The first quarter of the year is always nerve wracking. My year always begins with goals and plans heading in one direction, just for me to become distracted. I often change my priorities, but not because I’m flighty, but because I am a quick decision-maker when I believe something is better for me in a moment.
Well, that was the case for me this quarter, but it happened to be fairly successful and I’m so excited for what April, May, and June have in store. Some of this quarter’s highlights include:
As a recap, last quarter’s goals for January – March included a focus on my digital product course completion, Etsy sales, and launching B Chic Collective. My results are always a mixed bag of things but I’m proud nonetheless. Let’s take a looksie why don’t we?
Etsy: $264 Udemy: $14.34 Contract: $350 B Chic Collective Shop: $27
Honestly I’m not mad at a total of $655 when I spent so much time spinning my wheels on new ideas. I’ll get into that a bit more, soon. For much of 2022 and the start of 2023, I planned new things but didn’t actually launch. I foresee that changing in the coming quarters. I’m at least at a point where I notice when I’m procrastinating and pushing myself to take action even when I don’t feel ready.
A big thing that has changed my business life is my mindset. I didn’t realize how trash my money mindset was until I found some real estate investing business coaches. I now follow a coach who posts affirmations in her public Facebook group every morning. I got in the habit of writing them daily and watching her live videos where she talks about overcoming fear, reminding myself of my worth (women are so bad at this), and so much more. There are at least two monthly calls but when she feels like it, she goes live in the Facebook group at additional times.
Having this “re-up” on positive self talk really pushes me to take risks and make things happen. Needless to say, we’re going to see the fruits of my mindset labor really take off next quarter. With so much of my mindset work focused on money, I’ve literally shifted my energy and found myself on random days earning money from things easily. It’s been magical.
I have to say that I didn’t put much marketing into any of my revenue streams that actually earned me money this quarter. I did substantially grow my TikTok to nearly 700 followers (I started from 0 on November 17th) and that experience has been invaluable. However, it was not a big money maker for me. I can only assume that my one budget planner sale was thanks to TikTok but it wasn’t directly trackable since I haven’t earned the coveted “link in bio”.
Getting back on the board with Udemy was a pleasant surprise, though. In preparing my content for the B Chic Collective membership launch, I updated my course on Udemy which re-published it and that earned me the two organic sales. I’ll take that win!!
Lastly, the contract project I had came to me organically after the client found my work online. I was so happy about that, but wondered how I could replicate that success. My focus is not here, but I did think about my goals for creating predefined projects to sell on sites like Fiverr and Upwork. We’ll see. I’m not sold on that idea just yet.
With success and failures, there always comes a healthy amount of wishful thinking for the future. I thought carefully about these goals while keeping in mind the realities of my life outside of business. With this in mind, I knew to take a more conservative approach while also focusing on “needle moving activities” that can bring me more work and income.