Who’s ready for another income report? 🙌

This is the blog post where I pull back the curtain and give you a behind-the-scenes look at how my business is really doing. Plus, if I’m being honest, sharing these reports forces me to review my numbers each month — and that makes me a better business owner! Win-win, right?

In this post I’ll cover:

• How my business makes money
• How I did on the goals I set for last month
• My exact income and expenses 
• 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
• August: $9,829.90
• September: $8,515.20
• October: $9,278.20

Total for the year so far: $108,221.95

My October 2024 Income: $9,278.20

Client Work: $9,099.66
Affiliate Income: $178.54

My Expenses: $1,496.91

My expenses for this month include:

• Credit card processing fees from using Paypal and Stripe
• 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
• Two business memberships- that I’ve since canceled because I’ve noticed I’m not using them very often
• Plane flights for a business retreat I’m going on in February 
• Libsyn to host my podcast

How Did My September Goals Go?

1. ✅ Meet with accountants – I spent time this month meeting and interviewing different accountants. My business has outgrown the accountant I’ve worked with in the past, so I wanted to get ahead for next year and find someone who understands online business and can provide better tax strategy.

I met with 6 different accountants and ending up narrowing it down to the one I want to work with!

2. ❌ Record a new podcast intro!

Nope! Didn’t get it done. This has been on my list multiple months in a row so I’m going to have to block some time off on my calendar to make sure this happens.

3. ✅ Go to Therapy

I shared in my last income report that I was feeling a huge bottleneck of stress and feelings bubbling up to the surface. There wasn’t just one big thing, but tons of smaller things stressing me out so I put on my to do list to try going to therapy which has been super helpful in the past.

It was ALSO helpful this time too and helped me pinpoint what exactly was stressing me out. Most of it was feeling a really heavy workload and a lot of uncertainty around the future. I did not solve every problem, but talking about it really helped.

4. ✅ Try out having a fridge discussion list

Success! This was my idea to stick a whiteboard on our fridge of things my husband and I need to talk through. Most of these things aren’t big things, but stuff we both forget to bring up in the limited time we have together after our daughter goes to sleep.

Things like:

• What are we doing for Thanksgiving? 
• Where are the small set of house keys that we use to go on runs? 
• What day can we take the dogs to the vet?

The fridge list has been super helpful because we can both write down house projects that need to get done or things we need to decide together and it’s much easier for us to remember to have those conversations instead of getting tired at the end of the night and forgetting.

Next Month’s Goals

I usually use this spot to set goals for the next month, but I ended up writing this income report later and I didn’t set any official goals for November.

Sometimes that’s just the way it goes!

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

A quick note – Some of the links below are affiliate links which means I may get a small kickback if you use them. There’s no additional cost to you and all of these products are things I actually use in my own 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.