I hope you’ve already gotten past this one, actually! I haven’t.
It stings a bit when your own words come back to bite you in the ass.
I’ve been writing online in public forums for over two decades, so I have a lot of words out there ready to munch-munch.
Long on advice, short on follow-through
My spotlight on humility today comes from a decade-old post on the Personal Finance & Money Stack Exchange. An elderly man was losing $10,000 per month with his bookstore, and likely would not become profitable in the owner’s lifetime. His family asked on the forum how to handle this gracefully and lovingly.
I rattled off this beauty of an answer (which was accepted by the person posing the question):
You’ve already counted the cost. It will cost your family ~$10,000 per month until your father dies, or until there’s no money left, to enable him to pretend that he is a successful business owner. I’d ask him when he thinks business is going to pick up again. He may be honest with himself.
Or, ask him to consider what will happen if he outlives the money that’s going out the door. Ask him if he would like to be bankrupt on top of needing to close his business. (I don’t view asking those questions as being unloving, by the way.)
I sure knew a lot back then, haha.
For 2024, I published side hustle income updates monthly.
And in all of them, I made it clear that I was tracking income, and not profit. I mentioned each month that I was in the red, and likely would be for some time.
Truth is: I haven’t been profitable for years. I may not have been profitable when I wrote that pithy answer to that poor soul’s question!
The goal really should go without saying
A business needs to profit to be successful.
There’s no getting around that. If there’s no profit, there’s no successful business.
My loss for all of that time wasn’t $10,000 a month, or even close. One year I bought an overly-expensive course that might have tipped the scale at $10,000 loss for the year. Most years it was a few hundred or a thousand-ish for the year.
I had been profitable in the 2000’s decade but that didn’t last very far into the 2010’s. For the last decade or so it’s been a “labor of love” as one of my long-time blogging contemporaries called it. It’s kept me occupied, but I’ve been paying for it rather than having it pay me.
My overarching business goal for this year
It’s stupid simple.
My goal is to be profitable this year.
I no longer want to pretend that I’m a successful business owner. I want to be one.
And that means not needing to dip into my personal checking account over and over to cover business expenses.
I’ll be doing a combination of four things differently:
1. Reducing expenses
By reducing my expenses, I won’t need to make as much to become profitable. I’ll be taking a hard look at what I’m spending money on and cutting back on how many, and what tiers, of service I use.
I’ve already moved my websites to a less expensive hosting company that appears to be very competitive with the one I left. In the process I’m spending less than half of what I did each month.
There will be more reductions.
2. Not taking on new expenses
Part of my problem is that I’ve taken on new services, bought new programs or courses, whatever, with great intentions, and just never really used them or followed through.
This year I’ll need to see the clear benefit or payoff before I buy anything new.
3. Better using the services I already pay for
My Kit subscription is my most underused service. I pay an awful lot of money to not send nearly the number of emails I should.
Part of it is a learning curve thing. I just haven’t taken the time to learn the more powerful features.
I’m starting to do that with Canva and making my own YouTube channel thumbnails.
There will be more of this. For the services I decide to keep around, I’ll be using them for all they’re worth.
4. And of course … Earn more!!
I can reduce my expenses to nothing, and if I don’t make any money, I still won’t be profitable!
I’ll report my income each month for the coming year, like I did last year.
But this year I’ll be reporting on expenses as well as income to keep my main goal in sight at all times. Keeping a running total of my profit for the year is measuring my progress. This will help me to manage my expenses and aim for profits.
A SMART income goal
“My goal is to be in profit with my side hustles for 2025.”
It has the components of a SMART goal:
- Specific: Profit is Income minus expenses, which is very …
- Measurable: I can add and subtract pretty well! If the pluses are greater than the minuses. I’ve won. It’s also …
- Achievable: The year is still young, and I have lots of ideas that are …
- Relevant: This has been a constant in my life. Its relevance has proven itself over time. Lastly, it’s …
- Time-Bound: December 31st 2025 is the cutoff!
Let’s do this! What goals do you have for 2025?
Thanks for reading!
Hi, I’m John and I encourage people to work for themselves, and on themselves, every day to sleep better at night.
Join 400+ savvy people with my Solid Cash Tips newsletter for regular insights on side hustling and saving money, with a generous portion of productivity, habit-building, and working smarter!
Photo by Ronnie Overgoor on Unsplash