I’m pulling the curtain back on my small business!
In February 2017, I decided to start sharing my monthly business reports. In these reports, I discuss the month’s positives and negatives as well as progress I made towards my 2017 goals. I also give a snapshot of my earnings.
May continued to be a purposeful slowdown period for my business. I focused on getting everything ready for the new baby and took some time off. Still, May ended up being a more profitable month than April.
Here’s what happened in May.
Positives
- Continued low stress/routine work
I have a few clients that I’ve worked with for years and I continued working on their projects through May. This work is usually low stress and doesn’t take a lot of time so it was perfect for my slowdown period.
- Prepared for maternity leave
I met with a local client to discuss my leave and sent off documents detailing my maternity leave to other clients. I wanted to make sure I had this done in advance because Norah came almost three weeks earlier than her due date. Unfortunately, being self-employed means that I will not be receiving any benefits or pay during my leave, but it also gives me the opportunity to choose how much time I want off and come back when I’m ready.
Negatives
- Less income coming in
I will continue to bring in less income until September when Norah starts preschool and I establish a routine with my son. I don’t have the time or energy to hustle for more business right now.
- End of nap time work session
Norah started phasing out naps in February and has completely stopped taking them at this point. This has been a bit of an adjustment because I did at least 2 hours of quality work during her naps each day. My schedule will continue to shift and evolve as my son is born in late June/early July and Norah enters preschool in August. Fortunately, I mostly roll with the punches and I’m motivated to find ways to balance everything and make it work.
- Not enough time to work on EBA
I’m still working on the Elite Blog Academy course, but unfortuntely with the lack of naps and general pregnancy exhaustion I haven’t had much time to do anything towards this personal goal. I hope to have more energy and time to work on this in the last half of the year.
Progress towards business goals
1) Increase my income by $10,000
I don’t want to say this goal is impossible for this year, but it will be difficult. I have a lot of ground to make up from my lost clients before I will be at the “increasing income” level. Right now I’m trying to get back to where I was in January.
2) Get another local client
This goal is on pause until September.
3) Launch The Sturm Agency website
Hopefully, we’ll get something put together by late summer/early Fall.
4) Launch my freelancer idea
I have not made any progress on this goal yet.
5) Sponsor something in the community
This goal is on hold until 2018.
Income Snapshot
This income came from a mixture of social media management, virtual assistant work, one-off organization projects, and content writing.
I may eventually share the actual numbers associated with my income, but for now I’m not comfortable doing that. I will be sharing this income snapshot to show a trend of my income throughout the year.
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