Every month we put together an income report to share a behind-the-scenes look at the ups and downs of running a 7-figure business. In full transparency, it’s not easy – but it IS possible. Through hearing about our mistakes, lessons learned, and our wins, we hope to inspire and motivate you to take action in your business with just one step forward every single day. For our full income report, visit EOFire.com/income90, and IGNITE!
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3 Value Bombs
1) Josh recommends that you not file your 2020 tax return just yet. Wait until the President signs the bill and the IRS reacts to it.
2) Guest podcasting is a great book marketing strategy.
3) It takes a lot of intention and accountability to stay on top of being organized. But the rewards are through the roof!
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Show Notes
**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.
[00:14] – Income review from JLD
- Gross Income for February: $160,883
- Total Expenses for February: $17,067
- Total Net Profit for February: $143,816
- Difference b/t Feb & Jan: -$33,783
- % of net profit to overall gross revenue: 89%
[01:48] – Josh Bauerle’s Monthly Tax Tip
- Josh recommends that you not file your 2020 tax return just yet. Wait until the President signs the bill and the IRS reacts to it.
[03:38] – Josh’s February Tax Tip: PPP, EIDL, Stimulus, and Unemployment Updates
- PPP and EIDL Funds
- You should be going through the process of forgiveness for the first round of PPP funds.
- Stimulus Checks
- Like PPP and EIDL funds, the stimulus checks sent out to individuals twice in 2020 are not taxable.
- Unemployment
- The Covid bill set to be passed this week will impact unemployment in two ways.
[10:24] – What Went Down In February – Interviews, interviews, and… more interviews!
- The Common Path to Uncommon Success book launch is coming up fast! March 23, 2021 to be exact.
[13:26] – The total number of interviews John did in February?
- Total of 139 interviews in the month of February alone!
[15:12] – How do we know the interviews are working?
- Before we share links to order the book from the retailer of your choice, we start with asking for your email address.
[18:19] – The funnel flow for our pre-orders
- We set up a call to action.
- Listeners visit that page, click the “pre-order now” button, and enter their email address.
- They choose which retailer they want to use for their pre-order (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc).
- They get an email in their inbox, prompting them for 3 things in order to get the link to download their bonuses.
[23:56]– Audiobook Recording
- John COMPLETED recording the entire audiobook for The Common Path to Uncommon Success.
- He did 2 chapters a day and finished the editing as well.
26:27 – Thanks to our sponsors, Thinkific and Athletic Greens!
[28:38] – February 2021 Income Breakdown
- Gross Income for February: $160,883
- Total Expenses for February: $17,067
- Total Net Profit for February: $143,816
- Difference b/t Feb & Jan: -$33,783
- % of net profit to overall gross revenue: 89%
[30:28] – Biggest Lesson Learned – The Power of Organization
- If there’s one thing that has been spotlighted in February, it’s how critical organization is to the success of our business.
- It takes a lot of intention and accountability to stay on top of being organized. But the rewards are through the roof!
Transcript
0 (3s):
Shake the room, Fire Nation, JLD here with the Entrepreneurs On Fire Income Report for February, 2021. Our gross income for February was $160,883. Our total expenses were $17,067 for a total net profit of one 43, eight 16, which gives us a percentage of net profit to overall gross revenue of 89%. Once again, we're so close to that magical 90 percentile, ah, maybe next month, but actually it won't be next month. And maybe we'll talk about why, because we have some things to share. We've got, Josh's a monthly tax ed, which is going to be really cool when you're doing some deep dives into PPP and the EIDL funds stimulus checks.
0 (52s):
Unemployment's when you're talking about interviews, interviews and more interviews, we'll also talk about our funnel that we set up for our book launch, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, and some other amazing things. As soon as we get back from thinking our sponsors online training is skyrocketing across every industry and thousands of entrepreneurs just like us are using Thinkific to create market and sell online courses, launch your own online course and share your knowledge with the world today. Get started at Thinkific.com/eof that's Thinkific.com/eof.
0 (1m 34s):
All right, Fire Nation. We have quite the income report for you. We've got Josh coming on the mic right now to talk about the PPP, the EIDL funds, the stimulus checks unemployment and so much more. So Josh take it away.
1 (1m 49s):
All right. Fire Nation. I know we are all tired of hearing words like unprecedented and crazy and constant change and everything we've had to talk about over the last year, but like the rest of the world, the tax world has also seen basically never-ending change over the last year due to COVID. And unfortunately that doesn't even change right in the middle of tax season, because as I'm reading this, the house is set to vote on a bill. That's not only going to provide another round of stimulus and other massive changes to our personal and business finances, but it would also change the tax code retroactively for 2020.
1 (2m 31s):
Right? So meaning if you've already filed your 2020 taxes, you could have to change and amend them, or if you have not yet filed them that what you would have filed is going to change. All right. So I want to give a quick update on a lot of these issues that you guys would be looking at when it comes to 2020 stimulus, the, the funds that were given to you and things that could impact you. But before I do, I want to give one general piece of advice. I would recommend not filing your 2020 tax return quite yet. All right, wait until this bill officially passes, which could be today, could be sometime this week, wait until the president signs it into law and wait until the IRS reacts to it.
1 (3m 14s):
Because if you file ahead of time and if you already have, it's not a big deal, but if you file ahead of time, if you file now, then you're gonna, probably many of you are going to have to go back and amend your return. It's not a huge deal, just a little bit of a pain. It'll make things easier if you have not filed yet. And you think that these changes might impact you. Go ahead and wait on that. And I also expect the IRS to extend the tax deadline as well. All right. So I want to hit on a few quick things here that they're gonna impact most of, of Fire Nation in some way. Hey, first up is the PPP in the IDL grant funds, right by now, you guys should know that if you've been listening to these income reports, the process you should be going through the process of forgiveness for those first PPP funds.
1 (3m 59s):
If you have not already applied for that forgiveness, I would talk to your lender who, who, who issued that and ask what you need to do, but that's well underway of getting those loans forgiven and remembered that assuming you use the funds, how you were supposed to, you should be able to get that forgiven and never have to pay that back. That's one of the amazing things about it, right? It is now also open for people to file for the second round of PPP funds, which we covered in, in the previous income report. If you're eligible for a second round of PPP funds, even if you were to get the first round, you could be eligible again. If you meet certain requirements of your business going down in 2020. So to get on that, if you haven't already, when it comes to your taxes, the major thing to note here is that for both PPP funds in the EIDM grant, meaning the free money from the idea that you never have to give back.
1 (4m 49s):
Those are not taxable income, right? You don't have to report those as income on your taxes. Additionally, this is where the big area of uncertainty was for a long time. Last year, the expenses that you paid with those funds are still deductible in your business, right? Meaning let's say you got a hundred thousand dollars of PPP funds. You used all $100,000 to pay your employees salaries. Number one, you don't have to pay taxes on that. 20 on that a hundred thousand dollars is income. And number two, you still do get to deduct those expenses, even though you use PPP funds to pay them. All right? So basically there's, there's no tax impact whatsoever for PPP or EIDL. The stimulus checks the money that the government sent out two different times in 2022 to eligible people to help with, with COVID difficulties.
1 (5m 36s):
Like with PPP and EIDL, those stimulus checks, the amount you get, they weren't always checks or direct deposits, whatever you wanna call them, they are not taxable income, right? You do not have to pay taxes on those, regardless of how much you got, regardless of your income. Anything, if you received them, they're not taxable income. Additionally, if you did not qualify for either of those, stimulus's based on 2019 taxes, which is what they use to determine it. But you would have qualified based on your 2020 income. You're going to get both of those stimulus amounts as a part of your 2020 tax return. All right. So basically what's going to happen when you file your 20, 20 tax return, you're going to put in how much you actually received in those stimulus for each one.
1 (6m 19s):
If you would have received more based on 2020 income, they're going to give it to you now based on, Oh, it's a part of your return, right? So you're going to get a bigger refund or, or owe less in taxes if you will.
2 (6m 30s):
And yeah,
1 (6m 31s):
The other big thing there is, they're only going to look at 2020 if it benefits you. So if you received it based on 2019 income, but you would not have received it in 2020, they're not going to go back and say, Oh, actually, you weren't eligible for this. We want our money back. So it can only be to your benefit, right? So no matter what you need to make sure that you give your tax prepared, the exact amount you received in each round of stimulus in 2020. All right. So we're going to ask for round one and round two, how much should you receive? Make sure you give them the right number so that you can either get more now or, or, or not get extra that you shouldn't have. If he doesn't say that you received it, which we'll just call problems. Finally, this new bill that's being voted on today, hopefully coming into possibly coming into law this week, it's going to provide an additional $1,400 per person that's claimed on your tax return.
1 (7m 20s):
All right. So if you have you and your husband and three kids multiply five by 1400, that's going to be what you get for this one. They're going to use your 2019 taxes unless you've already filed 2020, then they will use 2020. Right? So plan accordingly there, the income limits on those are basically the same other than the phase out is a lot shorter. So if you're, if you're married, instead of cutting you off completely at 198,000, they cut you off completely at 160. So again, talk with your tax professional and plan accordingly. There finally, the last note here, a big one unemployment, right? The, the COVID bill that's set to be passed this week will impact unemployment in two big ways. First, if you remember unemployment in 2020, they it's normally just a state benefit.
1 (8m 4s):
That's a percentage of the income that you received in your job. The federal government added on top of that an additional amount per week started at 600, then went down to 300. It was set to expire here shortly. They're going to extend that additional $300 per week from the federal government all the way through labor day. All right, so that's a big one. If you're, if you're currently receiving unemployment second, a huge one here. They're going to make a portion of the unemployment that you received in 2020 non taxable, for those with incomes below 150,000, right? Typically unemployment is a it's considered taxable income just as if you received money from your job. They withhold taxes on it.
2 (8m 43s):
They should have if they didn't, but this is going to
1 (8m 46s):
Be a huge decision. That's going to drastically change how your taxes are filed. If you receive that unemployment. And this is why for those of you who did receive unemployment, if you have not already filed your tax returns, do not file yet. It's going to completely change how your return is filed and in how much you owe in taxes, it could reduce your taxable income. By, by up to a little over $10,000, it could reduce your taxes by a couple of thousand dollars, depending what tax bracket you're in. Right? Again, I expect the IRS is going to extend the tax sideline from four 15, just like they did last year. My guess is the new deadline will be in June or July. If you can wait on it, go ahead and wait on it. Until these things are settled. I've been in the tax world for almost 15 years. Now, this is by far the most uncertain tax season I've ever seen.
1 (9m 29s):
If you've ever, if in the past, you attempted to do your own taxes and you say, yeah, it's no big deal. Maybe it's not. Usually this is the year to hire a professional. There's, there's so much uncertainty. There's, there's so much confusion. Things are changing by the minute, talk to a professional, get them done right this year so that, you know, you're getting everything you're entitled to and not getting things that you're not entitled to, which could cause even bigger problems right next month. I'm sure I'm going to be back here with a whole new set of updates. Things could have changed drastically. Again. This is where we stand right now on these major issues. Talk to a tax professional, reach out to us. We always have information on the website, cpaonfire.com. You can reach out to me directly, josh@cpaonfire.com and we will talk next month with some updates.
0 (10m 11s):
Josh, thank you. As always for rocking the mic brother and a Fire Nation as always josh@cpaonfire.com or just cpaonfire.com to learn more about the awesome things that Josh has going on. And now what went down in February? Well, it was interviews, interviews and more interviews. And I don't say that lightly. I mean, come on the book, the common path uncommon success is launching on March 23rd. And if you think I will not be sprinting across the finish line, you have another thing coming and I'm actually going to pass it over to Kate because we'll, you'll see why I'm probably a little tired of talking right now.
0 (10m 54s):
What's up Kate? Yeah.
3 (10m 55s):
I can't believe how many interviews you are doing every time I look at your schedule. I, or actually every time I pull up my calendar, you know, the little check Mark box that you can like check to see my calendar. I could see your calendar. Sometimes I open it and I just like, Oh my gosh, I have to uncheck John's box like immediately. Oh man. Yeah. So I mean, okay, let's get into these interviews. So in February, not only are you doing so many interviews, but we also started our weekly meetings with Harper Collins team to check in on orders and discuss which of our marketing strategies are working best.
3 (11m 35s):
We've been chatting about some new ideas to continue improving our pre-launch efforts and the calls have been really great. I think it's been a really good touch point to just like check in with each other. But one thing that we've been discussing a lot on our calls and especially in the past couple of weeks, as we get closer and to launch, which is so exciting is that interviews are serving us like so well right now. So your work as you know, is not for not, it is moving the needle in such a huge way and Fire Nation. This is not the first time that you've heard us talk about our love for guest podcasting, AKA being a guest on other people's podcasts in your industry or niche.
3 (12m 22s):
I mean, this is not something that we recommend that you like try out one or two times, not like five times, but this is a really huge growth strategy. If you do it consistently over long periods of time. I mean, we've even had people come to us and say sands their own podcasts. Like they do not even have their own podcasts. They just are guests on other people's podcasts. And that has literally built their business. So this growth strategy is a huge winner to say the least. And because we believe so wholeheartedly in the podcast guesting strategy, it really is one of our leading book marketing strategies. We've been getting questions a lot about like what we're doing to market the book.
3 (13m 5s):
What are the different things we're testing out? Are we doing ads, dah, dah, dah, we're going to be doing a massive recap after the book launches to share with you every single strategy and tactic that we used for this book launch. But for purposes of this income report, I want to focus on just how massive this interview strategy has been for us. And just to show you how much we believe in the power of guest podcasting, I went back into John's calendar and I clicked that little box just for you guys, because I wanted to be able to count the number of interviews that he has done on other podcasts specifically, to spread the word about The Common Path to Uncommon Success.
3 (13m 46s):
Just like throw out a number. Maybe you're like in your car right now, or you're working out or you're with friends or whatever you're doing right now. Like, just think what, like how many interviews do you think John did in February? I'll give you a second to think like, okay. 28 days, it's a short month at a duh. Okay. I'm going to break this down for you. By week in week, one of February, John did 32 interviews, week two, he did 31 week, three 24 and week four. My head is popping off right now. 52 interviews. I'm talking within a seven day. Well actually like a four day period
0 (14m 27s):
Myself, one day a week off. Oh my goodness.
3 (14m 30s):
For anyone who hasn't been doing the math, that is a total of 139 interviews in the month of February alone, John, what the hell
0 (14m 40s):
I was going to say? There's no swearing on this part just for the record. And you know, March is probably going to be even bigger. I mean, probably not even probably, I mean, it's going to be a bigger month as far as the number of interviews that I'm doing. And that's only between March 1st and March 23rd because I'm not doing any interviews from March 23rd to March 31st. Cause that's, post-launch so crazy, crazy times.
3 (15m 6s):
You're probably thinking, okay, great. So you're on a bazillion interviews. Like how do you even know that these interviews are working? That's a great question for our nation. You always have the best questions. So I'm going to lay out a little bit like how we know these interviews are working so well. So the preorder website that we're using for every call to action in all of our marketing is UncommonSuccessBook.com. It's not the first time you've heard this link. You've probably been hearing it quite often here on the podcast. So UncommonSuccessBook.com. This is where we have all the retailers linked up. So it's super easy for people to pre-order from whatever outlet they prefer.
3 (15m 48s):
So you want to go to Amazon Barnes and noble books, a million book depository. So we have all of these linked up so that people can order from wherever they prefer to pre-order from. But before we share the links to all those different options for where you can, pre-order we actually ask for your email address. So if you go to UncommonSuccessBook.com and you click the pre-order button, it's going to pop up and it's going to ask you for your email address. Now, when we were very first reviewing this page, I was thinking like, I kind of feels like a barrier. I don't know if that's the right move. Like, why don't we give them the pre-order link first and then maybe have a call to action on the page that says, like reach out to us for your bonuses.
3 (16m 31s):
And that was kind of like, my struggle is that way didn't seem great. Either the main point being, we have to have a way to get people, their bonuses, because we're pushing these pre-order bonuses so much. And they're such incredible bonuses that we want to make sure we are properly rewarding. People who are pre-ordering the book. So I wasn't sure that the email capture before the purchase was the right thing, but I also knew that if we didn't do it before the purchase that we lose the person, right? Once they click to free order from Amazon or Barnes and noble or wherever, they're not gonna come back to the site, like there's excitement, you just made a purchase. There's a hundred other things going on in your day right there.
3 (17m 11s):
So I'm glad that we went that route. We did end up going to where you push the pre-order button. It asks for your email address. After you enter your email address, then it pops up with all the links for the options. So this is not only guaranteeing that we have a way to communicate with those who have expressed interest in the book, right? So even if somebody goes there, they put their email in and then they don't end up completing a pre-order for whatever reason, we still have their email address to be able to send the messages. Yes, given we don't actually know whether or not they ended up going on for a pre-order, but we do know that they were at least interested enough to put their email in, to get the links that's number one. So three big things that I'm really glad that we set it up this way.
3 (17m 54s):
That's number one. Number two is it's guaranteeing. We have a way to send people their pre-order bonuses, which was like our main goal in the beginning. Right? And number three, it's allowing us to gather such critical information about how people are finding out about the book, which as you know, is really awesome Intel for our marketing copy. And for the way that we're talking about the book. So you might be wondering how does people just entering their email address, allow you to do, do all of these things. So one of them to share just the funnel flow for a pre-order. So I can kind of wrap this all up in a big bow for you guys. So let's say that you're listening to Hal Elrod's podcast, right?
3 (18m 37s):
Awesome podcasts. And you hear John doing an interview with how, where they're talking about The Common Path to Uncommon Success. The call to action on how interview is that you should definitely head over to UncommonSuccessBook.com to pre-order a copy of the book, and you are going to get five amazing bonuses. So listeners are like, I'm definitely going to go check this out UncommonSuccessBook.com, click the pre-order button and they enter their email address. Next they're going to choose which retailer they want to use for their pre-order Amazon Barnes and noble, et cetera. And then before they've even completed their pre-order because this happens immediately on email capture, they're going to get an email from us in their inbox.
3 (19m 22s):
That's prompting them for three things in order to get the link, to download their pre-order bonuses. So somebody finishes their pre-order. They jump into their email inbox. Boom, there's an email from us and probably an email confirmation from wherever they did their pre-order from the email from us when they open it, it's asking them for three things, it's prompting, prompting them to reply with three things. Number one, reply to this email and attach your pre-order receipt because that's, what's going to allow us to send you the link for your pre-order bonuses. Number two, tell us where you heard about the book and number three, why did you decide to pre order these three prompts?
3 (20m 4s):
The pre-order receipt to get the pre-order bonuses, people telling us where they heard about the book and them telling us why they decided to actually go ahead and pre-order has given us such incredible insights into which marketing channels are working the best for us. So we're hearing, you know, from multiple people, maybe they heard about the book on how L rod podcasts and that's great information for us or that they heard about it on what's another podcast you've been Pat Flynn's podcasts. Like, so for, for all of these podcasts that you've been on, John being able to find out where people are hearing about it, which podcasts, or maybe it's a Facebook live and Instagram live it's on clubhouse.
3 (20m 48s):
Like everyone telling us where they heard about the book is giving us more insights into what's working plus why people are interested in the book. I mean, this has allowed us to take info in real time and have it help inform how we're talking about the book. And, you know, if, if people continue to say that the reason why they decided to pre-order is because, you know, they love the idea of having a roadmap. Then that's going to allow us to start really honing in and focusing on talking about the book in terms of it being a roadmap. So I could talk about this literally all day, because there is enough to talk about all day and there's so much more to come on our book launch and all these details.
3 (21m 29s):
And I know John, you're going to jump in and kind of add your 2 cents to this. Like I said, we're going to be doing a whole recap post. That's going to break down in so much detail. Like this was a very, very small slice of what you can expect in that big recap post. But John, go ahead and talk about kind of from your perspective or add anything that I missed on this point.
0 (21m 53s):
Well, you didn't miss much. So I'm only going to add 1 cents, not 2 cents here. And really the biggest thing that our focus was here is to say, Hey, how can we make a pre-order a no-brainer because now this gives us an opportunity to market all month. And in fact it was all of January, all of February, and now the first three weeks in March and give people a way that they can take action now. And you know, people are busy, like come March 23rd, who knows what people are doing March 24th, March 25th. And I mean, they might be on vacation. They may be doing this. They might be doing something else. So now we get an opportunity to hit people over at really three months and say, listen, this book is available for pre-order.
0 (22m 34s):
There's no reason to wait. So don't even do it because it's a no brainer to buy right now. And here's five bonuses and five reasons why that you should pre-order this book right now. And we have the uncommon success book.com page that does a great job that once it gets people to that page, that it shows them, Hey, why would I wait? Like why would I not get this book? And all the bonuses here's endorsements from Seth Godin, from Gary Vaynerchuk, from Erica Mandy, Dorie, Clark, Neil Patel. Here's a video of John jumping into his pool and Puerto Rico. And then talking about the book. Here's the first chapter. I can see how the actual book is being written and John's writing style. And see if I like that, I can see the details of all five bonuses.
0 (23m 15s):
Let me just pre-order right now. And as Kate mentioned, we're able to get and capture all that information so that, Hey me, we're going to send an email out in a couple of weeks that says, Hey, thank you so much for pre-ordering the book we know you did. We've got an awesome Austin deal. If you want to gift one to your loved one, and maybe we give like this really special call to action now. And what if you know of the 5,000 people that we email, one of a thousand of them 20% take that action. That's a thousand more books. And that's like an opportunity when you do what we're doing here by making it a no-brainer. And having people go through this process and building a database for this very reason.
0 (23m 55s):
So Kate, I'm going to move on to the audio book recording, unless you had something come up before we do that. Nope. I love it. Let's do it. Audio book recordings, a doozy. Let me just tell you that Fire Nation, like everybody's like, Oh, well of course, you're going to do the audio book recording, like who else would do it? Like you've got to do it. And I, I do totally agree. Like it, it had to be done, but it was a beast. I mean, it was a beast, 71,000 words. And I had to roll my sleeves up both figuratively and literally, and get to work on that in February. And I finished it by the deadline. Actually I will admit I was a little later than the deadline, but you know, that was fine.
0 (24m 35s):
And I got all of the 71,000 words in all of the 17 chapters. Plus of course the bonus 18th chapter, I will say, I saved chapter 17, sorry. Chapter seven, step seven, which is design your content production plan for the last chapter I was going to record because that chapter is 13,500 words. The other chapters average, 3,550 words. This one was 13,500 words. I saved it for the end because frankly I was scared of it. And it took me forever. But at the end of the day, I'm really happy with the audio book recording. I think it sounds awesome.
0 (25m 15s):
And I'm really excited for people that love audio books like me, Kate, anything you want to add from your perspective on that before we move to February's 20, 20 ones income per week.
3 (25m 27s):
Yeah, no. I mean, you really rocked that audio book all on your own. I, you were so disciplined about it. No surprise there, but your dedication to being in your studio and recording, what were you doing? Two chapters a day, one chapter, two chapters a day, plus you're doing all the editing for it. I mean, I know that you sent that final file off somewhere and that somebody else is probably going to be,
0 (25m 51s):
They're literally doing nothing. It's the easiest job they've ever had, literally
3 (25m 56s):
Audio expert and you did everything, but I mean, yeah, I totally echo your sentiment and everyone else says, there's no way that anybody else could have recorded this audio book. So Fire Nation, like you, I have not gotten to hear this yet, but John's keeping so much close to his chest on this book, but I am very excited to dive into the audio book as well.
0 (26m 18s):
Well, Fire Nation, we are not even close to done drop in value bombs. So make sure you stick around after our sponsors, where we will be getting in to the details of the income report, you know, I'm big on health and wellness, and I'm constantly looking for ways to improve the quality of nutrients and minerals I put in my body so I can operate at my optimal level. That's why I started drinking Athletic Greens years ago, after learning about how much greatness is packed into just one scoop a day, 75 minerals and whole food source ingredients. And that includes a multivitamin multimineral probiotic, green superfood blend in more, whether you're looking to fill the nutritional gaps in your diets, increase energy and focus a digestion or help support a healthy immune system overall well, athletic greens is a no brainer with so many stressors in life is difficult to maintain effective nutritional habits and give our bodies the nutrients.
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0 (27m 47s):
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0 (28m 39s):
Income breakdown, our product and service income was $154,000. We sold a total of 600 or sorry, of 306 journals. Plus we shipped out 672 journal trios for a total of 2,322 journals. The revenue we generated from our 306 journals sold was just under $10,000, 9,009 86. The freedom journal did one 15, the mastery journal, six seven in the podcast journal coming in strong at one 24. Taking this months, crown podcast is paradise. Had a strong month at 20 in 188 total dollars.
0 (29m 25s):
We have podcast sponsorships brought in $97,000. What an amazing month there, our bulk buy packages brought in 26. Kay. Our affiliate income was actually pretty low this month. We must've just kinda missed a couple big pails that have actually come in March. So I expected to be much bigger. And that was down to 6,823. That's the lowest our affiliate income's been in a long, long time, but ClickFunnels was only at 4,500 and typically it's triple that. So I expect a big month in margin. I've already actually seen a couple of those payments come in. So keep your eyes on that. Our total gross was one 60, our total expenses, which are all listed out were $17,067 for a total net profit of $143,816 to make our 91st month in a row of having a net profit of over a hundred thousand dollars.
0 (30m 22s):
And wow, Kate, I think you have a pretty interesting biggest lesson learned before we sign off here. So take it away.
3 (30m 30s):
I do have an interesting biggest lesson learned this month because never has it been clear to me the power of organization. This is, this book of launch has been so many moving pieces. And if you guys were with us through the Freedom Journal launch, the Mastery Journal launch, the Podcast Journal launch as well, and you followed along with the logistics there and what it was like launching on Kickstarter and, you know, working with Richie Norton and his team over at our product to source the materials, to find the warehouse, like all of that, there's just so much that goes into it. And when you move over to traditionally publishing, that adds like 10 more pieces to the puzzle that are all very complex because you're bringing in even more teams, even more logistics.
3 (31m 22s):
And I mean, bulk orders, pre-order bulk orders were such a huge part of our pre-launch strategy. And our pre-orders that man that in and of itself has presented just a lot of very new lessons. So going back to the power of organization, I thought that I would share with you just a handful of ways that I'm kind of keeping tabs on everything for all intensive purposes. I basically look at myself as a sort of project manager for this project, meaning it's kind of my responsibility in a lot of areas to make sure that people are doing what they're supposed to be doing and handling a lot.
3 (32m 5s):
So like making sure that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, holding myself accountable and a few ways that I've done this as, like, if you think about the pre-order page, the influencer page, the swipe copy page, the landing pages for all of the retailers, the book on Amazon Barnes and noble. I mean, that's just like randomly off the top of my head. I think I just named like seven, five, six, seven different websites. So one way that I'm keeping those organized is I have a bookmarks bar. I'm a huge fan of using a bookmark bar on whatever browser you use. I use Google Chrome.
3 (32m 45s):
And so on my bookmark bar, I have a folder just for this launch and I'm bookmarking all of the landing pages that I probably ended up visiting five, 10 times a day, just to like reference different things, to help remind myself of where stuff is at. So a bookmarks bar for sites and for documents, cause we've been doing a lot in Google docs. That's another part of the organizational process. Like we have a Google doc with agenda, with an agenda for all of our calls. I've created my own Google doc that I call it my master book launch document. And in that Google doc, I literally have a running list of every single piece of information.
3 (33m 29s):
Every question I've asked, every answer I've received, because again, when you're working with giving tens, who's shipping out our bulk orders, we're working with Harper Collins, we're working with ambers team. And when you start to kind of have to bring all those pieces together and you're going to multiple places for questions and answers, it can be really difficult to manage and keep track of those communications. So it's like a question that I asked two months ago. Like it might've been on my mind two months ago, but I haven't revisited it for two months. How am I going to quickly and easily get to that information? So the Google doc with all of my notes in there has been really super helpful for that. And of course these Google docs with the agendas, for our calls, all of my notes, those are all saved as well in my bookmark folder for all the sites and documents for this project.
3 (34m 19s):
We also have a Google spreadsheet. That's helping us track all of our bulk orders, which John you set up that has just been like so incredibly helpful, especially now that we're at the point of actually getting those addresses over to the warehouse for shipment. It's been pretty much where I've lived the last two weeks to be able to follow up with people, confirm their address, and then I'm color coding it to remind myself of like addresses that are confirmed addresses. I'm still waiting for confirmation on addresses that I've actually sent over to the warehouse already. So that Google spreadsheet has just been a huge win. And of course, I can't forget boomerang for Gmail, Holy cow reminders.
3 (35m 1s):
Follow-ups for confirmation getting answers on questions that I have making sure that people are keeping things moving on there and requests that we have for website updates. Our bonuses are, you know, kind of changing and flowing our bulk buy packages have changed and flowed several times organizing all of that stuff without like losing your mind in terms of where can I find this? Where did I get that? Where did I put that? Where can I find that it's a lot? And so I've really learned this month, how powerful organization can be. And if you are able to sit down and just like really backtrack and think of the most simple form of being able to keep everything in a place where it's easy to find so that you're not recreating the wheel or spinning your wheels and try to find something, it has just, I know that it has saved me so much time and so much frustration to know exactly where I need to go for stuff.
3 (35m 57s):
So if you have a project coming up, a project that you're currently working on a launch coming up, you're, you're starting a podcast. You want to get your content creation plan going. Think about how you can organize the thoughts, the ideas, the conversations, the brainstorming, what actions you've taken, what actions still need to be taken. I really encourage you to think about how you can organize that stuff. Maybe in some of the same ways that I've mentioned today. Maybe you have other programs or things that you use for organization, but don't skip that step because even if you think like, Oh, I'm just starting out on this, like I can wait awhile to start organizing, you know, early on.
3 (36m 38s):
I really don't have that much to keep track of. It'll be fine. Don't say that. Stop today, set aside some time, really get those things together in an order because I can promise you in the weeks and months to come, it's going to be so incredibly helpful.
0 (36m 55s):
And until next month, Fire Nation keep your fire burning. Online training is skyrocketing across every industry and thousands of entrepreneurs just like us are using Thinkific to create market and sell online courses, launch your own online course and share your knowledge with the world today. Get started at Thinkific.com/eof that's Thinkific.com/eof.
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