Episode 13: $1M in 6 Months - Julie's State of the Union

Hey everyone, this is Julie and today I want to give you a little bit of a behind the scenes in my business. I'm going to call this the State of the Union. July 2018. Welcome to the Create youe Laptop Life podcast where entrepreneurs all around the world come to learn how to market and grow their online business right from their laptops, wherever they are. We don't have traditional nine to five jobs and we don't want them because financial and lifestyle security and freedom is too important to us. We know the world is changing for the better and that the freelance and entrepreneur economy is the cleaner, greener, smarter way to work for both families and businesses. My name is Julie and this podcast will teach you everything you need to know about creating and growing your laptop life. Alright, so it is six months into my business, we're halfway through 2018. This is nuts because 2018 started yesterday. I wrote a blog post the other day about how my business is doing and I thought that I would share it with you all because I think it's very easy to wonder what the numbers mean when you're looking at experts, mentors, gurus out there who are sharing, you know, their stripe screenshots. They're sharing, you know, gross revenue and it's really hard to see, like, well, what does that actually translate to in dollars and cents? So my business in 2017 did about $1.2 million. The profits were pretty steady, pretty good. They were around 800,000 of the 1.2, which is actually, it's not pretty good. That's like insanely good. In fact, the profit margins were probably a little too high. It was evidence that I was not hiring out as much as I should and taking on a lot of working in the business instead of on the business. And when you're building a business, especially an online business, it's very normal for you to work in the business for a long time and then eventually transition out to working on the business. That's a hard transition for me because I have been a actual implementer, executor type personality in my business. So to take my hands off the wheel and to just be kind of the CEO and visionary was very difficult. And so you could see that in my profit and loss in 2017 because I was working a bajillion hours and making a ton of money and keeping a lot of that money, but also pretty exhausted. So in December, I began working with Russell Brunson and click funnels. And so this forced my hand in terms of how do I really create a business that I'm not in in the day to day, but still have ownership and vision of and do the things that are in my zone of genius and let everything else happen. So I was a little nervous that, number one, my profit margins would tank. I was also nervous that by diving over into Click Funnels and Russell that like my, I was afraid my business might suffer. And I didn't want it to suffer. I wanted it to grow. And I thought, is it possible to do both? So the really good news is that the profit and loss statements for my business show great profit margins and growth. And I just wanted to kind of give you a little behind the scenes of what it actually means for a business that's making anywhere between 100 and $200,000 a month. So right now, my business name, my actual entity name is Pipe and Lime Media LLC. We have seven people on our team. Three of them are full time employ and four are contractors. It costs us anywhere between 20 and 30 thousand dollars a month in salaries, payrolls and retainer fees. So just to kind of give you an idea of what it costs to run a business of this size. Now for six months, we came in around $58,000 shy of $1 million in a six month period, which I am super proud of. Given that I wanted to double my business, I wanted to hit 2 million in this year. And I am on track to be close to 2 million, which is so exciting, it's kind of a bummer. I can't say I made a million dollars in six months, but I'm $58,000 shy. So for all intents and purposes, I think I'll still call it. The profit margin of the business is sitting at 49%, which means of the $941,000 I earned in 2018, $470,000 of it is profitable. Now, that profit margin is after all expenses. And that does include my current salary. And my current salary for a six month period was around $100,000. So if you were to take my salary and wrap that in to the profit margin, the profit margin would actually be higher. So I'm very, very, very proud of that. But a lot of people ask me like, all right, you've made 940,000. You've only kept 470. Where is all that money going? And so aside from payroll and labor costs, which are my big costs, one of the biggest things that I spend money on is advertising. I do extensive amounts of Facebook ads to get visibility and brand awareness. So we spent about $100,000 in Facebook ads since the start of 2018. And Facebook ads are amazing and I recommend that you use them in your business. If you're not using them in your business, you'd be crazy because they are definitely the most lucrative way right now to get access to 2 billion people on the planet. So we spent about a hundred grand in Facebook ads. By the way, when you join my digital marketing program, I give you a complete, complete and comprehensive course on Facebook ad strategy that's in there. The other thing is event expenses. We hosted our first Mastermind in April. I support about 56 entrepreneurs in their business and I do the VIP mastermind in intensives, the live ones here in Connecticut. And that cost us a little over $30,000 to pull that off. And we have another one coming in October. And a lot of travel. I had done a lot of traveling back and forth to different conferences, speaking gigs, things like that. I'm also heading to Kenya here in a few weeks, which is amazing. So all of that cost a fair amount of money. So that's where most of my, my profits went. And that's why I'm sitting at about 49%. So super excited. But a lot of then people are like, well, what do you do with all that profit? And I know that a lot of people think, oh my gosh, 470,000 in six months is a lot of dang profit. In fact, I'm just whipping out my calculator now. If you divide that by six months, you're at about $78,000 a month, right? You're like, what do you do with that? Well, unfortunately, half of that goes to the irs. So at this tax bracket, I am getting royally screwed in taxes both at the federal and state level. I'm in Connecticut, which is not a very business friendly state. So I have to pay 50% of my profits to both federal and state. So that leaves me with about 235,000 left. Typically what I do is I take that 235,000 and I've been taking about 30% of it. And that 30% I've been keeping in the business. So it's about 70,000 just stays in the business account and that is there for emergencies, sleep well at night. If I have a bad month from a profit standpoint, because my machine is so big, it's got three full time employees, it's got four contractors, got all these things in motion. I can't just let that well run dry, right? I can't just take all that money and run off to the Bahamas. So when you take the 253 and you subtract the 70,000, you end up with about 180,000. And what I have been doing with that money is pretty much sticking it in a place where I can't reach it. Right now my salary that my business pays myself plus what I get from clickfunnels is more than enough to cover the bills. So all that money is actually going into investments and long term savings where it will help me down the road. And so this is my goal for the next five years to continue to basically save all the money that I can to help, you know, my kids with whatever education they want to pursue. Also to build up a comfortable and savings trajectory so that I can retire someday and not have to work as hard as I do. It's really not very sexy. We did take a couple of weeks, nice trips, we went to Disney World and that cost us a pretty penny when there's a family of six. So we do fun things like that. We also, you know, got some new furniture for the house, spent some money on redoing our basement, things like that. So some long term investments, really trying hard not to piddle the money away on, you know, fancy clothes and super expensive vacations that are just as fun as the less expensive vacations anyway. That's kind of what's going on behind the scenes. Just so you know, like I want to, I always want to transparent about the numbers because I think it really helps people to understand that when you're making that kind of money, even though an online business doesn't have overhead, doesn't have a physical location, you know, you think oh my gosh, you've made a million dollars in six months. That means you have a million dollars. Well, no, I actually have around $180,000. And even at that level of 180, that's still a very profitable business. And so it kind of just sets, it just sets the perspective. So it's amazing. I try to give as much help, feedback, advice as I can inside the create your laptop life membership group. If you're not a part of that yet, it is $50 a month and you can come and you can ask me all kinds of questions about finances, strategy, online business, all that good stuff. So I want to leave you with this. I wrote this on my blog and I want to read it to you now as I'm about to sign off and basically I sat down, I thought if I could go back and tell my pre business self what to expect when building a multi million dollar business. This is what I would say to the Julie three years ago and I'd say, julie, you're about to go on the wildest rollercoaster ride of your life. It will be the most thrilling, fulfilling, maddening thing you ever do. And knowing your personality and your drive for security and certainty, it would be good to recognize that no matter how hard you work, no matter how many backup plans you have, there's really nothing certain about starting your own business. And you're going to need to learn to love the ride the process. Even when there are huge dips in morale, mood money, tell yourself you know what, it's only because of the down that you can experience the high. It's absolutely 1000% a part of the process, always teaching you, course correcting you and giving you the ability to appreciate those times of growth. So go into business for the mission, for the impact, for the life changing results you can bring to the planet. And don't expect a crystal ball. And certainly don't expect to feel comfortable and don't think that things will be settable and forgettable. And don't think you're some anomaly when you feel like you have no idea what your finances are going to do in three or six or nine months. Because you will have to be your own best advocate, your own best critic, cheerleader and confidant. You will find some of the most amazing people on planet earth. And at the end of the day, no matter what happens, when or how it happens in your online business life, you will never want to go back to your old life once you start. Even if the hard times get really hard. Because building a business is truly the way to change the world. I hope that was helpful for you guys. Have an amazing day and I'll talk to you again soon. If you're ready to create, grow, scale your online business, you can go to createyourlaptoplife.com podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today. RA.