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I'm Mara — I help creatives create and launch digital courses and profitable products. I love chatting about online marketing, design and goal setting!

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August 2023 Income Report + Monthly Recap

Mara Kucirek on a blue couch writing in a notebook.

Welcome back to my monthly tradition of sharing the behind-the-scenes details about how the last month went for me in business.

In this post I’ll cover:

  • What I accomplished in August 
  • My goals for September 
  • How much money my business made 
  • What worked well this month and what sucked 
  • What I’m doing to grow my business and income

You can read my previous monthly income reports here:

My Goals for August That I Set Last Month

  1. Attend birth prep classes: Done! We spent two Saturdays attending birth prep classes at our doctor’s office. They were a little boring, but super informational and overall I feel much more prepared about labor, delivery and actually bringing home a newborn.

  2. Stock up on freezer meals and household essentials: Done! The freezer stockpile for when we have a baby has been started! Throughout the month anytime we were at the grocery store we picked up a couple of extra frozen meals that we could store at the back of our freezer. I plan to batch cook some of these freezer meal recipes too so that we have a lot of quick options ready to go post-baby!

  3. Continue working on Black Friday setup for clients: Done! This one honestly felt like a bit of a marathon. Not only have I been working on setting up Black Friday sales for my one-on-one clients but I’ve also been hard at work preparing everything for my one-on-one clients through the end of the year. I plan to come back from maternity leave before the end of the year, but my goal is to have as much done as possible ahead of time so that my schedule can be flexible.

  4. Get a haircut: Failed! I’ve been trying to get a haircut since May and due to a bunch of weird situations, it’s been canceled four times now. I had down on my schedule to get a haircut the last week of August, but we had a hurricane roll through. The haircut has been rescheduled for the first week of September!

  5. Take our dogs to the vet: Done! I should also give myself some credit here that this task wasn’t just taking my dogs to the vet, it also involved researching and finding a new vet since we moved since the last appointment.

  6. Check-in with every client and confirm our maternity leave plans: Done! I’ve been regularly checking in with each client and we have a plan of action put into place including what tasks will be paused while I am away and who will be covering the tasks that still need to be done.

  7. Finalize a new opt in I’ve been working on: Done and you’ll be able to download it next week! I have TWO podcast episodes coming out next month all about planning your Black Friday sales. This new guide will help you get started.

  8. Record guest interviews and batch podcast episodes: Done! Go me! All guest interviews through the end of the year have officially been recorded.

What Else Happened in August?

  • I started using Manychat in my business to deliver free guides and links on social media.
  • So many baby prep things – buying supplies, organizing our house, officially putting the car seat in the car and working on finalizing a name!
  • I was a guest on a bunch of podcast episodes that will release later this year.

Podcast Episodes I Released This Month:

  • Episode 13: Surprise! We’re Having a Baby!
  • Episode 14: Online Courses Vs Memberships: Which One is Right for You?
  • Episode 15: A Week In My Life: A Behind The Scenes Look at Business, Pregnancy, Health and More!
  • Episode 16: 8 Secrets to a Powerful and Profitable Launch Strategy with Carolyn O’Brien
  • Episode 17: My Biggest Business Mistakes (All of My Regrets and Embarrassing Secrets)

How Much Money I Made This Month:

$8,784.24 – This was all mostly made through one-on-one client work where I help clients set up and launch their online courses. I also made $450 this month from affiliate income.

Expenses: My expenses vary from month to month. I save 25% of everything I earn for taxes and I try to pay for most business software on an annual basis to help save money. This was a pretty low-cost month in my business and my expenses (not including saving for taxes) were about $650.

Read More: Exactly How My Business Makes Money

What’s Working Well:

  1. Being super intentional about saying no to things – I’ve said no to so many things over the last few months: speaking opportunities, seeing friends sometimes, business conferences, collaborations and more. I’m in a really busy season of life right now and giving myself permission to just say no has been so helpful.

  2. Batching – I’ve never been much of a batch worker, mostly because a lot of the work I do involves launching, which doesn’t always lend itself to being easy to batch ahead of time. For maternity leave, I’ve been forced to focus on batching and I kind of love it. In the moment it’s hard. This month I had several marathon days where I spent all day writing emails or social media posts, but once it was done it made everything so much easier. I plan to add more batching into my business going forward.

  3. Having CEO Mara time and employee Mara time – I’ve been asking myself a lot lately is this a “CEO task” or an employee task? Sometimes I need to be seeing the bigger picture of my business and other times I just need to get work done and not question a process or system that I already have in the business. Thinking of it as two separate roles has been really helpful.

What Feels Hard or Isn’t Working?

  1. The amount of things I would like to get done vs. the actual time I have has been a constant theme of my summer. I’m constantly prioritizing and re-prioritizing because I have so many business projects I would love to get done, but I don’t have an infinite amount of time to do them all.

  2. Energy – I’ve been super fortunate to have a pretty easy pregnancy so far, but energy has been a huge change in how I work. I get more worn out each day and I have to be mindful of my energy levels.

  3. Time leaks – I use Toggl to track and audit my time. I noticed this month that I have some “time leaks” where I spent way more time on something than it should have taken me. Part of this was related to communication things of not having everything I needed to complete the task ahead of time and parts of this was wasting time hunting down the different elements I needed because things were in a bunch of different folders.

My Goals for September:

There’s so much I want to do in September, but I’m going to do my best to not give myself a bunch of goals too since my due date is at the very beginning of October.

  1. Focus on breathing exercises – Read anything about birth and they will tell you to focus on your breathing exercises. I’ve been working on breathing a bit throughout this pregnancy but it hasn’t been as much of a focus lately as I would like

  2. Record a couple more solo podcast episodes

  3. Pick a name! – First name is narrowed down to a couple of options, but choosing a middle name for baby girl has felt more confusing.

  4. Create the last few maternity leave training videos for clients – I’ve got a handful of Loom videos I want to record to make sure everything is all set for while I am on maternity leave.

  5. Spend some intentional time relaxing – The past several months have felt super busy and I’m about to add a whole new family member, so I want to give myself some intentional time to relax and unwind pre-baby. I’m hoping to go out on at least one last solo date with my husband, go see a movie, read a good book and go for a swim.

Nice to do goals:

These are the things that would be fantastic to do if I have time, but I also want to give myself permission that it’s ok if not all of these things get done.

  • Refresh my ThriveCart checkout bundle
  • Clean out my project management software
  • Create a weekly CEO checklist that I can use each week to make sure the key business tasks are getting done

All of the software and tools I use to run my business:

Productivity and Time Management Tools:

Website:

Podcast:

  • Riverside – For recording podcast episodes and interviews 
  • Libsyn – For podcast hosting 
  • Microphone – For recording podcasts, events and videos 
  • Calendly – For scheduling guest interviews

Marketing:

Finance and Money:

See you next month! By the time I write another one of these I might have a baby!

*This post may contain affiliate links. 

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