Welcome to my June 2019 Income Report! Every month I publish an income report to take you behind the scenes of my online business and reveal exactly how much money I make, how much I spend and lessons learned along the way!
Important things that happened in June
- I continued the personal habits that I’ve been working on, like weekly meal prep, daily journaling and planning.
- I executed 4 Partnerships (Elevate, Rebel Boss + ConvertKit)
- I pitched no new partners (on purpose!!)
- I spent one full week on a project for my old employer.
- I recorded 4 new podcast episodes with some really awesome people.
- I created a new inbox + Facebook notification management strategy
- I continued creating the content for the Website Marketing Lab course.
- I started recording the content for the new Free 5 Day Website Challenge
Notes I found to myself in my planner:
- You are booked out this week.
- You are booked out this week.
Review of my goals
When I quit my day job, I had a goal of generating $10,000 a month in revenue so that I could pay myself $5,000, have $2500 for business expenses and $2500 for taxes.
Last month I hit my revenue goal, and my expenses were less than $2500 and I was so excited because I want to give myself a raise by the end of this year, and I eventually want to cover my husband’s salary. Not that he’d ever quit his job and come work with me… but hey, you never know! So there are two ways I can do that – increase my revenue, and reduce my expenses. I’m actually working on both, and my goal is to have my first $15,000 month by March of 2020.
What I focused on in June
So back in May, I’d opened up the doors to my Website Marketing Lab again – it’s my signature course where I teach online business owners how to market themselves and get traffic to their websites and in June, I was continuing to create tech tutorials for the tech library that’s included in the training, and to host my weekly Live Q&A where I work with the student one-on-one to help them focus, overcome obstacles and keep taking action.
I also continue to contract with my former employer, which is super fun because I get to spend time with one of my former colleagues who is a blast, and we actually spent about 6 full days together on a Zoom meeting just hammering out a project together. I enjoyed it, but it took a lot of time away from all the things I do in the business, like marketing, partnerships, content creation, client work…
So I totally got behind on my inbox, and Facebook notifications from all the groups I managed, and so I spent an afternoon and played what I call the Inbox Game, where I start at the very bottom and work my way up, and I can’t skip around and I have to Do, Dump or Delegate every single task in my inbox – which means if I gotta spend 15 minutes to do whatever task is in that email so I can respond, it gets done right then and there. And I win when I reach inbox zero.
So I did, and then I put a system in place with my team member Laura to maintain my inbox. We set up some canned responses she can use to respond to people who ask WordPress questions to direct them to my Facebook group, and we set up colored labels so she could categorize my emails and I could easily see what emails had to-dos in them, needed my response or that she’d already handled, or that were just FYI’s.
And then I scheduled from 1PM to 2PM every day to check email and respond to Facebook notifications.
And let me tell you, it’s been hard picking up my phone, looking at email and not just quickly replying, but I made a rule for myself because I get sucked into email like some people get sucked into social media… And I think it’s because I have this underlying thought that “there’s money in there” and “people need me” and then down the rabbit hole I go, and before I know it, I’ve spent an hour replying to emails when I should have been working on a client project and now I’ve gotta make that time up after dinner.
So that’s been working out really well, and as long as I’m committed to reserving that time every single day, my inbox is manageable. It’s when I don’t get in there for 4 days because I’ve got my head down in a project that it gives me total anxiety.
I’ve mentioned to you that I’m in a program called Growth University run by Bryan Harris of GrowthTools (formerly VideoFruit) and one of the things I’m supposed to do is send one pitch a week for a partnership.
I intentionally paused that in June and July, because I knew that I would have my head down updating and redesigned the Free 5 Day Website Challenge and completing the final 6 marketing experiments for the Website Marketing Lab. Once those are done – it’s pitch city in this office!!
On a personal level, I’d mentioned to you guys a couple of times that I started listening to a podcast called Losing 100 Pounds by Corinne Crabtree back in January and that by May, I’d lost 17 pounds. And for the first time ever it wasn’t a struggle. I’ve done everything Corrine’s said to do on her podcast, and I’ve built some habits like weekly meal prep, planning what I’m going to eat every day before the day starts, and getting all my garbage thoughts out of my head and onto paper and working through them, and at the time I’m recording this, near the end of July, I’m 23 pounds down.
So I’m really proud of that, and I finally no longer have to wonder why it is that I’m so on it when it comes to my business but never had it together when it came to my weight. Now I know why that was the case, and I took massive action to fix it, and just like in my business, I won’t stop, and I’ll reach my goal, however long it takes. And even then, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing and leveling up.
So I’m telling you that, A) because I’m totally proud of myself and want to toot my own horn, and B) because there is so much life-changing information out there online – for free – and if you just take ACTION on it, you can change your life.
That’s exactly why I created my Free 5 Day Website Challenge, because people that take action on that training CHANGE THEIR LIVES and I’m grateful I can contribute to that and repay the universe in a way for all the information I’ve had access to that’s changed my life, like Corinne’s podcast.
Okay, enough of the mushiness. Here’s how much money I made and spent in my business in June of 2019:
Total Revenue: $9368.71
- Affiliate Income: $1913.10
- Courses: $2354.00
- Done For You & Consulting: $5101.61
Total Expenses: $2163.54
Net Profit: $7205.17
Get the full breakdown of income, expenses and net profit month by month here.
Biggest Lessons Learned
Honestly, it’s to just keep doing what I’m doing.
Keep planning, keep scheduling realistically, keep assessing when the plan breaks down so that I can fix the problems, and just keep showing up.
I’ve got big plans for the rest of 2019, and I spent the last week of June and all of July – as you’ll hear in next month’s income report – preparing the groundwork to grow.
It’s hard to believe we’re already more than halfway through 2019… where do you want to be by the end of the year? What about by the end of 2020? You totally can do it, and it’s easier than you might think when you get the right systems in place – as I’ve discovered in fitness and in business.
Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you right here next week!
And if you need a website but have no idea how to get started, go to shannonmattern.com/5day and sign up for the 5 Day Website Challenge and learn how to create a website for your side hustle.
