Welcome to my May 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 May
- I kicked off the month with a cold.
- I continued some personal habits that I’ve been working on, like weekly meal prep, daily journaling and planning.
- I completed my profile in the AccessAlly Experts Directory (even though I don’t have my full sales page done).
- I booked one new Done For You client, had a consultation with another, and finished up 2 other Done For You Client Projects.
- I continued working on my Growth University roadmap to validate my product idea.
- I ran another 5 Day Freebie Challenge to promote my Website Marketing Lab course.
- I continued creating the content for the Website Marketing Lab course.
- I pitched 10 new partnerships, worked on 13 partnerships (with either phone calls or executing the partnership).
- I accepted applications for my Web Designer Academy Expert Directory.
- We decided to wait til next year to build our house.
Review of Goals
So if you’ve been listening to this podcast for awhile, you know that my goal used to always be $10,000 a month so that I could pay myself $5,000 – and then have $2500 for expenses, and $2500 to set aside for taxes.
Then I decided to actually do a Dave Ramsey-style budget every month, just like we do in our personal finances, where I project the income that I know for sure is coming in and the expenses that I know for sure are going out – including my 2 $2500 paychecks and taxes, so that I’m much more deliberate about my expenses and that I’m not freaking out at the end of every month, worried about whether I’m gonna have enough cash to pay my paycheck and paying myself late like I had been doing for several months.
Because one of the goals that I set back in September of 2018 at the mastermind that I talked about in episode 177 was to cut my expenses down to the bare minimum I needed to run my business and build up an emergency fund – which is totally in alignment with my 2019 words of the year, which are FOCUS and CONSTRAINT.
And May is really the first month that I saw the fruits of all of the changes I’ve made so far in 2019.
What I Focused on in May
So you may recall from my April income report that I launched my Website Marketing Lab course for the first time back in March.
It teaches you how to market your business online and get traffic to your website in authentic and algortihm-proof way.
And then in my April Income report, I broke down my launch strategy and results so that you could replicate my strategy in your business.
In May, I opened the doors to the Website Marketing Lab again, with the same 5 Day Freebie Challenge where I taught my method for creating a freebie that helps you grow your email list on autopilot, and then at the end, I invited anyone who wanted to continue on with the process of learning how to market that freebie to join the Website Marketing Lab.
This time, it took me WAY less time to do the live challenge and the promotion, because I’d already done it once. I had everything already created, and I just had review the list of things I wanted to change after last time, then double-check everything and update dates, prices and links, and do the live trainings.
This time it ran May 13 – May 17, and it was a freaking blast and a huge success!
I TRIPLED my conversion rate from 5 Day Freebie Challenge signups to Website Marketing Lab customers from my March launch.
And I give all of the credit for that to the product validation process that I was taught inside of the Growth University training that I told you guys about in my April Income report. I would have totally missed some key things that led me to adjust my marketing and my pricing.
I also give a lot of credit to the work I’ve been doing mentally on pricing after having conversations with some of the guests on Pep Talks for Side Hustlers like Paul Klein in episode 228, and Amanda Gallinger in episode 236 – and a conversation I had with my team member Laura after she attended a one-day workshop with Boss Mom Dana Malstaff. A comment she made to me when we were chatting about pricing gave me a nudge to test a new price point, and then an article I read from Ash Ambirge called Ten Urgent Lessons Women Need to Learn About Making Money (without apology).
In May, I also continued working on creating the content for the Website Marketing Lab since I pre-sold it in March and then created the content week by week. When I launched, I was able to give the new students instant access to everything to move at their own pace instead of dripping it out weekly based on necessity rather than choice!
And in addition to all of that, I pitched a bunch of new potential partners, fulfilled my end of some partnerships like doing bonus trainings for people like Becca Tracey for her Uncage Your Business Course and Suzanne Proska’s Elevate, Inspire and Build an Empire Summit, and talked to a whole bunch of new guests on Pep Talks for Side Hustlers – which is like, my favorite thing to do.
On a personal level, I’d mentioned to you guys that I started listening to a podcast called Losing 100 Pounds by Corinne Crabtree. I’d heard about her on one of Amy Porterfield’s podcasts, started listening to her show and everything just started clicking for me – why I wasn’t doing what I said I wanted to do for the past 20 years when it comes to my weight, how to actually get started doing it, how to build habits, how to build motivation, how to be accountable to myself. In January and February to be 100% honest, I listened to the podcast and loved what I was hearing, but I was just dabbling. I wasn’t really implementing any of the free advice I was loving. Then in March, I started actually taking action and doing what I was being taught, every single day no matter what.
By May, I’d 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 so far I’ve lost 17 pounds from my highest weight, which I logged at the beginning of December last year.
So you might be thinking, 17 pounds in 6 months, that’s not super impressive. That’s not like all the weight loss success stories you hear about where someone loses 50 pounds in 6 months. It breaks down to 2.83 pounds a month, or .7 pounds a week…
But the most important thing that I have learned throughout this process is that it’s keeping my commitments to myself, creating a daily plan and following through on the plan OR not following through on the plan and diagnosing why I didn’t follow through and what I can do differently next time – those things, not what diet plan I’m on (which I’m not on one) are what is leading to weight loss that actually finally feels EASY and POSSIBLE – and I don’t care how long it takes to reach my goal.
You can apply those same principles to growing your business too. What do you need to do to make it happen? Create a realistic plan. You’re not gonna go from working 0 hours a week on your business to working 20. But 1 hour a week from 0? That’s realistic. But it doesn’t feel like it’s enough, does it. So instead you do nothing. That’s what you need to overcome. Doing what is realistic, not what you think you SHOULD do. Then once you actually create the realistic plan, commit to following through on the plan. If you do follow through, why? Why were you successful? If you don’t follow through, why? What do you need to change for next time.
It’s working for me in weight loss, so I’m gonna see how it works for me in business.
And I mentioned in earlier income reports that last year we bought land with the intention to build a home, and we were pre-approved what we needed to make it happen AND stay in our home, but when it got through underwriting, in order to make it happen we’d need to bring a 30% down payment to closing instead of 20% BECAUSE when you go to get a mortgage and you’re self-employed, the bank will take the average of the last 2 years of your self employment – which for me is 2017 and 2018 – and in 2017 this business was still a side hustle – and it doesn’t matter what I made in my day job since I don’t have that job anymore – and I didn’t make nearly as much as I did in 2018 when I quit my day job – or what I’ll make this year. So instead of cleaning out our bank accounts to make it happen this year, we’re going to wait til February of next year when it’s a sure thing. And I’m totally okay with that – it gives me even more time to stash cash!
So with all of that, here’s how much money I made and spent in May of 2019:
Total Revenue: $10,384.80
- Affiliate Income: $1571.30
- Courses: $4431.50
- Done For You & Consulting: $4382
Total Expenses: $2274.74
Net Profit: $8110.06
Get the full breakdown of income, expenses and net profit month by month here.
Biggest Lessons Learned
Last month, I posted a negative profit of $224.15, which I planned for to give myself a clean slate, so it’s nice that I’m making up for it this month.
I’m starting to make up for those paychecks I missed, and at some point this year, I’ll be able to take home more profit or invest in more help so that I’m really, truly focused on those revenue producing activities.
I feel like I’ve got all of the pieces in place to start slowly scaling, and to grow into the person I need to become to handle the success that I dream of achieving.
I think that’s like, the most important lesson I’ve come to realize overall – is that I’m not going to achieve what I want to achieve if I don’t work on becoming the kind of person who can handle it mentally and has the foundation and systems in place to support it. And now that I’m aware of that, I know exactly what to focus on to grow into that person.
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.
