Dirty Money Talk: February 2025

Welcome to my Dirty Money Talk, where I lay out all the dirty details of my business for everyone to see.

I subscribe to a couple of people who do these and read them every single time they land in my inbox. Because I’m nosy, and I like seeing what other people are doing, how they’re doing it, and how they feel about it. So I decided to start doing them myself.

I want to do these for a few reasons:

  • It keeps me accountable. Writing these up for you guys forces me to actually look at my data and reflect.

  • I think financial transparency is extremely important and hopefully me doing these helps break down the money taboo.

How many hours I worked in February?

88 hours, 34 billable (39% billable)

 

How was February overall?

I’m not mad I ended up making around $5000 this month. Honesty, its $5000 more than I expected. The agency partnership project I had bookmarked to start late Jan was pushed back almost a month. Not their fault, but it still left me in the lurch. So even though I had worked booked for this month, I figured with the way I invoice agency partners, I wouldn’t have any money land in my account until early March.

But the agency paid their first invoice super quick, so that crept in this side of the calendar month. And a big project I’d been in talks for end of last year decided to sign on and pay a deposit. Between those two, I landed at $5326.

Which is great, but…

Between paying my VA, paying the first month up front for a new co-working space, AND paying for some business strategy sessions, pretty much all of those earnings went back into the business.

I’m open about this because I think it’s important to share these little blips and learning curves we have along the way. I knew this was coming, and luckily me and my partner have an emergency fund to smooth things out when things like this happen.

Did I still feel gross about it? Absolutely.

So if something similar ever has or does happen to you, you’re not a failure. Okay?

 

How did my goals go for February?

  • I finished working through Carrie Wilkerson’s Lab Intensive, and it was super valuable. I’ve implemented quite a lot of what I learned and have a plan for attacking the rest at a reasonable and realistic pace.

  • I didn’t finish reworking my own content pillars, but I DID get two customer interviews in to support those. So I took steps. I get a treat.

  • I also started posting on Instagram! Right now, my main goal is to have fun and be consistent-ish. I’ve only posted a few times, but so far, so good. Check me out and say hi?

 

Goals for next month:

  • Post consistently-ish on Instagram

  • Tweak my onboarding process

  • Tweak my offboarding process

 

Tech I’m currently using for my business

Productivity

  • Zapier (paid plan)

  • Upbase (paid plan)

  • Notion (free)

  • Moxie (lifetime subscription from Appsumo)

  • Clockify (free version) for my time tracking. I like the Chrome plugin.

  • Brain.FM to help get me into focus mode. Affiliate code: tbp for 20% off

  • Chat GPT 4.0 (free).

  • Squarespace for my website


Podcasting

  • Descript (paid annually) for podcast editing

  • Squadcast for podcast recording (free account with Descript subscription)

Marketing

Finance

  • Thriday (annual plan) for my business banking + bookkeeping, and to implement the Profit First system. I mostly use Moxie for my invoicing because I sometimes need different currencies.

  • Wise for any international payments I need to send or receive.

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