March Simple Business Bundle

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March Simple Business Bundle

Hey! Recently Ashlee invited me to be a part of the March Simple Business Bundle–after learning a bit more about it, I was really excited!

What it is:

A super-awesome bundle of small business products sold at a discount–with 10% of the proceeds going to support business training for women in Africa!

What it costs:

Just $29–for $177.99 worth of small business products!

What’s included:

Erin Flynn – Create a WordPress Site for Your Creative Business Udemy Course - $97 Value –  A course designed for creative entrepreneurs to help them start their website without a lot of technical stuff, there’s a list of awesome resources, some branding & content help, all with short videos so you don’t get overwhelmed!  Make your site pretty & great for business, without a ton of headaches!

Kara-Anne Cheng @ The Petite Co –  The Legacy Planners - $16 Value –  These planners are designed to be a command center for your life, business & blog.   Includes dozens of pages and planners for blogging, finances, shopping & chores, goals tracker, vacation planner and MORE! Create an awesome legacy in your business & your life with help from Kara-Anne’s planners & The Legacy Mindset™.

Deb Lange -  Embody Your Vision – $27 Value –  A powerful guided Mp3 & ebook to learn to bring your vision for your ideal life into reality now.  This is not hoping to manifest something.  This is teaching your whole body to experience what you want to create, as if you had it now.

Ashley @ Dinosaur Stew Designs – Custom Lilac Social Media Buttons and Digital Papers - $8 value – Ashley is a fantastic graphic & web designer! (She helped me with my first couple of sites when I first started out in business!)  She’s created some custom social media icons and digital papers with a spring feel!  Great for gaining more social media followers, add the icons to your site & use the digital papers to create blog graphics to share on Facebook & Pinterest!

Tamara @ Your Pretty Pages - Income Boost Pretty Pack – $27 Value –  10 Pages Packed with instructions, strategies and tips to put the pages to work in your business.  Organize things like Affiliates, promotions & launches, guest blogging, etc.  Keeping things organized (especially in a pretty way) allows you to be more creative, less stressed and create more business for yourself in 2014!

Ashlee Thurlow – Find Your Purpose, Change Your World ebook – $2.99 value – This book teaches you to reconnect with your passions & purpose and change the world while doing it.  You can apply this to your business or job and includes plenty of exercises to help you when you feel stuck!  Also includes many stories of inspiring women who own businesses and do awesome things around the world!

Sound cool? It is! Get it now for just $29!

B-School – Pre-launch thoughts

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B-School 2014 - Pre-launch thoughts // erineflynn.com

So, I’m doing Marie Forleo’s B-School again this year. Last year I had access to the materials, but not the community, so this year I wanted access to everything. I figured I’d maybe blog every week or two about how I’m following along and my thoughts. Maybe that way I’ll actually make the time to do it, unlike last year when I drug it on forever.

And wow! The B-School community is HUGE.

And it’s really overwhelming.

But my inbox is blowing up with inquiries!

So I’m trying to use the community strategically, and not just get lost in it for hours and hours–which is easy to do. There’s a HUGE Facebook group, a ton of subgroups, LinkedIn, etc. etc.

Every time I login to Facebook I have at least 20 notifications. And I’m logging in several times a day! And yes, I turned notifications off for the groups, I just get them when people are talking to me or replying to something I replied to. It’s insane.

And maybe I just don’t get it, but there are people posting all the time about things that aren’t related to business at all. I’ve seen posts about all sorts of crazy things that I won’t mention as not to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I really just don’t get the completely random topics in these groups.

So my strategy is going to be to check Facebook 3x a day, and try to be helpful, make connections with people who offer complimentary services, and not get lost in a rabbit hole of craziness that doesn’t lead to anything. I mean, it’s fun to play around all day and talk to people, but I gotta work!

Speaking of work, I’ve been working like crazy lately. Which is great, but I’m even dreaming about work, and that’s never good no matter how much you like your job. This round through B-School I’m working on re-structuring my business in a way that helps me make money more passively. I know I’ve been talking about that for a while, but I’m really making the effort to transition now. Like, really, really.

Part of that means really focusing less on selling designs (which I’ve done very few of recently anyhow) and stepping up on courses, coding, consultations, website maintenance, and webinars.

Yup, I’m gonna be offering webinars! So many people who have taken my classes email me and want to know more, so I figure this is a great way to do group question sessions, classes, and eventually a more interactive course with a small group. If you have a webinar or class topic request, feel free to let me know in the comments!

I’m excited for this round of B-School and this next transition in my business that will hopefully allow me a little more freedom! I can tell you right now that my web design packages will be getting another price bump after B-School, and it may be pretty close to your last chance to get a website designed by me, so (here’s the sales pitch!) hop on over to my contact page and book your website or blog design!

Are you taking B-School? Are you as overwhelmed by the community as I am?

Income Report – February

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Income Report - February 2014 // erineflynn.com
February 2014 Income Report // erineflynn.com

Well, at least it’s not negative this month, right?

Truth be told, I actually have a few checks sitting around waiting for me to drive them to the bank because I’m lame and don’t have a phone with which I can deposit them–have you seen that? I know it’s not really new anymore, but man, how nice would it be to just snap a photo of a check and deposit it in a bank account? But nope, my Nokia flip phone can barely receive text messages. Oh well.

February Income Report

  • Design Work: $0.00
  • Maintenance Work: $2,225.00
  • Affiliate and Advertising Sales: $0.00
  • E-course Sales: $111.56

Total: $2336.56 (before expenses)

What these things mean

Design Work: Anything that involves me designing something. A website, header, graphics of any kind, etc.

Maintenance work: Hosting, coding, plugin installations, etc. I lumped these all together because I often do coding/website tweaks as part of clients’ monthly maintenance packages. I will possibly break this down further in the future to distinguish between new coding projects and actual maintenance work, but for 2013 they’re all lumped together in my accounting software.

Affiliate & Advertising Sales: Affiliate programs I’m a part of (Studio Press, BlueHost, etc.), Google Adsense, and ads I sell on this blog. I only count this as income AFTER it is deposited in my bank account. I don’t do a ton of affiliate marketing or ads, so sometimes my earnings sit in the program for months before I ever get them. Any earnings listed here are likely an accumulation of several months’ earnings finally being deposited in my bank account.

E-Course sales: Sales of my e-course, of course. Most customers have purchased at a discount. I receive payment approximately two months after the sales occur. For example, in February I received payment for my December course sales.

February Expense Report

  • Advertising: $0.00
  • Domains/Hosting: $132.04
  • Licenses: $589.76 (includes TurboTax license this month)
  • Paypal Fees: $33.23
  • Training: $0.00
  • Office expense: $36.00

Total: $791.03

What these things mean

Advertising: Any ads I purchase, to promote my business, blog, and/or specific products or services.

Domains/Hosting: Any new domains, hosting plans, or renewals. I typically pay for an entire year, not month-to-month, so some months this may be non-existent and others it may be crazy.

Licenses: Plugins, fonts, software, or any other type of licenses for my business or a client websites.

Paypal fees: This one is pretty obvious, don’t you think?

Training: Courses or books to improve my mad skillz and my business.

Office expense: Anything I need for my office; furniture, paper, etc.

February 2014 total profit: $1,545.53 (before taxes)

Notes: Since I had a negative month last month, my profit should probably be counted as $925.91 instead.

As I mentioned before, I’ve got a few checks here that need depositing, these total $1,150, so a decent chunk of cash. I’m just incredibly lazy and getting to the bank once a month is about as good as it gets. These payments will show up on my March income.

Also, have you noticed I have yet to make any money from design this year? Lately all my income is coming from maintenance and coding.

How did you do in February?

March 2014 Goals

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March 2014 Goals // erineflynn.com

Oh gosh, how is it the end of February already? I’m not ready for March, except that I hope the weather gets a bit warmer!

Alright, so how did I do on my February goals? I had quite a few…

  • Create my new e-course (launch in early March) - Done! And launched!
  • Average at least 200 page views a day on my blog – Done! According to Google Analytics I actually averaged 255 page views per day-I’m happy with that!
  • Follow-up better with potential clients – Nope! I didn’t need to, I’ve been swamped with work!
  • Improve my health – Done! I’m feeling much better! I’m eating fewer carbs and working out more. There’s still room for improvement, but I’m getting there.
  • Read two books – Nope! I only got through The Four Hour Workweek–you can see my review here!

I think that’s pretty good! The only thing I really failed on was reading two books, because following up with potential clients would have given me more work than I could handle! As it was, I had as many as six clients in a week. They weren’t all design/development clients–thankfully, or I would have gone completely nuts–but I had a lot of larger projects popping up including malware removal that really took up a lot of time and brain power.

March Goals

  • Start B-School – I’m taking B-School this year! I actually took it last year with some friends, but since we split the course I didn’t have the login or community access–this year I do! The community is already crazy with questions and promotions and it’s all very overwhelming… but I’m excited!
  • Read Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World* – since I meant to read it in February and just flail around on social media
  • Have a fun 28th birthday – That’s right, I’m going to be 28 this year. Ugh.

That’s it! I know from last year that B-School is pretty intense, so I don’t feel like I need to add anything to that!

What are your March goals?

*This is an  Amazon associate link. If you click it and then make a purchase I get a small percentage of the sale price–and would really appreciate it! Thanks!

The 4-Hour Workweek Review

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The 4-Hour Workweek Review

Wow, I seriously need a haircut, and what’s going on with my eyebrows? Self-employment: it’s terrible on your appearance.

Also, sorry, my phone was ringing at the end of the video. Adds to the authenticity?

Overall, I liked The 4-Hour Workweek* a lot, but question some of the practicalities of it. I’ve NEVER had a job I could do remotely, and it’s not easy to just quit your job because they won’t let you work remotely like Tim suggests–some of us have bills to pay!

There’s also lot more setup to having a 4-hour workweek than is really talked about in the book; if you’re self-employed this may mean totally restructuring or starting a new company.

And I really love what I do, so wouldn’t want to outsource my entire business or have employees do the work for me. Though I do agree that it would be awesome to have more income streams that ARE automated so that I could take on fewer design/development projects, or take a month off here and there while still making income.

Overall, there are TONS of great ideas in this book, but you need to pick and choose what actually works for you. For me, being the owner of a company but being totally hands off just isn’t something I’m really interested in, but I think I can apply many of Tim’s ideas to boost my income and make money while I’m NOT actively working. Because I do know that one day I’ll have kids running around making it hard to code websites, and even before then I’d like to take a vacation that doesn’t mean giving up a paycheck.

I mentioned this in the video, but the Zero Hour Workweek (it’s a free e-book!)  is basically the idea where you love what you do SO much that it doesn’t even feel like work. I’m getting closer to that with my own business, and I think some sort of mix between the Zero Hour and 4-Hour Workweek might be right for me.

Have you read The 4-Hour Workweek? What did you think?

*Links to The 4-Hour Workweek in this post are affiliate links, which means I earn a small percentage of the sale if you make a purchase after clicking my links. Thanks!