Monthly review September 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 September?
81 hours, of which 58 were billable (71.6% billable).
$15k a month is my happy financial place and while I didn’t quite make that this month, I gave a 35% discount on a project for my For The Culture Initiative, and arranged a skill swap for another projects. If I’d charged the full amounts, I would have made my $15k target so mentally and emotionally, I feel like I’ve achieved what I hoped to.
How was September overall?
This month was a strange one. I got to get really deep into some awesome client work and have been pouring energy into my own business. And although it was a good month on paper, I have been in the headspace of having so many ideas and barely enough time to address what's currently on my plate. The entrepreneurial rollercoaster.
How did my goals go for September?
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!
Goals for next month:
I've signed up for a new email marketing platform called Drip so this month I'd like to finish migrating over so I can cancel my Mailerlite account.
I have a new digital product in the works, I'd love to finish creating and setting it up, even if I don't do a proper launch for it.
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.
