Hey, friends! I’m loving these monthly recaps! If you’re new here, this is where I share a vulnerable and transparent behind-the-scenes of my business and how it’s operating. The hope is that this can be helpful for YOU – to know that you’re not alone when entrepreneurship gets hard, you can do anything you set your mind to, and sometimes the grass isn’t always greener on the other side 😉

Also, what better way to be held accountable than to publicly declare what my hopes and dreams are over here?! 😅

🛑 BUT BEFORE WE GET STARTED 🛑

If you are somebody who struggles with imposter syndrome, crippling comparison that leads to stagnance, or just generally find it unhelpful seeing other people’s raw financial information, you have my full permission to X out of this tab immediately.

Your mental health and your confidence is of the utmost importance to me.

THAT BEING SAID…

If you do choose to read on, let’s give some context to these numbers, shall we?

• My husband’s salary pays almost all of our bills.
• The owner’s draws that I take (if I take them) go straight to paying off debt, saving up for a vacation or a savings goal, or put to “fun money” purchases.
• I was the sole income provider for our family for six years, and put my husband through dental school. Our financial picture (and my business!) looked drastically different when it was my responsibility to make enough to pay our bills, and we were not paying down debt or earmarking money for fun purchases.
• I have two kids that I homeschool, and because our family has made that decision, the amount of time that I am able to dedicate to my business has gone down drastically. (You’ll see this in the “Hours Worked” section.) I have spent the last 4.5 years growing my team, investing in them as members of my company and shaping their careers and I would not be able to sustain my personal life choices without them. Paying their paychecks is my greatest joy, and they are worth every penny 🤟

So when you read through the numbers below, please keep these contextual points in mind! My situation may look different than yours (heck–it looks wildly different than it did 3 years ago), so if comparison IS helpful for you, compare wisely 🙂

How does my business make money?

We are an accounting firm that provides tax and bookkeeping help for creative small business owners. We primarily work with online businesses – like brand & web designers, copywriters, VAs, OBMs, tech specialists, etc. 

We offer several different packages for tax strategy and preparation, DFY bookkeeping, a DWY bookkeeping membership and (occasionally) Gusto payroll setups for our current clients.

Here’s the breakdown:

September 2024 Income: $14,747

Bookkeeping	$13,800
Membership	$900
Template Sale	$47
Total	$14,747

YTD Income

January	$18,850
February	$16,454
March	$17,950
April	$14,795
May	$16,297
June	$15,347
July	$16,535
August	$15,850
September	$14,747
Total	$132,078

Expenses

Brand Designer: $2,000

Copywriter: $3,250

Gifts: $0

Insurance: $139

Interest Expense: $47

Lead & Staff Bookkeepers: $6,790

Legal & Professional: $200

Office Supplies: $5

Payroll Tax Expense: $345

Software Subscriptions (see breakdown below): $572

Speaking Coach: $1,875

Stripe Fees: $443

Training & Education: $940

Travel: $523

VA: $800

Total: $17,929

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Loss: -$3,182

Owner’s Draws: $0

(Whew – another loss this month! I paid the last payment for our website copywriter, and profit should be increasing slightly next month and even more the next month after I’ve finished paying my speaking coach! I am intentionally not taking Owner’s Draws until revenue increases. We’re making adjustments on the home front, cutting expenses where we can, and I’ve intentionally saved cash for this point in my business to be able to make these investments. It’s all about planning!)

Month Overall:

Professional

• New clients signed: 0
• Discovery Calls: 1
• Kick-Off Calls: 0
• Premium Client Quarterly Calls: 0
• OUR NEW CPA OFFICIALLY ACCEPTED OUR JOB OFFER!! So pumped to welcome Taylor Riggs to the Madison Dearly team!
• I started brainstorming a new system for tax / bookkeeping inquiries! Now that we’re adding tax services, I really wanted to clarify how new potential clients are inquiring with us, learning about both sets of services, and how the automations and workflows shake out for all of it. (I spent 4 uninterrupted hours on a Saturday doing this on our new back deck and lemme tell ya… HEAVEN. I was nerding out and feeling so content with this fun CEO work!)
• I had my Kick-Off Call with the Ashlyn Writes team and my goodness, these gals are the real deal. I’ve worked with their team as a bookkeeping client for close to 4 years now, and getting to be on the client end of their services has been so fun!

Personal

• Homeschool Things
  • We took a trip to Panama City Beach, FL and had SO much fun learning about dolphins and fish! We even met two other homeschool families while we were there! (We subsequently found out that traveling the week after Labor Day is a thing that a lot of homeschool families do! Did you know this?!)
  • Other than heading to the beach, we’ve been slowly working through the kids’ Language Arts, Writing and Math workbooks. Sadie is reading short sentences (🤯), and Nolan is really starting to identify A, B, C and D.
  • Slow mornings consisting of puzzles while I drink my coffee have become my new favorite homeschool “treat”.
  • Weekly library trips are a MUST, and we’re starting to get to know the children’s librarian! She is so sweet every time the kids finish one of her scavenger hunts and she hands them a sticker and a bookmark 🥹
  • We enrolled Sadie in a homeschool art class and she has been loving it! The teacher taught in public school for 9 years before she was laid off due to budget cuts (boo!), and now she has a class just for homeschool kids! We’ve loved feeling more connected to other like-minded families in our area. (And I’m enjoying time with just me and Nolan when we walk to the library during the hour Sadie is in class!)
  • We signed up for a membership to the Minnesota Arboretum and lemme tell ya… the Arb in the fall cannot be beat! I can’t wait for the leaves to change colors so we can just frolic around in nature like a bunch of woodland fairies.
  • Sadie also started nature school with a new homeschool buddy of hers! We signed up so they could be together and she loves it! They walked around the local nature center and caught bugs, learned about specific types of plants and animals and had a snack, too! Adorable.
  • On one of our Thursday Family Frolic Days™, Dale and I took the kids to the zoo to see the new baby tigers and MY-OH-MY they are so cuuuuuute!
• Books 📚
  • The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • It’s official: I’m obsessed with Clare Pooley and she is truly one of the most underrated authors right now. Why are more people not talking about how wonderful and sunshine-y her books are?! I absolutely adored this book. Clare has a way of making you feel like everyone is a potential friend and we can all be looking out for each other by acknowledging the truth of our vulnerabilities and desires for our lives.
    • Here is the book description!
  • Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • I actually started reading Just for the Summer while on our beach vacation and then I realized that it’s the 3rd in a series! I promptly started listening to the Part of Your World audiobook and WOW, it was incredible!! The narrators for Daniel and Alexis were extremely talented and gave this book that “can’t put down” feeling. I loved how Abby took a situation that our minds tell us will just never happen, but it ends up happening and you’re just like ahhhhhhh they love each other wahhhhh
    • Also it’s set in Minnesota, which is so cute and fun because that’s where we live! I love seeing this state that we’ve called home for the past three years represented so beautifully. It really does have so much charm, and the summers can’t be beat.
    • Here is the book description!
  • Currently reading: Hot Hex Boyfriend by Carly Bloom (an adorable witchy rom-com that’s perfect for October!)
    • Here is the book description!
• Pilates classes taken: 5 💪

Hours Worked

Administrative: .75 hours

• Responding to emails

CEO: 8.5 hours

• Chat with Staff Bookkeeper about offering budgeting services
• Running Madison Dearly payroll
• Networking
• Mastermind group coaching call
• Whiteboard tax systems, creating new workflows in Dubsado

Marketing: 7 hours

• Content creation
• Homework for speaking coach
• Kick-off call with website copywriter
• Reviewing Brand Messaging Guide from website copywriter
• Write August 2024 Income Report blog post

Other: .5 hours

• Running client payroll and updating pay for a team member

Sales: .5 hours

• Discovery call for new potential tax client

Total: 17.25 hours

Next Month Goals (October)

• Speak at the Showit Spark Conference
• Onboard our new CPA
• Finish mapping out the new inquiry ➡️ onboarding process and add the workflow to Dubsado
• Market the heck outta those new tax service offerings!!

Software & Tools

• Later.com: for scheduling content
• Gusto: THE ONLY payroll software I recommend for running payroll
• Notion: for organizing education notes (read: preventing my courses from turning into a course graveyard)
• Zoom: for sales calls, kick-off calls, team calls and quarterly bookkeeping meetings with Premium clients
• Zapier: for automated task management
• Loom: for sending a quick video / screen recording message to cut down on unnecessary meetings 😀
• Slack: an instant messaging software for quick team communication and client work management
• Slack: for the membership students to ask questions and engage with my team
• Adobe: for signing / editing documents
• Xero: THE BEST ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE OF ALL TIME
• VidIQ: I use this for YouTube research and education. It helps me evaluate data based on my channel and my competitors.
• Intuit: This is ONE QuickBooks subscription that I pay for for our only non-profit client and it’s basically a donation to his business. Every time I see this expense I think about moving that client to Xero…
• ClickUp: project management software to keep track of the status of monthly client projects
• Dubsado: our Client Relationship Management (CRM) system, which we use to track leads, send proposals and contracts and automate recurring emails
• ManyChat: automating Instagram engagement to increase sign-ups for lead magnets, etc.
• Flodesk: our email marketing software
• 1Password: our hub for storing all sensitive client information
• ChatGPT: the holy grail for all sorts of email writing, content writing, brainstorming, naming new service offerings… P.S. the paid version is WORTH IT and so much better than the free version 👍