May 2021 Profit Report: Hiring for 5 New Roles & Heading Into a Season of Growth
Episode 550: Show Notes
Welcome to our 550th episode! We are moving into a season of growth and, with that, there are some big things we have had to start doing and thinking about, both when it comes to staffing, projects, and programs and how we want to set our business up for success in the long term. May was a month of new faces as we brought our social media in-house, which necessitated hiring for a number of new and important roles. This has been an interesting lesson for Abagail and Emylee in finding a happy balance between delegating and ensuring their vision is communicated, resulting in new routines, rhythms, and collaborative efforts.
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In today’s episode, we share not only the five new hires we made and how we're growing, but also our product performance and how our expenses impacted our profit, plus so many sneak peeks that it's going to ABSOLUTELY BLOW YOUR MIND! Make sure not to miss this jam-packed Profit Report for May 2021!
Our Bigger, Better In-House Social Media Team
While it is important to learn how to delegate, there are some areas of your business where it is critically important to ensure that your vision is being communicated, and social media is certainly one of them. We brought on three new team members to work in tight collaboration with us on fresh marketing and messaging, including someone who not only schedules content but helps Abagail and Emylee manage comments, DMs, ad comments, and our Facebook community, from moderation to helping our audience get the links, tools, and guidance that they need. Abagail’s husband, Jared, was doing much of this for us already, mostly as a very kind unpaid volunteer, but we officially moved him into the role with Emylee as his main point of contact to ensure that things run smoothly without any conflict of interest.
We also brought on a dedicated Pinterest manager, as well as a junior copywriter to take on our social media captions, which was a lesson in the importance of hiring a niche person to fulfill a niche role. We used to write all of our own sales copy, long-form blog content, email marketing copy, ad content, and social media copy and we realized that we would rather give direction to and brainstorm with an eloquent, highly skilled writer about the ideas that a piece of copy needs to convey, with the added benefit of freeing us up to focus on business strategy. Similarly, Pinterest has its own set of rules and requires a specific set of skills in order to track conversions and make the most of the various tools and analytics available to us.
While it can be difficult to relinquish control over every single word that goes out about your business, you have to own it as a necessary part of company growth. Emylee’s are still the last pair of eyes on any copy before it goes out into the world, which allows us to honor our brand voice and protect our brand messaging, especially as we bring on new team members and get into a new groove.
Manifesting the Perfect Program Director
We talked about hiring for this role and, believe it or not, less than 48 hours later, the perfect person slid into our DMs. Talk about meant to be! Well, it wasn’t quite as woo-woo as literally manifesting the ideal candidate, but we were lucky enough that our newest program director reached out to Abagail via her Instagram stories and we had to look no further. We hired her primarily to spearhead all of our products, but her first main task was going through years’ worth of survey data and building out new surveys to help us get to know our current members and students better and better understand the people who aren’t purchasing our products and services and how we can improve. She brings with her a unique set of experiences, having managed over 20,000 members with a $10 million annual budget as a membership director for YMCA. Even though ours is a totally different kind of membership, the kinds of metrics that need to be focused on and the issues that come up around member retention, for example, have all translated really well. She has only been with us for one month, but we have already seen some really exciting developments and findings that are going to set us up for greater success in the year ahead!
Restructuring Our Live Launch Format
A couple of months ago, we noticed in our monthly recurring revenue that payments were dipping. We realized that we hadn’t done a Strategy Academy launch in over a year, which meant that our 12-month payment plans were starting to fall off. We decided to do a live launch for our Day Job to Dream Job webinar, which we did in May, but the way that we live launch now has dramatically improved over time. Previously, it felt like our entire business relied on the success of a live launch. It felt like 110 percent of our energy and our team’s energy needed to go into the launch, and that stressed us the heck out! It’s totally goofy to have your entire self-worth and all of your business funds tied into a single event, which is why we have entirely restructured and refreshed our live launch format to better match our messaging, starting with our mindset. Now, our live launches still have the same positive effects on our business, but our headspace is far more laid back. It’s just a webinar; we’re just refreshing, tweaking, making it better, hanging out with our audience, and whatever happens happens. Remember, every failure is an opportunity for growth, so never let a fear of failure stop you in your tracks!
Investing in the Future of Boss Project
One of the things Abagail and Emylee have discussed recently is how Boss Project can serve us in other ways, not only in terms of the programs and products that we offer, not just in terms of our social media and our content, but how we can expand the business in ways that aren’t as dependent on what we have built. Well, this is where investing in the future of the company comes in. There were a number of different options available to us, from real estate to equity, but we decided to take a more holistic approach and move a big chunk of our business savings into an investment-style account. Essentially, this means that the company now owns stocks and bonds and equity stakes in other businesses in the same way that you would if you purchased mutual funds as an individual. Will riding the wave of the stock market always work out for us? Not necessarily but, like any investment, it runs its own risks and we had to decide what our risk tolerance looked like. What we can tell you is that, after a few months, we are already excited about what this investment in our future can look like in the long term!
Diving Into the Numbers
While all these exciting developments were happening, we still had a business to run, so let’s dive into the numbers, shall we? The first number we’ll share is the Shop, which represents around 55 percent of our income in May, thanks to slow but stable growth over the first half of this year. Strategy Academy bumped up a bit, in large part due to the launch that we did, and hit 27 percent. Investing in content, being super strategic, and working on our SEO also totally paid off for us, and we have been seeing the kinds of conversions that we hoped for. While our affiliate income only comes in at nine percent in May, it is growing significantly and we can’t wait to see how it performs going forward! The last piece of the puzzle is no surprise, with Trello holding steady at eight percent. It’s a little lower than it was this time last year, but Emylee and Abagail attribute that to the Shop more than doubling in the same period of time.
As we have grown in revenue, we have hired people to serve not only the business that we have today but also the business that we are growing into. Because we are in this season of growth, we are making some decisions that past Abagail and Emylee would probably be a little uncomfortable with but, because we have built up our savings and our cash flow and we have put in the work, we are strategically deciding to skirt the line of breaking even in order to invest in people we see potential in. As a result, we have only seen an overall profit of one percent this month, but we aren’t worried at all! In fact, we’re excited and confident about the path we have chosen and we continue to reflect on what new roles we need to hire for as we evolve.
Onto expenses - our goal was 30 percent, we hit a little higher than that at 32, and advertising was at 28 percent, which was also fairly on target. Contractors were also a little higher than we would like at 35 percent, with a one-time project making up three percent of that, but we’re maintaining our focus on growing revenue rather than cutting expenses as we evolve. We truly believe that the season we’re going into will radically change what you know about Boss Project today, so stay tuned for more exciting updates!
Quote This
We have definitely grown in revenue and thus have hired a lot of people to serve the business that we have today but also the one that we are growing into.
Highlights
Our Bigger, Better In-House Social Media Team. [0:05:15]
Manifesting the Perfect Program Director. [0:14:14]
Restructuring Our Live Launch Format. [0:18:01]
Investing in the Future of Boss Project. [0:29:07]
Diving Into the Numbers. [0:31:39]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
