I remember the first time I hit a huge milestone in my business – $10,000 in revenue in one month.
It was the magic number for me – the one I needed to hit consistently to be able to leave my day job. The amount of money that would cover my salary and benefits at my day job plus cover business expenses and taxes.
And it felt amazing.
Because I started from ZERO. Zero dollars, zero subscribers, zero clients. And I didn't go into debt to do it, either.
The feeling of hitting the $10,000 mark is the exact same feeling I had when I got my very first subscriber – elation.
OMG, this is totally possible. Owning my own business, being in control of my schedule and income potential… it's totally possible!!!
But I didn't quit my day job for another 16 months.
Yep, you read that right. After I hit that first $10,000 month, it didn't happen again right away, and it didn't happen consistently. I knew I had more work to do to build a strong foundation, and you'll see why as you read this post.
I asked my WP+BFF’s Facebook Group what they wanted to know about what it really takes to build a side hustle that earns $10,000 in one month (from someone who's not trying to sell you the secret on how to make $10,000 in one month).
This blog post is to show you what it really took to make $10,000 in one month.
How long it took me to get there, how much I’ve made, what my expenses are, how much I’ve paid myself, how much I work, what my daily routine is like, if I was able to get my husband on board, and how I manage to work full time, run this business on the side and still have a life.
Plus I’ll share with you the number one thing that made all of this possible.
I’ve written a couple of blog posts on my journey so far if you want to learn more about that: How Much Money I Made in the First Six Months in Business, and then another one about having my first $5,000 month back in February of 2016.
Perhaps you’ll see some of yourself in there depending on where you’re at in your business. Go ahead and read those if you haven’t already – I’ll wait 🙂
So here it is: the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about what I did to have my first $10,000 month.
1) How long did it take?
Twenty months while working full time – January of 2014 to August of 2016.
2) What did your schedule look like when you were working full time?
Monday – Thursday
5:30 – Wake up, coffee, Daily Action Steps, plan my day
6:30 – Work out
7:00 – Shower & get ready
8:00 – answer emails, Facebook group interaction, Periscope
9:00 – pack lunch and drive to work, listen to a podcast
9:30 – Day Job
12:00 – Emails, Facebook (if time)
1:00 – Day Job
5:00 – Commute home, podcast
5:30 – make and eat dinner
6:30 – Depending on the day, it's my personal coaching calls, consult calls, my WP+BFF WordPress Developer Coaching Program, client work
9:30ish – Bed.
Some days, I’ll skip making dinner, end work at 8PM and go to dinner with my husband.
Friday
5:30 – Wake up, coffee, Daily Action Steps, plan my day
6:30 – Work out
7:00 – Shower & get ready
8:00 – answer emails, Facebook group interaction, Periscope
9:00 – pack lunch and drive to work, listen to a podcast
9:30 – Day Job
12:00 – Emails, Facebook (if time)
1:00 – Day Job
6:30 – Commute home, listen to podcasts
7 – ??? Hang out with husband, friends
Saturday
7:00 – Wake up, coffee, Daily Action Steps, plan my day
8:00 – Client work or projects
If I’m home, I’ll work til like 4, get ready and then we usually go do something with friends or family. If I’m camping or traveling, I’ll work for a couple hours and then get ready and spend the day having fun.
Sunday
7:00 – Wake up, coffee, Daily Action Steps, plan my day
Sundays vary – I may work a few hours here and there, I may visit family, I might be traveling that weekend – but I always make time to get to the grocery store and plan the next week.
I’ll also use vacation day or personal time every couple of weeks to spend a full day working on my business.
I HAVE to schedule my time, plan out my weeks and I HAVE to make sure that I'm setting boundaries and saying no to things. I'm also very seriously working on losing that extra weight I told you guys about, and the things I need to do for myself to make that happen are #1. I have to guard my time and be careful not to make other people's priorities my priorities.
Here are some things I do to make my days easier:
- Hired someone to clean my house weekly. This is awesome and I wish I would have done it years ago.
- Signed up for Blue Apron (use my link and you can get $30 off your first order). I have 3 healthy meals for two delivered to my house weekly. I don’t have to think about it, I just grab a recipe and cook it.
- Amazon Prime saves me TONS of time. If I run out of something, I just order it instead of running to the store.
3) How much of the $10,000 is passive income (affiliate marketing, online courses)?
Affiliate Commissions: 20%
Sales of my own online courses: 25%
Services (Done For You package, Power Hours, Coaching program): 55%
4) What are your monthly expenses and how do you keep track of them?
I used to use Quickbooks Online. Now I'm using Bench Accounting (use this link to get one month free) because I've discovered that I'm absolutely terrible at bookkeeping. Not at the task itself, but the numbers. So I've invested in someone to do it for me.
Here’s my breakdown for the 8 months prior to hitting that first 10K month.
I've invested the most money in my business coach, subcontractors to help with the Done For You packages, my virtual assistant, and my CRM, Infusionsoft. Plus all the plugins I use on my website and client sites. I see lots of opportunities here to cut down on expenses as well.
5) How much of that $10,000 have you paid yourself?
This part might shock you…
While I had a full time job, I paid myself $350/month.
That covered someone to clean my house once a week, and the best Internet I can get with super high upload speeds (a business expense, but it goes into our personal account).
I treated myself to some cool fall boots, but other than that I’m investing my earnings into growing the business.
That means business coaching, an awesome virtual assistant, the right tools and equipment, and subcontractors like graphic designers and WordPress developers.
I was seriously- serious about turning WP+BFF into a lucrative full time gig (and I did), and my day job is what allowed me to do that.
You might wonder why the hell I'm doing this if I'm only getting $350/month out of it, but I have gotten so much more out of doing this than money.
6) What kind of marketing do you do and how often? Social Media, blog posting, advertising, etc.?
You'll notice by looking at my expenses that I don't spend any money on advertising. I've run some Facebook Ads from time to time, but it's very minimal.
Instead, I spend a lot of my time helping people for free in my Facebook group and I get a lot of customers through word of mouth now – and I just recently set up an affiliate program.
I have relationships with influencers that help people build businesses but don't want to deal with the tech part so they send people my way (yay!)
I am a member of tons of Facebook groups, and my VA keeps track of all of their promo days and posts the 5 Day Website Challenge on those promo days consistently. She also helps me with Twitter engagement – I tweet every single person that follows me and I share the Challenge with them.
I was only writing a blog post a month up to the point I hit the $10K mark. Now I'm writing one a week.
Here's what my social media usage looked like leading up to that first 10K month:
I barely used Facebook Live or Periscope.
I used MeetEdgar to auto-post my own blog posts and curate content from others – now I'm using Coschedule.
I barely had a Pinterest strategy. Okay, I had zero Pinterest strategy.
I had Instagram and Snapchat accounts that I did nothing with.
I spent a lot of time building relationships and doing interviews, writing guest posts and all the other stuff that Nathalie Lussier teaches in her 30 Day List Building Challenge.
My list was been growing steadily at the rate of about 275 new subscribers a month.
7) What are your list building tips?
To take Nathalie Lussier's 30 Day List Building Challenge, commit to it, be consistent, do what she tells you to do and focus on providing value.
8) What kind of coffee/drugs do you take to earn $10,000 in revenue while still working full time?
I love this question! I drink a Keurig cup of Green Mountain Dark Magic coffee in the morning, BulletProof style. I don't take drugs, but I did have to give up a lot of things to get here…
Binge – watching The Real Housewives of Whatever City. Self doubt. Being cheap. Sleeping in on weekends. Going out drinking with my friends in the middle of the week. Being lazy. Having no schedule. Perfectionism. Instant gratification. Hating my day job. Being weird about asking people to pay for things. Not understanding the value of what I offer. Trying to do it all on my own. Thinking that I know everything. Saying yes to everything.
9) How do you manage to work full time and work enough to make that kind of money?
- I’ve figured out my schedule, roles and priorities thanks to the Rock Star Guide to Getting it Done.
- I hired a team of VA's and actually started delegating a bunch more stuff to them.
- I hired a business coach to help me close sales while holding my value (i.e. higher prices, awesome service).
- I hired a productivity/systems analyst to streamline my processes and help me figure out what to outsource to my VA so I can do more in less time.
- I get up early.
- I have someone cleaning my house weekly. When people talk about enjoying the journey, I think this is what they are talking about. This one thing makes me feel like a millionaire!
- Thanks to Blue Apron I don't have to think about what's for dinner.
- I told my boss about my dream and she’s been super supportive.
10) What is the most effective thing that you've done to reach this goal?
There are a couple… and this isn't going to be a very sexy or magical answer… but the first one is: Consistency. I put time into the things that bring me more subscribers every single day. The second one is: Delegating. I really can't do it all on my own.
11) What is the most important thing you’ve done that has gotten you this far?
Investing in a business coach. And not just any business coach – the right business coach. One who can give me one-on-one attention and who has actually built a successful online business. There is absolutely no way that I would have gotten this far without the help of an expert.
There were (and still are) so many things I don't know about building a business.
There are still many personal things I need to learn about myself and overcome to be successful. Investing in a mentor has gotten me farther faster than than anything else I’ve tried, and I’ve tried it all.
No amount of free resources out there can replace the help of someone who's done what you want to do.
12) How did you get your husband on board?
At the time I had my first 10K month, I hadn't. All the things I had to give up to get to where I am right now didn’t negatively affect him. I never used our personal funds for the business, and I just rolled everything I’ve made right back into it.
I knew I'd need his buy-in to leave my day job because he appreciated the stable predictability of my paycheck. You can learn more about how that all went down here.
When I hit that $10,000 month, he was super happy for me, but he’s also nervous – but the income won’t be as unpredictable as he thinks.
I’m building my business in a way that I have steady, consistent income that’s not dependent upon huge product launches to get me through lean months.
We have a household budget and I’m committed to contributing to 50% of our household bills – just like right now.
So whether I’m getting paid a paycheck or earning revenue from WP+BFF shouldn't matter.
13) When are you going to quit your day job already?
This was my answer back in September of 2016:
“I don’t know. I need to see that $10k/month consistently (I hit it again in September – woohoo!!!) and make sure I really know how much I need to make to sustain and grow WP+BFF and pay myself the same salary I make at my day job.
My husband and I want to be debt free except for our house. I have an awesome team at my day job that I like working with. I have a few big projects there that I want to see through to the end. The right time will reveal itself. ‘Impatience is a vibration that will keep you right where you are.'”
Here's what happened when I finally put in my notice.
14) What would you have done differently and what advice do you have for newbies?
This is a hard question for me to answer… I don't think I would have done anything differently. I had to learn all of the lessons I've learned by going through it – that's just how I am.
My business coach knows that she can tell me how something will turn out, I'll think I know better and do it my way, and only when I've felt that pain will I do it her way. (My mom will tell you the same thing.) I'm learning to just do it her way the first time and save myself time and pain… The only thing I wish was different is that I wish I would have believed in the value of what I have to offer earlier. I would have made different choices if I had.
Which leads me to my advice for newbies: If you are serious about making whatever you do into a legit, full time, for real business, you need the right tools even if they seem too expensive.
You need the right coach, even if it seems to expensive. And you need to make the decision that you are going to be successful no matter what. Only then will you do whatever it takes to be successful.
And I can tell you that if I had read those words when I was new, I wouldn't have listened to them anyway. You'll know what I mean when you get there – so really, my advice for you is just to keep going with small consistent actions daily, worry about progress, not perfection and you'll prove to yourself that you're worth all of those things I mentioned above.
15) What’s next for WP+BFF?
More training for online marketing tools outside of the WordPress space. Teaching more budding WordPress nerds how to turn their passion for WordPress into a business.
A reboot of the BFF Academy and possibly a live version of the course. Hiring a copywriter so that I can better communicate the value of what I have to offer. Updating my design and working on usability. Getting more visibility by building relationships with people that have communities bigger than mine. More marketing, more list building, more content, more value for you.
So tell me in the comments below – what else do you want to know about what it took to reach my first $10,000 month?
