Hey, there! If this is your first time stumbling across my income reports, please start with January 2015 to see why I’m doing this and how I plan to break each month down.

Each month I would like to share:

• How much I earned
• How many payments I received (Ex: 10 payments for 5 projects instead of 47 flyer design payments)
• How much I spent/invested
• What I spent it on (resources)
• What I learned
• How many hours I worked (I’m so bad at tracking this)
• YTD Earnings

Please let me know if there’s anything you want me to include in the income reports. If it’s a general question about my finances, I’ll be happy to write a blog post on it.

The number in parenthesis will indicate the difference from the previous month

Red = Lower Than Previous Month
Green = Higher Than Previous Month
Black = Stayed the Same as Previous Month

Here’s Month 5.

May 2015: $5,877.67
Last Month: $3,860.18
Year-to-date (YTD): $30,073.95 (Not including June)

May 2015 Earnings (16 Payments Received):

Consulting: $475.00 ($150)
Contributing: $30.00 ($20)
Blogademics: $585.00 ($25)
Design/Branding Projects: $4,787.67

Total Gross Revenue: $5,877.67 ($2017.49)

May 2015 Expenses:

Design Intern/Contractor: $280 ($100)
DropBox: $9.99
Twitter: $4.83 ($2.14)
CoSchedule (Social media automation): $10.00
MailChimp: $15.00
Microsoft Office: $10.71
Envato (premium themes & plugins): $116 ($46)
Adobe Systems: $32.16
Wistia: $25
Stock Images: $79
Google Storage: $1.99
Ad Space: $13
Networking Event: $20
Educational Workshops/Conferences: $275 ($41.80)
Coaching: $3,494 ($2,494) Holy Shit 🙂 *smiles to keep from crying*
InfusionSoft (CRM System): $898.50

Total Expenses: $5,305.17 ($2,617.55)
—-

Total Net Profit: $572.5 ($600.06)

What I learned:

Last month’s income report was “bad” financially but excellent for some revelations. You want to know the truth? I think I’m completely over working with clients one on one. Like, I can’t. My goal is to teach in group settings and only accept 3 one-on-one design clients per quarter. I updated my BRNDWCH site to reflect my new pricing, so 12 design clients per year (max) would be ideal.

Now that I’m looking at the numbers (I wouldn’t if I didn’t take the time to do these income reports), I’m like DAMN. $5300 in expenses?!? What the? But to be fair, approx. $3,000 of that is not recurring. It was “just” a one time expense. I will say, though, that I’m so so so so glad that I had money saved up in my business savings account because there’s no way I could’ve made all of these investments and JUST had $572 left over. If you learn anything from me, save your damn money for important stuff that is going to make you money.

Next month expenses for coaching will be at $997 and Infusionsoft will be at $249.

A few people have been asking me about Infusionsoft. It’s confusing as hell at first, but it’s going to be a huge part of my business growth. You can sign up for a plan starting at $199/month.  My original expenses for it are high because I signed up to get consultations from one of their experts to help me set up everything.

I had my mastermind meeting this month with my coach Marshawn Evans and all of the other awesome business people in our group, and it was amazing. I love that I’ve invested in her coaching program for accountability.  Listening to her speak, I feel so confident in the things I blog and teach.  Everything she says is literally confirmation on how I coach message development and brand strategy. My biggest learning experience from her and Jack (her husband) will be how to get paid bookings to speak. I’m so excited to work on that more. Now that I’m looking at how much I’ve invested so far I need to STOP FOOLING AROUND because a $3,500 investment is not a game. Damn. I’m supposed to be pitching to organizations.

Things I need to improve on:

• PITCH PITCH PITCH to organizations that I would like to speak at.
• Trusting my team enough to help me with work.
• Communicate better with clients.
• Getting sh*t done? (Even though I accomplished these 25 things by 25)
• Finishing #InfoBoMo by some awesome biz owners Regina, Brittany, Ashley, Jenna and Elizabeth.
• Do what I say I’m gonna do if I want to make money
• Come up with speaking topics to get my ass rolling with my speaking career, etc etc etc.

Things I did well:

• Revamped my work with me page
• Revamped my BRNDWCH website
• Attended my mastermind meeting
• Held my first in person branding workshop (woohoo!)
• Relaunched Blogademics
• Hosted a webinar

Hours worked:

I’m still horrible at tracking hours. Much more flexible this month, though. Don’t count on hours for June’s Income Report because it’s June 22 today, and I haven’t tracked. But MAYBE for July.

YTD Earnings:$30,073.95

I’m giving you the same challenge as last month. Do something that is worthwhile especially if it scares you. What has been your biggest transition in business? What’s the last thing you’ve done to stretch and challenge yourself?  I’d love to hear from you for some encouragement!