Can you believe it’s already the end of June?! Somehow we have an almost
six-week-old baby and time seems to be FLYING.

I mean look at this little nugget!

They say with parenthood the days are long but the years are
short…

I feel like that’s kind of the same with entrepreneurship, to be
honest.

ESPECIALLY if you work from home or alone – heck, even if you
work with your spouse! – the days can seem like they drag on…

You get SO deep and SO focused on client work, that you forget to
come up for air, your coffee is now cold (for the third time),
and you’ve worked through lunch.

And then somehow it’s been 4 years since you started and your
business looks TOTALLY different.

Anyone else been there?!

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of AMAZING things about
entrepreneurship. As business owners, we get to:

• Create something out of nothing
• Steward our talents, gifts, and interests in new, creative ways
• Work with our dream clients
• Build a life of time freedom and set our own hours
• Pivot, change, and grow as often as our heart desires
• Impact others’ lives and business on a whole new level
• Pursue endless opportunities

Pretty awesome right?!

But as amazing as entrepreneurship is sometimes (okay, most of
the time!)…

There’s one piece that can be not so fun: Income Planning

If you’re anything like me (type A, perfectionist, control
freak), then not having a steady income or guaranteed paycheck
can be slightly terrifying – ESPECIALLY when you’re just starting
your business.

Being perfectly honest here: when we first started our business
in 2015, we were living in the feast or famine cycle.

We would say “Yes” to every opportunity – even the ones we knew
weren’t good fits – because we didn’t know when the next one
would come.

Which meant we’d have months when we were pulling our hair out,
stressed out to the max, and overwhelmed with client tasks…

Followed by months of crickets that made us start thinking about
finding part-time work on the side…

And any time we had a brilliant new idea?

We felt like we had to launch it NOW because we had NO time to
plan in advance (who they heck actually plans out their launches,
strategies, and income?!)

That right there was our biggest problem. We weren’t planning.

We were so busy working IN our business that we weren’t looking
ahead. We couldn’t pick our heads up long enough to actually PLAN – which meant we really had NO control over how/if/when our
business would grow.

Yep, told ya we were gonna be honest here.

Let’s just say that we learned from personal experience the
meaning of the saying: Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

(cue head smack)

Our lack of planning was hindering our growth… not just
creatively, but financially. And it was hindering us BIG time.

We’re going to take a wild guess and say maaaaaybe just maybe
you’ve been in a similar boat?

So why are we sharing this with you today?

Because thankfully, we took action – and it was a game changer for our business. Today, we’re sharing exactly what we did to start planning for our business growth and how you can do the same!

Why Income Planning is so Important as an Entrepreneur

It honestly wasn’t until the end of 2017 that we got serious
about planning out our business and income…

(totally embarrassing, and totally true)

And you know what happened when we started planning? We doubled
our income in 2018.

Yep. One year of intentionally planning for our growth paid off BIG TIME.

(Which is why we’re really stinking excited to be sharing this with you today!)

If you’re a creative entrepreneur like us, odds are the idea of
planning out your income can seem daunting at best and impossible
at worst.

We never knew how to predict our income because we didn’t know
the types of projects we’d take on, when we would have work (yep,
we were living in that feast or famine cycle), and every project
looked different revenue-wise.

And while these factors certainly make it a little more difficult
to plan, at the end of the day we were just using them as
excuses.

We promise, it doesn’t need to be scary – or really all that
hard.

We took a step back and created a template that WORKS and that we refer to almost every week to make sure we are on track with our goals.

Watch us break down the exact process we followed step-by-step here!

Income Planning Template

Listen, we know how hard it is to set time aside for exercises like this. Heck, planning out time to just work ON your business instead of IN it is hard – but that income talk? That can feel frustrating, overwhelming, and downright disappointing sometimes.

BUT, here’s the thing: these are the exercises that can make ALL of the difference in your success + growth. Taking time to sit down and PLAN will help you take control of your business and your growth all the while being strategic about where you are spending our time, how to YOU want to grow.

And we know you’re here because you’re trying to grow a business that doesn’t just FEEL good and DO good, but one that actually supports your lifestyle right?!

Having a clear idea of how money is being spent and made in your business will give you an idea of which services are the most profitable in helping you continue to SCALE and GROW.

Confused about where to get started? We were too.

That’s why we created a handy dandy Income Planning Template to help you break your business down step-by-step.

This is the EXACT template we used to break down our income piece by piece and really move our business forward strategically and purposefully.

So what are you waiting for, friend?!

It’s time to start planning your income and spend more time on things in your business that WORK and less time on those that don’t.