Hitting Consistent Income Year 3 Of My Business!

2018 is my third year in business and things have changed a lot. In fact, by the end of 2018 there would be a major plot twist that no one saw coming and then a second plot twist. 2017, if you watch Yesterday's video was the year I realized I was really struggling with postpartum depression. I also that year got medication for it and really found another life raft by getting the opportunity to work basically part time for a YouTube educator. And I dove more into that in yesterday's video. If you didn't check that out, I will link it below for you to watch after this one. 2017 is also where I began to get that consistent monthly income to take some of that stress off of. When is the next paycheck coming? Now it's mostly coming from clients because like I said, I had three to four reoccurring dream clients in 2017. But I wasn't making that reoccurring income from passive courses or digital products. Those were only coming in by live launches. So now in 2018 it was really a great year for me, not only personally but professionally and health wise as well. So I would say in the Taylor Swift era theme that we're doing, this is really my state of grace era. I stuck with my program YouTube Bootcamp for the entire year of 2018 without changing anything for once. I also didn't really have the time to because I was spending more and more of my time in my clients business. You can also start to notice that this shift in my feelings and my behavior started to change as well this year as my hair got lighter. In fact I even had my first attempt at brand photos. I had a friend of mine come over to my office right here and take a few pictures with me and my kids. I don't think we ever actually used them. We may have used one or two for an ad, but it was just me finally starting to feel comfortable and making my business a legit thing again. This is year three into my business that I'm starting to feel legit. I had that consistent income coming in with Dream Clients, three of which that I got in 2018. I still work with to this day. In 2020 I was also able to start making time for myself for self improvement. Things like habits, exercising more and digging more into the steps and the things I needed to do on the back end of my business to take it to that next level. I still haven't done a lot of mindset work. I still hadn't bough into the idea yet, but I was doing some Monthly mindset work, I would say in my powersheets, which I was trying to do every month, but most of the time I was forcing myself to sit down and reflect on the previous month and then plan out the month ahead. Which is critical at this point in time in my business is the consistent planning that I did every single month. 2018, I also continued with something that I did in 2017 and that was invest in myself. So 2017 I invested in that YouTube workshop which ultimately got me this part part time gig with this YouTube educator. But 2018, I also invested in myself as well, but more into the business realm and with a business coach and a mastermind, which also led with my very first in person like entrepreneur online space event in January of 2018. And it honestly set me up for the rest of the year to have a great year to be around these people, to be around other women business owners and to see what they are doing and to see how I can make it happen with little kids at home while growing a business. Really this is where my confidence started to grow in 2018, not only was I around supportive people in a mastermind setting, but I was also working on YouTube channels through my client that had millions of subscribers. I was building their strategies, they were loving their strategies and their channels were growing because of the recommendations and the strategies I built for them. So I knew what I was doing, could work and was working now. That also led to me obviously putting more of my time into my client's business, the one that I was working for part time. I found myself spending more and more hours working for him. And a lot of the creative ideas and a lot of the, you know, energy that I had, I was really putting into his business and his clients. And I think this can really contribute to me launching a lot less in 2018. But even though I probably cut in half the amount of launches in 2018 that I did 2017, I still made over $77,000 in my business in 2018. And then take home pay was just a little bit over $43,000. That seems like chunk of change. Where did it go? This is actually where I started hiring help because as I brought on my own clients in my business, but I was working for my clients clients. I couldn't do all the work. So I brought on a video editor to help me edit my clients videos. I also brought on a designer to help me create my clients thumbnails as well. Literally was running out of time in the day to get everything done. So I needed help. And while I was still dealing with imposter syndrome and hadn't like magically gone away. It wasn't so crippling anymore. I kept notice in my power sheets as I look through them in 2018. The shift in how I'm talking about myself and how I'm thinking about what I want to do in the future, as opposed to those first two years where I was just like, why do I suck? I'm terrible at this. I'm never going to be good at this. So I can really see that shift start in 2018. 2018 was also a huge visibility year for me as well. I was on more podcasts in 2018 than in 2017. And I began speaking. I had my very first speaking engagement and it was actually paid for. And I did that in August of 2018. It was for the Alabama Wedding and Event Professionals group. And to tell you, when I walked into that room and saw this big stage and all these tables, I was nervous as crap. I thought, what the heck did I get myself into? Who am I to stand on that stage at big of a stage and can I just hide in the bathroom? But I did it. And then I had another speaking engagement in September for the Together conference in Portland as well. And that's where I met some really great friends that I am still friends with to this day. And I'm going to tell you, having friends in business and having friends who are doing what you're doing are so important because they're the ones that understand you while your significant others and maybe your family members are around you and they support you. They don't really understand when you have a problem in your business and you're not sure what's working. And so being able to have those people to reach out to that you've met at places like conferences or masterminds are so, so critical. And I think that also helped my confidence in 2018 because I really started to have a group of people that I could lean on right now. Chelsea wanted to know about my mindset, and I think I talked a little bit about that earlier. But she also wanted to know how I started to balance my family with my growing business as well. And honestly, I'll tell you, those first two years, I was terrible at it. In fact, when I look back on those first two years, because it was obviously my son's first year of life, I feel guilty because I spent a heck of a lot of time in my business. I didn't have any boundaries. I was willing to do whatever I needed to do to make it work. And if you watch the past two videos, you know, I was doing a lot. I was recreating that wheel over and over again. And that took a heck of a lot of time away from my family. And it took those two years till 2018 till I realized I gotta make a change because I can't keep doing this. I started this business like have my own schedule and all I'm doing is just slaving away at my desk every day. So 2018 is also the year that I started to put in boundaries. I decided I only work from 8 to 4, don't take a computer with me, don't open it up on my phone. And when I decided I was going to start taking every Friday off, this was the start of Fridays off for me. And I didn't actually start implementing it until about mid February. But I have continued to implement that as much as possible to this day. In fact, I don't plan anything on Fridays. And so the only thing I end up working on on Fridays now if I need to, if something fell behind that week. But I'm also at the point now where my kids are in school, school full time. And so I don't necessarily need Fridays off. But I'm still trying to make it possible every Friday. The other way I started incorporating more in my family is 2018 was also the first year that we were able to do two weeks vacation. And I contributed to me actually being able to make money again. I've never been someone who hasn't made my own money since I was 14. I was babysitting as soon as I could. I was working at the mall, I was working multiple jobs over the summer and always have my own money. So in 2016 and 2017 when I didn't have my own money consistently coming in, I really do feel that contributed to some of the depression. I've always had something of my own and to not have that for the first time ever in my life, it really kind of freaked me out. The other thing that I was doing, like I said, to be able to tie in these vacations and these speaking engagements was really getting consistent on planning in advance. 2018 was when I really started planning in 90 day increments and fig figuring out how much could I fit into a month. Instead of just like figuring out week to week to week, throwing a whole bunch of crap in a week and hoping that I got it done. I really use this process to this day. Not only do I plan for my entire year at the end of every year, but I revisit those plans and make plans every 90 days as well. So in December I'm making my January, February, March plans. In March I'm making my April, May, June plans. In June I'm making my July, August, September plans. And then in September I'm making the rest of the year's plans again. I can't reiterate how important it is to have a plan because if you don't have some type of plan or what you're working towards, you're not going to be able to fit in that time for family in 2018, that was the first time my daughter got on her flight and we could go see my best friend in Colorado. It's also when I was starting to go to these conference, I already mentioned that I spoke at the Alabama Wedding and Event Professions. I went to Portland to the Together experience. I also in October went to VidSummit and these are huge opportunities to make networking connections. I was able to meet the people at TubeBuddy for the first time at VidSummit and then they asked me to become a streamer on their YouTube channel and I continued to stream for them through 2020 from for almost two years. I was a streamer for TubeBuddy from that connection from that friendship that I made in 2018 at VidSummit. I also went to Creative at Heart Conference that year as well. This was the very first time I was able to meet two of my CL and where again, I was able to see how other people were building businesses, get new ideas, not be so stuck in this room doing the same things over and over again. I was able to get different perspectives, I was able to get different ideas. And just being around people and having the time and the money, the consistent money coming in to go to events like this is what helped my business grow. Because if you just stay at home, in your office or at your kitchen table, you're not getting that inspiration. Because I do think conferences are huge for inspiration and hearing other people talk and what other people are doing are huge to make your business move from that next step to go from maybe making a thousand dollars a month to 5,000 and then 10,000. You have to hear what other people are doing to figure out what you could take from that to help your business out. One more thing that I wanted to share before I jump into that massive plot twist that I told you came in 2018 is I was also asked by Elite, what kind of tools was I using up to this point in time? So honestly, when I started my business in 2016, the tools that I had bought or the software that I bought, I was still using in 2018. I hate tech. I don't like tech. I don't like to learn new things. So back in 2016, I got ConvertKit. I had lead pages, I had Canva, and I was just starting to play around with Trello. And that is all that I had used for the last two years. Like I said, I don't like to switch. I don't like to waste the time trying to switch and convert things. So those were the main tools, tools I was using. I wasn't even really using any scheduling devices other than, you know, convertkit to send weekly emails, which is something I was doing every single week. An email every week and a YouTube video every week. And honestly, most of those tools I used up through probably 2021. This is the year I've made a major conversion to FG Funnels. I moved my landing pages to FG Funnels in 2021, and this year I moved a lot of my AUT and a lot of my email marketing into FG Funnel. So everything that I jumped into in 2016 I kept for a good five years. I do want to address hiring. They mentioned a little bit earlier, but how I found these people. So I had a video editor, and he is a friend of mine, local. I reached out to him. I know he did some video editing, and that's how we got started. And then I hired someone for Pinterest. I knew that a lot of my traffic was coming from Pinterest. I wanted to continue getting traffic from Pinterest. Interest. I didn't want to do it, and I wanted somebody who could do it better. So I found Vanessa. Honestly, I think it was through Creative at heart is where I found her. I knew a few people that were using her there, and that's how I got started with my first contracted employees. And then I did try to train a virtual assistant. I was very nervous about finding somebody online. And so again, I was able to find a local friend and ask her if she wanted to learn how to be a virtual assistant. I thought maybe it'd be easier to be local so I could actually train her. But the problem was I wasn't ready for a virtual assistant. I wasn't clear on what I wanted her to actually do. And instead I was just trying to make her do everything. And it confused her and made me angry because I didn't really have the stipulations laid out. And so that working relationship didn't really pan out. It did for her in the long run though. I ran into her at Target recently and she's currently a virtual assistant. She had never come from this world until I introduced her to it and now she's a virtual assistant and she's doing great. But at the time in 2018, it just wasn't working out. So about this point in time, I was spending anywhere between 600 to $800 a month on contractors, but I was also making a consistent 5 to 8k with my reoccurring clients and then also some of the payment plans coming in when I was live launching. And yes, things are going really well in my business, but I was starting to feel that tingling tipping point that I was taking on too much, that I had too many clients. I was getting stressed out on where to put my time, where to put my efforts, what should I focus on. And it started to make me think, maybe I just want to be an employee, maybe I just want to work for somebody. It'd be so easy because I was getting to the point in my business where I had to make some automations and some processes and that's not the way my brain thinks. I just wanted to avoid it. And so I started to think instead of slowing down, why not maybe just become an employee? And that's when I had the opportunity to sell my business. Plot twist right? After two years in business, who would ever thought that somebody would want to buy my business? I really considered it. Scott and I, we talked about it a lot. Actually found in some of my powersheets and journals, me writing about accepting that this is the next step, that selling my business, that I'm at peace with it, that this is going to be the route I'm going to go. I was literally ready to a sign on the dotted line. And then I reached out to one of my friends who is also an entrepreneur and I talked to her a little bit about it and we, we talked about a couple of the points of the selling piece of it. And I changed my mind last minute. And the reason that I changed my mind is because the offer that I had basically told me my business was worth nothing to the buyer and that the buyer was basically just going to give me a sign on bonus to come work for him exclusively. And I'm, I spent two years of my life, almost three years at this point in time of blood, sweat and tears, building a reputation for myself and my business, building my brand equity, showing up on stages, speaking to podcasts, really being this voice for women in video kind of for me to be told that I didn't have enough credibility for my business to really be worth anything. Just the sign on bonus. I decided balls to the wall and we're going all in with trinalittle.com so my confidence did take a little bit of a hit in 2018 towards the end with everything that was going on. But by the end of 2018 and making this major decision, I now kind of lit this fire, this passion to make my business valuable in the eyes of which I don't know why it needs to be in the eyes but in the eyes of the outside world. And I was ready to do what it took takes to take my business to that next level in 2019 just to prove them wrong. I went into 2019, which I'm going to share more about with you tomorrow, with a plan to put more time back into my business, put my creativity and my ideas into my business, get more strategic with the content plan that I had in place and take more Fridays off. One more thing about 2018 and maybe I've ended up being a mistake in 2019, but I did decide to invest in a business coach wasn't a mastermind like I had did in 2018. This was actually a one on one business coach and I'm going to share with you in tomorrow's 2019 video how that all panned out. So let me know if you are loving this series. What are you loving most about? Let me know down in the comments. If you got any more questions about how I've been building my business along the way, let me know. I want to have that conversation with you down below and I'll see you tomorrow.