corporate job, wanting to make the switch over, knowing what to focus on and what to let go of. Is going to really change the whole game for you. Okay.

So this next little bit, I really want to share what I've stripped back and how much it has saved me in my business. I'm going to just go point by point. I've really sat here trying to think about every single thing  that I've just let go of, and it's pretty cool seeing it all in a list. And then also I tried to kind of come up with the estimate costs that it would have been for me to have kept going with it.

So here's a breakdown of what I've stopped doing and also why it didn't matter and how much I saved by removing this task or, you know, whatever it was, this project from my business. Number one, seeing as we're on the podcast right now, we've never really over edited the podcast. My amazing assistant, Deb, Literally looks after the whole podcast editing suite from start to finish.

Literally all I do is plug in the microphone, speak into Riverside, which is the system that I record everything in and Deb puts it all together. Now, a couple of weeks ago, we had a music licensing thing come up with the podcast music. And we were at a crossroads as to whether to go and find new licensed music, which costs quite a bit of money.

Or either make up our own or find another solution. And I just decided, you know what, let's just go no intro music, no fancy transitions, no spending any extra time making it perfect. Just record, edit out all of the weird bits, especially this episode. I'm sniffling a lot. So poor Deb's going to take out all of my gross sniffles and coughs and all of that.

And upload it and just let it be. And it performs. Not even exactly the same. It's actually performed so much better. So by us doing this, and then also the way that we're promoting the podcast has been really different as well. You know, we used to do these really beautifully edited video reels for Instagram, sometimes with stock videos, cutaways, music in the background, clipping out certain parts of the audio.

Like a one minute clip could sometimes take an hour to make or thereabouts. Right. And also promoting it through emails. We'd write this big, long email. Deb and I would work on that, collaborate back and forth, have a big button in there. The email would be quite long, like all kinds of things. And I've just switched that up now to it being a simple hook, either a short three sentence email with a hyperlink.

Uh, many chat funnel where people just reply with a keyword like link to get the episode. All these things they've added up to, I'd say about roughly a hundred bucks per episode. I'm just going to call it that. That's what we're currently saving on that. And that's becoming profit into the business. The second thing that I've done, which I've not really made a big deal out of because there is no big deal to be made from it, which is quite wild when I share it with you, but I've actually completely deleted my 6.

3 K Facebook group. And if you know the history of this Facebook group, it was put together about a year and a half ago.  I spent thousands of dollars  Joining other people's Facebook groups, paid Facebook groups, getting new leads to go into that group, having three people manage that group, community lead management and operational admin.

And so a lot of money's gone behind growing this group to 6. 3 K and I've just decided I'm done with it. It's so spammy. It's probably the worst space that I have with my name on it. So I've taken out even the name of the group, the header.  Everything. I messaged the group and said, we're closing down the group.

Honestly. No one really cared. At least the ones that were really close in my business and joining me elsewhere, like the LinkedIn, it made absolutely no difference because those people that were close to me or at least clients of mine or leaning into me, they were already more so connected on other platforms like Instagram or LinkedIn and the podcast, of course.

So it actually made zero difference to my revenue. And the only people that messaged me about it were people who wanted to buy the Facebook group from me, which meant effectively buying all the leads from the group. Now, obviously I said no, because I definitely didn't want to sell out your guys contact details for a thousand bucks, you know?

So that's not what we're doing at all. And if anyone reaches out to you from that group, please know that group is now being completely closed. And I just realized that the real connections and the conversations are happening elsewhere. The sales are happening elsewhere. And the lead up to it, like who's to say that whether or not like this group would have tended something more fruitful in the long term future.

But in the meantime, it was leaking some major energy and leaking about 300 minimum per month just to run that group because I had people who were lead generating in there. So very happy to cut that out. And oh my gosh, it was amazing. So let's talk about emails from time to time. I used to hire a copywriter for either long storytelling emails or sales emails.

I've tried it a few times, had some large emails written for me. I thought it'd be really great. Bought some templates and stuff to get the emails looking really, really fantastic. Honestly, I'm so done with that and I really feel like I write better emails now. And my emails, I've just decided I'm going to cut my emails down to two to three sentences for a lot of really quick, Hey, by the way, there's like a new sale on or a new course on or a new podcast app.

It's just been amazing. I can see the direct click throughs on this as well. So my open rate sits between 35 and 45%, which is amazing. And before I switched up the strategy to cut down my emails to let's just call it three sentences from like six paragraphs, I used to have about a 0. 2 to 3 percent click rate.

It was like really, really low and struggle town. Since I've switched the strategy. And not paying copywriters to write big long thingies for me and having ops managers try and write in my voice.  That click through rate, open rate's gone up to 45%, that click through rate has gone to like 2. 93%. That is absolutely huge and savings wise, copywriters, the ones that I went for, were charging me between 1, 500 to 2, 000 USD per project.

And I'd get like a lot of written stuff. From it, but  no, like that was a big cost and I just don't anymore. So again, if you're not someone who enjoys writing, then don't do it. But I actually really, really love writing now. And I love writing in this really short staccato style. Email, you know, comms and it's working so well.

My audience are happy for me to ramble on elsewhere, like here, for example, but emails, I get it. Like they just want the quick, tell us where we need to go. What do we need to click on? No fancy images, even no headers. It's just literally like a couple of lines of texts and a hyperlink. So easy. Okay. This one won't surprise you, but I'm also  pretty much running all of my socials.

Again, I used to have Deb run most of it because I was so busy delivering and always in membership calls, mastermind calls, group programs, creating, downloading, making new content, making new courses.  Now my entire business model has shifted and I have so much more time to spend on delivering my message online and actually sharing, not that I didn't before, but now just like being so present.

And so in my content, and so in the way that I want to present my work and my message each day, it's actually such a joy. It doesn't feel like a drag at all, at least at this point in time. And one of the things that I've really done is, you know, we used to make a lot of like talking head videos where I would sit down and speak to the camera and there'd be a lot of edits and I would need a lot of Encouragement and feedback and framing and lighting and audio.

And it just became like a big, old, massive production. And, you know, I really enjoyed that experience mainly because I got to hang out with Deb, to be honest, but also,  you know, it was good for me to kind of grow in that way.  But I just felt like it was hard. And you know, that my mantra is follow the flow of what feels good.

Follow the flow of what feels easy. And that wasn't it for me. So I've really taken all of that away from the business. And whenever I'm posting on Instagram now I'm posting carousels, which are doing really well for me. I don't remember the last time I spoke on a reel or on a video  on feed, all of what I do, like speaking wise is on stories or my live streams, but everything else on feed is pictures or B roll.

Now the pictures that I have at the moment is literally one picture. So listen up. So one photo,  one text font, that's it. So I might have a beautiful headshot of me and then the next few carousels, I'll zoom in on the same photo just to give it different context, darken it up a little bit, put text over the top and it's done.

So just by doing that, I'm saving definitely a couple of hundred dollars per month in anything that I would have needed in terms of editing social media management. So that's huge.  I'm also not overly editing any of my photos before I used to have like a filter, not like a skin filter type thing, although dead would always make me look fantastic, but like a color filter.

So nowadays it's just raw, the photos as is no filters, no adjustments, no retouching.  Just raw and real. So couple of hundred bucks there again, per shoot or per edits, like big chunky photos, editing up those images. Honestly, it's been fantastic. Okay. Couple more things. Actually, only one more thing. I stopped  running as many live group programs and membership calls as I was in 2024.

I was running, to give you an idea, a membership all year last year, I would do anywhere between two  to four live calls per week for that membership. And then I also had, of course, the Amplify Mastermind. That was once a week. I had my inner circle, which was once a week. And I had a group program running flow state business, for example, or be, and that could be anywhere between two to three times a week.

All of these live calls, I used to run all of these literally week on week and Oh my gosh. Like, you know, going back to that thing around, follow the flow of what feels good. That did feel really good at the time. So don't get me wrong. It was actually what I really wanted to do. And I could see the bigger picture because this year it's given me.

A lot of content to work with and play with to then go ahead and build out our passive income model. But there was a lot of post call admin that was required. Things like compressing videos, uploading, automating emails to go out to the clients, making sure they had their logins, all of those things. Now, I'm just estimating based on the number of hours it would take, but it would be anywhere between one to 2, 000 per month in operational admin to run a business model like that.

So all in all the total estimate savings per month that I've now received from pulling everything back is around five to 6, 000 per month.  Absolutely wild in, you know, extra service providers and extra services that I needed. Now  let's just pause and reflect because again, I want you to think about your business.

For me, simplifying the business and where it's at now. It was about removing what wasn't necessary. It wasn't about consolidating or sorry, not consolidating or not delegating, but literally deciding that these things didn't belong in my business anymore. It didn't suit the new business model that I was heading to, but your business might be in a different stage.

So maybe you're still building. And instead of removing, you need to add the right things that will help you scale. Or maybe you're like me and you're doing, trying to do too much. You're trying to manage it all. And it's time to take a step back. And is the answer necessarily in outsourcing or is the answer in  taking it off your plate altogether?

So I want to talk about a very simple way to figure this out. Okay. So I know a lot of you have your notepads ready to go. So this is where we're going to write some stuff down. Number one, I want you to write down.  Um, every single task, every single system, every single service that you currently pay for and that you currently do every single task that you do.

Okay. This might be a bit tedious, but it's going to be worth it. If you don't already track it, or if you do, maybe your bookkeeper tracks it. So, you know, get in touch with them. Secondly, ask yourself for each one. So what I did was I went through line by line. Does this activity directly generate revenue?

or build stronger relationships for the business.  Is it truly necessary? Or am I doing it because I think I should? And what would happen if I stopped doing it? Would it make any real difference? If it's not moving the needle, then we need to cut it.  If it's necessary, but draining time or energy, we automate it. 

Okay. So you might need to go back to those  bits there that I've just talked about, but that's the coaching component for today.  That's really what I want you to think about the flow science component to this. You know, I can't help myself. I've always got to talk about the science of flow. This is called the practice of attention residue. 

And knowing where a lot of your attention is scattered.  And when you're constantly switching between all of these different tasks, and it's requiring you to think about all these things, deep creative work versus the shallow work in the admin, your brain doesn't fully reset and a portion of your attention stays really stuck on what you're doing, meaning that you're operating at half your cognitive power.

So if you look at that entire list that you've made. Where is your cognitive power going? If it's a hundred percent and you've got 10 things running at that whole, like the whole day, think about it. It's just like 10%, 10%, 10%. No wonder you're feeling like it's so difficult and there's no space for creativity, innovation, high impact work that actually is going to grow your business.

Okay. So I hope that this really helped you think about some things  in wrapping up all of this. If I did the big zoom out and looked at the bigger picture  over time, if I'm saving five and a half thousand dollars to 6, 000 per month, my yearly savings could be up to 70, 000 and over 10 years, that's 700, 000  plus guys.

That is crazy. The cost of a house for some people, that's a massive investment portfolio. I mean, to me, that just feels like complete financial freedom in taking just these aspects off the plate, all from removing what wasn't necessary anymore. People don't want the noise either. So if you're thinking like people really want the podcast jingle at the start and beautiful transitions and B rolls, it's very nice to have, don't get me wrong.

Like I love it, but I know that I'm more drawn to the human touch. I'm more drawn to the undone and the raw and the real and the hilarious things. Like when someone accidentally drops something and they're like, Oh shit, so sorry. Oh, and then they're back to it. You know, it's, it's so nice to know that the person on the other side is just as real as you hope that they are.

They don't care about the polished branding. I know that sometimes is contentious because polished branding is beautiful, but if that's not your business and your brand, and if you're a coach and a mentor, who's just like trying to keep it real over here, overproduced content or perfectly crafted emails is not necessarily it,  right?

People care about the connection. I'll tell you this, when I had copywriters write my emails, My people knew.  They were like, Ruby, is this you?  They knew. And then when I came back into it and I'm writing these three sentence emails with spelling mistakes. Yeah. Even in a three sentence email, I typed so fast, like whatever.

I kind of joked with someone who wrote like, um, okay, so did you mean this instead of this? Cause I wrote the wrong word and I'm like, yep. And then he replied, well, at least I know you're not AI. And I'm like, what if I am? What if I did it on purpose?  Okay. So finishing up here, where does this leave you? Now, if you're in the early stages of your business, your focus should be on building smart, not busy.

Okay. Smart, not busy. Find the core things that create revenue, a calendar system, a way to take a payment and a way for you to deliver content and information. Then double down on them later. You don't need to get fancy now. You don't even need a website. Okay. If you've been in business for a while, ask yourself, am I making things harder than they need to be?

Okay. If you've been doing it all the way up to multiple six figures,  and you're like, this is the way that it's always been just like the way that I've always promoted my podcast episodes. I hadn't changed it for ages and ages. And then I realized, Oh my God, it's actually not working. Like I hardly got any click throughs from Instagram itself.

I'm telling you. All of those fears of like not branding the podcast the way that I need to, it's totally dissipated and gone away because my podcast listeners have actually never been higher. So there's clever ways to go around it and better ways to do it if you don't feel like it's easy. And I really want you to think at every stage, there's going to be a key to sustainable growth.

So where you are now may not be what you're thinking for yourself in the future. And that's perfectly fine. It's taken me seven years to really switch up my business model. And I'm still very much super early stages. Like I said, it started in November. It's February 23rd. Now, as I'm recording this. It's okay, like wherever you're at now, be in the now.

If you're thinking so far ahead, I was speaking to a client earlier this week and she's like, how do I scale and automate? And I said to her, babe, you haven't even got your first client yet. Think about where you are right now and how, what you're doing right now, does that matter? To helping you attain more clients.

You know, she was asking me, what do you think about building out an app? And I said, that's great. Apps can be fantastic, but apps can also be, you know, a hundred thousand to 300, 000, some 500, 000 to build out. Let's think about how we can get some capital and some revenue through your business now. So I'll leave you with this.

What's one thing that you can strip back this week?  To really look at ways for you to become not just more profitable, although that is an absolute bonus, but the main point of this is how you actually think about making things easier in your business so that you can have more impact and if you're thinking about that attention residue, a hundred percent of the pie, how we can claim back some more of that cognitive power, I promise you.

Letting go of excess isn't just freeing. It is profitable and it'll make you feel like you're in the business that you always want it to be in. Okay. So like I said, guys, the start of this episode. There is a workbook that goes alongside this entire episode today. It's how to cut, simplify, and scale the workbook for earning more whilst doing less.

It's in the show notes. And it literally walks you through how I'm scaling smarter in 2025. It is a 10 page guide. And in there, I give you the exact tasks that I removed that were costing me thousands of dollars and actually not increasing my revenue at all. The step by step process to identify and eliminate anything that's weighing down in your business when it comes to operational expenses, costs, activities, et cetera, where you may be over complicating things.

And then lastly, my personal notes and numbers showing where I cut costs and you will have journal prompts and reflection points. It's so comprehensive. I think you're absolutely going to love it. Go and check that out right now. And yeah, I'll see you in the next episode. Bye my loves.