Episode 53. “100k in 12 months = 8.33k per month” (Consistent Results)

I want to discuss a concept I call the “100k in 12 months = 8.33k per month” mindset. It’s about the idea of consistent results or monthly income in your business. Whether it’s consistent 2k months, 5k months, 10k months, or any other amount, I’ll share my thoughts on what I believe contributes to creating consistent income in your business.

More specifically, I want to talk about:

1) my thoughts on when other business coaches tell you not to expect consistent income because this isn’t a 9-5 job, and my take on that common dialogue

2) what consistent income looks like in my business and how I’m going after the 100k in 12 months goal in 2021

3) what will actually help you create consistent income in your business.

In This Episode:

The common narrative, typically among business coaches, about not expecting consistent income because this isn’t a 9-5 job
What consistent results look like in my business
What actually helps you create consistent income in your business
Reframing your relationship with goal setting

The common narrative, typically among business coaches, about not expecting consistent income because this isn’t a 9-5 job

A lot of coaches argue that aiming for a consistent monthly income from your business isn’t necessary, which I do agree with in theory.

The main premise of this argument is that running a business isn’t a 9-5 job and that there are many ways to create income. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to expect or strive for the same numbers every month.

Many business coaches encourage you to stop treating your business as a 9-5 and expecting your income to operate like a monthly salary, and understandably so.

While I think this argument makes sense for those who are already regularly making money in their business, it’s a lot harder to apply this concept to coaches or entrepreneurs who are at the earlier stages of their business and aren’t signing new clients consistently.

I find that many business coaches talk about income stacking or monthly recurring revenue (MRR) when addressing new coaches or entrepreneurs, which can lure people into their programs.

From my experience, I don’t think income stacking or MRR should be a huge concern for those who don’t yet have consistent demand for their programs.

Why? Well, because you aren’t even getting consistent applications or inquiries, let alone people who end up paying you to join your programs.

Therefore, I wouldn’t suggest spending time getting caught up in trying to plan what income stacking looks like for your business at this current point.

Instead, spend your time on other things that are actually going to get you your first few high-ticket clients and start building that demand over time so that you have consistent applications, inquiries, and clients.

I believe this is why many people think that business is not a smart career to pursue because it lacks a “stable income” and thus financial security. However, the pandemic has shown us that this may not necessarily be as true as people think.

Even if we take away the pandemic, one can still get fired from their job, and even professors who are not tenured have no guarantees.

I would argue that there is still a level of uncertainty in a traditional 9-5 or career.

The point is, we need to reframe our thoughts and beliefs about how money comes into our business and examine our expectations and assumptions about how we are supposed to make money.

For example, many regular jobs are commission-based. In your business, if you are not making, let’s say, $5k every month, it is not necessarily a problem. Having a $10k month followed by a $2k month is not an issue.

Our expectation that we should make the same or a roughly similar number every month is not helpful in showing up in our business.

Honestly, although you can hypothetically generate $8.33k every month to reach $100k annually, whether that’s in new sales or cash in the bank, or whatever number you pick.

Yes, you could do that, but I find that the expectation to hit that monthly income goal can be really detrimental for a lot of coaches, even for those who are supposedly more established and have more brand recognition.

It can affect anyone at any stage of their coaching business. It may look simple and innocent on the surface to set goals like this, but here’s where I think goal setting can go awry.

People often get so caught up in their emotions and attachment towards the outcome of the goal that they don’t let the goal just be a goal. They get so emotional when three days have gone by and they don’t see a new application, that they don’t stop to assess what’s working and what’s not working with a clear, clean mind.

For example, a lot of you probably start spinning out by the fifth day of each brand new month and start to think, “Oh my God, I don’t know if I can hit this goal”.

And that literally affects your ability to clearly assess, strategize, and plan; it affects your ability to show up as your confident best self.

It affects the energy in which you show up and the way you communicate your offer to your audience. It spins you out, and business feels stressful.

That said, if you’ve been able to consistently create a result, like if you’ve been creating $3k months for the past 4-6 months, then you likely have both the belief and the right strategy that allows you to create consistent $3k months.

Then, perhaps you can up your goal to $5k and start building your belief and/or adjust the strategy to hit a $5k month, and then repeat the goal several times so you have both the belief and the strategy to help you create consistent $5k months.

But right now, for those of you who aren’t consistently signing clients or haven’t signed any clients at all, this is not the time to set consistent monthly income goals. It simply doesn’t serve you.

Instead, use your cognitive energy to develop unique thought leadership content, concepts, and frameworks, and start sharing your core values and beliefs to build your business and brand messaging around what you want to be known for.

Use your brain space for those things, don’t use it to spin out over consistent $2k or $5k or $10k months. Now isn’t the time for that. Stay focused.

And for those of you who are making money in your business regularly, I think when it comes to creating consistent income, it’s important to consider that not everyone does a full payment and may instead opt to pay in monthly installments, which is where the concept of income stacking comes into picture.

This is where having a spreadsheet that tracks your total monthly sales and total monthly cash will be really important. It’s also crucial to differentiate between consistent sales in your business versus consistent cash in the bank.

Sales refer to the number stated on your contract. So, if you have a $5,000 coaching program and the client pays in full, that’s $5,000 in sales.

But if they choose to make five monthly payments of $1,000, then the total sales are still $5,000, but you’re only receiving $1,000 cash because that’s the amount going into your bank account each month.

For some people, they’re more concerned with total cash per month rather than total sales per month because it resembles a typical monthly salary.

I don’t plan to dive into topics like setting income goals or income stacking or monthly recurring revenue because it’s unique to each individual, and I don’t have much to say without understanding a specific person’s current business.

That said, if your monthly goal for your business is $5,000, having a spreadsheet that tracks your sales and cash per month, as well as who paid in full and when you’re expecting monthly payments, would be really helpful for making business decisions, such as whether to offer a major pay-in-full discount, whether to do mostly soft launching or a typical launch for a group program, when to launch, if you want to create supplementary offers, and so on.

What consistent results look like in my business

For my business, I don’t focus on having big launches that result in large “cash injections” in my business. Usually, coaches will have a massive launch either for a group program or for a course, where they can enroll a large volume of clients or students at once.

I personally love having a small, intimate container with clients, which either means working with clients in a one-on-one setting or having a very small group program.

For example, my two most recent group programs were with 4 people and 6 people, and that’s a size I’m really happy with. In fact, for the 6-person group, we’re splitting the group into two so that there are two possible coaching time slots. That way, I can coach the clients on an even more high-touch and personalized level.

That’s how I personally like to run my coaching programs because I really value building rapport with my clients, understanding their business and their brains, rather than having a large group with, let’s say, more than 10 people.

I personally value having smaller group programs. That’s why I currently don’t have “cash injections” in my business.

Instead, I see a more consistent flow of income on a month-to-month basis because I’m constantly soft-launching my programs.

Soft-launching, in my definition, means talking about your program or offer regularly, but without the pressure of having to make sales between a certain time frame.

Unlike a typical launch that involves open and close cart dates, there are no arbitrary dates where you start promoting and stop promoting.

Also, you don’t have to talk about your program every single day if that’s not what you prefer. Because unlike a regular launch where people usually go “all in,” you can keep it super low key and chill in a soft launch.

You can choose to soft-launch your program until you are fully booked, or you can even soft-launch and promote a waitlist if your program is already booked out. There’s a lot of flexibility here.

By the way, soft-launching is something I’m known for. I’ve actually done private soft-launch workshops before for other coaches and their group programs.

This is what I focus on helping my clients master as well. Actually, someone recently called me the “soft-launch queen,” which I really vibe with.

By constantly soft launching either my 1:1 program and/or a small group program, I typically sign three new clients per month for either of those programs.

This is a pretty consistent trend in my business, which means I am making very consistent sales on a month-to-month basis.

For more context, around 30% of my clients pay in full while the other 70% prefer to do a payment plan, which means I also have consistent cash flow every month.

To be honest, I don’t have any monthly income goals for my business. I think one benefit of having a side hustle is that you still have another source of income coming in.

As a PhD student, I receive a small monthly stipend. But even if I sign one client for any of my programs, it would already outearn my monthly PhD stipend by quite a bit. At least this allows me to take off the pressure of feeling like I have to make money.

This is where my monthly recurring revenue from payment plans comes into the picture. I still have cash coming into the bank on a monthly basis from these plans.

I’ve worked hard to master things in my business, including the consistency and quality of my actions and thoughts.

As I’ve been in business for over two years now, I’m in a much better position to achieve consistent results than I was in the first 3-6 months.

This is because I’ve focused on mastering my thought leadership, content creation, coaching techniques to help my clients see results, energy management to consistently show up and deliver value to my audience, relationship building, personal well being, and more.

And because I have clear evidence that 1) I consistently sign 3 new clients a month for literally the entire year of 2021 and 2) I have demonstrated to myself that I am consistent in both my actions and mindset, I am confident in hitting my goal of 100k in 12 months.

However, even then, in the first 10 months of 2021, I did not make a consistent 8.33k per month. Instead, there were fluctuations, and I had to coach myself on those lower income months.

One thing I also want to mention when it comes to consistent actions is to avoid the temptation to change up your strategy, especially when you’re starting to see something work for you.

I discussed this in a bit more detail in Episode 47: 100k – My Honest Thoughts, where I shared my honest thoughts on hitting 100k in my business.

In a nutshell, there were two months in 2021 where I changed up my strategy a lot, and as a result, it led to my two lowest income months this year.

When I started doing my usual thing, like soft launching my signature coaching programs and creating content that reflects my unique thought leadership, and basically just went back to what worked, I started creating consistently 7 to 10k months, and now we are on track once again to reach 100k in 12 months alone in 2021.

What actually helps you create consistent income in your business

To create consistent results in your business, we need to think about the consistency and quality of both your actions and your thoughts. How you show up, both in terms of quality and consistency, will reflect in your results.

Likewise, how you don’t show up will also reflect in your results. Therefore, the question comes down to how you need to operate in both your mindset and action or strategy to ensure your results reflect that.

As a side note, I like to talk about with my clients that if they want quality results in their business, they need to be thinking quality thoughts in order to take quality action and show up in a way that reflects the quality of their thought leadership, coaching, coaching program, and so on.

While I do think there are a number of factors that can contribute to whether you’re creating consistent results in your business, one thing I believe we have a lot more control over is developing our own content strategy that builds demand.

A content strategy that builds demand involves having a consistent “flow” of the following things: 1) people who are a good fit for your offer, 2) content that demonstrates your thought leadership and shows people, “Hey, I’m confident in how I can help you” – which can come in many forms, and 3) making offers.

Underlying all of this is self-belief that you are a thought leader and that what you have to say matters. Your self-belief and thought leadership are the driving forces behind the actions you take.

When you have the self-belief that you have unique thought leadership and you take the time to craft it, then it’s a lot easier to consistently show up and deliver quality content.

Once you find something that works in terms of building your thought leadership, content strategy, and brand awareness, repeat it over and over.

The truth is, I find that my action items and to-do lists when my business was making 2k months to 5k months are literally the same as when I’m creating 10k months.

The only difference is the quality of my content, my thought leadership, the core messages I’m known for, how much brand recognition I’ve built around these messages, as well as the energy in which I show up.

Here’s a breakdown of the effectiveness of my content that builds demand. There are a few key phases:

Phase 1: Content isn’t quite working, i.e. no clients yet or maybe your first 1 or 2 clients, but then no clients for a while. Phase 1 is the toughest because you may be shaky in your belief in your content. Be open to exploration and experimentation, but also be firm in the core messages you want to be known for.

Phase 2: Content is starting to work, i.e. you’re starting to see more applications or clients, but you wouldn’t say it’s consistent. Phase 2 is actually where I strongly recommend committing to repeating what you see is starting to resonate with your audience and keep doing this until you get to Phase 3. Repetition is key at this point to reinforce your core messages, unique thought leadership, etc. into your audience’s mind and build brand awareness.

I would also add that lead generation is important in Phases 1 and 2.

Phase 3: Content is building demand, i.e. at least 2 or 3 new applications or clients per month. Phase 3 is where you now have a small and engaged audience who are quite familiar with your core messages, values, story, etc., and are vibing with your unique thought leadership. This is because you’ve been doing it long enough for there to be brand awareness and recognition. People are also familiar with what you’re offering or selling. By this point, outbound engagement or relationship building is not as necessary because people are coming to you more often.

Phase 1 lays the foundation for Phase 2, and Phase 2 is the foundation for Phase 3. You can’t skip either phase to get to the next one; they build upon each other.

In Phase 1, you need time to experiment, explore your own voice, message, story, and thought leadership, and to build relationships with your audience.

In Phase 2, you should commit to repeating what resonates with your audience, reinforcing your core messages and unique thought leadership, and building brand awareness.

And all the while, you need to focus on mastering consistency in both your mindset and actions, thinking quality thoughts and taking quality actions consistently.

When you can achieve this level of consistency, you will likely see more consistent results in your business.

Reframing your relationship with goal setting

Going back to the title of this post, which is “100k in 12 months = 8.33k per month,” I want to encourage you to reframe your relationship with goal-setting.

For many people, they set a goal and then either give up on taking action on the goal, or they get discouraged by the goal itself.

I recommend being intentional about setting goals in your business and focusing on mastering your consistency in your thoughts, mindset, and belief, as well as consistency in your actions, rather than solely looking at the number and how far away you are from hitting that number.

Use your goals as an opportunity to improve multiple areas of your business, and the consistent income and results will happen as a byproduct of you being a consistent entrepreneur who takes quality action and thinks quality thoughts.

Sounds good? Awesome. Let’s get to work.