Behind the scenes of my first year of business PLUS a baby. I’m sharing all the lessons, including what worked and what didn’t work in my first year as a working mum…

 

 

Things You’ll Learn in this Episode of Doing it Online:

• A sneak peak into the behind the scenes (the stats, the figures, the nitty gritty) of what happened from my first year of business PLUS baby
• I’m reflecting on what worked and what didn’t work in my first year as a working mum
• The juicy $$$ – my revenue and my expenses for the past 12 months
• Get access to our eCourse MBA Workshop for FREE (usually $97)

I’m going to pull back the curtain and get a little personal…

So I’m sharing behind the scenes (the stats, the figures, the nitty gritty) of what happened to my business after I had a baby! My biggest lessons from my first year of business PLUS baby. I know everyone loves to know all the juicy details…you’re only human after all.

I kinda can’t believe it, my little man, my little nugget… is a whole one year old. 

WHAT?

How did this happen?

It’s been both the longest and shortest year of my life. And more than half of it has been in lockdown – thanks COVID. 

It’s been such a year of ups and downs personally, and in my business. 

But even with the homeschooling – or trying to “help” homeschool – my two step kids…

And the lockdowns…

And the newborn who very quickly became a very fast moving little dribble monster who wanted to get into ALL of the things…

Despite ALL of that.

I actually had one of my best years in business EVER – financially, client results wise, and just my own personal enjoyment of the business. 

So I wanted to break it all down for you…show you exactly what that all looked like.

What worked, what didn’t, and all the nitty gritty numbers of my first year as a working mum.

AND my most profitable year in business. 

So if you’re one of those people who (like me) LOVES to get a bit of a Big Brother style behind the scenes look into someone’s business, then pour yourself something fancy because this episode is for you!

 

What WORKED in my first year as business PLUS baby…

So first of all, I need to caveat this whole thing off by saying my bub was and still is a champion sleeper…so I had more spare time than I thought I would – that was pure luck and I’m so, so grateful for it.

Now I had actually planned and set up my business assuming the worst…that’s me…a hope for the best, plan for the worst kinda gal.

So I had set things up so I pretty much didn’t have to do any work for the first 6 months if I didn’t want to. I paired everything way back. All my sales and marketing ran on autopilot. I had batched a whole tonne of emails and videos, and I had a small team to help keep the rest turning over. 

But, as I said, my little one was an amazing sleeper, so I was back tinkering away after less than a month (I get bored easily and don’t do well sitting around twiddling my thumbs!)

Which brings me to the first thing that worked this year. 

#1 – I created 2 new offers: 

One high ticket ($5,000) and one low ticket ($27). 

I never considered a high-ticket offer before because I’m not about the all-singing-all-dancing launches (it’s a no to sales calls from me)…I like my offers funnel-friendly. 

But now I have discovered this mind-blowing thing called an application funnel that lets you sell high ticket offers, completely automated and without a sales call! This certainly blew up a whole lot of limiting beliefs I had around what you could and couldn’t sell on autopilot. Absolute game-changer! 

And on the flip side, I also launched a low ticket offer for $27!

Not only do they run on autopilot…they work well together to build a nice little ecosystem alongside my core offer the $5KFF By introducing these two new offers that feed into each other and my core offer

#2 – Putting my ads on autopilot 

I had a system set up (a funnel for FB ads) where you attract a cold audience and take them through a warm up sequence on Facebook and then invite them to webinars.

I was spending around $250-300 a day.

Sure it could’ve been tweaked and worked even better…but it was that little engine running behind the scenes, ticking things over and making reliable sales each week – keeping my business rolling.

#3 – Investing in my dream team

When I was ready to ramp back up, to start actively creating and take a step back and keep growing – then it was time to put the team piece back into place (otherwise everything would’ve come to a grinding halt). 

So when I went on maternity leave my team consisted of a VA, a friend (who’s a blogger) came in to take over my Instagram, and another friend to do my monthly Facebook calls.

And then when I was ready, it was time to build my dream team…a team of unicorns. And now I have 2 amazing VA’s looking after customer service, an OBM for project management and tech set up, and someone to do all of the content (from socials to emails) and another amazing copywriter who takes care of our launches. Add in a podcast editor and a bookkeeper and the team has scaled up really quickly – with awesome potential to get us where we need to go!

#4 –  Focusing on what mattered ONLY

Being forced to focus on what mattered and what mattered only because when you’re trying to do 6-9 months of work in advance, and you don’t know how much…if any time you’ll have on the other side, it makes you pretty ninja at cutting through the crap… and just getting down to what works.

Before the team came onboard….I did the bare minimum content, we literally posted quotes 4 x a week for months! I re-ran mini email promos, I got extra help as I needed it, so I could just focus on two things… revenue generating activities AND being there for my clients. 

What DIDN’T WORK in my first year of business PLUS baby…

Not everything is entirely rosy…and some things didn’t work…

#1 – I held onto some team members 

Despite an inkling I had…I wanted to save myself the inconvenience of letting go of a team member just before I went on maternity leave…hoping that it would work itself out.

And then lo and behold 2 weeks into my maternity leave, said team member pulled the pin.  

So I ignored the gut feeling I had because I didn’t want to do the inconvenient thing – even though it was the right thing. Lesson learnt. 

#2 – I tried to run a live launch just as we got locked back down again, and had to kind of phone it in

So things definitely didn’t go to plan here. The lockdown meant that the plans we had for a big launch were scaled back and we got 50% of our goal by doing about 15% of the effort. This has taught me that it’s ok to be flexible with your plans and that your goals will shift. 

#3 – I didn’t look after me… 

The biggest thing that didn’t work this year was that I didn’t look after myself enough. As a family we’ve managed to keep it together pretty well considering all the things the last year has thrown at us…but coming out of having a heavy baby, a c-section and working from weird places around the house (hello bed-office!) means I have bad back pain. 

I definitely need to take better care of myself!

The juicy $$$ in my first year of business PLUS baby…

And now, for the part you’ve been waiting for.. the numbers in my first year being a working mum. 

These are based on the Australian financial year (July 1 2019 – end of June 2020) – just because I have these in more detail (thanks to my lovely book keeper). 

Now for a little bit of context…my revenue for the 2018 financial year was just over 700K, then 2019 it was $321K (that was the year I shut everything down and rebuilt from scratch). 

And this year, with Covid, a baby, working really irregular hours, and no big launches at all…it was $566K (and if it was actually the proper year from his birthday it would actually be just shy of $650K).

How does that all break down in terms of my revenue…

• $250K – 5KFF
• $150K  – eCourse Empire – which launched halfway through the year 
• $50K – from my Mini but Mighty offer (which only started in MAY)

And the rest is dribs and drabs from programs I no longer offer and from affiliates as well. 

And breaking it down expenses wise…

• I am my biggest expense, and I pay myself a salary of $140K
• Marketing spend of $102K
• Team expenses were $57K
• Coaching + education I spent almost $40K
• Saas (software and tools) I spent $37K 
• Bank and paypal and international transaction fees… almost $30K…that one stunned me a bit
• Donations $5K… definitely making sure that is more this year!

And then profit for the year (what was left)… was $115K 

Now I’m not a financial planner, but someone much smarter than me once said a good aim for how much it should cost to run this style of business is 1/3 operating expenses, 1/3 marketing and 1/3 you take home (after accounting for tax and fees etc of course).

So there it is, in a nutshell, my first year as a mumpreneur (god I hate that word)

But seriously this year was such a roller coaster, and I count my lucky stars every single day that I was able to set up my business how I did before I had my baby, because I didn’t miss out on a single second this year, I got to be here and present, AND still grow my business AND still help create amazing results for my clients. 

I’m seriously so lucky. I mean I worked damn hard to get to this place, but I am so grateful I am here. 

And anyway that was my little big brother style peek into my business, I hope it was helpful to you. 

I hope it gave you more of a realistic view of what a growing online course business looks like and also that it gave you clarity or inspiration for making yours even better. 

And if you liked this episode of Doing it Online please subscribe, share, review (I’ll even gift you our 5-Day $97 eCourse MBA Workshop… for FREE at katesbonus.com) – get the word out there!