This blog post includes affiliate links for tools and products that I use and love. If you purchase using any of these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you

Over the past few months, I’ve been trialing these new posts – a behind-the-scenes look at business and life. If you missed any of the previous posts, you can read the August edition here, the September edition here, and the October edition here.

This is totally inspired by the wonderful Ruth Ridgeway. I absolutely love reading her behind-the-scenes posts and the transparency she brings through them. More and more recently I’ve been feeling called to share the full business owner life with people – I try to share snippets on Instagram but, let’s face it, I’m rubbish at posting consistently!

These behind-the-scenes/monthly reviews are going to be a mixture of income, regular expenses, who I’ve hired, what investments I’ve made, what’s been happening outside of the biz and, most importantly, how I’ve been feeling about things…because we all know that the numbers don’t actually mean anything in terms of how we feel!

So, let’s get into it…

Income

I’ll start with income as I know that’s probably why you’re here 😉. These are the numbers that hit my bank account (so after PayPal fees, conversion fees etc. but before expenses, taxes etc.)

I’m a big fan of having multiple income streams in my business. As you’ll see from the numbers below, most of my income comes from 1:1 clients at the moment. Over the next few months, I’m going to be focusing more on “passive” income streams and affiliate marketing/income.

1:1 CLIENT WORK: £7,400 (about $9,810)

Each month varies quite a bit depending on a) what is going on for my clients and how much support they need, and b) when the invoices are paid! I send invoices on the last day of the month for most clients and sometimes they pay on the same day, sometimes it’s a few days later but this makes a difference in terms of which month the money hits my bank account!

This is about £200 more than last month. The difference is due to the dates that clients paid me.

November just flew by! We took the first week off for our family holiday so the other 3 weeks of the month were making up for lost time 😂 – some of my highlights included:

• Prepping for Lizzy’s Christmas Party – there are some AMAZING submissions this year, if you haven’t signed up and grabbed a goody bag (or two!), you can do that here right now!
• Helping clients prep their submissions for Lizzy’s Christmas Party. Here are some of the things my incredible clients have contributed:
  • Lizzy (obvs!) – The Anti-Planning Workshop (Regular Goody Bag, usually $97) and Make a Flash For It! (Premium Goody Bag, usually $497)
  • Daire – The Unshakeable Goals System (Regular Goody Bag, usually $97) and Unapologetic Wealth (Premium Goody Bagm, usually £444)
  • Sandra – Opt-In Page Copy Template (Regular Goody Bag, usually $50) and Sales Email Sequence Copy Template (Premium Goody Bag, usually $150)
  • Sarah – The Well Planned Planner (Regular Goody Bag, usually $67)
  • AnnMerle – Your Hallelujah Hips Mini-Course (Regular Goody Bag, usually $47)

You can grab the Goody Bags here.

DIGITAL PRODUCTS: £540 (about $718)

So this is about half of what I made last month but still a good increase on the previous two months (which were £200).

I know I’ve not really been sharing my offers with the world so it’s no surprise really! One of my big goals for 2022 is to actually share my business and my offerings more!

This figure is made up of sales of the following:

• Client Onboarding Pack Template
• Client Offboarding Pack Template
• Client Journey Template Bundle
• Fully Booked Without Pitching

I’ll be honest (because I always am), I’m not massively happy with this but there have been other things going on (see further down the post!!!) and I know I can turn this around,

AFFILIATE INCOME: £94 (about $125)

I didn’t realllllly do much affiliate marketing stuff in November so one of these is a recurring affiliate commission and the other is an “accidental” affiliate sale!

• ConvertKit – Email marketing system
• Various products from Lizzy Goddard

What I’ve been working on

1. Preparing submissions for bundles

I’m in two different bundles in December so I’ve been working on getting the course content all updated, setting up the tech, and scheduling promos.

The first bundle I’m in is Lizzy’s Christmas Party where my Easy Delegation for Busy Bosses course is included in the Premium Goody Bag (it’s usually $300 but you can access it plus 200+ other courses for just one payment of $100).

The second bundle-type thing that I’m taking part in is Kimi’s 25 Days of Deals. I looooove Kimi’s countdown/advent calendar style bundles so much that I purchased her course to learn how to run my own (more on this below). I was behind the door for Day 4 with my Create Your Simple Client Onboarding System course. You can still grab it a hugely discounted rate here PLUS check out all of the other goodies (I don’t want to ruin the surprises for you!)

2. Setting up evergreen funnels

I currently have quite a few products and courses available to purchase through Organise & Grow but not many of them are linked together or have any sort of funnels so I’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work recently to get things flowing better in the background.

3. Myself

In November I sent an email to my list explaining and sharing the struggles I’ve been facing recently with my mental health (you can read it here if you want).

I’ve found myself at a crossroads with my business and have some big decisions to make in both my life and business so a lot of time in November has been spent mulling over things and making decisions. And a huge part of this decision-making process has been about checking in with myself and really trying to trust my gut.

I really hate to be that cryptic person but there are still a few decisions to be made and plans to be finalised before I share any more info! Sorrrrryyyyyyyyy!

Black Friday!

I’ll get straight to it…Black Friday was a huge flop for me.

I put out two offers – Dani Dollars and 50% off Day of Voxer offers and I made approximately $0! Yep! You read that right!

I absolutely believe that this was a mindset issue – as much as I love these offers in terms of pricing and what they provide, my mind and energy were NOT in the right place for promoting them properly and I kept telling myself “I know I’m not going to make any sales”.

Expenses

NEW INVESTMENTS: £144 (about $195)

E.g. courses, templates, etc. (one-off payments)

It was Black Friday so of course, I had to make a few new purchases! Here’s what I grabbed in the sales:

• HelloAudio
• Podcasting 101 from my incredible friend Kerstin
• Design Your Own Digital Magazine from the Secret OWL Society

REGULAR/RECURRING EXPENSES: £840 (about $1,112)

Includes tech tools, recurring fees, memberships, etc.

We have quite a few annual subscriptions that renew in November due to signing up for things during Black Friday deals in previous years!

TEAM: £305 (about $425)

Includes accountant and 10 hours of VA support.

Tech I used

• WordPress + Elementor (website, sales pages etc.)
• ConvertKit (for sending emails, creating sign-up forms, delivering freebies, etc.)
• ConvertBox (for setting up popups on my website – there’s so much more I can do with this but I’ve not explored it yet!)
• ThriveCart (for my checkouts and running my affiliate programme)
• MemberVault (for hosting courses)
• Voxer (for running Voxer Office Hours and chatting with clients)
• SmartMockups (for creating mockups of courses, templates, etc.)
• Asana (for keeping everything organised. If you’re interested in exploring the power of Asana, check out Organise and Grow Your Biz with Asana here.)
• Otter.ai (for transcribing client voice notes and calls, creating closed captions for videos, etc.)
• Vimeo (for hosting videos for courses)
• Dubsado (for invoicing clients, managing client contracts, etc.)
• Canva (for creating graphics, PDFs, and more!)

Numbers

Instagram: 1,031 followers (+29)
FB Group: 261 members (+10)
Pinterest: 354 followers, 3.9k monthly views (+2, +400)
Email Subscribers: 2,194 2,235 (-41)
Income: £8,034 / $10,653 (-£1,146 / -$1,514)

Other businesses

For the first time everrrrrrr I have things to report here!

Starting with FBM. We used Kimi’s Digital Advent Calendar System to create 11 Days of Deals over the Black Friday period and we made £344 from £11 products.

I am SO, so happy about this because we’ve never made sales through FBM before (we’ve just offered free content until now) and we definitely could have promoted it more than we did…although I’m pretty sure that always feels true, no matter how much you promote things!

Next up is Mantra + Moon – we have a product in Lizzy’s Christmas Party which seems to be capturing the interest of lots of people which is really exciting. It’s also allowed us to play with some new branding bits and pieces!

Personal life stuff

I already mentioned that we took the first week of November off for a family holiday. We went to our favourite place in Yorkshire and spent lots of time playing outdoors, visiting places and chilling in the hot tub!

I’m pretty sure that’s my first week off this year!!! Hopefully next year will see a LOT more family holidays happening.

On our way home from our holiday, we stopped by to visit our friend Codie and her small people. Ella and Ruben were alllllllmost born on the same day (they were born hours apart but on different days) and it was SO cute for them to finally meet. Plus it’s always nice to see Codie – we chat every single day but have only ever actually met twice!

Apparently seeing Codie once in a month wasn’t enough because I saw her again like a week later at a yoga retreat. I went on an incredible yoga retreat earlier this year, hosted by Paris Yoga and loved every single minute of it so when she announced her November retreat I snagged my spot pretty much immediately! Not only was the yoga retreat amazing but it was so nice hanging out with Codie again…we even got some work done once the retreat was over!

I mean…how cute is the venue?! I think we might start having more team meetings there!

I think that just about wraps up November! I might do a slightly longer post for December orrrrr I may end up writing a month review post AND a year review post…who knows!

READ MORE

This blog post includes affiliate links for tools and products that I use and love. If you purchase using any of these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you

Over the past few months, I’ve been trialing these new posts – a behind-the-scenes look at business and life. If you missed any of the previous posts, you can read the August edition here and the September edition here.

This is totally inspired by the wonderful Ruth. I absolutely love reading her behind-the-scenes posts and the transparency she brings through them. More and more recently I’ve been feeling called to share the full business owner life with people – I try to share snippets on Instagram but, let’s face it, I’m rubbish at posting consistently!

These behind-the-scenes/monthly reviews are going to be a mixture of income, regular expenses, who I’ve hired, what investments I’ve made, what’s been happening outside of the biz and, most importantly, how I’ve been feeling about things…because we all know that the numbers don’t actually mean anything in terms of how we feel!

This one is coming to you a little later than usual as we took a family holiday/vaca at the start of November and I wasn’t organised enough to get this done before we went away!

So, let’s get into it…

Income

I’ll start with income as I know that’s probably why you’re here 😉. These are the numbers that hit my bank account (so after PayPal fees, conversion fees etc. but before expenses, taxes etc.)

I’m a big fan of having multiple income streams in my business. As you’ll see from the numbers below, most of my income comes from 1:1 clients at the moment. Over the next few months, I’m going to be focusing more on “passive” income streams and affiliate marketing/income.

1:1 CLIENT WORK: £7,200 (about $9,770)

Each month varies quite a bit depending on a) what is going on for my clients and how much support they need, and b) when the invoices are paid! I send invoices on the last day of the month for most clients and sometimes they pay on the same day, sometimes it’s a few days later but this makes a difference in terms of which month the money hits my bank account!

This is about £300 less than last month. The difference is due to the dates that clients paid me.

October was another really busy month – some of my highlights included:

• Launching Amanda Jyll’s new website – take a peek at it here.
• Sarah Lidwell-Durnin’s Resilient CEO quiz – if you haven’t taken it, go do that now!
• Starting prep for Lizzy’s Christmas Party – there are some AMAZING submissions, it’s so fun looking at them as they come in
• Celebrating Tonia G’s book launch 🎉🎉🎉

DIGITAL PRODUCTS: £1,940 (about $2,630)

The previous two months were £200 so this is a huge jump! There are a couple of things that contributed to this. Firstly, I actually shared my stuff! I posted on social media and emailed my list about various PLTs and offers happening in October and guess what? People bought things! Who knew 🤷‍♀️

Secondly, I was in two different bundle-type thingies and made quite a few sales of order bumps (more details on these two bundles below)

This is made up of sales of the following:

• Client Onboarding Pack Template
• Client Offboarding Pack Template
• Client Journey Template Bundle
• Organise & Grow Your Biz with Asana
• Organise & Grow Your Biz with SOPs
• Fully Booked Without Pitching
• Create Your Simple Client Onboarding System (Live Training)
• Biz Strategy Day of Voxer (x3)

I’ll be honest, I’m pretty pleased with this!

AFFILIATE INCOME: £40 (about $54)

I did absolutely zero affiliate marketing stuff in October so this isn’t at alllllll surprising!

• ConvertKit – Email marketing system

🎉🎉 BIG MILESTONE 🎉🎉

In October, we passed our $100,000 mark for this calendar year (i.e. income since January).

This actually came with a lot of mixed feelings that I’ve been exploring with my coach, Hannah. I was reluctant to celebrate it because I’ve always been so against this idea that 6 figures = successful and it certainly isn’t my definition of success. I’m also the kind of person who hits a goal or milestone and then immediately moves on to the next thing without taking a moment to celebrate.

BUT, after chatting things through with Hannah, I’ve realised that just because 6 figures isn’t my definition of success, it’s still a big milestone in my business and that should be celebrated! So YAY ME!

What I’ve been working on

1. Updating Fully Booked Without Pitching

I ran Fully Booked Without Pitching as a live workshop back in June. Since then, I’ve chopped it up into smaller lessons and added a few extra resources but at the start of October I decided that it was time for a proper overhaul.

I’ve now added lots of new lessons, tech tutorials and templates PLUS all of the videos now have closed captions and written notes AND you can get them as a podcast so you can listen to the lessons on the go!

You can check out the full details of the course here.

2. Create Your Simple Client Onboarding System

I ran a Paid Live Training on the 14th October on how to create a simple client onboarding system for your service-based business. It was hands down the most fun I’ve had delivering a live training!

The training was supposed to be 60 minutes with time for a live Q&A session too but it ran to just over 2 hours 🙈

I started promoting the training the week before the live and sold 12 spots (£484 / $658) which I was really happy with. I’m in the process of chopping up the training and turning it into a self-study course which should be ready to enrol in very soon!

If you’re interested in adding paid live trainings to your business, I highly recommend Lizzy’s course The Quickstart Guide to Profitable Live Trainings – honestly, it’s a TOTAL gamechanger.

3. Back to Business Bundle

In October I was a contributor to Kate Doster’s Back to Business Bundle. Between 4th and 12th of October, the bundle was being promoted and people were able to sign up to over $3,000’s worth of business goodies completely free.

This was an amazing opportunity for me and my biz! During the course of the bundle I added 1,437 new subscribers to my email list (which also means 1,437 new students enrolling in Organise & Grow Your Biz with a Team) and made £589 / $800 in sales from the $27 tripwire offer I had set up.

4. Online Business Playground Summit

October was also the month of Lizzy’s Online Business Playground Summit. I submitted my Fully Booked Without Pitching course to her Ultimate Play Pass and had 107 sign ups/enrollments. I also made $90 in sales from the order bump on my checkout.

Another successful collaboration for the books! 🎉🎉🎉

Note: I know that offering your products up for free might feel counter-intuitive but I really do think opportunities like these are great for your business. For both the Back to Business Bundle and the Online Business Playground Ultimate Play Pass, I submitted products that already existed – I had to do a couple of hours work TOTAL to make sure that the tech was set up so that people could access the courses for free and that they were tagged properly to enable me to check stats. And that’s it. A couple of hours work and I now have 1,544 people in my world who weren’t there before! AND I made almost $900 in sales of the tripwire and order bump.

Fun things…

I love learning new stuff, trying out new tools, and generally exploring what other business owners are offering right now! Most months I sign up for something new!

1. Learn+ from ThriveCart

I’ll be honest…I thought I’d tried lots of new things in October but it turns out, the only thing I bought was the Learn+ addon/upgrade on my ThriveCart account.

I’ve had a quick look at the Learn+ features and I’m excited to fully explore the possibilities!

Expenses

NEW INVESTMENTS: £144 (about $195)

E.g. courses, templates, etc. (one-off payments)

Just the Learn+ upgrade this month!

REGULAR/RECURRING EXPENSES: £680 (about $500)

Includes tech tools, recurring fees, memberships, etc.

TEAM: £305 (about $425)

Includes accountant and 10 hours of VA support.

Tech I used

• WordPress + Elementor (website, sales pages etc.)
• ConvertKit (for sending emails, creating sign-up forms, delivering freebies, etc.)
• ConvertBox (for setting up popups on my website – there’s so much more I can do with this but I’ve not explored it yet!)
• ThriveCart (for my checkouts and running my affiliate programme)
• MemberVault (for hosting courses)
• Voxer (for running Voxer Office Hours and chatting with clients)
• SmartMockups (for creating mockups of courses, templates, etc.)
• Asana (for keeping everything organised. If you’re interested in exploring the power of Asana, check out Organise and Grow Your Biz with Asana here.)
• Otter.ai (for transcribing client voice notes and calls, creating closed captions for videos, etc.)
• Vimeo (for hosting videos for courses)
• Dubsado (for invoicing clients, managing client contracts, etc.)
• Canva (for creating graphics, PDFs, and more!)

Numbers

Instagram: 1,002 followers (+40)
FB Group: 251 members (+54)
Pinterest: 352 followers, 3.5k monthly views (-9, +300)
Email Subscribers: 2,235 (+1,250)
Income: £9,180 / $12,454 (+£1,230 / $1,639)

Other businesses

Absolutely nothing to report on these for October other than having a whole bunch of ideas that I don’t have time work on 🤣🤣🤣

Personal life stuff

I LOVE autumn – even more so now we have Ella.

October was jam-packed full of trips to pumpkin patches, dressing up, and generally having spooky fun! I’m pretty sure I took at least one full day off each week throughout October (which is unheard of!)

I think that just about wraps up October! I’ve had so much fun writing this so keep your eyes peeled for another one next month!

READ MORE

This blog post includes affiliate links for tools and products that I use and love. If you purchase using any of these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you

Last month I thought I’d try something new on the O+G Blog – a behind-the-scenes look at business and life. If you missed it, you can read the August edition here.

This is totally inspired by the wonderful Ruth XO. I absolutely love reading her behind-the-scenes posts and the transparency she brings through them. More and more recently I’ve been feeling called to share the full business owner life with people – I try to share snippets on Instagram but, let’s face it, I’m rubbish at posting consistently!

These behind-the-scenes/monthly reviews are going to be a mixture of income, regular expenses, who I’ve hired, what investments I’ve made, what’s been happening outside of the biz and, most importantly, how I’ve been feeling about things…because we all know that the numbers don’t actually mean anything in terms of how we feel!

So, let’s get into it…

Income

I’ll start with income as I know that’s probably why you’re here 😉. These are the numbers that hit my bank account (so after PayPal fees, conversion fees etc. but before expenses, taxes etc.)

I’m a big fan of having multiple income streams in my business. As you’ll see from the numbers below, most of my income comes from 1:1 clients at the moment. Over the next few months, I’m going to be focusing more on “passive” income streams and affiliate marketing/income.

1:1 CLIENT WORK: £7,500 (about $10,200)

Each month varies quite a bit depending on a) what is going on for my clients and how much support they need, and b) when the invoices are paid! I send invoices on the last day of the month for most clients and sometimes they pay on the same day, sometimes it’s a few days later but this makes a difference in terms of which month the money hits my bank account!

September just flew by! I honestly have no idea where it went or what I worked on 🤣 There was lots of work to make sure that everything ran smoothly for Lizzy’s Online Business Playground Summit, we worked on a HUGE website design project for Justin Mabee, plus some other top-secret client projects that I can’t share yet!

DIGITAL PRODUCTS: £200 (about $275)

This is made up of sales of the following:

• Fully Booked Without Pitching
• Client Onboarding Pack Template
• Client Offboarding Pack Template

This is pretty weird – the amount is about the same as it was last month but it’s made up from a different combo of products!

AFFILIATE INCOME: £250 (about $340)

I’m still working my way through Elizabeth Goddard’s Lazy Guide to Affiliate Marketing because I don’t reallllllly do much with the affiliate programs I’m part of and, well…I’m lazy! I’ve already started seeing small changes and made £100 more than I did last month from affiliate sales 🎉🎉🎉

• ConvertKit – Email marketing system
• ConvertBox – An incredible pop-up building tool (I mean, there’s so much more to it than that but that’s the quick one-liner)

What I’ve been working on

1. My everything page!

Special shout out to Elizabeth Goddard for this idea! You can read Lizzy’s post about creating an everything page here.

I’ve been meaning to create this page for a while as a way to have all of my offers in one single place but it’s been one of those things that I just kept putting off! I’m really glad I’ve done it because it made me review the current offers I have AND gave me the kick up the butt that I needed to create pages for my new offers. This leads me nicely onto…

2. Creating new offers

As I mentioned in last month’s post, I’ve been moving away from being “just a VA”. In August I was working on updating my messaging so it made sense that in September I started to switch up my offerings!

I now have 2.5 new ways to work with me (because the third way kiiiiiinda already existed but I never really shared it and I’ve shaken things up a bit!):

1. Get Sh*t Done Day of Voxer
2. Biz Strategy Day of Voxer
3. VIP Get Sh*t Done Day with Dani (that’s me!)

3. Outlining new courses and programmes

Alongside the new ways you can work with me 1:1, I’ve been outlining some new self-study courses and a group programme that I’m hoping to launch in January. Hopefully I’ll be able to share a lot more about these things in next month’s roundup post!

4. Preparing submissions for various “things”

As I mentioned last month, the next few weeks and months are looking pretty busy for me with live trainings in clients’ memberships and courses in bundles.

Right now you can get my Organise and Grow Your Biz with a Team completely free as part of the Back to Business Bundle (usually $333).

5. Planning a NEW business launch with my biz friend/VA

Yep, you read that right…3 businesses is not enough businesses for this gal! I really hate to be that dickhead who’s suuuuper cryptic about things but I genuinely cannot say much about this project right now except that it’s going to involve crystals, jewelry, printables, candles, clothing and SO. MUCH. MORE! We are both so excited about this and you’ll be the first to know when there’s more info.

Fun things…

I love learning new stuff, trying out new tools, and generally exploring what other business owners are offering right now! Most months I sign up for something new!

1. Joined WAIM

In September I joined Wandering Aimfully Unlimited. I’d had my eye on it for a little while but the price had always been a barrier for me. After I saw Ruth mention it in her Facebook Group AND list out her affiliate bonuses, I decided that this year was the year to join.

I’ve had a brief look through the content and it looks amazing. I need time to sit down and figure out what to work through first…oh, and get those infamous coaching calls in my calendar too!

2. Virtual VIP Day Bootcamp with Jordan Gill

I’ve been wanting to dive deeper into the idea of VIP days for a little while and they fit really well with my vision for Organise and Grow. I grabbed Jordan’s Virtual VIP Day Bootcamp as a tripwire offer to her free VIP Day Roadmap. The freebie AND the bootcamp are both really good and filled me with lots of exciting ideas!

3. KDP things galore!

This month I’ve signed up to two different KDP courses:

• The Journal Template Kit from Ruth XO
• KDP Magic from Julie Hall

In all honesty, I bought both because I love the idea of creating my own journals and planners but also because it seems like a really fun thing to have a go at doing. PLUS I love both of these creators so I knew that what I was buying would be great.

Expenses

NEW INVESTMENTS: £255 (about $350)

E.g. courses, templates, etc. (one-off payments)

In September I purchased Ruth’s The Journal Template Kit, Julie’s KDP Magic, Credit from Kimi Kinsey, and Smart Quiz Bsuilder from AppSumo.

REGULAR/RECURRING EXPENSES: £680 (about $500)

Includes tech tools, recurring fees, memberships, etc.

TEAM: £305 (about $425)

Includes accountant and 10 hours of VA support.

Tech I used

• WordPress + Elementor (website, sales pages etc.)
• ConvertKit (for sending emails, creating sign-up forms, delivering freebies, etc.)
• ConvertBox (for setting up popups on my website – there’s so much more I can do with this but I’ve not explored it yet!)
• ThriveCart (for my checkouts and running my affiliate programme)
• MemberVault (for hosting courses)
• Voxer (for running Voxer Office Hours and chatting with clients)
• SmartMockups (for creating mockups of courses, templates, etc.)
• Asana (for keeping everything organised. If you’re interested in exploring the power of Asana, check out Organise and Grow Your Biz with Asana here.)
• Otter.ai (for transcribing client voice notes and calls, creating closed captions for videos, etc.)
• Vimeo (for hosting videos for courses)
• Dubsado (for invoicing clients, managing client contracts, etc.)
• Canva (for creating graphics, PDFs, and more!)

Numbers

Instagram: 962 followers (+14)
FB Group: 197 members
Pinterest: 361 358 followers, 3.2k monthly views (+3, +200)
Email Subscribers: 985 (+189)

Other businesses

Flourishing Business Mums

I’ve pretty much been ignoring this business for the past 2 years! Buuuuut I’m finally getting organised with my team and we’ll be chipping away at a few projects over the next few months.

Expenses: $49 for ConvertKit
Income: $42 from affiliate sales

Kick-Ass VA Academy

I’m finallllllyyyyyyy getting the website for this little passion project set up! Nothing else to report on this for September!

Income: Nothing
Expenses: Nothing

Personal life stuff

August felt like the month that we FINALLY started to do things outside of the house again and September was almost back to pre-COVID life!

I had a wonderful spa day with my mum at Moddershall Oaks. She actually got this for me for my birthday last year but lockdown was announced a couple of days later so we’ve only just been able to re-book. It was so nice to chill out for a day AND spend ome quality time with my mum.

We had a family day out at Peak Wildlife Park and Ella got to feed some of the animals. We’ve been taking her here since she was born and she LOVES it. I also fell off the kids’ bouncy castle so that was fun!

We went to BeWILDerwood TWICE. I took Ella on my own when Mark was away for the weekend and Ella absolutely loved it. Mark was jealous of our amazing day out so we went back the following weekend with Mark too! It’s honestly one of my favourite kids places and we’ve booked to go to their light show in October.

Ella had her first hair cut and didn’t move anywhere near as much as I thought she was going to…seriously, I thought there was going to be a real risk of her losing an ear but she sat like a little legend!

Me and Mark made time for a coffee date at Wild & Wild. It’s my favourite local coffee shop and I love working there. But it’s been soooooo long since me and Mark went out together on our own so we made time for a morning coffee and cake break!

I’m pretty sure some other things happened too but if there’s not a pic of it on my phone, I tend to forget about things!

I think that just about wraps up September! I’ve had so much fun writing this so keep your eyes peeled for another one next month!

READ MORE

This blog post includes affiliate links for tools and products that I use and love. If you purchase using any of these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you

So I thought I’d try something new on the O+G Blog – a behind-the-scenes look at business and life each month.

This is totally inspired by the wonderful Ruth XO. I absolutely love reading her behind-the-scenes posts and the transparency she brings through them. More and more recently I’ve been feeling called to share the full business owner life with people – I try to share snippets on Instagram but, let’s face it, I’m rubbish at posting consistently!

These behind-the-scenes/monthly reviews are going to be a mixture of income, regular expenses, who I’ve hired, what investments I’ve made, what’s been happening outside of the biz and, most importantly, how I’ve been feeling about things…because we all now that the numbers don’t actually mean anything in terms of how we feel!

So, let’s get into it…

Income

I’ll start with income as I know that’s probably why you’re here 😉. These are the numbers that hit my bank account (so after PayPal fees, conversion fees etc. but before expenses, taxes etc.)

I’m a big fan of having multiple income streams in my business. As you’ll see from the numbers below, most of my income comes from 1:1 clients at the moment. Over the next few months, I’m going to be focusing more on “passive” income streams and affiliate marketing/income.

1:1 CLIENT WORK: £7,800 (about $10,800)

Each month varies quite a bit depending on a) what is going on for my clients and how much support they need, and b) when the invoices are paid! I send invoices on the last day of the month for most clients and sometimes they pay on the same day, sometimes it’s a few days later but this makes a difference in terms of which month the money hits my bank account!

August was such a fun month for client work, with lots of prep for launches and events, including Lizzy’s Online Business Playground Summit (grab your free ticket here), Daire Paddy’s Unshakeable Business Academy, and Amanda + Carli Bybel’s Related Community and Membership!

I’ve also been building a new website for the amazing Amanda Bybel. It’s not quite finished yet but I cannot wait to share it.

DIGITAL PRODUCTS: £200 (about $275)

This is made up of sales of the following:

• Organise & Grow Your Biz with SOPs
• Client Onboarding Pack Template
• Client Offboarding Pack Template

AFFILIATE INCOME: £110 (about $150)

I’m currently working my way through Elizabeth Goddard’s Lazy Guide to Affiliate Marketing because I don’t reallllllly do much with the affiliate programs I’m part of and, well…I’m lazy! (so I’m excited to see these numbers go up)

• ConvertKit – Email marketing system
• Online Business Playground – 30 days to a whole lot more fun, freedom + flow in your business.

What I’ve been working on

1. Live Round of Organise and Grow Your Biz with SOPs

I ran my first ever live round (technically it’s still ongoing as today is the last day!) and it was. SO. MUCH. FUN!

I only made 1 sale in the run-up to the live round which I was a little disappointed about buuuut all existing students were invited to join the live round so we had a good group working through the course content and getting their SOPs set up. I absolutely LOVED Voxer Office Hours each week and seeing people take action!

2. Updating my messaging

For the longest of times…well…for as long as this business has existed, I’ve called myself a VA but I’m not really just a VA 🤣 – I sell courses and templates, run live trainings AND I’m no longer taking on new VA clients.

So, after a great chat with my coach last week, I’ve decided to drop “VA” from my website and main messaging and switch to “Systems and Ops Strategist”. It’s a work in progress but I’m very excited about the changes ahead!

3. Preparing submissions for various “things”

Over the next few weeks and months I’m running live trainings in clients’ memberships, submitting a course to a business bundle, and including one of my courses in a summit all-access-pass (spoiler alert! It’s Lizzy’s Online Business Playground Summit!)

Fun things…

I love learning new stuff, trying out new tools, and generally exploring what other business owners are offering right now! Most months I sign up for something new!

1. Working with Hannah O’Donnell

I’ve only just started working with 1:1 Hannah and it has been a game changer already! In our first session she completely shifted the way I think about my business and I’m suuuuuper excited about implementing the things we dicussed, starting with my messaging! I can’t wait to see what we achieve together over the next weeks/months.

2. The Viral Content Club™

I’m not going to lie, I snapped this up before the price increased but I haven’t actually had time to dive into it yet BUT I’m hoping to use it today to plan out my content for the week ahead. I went all-in for the annual membership so that I can access previous templates and prompts (to mix things up a bit!)

Expenses

NEW INVESTMENTS: £290 (about $400)

E.g. courses, templates, etc. (one-off payments)

In August I purchased an annual subcription to The Viral Content Club™ and the The Digital Business Bundle from Adriane Galea.

REGULAR/RECURRING EXPENSES: £300 (about $415)

Includes tech tools, recurring fees, memberships, etc.

TEAM: £305 (about $425)

Includes accountant and 10 hours of VA support.

Tech I used

• WordPress + Elementor (website, sales pages etc.)
• ConvertKit (for sending emails, creating sign-up forms, delivering freebies, etc.)
• ConvertBox (for setting up popups on my website – there’s so much more I can do with this but I’ve not explored it yet!)
• ThriveCart (for my checkouts and running my affiliate programme)
• MemberVault (for hosting courses)
• Voxer (for running Voxer Office Hours and chatting with clients)
• SmartMockups (for creating mockups of courses, templates, etc.)
• Asana (for keeping everything organised. If you’re interested in exploring the power of Asana, check out Organise and Grow Your Biz with Asana here.)
• Otter.ai (for transcribing client voice notes and calls, creating closed captions for videos, etc.)
• Vimeo (for hosting videos for courses)
• Dubsado (for invoicing clients, managing client contracts, etc.)
• Canva (for creating graphics, PDFs, and more!)

Numbers

Instagram: 948 followers
FB Group: 197 members
Pinterest: 358 followers, 3.1k monthly views
Email Subscribers: 796

Other businesses

Flourishing Business Mums

I’ve pretty much been ignoring this business for the past 2 years! Buuuuut I’m finally getting organised with my team and we’ll be chipping away at a few projects over the next few months.

Expenses: $49 for ConvertKit
Income: $42 from affiliate sales

Kick-Ass VA Academy

I’m finallllllyyyyyyy getting the website for this little passion project set up! Nothing else to report on this for August!

Income: Nothing
Expenses: £350 to team members to help with blog post creation and social media.

Personal life stuff

August felt like the month that we FINALLY started to do things outside of the house again!

We went to Dino Kingdom in Manchester – a pop-up outdoor event with some epic dinosaurs! Despite being 2 and a half, it was Ella’s first time experiencing face painting (although she wanted claws on her arms rather than having her face painted) AND her first time on a fairground ride. It was also the day of the dreaded dinosaur-related back injury 🙈

I headed up to Southport for a beautiful 2-day yoga retreat organied and hosted by the fabulous Paris. I couldn’t do a huge amount of the yoga due to the aforementioned dinosaur-related back injury but I met some amazing people, spent time meditating, practising Reiki, journalling, writing letters to my future self, and working on some deeeeeep manifestations. I’ve just booked on to Paris’ next retreat which is happening in November (if you’re UK based, come and join us!)

We had a family day out at Arley Hall. The sun was out, the gardens were beautiful, we got some stunning photos for the gram. Ella also had a meltdown, screamed and refused to walk sooooo…you win some, you lose some. After some snacks (a girl after my own heart) she perked up and we had adventures in their play area and ate ice cream! No injuries were sustained on this day out.

I think that just about wraps up August! I’ve had so much fun writing this so keep your eyes peeled for another one next month!

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This blog post includes affiliate links for tools and products that I use and love. If you purchase using any of these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you

As 2019 draws to an end, I’ve spent a lot of time worrying about how little I’ve achieved this year and how time is quickly running out for me to achieve the goals I set for myself this time last year.

Then I was inspired by Elizabeth Goddard’s 2019 Review blog post to write my own in the hopes that by writing out everything that happened, I would feel better about my achievements for the year.

This post didn’t have that effect AT ALL! But it felt quite cathartic to write it. I debated whether or not to share it because I actually felt embarrassed about the year I had but then I remembered that we all have to start somewhere and progress is still progress, no matter how small so I’m sharing it anyway.

Like Lizzy’s post, my 2019 review actually starts in December 2018. So, let’s jump in!

** Trigger warning – this post contains details of pregnancy, labour and general baby “stuff”

December 2018

Moving house + having a baby!

The first weekend in December saw a heavily pregnant woman, her fiance and her dog move house (that woman is me, by the way!). Whilst we only moved 3 streets over from where we were living previously, it felt like a completely fresh start and I was crazy excited about getting our new home ready for the arrival of baby Copeland.

By Tuesday, most of our boxes were unpacked. By the end of Wednesday, our Christmas decorations were up. On Thursday I went into labour (a week early)!

The early stages of labour were on and off and really quite manageable so I carried on getting the house straight and doing client work.

My contractions stopped completely on Saturday morning so we headed off to the hospital just to make sure everything was okay. The midwife we saw was incredible and he put our minds at ease as soon as we got there.

Hooked up to the monitor, we were told that baby’s heart rate etc. were all perfectly fine. My contractions started again while we were there so we opted to have an examination to see if I was dilated at all – I was 1 cm which, meant that we were all good to head home again.

Everything then started to move pretty quickly. We got back from the hospital around 6 pm and my contractions were getting stronger and closer together. I really didn’t want to head back to hospital too early, only to get sent home again, so managed the contractions at home with the help of Mark, the bath and Sherlock (the dog for those of you who aren’t familiar with him yet!)

At 1.00 am on Sunday morning I just “knew” that it was time to go to the hospital so we grabbed our bags and headed off. I was still quite anxious about getting there too early but when we arrived around 1.30 am I was 7-8 cm and by 4.30 am Ella was here and laying on my chest! At 6 pm on the same day, we were in the car on our way home!!!!

The next few days/weeks were a total blur but I was back to work the day after Ella was born. The beauty of working virtually – I was doing client work in bed with a newborn attached to me!

Income

Despite moving house and taking a couple of days off to have a baby, I earned around $2,000. I also signed 2 new clients who I would start working with from January.

January

You’ll be happy to know that the rest of this post is much lighter than December!

No idea what’s going on!

I barely remember January – it was just a blur of sleeping, breastfeeding, changing nappies and working. I was working during Ella’s naps and in the evenings when Mark got home from work.

I was surprised by how much I was able to get done and actually felt rather smug about things. I was looking after a newborn on my own, 6 days a week and still working “full-time” hours, as well as keeping up with housework etc. This was mainly because, as a newborn, Ella slept a LOT – things were going to change.

Clients

I started working with 2 new incredible clients that I had signed in December and had my highest earning month to date.

Income

$2,700 – this was the best month I’d had so far in my business and I’m not really sure how it happened as I was in a bit of a new mum daze!

February

Nothing new here

Nothing changed in February. Mark was working 6 days a week selling cars and I was running my VA business during Ella’s naps and in the evening.

I had hoped to start blogging on Flourishing Business Mum again (and every subsequent month!) but that didn’t happen. VA work was bringing in immediate money whereas FBM is a long-game so I decided to dedicate my time and energy solely to VA work.

Income

$2,000

March

Happy Birthday to me!

March is my birthday month. It also saw me and Mark going out for the first time without Ella. We headed to the pub for a meal and some drinks to celebrate my birthday while my mum had Ella for the evening. I thought I would find it really difficult being away from her but I didn’t!!! (probably because it was only for a couple of hours)

Busy booking new clients

I signed 4 new clients this month and was pretty much fully booked for my VA Services for the first time ever.

Business Investments

Joined the Profit Planner Lounge with Haley Burkhead – even as I’m writing this in December, I’ve barely looked at it!

Income

$3,900 – quite a jump from last month due to new clients.

April

Big changes

April was a BIG month for us! It was the month that our 3-year plan of Mark working from home with me became our 3-week plan.

At the start of 2018, I had written down a 3-year goal that in 2021, Mark would be able to quit his job and work from home with me. By February 2019 I was feeling really lonely working from home and my depression and anxiety were really bad. I felt completely lost.

So we made the decision that Mark would leave his job at the end of April and work on the business(es) with me.

Clients

Signed 6 new clients in preparation for Mark working from home with me from May onwards!!!! This actually turned out to be a terrible decision – not because of the number of clients but because of the types of clients they were (hello inconsistent work!)

Income

$2,500 – the new clients I signed paid in May.

May

Say hello to Organise + Grow!

In May shit got real! We registered Organise and Grow as a limited company, me and Mark became company Directors and we opened a business bank account.

I started working on a new website that reflected the changes in the business. I wasn’t “Dani Fairhurst – VA for Creatives” any more!

Mini business retreat

I went on a mini business retreat with Zoe Linda and Ana from The She Approach. We stayed in a gorgeous AirBnB cottage in North Wales with Ella and our doggies. We chatted business, made plans and watched TV together.

It was SO exciting to meet my biz besties in real life and it’s something I want to do a lot more often in 2020.

Amy meets Ella

My little sister came to visit from Australia and met Ella for the first time. It’s actually the only time that she’s met her but she’s coming to visit again in February 2020 and I CANNOT wait!

Clients

Signed 1 new client.

Fired a client for the first time ever! One of the clients I signed in April turned out to be a complete disaster with absolutely zero respect for scope, boundaries or me as a business owner. After chatting it through with the ladies on our mini-retreat, I pulled the trigger. It felt horrible to do but I felt so much better afterwards.

Income

$3,300

June

Ch-Ch-Changes

June saw the launch of the new Organise and Grow Website, along with a suite of new services. I decided that my passion for setting up project management systems, creating SOPs and workflows etc. needed to be a part of our business so I added the “streamline your biz” services to our site.

I also increased my rates from £25 to £35 per hour.

Digital Products

Feeling very unsettled with the constant churn of clients and the pressure of needing to find new clients on an almost monthly basis was starting to take its toll on me. I’ve created digital products before for Flourishing Business Mum so in June I created and launched Organise and Grow Your Biz with Asana, the Organised Blogger’s Toolkit AND the Organised Launch Toolkit.

Income

$3,500 – this is 90% from client work. The bulk of the income from the digital products arrived in July.

July

Our first family holiday

We had our first family holiday and spent a lovely week at Peaks and Pods in Settle, Yorkshire (we’ve been before and loved it) to celebrate Mark’s birthday.

We spent lots of time walking, drink coffee and eating cake. It was perfect.

I took the whole week off from work – the only time I’ve taken off this year!!! It was lovely to spend some time with the family and not think about work but sadly, we’ve not taken any time off since then. Definitely, something that needs to change!

Rebel Boss Summit

I was a guest speaker at Eden Fried‘s Rebel Boss Summit and presented on how to use a VA to run a successful digital product launch. I thoroughly enjoyed being part of my first-ever virtual summit and can’t wait to take part in more next year.

I gained 200 new email subscribers and sold $200 worth of digital products as a result of the summit.

Clients

Signed 2 new clients and got completely ghosted by a client. As in, I woke up one morning and she had removed me from everything – Slack, Asana, email accounts…everything – without a single word to me. Luckily she had paid in advance but it was still super frustrating and made me really doubt my entire business.

Income

$3,200 – $3,000 from client work and $200 from digital product sales

August

Does anyone need a website?

Decided that I LOVE designing and setting up new websites so added this to the list of services that I offer (also signed 2 website design clients and designed 2 additional sites for friends)

Scrambled brain

If you’ve never visited my Flourishing Business Mum site or don’t follow me on social media you may not know that I struggle with mental health issues.

In August I was the lowest I’ve been in a long time and made the decision to go back onto medication (I stopped when we were TTC). This meant having a few weeks of nausea and brain fog as I adjusted to the medication. The medication also made me feel pretty “meh” towards everything and I considered giving up on the whole online business thing.

One of my main big goals for 2019 was to start working on Flourishing Business Mum again but by August I’d barely even had time to think about – I felt like a failure.

I was (and still am) really struggling to come to terms with my mum-bod! I had figured that by now I would be back to my pre-pregnancy fitness but I was actually the biggest I’d ever been with no motivation whatsoever to change that!

Clients

Signed 4 new VA clients and 2 website design clients.

Income

$3,900 – all from client work

September

Feeling more settled

After months of signing new clients and parting ways with clients on a monthly basis, things started to feel more settled in September.

Ella also started nursery 2 days per week which freed up a lot of time to start working on other things in the businesses. FINALLY, I could start making some progress on those 2019 goals I had!!!

Income

$6,600 – the best month in our business to date.

October

Lots of new ideas

I’m not sure why but October was a month for a TON of new ideas and lots of inspiring energy.

I had one brain download after another with ideas for the O+G Hub, as well as a Flourishing Business Mum membership AND a course for aspiring VAs (keep your eyes peeled in 2020 for these things!)

I think having a good income month in September and finally securing clients that are a great fit has had a huge impact on my mental health and energy generally, as well as making me feel better about the business as a whole.

Investments

In my excitement to start working on new projects, I invested in the LMS software, LearnDash. So far, I’ve absolutely loved building out my courses in it. It’s super easy to use and, combined with Elementor, I’ve already made a few good looking lessons!

Clients

Signed 2 new VA clients and 2 website design clients. This was the first month that I started to feel really good about where I’m at with clients. I finally had a strong client base of AMAZING clients who I absolutely adore. Work and income are now more consistent and I’m continually learning new things from my clients.

Income

$6,500 – the wave of new inspiration and energy really shone through in my income this month! $300 of this was in affiliate commission (I usually make around $50 per month)

November

In the online business world, November means two things – Black Friday Sales and 2020 planning!

Black Friday

I made some pretty big business investments during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales including:

• MemberPress – to start building out my membership sites in conjunction with LearnDash.
• Pinterest Powerhouse by XO Sarah
• Annual Membership to Haute Stock
• Annual Subscription to SmarterQueue
• ThriveCart (not actually a sale but as I was investing heavily in the businesses this month, it seemed like the right time to make this purchase!)

2020 Planning

I’ve spent a huge amount of time planning for 2020. I have a LOT of ideas but I know I need to be realistic with my goals. I was going to write about them here but thought I’d add a section at the end of the post instead.

This year I’ve chosen to use the Passion Planner and Powersheets, along with Asana to plan out 2020.

Mike Wazowski

November was also the month that I made Ella’s first-ever Halloween outfit!

Income

$5,500 – disappointed to have dropped back below $6k but still in a fairly good place.

December

Ella’s first birthday and “first” Christmas

Although Ella was born before Christmas, this year definitely feels like her first one.

We took things slowly and ended up taking quite a lot of time off from work to watch films and walk the dog as a family which was nice.

Income

$3,500 – December is always a quiet month for work so I’m happy with this month’s income.

Final thoughts on 2019

It’s probably worth mentioning that I’ve been running my VA business full-time for just over 2 years now. Until April this year, my aim was purely to make enough money to cover my own bills as Mark was our main source of income.

From the start of May, I became the sole income provider and that put (and continues to put) a huge amount of pressure on me. This pressure stems from the fact that client work can be very unpredictable. Looking solely at the income figures for 2019 I’m massively disappointed in myself! My goals for 2019 were to have consistent $5k months, moving closer to $10k towards the end of the year.

BUT I’m super proud of being our sole source of income whilst raising a baby at the same time. It’s really tough to strike the balance (ha! balance!) between working and spending time with Ella and I constantly feel guilty about whatever I’m not doing.

2020 Goals

I’ve spent a LOT of time working on my 2020 goals and breaking them down into actionable steps. 2020 is going to be a HUGE year for both businesses – I’m sure of that!

I’d love to hit $100,000 for the year, stop worrying about finding new clients and finally launch my memberships. I also want to get my health back on track (note, I didn’t say lose weight!), attend more in-person events and work with a coach!

Here’s to 2020!

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