💰 Overcoming Underearning — How Much Money I Made Last Year & What I’m Doing Differently This Year

Amelia [00:00:00]

[Music begins to play, overlapping with the introduction to the episode]

Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

[Music plays]

Hello and welcome or welcome back to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio and the co-founder of the Lifestyle Business League. And this week, I am so excited to be here because we are kicking off season three of Off the Grid. That's right. Season three has officially begun and we will be sharing weekly episodes from now through the end of June. I have so much in store for this season.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:03]:

I'm super excited about it. And before we dive in, I wanna give you a couple quick, quick, quick updates on what's coming up for the show. So first things first, as always, you probably should go download the free Leaving Social Media Toolkit. You can find it at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. It includes three amazing tools, a five step plan for leaving any social platform, a list of 100 ways to share your work without social media, and a creative marketing ideas database to help you plan your marketing experiments for the season ahead. You can find all of those things for free at offthe grid.fun. And this month only, I have a second fun freebie for you, which is the Leaving Social Media Five Day Challenge. So that challenge is gonna take that five step plan from the Toolkit and turn it into five daily emails that will expand and support your process of taking a social media break or exiting one or more platforms entirely.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:13]:

So the toolkit is free all the time, anytime, no matter when you're listening, but the challenge is only available in January of 2024. So if you wanna learn more about it, head back to the episode from last week, January 10th. Listen to it. Grab the link in the show notes. Get the free challenge. And if you're listening from the future, that challenge is now exclusively available for Interweb members, so if it sounds like something you want, then check out the Interweb and join our annual membership. One more quick announcement before we dive into today's episode. This season on Off the Grid, you are going to start hearing some ads.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:52]:

Now you're a smart, savvy business owner, so I'm going to assume that you respect that ads are a part of the marketing process, And we don't have to groan through them or skip past them when we hear them on a podcast. I won't judge you if you do, but I wanna give you a heads up that they are here. And you might also be thinking, "Oh, well, maybe I should advertise on Off the Grid. I love this podcast. I know that I wanna work with other cool business owners that listen to this podcast." If you're thinking that, you are in luck because we have plenty of ad spots open for season three. If you are interested in advertising with the show, head to the show notes and you'll find a link to a page with tons more info, including our rates. It's all right out there for you. And I would love to talk about the amazing things that you are creating and selling here on the podcast.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:42]:

So those are your three updates as we kick off season three. Get the free Leaving Social Media Toolkit, take our five day challenge while it's free in January of 2024, and you're gonna hear some ads on the show this season. Your business could feature in one of them if you head to the link in the show notes to learn more. And that's it. Are we ready to dive in to season three of Off the Grid? Are you ready to hear the splash of water that I always play at this point in the episode? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeses all around. Okay, my friends. Let's dive in to season three of Off the Grid.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:20]:

Okay, my lovely listeners. We are kicking off season three of this show with an episode about everybody's favorite thing to talk about, money, money, money. Yep. Money, dollars, cents, stocks, options. No. We're not we're not talking about stocks or options, but we are gonna talk about money.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:41]:

And as the title of this episode promises, we're gonna talk about overcoming underearning, and I'm gonna share how much money I made last year and what I'm doing differently this year. So this episode is gonna have three parts. In the first part, I'm gonna share more about my experience with underearning and the ways that I have worked to transform my relationship to money over the past five years, as well as the positive results that that has had for me in my life and in my business. In part two, I'm gonna tell you how much money I made last year. We're gonna talk about how much money Softer Sounds made, how much money this podcast made and then in part three of the episode, I'm gonna share three things that I'm doing differently in my business this year to try to channel money into the business and out of the business with more intention. So that's our episode. Overcoming underearning, How much money I made in 2023 and what I'm doing differently next year.

Amelia Hruby [00:05:46]:

I guess you knew all that from the title, but I always love to lay it out for you. Isn't it so nice when somebody just like tells you what's gonna happen and then it happens and you expected it and it was wonderful? That's what we're here to do, at least today. So let's begin by talking about overcoming underearning. This phrase, as far as I know, comes from the title of a book by Barbara Stanny. The book is called Overcoming Underearning: A 5 Step Plan to a Richer Life. I have read it. I will link it in the show notes. I'm not gonna talk about that five step plan here because I haven't gone through the steps. But when I read the book, what I really took away was just this phrase "overcoming underearning" because it really unlocked something for me, which was that I was an under earner.

Amelia Hruby [00:06:32]:

And to me, what that meant is I always found myself in these situations where I was working hard and being told how valuable my work was, how valuable my contributions were, and how important I was to any team or organization I was working with, and yet I was never making an amount of money where I felt like I could pay all of my bills and save for the future and do just a few fun things, a month or a year, even though I was being told that my contributions were so valuable. And it didn't seem like anything I did really raised the threshold on how much money I was making. I could get a different job. I could get another job. I could quit my job, and it all seemed to average out at that time to like 30 something thousand a year. So now that I've shared kind of how I found and relate to this concept of overcoming underearning, I wanna tell you more about my personal history with underearning, how I ended up under earning for so long, which to me means like basically all of my twenties, and what I've done to transform my relationship to money in the past few years. Before I dive into that, I want to wrap this whole conversation in some context.

Amelia Hruby [00:08:00]:

I believe in financial transparency, which means that I'm about to tell you very real numbers for how much money I have made in the past and in the present. In the United States where I live and we live under a capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative, ableist overculture that certainly influences how much any of us can earn. And before I give you any more numbers, I'm gonna share some of the details of the context of my own life that shapes how this has been possible for me. I am a very well educated white woman who lives in the Midwest. For many of the years I'm gonna talk about, I was living in Chicago, which is an expensive city, but not the most expensive city by any means. Now I am living in Nebraska which has a very low cost living comparatively to Chicago or most other places in the country. I am able-bodied, but I have some chronic health conditions that require ongoing check-ins and treatment. And on the whole, I have a lot of emotional support and, at times, financial support from family and friends. I have always paid my own rent and my own bills, but I have been lucky to be in situations where if I really needed money to cover an unexpected expense, then I had people I could ask for it.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:27]:

Those are just some of the details of my background and lived experience that make up my money story. I wanted to share at least some context about my life so that when you hear these numbers, you can know that these numbers are about me. And as you listen, I'm asking you to maintain your own energetic sovereignty so that you remember that these numbers are not about you. You may hear the amounts of money I'm gonna tell you I made and be like, "Wow, Amelia, that is more than twice what I make in a year. Why do you feel like that was under earning?" Or you may hear these numbers and be like, "Wow, Amelia, I thought you were successful and now I know that you don't earn shit." You know, like, as I share really transparently, I'm just asking that if you keep listening or as you keep listening, you remember that these things are all about me and they may or may not apply to you in your life. I'm gonna talk a little later about why I think it's still so important to share, but I just wanted to pause here and share all of this context. And now I'm gonna take you through kind of the past ten years of my money story, where the underearning really lies and how I've shifted beyond that.

Amelia Hruby [00:10:38]:

So let me introduce you to college senior Amelia. In 2013, I was a chronically overachieving college student with a 4.0 GPA, a soon to be minted dual degree in English and religion, and a whole lot of questions about what I might do next with my life. At the urging of one of my professors, I applied to PhD programs. And when I got into a school in Chicago, that seemed way more appealing and frankly, just so much more fun than staying put in North Carolina to work the part time pharmaceutical marketing job that I had happened into in my senior year. So with my grad school offer in hand, I packed up my belongings, moved halfway across the country and registered for classes. I was super excited to be in Chicago. And looking back, I am so glad that I made that decision. But what I didn't know when I decided to go to grad school was that I was signing up for a decade of financial instability.

Amelia Hruby [00:11:54]:

So my PhD program had a set stipend of $22,000 a year for each student. I think it might have been a little lower when I started and a little higher than I ended, but that's about the average. They paid us $22,000 a year with no benefits, health insurance, no retirement benefits, none of that. And even though I was a pretty healthy young person, I quickly learned that $22,000 a year was barely enough to cover my rent and food, let alone anything else I needed to buy. So throughout grad school, I got side jobs at restaurants, on campus, and online to make ends meet. Between 2015 and 2021, I worked 2 to 4 jobs at a time to earn an average of $33,000 a year. That's a very real number. I looked up all my tax returns.

Amelia Hruby [00:12:51]:

That's how much I was making before taxes. I think my lowest year was like 20,000 something dollars. My highest was like $45,000, but the average through those years was $33,000 a year. And honestly, that seemed pretty okay to me. I was like, cool. This is a living. I can work with this. But it seemed a lot less okay after I took out taxes and then I took out $12,000 a year for rent and then $6,000 a year for health insurance and then $3,000 a year to keep my car running.

Amelia Hruby [00:13:22]:

And at the end of the day, I was left with less than $1,000 a month to cover food, clothes, shampoo, birth control, friends, parking tickets, drinks, fun things I wanted to do, concerts, you know, all the stuff that goes into life in your twenties. The things that I prioritize and wanted to spend my time on, plus, like, the necessities of buying food to feed myself. And honestly, like, I made it work. I certainly wasn't saving for the future, but I was able to cover my basic expenses and some fun trips and some nice things for myself at that point in time. But when my car got towed or I got sick or like any expense over $100 popped up, I went into full panic mode because I didn't know where that money was coming from. And then that panic generally led me in one of two directions. It would take me to, like, complete avoidance where I wouldn't open my bank account for weeks at a time while, like, swiping my card with a hope and a prayer. Right? Maybe you can relate. That avoidant attachment-ness that happens with money.

Amelia Hruby [00:14:31]:

Sometimes I'd go there. And then other times when I was panicking, I would go to the other end of the spectrum, like full anxious attachment where I had my bank website open all the time, and I vigilantly tracked every single cent that I was spending, And I shamed myself for spending it. Those were the two modes that I knew how to relate to money. It was either like, I'm not looking at it, happy go lucky, it'll be fine, except maybe I'll overdraft occasionally. Or it was like, I'm looking at it all the time, all the time, all the time and feeling bad about everything that I'm spending. And I oscillated between those two modes for basically all of my twenties while I was under earning. During that time, while I was panicking about money, I watched my friends get stable jobs with stable paychecks and health insurance benefits and 401k matches. And I will be perfectly honest with you that I was so jealous.

Amelia Hruby [00:15:26]:

I was like, literally, my inner monologue was like, "I am just as smart as you. Why do I make less than half of what you make in a year? I don't know what a 401k matches, but I want it." I was like, "Give me health insurance, anybody. I don't wanna have to buy it for myself anymore." Like, that was my internal monologue. I was, like, seething with envy. Like, I'm not sugarcoating this. I was so jealous. And it wasn't just me. Right? Every boss I had ever had before that period and through that period, every boss I'd ever had had told me I was so smart and such a hard worker and such a great team player, but I couldn't translate that into earning or having more money. It's like, how could I be so good at working and so bad at having money?

Amelia Hruby [00:16:10]:

And it's not because I was spending tons of money. Right? Like, I wasn't earning that much. Like, how can I be so good at working and still not earning more money? Like, I didn't get it. And a lot of that for me was centered in grad school, but even after I got my PhD and I quit working in academia, I could not break through that $33,000 a year threshold. I truly felt like I'd never earn more money than that. And I was starting to wonder if I would always be stuck in that multi-job grind without any hope of having better insurance or paid time off or frankly like a semblance of a retirement account.

Amelia Hruby [00:16:50]:

I'm gonna pause there and invite myself and all of us to take a deep breath. Let's inhale together and exhale together. Quite honestly, as I talk about that period, as I just like share that story here, I feel some of that panic again in my body. Like, it's very visceral. I really remember what it felt like to get a parking ticket and, like, have a full crying, sobbing breakdown on the sidewalk because I didn't know how I was gonna pay for it.

Amelia Hruby [00:17:25]:

Or honestly, like sometimes the money was in my account, but I just had so much shame wrapped up in making the mental calculation of, "Okay, well, I guess I have to pay this ticket, so now I can't do this other thing I wanted to do. And I'm such a failure because I can't earn money, and I don't have money, and no one wants to pay me any money because I'm not good enough." Like, that internal monologue was so strong. And whether or not you relate to any of the numbers in my story or the grad school bit or the working bit or anything else, maybe you were one of those people with a stable job and a stable paycheck and benefits, but like, I'm guessing that somewhere along the line, you have encountered that like panic and shame around money. And it's really hard. And you might think that this story is going to like turn around now and lead to some like rosy revelation that everything changed when I quit my jobs, I started my business, and now I'm great at money. Like, that is not what happened. So let's just go a little deeper into the spiral, the money spiral I was in.

Amelia Hruby [00:18:35]:

Because if you've listened to any episode of this show, you know that I am not a rose colored glasses kind of person. I'm very practical. I'm very honest. And I am definitely a positive thinker, but I'm not here to sugarcoat things. So not gonna tell you to quit your job and start a business, and it's gonna fix your relationship to money. Because the first thing that happened when I quit working multiple jobs and starting my own business was that the panic got exponentially worse. Suddenly, every fear that I'd placated with a semi-steady paycheck surfaced angrily in my life. I was not surfing tidal waves of money coming in and out of my business. I was, like, drowning in my own narratives of how I'd never be able to earn enough to feel supported and successful, and how dare I believe that I could do that on my own? All of that was so present.

Amelia Hruby [00:19:34]:

And when I quit my jobs and I went to start my business, the first thing that happened is I panicked and I froze. And I had to step back. I've shared before that I took a summer sabbatical before I launched Softer Sounds. But part of the reason I took that summer sabbatical that I haven't shared so publicly is because I really had to work on my relationship with money. I really had to do a lot of learning and unlearning and energy work and intellectual work and embodied work to even believe that I could support myself financially. Some of the tools that I worked with during that time included my dear friend grace allerdice's water medicine teachings. I'll link to her course in the show notes. I also spent that summer in a course with Sarah Gottesdiener on embodying abundance. I think she's got a self guided version up on her website called Money Alchemy. I'll link to that in the show notes as well.

Amelia Hruby [00:20:31]:

I did a lot of breath work. I did a lot of nervous system regulating work, and I journaled so much about money. I just wrote about money all the time, and I thought about money all the time, and I lit a bunch of candles, and I said a bunch of prayers, And I reworked my relationship with money. And quite honestly, it was a lot of work and that was a whole emotional, spiritual, psychological, embodied process I had to go through. Frankly, none of which is my specialty, which is why I'm providing those links. And I did all of that so I could even start a business or come back to my business and create a new way of relating to money in my business. So here's what I know more about, money in business.

Amelia Hruby [00:21:23]:

So what did I do to finally be able to stop underearning? Well, starting a business was a part of that. I eliminated the employer. I basically was like, this person, the employer, the company, the corporation, the university, like, they have always been a thing that's standing between me and money. So I need to be the employer. I need to be self-employed. And that was necessary for me. That is not necessary for everyone, but it really helped me in this process. And then I did all of that emotional, spiritual, psychological, embodied work, and then I brought it to my business.

Amelia Hruby [00:22:00]:

So here's how I approach money in my business now. It's kind of trifold. There are three pieces of this. I have simple systems for paying attention to money. I have consistent practices for regulating my financial and embodied needs, and I have magical rituals for connecting with abundance and channeling it where it's needed. So systems for paying attention to money, practices for regulating my needs, and magical rituals for connecting with abundance. That is how I transformed my relationship to money and stopped underearning. The reason I was able to stop underearning through that process Is because I finally became sovereign in my relationship to money.

Amelia Hruby [00:22:50]:

I wasn't mediating it through an employer and I wasn't beholden to money and all of the cultural narratives and personal feelings of shame and fear around it. So that's my money story. That's the journey from chronically underearning college graduate Amelia, to present day self-employed business owner Amelia, who is earning what, to me, is a supportive living, which again, may not be to you. We'll talk about those numbers next. So let's move into part two of this episode where I share how much money I made last year and then what I'm doing differently next year. You ready? Let's go.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:35]:

Okay. So just like in the last part, we're gonna have some context to wrap these numbers in. First of all, I'm gonna talk about the revenue of the business. The revenue is all the money that came into the business last year. It is everything that people paid me or Softer Sounds in 2023. It does not take into account payment processing fees, other expenses or anything else, its just all the money that came into the business. I will also talk a little bit about some of our expenses. That is money that we paid out from the business. From there, I will also talk a little bit about how much I paid myself personally from the business.

Amelia Hruby [00:24:23]:

Now, I want to be very clear that the revenue of the business is not how much money I personally made last year. I pay myself a monthly salary of $2,500 a month, as well as distributions from the business to pay for my quarterly tax payments and give myself twice a year bonuses based on how well the business is doing. That's something that I have planned with my accountant based on my business's corp status. So that may mean nothing to you, and that's perfectly okay. It may, you may be nodding along like, "Yes, yes, yes, of course, I've done that too, Amelia." That's all fine. I'm just giving you the context here. What I'm gonna talk the most about is the revenue that Softer Sounds and the other projects I had going on in 2023 brought in, and then some of the expenses that we had in relationship to that. Why am I doing this? Well, for one, I am nosy as fuck, and I love to know what people make.

Amelia Hruby [00:25:24]:

I don't know about you, but the best way to get me to pay for, like, a newsletter or a membership or, like, a quick piece of content is to tell me that you're gonna break down your income for me. I am a sucker for it. I love to see it. I'm also somebody who is, like, out here tweeting my annual income since, like, 2017 or something, back when I was on Twitter. Every year, I would just make a list. Here's how I made all my money. It's always been exciting to me to share and to see, what other people are making. So some of it is my nosiness. But also, as I've already said in this episode, I value financial transparency. And I value it not just personally, but also politically.

Amelia Hruby [00:26:04]:

In our society, corporations and big companies are incentivized to hide their financial data, particularly their wages. Because if they hide wages, then it keeps salaries low. And it creates a culture of fear and shame around sharing what you earn. Because what if you share your salary and then you find out somebody makes twice as much as you do for the same job. Right? These big companies create this culture around sharing what we make. And I think that by sharing our finances more transparently, we can combat that culture. And I think as small business owners or self-employed people, we're actually kind of uniquely positioned to interject in this pattern, in this culture, because we are not beholden to corporations. We are beholden to ourselves, and we can choose to release that fear and shame.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:02]:

When I share how much money I make, yes, another small business owner may look at that and think that's not enough or that's too much. Frankly, dear listener, you might hear it and think that's not enough or that's too much, but I'm not at risk of losing my job as a result. Like, what's at stake is perhaps my self image or my reputation, but it's not the work itself because I have nothing to hide. I don't need to hide how much money I make from you, and that's why I'm gonna share it here. So let's talk about how much money Softer Sounds made last year. Are you ready for the numbers? Shall we do a drum roll, please? No? No, thank you. No drum roll.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:39]:

Okay. Here's the numbers. Last year, Softer Sounds made approximately $145,000 in revenue. That was our total revenue for the whole year. That includes all of the money that I made for every single thing that I did last year. So Softer Sounds LLC is the business that I run everything through. That's gonna be all the podcast work that I do, everything that's happening through Off the Grid, as well as things I've done, like teach a summer program for teen girls or judge a writing competition for my high school, which is something I did last year. They paid me a $100 honorarium, and I process it through Softer Sounds.

Amelia Hruby [00:28:21]:

So Softer Sounds made approximately $145,000 in revenue last year. Now that's a nice number, but what's more important is how it breaks down. Of that money, Softer Sounds, the podcast studio, made about $112,000. So 78% of the money that we make at Softer Sounds is coming through the podcast services. That's how I make my money y'all. I never try to hide that. It is definitely my business. I am a podcast producer, editor, and strategist, and that is how I pay my bills and support my life.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:00]:

This here podcast, Off the Grid, made approximately $15,000 last year. Now as I've shared in a previous episode about how this podcast makes money, the podcast itself did not make any of that money. That money was made by me selling our refresh workshop series, business coaching, and the Interweb. Those are the three things that I sold through Off the Grid last year, and they made approximately $15,000. About half of that came from selling business coaching. So I am still selling my time. Right? When I sell coaching, I'm selling my time. I'm working with all of you wonderful listeners.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:34]:

And part of the reason that I've shifted to the Interweb is because I would like to be selling a bit less of my time in the year ahead, and I'm hoping that this membership group experience can be a way that we can all feel more supported. Back to the money. So the other 11% of Softer Sound's income came from a variety of other things, including teaching Living Systems with my friend, grace allerdice, last year, teaching at that summer program that I just mentioned, doing some other one-off workshops and things, and some of that money came from a big contract that's for this year, but that got paid in full last year. So to recap, Softer Sounds made a revenue of about $145,000 last year. 78% of that came from our podcast services, 11% from Off the Grid, and 11% from other assorted things that I did to make money. That's the revenue. That's what we made. Here, I will add another caveat that this is not me doing income claim marketing.

Amelia Hruby [00:30:38]:

I am not saying that because I made $145,000, you can make $145,000. I am absolutely not saying that. Like, perhaps if you too launch a feminist podcast studio, you could make $112,000 net doing that next year. I don't know. Maybe. But I'm not here to say that, like, look what I did. You could do it too. In fact, many of you are here because you love Off the Grid. And as I shared, Off the Grid itself only made $15,000 last year, which I don't know about you, but that barely covers my rent for the year.

Amelia Hruby [00:31:10]:

So again, all of this is about financial transparency. It's about context. That said, what do I think of this $145,000 number? Well, I'm excited by that number because I exceeded my goal for the year, which was to make $100,000. I calculated that if I made a $100,000 in revenue. I could pay myself roughly $50,000, and that means that I will have made more money last year than I ever did in my life. That said, that's still not a whole lot of money. Right? Like, as you're listening to this, as it unravels, it still isn't that much more money than I made in my highest earning year between 2015 and 2021. I had a year in there where I made $45,000.

Amelia Hruby [00:31:58]:

Last year, I paid myself roughly $50,000. That's not a huge difference numerically. But to me, the big difference is that now I feel like I have unlocked a new relationship to money and that I am capable of making money when I need or desire to. I can't control how much money I make. I can't control exactly when I make it, but I know I can make money, and I can have money, and I can steward money, and I can channel money. And the reason I can do that is because I do have these much larger amounts of money moving through Softer Sounds. Even if they don't all move into my personal bank account, they move through the business. So let's talk about some of my big expenses last year.

Amelia Hruby [00:32:40]:

At Softer Sounds, I have a small team of contractors. I currently work with two editors, a show notes writer, and an assistant producer. And I love my team. Shout out to Jesse, Melissa, Amber, and Morgan. You're the best. I'm so grateful for you. And last year, I paid them and a few other folks who worked with us over $35,000. When I look at that number, what I see is that 30% of the money that Softer Sounds made for podcast services last year went to our team, which I think is amazing, especially considering that I am still a core editor on the team.

Amelia Hruby [00:33:19]:

So when I ran my numbers at the end of the year, I edited just as many episodes as our team of editors combined. I also do all of the strategy work in the company. I lead the company. Right? So, like, 30% goes to the team, and then QuickBooks tells me that 15% goes to our other expenses like software and continuing ed for me and business trips and things like that, and then there's 55% remaining that is what I pay myself and the profit that remains in the business. And just being able to think about and relate positively to those numbers and that flow of money tells me it's really not about the amount of money that I made, but it's about my relationship to that money. And frankly, it also makes me so damn proud to be a small business owner because I get to see my money redistributed to these other amazing people that I work with for the value that they bring. In addition to that, Softer Sounds does donate 1% of all the money that we make to causes that align with our company values and are close to my heart personally. That meant that last last year we donated over $1,500 to LGBTQIA+ orgs in Nebraska, where I live.

Amelia Hruby [00:34:36]:

And in Softer Sound's existence over the past two and a half years, we've donated over $3,500 to orgs all over the country. And when I think about that and I think about how I wouldn't have been able to find that $3,500 in my personal finances, but the business can support and donate and share that money, redistribute it to people who are working hard to ensure that the future that we hope for can come into fruition. Like when I think about all of that, I feel so inspired and urged to keep going in this work, to keep running Softer Sounds, to keep making this podcast, to keep talking about money. And again, I don't know what you do for work. I don't know how much money you make. I don't know what your business is like or if you have a job or if you have both, a business and a job. But here's what I wanna offer you if you're listening to this podcast. The way that we overcome underearning is by doing work on these multiple levels.

Amelia Hruby [00:35:37]:

We have to get our mindset shifted from a space of fear and shame to a space of empowerment And abundance, that's gonna require working with our nervous system, working with our body. It's gonna require unearthing the stories we tell about ourselves. It's gonna require doing some ancestral and lineage healing work to unearth the stories about money that reside in our epigenetic sphere and the stories that our families tell. And then it's gonna require those three things I talked about earlier. It's gonna require systems for paying attention to money, practices for regulating your financial and embodied needs, and rituals for connecting with abundance and channeling it through your business and your life, channeling it where it's needed, which sometimes may be you and your bank account and sometimes may be amazing causes that you wanna support and sometimes may be amazing people that you wanna work with. So again, this is how we overcome underearning and you don't have to do it alone. As I shared earlier, I found mentors and guides to help me in this work. I've also created a community of lifestyle business owners, small business owners who want to relate to money in these ways.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:52]:

You can join us on the Lifestyle Business League if you feel like you need more community support in transforming your relationship with money this year. And then I've also created a lot of templates and systems within my business that help me track money and do monthly money rituals to support that work. If that's what you need, you can find that in the Interweb. I will be sharing more about how I relate to money there this year, so come join us. So now let me take us into part three of this episode. We talked about overcoming underearning. We've talked about how much money I made in 2023. Let me share three things that I'm doing differently in the year ahead.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:37]:

The first thing that I will be doing different in business this year is that I am going to have fewer offerings. When I looked at how I made all of that money last year, I realized that I sold over a dozen different things, and that was really exhausting. You know, I'm not here to tell you to niche down or to have one signature offer. I'm a Gemini moon, I find doing one thing over and over to be incredibly boring. But I also need to be doing more like 3 or 4 things, not 12 things, at any given time. So next year, I'm gonna have fewer offerings so I can really focus on the things that I am selling and sharing. And for me, those things are always gonna be podcast editing, podcast advising, and the Interweb. That's the work that I'm doing in the year ahead, fewer offerings. The second thing I'm doing differently in the year ahead is I am going to be giving more work to my team.

Amelia Hruby [00:38:36]:

I'm gonna be channeling all of that money toward the Softer Sounds team. One of the things I've uncovered in my money work that I've been doing is that I definitely have this narrative in my head that in order to make money, I have to work really, really hard and I have to do it all by myself. It's a very like DIY do it yourself mentality. And I have a DIY background and I love that. I love DIY culture and community, but I need to loosen my grip on that a little bit. I have a team of amazing people I work with and I need to channel more of the work that comes into the business toward them. They ask me for it, but often I will just be like, "Well, it's just easier if I do that thing myself." Like, "Well, it'll take me more time to assign that than it would to just edit it this morning on my own."

Amelia Hruby [00:39:26]:

That's the mindset I really wanna shift in 2024. I'm trying to retrain myself to believe that I can make more money by sharing the work than by doing all the work myself. It's a really big shift for me. We'll see how it goes, but that is one thing I will be doing differently this year. And the third thing that I'm gonna do differently this year is that I have set a big audacious goal for how much money I would like Softer Sounds in all its iterations to make in 2024. In 2022, the business made $90,000 in revenue. And in 2023, I set the goal at $100,000 in revenue, which is really not that much more. It was, like, pretty inevitable was gonna happen just based on the clients we already had.

Amelia Hruby [00:40:14]:

The reason I did that is because I really needed to learn that I could trust myself and I could trust my business. Over the past five years, as I've been overcoming underearning, I've been really soft and gentle with myself. I have set tiny, tiny goals that I would definitely meet so I could meet my goals every time and learn that I could do it. Like, that's what I had to do. It's like, "Oh, can you save $10 out of this paycheck? Of course, you can save $10. Oh my god. You're amazing. You saved $10."

Amelia Hruby [00:40:44]:

I did that over and over again until I was saving 100 of dollars out of a paycheck. In my business, it was like, "Can you make $100 this week? Great. You made $100 this week." I did that until I could make thousands of dollars in a week. I really had to reinforce for myself through those tiny goals that I could be successful at much bigger goals. And now that I have done that, I feel ready to set a big audacious goal that In my mind, I'm like, I'm probably gonna fail at it, but that's okay. Because now that I've built up the ability to believe in my success, I wanna work on my failure tolerance and my ability to fail without it impacting my sense of self worth. So the thing I am doing differently and 2024 is setting a big audacious revenue goal and that goal is going to be $200,000.

Amelia Hruby [00:41:34]:

Last year, we made a S145,000 in revenue. This year, our goal is $200,000 in revenue while I sell way fewer offerings and give more work to my team. And that's it. That's what I'm doing differently in the year ahead. So to give you a quick recap. In this episode, we talked about overcoming underearning and the ways that it's actually less about how much money you make and more about your relationship to money and transforming your relationship to money from one of fear and shame to one of empowerment and abundance. We talked about how much money I made in 2023, including the difference between revenue and income, as well as thinking about some of the ways that I channeled and redistributed money through my business. And then we also talked about three things that I'm doing differently in my business in the year ahead and how I am hoping that that will help me reach this big audacious goal that I have set for 2024 revenue.

Amelia Hruby [00:42:39]:

For one final time, I would like to remind you that this episode comes wrapped in context, that my life is only mine, that your life is certainly different, that there are systems in place in our world that keep us from overcoming underearning, that we may not be able to do that work alone. In fact, perhaps we shouldn't do it alone, but also that doing it is a political act. When we can, if we choose to refuse to live by the rules of the capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative system of our contemporary society, we can make big changes in our own lives and the lives of our communities. Again, when we can. We can't always do that work. Sometimes we are just trying to make ends meet, and I really understand that. I lived that way for a long time and it was through some big decisions like moving from Chicago to Nebraska and a lot of luck like having a family who can help me out when I really need it, that I was able to choose to do things differently. If you are able, I hope that you will choose to do things differently too. And if you're not able, I am not here to judge or shame you.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:06]:

Thank you so much for tuning in to the first episode of season three of Off the Grid. I hope that you will join me in the Interweb, especially because we have our first live event next week, January 22nd, where I will be hosting a renew retreat for all Interweb members to help us kick off the year. We'll talk a little bit about money like we did in this episode. You'll get to meet other people who are interested in doing business with no or minimal social media presence. So come hang. If you're listening after the 22nd, there's still so much more greatness to come in the Interweb this year. I hope that you will become a member. It's currently only $129 a year, so get on in there, join us on the Interweb, and until next week, my friends, I will see you Off the Grid.

[music plays]

Amelia Hruby [00:45:02]:

Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social media Toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by n'Atelier Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. And until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the Interweb.