January 2021 income report: making a loss *and* starting the year off right

Hello there! Here’s a new idea of mine: sharing my monthly income reports. I want my content both on the blog and the podcast to be relatable and inspirational. So I thought I’d share the behind-the-scenes of my entrepreneurial journey with you! It could well be that this post is more relatable than inspirational though…

January 2021 revenue

My revenue is actually the number I am most interested in, not my income. This year, my “impossible” goal is to make £100,000 in revenue by the 31st of December. I go into a bit more detail in my thirties bucket list + what I want to focus on in 2021 blog post.

To make this big goal more manageable (and to lessen the chances of self-sabotaging because it seems overwhelming), I’ve broken it down into quarterly targets:

• £10,000 in quarter one (ends on the 31st of March);
• £20,000 in quarter two (ends on the 30th of June);
• £30,000 in quarter three (ends on the 30th of September);
• And the rest of the £100,000 in quarter four, which would be £40,000 if I exactly hit the rest of my targets.

In January, I earned £55.05. That represents 0.05% of my yearly goal and 0.5% of my quarterly goal. This money came from:

• £43.70 from my cryptocurrencies doing well (get $10 free when you buy $100 of cryptocurrencies on Coinbase by following this link*).
• £11.35 from printables sales in my Etsy shop (learn how to create and sell printables with this course*).

(* Note: this blog post contains Coinbase*, Printables by Number* and Buzzsprout* affiliate links. If you follow a link marked with an asterisk and make a purchase, I may earn a commission at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting my work!)

January 2021 expenses

It is very possible to start an online business in a lean way – I even wrote a whole blog post about how to start an online business in 2021 which suggests free or low-cost ways of doing things. However, there are some services I am happy to pay for because they make my life much easier and I know that they will accelerate my success in the future. If you want to learn more about the importance of investing in yourself (and your business!) you can read this blog post: How I’m investing in myself and why you should too.

In any case, my January 2021 expenses were:

• £72.64 for joining Haute Stock: this is a quarterly membership price that enables me to use their beautiful photos on my blog + social media.
• £36.15 for my Perfectionists Getting Shit Done membership: I joined a year ago and I feel like I really benefit from the resources Sam shares + the community of like-minded people.
• £10.98 for Calendly: this is a super clever service that allows people to book into my calendar, thus avoiding the awkward backwards and forwards emails about which times work for the both of us + possible confusion due to time zone differences. I use it to schedule interviews with my podcast guests. It also enables me to collect payments from my coaching clients when they book their call with me, thus eliminating the need for conversations around unpaid invoices!
• £8.79 for Buzzsprout* (if you use that link to sign up, you’ll get a $20 Amazon gift card after your second paid invoice!): I launched my podcast in January and signed up to Buzzsprout so that they host and share my episodes automatically with podcast providers (Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts etc.).
• £4.14 for Google Workspace: this is a monthly charge to have my own “professional” email address, inbox and drive (feel free to reach out to me at jessica@jessicagoodenough.com!).

(My graphs will look a bit more interesting in a few months with more data points!)

How I feel looking back on my January 2021 income (or loss in this case!)

My revenue in January was £55.05 and my expenses added up to £132.70, therefore I made a loss of £77.65. While I’m not advocating for this as a way of running your business, I’m still feeling happy about the last month. I offer a more in-depth review of my monthly progress (not just in my business, but my personal growth, as well as life updates) to my email subscribers. If that’s something you’d be interested in, you can join here and get all my freebies as a bonus! However, here’s an overview of my struggles and progress regarding my business.

Struggles

• I tried to make big progress in lots of areas at once. This was the main issue in January: I was very excited about opportunities, but then also my efforts were a bit scattered (launching a membership, actively promoting my email list, starting a podcast…). I guess this is typical “shiny object syndrome”.
• Because I wanted to make progress in every direction, I started the month off working in the evenings and not unplugging like I normally advocate doing!
• Early in January I also got a bit discouraged that my efforts weren’t paying off. Combined with the rhythm I was in, I was a bit anxious. But I didn’t let that slow me down: I kept showing up and progressively streamlined things.

Progress

• Even though things did feel a bit scattered, I’m proud of myself for showing up in a big way and actually acting upon ideas and trying things rather than doing things and wondering about the “what ifs”.
• I started embodying the identity of a coach and entrepreneur. I had an affirmation related to this that I wrote every morning and I asked myself what £100K Jessica would do regularly during my morning journaling sessions.
• My podcast launch went well! Several people (including some unexpected ones) told me they enjoyed listening to it.
• Towards the end of the month, I streamlined my priorities and chose what to focus on for each quarter of the year, which gave me a lot more clarity. For quarter one, I’m focusing on booking 1:1 coaching clients and promoting myself via Instagram. I’m still maintaining the weekly baseline of one email to my subscribers (on Mondays), one podcast episode (on Wednesdays) and one blog post (on Fridays). But where I want to show up bravely and experiment with new strategies is Instagram + directly reaching out to potential coaching clients.

Why I’m feeling optimistic about February

• My podcast giveaways generated some interest and I’m excited to be coaching the winner of the first giveaway (her session’s already booked into my calendar).
• I’ve had one person tell me she wants to get coached by me, so we’re going through the onboarding process. Several people have said that it might be something they’re interested in in the future.
• I believe the podcast + my Instagram Stories are a good way of warming my ideal clients to me.
• I’m increasing my coaching prices at midnight between the 14th and the 15th of February, from $500 USD (or three payments of $180) to $700 USD (or three payments of $250). I’m confident (most of the time anyway!) that this will encourage people who are interested, but potentially procrastinating on their potential, to sign up for coaching and secure the lower price. If that’s you, either pop me a DM on Instagram, email me at jessica@jessicagoodenough.com or fill in the form at the bottom of this page. You don’t need to say anything fancy, just something along the lines of “I’m interested in getting coached” to lock in the lower price before the deadline passes.

Back to you

How did January go for you? Did you like this new blog post format? What are your feelings going into February? Tell me in the comments or reach out on Instagram! 💖