October 2024 Income Report

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Marketing Made Simple. Today, we are breaking down the income report from October of 2024. We had quite the month, a lot of fun things going on, and we will dive into all of that and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. DTC Pod, hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. DTC Pod is a podcast about all things direct to consumer.

0:41Ramon and Blaine cover everything from starting, growing, and optimizing e-commerce stores and DTC brands. If you're interested in the stories behind your favorite consumer brands, this podcast is for you. One recent episode on how the best brands are built is a must listen. Listen to DTC Pod wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Franbridge Consulting has guided them. Franbridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranbridgeConsulting.com.

1:21All right, Fire Nation, quite a month of travel for us, but we still managed to do a gross income of$140 ,000 for the month of October. our total expenses were$10 ,867 for a total net profit of$129 ,603 with a 30 % increase from last month with a net profit to overall gross revenue of 92%. We're going to talk about Joshua Tree for anybody that might know what that means. We're also going to talk about a fantastic event that I both spoke at and attended alongside with Serena Williams, David Spade, Ryan Reynolds got to share the stage with some legends like that at an amazing conference. We'll talk about Bo's first Halloween, of course, and man, you got to check out his picture and so much more.

2:09And we're going to start with our monthly tax tip from Ron, Mr. CPA on fire himself. And this tax tip is all about how marathon planning can strengthen your business strategy. So Ron, as always, welcome. Thank you for what you do and take it away. Hello, John, and hello, Fire Nation. This is Ron Parisi with CPA on Fire for your October 2024 tax and accounting tip. Hey, John, and hello, Fire Nation. We got a really conceptual tip regarding planning for 2025. This is planning season. If any of you guys are familiar with CPA on fire, big what we term no rear view accounting. We do everything future planning through forecasts and budgets.

3:00And right now we're just finishing up our planning season with our clients for 2025. Pretty incredible as 2024, I would say a year of uncertainty. Obviously, we had the elections, but really across our client base, a lot of ups and downs, a lot of uncertainty as far as certain predictions. It was an interesting year, and now we kind of roar into 2025 and we start to do our planning. I was talking to Josh Bowerly. If you guys don't know, Josh, way back when, played a major role in starting CPA on fire. And nonetheless, he just completed a marathon. And he was taught, it was his first marathon. And he was kind of talking about the frustrations of the training when it came to the plan and how several times, you know, throughout the marathon training, you know, over six months, uh you know he just he didn't think the plan was working he wanted to throw the plan in the garbage he wanted to make some major changes in the plan like he just didn't see uh how the plan was going to get him to the final outcome but he stuck to it and uh he finished his first marathon at a really good time don't ask me what it was but he was very happy about his performance and uh you know, as he was relaying that story to me, I said, wow, that's very similar to, you know, a founder, an entrepreneur, their journey, right?

4:42Is that as we start planning for 2025, right? And we go into the year, right? That your plan, you know, is going to be tested to the reality of the business cycles, the challenges of running a business or a company, all kinds of uncertainties. And I find that entrepreneurs are more likely to change very rapidly and not stick to the original plan. And there's a lot of reasons for this, right? But if I could say one thing, the amount of energy that you put into your plan is going to carry you throughout the year. And as long as you have a really well thought out, crystal clear plan, the more likely that plan obviously is a good plan.

5:44And you should stick to that plan throughout next year. As entrepreneurs, we chase shiny objects sometimes. There's no shortage of mastermind groups, podcasts that are telling you, hey, this is the next greatest thing. This is how you should pivot, et cetera. I just think that while course correction each month is important, but sticking to the plan is equally as important. And I was just going to give you maybe a tip or two on how you do that, right? I think that when you create your plan, and that's, you know, for us, that's a three or five year forecast. And then dialing that back to a rolling 12 month budget.

6:37And, you know, what you think the ROI on your marketing is going to be, what team members are you going to need, every aspect of how you're going to achieve your goals for the year and for the three or five years that you've forecasted. I think it's very important as you create that plan, right, that one, obviously it is crystal clear, but two, is you memorialize the assumptions you're making to create that plan, to forecast those numbers or sales. What are you expecting from your team? What are you expecting from your marketing program? This way, when, you know, usually it's February, March, that all of a sudden, right, things aren't going to plan.

7:22Maybe sales volume's down. Maybe conversions are down. The marketing spend is running hot. That's, you know, usually the time people start pivoting off their plan. And I think if you memorialize those assumptions and reflect on them as you're going through 2025, I think that's going to really help you stay the course, make those great business decisions throughout the year and succeed on hitting your goals. So I just thought that this was an interesting comparison between marathon training plans and what you, the founder, the entrepreneur, goes through with planning and then executing on that planning in 2025.

8:12Fire Nation, always a pleasure being with you. Until next time, I wish you the best and talk to you soon. Thank you very much. Well, Ron, as always, thank you. Much appreciated. and Fire Nation, please check out CPAonfire.com for all of your tax needs. Ron's a great guy. And again, we have a lot more to talk about from events to hiking to Halloween when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Marketers have never been spread so thin. Trust me, I feel it too. Between creating content, launching campaigns, generating leads, nurturing your prospects, and more, you barely have a second to breathe, let alone do your best marketing.

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9:29Stop spreading yourself thin and start making major moves with HubSpot. Visit hubspot.com slash marketers to learn more. More and more entrepreneurs are jumping into the awesome non-food franchise opportunities that exist across a variety of industries. Franchising is simply the better path and interest in franchising is at an all-time high. Lucky for you, John Ostenson, founder of Frambridge Consulting and a frequent EO Fire guest, is here to help you explore the premier franchise opportunities and his service is free. John and his Frambridge Consulting team are part of the largest franchise brokers and have vetted the market thoroughly.

10:05Frambridge is hands down the premier source for the best opportunities in the franchise world, including both active and passive opportunities from senior care to youth soccer, consulting to dog grooming, fitness and health to home design, and much more. John has served as an Inc. 500 franchisor and is a multi-brand franchisee himself, and he helps more entrepreneurs than any other consultant in the country. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today, or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. That's FranBridgeConsulting.com. All right, Fire Nation, we are back, and we're going to talk about our interview of the month, which comes from the event that we went to called Inbound, which was in Boston.

10:44It was an amazing event, again, with the likes of Serena Williams, Ryan Reynolds, David Spade. Yours truly, I got to speak and it was really fun. And I got to have a conversation with Alex Lieberman. And we talked about some great things from stage. One was avoid pod fading by consistently producing the right content over time to serve your audience in a meaningful way. We also talked about how podcasting is the most intimate channel to build an audience. And then we talked about how choosing the hard way when creating your niche, the higher the barrier, the lower the competition. choose the hard way choose that hard way Fire Nation so that was a great interview again that I did on stage at Inbound that was a lot of fun with Alex we had a lot of good back and forth definitely a good time and just another great event from Inbound so thank you HubSpot for all that you do there and putting on such a great show and us just being able to go back and enjoy Boston every year is always a pleasure as well we're going to move into Joshua Tree and then returning to Puerto Rico and to do this I'm going to hand it over to the great Kate Lynn Erickson Dumas.

11:46So Kate, take it away. What's up, Fire Nation? Always amazing to be on the mic with you, and I'm excited to give you a quick rundown of how our October went. We closed out our summer and fall travels with a trip to Joshua Tree before heading home to Puerto Rico. As you know from our last income report, our last couple income reports, we spent a good six weeks in Maine visiting John's family. Then we hopped over to San Diego. We spent four weeks visiting my family and we rounded out that time in San Diego with a little jaunt over to Joshua Tree, which is a fantastic park if you've never visited before.

12:26And since this was Bo's first camping trip, we decided to approach it a little bit differently than we would normally if it were just myself and John going and we rented a camper and that was actually an awesome experience. We found a website online just a couple of guys who rent out campers and you book the camper, they drive it out for you, park it at your campsite and have it ready for you. You kind of walk into it and get to stay and then they come and pick it up when you're done. So that was a really convenient and awesome way to spend our time in the desert, especially with Bo. Again, there were actually temperatures in the 100s while we were there.

13:11So it was quite hot. And we had a generator and air conditioning in the camper. So that was kind of a must with Bo. We could have hacked it out ourselves. But you know, with a little baby, you kind of make some exceptions. But we had such an incredible time. The weather did not stop us from doing some really incredible hikes, enjoying the park to the fullest. If you head over to our income report, eofire.com forward slash income 134, you'll see that we had quite the crew with us. My sister and her family came, one of my best friends, Jen and her family, one of my other best friends, Vanessa and her family, and my parents were there.

13:53So we had a big crew and oh man, we had such a great time. And as was the case with our entire 2.5 months of off-island travel, Beau was an absolute champ. He seemed to really enjoy his new mode of transportation, which was a hiking backpack that our friends gave us. He was sitting high up there. I think he enjoyed it because he could actually see stuff. Usually when we're carrying him, he's in a front-facing carrier. He doesn't really love the carriers too much, but this backpack worked out quite well. John wore him well. So while Maine, San Diego, and Joshua Tree were all very incredible, we were definitely excited to get back home and settled in.

14:38Traveling is awesome, but it always feels great to get back into your routine. And especially with Bo, I think we were kind of ready to get back to the nursery and have him on a bit more of a schedule, although we did quite good while we were traveling with his schedule, if I must say so myself. So we closed out the month diving back into work. Believe it or not, John did not have a single interview day our entire trip. So that was, of course, all the work that led up to our trip was very jam-packed and he will attest to that but we were definitely excited to get back on the mic here in EO Fire Studios, catch up with some of our other tasks and of course catch up with our friends and neighbors.

15:24And at the end of October we also celebrated Bo's very first Halloween. Kind of wild to think that a year ago I was very pregnant and very ready to give birth. We attended a Halloween party and I remember a bunch of people asking me if my Halloween costume was a joke, like if I was jokingly a pregnant person, but no, I was really a pregnant person, very pregnant. And now that we are officially in Q4, we're also excited to start some holiday celebrations and close out 2024 strong with the business. Fire Nation, we are wishing you and your families a very happy holiday season. And we will continue on here with the income report.

16:09John's going to give us a little income breakdown. Okay, thanks for that share. I will just echo everything, especially the fact that Bo was a champion. We have so many great photos. So as always, head over to eofire.com slash income com134 to check out some great photos and just Bo being a champ in a backpack and in a Halloween costume, in a pumpkin costume, whatever costumes he's in. Life is good. Definitely check it out. Now we're moving into the income breakdown for the month. For Freedom Journals, we did a total of 35 journal sales,$1 ,350 in sales. For our affiliate income, we did$5 ,192.

16:55And for our podcast sponsorships, we came in at a cool$130 ,570. Our total gross income for the month was $140 ,470 as a result with expenses being just under$11 ,000. It's$10 ,867. So a very good month there, especially when I gave you that 92 percentile net profit gross revenue percentage at the beginning of the episode. So a lot of good things going on. We are definitely heading into the end of the year with a lot of excitement for how Bo is going to have so much fun with all these holidays. And Kay's going to bring us home with her biggest lesson learned. This month's biggest lesson learned was inspired by the biggest lesson learned exactly one year ago, October 2023.

17:44And it's all about choosing a word of the year. So last year in October, I shared my annual routine of choosing a word of the year. And since we're approaching a new year once again, which is crazy and very hard to believe, I wanted to bring this back to the top so that we all have time to brainstorm. I have not chosen my word of the year for 2025 yet, but I am also giving myself this little reminder. So let's do it together. So first, let's review what I shared last year so you know a bit more about the exercise and how powerful it can be. Okay, so first, great question. How can choosing a single word help you stay focused throughout the entire year?

18:27Kind of seems like a tall order, right? with just one word. However, choosing a word of the year and consistently reminding yourself of what that word is and why it matters to you can not only help you stay focused, but also motivate you in tough times. That's because we all know that distractions are around every corner and it's so easy to fall off track. We get frustrated by lack of progress or something doesn't go the way that we had hoped it would. And you know, you kind of think like, man, all right, maybe I should throw in the towel. But when you have your word of the year to constantly go back to, you can easily refocus and remind yourself of what's really most important to you.

19:09My word for 2024 has been surrender. And I chose that word because I knew that becoming a new mom was going to flip my world upside down. And then I would need a strong reminder that not everything is within my control. I really wanted to enjoy my first year with Bo to the fullest, not let frustrations or tough times override all the incredible joy and excitement that is becoming a parent and experiencing the first year of your child's life. I also knew that my work life was going to look a lot different and I had no idea how I was going to feel about that. Was I going to miss working every day?

19:46Would I crave being challenged by the same types of things I've been facing for the past 10 plus years working as an entrepreneur? So I knew that 2024 was going to bring a lot of unknowns. and being a person who loves control and typically having everything kind of buttoned up and planned out. Surrender was a word that I knew could help me stay focused and on track with whatever my new normal was going to look like. And this word has served me so very well this year. I'm so grateful for it. So just to give you a little example there, I would love if you would join me in taking some time out in the coming weeks to really think about some of the big goals you have for 2025?

20:27What do you want to focus on? And what do you want to give your time and energy to? What reminder would serve you well in tough times? And what word can help you stay focused and remind you of what's most important to you? Once you've chosen the word, write it down, look at it daily, and share it with as many people as possible. It's really powerful to have this repetition and to have it someplace where you're going to see it every single day. I will be doing the same Fire Nation. So stay tuned. I will love to share my word and I'd love to hear yours too. So hit us up on social media, send us an email, let us know what your word for 2025 is going to be.

21:09Until next month, keep your fire burning. DTC Pod hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. DTC Pod is a podcast about all things direct to consumer. Ramon and Blaine cover everything from starting, growing, and optimizing e-commerce stores and DTC brands. If you're interested in the stories behind your favorite consumer brands, this podcast is for you. One recent episode on how the best brands are built is a must listen. Listen to DTC pod wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Franbridge Consulting has guided them.

21:51Franbridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at franbridgeconsulting.com.