Hello and welcome to The B-Side, a mastermind group for entrepreneurial women! On the first of each month, I share my business-related goals, challenges, and triumphs while inviting you to do the same! I'd love for you to join me; you can learn more about participating by clicking here.Welcome to the June B-Side Meeting! I know I don't even have to mention how fast this year is moving, so I won't even say it! Ya'll know the deal - let's get right to it:[symple_divider style="dashed" margin_top="20" margin_bottom="20"]

Last Month's Results

1. Get some personal systems in place. This month I did a good job getting a rhythm down for some of the parts of my business. I'm still not completely done setting up systems but I do now have a pretty solid system in place for the production and promotion of my classes and workshops. It's so solid, in fact, that I showed my little "formula" to one of my friends who was interested in monetizing her brand and now it's working for her!
2. Go back to posting 2x per week. I didn't quite hit this, some weeks last month I was only able to post one post for the week. There's just so much I'm doing now - speaking on the weekends, coaching clients, teaching virtual classes, writing my email newsletter, writing sales pages, marketing on Facebook, hosting webinars, etc, etc, it's difficult to write blogs on top of all that. But I'm committed to keeping the blog up because the blog is what makes everything possible! So I have some ideas on how to free up more time that I'll be experimenting with this month...
3. Get the website and back-end stuff in place for upcoming virtual conference. I didn't even touch this. Last month was the month where I was supposed to have the free time to just focus on this but to my surprised I got some great referrals for speaking engagements and paid workshops, totally unsolicited from me. Obviously I wasn't going to turn that down but there was just no way I could do all that and build a website for a virtual conference. This is going on the back burner for now.

This Month's Business Goals

1. Set up a PASSIVE marketing system for one of my products. I have one, and ONLY one goal this month - to get a system in place where I'm generating passive income from one of my products. Here's the deal - I've am SO grateful for the response my book and my virtual classes have been getting. That said, it is A LOT of work to constantly have to "launch" or market in order to get sales. As I said, I'm grateful - my products have been generating around $1,500/mo for the last few months in a row. I'll talk more about this under "Current Challenges" but I'm learning that if I want to GROW my business beyond that number so I can actually quit my job, it's CRITICAL that I get a more passive process in place because I'm only one person and my time is limited. So this month, I'm not taking on new clients and I'm not launching any new products or classes. I recently moved from Mailchimp to a more advanced email marketing and sales automation system and I am doing NOTHING this month but building that out. I want to get it setup for ONE product first to see if I can still clear the same amount of income from it without me actively promoting the product. If I can successfully do that, then I'll repeat the system for other products until I'm at the point where I can quit my job. Woohoo!

Current Challenges

Time and Leverage. I've mentioned this for a few months now but time is truly a hurdle. And I don't even mean it in a "Oh, woe is me, I work a 9-5, I don't have any time to work on my business, I need an assistant, yada yada yada..." kind of way. When I say I'm realizing time is a major hurdle, I mean I finally understand that even if I didn't have a job and I could focus on this 100%, my income would still be limited by the amount of hours I could work in a day because right now, my income is directly tied to my time. When I launch a new virtual class or information product, I only get paid if I put in the time to promote the product. And when I'm not promoting the product or teaching the classes, the income stops.As I was thinking how I could 2-3x my current results (I'm earning $1,500/mo now, I need at least $4,000/mo before I would even consider quitting my job) it dawned on me that this is what people are talking about when they say it's important to create passive income. The current amount of time I put into my business, which is limited my my job, is earning me $1,500/mo. If I left my job and DOUBLED the amount of time I could put into my business, then I'm still looking at an upper limit of $3,000/mo. Now yes, I could sell more expensive products in order to make more money but the issue is not the price of my products as much as it is the fact that I'm still trading dollars for time. Hence the problem - I will always only have so much time.Thus, I realized that it's not enough to get paid for a particular product or service I offer - I have to create a SYSTEM where I'm getting paid for what I create even when I'm not actively promoting it. I've always thought it was corny when internet "gurus" say this but they're right - you really do want to make money in your sleep. That's the only way I'm going to reach the level of income I need without stressing myself out trying to put in more hours.I've been researching this like crazy over the last few weeks and I feel really confident that I've hit on a process that's going to do exactly what I need it to do. I actually hired a coach back in April who showed me how to do this using email marketing and Facebook ads. We did a test run on small product I created on the fly and I made a "passive" sale! Now I just need to replicate the process on a larger scale. The only problem is a system like this takes considerable amount of time to build out, then test, then tweak, which is why I'm committed to ONLY focusing on this for the month of June. I don't mind it though because I know once this is up and working, this is going to be a game changer. So I'm really excited to get started!

Current Successes/What's Working

Outsourcing. I bit the bullet this month and started investing more heavily in freelancers and software that can do some of the admin stuff so I can free up more of my time. Last month, I worked with a lot of transcribers and writers who create notes for my online classes. I want to keep using them to edit some of my blog posts and create written summaries for my podcast. As I mentioned above, I also switched from Mailchimp (I exceeded the subscriber limit for the free account) to a more advance email management software that allows me to do some really cool, automated stuff. I used to be really apprehensive to outsource because I felt like I couldn't afford it but now I realize I can't afford not to if I want my business to grow.

Your Turn!

Mastermind Rules

• Share your goals, challenges and successes in the comments.
• The goal of this mastermind is to support each other, so be sure to read all the comments and check out all the participating blogs and businesses! If you have something to offer, leave a comment and help each other out!
• If you are a blogger, feel free to create a post sharing your entrepreneurial goals, challenges, and successes (via the format above) on your blog and link back here. You can even grab the button and include it in your post:

B-Side Facebook Group

Be sure to join the B-Side Facebook group! Since the B-side post will come out monthly, this women-only Facebook group will serve as a "hub" for us to ask questions, share what we have going on, and generally connect with each other on a day-to-day basis. You can join right now: http://facebook.com/groups/bsidebythinkandgrowchick