Dirty Money Talk: March 2025
Welcome to my Dirty Money Talk, where I lay out all the dirty details of my business for everyone to see.
I subscribe to a couple of people who do these and read them every single time they land in my inbox. Because I’m nosy, and I like seeing what other people are doing, how they’re doing it, and how they feel about it. So I decided to start doing them myself.
I want to do these for a few reasons:
It keeps me accountable. Writing these up for you guys forces me to actually look at my data and reflect.
I think financial transparency is extremely important and hopefully me doing these helps break down the money taboo.
How many hours I worked in March?
82 hours, 53 billable (65% billable)
How did I make money this month?
Brand voice & web copy for a trading platform
Brand identity for a boutique real estate agency
Brand voice & web copy kickoff for an insurance organisation
How was March overall?
This month was fantastic. My medium-term goal is to average $16,000-$18,000 per month and this month I got pretty close! After three consecutive slow months, I feel soundly in the swing of things again, and my projects and bank account reflect that.
I’m also overall happy with my work-life balance. I had a couple really intense weeks but the second half of March felt comfortable and flexible enough to be sustainable.
How did my goals go for March?
A big goal was to keep posting on Instagram, which I have been doing. It’s fun but it really eats up my brain juice. Even with Floi (my VA) helping, between the ideating, planning, captions, briefs, approvals… it’s a lot. I do have over 100 followers now though and not all of them are my friends and family so I’m pretty happy. Check me out!
I tweaked my offboarding process so that I can capture more voice of customer research, gather reviews, and generally make sure my clients feel more supported.
Floi and I also finalised and implemented an automated flow to check in with warm future leads. It feels great to have something set up towards keeping my pipeline full in the future. I’ve realised that having end of project invoices + current project invoices + new project deposits is the easiest way to hit my income goal without running myself into the ground.
I didn’t get to tweaking my offboarding process but I’ve filed that for later.
Goals for next month:
Keep posting on Instagram
Enjoy time off for my birthday and visiting my family
Finish creating and implementing an outreach automation for agencies and referral partners
What does it cost to run my business?
My (approximate) regular, ongoing monthly expenses are:
Co working space: $450
VA: $1000
Software & Subscriptions: $250
This doesn’t include any extra professional services, travel, office supplies etc.
Tech I’m currently using for my business
Productivity
Zapier (paid plan)
Upbase (paid plan)
Notion (free)
Moxie (lifetime subscription from Appsumo)
Clockify (free version) for my time tracking. I like the Chrome plugin.
Brain.FM to help get me into focus mode. Affiliate code: tbp for 20% off
Chat GPT 4.0 (free).
Squarespace for my website
Podcasting
Descript (paid annually) for podcast editing
Squadcast for podcast recording (free account with Descript subscription)
Marketing
Simplified.app for scheduling social media posts
Systeme.io* for emails, courses, products, and funnels!
Thrivecart (lifetime subscription) to host all my products and courses.
Finance
Thriday (annual plan) for my business banking + bookkeeping, and to implement the Profit First system. I mostly use Moxie for my invoicing because I sometimes need different currencies.
Wise for any international payments I need to send or receive.
