Ep 90 - How to Create A Budget For Your Business – Income & Expenses

Episode Show Notes

When you trained as a dietitian or health professional, I’m guessing no one handed you a spreadsheet and said, “Here’s how to pay yourself, manage your expenses, and make sure your business is sustainable.”

And yet here you are — running a business, helping clients, showing up online — and maybe still wondering if you're doing your finances right.

Most of the brilliant clients I work with feel awkward around money at first. Whether it’s charging enough, knowing what to spend on, or figuring out what’s “normal” — business finances can feel like one big guessing game.

But budgeting doesn’t have to be confusing, complicated or spreadsheet-heavy.

This post will walk you through a clear, percentage-based system that shows you exactly how to plan your income and expenses — no matter what stage of business you're in. You’ll learn how to create a business budget that actually pays you, supports your growth, and makes the whole money piece feel a lot less stressful.

Why Budgeting Matters as a Freelance Dietitian

Most of us came from the NHS, where our salary was set and our pension handled automatically. We didn’t have to think about tax, reinvesting, or whether we could afford to outsource.

But when you’re self-employed? Everything changes.

Without a clear plan for your income and expenses, it’s easy to:

• Underpay yourself (or forget to pay yourself at all)
• Say yes to tools or training that don't help your business grow
• Stay stuck in feast-or-famine cycles chasing revenue sources
• Burn out by doing everything yourself

A thoughtfully considered budget helps you avoid all of this — and creates a financial foundation that feels calm, intentional and actually quite empowering.

Step 1: Start With Your Personal Needs

Before you plan business expenses, you need to know what you need to live on. Your business exists to support your life and not the other way around.

So ask yourself:

• How much do you need each month to cover your personal life?
  (Think: rent or mortgage, groceries, childcare, car, savings, pension, fun stuff etc.)

That becomes your Owner’s Pay? This is the number that your business needs to pay you each month — consistently.

Write it down. This becomes the non-negotiable starting point of your business budget.

Step 2: Plan Expenses Based on Your Income Level

Whether you’re just starting out or more established, the way you allocate your businesses income should look different. Here’s a suggested breakdown to guide you at each stage:

If your business is in its infancy or you're earning £2K/month or less:

At this stage, your focus should be on learning the basics of business and marketing, your businesses visibility, and aiming for consistency in both your revenue and expenses.

If your business has been established for a while and is bringing in £5K/month or more, your percentages are going to look a bit different:

You’re now in a position to invest in growth. That includes delegating work that doesn’t require your face, voice or unique skill set, amplifying your marketing with some budget to get in front of new audiences, and refining your strategy.

Step 3: Create a Simple Sales Plan

Once you’ve budgeted your income, the next step is figuring out how you’ll earn it. That’s where a sales plan comes in.

Here’s a high level overview of what that it looks like:

1. Choose your offer(s) – What are you selling, and how much do you sell them for?
2. Set a monthly sales target – How many sales do you need to hit your Owner’s Pay and expenses?
3. Build a visibility & nurture plan – How will people find you and how will you earn their trust?
4. Plan for conversion – How will you guide these people to say yes to your offers?

🎧 Dive deeper: Create Your 2026 Business Plan with Me in 20 Minutes (Podcast Episode)

Avoid These Common Budgeting Mistakes

Ignoring Owner’s Pay and “Just Reinvesting”

One of the most common mistakes I see is health professionals telling themselves they’ll pay themselves later — once the business is “doing better” or “more established.” 

On paper, reinvesting everything back into the business can sound sensible. In reality, it often leads to exhaustion, resentment and a business that relies on your constant overworking to survive. 

If your business can’t consistently pay you, it’s not truly sustainable. Paying yourself isn’t selfish or premature — it’s a signal that your business is doing the job it was created to do: support your life.

Underestimating Tax, Software or Support Costs

It’s very easy to focus on the visible costs like your accountant’s fees, clinic software or website hosting and completely forget about the quieter, creeping expenses — tax, email platforms, graphic design tools or your Microsoft Office fee. These costs might seem small individually, but together they add up quickly. 

When they’re not planned for, they can feel like unpleasant surprises that eat into your income and create unnecessary stress. A good budget accounts for these essentials upfront so you’re not constantly reacting or scrambling when bills land.

Hiring Too Soon — or Waiting Too Long

Hiring is one of those areas where there’s rarely a perfect moment. Some people bring on support far too early, before their income can comfortably sustain it, which adds pressure and anxiety when it comes to paying the bills. 

Others wait far too long, clinging on to every task themselves and becoming the bottleneck in their own business, slowing their own growth in the process. 

The key is intention. Hiring should be a strategic decision, not an emotional one. When support frees up your time to focus on income-generating or CEO-level work, it often pays for itself.

Spending Money on Advertising Before You’ve Nailed Your Marketing

This is the one that so many of my colleagues fall for, as ads seem like an easy win right? But often they find ads don't work for them and get disheartened. 

Paying for your marketing can be an expensive way to learn a hard lesson. If your marketing isn't landing organically, it's not going to land when you put ads budget behind it.

You need to know exactly who you help, what problem you solve, and why someone should choose you and have tested that the messaging you use to articulate this, lands with your audience - before investing in ads or promotions.

Before you spend on marketing, do the work. You need a solid foundation: clear offers, confident pricing, and messaging that resonates with your ideal client. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your hard earned cash.

Not Setting Aside Money for CPD or Coaching

As health professionals, we’re used to investing in clinical CPD — but business skills often get pushed to the bottom of the list. This can be a costly mistake. 

Learning how to sell ethically, price confidently, market strategically and make clear decisions can dramatically shorten your growth timeline. 

Without dedicated budget for CPD or business coaching, many people end up stuck in trial-and-error mode for years. Ongoing learning isn’t an optional extra — it’s part of building a business thats profitable and sustainable long-term.

Final Thoughts: You Deserve to Feel Financially Supported

Running a business as a health professional means you wear a lot of hats. But being financially organised doesn’t need to be one of your stressors.

With a simple budget, a clear plan and the right support, your business can pay you well — while also growing in a sustainable, joyful way.

If you want personalised support, business mentoring, or help getting your financial ducks in a row — I’d love to help you inside my business coaching space Accelerate. You can learn more here. Or message me directly on WhatsApp: +44 7874 485069

The Master Plan:

Helping you build the business of your dreams. Get your 22 point step-by step workbook here: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/master-plan

Connect with me:

Website: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dietitiansinbusiness

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BeyondTheClinicPodcast

Episode transcription:

Welcome along. I'm really glad you're tuning in today because money is one of those topics that a lot of us like to avoid. It's easy to hope that everything just works out. Keep your head down, doing the work you enjoy with your clients or tell yourself you'll figure your numbers out later. But if you don't get clear on your finances, running a sustainable business becomes a lot harder. So let's do it.

Let's talk about money. Specifically, let's talk about how much money you need to be making in your business to make sure you're paying yourself and that your business can run smoothly and support your life.

Now, just a quick side note before we dive in, I am by no means an expert in finance. What I am is someone who's been in your shoes, figuring out how to pay myself properly, how to cover business costs and avoid feeling stressed out about money month after month. Over the years, I've learned from some of the very best and I've held so many other health professionals like you grow sustainable, thriving businesses.

So in this episode, I'm sharing what's worked for me and for my clients. Now, most of us came from the NHS where our salary was set and it just landed in our bank account. We never really had to think about business finances and things like expenses or tax or reinvesting or profit actually. And so for a lot of people and probably many of you listening, money in business can feel overwhelming at first.

You might be asking yourself questions like, well, how much should I be paying myself? When should I even start paying myself? How much money should I be spending and on what? You might feel like you're expected to figure all of this out on your own. And that can bring quite a lot of worry about getting it wrong or making expensive mistakes along the way.

So in this episode, I'm going to break it all down for you so that you can feel more confident about your numbers and in control of your money. This episode will help you understand your business expenses. And I'm going to be giving you my suggested percentages for budgeting expenses because it's really helpful to have a clear intention for how your income is structured as money starts coming in.

And that way, you're not gonna be running blind. You're not gonna be constantly stressed about whether you're not making enough each month of the year. Plus, I'm gonna show you how to create a simple sales plan that will set your business up for sustainability and growth in 2026. So let's dive in, shall we?

Okay, so the very first step is working out what you actually need to live. So before we talk business, we start with you because your business exists to support your life, remember? So the first question is, how much money do you need to live each month? So if you've got a pen and a piece of paper handy, I want you to literally write this down. Think about things like your mortgage or your rent.

Think about things like car payments, food, transport, petrol, your phone, your pension, and any other regular personal costs. Make a list and add all of those things up and then write your total number of your personal expenses down. So this number becomes what we call your owner's pay, the amount your business needs to generate for you before anything else. Because above all, that's the most important thing. If you're not paying yourself, your business isn't truly supporting you. So always make sure that your personal needs are covered first.

Now that you know your owner's pay, the amount you personally need each month to live on, it's time to look at your business baseline costs. In other words, all the things that keep your business functioning smoothly from tools and systems to any support that you bring in to marketing costs and ongoing learning. Now I'm going to break this down differently depending on whether you're newer to business.

So I would say earning less than 2000 pounds per month, or more established, so earning more like £5,000 per month or even more than that. Because what you spend and should spend needs to change as your business grows. Now I'm going to give you a rough but helpful breakdown of my suggested percentages for all the different kinds of budgeting expenses that you will have as a business owner.

So we're gonna look at the owner's pay first. So before we talk about those potential business expenses, let's think about the percentage of your business income that you're paying yourself. So your owner's pay is the money that supports your life. This might be your salary and dividends if you're a limited company, or it might be profit if you are a sole trader. When your owner's pay isn't planned properly, it's very easy to underpay yourself. It's really easy to overwork or to feel constantly anxious about money. So I really do think that this is the very first priority.

So let's consider if you're a new at a business and you're earning say £2,000 a month or less than that. At this stage, your business is still being built and cashflow truly matters. And you know what? Simplicity is your best friend. So if this is you, I'd recommend aiming for about 50% of your average monthly income to go towards owner's pay. Yes, if possible, half of what comes in should go back out to you.

That way you're setting yourself your business to support you from the very start. And it means you avoid getting into the situation where you're working really hard in your business, but you're never quite paying yourself properly. Now, if you've got a more established business and earning say 5,000 pound a month or more, you've likely got more consistent and more predictable income and also more opportunities to reinvest for growth.

Now, because of that, I typically recommend around about 30% of your average monthly income going towards your owner's pay. And of course, the more you earn, the more money that 30% becomes and the richer you're gonna feel.

And what this does is it allows you to still prioritize paying yourself well, but it also leaves room for things that help your business grow like support, like marketing, like systems. Now, the key difference here is that your business isn't just supporting you now, it's being set up to support you long-term.

Okay, what about team costs? So team costs are things like a VA, maybe a social media manager, maybe your accountant, maybe you have a copywriter, a website developer, basically anyone you pay to support you in your business, perhaps behind the scenes. If you're newer and you're earning less than that, say, £2,000 a month threshold, I don't usually recommend having a separate team budget just yet.

So at this stage, support tends to be a bit more ad hoc. Maybe a bit of admin help here and there. Maybe you're paying an accountant at the end of the tax year when you need one. for now, these costs can just sit inside your general operational costs, which we'll talk a bit more about shortly. And this keeps things really simple, and it avoids over-committing to monthly expenses before your income is coming in consistently.

Now, if you are a bit more established and you're earning a bit more, this is where having support really does start to make sense. So at this stage, I recommend budgeting around 25 % of your average monthly income for your team costs. Now that might feel like quite a lot of money at first, especially if you're used to doing everything yourself, but often this is the point where not having the support actually slows down your growth and bringing in help frees up your time, protects your energy, and it allows you to focus on the things that actually only you can do. And remember, you don't go from zero team to a full team of staff overnight. You could start with one small hire, like some part-time hours from a VA, that just makes your life easier. And then you grow from there as your business grows.

Now let's think about marketing costs. So marketing costs include things like ads, directory listings, for example, the BDA or nutritionist resource. can include things like podcast production if you have one, email marketing tools, everyone should have one of those, and anything that you use specifically to get your work seen by new people.

Now, if you're newer to business or you're earning under that £2000 a month or less stage, I generally recommend 0% is allocated to marketing at this stage. And that often surprises people because you're told everywhere that you must be marketing in order to grow. But early on, your most valuable marketing tools are actually your time, consistency and visibility and not your money.

Organic marketing, like showing up on social media, networking with people who can help you and having conversations is usually more than enough to get your first few clients. And paying for ads too early can add pressure without actually giving you a return on that investment just yet.

Now, if you're more established on your earning that £5,000 pound a month or more, this is where marketing spend becomes much more useful and sustainable. So at this stage, I recommend budgeting around 25 % of your average monthly income for marketing. And this allows you to intentionally amplify what's already working. So whether that's ads, whether that's podcast production, whether that's listings that consistently bring in inquiries.

Now, what about CPD, like education and training? Now, I mean, business focused CPD here, not clinical stuff. Now, this includes things like business courses, coaching, mentoring, masterminds, events that you might want to go to, and anything that helps you build the business skills that we were never taught at university, like marketing, like sales. So if you're new to business and you're earning £2,000 a month or less, I actually recommend budgeting around 30 % of your average monthly income here.

Now that might sound high, but early on your biggest bottleneck usually isn't time or team, it's the knowledge and skills and confidence that you need in order to build a business. Learning how to attract clients, how to price your services properly, how to sell ethically and build visibility, will move the needle far faster than most other investments at this stage. Often, this is the phase where investing in the right support can massively shorten that learning curve and stop you from spending months or even years trying to figure everything out alone.

And if you're more established and earning £5,000 pounds a month or more, I'd probably reduce this down to maybe 10 % of your average monthly income. So by this stage, you've already built a foundation and business education becomes more about refining strategy, scaling sustainably and staying in spaces that challenge you to think bigger. Now it's still very important, it's CPD after all, but it no longer needs to take up a huge chunk of your budget.

And then last but not least, operations and other business costs. So think about all of the essentials that just keep your business ticking over, that keep it running smoothly behind the scenes. So tech tools are included in this, like your email service provider, your website hosting, any client management software that you might use, like Practice Better, or you maybe use Kajabi, as well as things like travel and accommodation if that's relevant.

So if you have an established business earning that 5k a month or more, I do recommend allocating around 10% of your average monthly income to cover these sorts of costs. However, if you're newer to business and earning less than that, like £2k mark or even less, this should still be around 10% and it should also include your VA or your admin support. So when you keep this category in check, it ensures that your business can function efficiently without any surprises so that you can focus on serving your clients and growing your business.

OK, let's quickly recap those percentages. So for those of you new to business, earning less than £2k per month, aim to put 50% of your income aside towards your owner's pay, 30% into business education and training, 20% towards operating costs. And then if you're more established in business, earning £5,000 a month or more, a good structure is about 30% for owners pay, 25% for team costs, 10% for business education and training, 25% for marketing, and 10% for operating costs. Now if I've done my maths correctly and I think I have, those should equal 100% when you add them up.

Okay, now let's think about your sales plan because once you know your numbers, the next step is figuring out how you're actually going to make that money. What you need here is a detailed sales plan. A sales plan might sound a little bit intimidating or overwhelming or even complicated, but all it really is is a clear roadmap for how you're going to start to turn your income goals into actual sales.

So you just start by thinking about what it is you're going to sell. How much does it cost? And how many units do you need in order sell to hit your goals? And then you can just break this down into monthly targets so it feels manageable. Then you need to think about how you're going to sell those units. So to sell, you need a plan for visibility and to generate leads to get in front of new people who might want to buy from you.

Then we also need a plan for nurturing those new people, building a warm and authentic audience of people who simply become your raving fans. And then we need a plan for actually closing those sales. So a common mistake I see is thinking that just posting on social media or having a website out there is enough. But without a clear plan for visibility, for nurture and conversion, your sales will be unpredictable. also have to consider your numbers carefully.

So if we assume that 2% of your audience will buy and this is fairly typical when we're using online marketing, we need to ask ourselves have I got enough people in my audience to sell to in order to meet my targets? And if not, we've got to grow our audience or we've got to adjust our plan.

Now I go much deeper into how to create a concrete sales plan in my other podcast episode called Create Your 2026 Business Plan with Me in 20 Minutes. If you haven't listened to that one, then I highly suggest tuning into that after we finish today's episode. Because in that episode, I'll help you set realistic revenue goals for the year, align your offers to these goals and plan your sales and marketing in a way that suits your energy and your life. So be sure to give that one a listen if you haven't already.

Okay, there we have it. Today's episode was all about taking control of your business finances. When you structure your expenses intentionally, you're no longer hoping things will work out. Instead, you'll know exactly where your money's going, you'll know what to prioritise and what to avoid wasting money on. Hopefully now you feel clearer and more confident about your numbers and have a better idea of how to organise your income and your expenses so that your business can run sustainably and support both your life and your business growth goals.

And if you want extra support in 2026 to get more clients and make your business run more smoothly without the guesswork, then I'd love to help you. There are a few new and exciting ways that we can work together this year. I've created different tiers of support within my business coaching, depending on what you need and what your budget is, and what works for you.

So for those of you who need a more affordable way to get started, there's the option where you can access my support and training for a more budget friendly price. And if you want a higher level support, there's options with regular weekly calls and personalized feedback on what you're doing. And you'll get more direct one-on-one time with me to really fast track your results. If you want to explore which option is right for you, then you can book a free, no pressure, no obligation, 20 minute discovery call with me using the link in the show notes, or just drop me a WhatsApp or a DM on Instagram. I'm more than happy to chat, whichever method works best for you.

So that's it for today. I look forward to chatting to you very soon. Bye for now.