Be Bold, Make Waves with Laura Kåmark

Behind the Scenes: March 2024 Income Report + Goals

• Laura Kåmark • Episode 70

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Laura Kåmark [00:00:01]:
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 Kamark, Evergreen system and funnel integration expert for coaches and consultants who love their work, but not their tech. This is gonna be a really fun podcast episode this week.

Laura Kåmark [00:00:51]:
This is the March 2024 income Kamark, and I just love bringing you these episodes. And I've been loving getting the feedback of how much you all are loving it as well. So thank you for those of you who send me the DMs and the emails telling me how much you are really appreciating hearing the income reports and kinda getting a backside view backside view? Inside view at the backside of someone else's business. I know it's so hard as entrepreneurs that you only see, like, the shiny Instagram images and what you read in emails, but there's so much that goes on behind the scenes. And that's one of the reasons I love to break this down for you so you know how things are really going. And for those of you who maybe haven't tuned in yet to some of the past income reports, this year I was actually challenged by one of my business coaches to do a monthly income report. And the purpose is to really take some time to reflect on what worked, what didn't work, what I'm proud of, and what lessons I learned. So in today's episode, we are going to cover some of my wins in March, how my goals went, how much my business earned, and my goals for next month, April.

Laura Kåmark [00:02:06]:
Okay. So let's go ahead and dive in. So first of all, some of the wins from March. I started off right at the beginning of the month and had some visibility wins. I was a guest expert in Sarah Massey's VIP day group. I partnered with Nicole Capex. She's been on the podcast before, and I talk about her often. She's a very dear friend, a good client.

Laura Kåmark [00:02:28]:
We're in a a mastermind together. We're we have our own peer led accountability group. We talk on Voxer pretty much every day, and she's also the copywriter that I hire when I'm working on copy need copy help for my website. So Nicole and I partnered to bring a new presentation, a new training I put together. Well, the 2 of us put together different pieces. Evergreen, your email marketing with ease. And so that was brought to life, and that was so much fun to be able to partner with Nicole on a presentation, which we hadn't done before. And our just our offers go so well together with me putting in place all the tech set up, for Evergreen email systems.

Laura Kåmark [00:03:16]:
And Nicole, of course, is just amazing copywriter. She's so hilarious, and I just love reading her emails. She has a great nurture sequence that I set up for her in some VIP days over the last couple years. We've put together a really great, evergreen sequence for her. And so it's really fun to talk about that and highlight her project, her sort of case study that one of these days, I will get on my website. Anyway, so that was a really great visibility win. I love speaking in front of groups and helping just give everyone a different way of looking at some of this and finding more ways to simplify the back end of their business. Then I also, in March, spoke at the Business Automation Summit, and this was a really great summit.

Laura Kåmark [00:04:07]:
It was a new audience for me. I was really excited to speak at it. This was super fun because I had gotten such good feedback on the Evergreen Laura Email Marketing with Ease training that I did for the VIP day group that I was able to rerecord that some that presentation, with a little different spin because Nicole wasn't also presenting with me. And so I presented that to the Business Automation Summit. So another win I had is I added 2 more emails to my email nurture sequence. So this is something that seems like it's gonna be on my to do list for quite a while. I don't always take the time that I would like to to work on my business. I know I mean, one of the things I do for my business is the podcast.

Laura Kåmark [00:04:58]:
That always takes a priority overriding a lot of my nurture sequences. I would love to go back and write some emails for every single one of my past podcast episodes, because that is evergreen content. So that's on my list, my my never ending to do list. But I know we all have those. So I was very excited that I was able to add 2 more emails to my nurture sequence. I also emailed my list other times in addition to that because I spoke at the summit, so there were emails going out about that as well. Then closer to the end of the month, I it was actually on my birthday. My birthday is March 25th, and I, all of a sudden, was like, why am I not doing a flash sale right now? So it was completely a 100% spur of the moment.

Laura Kåmark [00:05:47]:
It was later in the day. It was, I think when I was out picking up lunch that I was like, I am going to do a birthday flash sale right now. So I quickly wrote an email and sent it out to my list. You know, I made a quick coupon code, and I decided to just do a birthday flash sale for my WordPress protection plan. And so what that is is for WordPress websites, I have monthly clients who are I take care every week I go in and update all the plugins and any other core files that need to be updated. Just make sure everything's backing up properly and just keep an eye on things. I'm also available for when they have questions that come up. There's all sorts of random things that happen with tech.

Laura Kåmark [00:06:33]:
And so I was able I wanted to offer that service to my email list. And it was, again, very last minute. I didn't end up getting any sales, and I was actually okay with that. I was hoping that I would, but it didn't feel super thought out ahead of time. I will say I didn't. I do have some updated copy that I was hoping to get up on that website, and I was really proud of myself that I I did it messy. I didn't say to myself, no. I can't send out this birthday flash sale because I haven't updated the page yet.

Laura Kåmark [00:07:10]:
I have to do that first. I went, no. I'm just gonna do this and send it out and see what happens, because you'll never know. So since then, the website has been updated with the WordPress protection package information, but I did send out that birthday flash sale. I do need to go back and check and just see what my click click through rates were on that. Because I know some people were clicking, and so that felt good. Again, it can take, you know, 7 or 8 touch points before someone buys. So that very well could have been the first time people are really hearing about it.

Laura Kåmark [00:07:43]:
Because as I'm going back through and looking at everything a little closer and doing these income reports this year, I'm finding that's one of those the WordPress protection plan is one of those things I have not talked about a whole lot. It's sort of a back end offer that I offer to web clients when they are well, once we're done building out their website. But there's definitely no reason why I can't offer it to other people because it's not just websites I built that I have clients on the WordPress protection plan. Another win I had for March was I had 3 coffee chats, and I don't do a lot of coffee chats. While back, a couple years ago, I done a bunch of them, and they just really felt like they drained my energy. That was where I was like, I'm just gonna create a podcast. I would much rather talk to people and build a stronger connection and long term relationship than I was I didn't feel like I was getting that with coffee chats. It felt very very rushed, very surface.

Laura Kåmark [00:08:48]:
And so it's not something I do a lot now. I'm very I hold on to my time a little bit a little closer, but I was really excited. 1 was with, a gal who has been on the podcast before, and we keep in touch. We check-in every so often. So I was really excited to just hop on a call with her, see how she's doing. She was giving me just an update on her business and her life, and just it was so great to reconnect with her. That was so much fun. And then I had 2 new people who I would had not met before, and I was really excited.

Laura Kåmark [00:09:23]:
One came from a dear friend of mine who is one of my biz besties, and she just sent me a con a connection introduction, said, I think the 2 of you would really get along and your businesses complement each other really well. So, hopefully, that gal is going to come be on the podcast soon. We had a really amazing conversation. So I just need to follow-up, which is something I'm learning I need to do more and more of. That's lessons learned. Because we all get so busy. You know? And And it never hurts to just follow-up with people. Okay.

Laura Kåmark [00:10:00]:
The other thing that I was felt like a really big win is my I mentioned in last month's income report that one of my biz besties and I, Caitlin Harrison, we've been meeting on Fridays for an accountability call, and we continued that in the month of March, which, again, was super fun. And we it was just a great for us to spend an hour together on Friday and work through some of the things of some outreach, kind of bounce ideas off each other, and just hold each other accountable as we get some things done in our business. So that felt really great. Okay. Moving on to my goals for March. So one of my goals was to create some blog posts and training videos on email compliance. And, dun, ta, da, I did it. I created a how to set up Google post master to monitor spam complaints, domain reputation, and delivery errors.

Laura Kåmark [00:10:59]:
I created a blog post on how to easily set up Google Workspace email authentication. And in doing all that, I realized I had not ever added, one of a blog a blog post and training that I'd created on how to change the default Google Analytics for data retention. I never added that to YouTube. And I was like, what? Why is this not on here? So I got that added as well. And then in the midst of all this adding things to YouTube, I sort of accidentally ended up adding all my past podcast episodes to the podcast YouTube feed, which was great because I've been wanting to get those episodes on there, and now they're all there. And all the new episodes just auto magically go there, which is amazing as well. So super excited about that. Yeah.

Laura Kåmark [00:11:54]:
And so I got I was able to then I emailed out my list and told them about how, hey. My YouTube is my YouTube channel is launched. Please go check it out if you did not get that email. If you're not on my list, please go get on there. You'll just love it. It's you can get a great little idea of all how I run my evergreen nurture sequences, see it live in action, and then also find out when new and exciting things are happening, because I am much more likely to send an email about it than post on it, surprisingly enough. But that's how I roll. Anyway, go check out the YouTube channel as well.

Laura Kåmark [00:12:33]:
Lauracomark.com/youtube. We'll take you there, and super fun. I I and this is so silly and so geeky, but I was so excited. I figured out how to add some for the Google Workspace email authentication. They're super short videos. They walk you through, and I found out a way to do some fun editing things with it. And that was exciting for me because video editing is definitely not something that I am an expert at or anything along there. I just kinda roll with it.

Laura Kåmark [00:13:04]:
So one of my other goals for the month was to book 3 VIP days, and I booked 0. But that's okay. I did have I only had one discovery call on the books, and she actually was a no show, which was a bummer. I wasn't super surprised because I the form that she filled out seemed it was very vague. And I emailed back and asked for a little more information and did not get a reply. So I wasn't super surprised because I was like, is this a real person? Is it a bot? I wasn't really sure because, again, it was a really, really vague acuity booking form that was filled out. So she didn't show, and that's fine. I did get one of my current clients emailed me during that while I was on that call, I got an email from her asking if I had space for another client and was gonna send me a referral.

Laura Kåmark [00:13:59]:
And so that was great. I was like, oh, how's that for timing? So even though I didn't reach my goals, it's okay. We, you know, shoot for the moon. If you don't make it, you land up among the stars. So we're gonna roll with that. Okay. One of my other goals was to continue producing the podcast. I got 2 episodes out.

Laura Kåmark [00:14:19]:
I'm I'm my goal every month is to get this income report produced and sent out in that next month after it goes out. Like, this one, the April 1 will be coming out the 1st week in May. It is what it is. You know? It's I can only do so much. So I got 2 other podcast episodes sent out, both really great episodes. 1 talking about up leveling your marketing with brand photography. Another one talking about the power of podcasting with purpose. Super fun episodes.

Laura Kåmark [00:14:53]:
Go check them out. Episode 64 and episode 65. I will link them up in the show notes. Something else that is always on the goal list is doing outreach. So always a thing, always something that I have a block around. We're working through that. I did reach out to a past lead. Randomly, I just thought of her, and I said, you know what? I wonder if she ever got her website done.

Laura Kåmark [00:15:21]:
So I emailed her and just to check-in and say, like, did you ever get this, you know, get this done? Did you still need help? Anything like that. And we did a little back and forth, and then I didn't hear from her again, which, again, is totally okay. It doesn't hurt to do more outreach. And just because someone says no, doesn't mean it's a no forever. It might just be an I'm not ready, and that's okay too. So I also got, I had another podcast interview with someone who will be coming up on the podcast next month. Super fun. Again, just I really, really enjoy creating this podcast.

Laura Kåmark [00:16:00]:
It I love connecting with people this way. So love doing that. Something that's really fun. Okay. So now let's move on to some of the personal wins. One of the goals I have for this year is hiking with my husband more. This is something that together we decided we were gonna do on Fridays starting in 2024, and we did pretty good. February was a little harder because the kids were off school a couple days, and the rain wasn't as cooperative as we wanted.

Laura Kåmark [00:16:35]:
But there were 5 Fridays in March, and we went and hiked on 3 of them, which, again, just felt like a really big win for us, something we really enjoy doing together, and we get to take the dog with us. So that was super fun. Something else that I was able to start back up again in March was agility. And so years ago, a few years ago, probably, oh gosh, I think it was 2 years ago, I started taking my dog, Benny, to an agility class. And it's just for fun. I do not anticipate that we will ever do trials, but who knows? Never say never. But, again, we just do it for fun. He can be a little bit of a, very sensitive dog, and so we're working on building his confidence.

Laura Kåmark [00:17:28]:
He's, you know, this giant 80 pound dog who is just a very delicate flower. And so just working on building his confidence, it's absolutely hilarious in my opinion. It's him and a bunch of Australian shepherds and border collies, and they just run so fast through the course. And the trainer is always just telling me, like, do not push that dog. He is a hound dog, and he will just shut down. But he is very friendly. He seems to enjoy it. When we come out, when it's our turn, he runs to all the other people who are there and says hi, which most of them are all my neighbors.

Laura Kåmark [00:18:03]:
It's kind of funny. We drive about 30 minutes, away from the beach inland and go to this woman's house. It's out in her, Lemon Grove Orchard. Lemon Orchard? Lemon Grove. I think it's a Lemon Grove. And where she has an agility course set gated or a fenced off agility course as well. And she teaches us also to find different things. So it's really fun.

Laura Kåmark [00:18:26]:
I've always enjoyed doing it. I find that when it gets, you know, the dark of winter, I have trouble going because it's I don't really like driving in the dark, and it just gets cold. So we usually between that and just life happening and kids being off and everything. Usually, I I typically end up not going November December and then work towards getting back to it in February, March. So we stopped for a while, and then last year started back up again. I put it on my vision board as something I want to start doing once now that the kids were both in school and are in an after school care program. I was able to do that after taking a break from it when I didn't have as much time during the week to be able to take the time off. Because I do leave it's on those days, I end up leaving the house at or shutting down for the day at 3:30 instead of my normal 5 o'clock.

Laura Kåmark [00:19:18]:
So that log tangent to say, I was really excited because we were able to start back up and go for 3 weeks or go 3 consecutive weeks in March and do some agility. So it's fun. I try to post in my stories when one of my other neighbors usually will video some of our, runs as we go through them. And so I try to post those on Instagram because, again, I find it entertaining. Okay. Now let's dive in to the juicy bits around how much money my business made in March of 2024. My total revenue was $2,917. That includes affiliate income of $641.

Laura Kåmark [00:20:07]:
So this is different products, services that I use and love and recommend. It can be tools, all sorts of fun stuff. I often get a lot of affiliate income from my good friend, Dara Skolars, get productive with G Suite. That is an incredible course at such a great value. It's $37, and that is something that I do see affiliate income come in from that because I do promote it a lot. It's part of my evergreen sequence. And so as people new people get on my list. So, like, with the summit that I spoke at at the start of the month and the expert training I did, that always adds more people to my email list.

Laura Kåmark [00:20:50]:
And then one of the emails they get in that 1st month of being on, promotes Dara's course. So and then I had $2,275 in services. So that was a VIP day balance for a VIP day that I did. I sold one more email compliance. I had one more trickle in of someone who was still didn't have everything just quite where it need to be, and so I went in and did hers. And then I did have too many projects. 1 was, I believe, mostly complete at the end of February, but the the invoice went through at right. It was right at the end of February.

Laura Kåmark [00:21:28]:
So it was right in March when it got paid and came through. And then I had another ongoing client who needed some updates to her site and her funnel and everything, and so I got those updates in. And then also my WordPress protection plan. So that's the monthly maintenance that I mentioned earlier that I did the flash sale on. Those are when I go in and update everyone's WordPress and make sure all the plugins are up to date, everything's backed up. Some of those clients pay for I have 2 different packages. One's basic, and one's the premium. And for the premium, they get an additional 30 minutes of support every month.

Laura Kåmark [00:22:03]:
So that can be I have one client who right now we've been going in and updating some bios and headshots on her website for different people who work at her studio. So then my total investments for the month was $1,370. And so these are different things that I pay for to invest in my business. It also includes things like PayPal and Stripe and QuickBook fees. I did buy my software and subscriptions is a little higher than normal. I did buy Convertbox. They had a leap year sale on February 29th, and so I bought that. And, of course, it, like, actually came through and hit the the accounting in March.

Laura Kåmark [00:22:48]:
But it's a tool that I've been hearing about for years. I'm excited to dive in more to it and just find out how I can use it in my business. Again, been hearing lots of great things about it, and so I was excited to jump in on that sale for that. And then I also had some travel expenses. I have something an event I'm traveling to in April, and so I had the deposit for that hotel hit in March. And then I had a little bit more on my website charges, and that was because I'm moving hosting. So I have had my many, many years ago, I signed up with Bluehost. They used to be a really great hosting company, especially when you're first starting out.

Laura Kåmark [00:23:30]:
All their customer support was located within the United States, and they were so great and so helpful. And over the years, they have not been as great. They've gone really downhill as they've gotten larger and expanded, and they're definitely not a company I recommend anymore. I moved my main website a couple years ago to Flywheel, who's amazing and has incredible customer support. But I still had, like, my husband's website. I had some of my, DIY website launch kit, example websites. And just some of those things, I still had on Bluehost. So I found a different hosting company that isn't gonna make me super mad every time I try to log in because Bluehost has just gotten so horrible with everything.

Laura Kåmark [00:24:18]:
And I bought hosting and worked on moving over my template kit sites so that I just I don't need fast hosting. I don't need super reliable hosting. It's just some kinda demo websites that I have. So I moved those over. I got my husband's website moved over to a flywheel account as well. And I'm working in the process of transferring my domain and saying goodbye forever to Bluehost. So just know if you have horrible hosting, you are not stuck there. That is something I actually hear a lot from clients when I talk them about moving hosting is they're concerned that they will have to give up their domain.

Laura Kåmark [00:24:58]:
And as long as you have access to your domain, which you should, we can move it to any better hosting. And I highly recommend doing that because hosting plays a huge part in a lot of different pieces of your website. At the how long your downtime, how often it's up or goes down. It plays a part in how fast your website is, and also can play a huge part in just your frustration level of if you do have to contact them for support. I know there's been times where I have a client who's on really horrible hosting, and it's fine until the day when it's not. And then you end up, a lot of times, hours and hours into a really frustrating situation. So there's my soapbox on that. Highly recommend much better hosting.

Laura Kåmark [00:25:42]:
I will link in the show notes. Flywheel and WP Engine both have incredible customer support. So at the end of the month, after my revenue minus my investments, my total income is $1,547. So definitely not where I I want to be at. It's been so interesting these last few months doing these income reports because I kinda wish I'd been doing these a few years ago when I was making some more money because it's just this year's been rough so far. It really has. But that's okay. I know what I need to do, which is more outreach.

Laura Kåmark [00:26:25]:
And I feel like a broken record, like, I keep saying this, I know what I need to do, and I just need to do it. So let's move into my goals for next month. So for April, I would like to create a blog post on the Kamark setup and how to read the report. It's something that I did a lot of setup for with the email compliance updates, and I would like to create some sort of training around it, just a simplified training so that people who I set it up for understand how to read the reports, and anyone else who might still need to set it up has a resource. I would like to book 2 VIP days for the month of April. Continue to produce the podcast, send at a minimum 2 hour reach emails, and add 2 emails into my nurture sequence. And then my final goal for next month is to update the copy on my website. Okay.

Laura Kåmark [00:27:16]:
There you have it. That is the conclusion of my March 2024 income report. I hope you I hope you feel inspired. I hope you're enjoying this behind the scenes look. If you have any questions, I am definitely an open book. If there's anything else that you wanna know about or anything like that, feel free to just shoot me a DM on Instagram or reply to any of my emails. Okay. Thanks so much for listening.

Laura Kåmark [00:27:45]:
I'll see you next week. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. Be sure to check out the show notes at lauracomark.comforward/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 lauracomark.comforward/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.

Laura Kåmark [00:28:25]:
Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next week. Bye now.