June 2024 Progress Report: You Can Do Hard Things

Last Updated on July 30, 2024

Explore practical insights on embracing the challenge of starting an online business with our June case study. Learn how to get comfortable being uncomfortable and what low-cost marketing strategies can help you grow. You can do hard things!

Welcome back to the 4th installment in the Progress Report series! Last month, Rachel shared some exciting developments in her new business, Seeds and Stalks, as we continue to push the boundaries of traditional business methods.

If you’ve been following along, you know we’re venturing through this business creation without leaning on the crutch of social media, which in itself is a rebel move!

June was all about getting comfortable being uncomfortable and embracing the mantra “you can do hard things.” In this month’s update, Rachel dives into how low-cost marketing strategies are driving our growth and reshaping our approach to business.

Get ready for another dose of real talk, fresh stats, and hands-on tactics from the front lines of a social media-free business growth. Let’s see what Rachel has in store for us this time!

June 2024 Income:

• Gross Income: $0
  • Current Offers:
    • Be Your Own Herbalist 6 month Coaching Program Founding Member’s Price $100/month for 6mo
    • The Fatigue Breakthrough for Moms Course – $197
    • Family Health Checkup Custom Video – $37
    • Build Your Home Apothecary Course – $27

• Expenses: $518.42
  • ConvertKit: $53.41 (this is my email service provider but I’m contemplating switching to Kartra because I love Kartra 1000% more!)
  • Loom: $15 (so I can record my Family Health Checkup custom videos) 
  • Microsoft $18.51
  • Zapier: $32.69
  • Continuing Education: $398.81

• Net profit: —$518.42

Despite a loss this past month, I wasn’t discouraged or derailed this month.

I’m nearly finished paying off a coaching progam from 2023 which was almost $400 in expenses this month. So, without that continuing education, my monthly expenses would have only been around $120.00.

I am keeping my expenses as lean as possible in this start-up phase. I am consciously saying no to purchasing additional courses/programs right now while prioritizing revenue generation. I understand that there is a cost to doing business and I’ve also seen monthly expenses get out of control.

Traffic Totals

Overall, I saw a slight decrease from last month in terms of traffic and users to my site.

This month I did not actively blog or produce any content to bring people to my website. This is affecting my SEO/Organic Traffic and I want to make a concerted effort to change that. Especially with my kids home this summer, producing quality content will be a good use of my time. 

I’m not going to lie, it was a little disappointing to see a decrease in traffic this month. However, I know that progress isn’t linear and that I’m not going to see increases each and every month. I know that if I look at my stats over time, if I continue taking small steps, I will see growth, progress and results. 

That’s been coming up for me a lot lately. Seeing my business as a long game instead of a short game. If I can zoom out and see my business for it’s potential in the long game, then the time, money, and energy investments now will pay off in the long run.

I don’t have the blog that I want…yet. I don’t have as many clients as I want…yet. Zooming out helps me see the big picture and I know that as long as I keep at it, I will have my dream business.

Email List

Note: This screenshot comes from my dashboard in Convertkit.

• Email List Growth: 15 new active email subscribers in June 2024, bringing my list to 1,043 subscribers at the end of June 2024. 

This month I actually lost more subscribers than I gained. And that’s OK! I want to clean up my list (especially since a lot of it was from 2019 and was pretty cold).

One of my mentors always says “Buy or unsubscribe” so I’m OK with people who aren’t my ideal clients unsubscribing from my list. This month I did not participate in any bundles or engage in major visibility opportunities. And I’m seeing a direct correlation between bundles and email list growth.

I am participating in a few more bundles this year so I am hoping this will also infuse my email list with new subscribers. 

The way that I was able to grow my list by 15 people was to continue having coffee chats with other business owners who might be my ideal clients. And it’s important for me to remember to humanize leads.

15 leads that 15 more people found out about me. Again, if I look at my business as a long game, if I can keep growing by even 16 people each month, in 10 years that’s a lot of new people into my ecosystem! 

My biggest takeaway from all of this is that email list growth needs to be active, at least at the beginning.  What I mean by that is that I am actively searching out visibility opportunities. I’m not waiting for people to come to me. If you want to learn more about how I set up visibility opportunities and find aligned partnerships, checkout our brand new course: Painless Publicity!

My current list building Freebies are: 

• Build Your Herbal First Aid Kit
• 5 Day Energy Kickstart mini-course

Domain Authority

Note: DA is a ranking metric developed by Moz that predicts how well a site will rank on Google, and is measured on a scale of 1 to 100. The closer you are to 100, the more traffic and better ranking you’ll have.

Clearly I have some work to do in this area! One way that I’ll be working to improve my domain authority is by following the advice and teachings found in the SEO Course (also in MBA) about publishing high quality consistent content so that I can show Google that I’m a reputable website and increase my E-A-T!

Hours Worked: 30 for the month

I’ve been working between 10-15 hours per week on my business. Most of my time this month was spent on networking and collaborations and I’ve definitely spent more time in meetings this month talking about my business.

I’ve noticed that the more I talk about and tell people about my business, the more connected I feel towards my business. I’d like to continue that connection and momentum into next month!

Rachel’s Takeaways

What I focused on this month: email marketing

This past month I organized 3 collaborations with other entrepreneurs who are my ideal clients. I also practiced making a direct offer to anyone who I speak with (if appropriate). As a result, I got a verbal yes to enroll in my Be Your Own Coaching Program as a founding member!

We will be starting out work together next month. I am realizing that making direct offers (telling people how I can help them and asking for the sale) is awkward at first and extremely uncomfortable. 

As I’ve been reflecting on my business this past month, the thought that I was having is “this is hard.” When I did some 1:1 coaching with Kate around that thought, what I actually determined was that it’s not hard but what it is is uncomfortable.

It’s uncomfortable putting yourself out there and asking for the sale. And, I know that the only way to get better at it is to practice doing it as much as I can.

Hence why I am challenging myself to make the direct offer/ask to each and every person that I talk with about my business (if I can really help them). I know that it’s a numbers game and the more that I talk about my offers and how I can help, and the more that I connect with my audience, the more results I will see. 

I participated in a networking event on the platform, BossMom+ that I’ve been using and that was really great practice talking about my business.

One thing that we did together was share an opinion about our industry in small groups. It was amazing to see the conversations sparked by sharing and opinion rather than just telling someone about your business. I’d like to see how I can share more opinions in my weekly emails because it was a profound exercise. 

I also did a guest presentation in another coaches parenting membership. I gave a talk on 3 easy steps to using natural remedies to care for your family and it was such a fun experience.

It was amazing to get in front of an audience, share my expertise, and feel like I was really helping people. The talk was well received and I plan on giving it again for my own audience in the near future. I love teaching and helping people and I want to incorporate doing more of that in my business. 

One big area that I’m still working on is publishing content. I did not blog at all this past month.

I need to get into a better rhythm and embrace a “done is better than perfect” mentality with blogging

My blog posts don’t have to be perfect and I don’t have to spend hours optimizing for SEO. What I need to do is focus on publishing high quality content and starting to let SEO work for me. 

One thing that came up for me last month was just being in a funk about my business feeling so hard. I’ve shared a little about it being hard vs uncomfortable in the paragraphs above as well as the shift to thinking of my business as a long game.

Those two things have really helped me work through the funk and the feelings of giving up and just looking for a different job. I’m still working through some of those feelings and reminding myself to take small steps in the right direction. 

Additionally, the kids are out of school now and we had an extended trip at the end of June which affected my productivity.

On the flipside, it was really nice to take a break and focus on my family. I’m curious to see how the rest of summer will go without any childcare. I’m embracing a different summer than years past and prioritizing work that I can do with my kids around (which is why blogging and publishing content will be a good fit for me in July/August!)

June 2024 Goals

• Plan a live event (webinar) where I can get in front of my audience 🟧I taught in someone else’s parenting membership but wasn’t able to deliver a live event to my own audience. 
• Personally connect and make offers to at least 10 potential clients (✅ I got 2 verbal yes’s and one that was on the fence!)
• Set up 2 visibility collaborations ✅  I’ll be participating in a bundle in August and also set up a lead magnet swap with a home designer in July. 
• Update my home and about pages with our get-it-done-week ✅(sign up for our future get-it-done-weeks!! 

Goals for July 2024

• I signed up for a 30-Day Free Trial of Kartra and I want to make the switch! This means moving my email list over as well as moving all my landing pages and courses over.  
• Participate in the Get-It-Done-Week Tripwire week and create a new tripwire in Kartra!
• Make at least 10 direct offers to work with me
• Write 2 blog posts

• My guiding wisdom for next month:
  • I’m living my best life and it’s my choice to start and grow my own business. If it was easy, everyone would do it. It’s worth the time it takes to build something that I love. 
• My guiding feeling for next month:
  • Determination 
• My mantra for next month: 
  • I am OK with feeling uncomfortable and I CAN do hard things.

Thoughts + Self-Coaching

In looking at my goals for last month, I am proud of how much I achieved – even while in a bit of a funk. I continued to embrace and embody my CEO energy and continued to take actions- even when I didn’t feel like it.

When I take action in my business, I feel more connected to my business and I am able to work through feelings of imposter syndrome (rather than get stuck). 

As I shared a little bit about above, making direct asks to have people work with me was a bit ackward and uncomfortable.

But the truth is, I can’t actually help people if I don’t share what I’m doing and invite them to work with me. I will continue working through this uncomfortable feeling and keep taking steps to put myself out there.

Hearing no is totally OK and it just means that I’m one step closer to a yes. And following up with people I’ve talked with and made offers to is another to-do on my radar for next month! 

I’m realizing that having an actual sales process/pipeline will be critical to my success. I don’t want to rely on hopes, wishes, and dreams. I want to know who my hottest leads are and where they are at in the sales process.

This is a numbers game and I want to make sure that I maximize my time with revenue generating activities. 

Kate’s Takeaways

This month was really interesting coaching Rachel because what I observed was the a lot of uncomfortable feelings prevented her from taking action and feeling good about it. So here’s my two cents that will hopefully help anyone reading who might relate to some of the feelings Rach shared above:

• Embrace the Ask: Sales might feel uncomfortable, but they’re the backbone of any thriving business. Truly, I’ve spent the last 14 years of my career asking strangers for money. Because as an entrepreneur, you’re not just in the business of your craft; you’re in the business of marketing your craft.
  • Meeting people, telling them how you can help, and making them an offer to work with you—that’s the whole gig. You don’t need to be a social media butterfly to succeed. But you have to be proactive—run ads, join networking groups, participate in bundles and summits, engage in relationship marketing with affiliates and collaborations, be a guest on podcasts, host JV webinars, do a list swap, get featured by the media. There are literally SO MANY options besides social media. But you’ve got to be constantly getting in front of new people and making offers. Right away, and then following up, nurturing them through your email list, and making more offers (yes, even the same ones) over and over and over again.
  • Remember, if you don’t ask, the answer is always no. Rachel’s journey this month shows that stepping out of your comfort zone and making direct offers is crucial. To anyone hesitating, just remember—you’ve got to shoot your shot if you want to score.
  • So get comfortable with being uncomfortable because you can do hard things! And if pitching and making offers makes you want to hide under your desk, check out our Painless Publicity course. It’s like a comfy blanket for your introverted soul who’s afraid to put themselves out there but knows they have so much to offer!
• Low-Cost Marketing with Bundles: Bundles have proven to be a game-changer for both Rachel and myself this year, significantly boosting our email lists and introducing our businesses to wider audiences. Plus it’s totally free. Talk about low-cost marketing strategies! Given the success, I’m considering putting together a training on how to effectively contribute to bundles for list growth. If you’re interested in learning more about this strategy, drop a comment below with a question you’d like me to answer in the training!
• Consistency is Key: Watching Rachel push through this month has been a reminder of how vital consistency is, regardless of the emotional ups and downs. It’s not just about doing things right once, but about continuing to show up, even when it’s hard. As your coach, my tough love advice is this: keep showing up, even on the days it feels like you’re moving backwards. Progress is progress, no matter the pace.

Reader Questions

Each month, I feature one question about online business from a reader. Submit your question in the comments and I’ll answer one next month!