Let’s jump right in with this January 2018 income report! I’m super excited to share with you guys what’s been going on with me lately.

What’s Up With These Income Reports, Anyway?

Ever since my very first month in business (I made a whopping $87), I’ve been sharing my income and expenses for each month, in order to give other online entrepreneurs a good baseline of what a real business looks like during its start-up phase.

My goal with these posts is to give you guys a super realistic look into what type of income and expenses you can expect from being a “girl next door” type of online entrepreneur who isn’t making 6-7 figures each month (yet!).

Let’s do this!

January 2018 Income Report: An Overview

After remembering how busy we were last January, I was ready for this January to be similarly crazy. I don’t think I was quite ready for just how busy we’d really be, though. January brought the word “busy” to a whole new place I didn’t know existed.

So far, August of 2017 had been our craziest month. But compared to January, August was like a walk in the park.

I would say that most days in January, I worked at least 10 hours. And since this was officially my very first full month working from home full-time (I quit my part-time job at the end of December), I definitely felt it more. There were whole weeks where I didn’t even leave the house…just worked worked worked until the cows came home.

Not that this was necessarily a bad thing. With how busy we were, I needed to be working that much.

I’m starting to realize that we are just in a big transition phase in my business, and this may very well mean that I don’t get a break from working like crazy for a long time. I’m still working on setting up new systems and passive income streams in my business so that, in the future, we don’t have to work this much. But until those things are working like gangbusters, we’re not really in a position to be living the high life. It’s more like the I-haven’t-showered-in-3-days-when-was-the-last-time-I-ate-oh-my-god-I’m-so-tired kind of life at the moment.

But the more that I realize this is just a necessary, temporary phase, the more I’m starting to be okay with it.

And you know what? At least for this month, our income and profit is a really good representation of just how hard we have been working.

A FEW HIGHLIGHTS:

• I ran a beta test of The Biz Bestie Squad — Throughout January, I offered my new group mastermind program, The Biz Bestie Squad, at a reduced rate for 10 beta members to come in and test it out. This was so much fun and really gave me a ton of feedback on how I want to set this program up longterm. I haven’t done too much beta testing in the past, so it was kind of fun to have that experience! 
• I hit a big income goal — You’ll see more details below, but I hit a big income benchmark goal I’d set for myself this month! It was actually kind of funny, because I was only hoping that I’d hit this benchmark at some point in 2018…and I ended up hitting it right in the very first month!

Business Goal Setting

My Goals For January 2018: Success or Failure?

1. Launch my webinar — SUCCESS! I 
2. Make at least $3,500 in profit (our bare minimum to keep the lights on) — SUCCESS! We went above and beyond with this one.
3. Finish my outline for March’s new free course — FAILURE! I really, really wanted to get this done, but it just wasn’t in the cards because of how freakin’ busy we were with client work this month. Honestly, though, I’m not complaining because we made a ton of money haha.

My Goals for February 2018 — Let’s Do This!

1. Finish my outline for March’s new free course.
2. Make at least $3,500 in profit (our bare minimum to keep the lights on).
3. Make $1,000 in my passive income sales/coaching category.
4. Make $5,000 from social media packages.

January 2018 Expenses

• Ads & Marketing = $228.10
• Team Member Payments = $6,321.07
• Books & Courses = $109.24
• Transaction Fees = $847.66
• Referral Payouts = $158.94 (sign up to be a partner!)
• Teachable* = $39.00
• Active Campaign* = $70.00
• PennyPipe = $9.95
• Adobe Creative Cloud = $21.39
• PeopleMap* = $26.77
• ClickFunnels* = $297.00
• Buffer = $10.00
• Quickbooks = $10.00
• Zoom (yearly subscription) = $149.90
• Zapier = $20.00
• BoardBooster* = $10.00
• Deposit Photos* = $29.00
• Turquoise & Palm Stock Photos = $19.00
• NameCheap = $33.16

Total Expenses = $8,410.18

January 2018 Income Report

• Interest Earned = $4.66
• Affiliate Income = $145.40
• Passive Income Products + Coaching = $733.99
• Done-for-You Social Media Packages = $3,811.00
• Hourly Client Work = $12,089.00

Total Income = $16,765.05

Total Net Profit = $8,345.87

January 2018 Income Report: All the Stats & Analytics!

• Number of blog posts = 5
• Monthly blog page views = 8,644
• Email list subscribers = 7,219
• Facebook page followers = 923
• Grow Like Woah group members = 2,160
• Instagram followers = 4,785
• Twitter followers = 6,751
• Pinterest followers = 6,266
• YouTube subscribers = 76

Final Notes on My January 2018 Income Report:

So, on one hand, I’m extremely excited about the fact that I hit my next income benchmark goal of having a $15k month. On the other hand(s), I’m both horrified by my amount of expenses, and feeling like I’m not setting big enough goals for myself.

Back in October, when I was mapping out how I wanted my 2018 to go, I remember thinking to myself “It’d be really cool to have a $15k month one time in 2018.” And here I am absolutely destroying that goal in Month 1 of the year.

It’s hard not to ask myself, “Am I doing this whole ‘goal’ thing wrong?”

That being said, I definitely think that this crazy income month was more about timing than anything else. I knew going in that January was going to be a crazy month for us. January always is. I just don’t think I expected it to be quite this crazy. And now I’ve gone ahead and achieved something way bigger than I saw coming…so now it feels like the rest of the year is going to be downhill from here. Kidding! Sort of.

I guess my point is — now that I hit a $15k month, the obvious next step is for me to hit a $20k month, right? And I’m just not sure if I have that in me!

Making $15,000 almost killed us. And now you’re telling me I have to do more?!

I want to keep setting big goals for myself, but to be honest…what I really want to do isn’t all that big. I don’t have a hunger to make $1 million dollars in a month or something. What I actually want to achieve (at least, for right now) is a homeostasis where I’m making a profit of around $5,000 per month (so, higher than our bare minimum “we have to make at least $3,500 to survive” but not too crazy) and at the same time, not be so busy that I want to shoot myself and everyone around me.

It’s funny, because I’ve come to the point where people ask me how I am, and I just kind of mumble “Busy!” And then they’re like, “Yeah, but busy is good, right?” And I just keep thinking to myself “NO! Busy is where my life goes to die and my eyes start bleeding!”

I’m starting to think that “busy is good” is just a lie that non-busy people tell themselves, because they’ve never been busy enough to understand what true “busy” really feels like.

Not to scare you guys…I’m just in growth mode over here!

But anyway, yeah, no. My goal is not to be busy. My goal is to be having fun, bringing in enough money to feel more than comfortable, and getting the choice to work with people and on projects that I’m in love with.

And I can see that future in the distance. I can taste it. But in the meantime, my eyes are bleeding a little bit and I’m just going to smile and nod and tell you “busy is awesome.”