We are being vulnerable with you today because we want to share a little behind-the-scenes look at what it costs to run Duo Collective.
There isn’t much transparency into the costs of running a team and building a boutique agency. If this is a path you’re on, or if you’re just wondering if you’re alone, or maybe you just want to feel good about not spending as much money as we do, you’re in the right place.
We’re actually proud to share this because, believe it or not, our business expenses are very lean, and we’re conscious of what we spend.
So let’s break it down:
1. Payroll
Our team is our largest expense, between $12,000 and $15,000 each month. We have four W-2 employees (excluding ourselves) and two contractors.
Our W2 part-time employees are all hourly, so this can fluctuate each month, but most work 10-20 hours a week.
W2 employees get benefits like a 401 (k) (which we match), and we pay for taxes, time off, and holidays. We also have to pay for workers’ compensation insurance.
Almost everything now is internal (blog management, website design, copy, marketing, etc.) The only thing currently outside our team is podcast management—specifically, YouTube.
Listen to episode #147 to learn more about how we’re building our boutique agency.
2. Studio Rental
We rent a studio to record the podcast. If you listened to episode #127, where we talked about our podcast workflow, you’ll remember that we plan recording dates to batch episodes in advance.
We’re thankful to our favorite photographer for giving us space to host our podcast studio for $300 a month.
3. Softwares
Software runs us about $2k a month. Semrush and Adobe are the heavy lifters in our business since everything we do revolves around SEO and branding.
We also invest in these marketing tools:
And these internal tools:
A lot of tools means a lot of business expenses!
4. Bookkeeping & Taxes
We pay our friends at Madison Dearly Bookkeeping about $600 a month to keep all our finances in order. That includes:
- A few strategy calls a year
- Monthly profit/loss statements and balance sheets
- Voxer support
Abbey handles some of our business expenses and finances, but we love having a team do the heavy lifting.
5. Legal Services
This past year, we made some investments in trademarks for Duo Collective and SEO on Tap. We’ve been slowly integrating trademarks into our process.
As we’ve grown, we’ve found we need a bit more oversight from a lawyer, including refining our contracts.
This isn’t a monthly spend, but we’re allocating a little more funding to it.
6. Meals & Coffee
We are pretty lean here, but any time we get together and work for the day, we aren’t shy to order coffee and lunch!
This business expense category also includes meals or drinks if we’re meeting a client in person.
7. Team Retreats
We host one a year (including Airbnb, meals, travel, gifts, etc.) and spend a few thousand dollars. In 2025, we also hired a brand photographer and personal chef to join us, so that cost more than we’ve done in the past. It was a fun bonding experience for the team!
Episode #190 recaps our 2025 team retreat!
8. Credit Card Processing Fees
This isn’t a super fun business expense… but an expense nonetheless! We spent $11,000 on this last year… It’s crazy how much this stuff adds up!
We use several payment processors, such as Dubsado, PayPal, Thinkific, and Stripe, and each has its own fee structure.
But here’s the deal… If you don’t pay for that, you don’t give flexibility to your clients and can’t structure payment plans or how they pay. You could require people to pay through ACH bank transfers, but it’s not as seamless for them, and that’s our main priority.
9. Advertising
Even though we’re an organic marketing agency, we have been dabbling in some paid ads over the last few years. We spent about $4,500 on paid ads last year.
But with this business expense, we have to consider how the ads convert for us. So even though we spent $4,500 in advertising, we made around $6,000.
Listen to episode #114 on our experience running paid ads and episode #211 to understand what you should do before starting paid ads.
10. Travel & Education
In 2025, we spent about $10k on this, which includes conferences, travel, and professional development for our team and us.
We took our whole team to Arizona for the Showit Conference, and we were so happy to be able to do that.
$10K might sound like a lot, but that was actually a lean year for us. In other years, we’ve attended a few conferences each year as either attendees or speakers.
11. Fonts & Graphics
We spend about $2k a year on fonts and graphics. It’s backed into most of our branding packages, but some costs are out of pocket.
12. Gifts
You know we’re big gift givers! About $2k a year goes back to our clients. From big to small gifts—Starbucks coffees to custom launch packages.
Our Total Business Expenses…
Drumroll…. If we break down our total expenses based on last year’s profit and loss statement, we spend about $20k per month.
And it would be oh-so-easy to spend more.
How we keep things on track…
This is how we make sure we don’t go overboard on our spending.
- Quarterly business expense tracker— make sure we aren’t making any payments for tools or software we aren’t using.
- Monthly Financial Snapshot of our projected revenue and expenses.
- Profit First allows us to pad savings accounts to account for the rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship.
- Annual meetings to dig deep into each service and whether it’s profitable.
- Looking at team hours, project expenses, timelines, and more.
One thing we had to learn was that as our business grew, we had to spend more. The more we spent, the more our business grew, though.
Don’t be afraid to invest in your business!
And be sure to listen to episode #50 for tips on becoming more confident with your business expenses and finances.
FAQs About Business Expenses for a Boutique Agency
Yes, if you work from home and have a dedicated space used exclusively for business, you may be able to deduct a portion of your rent or mortgage, utilities, and internet. The key is that the space must be used regularly and only for business purposes. Consult with a bookkeeper or CPA to confirm!
It’s best practice to keep receipts or digital records for all business expenses. This protects you in case of an audit and helps ensure accurate bookkeeping throughout the year.
Yes! This is one of the most important steps you can take. Having separate bank accounts and credit cards for your business simplifies bookkeeping and makes tax preparation easier.
Let’s Talk Money!
Apple Podcasts | Spotify
If you loved today’s episode of The Duo On Air Podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on your favorite platform and hit subscribe for those new episodes dropping every Monday — it helps more small business owners find us (and let’s be honest, that’s good SEO ).
More From The Duo
Sign Up for Tuesday Confetti Drop Newsletter
Abbey Oslin and Courtney Petersen are Minnesota-based marketing experts with over 20+ years of combined experience working with big brands. They are educators and co-founders of Duo Collective; a boutique organic marketing agency specializing in SEO, branding, and custom websites for women-led small businesses and creative entrepreneurs.
Ready to grow your visibility and become unforgettable?
Learn more or work with our team here.
To inquire about being a guest on Duo On Air, please fill out this application form.
+ show Comments
- Hide Comments
add a comment