If you’re clueless about where your numbers lie on a monthly basis, for Coach Jess, it’s just as good as leaving money on the table.
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Full Transcript
Jessica McKinley 0:00
The moral here is really if you're not looking at your numbers every month, you are leaving money on the table
Welcome to Sincerely, Future You. A podcast for female entrepreneurs looking to scale their business by mastering their time, money, and drama. I'm your host, Jessica McKinley, founder of What's Happyning Coaching, a life coaching program that helps ambitious women like you make decisions today with the future you in mind.
Hi Happsters, happy spring, I am in such an interesting phase in my business. And I was just reflecting on it. Because I'm so proud of the mental growth that has happened for me within the last year, because the way that I decided to scale this year was scaling my time while maintaining actually slightly increasing my goal for the year. And I think that this is so important to know, there's so many different ways that you can scale and scaling your time. And working less to create the same amount of money is just as valuable, in some cases more valuable than it is to just make more money. But also, if you're scaling not properly, if you're not scaling, you're just growing your business, you're also growing your problems. And we don't want that to happen. So what I mean by that is that this year, I decided to do a launch model, which meant that I was only going to launch happening sessions twice, which, if you guys know if you've ever done a launch something open and close, you know that having time when you're not selling can create a little bit of panic for your brain, especially the first time you do it. Because my brain is like, okay, so if we want to make more money, we just what do we just stop selling what's happening right now we're in between happening sessions is rocking and rolling. First of all, having so much fun over there, just delivering and watching people get results, pretty immediately, like, at the time that I'm recording this, we've only had two meetings and almost every single one of the hamsters in there, he's telling me about their wins and what has happened and shifted in them just since having two weeks of access to all the tools and of the coaching. So shout out to the hipsters there. But for me going on, I'm just like, Okay, I'm just get to deliver and I just get to show up. And I have to make room for the discomfort that comes with space in your business. In the very beginning of our business. We're hustling, right? We're out there, we're just like, okay, sell, sell, sell, earn, earn, earn. And we're going to be talking about that topic today about how earning more money, in general, isn't the way to show up as a masterful CEO. You want to build your business in a balanced way and engage with money in all of the ways and track in a way that feels calming and control instead of impulsive and hustling, right? So I am very out of the hustle. I feel just kind of I think the word is relaxed. But also the word is a little bit just like it's like what do I do with my hands like I don't even know what to do with all of this free time and space that I have. And I wanted to offer some tips for you guys. This isn't the topic, but it could be almost maybe I'll do a separate podcast episode on it. So number one, a shift that I've made is to not think of selling as being something that just happens during launches. I'm thinking of selling as something that I'm always doing. So I'm continually continuing to show up selling my offer to you guys because I know that right now more than ever, the people that want to be prepared to be inhabiting sessions in October when it opens back up. You guys need to be preparing right now. I know a lot of you really, really wanted to join in March, but one of your main reasons was that you hadn't budgeted for it yet. So what are you doing right now to prepare yourself to put yourself in the best position to be all in for the October round and I'm telling you this round I know If it's going to be more competitive, because we're going to get more applications than our spots for that round.
So you really don't want to make sure that you're in a situation where you're leaving it to the last minute, you want to be prepared. So for those of you who are running launch models, and you're in between, it is okay to continue to just sell so that you don't get hustling in sales around the times of the launches. It's like, Yeah, always the best way for me to serve you is for you to be in happening sessions. So get on the waitlist, right. So right now, what I'm selling is, obviously the concepts and the ideas and the value of coaching in general, and preparation in terms of doing all the things that can help you. So listening to the podcast right now, definitely getting on the waitlist, the way to get on the waitlist right now is to go to my Instagram at what's happening with w j s, that's WJTSHAPPY and i n g w Jess, and go to the link in my bio, and you can get on the waitlist there, I'm going to be sending out some emails. And I'm really going to kind of be like training you guys this summer, I like putting you through the bootcamp of getting prepared to be in the room that is going to rock your world. So I am really excited about this space, but it is feeling uncomfortable for me. And I wanted to be super transparent about that, because it's just normal. It's the human emotions. So I'm going through all the fields. And the things that have been helping me have been to a shift the way I'm thinking about selling and timing of selling, I'm not just selling when I have something that they can actually click Buy on, but I'm always selling to help them put themselves in the best position for for the next opportunity to work together. And then number two is also thinking about space as like, a beautiful opportunity for me to connect with clients in a just a different way. That's really helps me to be like, Oh, this is just fun. I'm like leaning into it. The third and final way that just like cannot go without saying is setting up my budget. Like I have my understanding of what I will be earning. And I have budgeted out the money that came in, in spades in February and March during this launch for the next six months, really, and I understand what that means I understand what my expenses are. I talked about it a little bit on a podcast last week or the week before that, about talking about my expenses. And if I how I want to manage things during my maternity leave, which will be in July and August. And it is so calming and controlling to feel so far ahead of the game. And to feel like I know exactly what's going to be going down this year, I'm prepared for really any scenario and I can just lean into the delivery and making sure that the back end of everything is so flawless, I can get everything prepared for October to be even better. And this has just been Yeah, it's been I've been really proud of being able to not sell and just still feel in such abundance about money. And a lot of that has to come with the the meticulous budgeting that we teach in happening sessions. If I didn't have that all set up that last year, I would have never chosen this business model, which affords me all of the time that I want to be able to spend with my baby girl that's coming in a couple of months. So wanted to share that with you. And now it's shouted perhaps during the week, you guys there's all these new names in the bunch. So I wanted to shout up for the first time ever have served the week Erica Erica Madama she I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce her last name. So I apologize, Erica, it's not but you can see this correct spelling and someone's correct me in the show notes. But, Eric, I wanted to shout her out because of a couple of things.
Number one, I require all of my clients to track metrics. We talked about this to track their revenue. But what she identified really early on was that she didn't just want to track her revenue. She wanted to track her profitability. She wanted to track her salary because for some of you guys, your business models require more overhead than others. My business model doesn't have an extremely high overhead unless you count my coaching and then it's very high. But other than that I don't have employees that I'm paying, although I will have guest coaches that a thing coming up for happening sessions this round. But yeah, some of you guys have a lot higher overhead and for her she wanted to increase her profitability and I He thought that that was so wise and it came from her like looking at these numbers and being like, this number isn't quite reflecting exactly what I need to know. So shout out to Erica for just being onto herself and really figuring out the goal that that she cared about right numbers are just numbers, unless you are feeling and informed in a different way that will help you take better action in your business. So that's exactly what she did. And she also figured out with some prodding after I asked her some questions about her very specific number, revenue goal, I was like, oh, that's odd. It feels like very specific. And I already see you're tracking for January and February is very onpoint. Seems like this isn't really a goal. And it's more like a task. And she admitted that she wasn't quite stretching herself or uncomfortable enough. And she raised her goal for the year. So she both lowered the overhead that she wants to have and increased her overall revenue goal. And she was like, ah, and I was like, That's exactly where you want to be. So the more that you guys can stay stretchy and uncomfortable. The more failures you're willing to collect, the more negative emotions you're willing to feel, the more unfuck with a bowl you will be. And I could just already tell Erica is game she brought her game face. So shout out to you, Erica, really proud of you. And let's dive into the topic of the day. So we've got our we've, I've got my glasses on today. And I'm feeling very accounted like it's tax season, you know, I am getting into the nitty gritty of numbers myself, and I wanted to share with you four numbers that you absolutely should be tracking monthly in your business. So I wanted to share this in two ways. Number one, in a very specific, fake example and a conversation that I had, with in a conversation that I had with one of my clients and exact, really funny story that I bet you all of you guys are going through when you first realize, Oh, I'm not even thinking about that number. A lot of you guys just think about the success of your business as earning more money. But the success of your business isn't just about earning more. It's about growing a balanced business that affords you the life that you want. In order to do that, you need to be tracking more than just what you're earning. And again, sometimes when you think about earning more, you're not even thinking about tracking that number, you're just thinking about making more sales, right? You're not tracking the totals, you're not tracking monthly totals. So we want to have you help you show up in a more CEO way. Now. Ultimately, the goal is to get a bookkeeper who's doing this for you so that you are not spending so much time doing it. So in this episode I wanted to find for especially for those of you guys who don't have a bookkeeper yet, I wanted to simplify it to the four and just the four numbers that you can track yourself. And even if you do have a bookkeeper, I know some of you guys, they track so much stuff that you maybe just your eyes crossed when you look at the sheet and you're not informed by it. So I want you to make sure that your bookkeeper is delivering to only the numbers that serve you. And these are great, these are a great place to start. So let us tell you a little story. It's proof that math makes you more money. I was talking a couple of weeks ago with my client, and we were discussing her sales strategy for the month. And suddenly it just felt too vague to me. I was like, What's your revenue goal for the month? And she's like, I don't have one. And I was like,missing ingredient number one, the number one metric that you should be tracking is what is your monthly revenue goal. Now, a lot of my clients, most of my clients have a year goal. But the month goal is essential to tracking your progress and commitment and fund the functionality of your current process towards hitting your annual goal. It's all well and dandy to say 100k Yeah, I want to make 100k. But if you're not tracking monthly what you're earning and you don't have a revenue goal for the month, then you're really not going to know how realistic I don't see and I don't believe in your commitment to the 100k goal if you're not willing to look at the math along the way. So she decided on 10k for her monthly goal. And I said have you been tracking your revenue so far this month? This is now required and happening sessions and as an excellent student her answer was yes. So she had been tracking it. She said, Oh, let me look at it. Oh, I guess I'm actually already at seven cat, which is really funny because she had been practice well practice in the thought that she's not making enough money. So it didn't she didn't even bother to look at the math, because her brain was just telling her up yet we know the deal, you're not making enough money, right. And that's how our brains are, they really don't lean into the money or the math of it, because they don't want to be proven wrong. I say that, but I'm talking about your brains, right? So she realized that she was at 7k. Sometimes we have a thought about a goal, like it's very far away. And we've practiced believing it for so long that we just ignore the math, I visibly noticed her shoulders relax, as we put number two metric that you should be tracking monthly into the equation. But here's the number that people don't often factor in, what is your predictable or expected income this month. This It might include for you, depending on your business model, payment plans, or final balances do if you have people paying deposits, session fees for sessions that you have in the books that you know are coming up workshops, you're running, etc. She added it up and the total was 3450. That's $3,450. So if you're even the littlest bit good at max, you know that 7k plus a little more than 3000 is already over her goal. So we giggled about this for a little bit as she had entered the call in a bit of scarcity hustle mode, which was her Mo and left the call, like I already hit my goal that I didn't even set for the year and it was her highest month yet. But she hadn't been thinking about the future, she was just thinking about the past and wasn't even aware of what was going on in the president. The last number in your equation, goal number are metric number four that you want to track is your gap to your goal. But as it turns out, in this case, that number didn't even exist. Without realizing it. My hamster had entered her seventh month of coaching exceeding her goal. This is is we were only halfway into the month. So in typical coaching fashion, I was like, well, that's not very uncomfortable, I think we should raise your goal. We're only halfway through the month. So she ended up raising her new goal of 215 K. And she ended up showing up in abundance to those consults that she had for the remainder of the month. And she ended up coming in this because this was last month, I believe she ended up coming in, at like 14,870 something dollars like she was under her goal by $100. And she felt so incredible, because that goal was stretched to her. And now she's consistently setting the goal of 15k instead of 10k, when 10k felt far away now 15k Kind of feels, I'm I'm begging not even that uncomfortable for her. So we're gonna have to be raising that one soon, too. So the moral here is really, if you're not looking at your numbers, every month, you are leaving money on the table. And I wanted to explain kind of what happens and why this makes you more money, instead of just kind of being, you know, awareness of what's happening. Because what happens when you're thinking about this at several points throughout the month is your brain can fill in the gaps. So let's say she had an exceeding goal, and the gap to goal was $2,000 or something, we then look at her offers and we say okay, how do you want to make those that $2,000? What are the different ways and we can create a plan A, a plan B and A Plan C or we can just kind of give her a bunch of abundant options. The brain loves this, your brain will show up creatively it loves to fill in the equation, right? It's it's just becomes a math problem. It's not drama, your brain knows exactly what to do. But if you don't have the math, your brain just like I need to make more, I need to make more and it feels like it's this never ending rat race or you know, it's like you're on the hamster wheel and it's just like right in front of you and more is always more, right and you're never at more. So we need to understand what that revenue goal is so that your brain feels like it knows how to succeed. If it doesn't, if you don't give it an opportunity to succeed. You're setting yourself up for failure and that's just what's gonna happen. So So the number I wanted to explain a little bit more is your expected income or receivables. I've now started to break this down into two different ways that I look at it. Number one, obviously your receivables is the number that of things that you're contracted in. So you have things on the books, you know, that this person is going to come, they're going to pay their deposit on this day. I say no. But of course, we all know that some of those things do end up falling through things happen. So we want to be pessimistically strategizing. And I always said, we plan for the best, we believe in the best case scenario, but we plan for the worst case scenario. So we look at that number. And we understand let's say your gap to goal is 2000, or your expected revenue is 2000. But we also have like some Predictable Revenue. So for me, that might look like when I had lunch like I have consults, not necessarily do all those consults. But it's not a receivable, I wouldn't put in that category. But let's say I had five consultations, I would say pessimistically two of those people are going to sign on as clients.
So I kind of separate number three of predictable income into receivables, and then potential income, just to get your brain feeling very abundant. Like there's so many opportunities for you to make money and hit your goal. So that your brain actually shows up to the each console. And it can get into service. Instead of being thinking about, I need to sign this client so that I can make this goal or I need to sell X number of products in order to hit my monthly goal. We want to slip out of significance and interest, we want to stay in service, of course, but you're only able to do that when you you're having abundant thoughts. And so for me the potential income category, I just love to bullet point as many things as I can think of, I'll be like, Okay, I have all these consults, I'm going to a networking gig on this time, these are the people who have been newly following me, I'm just going to write their names down. I like to just have names and numbers and like long lists of potential money that's always available to me. So that even if they don't book this month, it's like it's all inevitable. All these people that are interested in that are following me. They'll all eventually be clients, like I love to think about it in that terms, so that I'm not so specifically attached to the receivable so that if something falls through, or something gets delayed, which happens, right, like I had a client who verbally committed to one on one like two weeks ago, and then went on a trip and had other things and didn't pay for two weeks now that's like almost $10,000. That was right, she was paying a bowl like $9,500 That was kind of like floating in coming in maybe maybe not right six significant amount of money. But I was very unattached to it, I was able to be like, okay, great that money is inevitable that's coming at some point. And she did actually pay this week. And it's like, all of the rest of the time I was having other consoles, I was because I am so dialed into my money and all of the possibilities. So it's not just the math of what's coming, the past math, but it's that future money that I love so much that I want you guys to be tapping into. And of course, all of this is a reflection of how many people you're serving. So it just becomes fun. I know in the beginning when you're looking at your numbers, especially if you see zeros. So for me, like there are weeks, where I'm gonna have 00 per month, I'm gonna have like 00 zeros happening. And I'm not freaked out about it at all, because that those zeros are just data points for me and I understand now the bigger picture, I can zoom out and I know that my business model is more zoomed out business model than it used to be. But if you aspire to scale your business in terms of time, you can not do that without being meticulously budgeted. And every CEO eventually this is the goal. So what are you doing now to prepare for the next stage of your business? And if you're not doing that, if you're not tracking these monthly numbers, if you don't have a system, you don't have these dots that are going to help you show up and not just close your eyes and cross your fingers. When it comes to the math of your business. Then you're gonna stay in this hustle, grind and It's not sustainable. And when I tell you that there are some times where you're going to be down for the count for longer than you expect, something's gonna happen, something's gonna come up. You know, we live where human beings in a fragile worlds, you don't know what's going to happen, you want to put yourself in the best position to be able to take that time and space when you need, hustling might be fine for you, if you enjoy that energy, I actually can relate to that. And I'm like, I don't mind the hustle. Until I do mind it. Right. It's like, I actually most of the year can, like feel pretty energized by that, like, let's go, let's talk, let's set up all the consoles. I love it. I love people. I'm a people person, I'm energized by that. But when I was sick from nausea, unexpected from this pregnancy for three months, one of the most comforting things during that time was the fact that I had set myself up for a year to understand where my business and where my personal finances were at, while I could not sell. And I felt very abundant during that time, even though it was not a part of my plan. And I want that for all of you guys, right? I don't want you to have something unexpected happening to you, and not be able to be fully present in your grief or in your sickness or whatever is going on or for someone that you love. Because you can't financially afford to. You have to stay in the hustle. i That's not a sustainable business model. Right. All right. I think that that is all so just to recap, I'll give you the four numbers again, that you should be tracking monthly. Number one, your monthly revenue goal, if you don't have a goal, what's happening, right? You're not really you're just kind of showing up in a scattered energy. And they say vague, vague goals create vague results.
So your Monday revenue goal. Number two, your current cash received. So it's like, Are you tracking the money that's actually coming in? Do you know where you're at, in progress towards your goal number three, your expected income and receivables slash subcategory your potential revenue for the month, get really creative, put as much in here as you want. And then number four, the gap to your goal. So I run this, these numbers in like, five minutes, 10 minutes, probably every couple of days. I just check in maybe every week. And now it depends on your business model, it might not make sense for you to do it weekly, it might make sense for you to do it monthly. For me, it does make sense to do it weekly still, but actually probably in the next coming month. It won't make sense for me to be tracking this weekly anymore, which is so fun. But I'm still going to make sure that we understand what the gap to goal is and what we are achieving on a larger more zoomed out scale. So we'll see maybe we'll have some new metrics for those of you in this phase of business in a future episode. But for those of you guys who are still in a monthly selling or a weekly selling business model, these are non negotiable metrics for you to be tracking. Alright guys, get out there, do the math and if you are so paralyzed and cannot look at the math. Come on over to happening sessions, get on the waitlist, go and connect with me on Instagram. Tell me your woes. We'll get you through it. You have this have a beautiful weekend.
Hey Happters, if you want to learn more about today's topic, head over to what's happening.com forward slash podcast. That's what's happening. Whats h a p p y and ing.com forward slash podcast? If you're a business owner, and you're resonating with what we talked about here, what are you even doing come hang out with me over where the party's at on Instagram at what's happening W Jess again that Tapi h a p p y and ing and book a discovery call to see if coaching is your next best step.