Be Bold, Make Waves with Laura Kåmark

Behind the Scenes: February 2024 Income Report + Goals

• Laura Kåmark • Episode 66

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Find out how much money my business made in February 2024, my wins for the month, goals update, and lessons learned along the way!

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For the transcript and show notes:
https://laurakamark.com/66

 
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Be Bold Make Waves podcast, a show bringing you inspiring stories of women who are growing and scaling their business. I'm your host, Laura Kamark, a website and tech integration specialist who works with online business owners who love their work and not their website. Join me as we have incredible conversations about business, mindset, productivity, and, of course, the website and tech behind the business. Let's go ahead and dive in to this week's episode. Hello, and welcome to this week's show. For those of you who don't already know me, I'm Laura Kåmark, web designer, Evergreen System, and funnel integration expert for coaches and consultants who love their work but not their tech. So this week, we are gonna go through my February income report.
 
So some of you may have missed January's income report that I released last month. And the background here is I was challenged this year by one of my business coaches to do a monthly income report. And the purpose here is to really take the time to reflect back on the month and look at what worked, what didn't work, what I'm proud of, what lessons I learned, and all sorts of fun little things that have come up in going through this. So in this episode, we will cover wins in February, how my goals went, how much my business earned, and my goals for next month. So we're gonna start off with some of my wins in January and one of the first really I'm sorry. Wins in February. And one of my really first fun wins is my podcast hit 2,500 downloads. And Buzzsprout is the company I use for produce or not producing, but for publishing the podcast and hosting it.

And it I love that they send you all these little celebratory alerts and graphics when you hit different milestones in your podcast journey. So they sent me a message and a graphic to celebrate that I hit this milestone. So that was really exciting. The podcast launched back in September of 2022. I had the trailer came out in August. But that's pretty I've been pretty proud of myself. It's felt like a really big win to stay as consistent as one can. Not gonna compare myself to others when I do have children and holidays and things that have come up that have not always made it that I can produce an episode every week.


But I have tried really hard to stay consistent with it and stick with it, even though it it is a time consuming process, I do all my own podcast editing and production, and it definitely takes some time. But I do really enjoy it. I love having all these amazing conversations with different women in business and being able to share with you just what's kind of going on and different tips and tools and such. So that's been a huge win for me, is the podcast. Then in terms of going back to that email compliance offer that we talked about in January that took on a little life of its own. I did end up selling another one in February. Even though we were after the deadline, I did have another client who needed to get it done and jumped on that. And so I got that set up for her, which was another win to sell that offer.
 
Something else that was really exciting, I talked about how I had, coming up this month, a VIP insta day with the fabulous Lizzie Matson and her team at Wild Feather Co. And she does she's a social media manager with Instagram and has her VIP insta days where she goes and creates evergreen content. And so this was so amazing because since she and I had worked together when she used to do my monthly posting, I've had some changes to my offers, and I was just ready for some refreshed content. And so I was so excited for her and her team to go and create some evergreen content for me because I'm such a huge fan of having content that we're able to repurpose and reuse. Because when someone comes in and sees it, I mean, we all know that when you post something on Instagram, it has a very short lifespan. So if we're able to repurpose that content and use it again so that as new people come into our audience, they can get benefit from that content as well. So Lizzie did the start of the month of VIP day for me. I got all my content.

And then another big win is I was able to get it all scheduled out. This was one of those things that I was just chomping at the bit to figure out how I was gonna get it all set up. I use SocialBee as my hosting scheduler. I'll link that up in the show notes. And finding a way, I had a little bit of a roadblock that I hit because of the way the content was, categorized out. There was more categories than there are days I want to post. Because I only post Monday through Friday, and Wednesday is always saved for the podcast. So really I only had 4 categories I could post, and I wanted to spread it out over, like, every every other Monday I want you to post this one.

Every other Tuesday, I want you to post this category. And I'm not able to do that. And, man, did I go down a rabbit hole. I went and signed up for any social media scheduler free trial I could find and was just trying to find someone that would be able to do what I was trying to do, and I was not finding it. I've all the different ones I was coming up with were just not able to allow me to schedule by the month versus by the week. So I found a workaround where I combined some categories and shuffled things around, and it's working just fine. I'm very happy with it. But I did also have to sit on my hands for a while when I really wanted to just go play around with it and figure out how I was gonna get all set up and get all the content moved from Asana into SocialBee.
 
And I had a few different times where I was like, okay. Let me get these other things on my to do list checked off. And once that's checked off, then as my reward, I can go play around with all this new Instagram content. And so make sure to go check that out. Again, really excited. I had all the new copy that the fabulous Nicole Kepic wrote for me, my copywriter. And I still was not able to get it up and on my website because it just hasn't happened yet, but it will. And so I was able to give that to Lizzie.
 
So she was able to use that new copy, and I have some of my offers that Nicole was able to get a little more detailed into, such as my WordPress protection plan. And so that's something that I want to be promoting more this year. I've something I've been doing for so many years, and I realized I don't talk about it a whole lot. It's typically something that clients will sign up for after I work with them, but not something that I get a lot of new clients coming to me specifically for that. And in my WordPress protection package, basically, what it is is I go in on the back end every week and update all the plugins, make sure there's backups, make sure everything's running smoothly on the back end of a website, a WordPress website. And so that my clients don't have to worry about that. And, I mean, the clients I have on it just love that they have access to me. If they get those weird emails that come through that say, like, something that makes no sense to them, I get I have a number of clients who'll forward those to me and be like, does this do I need to do anything about this? Is this junk? All the things.
 
And so the feedback I've gotten is it's really nice for them to know they have kind of a techy tech support person in their back pocket when they have things that come up and questions and all that sort of thing. So that's a service I really love having. It's also a monthly reoccurring service, and so that helps me with having that reoccurring income coming in. And, again, that long term relationship that I love so much with clients. Okay. So next up for my wins. I had a mini project that I did for one of my long term clients. And we talked at the end of January and booked it into February.
 
And she just had some updates that needed to be done on her site, some little techie bits on the back end. And we were able to book the call or book the project so so that I was able to get everything all set up. She had a new domain she'd purchased that we want to specifically lead to a specific product on her website. And we just got everything set up and dialed in, made sure her email funnels were all connected properly. And that was, again, a really fun I love doing mini projects for clients. This is perfect for a client who doesn't have enough on their tech to do list and website update list to book a full day or even a half VIP day with me. And so we do the mini projects which I can knock out, you know, same as the others in a we'll set a bit of time, couple of hours, and just get everything done. And those are a lot of fun for me.

And then the final win I wanna talk about is at the end of the month, I spoke at the Females on Fire Summit, and this was my 1st year speaking there. It was so exciting for me to be in front of a new crowd, a new audience, meet some of the other speakers, connect with them. I asked a number of them if they want to come be guests on my podcast. And so that's been really fun as I've been seeing those guest intake forums come in. And just, again, being able to expand my network and connect with more entrepreneurs. It's just I love so much meeting new people and hearing their story and really connecting and continuing to expand my network. That is something I just love doing. I'm such a connector that I love being able to help connect the right people together.
 
And so that was exciting to just get in front of a new audience. I also did 2 podcast interviews. So the podcast took a little bit of a hiatus over the holiday break just because of life happening and everything. But I did have 2 podcast interviews that were just so fun for me to kinda get back into a routine and a flow with getting interviews scheduled and hopping on the call and getting that done, which is always super fun for me. I had 2 new podcast episodes that were released. 1 was a solo episode that talked all about the Google and Yahoo email compliance update, where I I wanted to talk to people about it without it getting too technical and too complicated and just explain because it is something that is now required and is not a nice to have. It is a requirement. So this is important for people to be aware of.

 
And then I also had my good friend, Jocelyn Wyckoff, who is a just fantastic human being. She owns Kiss It Jane, a marketing agency, and we're in a mastermind together. And I just love her to pieces. I was so happy to invite her on the podcast and share her with this wonderful audience. Let's talk a little bit about some personal wins because I definitely wanna make sure I'm keeping track of those and celebrating those. So one of my personal goals this year is to go hiking with my husband on Fridays. After we get the kids on the bus, our goal is to go shoot off with the dog and go for a nice little quick morning hike. Now we did really good in January, but February, things didn't go quite according to plan.
 
There was a bunch of different things that happened. Some of it was just we had some rough mornings with the kids where we got to school a little later than we should've. We had some rain where it was not hiking weather. It would've been very, very muddy. And then we also had, a school holiday on one of our Fridays. So it just it just did not work out for us. We did have one of the days where we were running too late to go for a hike. And so we just did a nice fast paced walk, here in our neighborhood out on the beach and back on the street and did a full back and forth.
 
And so that was good to still just get out and move around. We also, in the month of February, celebrated my daughter's 8th birthday. And this was kind of a big deal for us because it was the first time we had a friend birthday party. We did it at a, Sky Zone where the kids can all go jump around, but it was a lot. There was a lot of details. I am definitely not a Pinterest mom, and that stuff can be a little much for me to put all those details together of everything that need to come into place. My mom and one of her good friends, Kathy, also came to visit for the birthday celebration, and we're here for a long weekend to come hang out with us. So that was great because I don't get to see my mom a whole lot, during the year because she doesn't live close.
 
So it was fun for them to fly in and come spend some time with us. We also during the month of February, my daughter one of my daughters had, a school field trip. So my husband and I both took the day off and went with the class up to Santa Barbara for to one of the sea museums up there and learned about lots of fun ocean things. And that was really exciting for us. That is one of the reasons we do have our own businesses. This is one of the things we want to make sure we were able to do and available is be able to go on field class field trips with our kids. At near the end of the month, my husband had a job to go look at in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. So him and I hopped on a plane.
 
Grandma was kind enough to my mother-in-law to watch the girls, and on a Sunday, very early in the morning, we trotted down to LAX, hopped on a plane, landed in Cabo. The next day, my husband was working on a boat, getting measurements to put together an estimate for this job that he's bidding on. And then we spent some time together, went to dinner, and all that sort of thing. And next day flew home. So it was a very short trip. I was hoping to get some work done while I was there, but was having a lot of trouble with the Internet. I was able to connect to it at the hotel, but I was not even able to get Gmail to load. So if you can't get Gmail to load, not much else is gonna load either.
 
It was just not in my favor. So instead, I read a book. So back another one of my big goals for the year is to just read more books. Back in January. I believe I read 6 books, and in February I read 1. Just to give an idea of the difference of timing and being out of town, because in January we were part of the at the beginning of the month we were in Mexico at the start of the new year. And so being able to sit and have the time and space to read, which I just love, I didn't have as much of that in February. February was definitely a world world whirlwind of a month.
 
And I got one book in while we were on the plane and while I was hanging by the pool relaxing. So the other personal win, and this kind of flows over into business as well, is I started having a monthly I'm sorry, a weekly accountability call with another web designer, biz bestie, Caitlin Harrison. And we started we're both in the AI to a 100 k program with Britney Long, and we're both feeling a little not behind, but that we weren't utilizing the program. So we decided to spending an hour each week to intentionally sit down and go through the program and do the work to make sure that we get the full value of not just getting something and never doing anything with it. So that's been really great to just have that accountability every week, and that's a continuing thing that we are planning on doing this year. Next, we're gonna go through some of my goals for February and how I did. So one of my goals was to create some blog posts and training videos on the different components of the new email compliance, and that did not happen. I with the caveat that I did get the podcast episode released, which felt like a big piece of it.
 
And so that is something to celebrate. So even though the whole goal didn't get completed, that's not a full check off. It might have been a little too Laura, and I probably need to chunk that down into smaller bite sized manageable pieces instead of being very vague about great blog posts, and training videos on email compliance. Really breaking it down into the specific blog posts, and training videos I would like to create so it's a little easier to tackle. So we'll work on that for for March. Another goal was to book 3 VIP days. I did book one VIP day for in February for March. So still need to do just do some more outreach.
 
I it's one of the things I have the biggest block with, and it's something I've worked with with different coaches. I'm not quite sure exactly why I have a big block around it, but something that I know I need to do more of so I can get past that block, and just keep going forward. Because if I'm not out there promoting my services and talking and letting past clients and new clients, new potential clients know how I can help them in different services that might help. A lot of times, they're not sitting around waiting for me to reach out to them. So I need to they're not gonna reach out on their own. They're busy doing their own business. So I know the value in outreach. I see it when I'm better about doing it.
 
So that is definitely something on the goal list that will continue to stay on that goal list. One of my other goals for February was to produce the pod cast, which I did. Yay. Two episodes got produced for the month, produced and released. So that was super exciting for me. Okay. So now let's jump in to the juicy bits around how much money my business made in February of 2024. So my total revenue for the month was $4,151.6.
 
Of that, a $160.59 was affiliate income. So these are different courses, tech tools, programs, things that I use and love. And if you know me, you know, if I find something good, I love to tell people about it. So that is the affiliate income that I get if someone uses my link to sign up for it. And then my services was $3,990.47. And so that included, a deposit for VIP day, a mini project for a current client, and then also my WordPress protection plan. So that's the monthly reoccurring maintenance. And then in terms of investments, so these are I don't like to think of them as expenses.
 
These are this is money I put invested into my business, $1,151.9. And so part of this was the balance of my VIP InstaDay, my that I booked with Lizzie Matson. It's the PayPal, Stripe, and QuickBook fees for processing payments. I did upgrade my Cast Magic. Cast Magic is a really cool tool, and I use it primarily for help with the podcast. It's an AI tool that allows you to upload video and get transcription from it and also can help with, you know, all sorts of things, different posts for it, emails. It helps me come up with titles for the episodes. And they've actually expanded a lot since I purchased it over a year ago.
 
And they've added so that now it's not just for podcasting anymore. And now I can take other things, like when I've done blueprint strategy sessions with a client and have a blue a brief I'm gonna put together 2 of the next steps, and I can put the transcript in there and have it kinda summarize things. I can put in there different presentations I do for summits and have it spit out a transcript for me. I can have it then help create content for that around there. So it's really a great tool, and I'll include the link for it down in the show notes. The other things are just kinda my month or it's like G Suite or Google Workspace, Manage WP, a tool I use for my WordPress websites, Buzzsprout that I use for my podcasting, AppleCare for my Apple products. And then also, I finally signed up for paid chat GPT. It took a while, but I finally am now paying for GPT 4 point o, which I do see the value in it for sure, but I held out for as long as I could.
 
So at the end of the month, my total income was $4,574.40. And again, I sold one email compliance as part of that. I didn't have any discovery calls this month, which, of course, affects things going forward into future months. So now let's jump into my goals for next month. So I'm gonna bring into my goals of one of the goals that did not get completed in March, which was creating the blog post and training videos on email compliance. I'm gonna see if I can break that down a little bit more when I look a little closer at it all and see if I can get a little more granular about exactly what those blog posts and training videos need to be. So it doesn't feel as hard of something to to create. I'd like to book 3 VIP days.
 
I would like to I will be continuing to produce the podcast, and then doing outreach. Now, I need to do a little a few different types of outreach. I need to do some podcast outreach, for new guests on the podcast. And then I also need to do outreach for my VIP days and my WordPress protection plan. So those are my goals for March. I am definitely seeing how if I don't make emailing my list, that's something else that's been on my, on my goal list for a while. I've got got a little quiet on my list. I do have an evergreen nurture sequence set up for new people when they come onto my list, but for those who have been on my list for a while, it's been a little quieter than I would like it to be.

I definitely emailed them about the females on fire summit, but they need to go get back to some of the regularly scheduled content that I like to send out of my different trainings and just value chock full value emails that I like to send to my list. So those that is all on my goals for March. And, you know, February is always just such a fast month and it always feels extra busy because we have my daughter's birthday in there and there's all the school holidays, and it just always goes fast. So March is just around the corner, and we're actually in it right now at the time of this recording. And look forward to filling you in on all the March stuff next month. So thanks so much for listening today. I'd love to hear how you're enjoying the income reports. I've already gotten some really amazing feedback from some of our listeners and that's they really enjoy hearing this.

So I'm always happy to bring more content that you enjoy hearing and want to hear more about. I know I just love hearing about the back end of people's businesses as well because it's not all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows, and it's not all sparkly like Instagram makes it look like. So Thanks so much. I will talk to you next week. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. Be sure to check out the show notes atloracomark.com/podcast. And if you're ready to turn your website into a marketing machine, get more sales, save time, and simplify the back end of your business? Grab my free resource, Power Integrations for your website. Head on over to laurakamark.com/power.
 
If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe. And, also, I'll just love you forever if you leave me a review. It helps get this podcast in front of other people that can help inspire. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next week. Bye now.