Monthly review October 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 October?
78 hours, 52 billable (67%)
How was October overall?
This month was… yikes.
I was so busy working on projects last month that I didn’t do any of my own marketing (whoops), plus I took several days off to go up to Sydney which cut a hefty chunk off of my usual retainer income. Plus, I’m moving houses so I’ve had to keep big chunks of time free to handle packing, organising, unpacking etc etc etc.
On the plus side, I did achieve some things I’m proud of. I got AMAZING feedback on my Human Brand Messaging Strategy Template which I’m very excited to launch properly after we finish moving. I also interviewed and hired a VA who will be starting with me in a couple of weeks. (Thank god.)
How did my goals go for October?
I managed to email pretty regularly but overall this month has felt frantic and kinda… gross to be honest.
We did line up some incredible podcast guests, recorded quite a few episodes, and have some more fantastic ones coming up.
Goals for next month:
Honestly… I mostly just want to get through next month without killing myself. So my ‘achievement’ for November will be getting through my scheduled work, locking in a project for December, and feel my way through the first couple of weeks working with a VA!
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.
