Almost forgot to post today. Again. Haha and I even had a conversation with someone this morning about how I was 10 days in and going strong!
Fun fact: Did you know…my last name is also part of a product of liverspread in Brazil?! Found that in an asian grocery store in Oklahoma a few weeks back. Make me laugh. Thought it was worth sharing.
Today’s Task:
Create financial projections
Not only is it important to know where you currently stand with your finances, but to come up with some kind of an estimate in the future of where you aspire or anticipate being.
I had some fun today mapping out different contract opportunities and the amounts, as well as creating a ‘scoping/leads’ map on a giant sticky note on the wall in my office. It was helpful to get clear about exactly where I stand, and also a good reminder of how far I’ve come! Case in point. In August I made 1000 from my consulting work. In December, about $3600. Not too bad!
January is on track to be an even better month.
One of the things that I did a while back for an online course I was developing was to work with my mentor at the small business development center to develop projections using a nifty spreadsheet that had the amount of students, how much the course cost, and then the month.
I’m making the draft available for you to customize at your leisure, should it be helpful for your own purposes (see below). There are a ton of free templates available through a quick Google search as well. If you’re looking for someone to walk you through the process, I highly recommend getting a free business mentor through your local Small Business Administration office, or through SCORE.
One of the ways that I broke down my map was between passive and active income, because I wanted to be sure that I was keeping track of my progress on both of these. My goal is, after all, to be working towards covering my fixed expenses through passive income. Speaking of which, my Adobe Stock photos that have been accepted are now up to 42! Woohoo! You can check out my portfolio page here. I’m not making this sh*t up. 😀
Anyways…I’m making headway on another goal of mine, which is to interview someone for my podcast about finance. It’s not exactly what I had in mind from the beginning, but I’m stoked to share later this month about who my guests will be!
So finally, for the maps (somewhat edited to protect my clients…)
You’ll notice how I have a lead and then I started creating arrows next to them to show what my next step was on each of them. I organized by type/scale, and then I asked myself the question at the bottom – what’s missing? I feel like this is always an important exercise. To recognize that to some degree, this whole thing is co-creative. Put what I want out into the universe and see what happens. I’ll have to share tomorrow some journal prompts about my 10-year vision and things that have already come true that I forgot that I wrote about! It’s wild…
Resources from today:
