213 - January Profit Report
On today's episode of the Unf*ck Your Biz podcast I review my January profit report.
I am passionate about helping business owners build profitable businesses and increase their take-home pay. By sharing my own profit reports and how I plan for my own business and personal expenses, it is my goal to help other business owners put these topics into context for themselves and increase your profit. If you’ve missed my previous Profit Reports, check out episode 186 where I reintroduced Profit Reports back to the podcast.
To start, I want to share a few of my goals for the year. One of my big goals is to work with my marketing virtual assistant to book 25 PR spots per quarter, anything that gets me in front of other people’s audiences such as podcasts, speaking at conferences, summits, bundles, guest blog posts, etc. I’m also focusing on my number of podcast downloads and less on my social media metrics. This year I am really doubling down on the work that’s most profitable for me.
As far as revenue, I have Good, Better, Best goals of $200k, $225k, and $250k. This past year I did about $100k in revenue and $140k the year before that and in previous profit reports I dive into why I took a step back this past year. My goal for this year is $15,000 in revenue per month. What I don‘t want is for you to get hung up on the number and think that these are the numbers that you need to have in your business. For me this is the stepping stone for where I want to go based on where I want to go and what I need money for i.e. paying off student loans, my mortgage, purchases I want to make, etc. This would put me at $180,000 for the year, however I know I often make more in the last quarter which will make up for it. 70% profit is always my target.
MRR - Monthly Recurring Revenue - my goal is to get mine to $15-20,000 a month within the next few years. My goal is to keep my monthly expenses at 40% of my MRR, this does not include my salary. I never want my expenses to be so high that I can’t cover them in a worst-case scenario month. I give myself an allowance to reinvest up to 20% of additional revenue into the business if I feel like I need to or if I want to if I feel like that 20% will help my ROI.
In January, I did hit my goal, I had $15,700 in revenue. $1800 was my budget for increased expenditures. I spent $1400 more than my monthly recurring expenses in January, using that money on ads, a copywriter, and a new microphone this month.
When I started really tracking profit I wanted a new microphone. But I started really focusing on my profit margin. If I couldn’t pay myself what I needed personally and buy the microphone, I told myself I couldn’t buy it and I allocated money to other projects and services that would get me a greater ROI.
The extra money I had in the business went to my business credit card and the debt I racked up on that last year. One of my personal goals this year is to get a new car and I need to improve my credit score to help with that.
My plan is to build out my business savings and a slush fund. My goal is six months of expenses, plus a little more, so about $15,000 to cover expenses if I don’t make enough revenue one month to pay my team or myself since I am required to do so as an S Corp. For the slush fund, you’re saving the money with the intention of spending it when you hit a certain amount, not for emergencies like your savings account.
I also need to balance this with personal savings. For me, I want to focus on my business savings first. I’m not telling you this is the right answer, this is the answer that works for me and yours might be different. I want to be able to pay myself and run salary.
Here is my January revenue breakdown:
$5,800 came from Profit Rx
$6,500 came from the Contract Vault
$400 Other sales - Misc. smaller programs on my website
This totaled $12,500. On the 20th of January, I put out some VIP day package offers. I booked two of them which came to $3,000.
What we need to be careful about is if we’re constantly obsessing about our revenue. We have to balance this with being CEO of our own business to make money. What I’m doing is rather than thinking of what my annual goal is, it’s what are my quarterly and monthly goals and what do I need to do to make them happen? With that, I’m doing pushes at the end of the month if I need to.
My expenses for the month were:
$3500 for standard expenses
$800 for additional expenses, like my new microphone
$300 for ads
A few hundred dollars paying for test products as I hired a copywriter
My increased expenses came to a little less than 20% of my increased revenue.
My February revenue goals are:
$5800 - $6000 from Profit Rx
$1500 from Contract Vault Sales
Several hundred dollars from a paid speaking gig
$5,000 Tax Season Playbook Sales, though revenue projects are hard so we will see
$1500 S Corp in a day sales, I might offer a couple more VIP days as the month goes on
Are you enjoying my monthly profit reports? Tell me over in my Facebook group, Braden’s Besties.