I was very close to reaching my income goals for the month, which makes me both excited and nervous for May, but we’ll get into all the gory details shortly. April was a bit of a weird month, but I feel like I could say that truthfully every month. The winter dragged on so long where I live — we probably got as much, if not more, snow in April than the rest of the winter combined. It was a month of resetting expectations and, as always full of ups and downs. So let’s get into it.
What did I do?
Life
We received tax returns (which, as someone who is self-employed, is a comment on how little I made last year). So I treated myself to buying new desks and a chair. I decided to get two separate desks, rather than an L-shaped desk for increased flexibility in layout. Unfortunately, at the end of the month, I received notice that the side desk that I wanted is back-ordered until September. If I find one that I like as much or better, I may get it and cancel the current order, but I’m not going to be hasty about that. I can continue to use a TV tray for the time being.
Spring is not particularly fun as someone with arthritis. The cool dampness and shifts in weather patterns (maybe the barometric pressure?) do not work well with my hands. I do have compression gloves, but those are not particularly helpful for trying to type. The compression just makes it harder to type when placed on top of stiff hands. So the day that I was planning on finishing up that article I ended up going and doing something else that didn't require as much typing, especially on my mechanical keyboard. What I didn't think of at the time, but I am doing now, is dictating. I don't love it because it's not as fast as just typing because I have to interrupt the dictation to start a new paragraph or correct random errors. (And yes, I am a fairly fast typer, especially if I know what I want to say.) However, it does help me avoid typing so much on stiff fingers. I am planning on getting a different keyboard that doesn't have as much key travel, so I don’t have to press as hard, because I think that will help a lot but for now, I make do.
Private Practice: samanthaholmgren.ca/coaching
Since the group coaching push didn’t work in Q1, I spent a good amount of time in April considering my options. I worked on a new foundation article for my website but wasn’t able to complete it. I had to delay working on it one week because of the aforementioned stiff fingers and have had difficulty getting back into it. However, I was able to write a quick article about balance. It came out of a weekly newsletter and because it was quite long (and I had a sudden brain wave that I felt was quite brilliant) I just turned it into an article for the website.
Biz&Life
I have a bunch of different thoughts swirling around my head about business, so I expect I'll be writing a lot more frequently for the next little while. I wanted to get the update done first before I start delving into all of those ideas. So stay tuned!
Gigs
Things have been very slow at the marketing gig. I have been sort of out of the rotation to get new clients through them for a while now. So the hours have been slowly dwindling. At least that slowdown is matching up with the editing gig hours increasing. It doesn't quite match but it's helpful for sure. To recap, I have a marketing agency gig, an editing gig, 2 dietitian contracts, mental health talks, and my private practice. Below you will see the income reports to see how the income breaks down.
Income Report
What am I working on? What’s Next?
Up until April, I was able to keep pace with my targets. Pretty aggressive targets, considering that I'm increasing them by $500 every two months this year. I didn't set these targets based on any research on what I anticipate making or anything like that but I want to get to at least 5K per month, preferably sooner rather than later. So I felt like this target was reasonable enough while still being aggressive enough to be aspirational. But even though I know that I just made up these targets, it was still really disappointing to fall $50 shy in April.
As I mentioned in the discussion above about the gigs that I have you can see that the marketing slice of the bar has shrunk and the Studiosity (editing) slice has gotten bigger. But I didn't cross the $1500 line like I wanted to. The contract dietitian piece is also a good chunk, which I love to see. That typically wasn't the case last year so I like seeing that part increase because I like being a dietitian. I just hope that at some point this year we start to see another colour appearing on this chart for my private practice.
Private Practice
For the course, I have come to a decision that I am going to put it up for pre-sale soon. I'll price it starting pretty low for what it will ultimately be worth, currently thinking about $37, and after each module is released the sale price will increase, currently thinking about $20 each time. I think this would be a great way to get things out the door sooner rather than later and also start to get feedback sooner rather than later. And it will be fair to the people who buy sooner because from their perspective, how do they know that I will finish it at all? But the investment of $37 is quite low for something that will sell for $197 (or maybe even more) eventually. Parallel to the course, I'm planning on doing weekly office hours that will be a subscription rate to join (in addition to the course) that but I'm thinking that I would allow anyone who joins in the pre-sale process to just get lifetime access to the office hours (defining lifetime access as ‘for as long as the office hours exist’.) I haven't fully finalized the plans around this but I'm feeling pretty confident that this is where I'm gonna go next, so I thought I'd share and let you in on that behind-the-scenes thought process, especially if I do change my mind, you'll get to see that too.
Biz&Life
I have a lot of ideas that are very nebulous right now. This tells me I need to do a lot more journalling and I need to write some more entrepreneurial/general business ideas type articles for this venue as well. So as I said before I am planning on writing more than just updates in the next little while.
Side Projects
I was very tempted to buy some PLR content. Courses, articles and social media content that have been created by a company for other companies to use with or without repurposing or editing. I had a daydream so to speak about buying it and using it to revive a Foundations for the Good Life. And even though I decided against doing it, I am still extremely tempted to do it anyway. Instead, I am going to focus my energies on actually starting to put my course for my private practice out into the world and know that I can always come back to this in the future.
Gigs
I'm feeling right now a lot of the limitations of gig work. Particularly being dependent on someone else's business to give me work. In these times it's tempting to regret my decision to quit my full-time job but I feel that mostly when I'm not super busy with gate work but I'm also not putting enough of that freed-up time into moving my actual business forward. But this is one of those topics that I feel like I have quite a bit to say and the need to unpack it in a full article.
Life
May is Mother's Day and my birthday and springtime, but I don't have any big plans. Try to enjoy the spring weather, whenever that comes, before the insects start to fly, plant some flowers, and hopefully pick up some more momentum.
Final Thoughts
I feel optimistic about May, even as I worry about the income goal going up to $2000. It was my best income month last year, but I also had a bunch of training that I was able to power through for the marketing gig which helped me get to that income.
Until next week,
-Samantha 💜
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