Monthly review August 2024
Welcome to my monthly review, 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 August?
72 hours, of which 60 were billable (83% billable). Which is a VERY high percentage of billable hours, and it’s reflected in my income for the month. I will observe that I dropped the ball on some of my own internal marketing, including missing a weekly newsletter and not posting on LinkedIn or promoting the podcast as much as I like to.
How was August overall?
Whoa, bumper month! This is the most I’ve made in a single month, ever. By quite a lot. And even though it was a big money month, in other ways it felt normal. Life was lifing, I gave myself grace and knocked off work early several days, and I didn’t feel swamped or overwhelmed. So that’s nice!
I also signed up to a program that places a recent comms graduate with you as an intern for 1 day a week for 6 weeks. My intern is starting next week and I’m quite excited to use this as a practice run with having some kind of VA help.
If you’re also thinking about hiring a VA, I found this podcast episode helpful (shoutout to you Victoria): How To Go From Overworked Solopreneur to Time Freedom CEO with Kirsten Graham
How did my goals go for August?
Take some time off
I sort of did this. I kept pushing back my scheduled days off. When I did eventually take them, my partner was up in Sydney for her Nonna’s funeral and I spent my free days running errands and managing the household. Not terrible but not amazing either.
VA Preparation
I’m not completely prepared, but I did spend some time on this. I thought I had Lizzy’s Hiring a VA Course included in the everything offer I bought but turns out it isn’t, so I may or may not go ahead with that one.
Goals for next month:
Keep up with my weekly emails to you guys and post regularly on LinkedIn. I've got lots to talk about at the moment!
Find some new podcast guests. If you listen to the podcast and are interested in appearing, the application form is on my Media Page!
Tech I’m currently using for my business
Productivity
Zapier (paid plan)
Asana (free plan)
Notion (free)
Moxie (lifetime subscription from Appsumo)
Grain for recording customer interviews and VOC research, getting transcripts and extracting insights
Clockify (free version) for my time tracking. I like the Chrome plugin.
Brain.FM to help get me into focus mode. If you’d like to try it, you can use my affiliate code when you sign up for 20% off your membership. Code: tbp
Chat GPT 4.0 (free). I used to have a subscription so I could use the more advanced data analysis features, but I downgraded to free once they made more features free to use.
Squarespace for my website
Scribe (free), a screen recording tool for creating SOPs.
Social media
Simplified.app for scheduling my own and some clients posts.
Podcasting
Descript (paid annually) for recording and editing
Squadcast for recording (free account with Descript subscription)
Marketing
Mailerlite (paid plan) to send out these emails that you all know and love!
Thrivecart (lifetime subscription) to host all my products and courses.
Damn Write’s content club to keep me regular (it’s been helping a bit, but I anticipate using it much more when my new website’s live)
Liz’s email marketing membership. I dip in and out of this membership. It is very low cost and excellent value. She sent out an offer for 6 months for the price of three (USD$27) so I snapped it up. Why not.
Finance and Money
Thriday (paid plan, paid annually for discount) 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.
