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Welcome to our third monthly forecast episode! This is a pod-feed-exclusive where I check in on the first Friday of each month to share a few fun marketing trends, this month's biz-care to-dos, a preview of upcoming episodes, and more!
This month, you’ll hear:
- why I'm super into private podcasts right now 🙉
- the springtime joys of email debt forgiveness 📧
- & exactly how much money I made in Q1 2024 😬
Plus! Listen to the end so you can let me know if you're the guest I'm searching for...
Tune in, then get in touch to share your Qs for next month…
💌 Email hi@softersounds.studio
☎️ Leave a voice message at speakpipe.com/offthegrid
💞 Link love 💞 — The Planets & Your Business Private Podcast | BS-Free Business Podcast & Staying Solo Private Podcast | Make a Private Podcast with Softer Sounds | The New Age Playbook For Spellbinding, Can't-Stop-Reading Copy from Holisticism | Celebrate Email Debt Forgiveness Day on 4/30
👋 Thinking of leaving social media? You don't have to go it alone! Download our free Leaving Social Media Toolkit today
🌈 Want support building a successful, sustainable business without relying on social media? Join The Interweb — our affordable, annual membership for creatives, artists & business owners, who want to share their work & make money without social media. ✨
🍦 Have fun with your writing practice. Join SUMMER CAMP with Sarah McColl for a 10-week container of creative experiments & deep delight. (sponsored)
Creators & Guests
Host
Amelia Hruby
Founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio & host of Off the Grid: Leaving Social Media Without Losing All Your Clients
What is Off The Grid: Leaving Social Media Without Losing All Your Clients?
Off The Grid is a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. ✌️ Our host, Amelia Hruby PhD, shares stories, strategies & experiments for growing your business with radical generosity & energetic sovereignty. 🌐 Get the FREE Leaving Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit
Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. Hello, and welcome to off the grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. I'm your host, Amelia Frooby. And on this show, I share stories, strategies and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty. And of course we're doing all that with no or minimal social media presence.
Amelia Hruby:We are currently in the middle of season 3 of the show where I've been sharing new episodes every Wednesday, where we talk about marketing strategies and hear about creative business journeys from some of my favorite people on the web. And in addition to those weekly Wednesday episodes, this season I have introduced this fun new format of the monthly forecast. I decided to add in these forecasts because sometimes there's something I wanna talk about, but it doesn't need like a whole episode, But I wanna share some thoughts, and I wanna know what you all think. And, also, I've gotten requests for more updates about my business, Softer Sounds, and the business side of this podcast. And I didn't really wanna take a whole Wednesday space just to tell you, like, we we made some money.
Amelia Hruby:We didn't make some money. Who knows if we made money, etcetera. So I thought that I'd include that in these forecasts as well. So in this monthly forecast episode, you can expect a few fun things. First, I'm gonna share a few marketing trends that I am into this month, Then I'm gonna talk about 1 biz care task that I will definitely be doing in April.
Amelia Hruby:After that, we're gonna hear our first financial update from me, which I promised in the very first episode of the season on overcoming under earning, and then said I would share after each quarter this year, so that is coming up in this episode. I'm gonna tell you exactly how much money I made in q one and, some feelings that I had about that. And then we'll wrap things up with a preview of what is coming up on the pod this month and a request for some guests that I might be looking for in the future. I'm gonna get to all of that in less than 30 minutes. So let's go ahead and dive in to our April forecast episode.
Amelia Hruby:Okay, lovely listeners. Here are some marketing trends that I'm into this month. If you've been listening to the podcast, you will not be surprised to hear about the first one of these trends and that is launches, but not just any old launch. I have been really excited to see people launching products, offerings, and services with a slower pace in really creative ways. As I talked about in this week's main episode, I've been watching a lot of people launch so far this spring and I've just been really pleased to see a lot of messaging around, I'm launching this program, but I'm doing it slower.
Amelia Hruby:But I'm not gonna do a 3 day open cart, but I'm not gonna this. Like, I just feel like there's been all these interjections in the ways that many of us were taught or trained or just, like, picked up by osmosis to launch in this hard and fast mode. And I love seeing people launch slowly and softly. So our first marketing trend for April is softer, slower launches. And if you wanna think about launching your own thing, whatever that might be, without social media, I hope that you will head back to the last two episodes of the podcast and join us in the interweb where I just taught a whole class on how to launch without social media.
Amelia Hruby:And coming up on May 14th, we will have a live community coaching call where you can get my support and the ideas of our other amazing members for your launches. So head to the show notes to join the interweb, and let's move on to our 2nd marketing trend of the month. The next marketing trend that I've been excited to see this spring is private podcasts. Now these have been around for a little while, and as a podcaster, I have definitely kept an eye on this technology and been like, how might a private podcast fit into my marketing ecosystem? And let me interrupt myself because if you don't know what a private podcast is, I'll tell you real quick.
Amelia Hruby:It's just like a regular podcast, except that people have to give you their email address in order to listen. And when they do that, they get a personalized RSS feed that they add to a player of their choice, and then they listen to that feed. And what that means is that, a, you get the email addresses of everyone who listens to your show, and, b, you can actually have a lot more analytics on who's listening, how many episodes they've heard, etcetera. So private podcasts can be sorts of, you know, one off you record 3 episodes and use it like a lead magnet, or they can be ongoing series where people just have to give you their email address the first time in order to listen. And private podcasts have been around for a while.
Amelia Hruby:But this spring I just encountered a couple that I was really into and they got me rethinking this whole strategy. I listened to one on the planets and your business from Paula Crossfield, who's gonna be coming up on the pod in a few weeks, and I really loved it. It was so simple, it was so straightforward, and I was able to kind of binge the whole thing. And then I was like, give me more and more and more and more of what Paula's up to. And Paula has a public podcast that then I could just go listen to, but I was really excited by how she was using the format.
Amelia Hruby:I also encountered it through BS free business with Maggie Patterson. She has a public podcast as well called BS free business, but then she's also got a private podcast called Staying Solo. So I found myself listening to a couple episodes of her public show, and then I was feeling like, you know, I want something a little different. I'd like to go deeper with her, but none of these titles are necessarily really striking me. And so I subscribed to her private pod, and I was like, oh, yeah.
Amelia Hruby:This is what I wanted to really get to know Maggie's work. So I've just really been into private podcasts, and it's inspired me to create a private podcast offering for softer sounds. And through that, I've gotten to meet some really cool new clients who I will be cocreating private podcasts for this spring. And it's just been a real joy to dream together about all the different possibilities for how podcasts can nurture your audience and take people from, I sort of know about you, but I don't know, to, oh my gosh, I love what you're doing and I wanna buy something from you. Like, I'm just noticing that private podcasts are a really great way to help people get to know, like, and trust you so that they're ready to buy from you.
Amelia Hruby:So if you've made a private podcast, I'd love to hear from you about how it worked for you or didn't work for you. Like, tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm seeing great results so far. And then if you want to make a private podcast, I will link in the show notes the offering that we have at Softer Sounds Now, or you can come make a private podcast with me. It includes a bunch of strategy support, so I will bring my entire marketing mind to you and your business and your private pod. And then, of course, the tender yet technical production and editing support that softer sounds brings to everything that we do.
Amelia Hruby:And with some of the packages, we even set it all up for you, build a launch calendar for you, and, like, all you gotta do is record it and then share it with the world and we handle everything else. So that is our second marketing trend for the month of April. And I hope if you're intrigued, you'll head to the show notes to learn more. Okay. Enough about private pods.
Amelia Hruby:Our third and final marketing trend that I am into for the month of April is shiny sales copy. So I feel like sales pages get a bad rap. Like, people don't like to write them. People don't like to read them. They're just, you know, they're just not that popular.
Amelia Hruby:And I find that a lot of people, it's like one of the things they really want to outsource in their business. They are like, I I just want somebody else to do this. I'm gonna hire a copywriter. They'll do it for me, etcetera. And I love copywriters.
Amelia Hruby:Nothing against hiring out this work. But I'm a big believer that all of our businesses benefit from strengthening our writing skills and or our speaking skills in the case of podcasting. And this month, I have been obsessed with this new book, workbook, handbook from Michelle and co at Holisticism. Michelle's written the new age playbook for spellbinding can't stop reading copy. And, you know, I consider myself a pretty good copywriter or sales writer, but moving through this playbook has just been, like, up leveling my skills, like, so much, and I'm really into it.
Amelia Hruby:So I don't know if sales copy is a trend. I'm honestly not a trend spotter. I am not always seeing the new shiny fancy thing, but I think that spending some time working on your sales copywriting skills will always benefit your business. And what is new and exciting here is just this amazing playbook from Michelle at Holisticism. So I will link that in the show notes if you wanna go grab your own copy and your copywriting skills this spring.
Amelia Hruby:I'm definitely doing that, and I'd love to hear if other folks join in as well. So those were our 3 marketing trends for April. The first was launching softly and slowly. The second was private podcasts, and the third was shining up our sales copy. Now let's move on to our biz care tasks for the month.
Amelia Hruby:So typically I give you a couple tasks here, but April is tax time. So I'm not even gonna talk about it, but I know that that is, like, the biz care task many people will be doing in the upcoming weeks. So we're just gonna put that to the side, and I'm gonna share one more biz care task that is on my radar for this month. I don't know about you, but over the course of, like, winter, I did an okay job keeping up with my inbox, and then, like, spring hit, and suddenly I was getting 4 or 5 or 10 times as many emails. And I am just buried in things that I would really like to reply to, but, like, cannot find the energy to write a response for.
Amelia Hruby:So I was just in flexible office with Cody Cook Parrott this week and someone shared this thing that was created by the podcast Reply All called Email Debt Forgiveness Day, and it is celebrated on April 30th. And on this day of email debt forgiveness, you can send any email response that you've maybe wanted to send but have been putting off or feeling anxious or just avoiding, and you go to that email and you say, hey. In celebration of email debt forgiveness day, insert link here, I'm finally getting back to you, or I finally worked up the nerve to write this email, whatever it may be. So I will link to that page in the show notes if you too would like to celebrate email debt forgiveness day this year. But that is the biz care task I am inviting us into this month, which is basically just clearing out ye olde inbox and celebrating email debt forgiveness day in the process.
Amelia Hruby:I mean, it's not till April 30th, so you have the whole month, or you could just spend the whole last day of the month dealing with the inbox sending out the links. So, again, I will link to that in the show notes. And, honestly, I hope that I get a couple emails from a few of you on April 30th saying, hey. Meant to reply to this, or, hey. I always meant to reach out, but, like, didn't happen.
Amelia Hruby:Today is the day, or rather April 30th the day, if you so choose. Okay. So we've covered our marketing trends for the month of April. We've covered our biz care tasks for the month of April. And now we get to the thing that you're probably all listening for, which is my money update for q one 2024.
Amelia Hruby:So if you're just joining us, if you're new to off the grid, you might wanna go back and listen to the very first episode of season 3 called overcoming under earning, how much money I made last year and what I'm doing differently this year. There's just a lot of context setting there that I think is important for talking about money, and I'm gonna skip over it in this quick monthly forecast. So at the very end of that episode, I shared that I was setting a big audacious revenue goal for softer sounds for this year. And that goal was $200,000. I wanted the business to bring in $200,000 in revenue this year.
Amelia Hruby:And that was a pretty big jump from last year where we brought in approximately $140,000 in revenue, if I'm remembering correctly. And in the episode, I shared that I typically don't set audacious goals. I kinda like to raise the bar really incrementally because I like to build up my self trust by achieving my goals rather than, like, setting huge goals that I don't meet and then going into this, like, shame spiral of feeling bad about myself for not accomplishing my goals. But this year, I was like, I'm gonna try something different. I've been setting these totally tiny goals for the past few years, and let's see if I can set a big goal.
Amelia Hruby:And after 1 quarter of living with that goal, I am here to announce that I am retiring it. You know, I really try to set myself up to live in that goal without judging myself if I didn't meet the sort of benchmarks along the way. And so with a revenue goal of $200,000 for the year, I was like, okay, $50,000 per quarter, let's go. And then as the end of q one neared and it was obvious I was not gonna reach that goal, I felt awful. And I did like every nervous system regulating practice I know, I talked to all of my biz friends about it, but I just couldn't shake the feeling that I was failing.
Amelia Hruby:And I hated it because softer sounds made more money in q one of this year than q one of any other year, but because I had set this big audacious goal and I wasn't gonna reach it, I felt horrible about how much money we made, and that sucked. And as I was watching myself go through that, I was like, there's just no need to do this, Amelia. I was like, let's just change the goal. Let's just abandon the goal. Yes.
Amelia Hruby:I will have to tell all of my lovely off the grid listeners that we're giving up that goal, but, like, also who cares? The reason I'm sharing this is not so much for any sense of accountability, but more for a sense of permission granting for all of us to change our mind and to release our grip on big audacious goals and to lower the bar anytime we need to. You know, I experimented with raising the bar pretty high for myself, didn't like it, so it's going back down. So now I have reset my revenue goal at $160,000 for the year. That number will still accomplish all of the material goals I have for my life in terms of how much I wanna pay myself, my team, how much I wanna save for the house I'm trying to buy.
Amelia Hruby:And softer sounds doesn't actually need to make $200,000 for me to accomplish all of that. That was just this big goal I had set kind of for no reason. So we've lowered the bar, we've changed the goal, and now I can report a little bit about how softer sounds did in q one. I will give my forever disclaimer here that I request that you listen with energetic sovereignty, that you remember that my numbers have nothing to do with your business and that you acknowledge and even embrace that my intention for sharing this is to try to bring more transparency to small business finances, particularly as someone who you might be listening to for marketing and business support or guidance. I want it to be clear how I'm making money, how much money I'm making, how that's impacting my life, But I also want that to be shared in a way where I'm bringing my context along with me as a white woman living in the Midwest in an area that has a relatively low cost of living, shout out to Nebraska, and I am child free, I am able-bodied, minus the chronic migraines, and I have a partner who has a job that offers us health insurance, even if it's for a nonprofit that doesn't offer us much money.
Amelia Hruby:And I have a wonderful family who can be a financial safety net if needed, and typically that's not needed, but I will be totally honest that just knowing that brings so much peace of mind to my life that allows my nervous system to regulate and allows me to relate to money in different ways. So that's a little bit more about everything I'm bringing to my relationship with money. I acknowledge that your set of circumstances will be totally different than mine, and I ask that you acknowledge that too. And now here's how much money I made. It always takes me like 10 minutes to get to the figures, but honestly, y'all, like, that's on purpose.
Amelia Hruby:I don't want this to be a quick hit sort of thing. I want you to have to go on that journey of remembering context with me before we get to the juicy, salacious, also boring details of how much money I made. So in q one, softer sounds made just over $38,000 in revenue. Of that money, 85% of it, just over $30,000 came from editing and production work. I run a podcast studio, we make podcasts, that's how we make money.
Amelia Hruby:10% of our q one revenue, that's just under $4,000 came from off the grid related things, which means selling ads on the show, shout out to our lovely sponsors, and selling interweb memberships, shout out to our wonderful members. And then there was like 5% more revenue that came from selling some podcasting courses through softer sounds, some random affiliate things, etcetera. That's how we made our money. Again, podcast editing and production. It is a process intensive service based business.
Amelia Hruby:That is how I make money and then I am slowly growing the off the grid revenue streams. I would love to do this full time one day, but we are years away from that, my friends. I mean, unless a 1000000 of you join the interweb right now, feel free to do that. But I don't anticipate that happening, and I see this as slow growth. And, you know, my goal is to be slowly shifting this ratio of work from being like 9 to 1 softer sounds to off the grid to maybe like 8 to 2, 7 to 3, 5 to 5, we'll get there.
Amelia Hruby:So if that's how Softr Sounds made its money, how did I spend it? Well, I paid out over $10,000 to our contractor And I love that. It's really a joy to work with the amazing people that I do and to be able to offer them work in podcasting that's like exciting and interesting and values aligned and to get paid well, or at least relatively well, I hope, while doing it. And then in addition to paying the team, I spent a bunch of money on taxes in q one. It was less than last year because I switched to being an S Corp this year, but I did still have to pay corporate taxes in the state of Nebraska.
Amelia Hruby:I had to pay some other taxes on various things that my accountant told me to do. I just do what my accountant says. So that money came out of the business in Q1. I also paid in full for 2 year long programs that I will be a part of this year, plus all of our typical expenses for software monthly memberships, etcetera, etcetera. At the end of it all, softer sounds net about $10,000 in profit in Q1, which feels great, honestly.
Amelia Hruby:And that is money that I will be saving for future expenses and hopefully distributing some of it into my house fund because I'm trying to save to buy the house that I live in and that's expensive. And that was one of the big actually impulses in setting a higher revenue goal for this year. But I realized I can still save a very reasonable amount of money without making so much money and hating life in the process. So here we are. So that's your q one finance update.
Amelia Hruby:We'll do all this again at the end of q two, and we'll see how it goes. You know? Now that our annual revenue goal is $160,000 a year, I'm trying to make $40,000 a quarter. I came in just under that in q one. I am guessing q two will come in hopefully at or just above that.
Amelia Hruby:Spring tends to be a busy season for the studio, so we'll see how it goes. And I look forward to checking in and sharing more with you at the end of the quarter. Okay. Two final things for our April biz forecast episode. The first is what's coming up on off the grid this month.
Amelia Hruby:And I just wanna say that I have been blessed with so many amazing guests this spring, and you all have heard some of them, but like, it only gets better. So coming up in April, we are going to hear about creative offerings and world building with Ayanna Zeyer Cotten of SITA School. We're gonna hear about cosmic business and money karma with Paula Crossfield of Weave Your Bliss. We're gonna talk about how to build a trauma informed business with Jess Jackson of Soft Path Healing. And that is just the tip of the iceberg because there are even more amazing conversations coming up in May that I don't, I'm not gonna tease yet, but they're coming.
Amelia Hruby:They're so good. So the Podfeed is gonna be full of great conversations this month, and I can't wait for you to hear them. And that said, I have pretty much recorded everything for season 3. There are a few solo episodes that I'll record later in May or June, but almost all of the interviews are recorded and I'm feeling super happy about it. I am curious if I could find a guest to come on and talk about YouTube because I've been watching a lot more YouTube videos this spring.
Amelia Hruby:I'd love to talk to somebody who uses YouTube and grows their audience there, but maybe also can chat about, like, is it actually social media? Because it's very algorithmically fueled, and I can't decide if it's really aligned with the off the grid vibe or not. So if you're a person or you know a person who loves YouTube, grows their audience on YouTube, and wants to also have a slightly questioning conversation about YouTube, hit me up. You can send an email to hy at softersounds.studio. I'd love to hear from you and potentially have you or the people you know on the podcast.
Amelia Hruby:And that's it for this episode. Typically we end the monthly forecast episodes with a listener Q and A, but we're not doing that this month because I just did a whole listener hot seat episode earlier this week. So if you wanna hear from listeners, go there to hear me chat with 6 amazing folks about the things they're launching this spring. And if you have a question for a future Monthly Forecast episode, you can leave me a voice message at the link in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you.
Amelia Hruby:I'd love to chat about whatever you wanna chat about and potentially feature it here on the air on off the grid. Thank you so much for tuning in to this monthly forecast episode and, you know, just showing up for off the grid in general. If you enjoyed this one, I would really appreciate if you could leave the show a 5 star rating and a little review. Hearing from you, yes, you listening right now, really fuels me creatively so that I can keep showing up to the mic, keep sharing new things, and keep supporting you in growing the successful sustainable business that you want to have. So if you have a second, I would really appreciate a rating and review for the pod.
Amelia Hruby:Next week I'll be back with Ayanna Zeyer Cotten, and until then, I can't wait to see you off the grid and on the interweb. Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Don't forget to grab your free leaving social media toolkit at offthegrid.fun/ toolkit. This podcast is a softer sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Caitlin Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by Natalia's studio.
Amelia Hruby:I'm your host, Emilia Ruby, and until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the interweb. I know that you really wanna put your phone away. Yeah. Let's go off the grid.