Description

On today's episode of the podcast I'm diving into my January 2023 profit report.

In lieu of a December profit report,I did my 2022 year in review. If you missed that, check out my recap with Claire Pelletreau here.

These profit reports help me keep on top of my numbers as I prep and review them in order to record the episode.

To quickly recap 2022, my big goals for the year were to have income consistency and building Monthly Recurring Revenue. My income stayed in the same few thousand dollar window month- to-month then grew toward the end of the year. The MRR didn't grow as much as I had hoped it would during the year and I need to go back and review this month's because my January 2023 MRR was about $2,000 less than I had expected so either we had a lot more failed payments than I expected or my math was off.

Expenses for 2022 were 42.5%, higher than my goal of 30-35% however a lot of this is due to the money spent of starting Drag Tax. This is why I invented the term WTF Happened to My Money Hamster Wheel because the more my income increased the more my spending in the business went up so my take home pay never really went up. 

This cycle continued in 2023 as I've been spending to launch a new project (more on that later). What used to be a cycle of spending on courses and education became a cycle of spending on new businesses.

Big goals for 2023

• Consistent $20,000 months is the big focus. At the end of last year we were hitting $15k pretty consistently. I would like to be close in Q2 and hitting it each and every month in Q3 and Q4, but hopefully in March after my new announcement.
• Get MRR to $20,000 by end of year. Monthly recurring revenue is different than payment plans. A payment plan is when someone will be paying you, let’s say $1,000/month for five months instead of $5,000 upfront. MRR is like a subscription, think Netflix or your cell phone bible. 
• Get expenses under 35%. I’m off to a bad start (blame this new project I’m working on) so I’ll probably need some 80% profit months to make up the difference. 

This year I want to do a Profit & Loss breakdown. A P&L can be as detailed as you want so I have income in different sub-categories which are:

• Low ticket stuff
• Contract Club ($30)
• Tax Toolbox ($30)
• Bookkeeping Blueprint ($30)
• Legally Launched ($30)
• Profit Rx (this is really our MRR plus the 1-on-1 stuff)
• VIP - Our Primary Tier ($100/month)
• Content-only Tier ($30/month)
• Book
• Affiliate income
• Speaking fees
• Other - one-off products that are deep in the website, tucked away in funnels

So let’s break it down…

January Income

Total revenue: $12,500 (not including 1-on-1 income, that now gets separated. More on that in a minute)

• Low ticket revenue - $2,790 ($2,200 came from Contract Club, $30 from Legally Launched, $150 from Bookkeeping Blueprint, $360 from Tax Toolbox)
• MRR - $8,080 (about $6,000 from Profit Rx VIP)
• Book sales - $70
• Affiliate income - $283
• Speaking - $500
• Other - $800

Expenses:

• Team $3,000, so almost 25%. Goal is 15%, but most of that was working with new PRx folks
• My own wages (I don’t really count this, that’s a different conversation). 
• Monthly tools - $500. Gotta see if I can trim this some. Since growing my team and doing PRx onboarding I’ve been needing more accounts for my team like multiple Calendly users and Zoom accounts.
• Payouts to our affiliates - $300 (a lower month since we weren’t promoting much)

Total Expenses (not including owner salary): $5,400

Owner Profit: $7,000

BUT, I didn't really feel like I made money this month because *drum roll* my big exciting announcement I’ve been hinting at is that we are going to be reopening my law firm next month. I used to run a firm called Braden Drake Law but as I moved away from one-on-one work and into more education, I decided the law firm would go away. 

I’ve been thinking about restarting it for about a year and we’ve been doing some work leading up to it like launching Drag Tax and one-on-one bookkeeping and I’ve been thinking of going back to more one-on-one work. 

To launch the law firm, I’ve had about $6,000 in expenses so far: 

• Brand Designer: $3,000
• Trademark course (we’ll be getting into trademarks and I plan to eventually hire an attorney to do this in the firm so I don’t have to) : $2,500
• Website (Squarespace, etc).: $500

I use the money from my Braden Drake LLC business to pay myself and then use my personal money to invest in the new business expenses. So my business had a good month, but my personal bank account not so much. 

I’ll be talking about the lawfirm more in the coming weeks so stay tuned for that and for an announcement of my lawfirm virtual launch party. 

On the Drag Tax side of the business, this marketing channel is to speak to its own niche where we send folks both to the law firm and the education site. We’ve brought our first fabulous drag queen into Profit Rx and I had another promising call this week. Legally speaking I thought Drag Tax might be a DBA (Doing Business As) under the law firm, but what I realized is that a lot of the folks I talk to are a great fit for Profit Rx, it’s just a matter of growing trust in online education within the industry. 

What we’re moving towards is BradenDrake.com has my low ticket offers, Profit Rx, my book and my blog and the lawfirm will have one-one-one legal, tax and bookkeeping services. Drag Tax is a separate, industry-focused website that will drive people to BradenDrake.com or the law firm based on what they need. 

Goals/Projections for February

BradenDrake.com

• Profit Rx MRR: $8,000
• Low ticket stuff: $4,000 (including my $75 bundle)
• Will likely have some other stuff but not counting on it 

Law Firm:

• $1,200 in MRR from current clients including bookkeeping and projects I haven’t started publicizing to everyone yet
• Tax Returns: $3,000 (If you’re a Profit Rx member, stay tuned for this)

Grand total: $16,200 between both businesses

If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe in your podcast player and tag me on Instagram @bradenadamdrake