Let’s jump right in with this October 2017 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!

October 2017 Income Report: An Overview

I’m going to be honest with you guys — October was kind of a bummer. While we totally knocked it out of the park in August and September, October didn’t go so well.

Going in, I knew that August and September are usually really busy months for me. So it wasn’t a total surprise that October brought in less revenue. But it was still a little disappointing to go from two record-breaking $10k+ months back down to under $10k. After achieving that goal, it’s hard to not continue to meet those standards over and over again.

I want to be a consistent $10,000 per month business (at least!), but I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I’m maybe not quite there yet.

A FEW HIGHLIGHTS:

• Launched my Instagram package — Can I just say that I’m in love with this sales page? 
• Made income goals for 2018 — I dug out my annual profit prediction spreadsheets and mapped out my goals for the year. If I’m able to reach my mini goals throughout the year, I’ll be on track to pull in $150,000 in 2018. Originally, my goal for 2018 was $125k, but after I wrote everything down and made sales goals for each of my packages and products, I realized that I actually could possibly make more than that. So $150,000 it is! (You have no idea how much that number makes me want to throw up.) 
• Made big changes in my Facebook group — Since I am rebranding to focus on client attraction and retention for online service providers, I renamed my Facebook group. It used to be called The VA Collective, but now it’s Grow Your Biz Like Woah. I was nervous about the switch over, but people seem to be really happy!

Business Goal Setting

My Goals For October 2017: Success or Failure?

1. Launch my Instagram package — SUCCESS! 
2. Create full outline + ClickFunnel for upcoming webinar — SUCCESS! I’m actually pretty surprised that I got this done, because I’ve had almost no time to work on it, but I completely outlined it out and started working on the slides! The ClickFunnel is created, but not all the pieces are designed yet. Eh, I’m totally still counting it as a success.
3. Keep expenses at less than 30% of revenue — FAILURE. Hahahahaha not even close.

My Goals for November 2017 — Let’s Do This!

1. Launch my Facebook Page package.
2. Launch my webinar.
3. Keep expenses at less than 30% of revenue.

October 2017 Expenses

**Annual expenses not included (such as Tailwind* and hosting costs*). 

• Deposit Photos* = $29.00
• Turquoise & Palm Stock Photos = $19.00
• ClickFunnels* = $97.00
• Active Campaign* = $70.00
• Teachable* = $39.00
• Adobe Creative Cloud = $21.39
• BoardBooster* = $10.00
• PeopleMap* = $35.47
• Zapier = $20.00
• E-Courses & Ebooks = $117.00
• Design Elements = $0.00
• Ads & Marketing = $0.00
• Referral Payouts = $167.09 (sign up to be a partner!)
• Transaction Fees = $244.63
• Team Member Payments = $5,157.48

Total Expenses = $6,020.85

October 2017 Income Report

• Affiliate & JV Sales = $181.53
• Passive Income Products + Coaching = $544.59
• Client Work = $7,858.59
• Pinterest Package = $1,395.00

Total Income = $8,584.71

Total Net Profit = $2,563.86

October 2017 Income Report: All the Stats & Analytics!

• Number of blog posts = 4
• Monthly blog page views = 3,505
• Email list subscribers = 7,013
• Facebook page followers = 853
• Grow Like Woah group members = 2,085
• Instagram followers = 4,600
• Twitter followers = 6,708
• Pinterest followers = 5,574
• Google+ followers = 64
• LinkedIn connections = 834
• YouTube subscribers = 63

Final Notes on My October 2017 Income Report:

As I look over this income report for last month, I’m pretty disappointed. Not only did we not hit $10k again, we also spent an exorbitant amount in expenses.

In thinking back on how the month went, I could tell pretty early on that we weren’t going to do well. Because I was putting so much pressure on myself about it, I worked extra hard this month trying to bring in new clients and make more money. It didn’t really work, and I end up spending a lot of extra time and effort doing that when I could’ve been working on other things. As a result, not a whole lot of stuff got done and we still didn’t hit the $10k goal.

Sometimes running a business can be so frustrating! Especially when I look at the overall profit for October, that’s what really scares me.

Once I quit my part-time job in December, Brent and I figured out that we need about $3,500 to live on each month. So having a month where our profit is only $2,500 is clearly not going to cut it. In a few months, we won’t have my part-time income to help fill in the cracks. I’m hoping that, with a few more good months under our belt, we’ll be able to save away some extra rainy day money to make up for those months where we don’t make as much. But since we just hired our new accountant and started implementing the Profit First system last month, things aren’t at that point yet.

In speaking with my accountant, I did realize that there were a few weird things in October that accounted for some of this discrepancy. So I’m hoping that October was just a bit of a fluke. But, still….ugh! It’s hard not to feel upset.

I was getting pretty down on myself about it the other night, but something Brent said really got me thinking. He said, “Pretend this was like a year ago, and I told you that you’d make $8,500 this month, but you could only keep $2,500 of it because of some annoying circumstances that came up…you’d be jumping up and down, you’d be so excited.”

While I’ve grown and learned a lot in this past 2 years since I started my business, what he said rings true. It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?