Hey there! Who’s ready for another income report? 

I love pulling back the curtain and giving you a behind-the-scenes look at how things are going with my business (also in full transparency it makes me a better business owner to be forced to review my numbers each month!)  

In this post I’ll cover:

• How my business makes money
• My exact income and expenses 
• How I did on the goals I set for last month
• My goals for the upcoming month 
• All of the tools and resources I use to run my business

You Can Read My Previous Income Reports Here:

• January: $13,338.33
• February: $10,616.89
• March: 10,663.22
• April: $9,450.00
• May: $14,410.47
• June: $11,802.66
• July: $10,317.08

Total for the year so far: $80,598.65

How does my business make money?

Most of my income comes from working one-on-one with clients, helping them with digital marketing and building online courses. I currently have 7 monthly retainer clients and 2 project-based clients where we are working on something very specific together, but I won’t be on their team after the project ends.

I also earn money through affiliate income (sharing links to products I know and love), speaking engagements, coaching, and selling my own digital products.

How much do I work?

People ALWAYS ask me this question so I started including it in every income report. In general I work 40 hours a week, some weeks it’s higher and some weeks it’s much lower.

Those 40 hours are split between client work and tasks in my own business (like writing this blog post!)

I also do work some on the weekends right now. Spreading my work out over 7 days over 5 gives me a lot more flexibility in my weekly schedule.

My August 2024 Income: $9,829.80

Client Work: $9,002.2
Affiliate Income: $827.60

My Expenses: $785.23

This includes:

• Credit card processing fees
• A VA who helps me schedule blog posts on my website, schedule emails and keep up with my bookkeeping
• A website designer who helps edit pages on my website and keep things up to date
• Software (Calendly, Canva, Libsyn) 
• Website domain renewals and hosting fees 
• Gifts for a clients
• Lots of coffee shop time where I purchased a coffee or a bagel while I was working
• Various office supplies – pens, a patch for my office chair because it has a hole in it and a new iPad case 
• Two business memberships

*Looking at my expenses this month, I can see there was DEFINITELY some fluff here! I forgot to cancel a business membership I’m not using, and I paid for Calendly but booked zero calls with it last month.

How Did My August Goals Go?

1. Travel! DID IT ✅

My husband is currently working very, very part-time as he’s the main childcare provider for our daughter. We knew at the end of August he was going to need to be working full-time for a specific project, so we planned ahead and I went to visit my parents. 

The trip was great! My parents were able to help watch my daughter, I was still able to work and I got to spend lots of time with long distance friends I don’t normally see!

2. Record a new money workshop! NOPE!

I didn’t work on this at all. I still plan to launch a short workshop about how I manage my money in my personal life and business, but between travel and several big client launches I never got around to this.

3. Meet with a new podcast editor YES!

One of my goals before the end of the year is to release new podcast episodes. I took a hiatus when we decided our daughter was going to be home full-time with us all year, but I’m so ready to get new episodes out. 

I met with a new editor and we’ll be working on a new batch of episodes soon!

My Goals For September

1. Plan and promote my free Black Friday Training! 

About a month ago I was in an Instagram chat thread with two of my really good business friends (Dolly DeLong and Bekah Read) talking about our Black Friday plans for 2024 and the trends we’re seeing.

We realized that our personal chat thread of 2024 Black Friday trends might be really helpful for other business owners and from that a free masterclass was born!

On October 2nd at 12pm ET/11am CT/9am PT we’ll host a quick, bite-sized masterclass sharing the top 2024 Black Friday trends to help you plan and execute a profitable sale.

Click here to register (a replay will be available to everyone who registers too!)

2. Don’t save money!

Ok this one is weird and I don’t actually mean that I don’t want to save any money, but I want to not save any money for the long term future this month. I’m focusing on short term stuff in September.

I love saving as much money as possible for retirement and buying a future house, but I also know that we have a ton of short term expenses coming up and instead of focusing on the long term things, my focus this month is on stashing cash for a bunch of once a year expenses that are around the corner.

Between now and the end of the year we have bills coming up for:

• Both of our dogs annual vet visits (and they are old so it’s not cheap)
• Six month car insurance renewal 
• Dentist visits for my husband and I
• Pediatrician appointments for our daughter
• Eye appointment and ordering a new round of contact lens
• Christmas spending

I’m going to let our automated investments for retirement and long-term savings continue, but anything “extra” this month is staying in our checking account for upcoming expenses.

3. Celebrate my daughter’s birthday

I’m about to have a one-year-old! This last year has been amazing, crazy, busy and filled with tons of sleepless nights. I’m excited to start a bunch of new family birthday traditions as we celebrate the last year and try not to cry about how fast the time has flown by.

That’s a wrap! September is one of the busiest launch months of the year so I’m keeping my goal list super short and sweet this month.

Here’s your friendly reminder that often it’s better to set less goals than trying to stuff everything into next month.

All of the software and tools I’m currently using to run my business

Business Money Tools: 

• Relay – for business banking 
• Dolly DeLong’s Bookkeeping Spreadsheet 
• Capital One Spark Card  – Business credit card
• Dubsado – For invoicing and contracts 
• Profit First System – For managing business expenses and savings

Personal Money Tools:

• Ally Bank – For my everyday checking and savings account
• Wealthfront – Long term savings like my emergency fund and future house down payment fund.  
• Alliant Visa Signature – My personal credit card that receives 2.5 cashback. We use these for most of our everyday expenses.

Productivity and Goal-Setting Tools:

• Asana – Project Management
• Timer Cube – To stay focused on your work
• Full Focus Planner – For planning my week and daily to-do list 
• Bullet Journaling – For planning out my long-term goals and to-do lists (I use this inexpensive notebook as my journal) 
• Dynalist – To create lists and organize my thoughts

Social Media: 

• Your Template Club – Canva templates for Instagram and Facebook that you can easily customize 
• ManyChat – For sending automated messages on Instagram and Facebook
• Metricool – To schedule posts on Instagram and Facebook  
• Tailwind – For scheduling Pinterest pins 
• Canva – To create graphics
• Ring Light – The ring light and tripod I use to film content

Podcasting: 

• Riverside – Recording podcast episodes and interviews 
• Libsyn – Where I host my podcast episodes 
• Microphone – For recording podcasts, events and videos 
• Calendly – To schedule guest interviews

Email Marketing: 

• Convert Kit – The software I use to send emails
• Liz Wilcox’s Email Marketing Membership – $9 a month membership that gives me access to hundreds of email templates 
• Interact – For creating quizzes in my business like my Find Your Perfect Course Creation Match

Website:

• Showit – My website host
• Elizabeth McCravy’s Showit Templates – Super easy-to-use website templates for Showit

Other disclosures:

Relay Bank: Relay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services and FDIC insurance are provided through Thread Bank, Member FDIC. The Relay Visa® Debit Card is issued by Thread Bank pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. and may be used everywhere Visa® debit cards are accepted.