Ninety Ninth Income Report – June 2021 ($2,605.57)

Are you curious about a 3-month delay? I explained it in my first income report.

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If May 2021 was fully packed, then June 2021 was over-packed. For most of the month, I felt totally overwhelmed. Both business and family life were truly hectic. I planned a vacation with my wife at the end of the month and it didn’t go well, making the closure of the month bittersweet. I worked non-stop, and I was constantly exhausted.

1-time Projects

I tackled a few mini-projects in June; things I don’t normally do, but since I got the opportunities, I continued them.

Philip Morris Webinar

We scheduled the webinar on the 29th of June. My parents’ schedule shifted a bit, so we were forced to move the date of our vacation too. Thus, I needed to conduct a webinar from my hotel room in Greece.

I spent a few hours preparing the PowerPoint presentation, coordinating the technical details with my contact in Philip Morris and invoicing details with my accountant. I also had to pack my microphone to a suitcase. Luckily, our luggage didn’t get lost, and I could do the webinar with my normal audio-video setup.

More about the webinar itself further down, in the ‘failures’ section.  :/

Scribd Audio Program

I spent on this project a few hours too. Actually, I spent about the same time on registering myself as their contractor and figuring out the invoicing process, and working on the content of the program.

Scribd was up to their word; I had very little to do. They compiled several of my Medium articles and Quora answers and arranged them into a program. All I needed to do was to review the outline and provide my comments.

Podcast Pitch Sheet

I got the idea that this time I could do more for my book than just a soft book launch. I decided to try a podcast tour with The Remarkable Power of Consistency.

First, I created the Impact Filter from the Who Not How book, and posted it in my mastermind’s FB group. Crickets. So, I consulted a couple of podcasting books I read and created the podcast pitch sheet. Or rather, the content for it. It needed some graphical elements, and I’m hopeless with that. My friend, Anthony Smits, helped me with that.

Ironically, the only podcast interview I got through my business, without using the pitch sheet. One of my new customers has a podcast and he was interested in my way of doing Amazon ads. We discussed this, but also my book.

Book Launch

I published The Remarkable Power of Consistency at the very end of May. The first few days of June were busy with the publishing process too. There were some troubles with the paperback version, then Anthony helped me to create the hardcopy version.

Next in the queue were keywords and categories, which I researched and updated.

After the mid-month, when the book gathered 10 ratings, I scheduled a few promotions. I extended the launch period (and the Kindle discount to 99 cents) till the end of June. I switched to the full price already in July.

I did all the above when juggling my business and life. The Remarkable Power of Consistency sold exactly 361 copies during the launch, 24 of those non-Kindle; 247 copies in the US.

On the family front, there were plenty of 1-time events too.

A Tent

My wife bought a tent and, of course :/, she made me set it up the very same day.

Cinema

We got out of the lockdown at last, and we could use some entertainment. I went with my daughter and wife for Cruella – a very deep movie for a kids’ fairytale. I also went with my son and daughter for the latest Tom & Jerry movie; we had a lot of fun.

Braces

My daughter got her teeth braces. I wasn’t involved at all – other than being a calming element for my wife, who approached it like an open heart surgery. There were some complications; Olga had one tooth removed, and it all required attention and time of my wife. Meaning, I was the one who had to listen to all her concerns and hug her through anxiety attacks.

School Exams

My eldest son finished high school and had the final exams. My daughter finished primary school and had hers. My other son had a couple of vocational qualifying exams in his technical high school.

And it was the same story – it was a source of anxiety for my wife, that’s all. I was involved only into preparations of my daughter for her math exam. But the exam was on the 6th of June, if I recall correctly. So, maybe I did a single mockup test with her, that’s all.

My Parents’ Visit

My parents escaped from Ireland under the excuse of essential travel for health consultation. The lockdown was hard enough for us in Poland; it was nuts in Ireland.

They arrived at 19th of June, and they were a part of our vacation scheme. My mother stayed with our kids when we traveled to Greece.

Of course, I spent some time with them, which took time away from the mountain of tasks in my business.

The Mountain of Tasks

It grew and grew for the whole month, along with the accompanying pile of unprocessed emails. A week before vacation, I had over 100 emails in my inbox!

I felt totally overwhelmed for the most of June (and I WAS overwhelmed). Thinking of how much there is to do and doing just a fraction of it sapped my energy like nothing else. It was exhausting.

In the last week before vacation, I underslept. From Wednesday to Thursday, I slept less than four, five hours the next day and again, less than four. I’m too old for this shit.

I managed to deal with half of the emails and finish or move forward all the projects I mentioned above. Still, my mind was with all those unfinished tasks, and not focused on the finished ones.

Medium

One of my 12 Week Year goals for Q2 was publishing 100 articles on Medium. Among all the craziness, I kept steadily publishing new articles. I even exceeded the number of articles I planned.

On the 11th of June, I published an ultra-short piece, barely 100-words long. So, I added a few sentences about The Remarkable Power of Consistency, and the info that the Kindle was discounted for the launch.

I didn’t think much of the article. Why should I? It was a short, not especially useful for readers, shameless plug. On the 20th of June, the article started gaining momentum. It got a few thousand views till the end of the month. Medium’s algorithms recalibrated their perception of my writing, and my further posts got more views as well. Thirty days prior, I managed to get over the 50 reads threshold only on a couple of days. On the 21st of June, reads of my articles exceeded 100 a day, and kept climbing. 200, 300… On the last day of June, I reached over 400 reads for the first time.

Business Coach

In the middle of the month, we had a small get-together of my department. I talked to my supervisor and out of the blue, she decided to bestow on me a $5,500 coaching certification from the department’s training fund.

I asked my wife for her opinion and she said, “Take it!” So, before my vacation, we processed the paperwork and I signed up for the training cycle that starts in October. It would consume every second weekend for the whole quarter.

I took the offer mostly because there was another offer in the background. My supervisor would work the system so I could become a part of a PwC coaching team after the certification process. That’s better than IT stuff, which simply bores me out of my mind.

My Great (Nightmare) Greek Vacation

We had to travel a day before to an airport which was about 250 miles away from our home – we had the flight at 6:05 am. On a train to that other city, my wife got a message that her mom had a car accident. A truck ran her over while biking. We had no contact with her mom till about 8 pm. She was admitted to a hospital, had a broken arm and a ruptured leg. And no visits were allowed due to COVID regulations. She was going to stay in the hospital for about two weeks.

We booked a cheap motel near the airport. We woke up at 3:30 am to be early enough for onboarding. The queue to the check-in desk was long and slow.

And they didn’t let us get to the plane. We didn’t have a Greek Passenger Locator Form. It was the first time my airline informed me about this requirement. It wasn’t a mystery for them; they clearly knew we needed it, why they didn’t tell us?

‘Cos the whole airline (LOT Polish Airlines) is one big mess.

My wife was devastated. She cried like a baby. Well, the frickin’ lady at the check-in desk told us we could get the form, go to Samos, our destination, and come back with our already-booked flight. We went to a train station. I researched the flights for the next day. My wife kept being devastated.

We bought one-way plane tickets for the next day. They cost us 150% of the price of the original tickets. We had two layovers. I spent the whole day, literally, studying all the COVID travel regulations I could find. BTW, we booked new flights with a couple of different airlines, and they both informed us in big, bold letters we need to get our Passenger Locator Form. Which only highlights the incompetence of the Polish Airlines.

We traveled to Samos the next days with no problems. But we ended up with enormous headaches – dehydration and all the pressure changes took their toll.

The Webinar

The Wi-Fi connection in the hotel wasn’t very fast or reliable. I bought the SIM card to have a backup. That was a 1-hour trip to a town and 20 Euros.

A day before a webinar, I gave a mockup run to Anthony, and he gave me some feedback.

The webinar itself went exactly as I planned. No technical glitches. No network connections problems. About 20 people showed up, and I gave the presentation.

I called my friend who works in Philip Morris, and he told me it was a disaster from the audience point of view.

The PowerPoint presentation itself was awful, and I overwhelmed my audience with information. Ugh. I swallowed the tough feedback. My takeaway from this webinar was to:

1. a) show my presentation before I gave it (I did that, but Anthony was too polite to tell me it sucked.)
2. b) prepare with the audience in mind (I didn’t do a proper research in advance.)
3. c) prepare more in general

Emotionally, the webinar hurt me. I coordinated and prepared the whole thing, spent about 5 hours on all the paperwork and preparations. And the results were meager.

Logically, they got what they paid for (not much). My effort was proportional to my fee; in fact, my effort even exceeded the fee twice. And I got some painful lessons for the future. Painful lessons are the best. They better stick to memory.

Vacation

Our stay on Samos was great. The weather was awesome, especially by Polish standards. 😉 Our hostess was very hospitable. We had a room with the sea view. Thanks to idiotic Greek regulations, there were very few tourists and my wife often had the whole beach just for herself.

The vacation itself was cheap. We paid €240 for the hotel, and we spent about the same amount (or less) on food and souvenirs. Anthony’s wife, Paula, got along very well with my wife.

Vacation Work

Anthony has been helping me with my book business for years, but it was our first face-to-face meeting. It was so great to be able to finally hug him!

Apart from the webinar preparations, we moved forward a couple of other projects – my podcast pitch sheet and graphics for BookBub ads. I helped him to get control over his Kindle device and cleaned up both of their computers.

The June 2021 Income Report Breakdown

Income:

Amazon royalties: €1,884.72 ($2,299.35)
Coach.me fees: $188.39
Audiobooks royalties: $29.08
D2D royalties: $44.74
PWIW personal coaching: $573.2
AMS service remuneration: $2,064.41
Others: $475.2

Total: $5,674.38

Costs:
$23.37, BirdSend fee
$1,196.24 Amazon ads
$672.54, RAs’ remuneration (RAs = Real Assistants; my team)
$30, SiteLock fee
$500, ISI mastermind
$49.53, royalties split with co-author
$302.5, editor’s share, formatting and design
$102.55, Advanced Amazon ads
$99.99, Coach.me yearly fee
$5, book promotions
$100, an obligatory monthly fee for LLC
$92, my accountant’s monthly fee
Total: $3,068.81

Net Result: $2,605.57

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Previous Income Report: May 2021