Early Exit #36: March Finance Update
My best ever month for consulting income and a chance to meet me in person next week.
You’re reading Early Exit Club — a newsletter about leaving the 9-5 workforce to build a $20k/month solo business by Nick Lafferty.
Hey folks,
Welcome back to my monthly finance update where I transparently share my income dollars and sources to help unmask what it takes to build a $20k+/month business.
Last month I changed formats to share my high level thoughts on what’s working for my consulting business, what isn’t working, and what’s next.
The feedback on that was really positive so I’m going to do it again, but here’s a quick look at my finances before moving onto that.
Revenue Breakdown
My income stayed over $30k for the second month in a row powered entirely by my consulting business. More on that below.
But what happened to my affiliate income? I didn’t get paid from my main affiliate source last month so I’m not counting it. I’m expecting some revenue, but for now it’s missing.
What’s Working
Here’s what I wrote last month:
Client Retention
My Niche Offer
My Pricing
I’m happy to report that those three things are still working.
Client Retention
I retained all of my clients this month! However, I don’t expect to retain all of them through the end of the year.
Every month I grade my clients on a stoplight score (🔴 🟡 🟢). I have two clients in the red right now that I’ve flagged for a few reasons. I’ll go into my scoring methodology in a future newsletter.
Niche Offer
I sent out one proposal last month that was not accepted, partially due to timing (I’m not booking new clients until after I move in July) and partially due to my PPC offering not including design work.
I’m ok with this and have no intention to change my offering to add design into it.
My Pricing
Prospects are not balking at my new prices and I’m about to go through my first 1-year renewal with my first retainer client. I’m following the exact process I outlined here, wish me luck :)
What’s Not Working
Here’s what I wrote last month:
Too much client work
Too much networking
Networking:
I offered my time to marketers who were recently laid off and many of those calls were held in early March. Those were great conversations and I genuinely enjoyed talking and helping those people, but I seriously overextended myself. I promised to reduce the amount of time I spent doing this and here’s what that looked like:
March 1 to 15: 8 networking calls
March 16 to 31: 2 networking calls
I am very happy with that and I’ll continue to be very picky about saying yes to networking calls from now on. I have not started charging for calls yet but it’s coming.
Client work:
As long as I retain my current client roster, this won’t change much. But I made one small change: I started spending less time with one of my hourly clients.
They have an incredible sweetheart pricing deal that is becoming a drain on my available time each month.
I’m working on redoing this contract to either make it more favorable for me (like moving them to a retainer with defined deliverables every month) or managing them out of my client roster.
Better newsletter content
Having more time directly contributed to creating better content last month. I wrote some of my favorite (and IMO, best) newsletter content I’ve put out recently:
Writing this newsletter is an important part of my business as I talk with freelancers who continue to struggle with aspects of their business. It’s my goal to give back to the community and provide as much free value as possible.
What’s Next: Travel
I’m going to my first in-person event as a freelancer: Spryng in Austin, TX (Apr 9-10). Come say hi if you’ll be around next week! I’m looking forward to finally meeting a bunch of my internet friends in person.
I’ll also be in NYC in May. Hit me up if you’ll be there too :)
See you all next week,
Nick
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Always good to read! Keep crushing it, Nick :)