How Much Money I REALLY Made When I Started My Business

When I launched my business, I made so little money the IRS called me to say, “Hey, hon. You ok? Need anything…? Like, maybe, a REAL JOB?” 

Funny, that’s also what my mom said while she wept over the student loan “reminders” she saw stacked on my counter. 

AND THEN I LEARNED THIS ONE SECRET AND MADE A BAZILLION DOLLARS AND BOUGHT MY MOM A DIAMOND ENCRUSTED HORSE & CARRIAGE FOR HER TROUBLES. 

JK. 

My mom is more the Royal Caribbean cruise type. 

Yesterday I was looking at my 10 year revenue chart. (Yes, in just a few short months I will have wrapped up year T-E-N in biz. I’m a big kid now!)

And if this graph doesn’t sum up entrepreneurship, I don’t know what does:

DAMNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. Look at that painful climb. 

When I look at these numbers, they tell me a few things: 

1. YER GIRL HAD GUTS to tough it out past Year 3. If I had listened to all the shiny marketing “gurus” telling me their rock bottom to riches stories, I probs would’ve thought I wasn’t cut out for business and thrown in the towel. (Well, to be fair, I couldn’t have AFFORDED to throw in any towels. So I’d have thrown it and then picked it up and washed it by hand to save a laundry quarter.) 

2. Overnight success is a lie. There were 1825 nights between when I started my business and things really started heating up. And when I made the leap from Year 5 to Year 6, it wasn’t the result of “one funnel” or any single hack/tip/trick/tactic/formula. It was a ridiculous combo of elements I couldn’t dream of reverse engineering that got me over the hump. 

3. The path to a healthy business isn’t paved in constantly 2xing or 3xing your revenue. If you look at years 1-4 and then years 6-10, my business experienced steady, incremental growth. Not massive revenue explosions. And, to be honest, I couldn’t have HANDLED 2x or 3x explosions every year. It’s not healthy, realistic, or sustainable to grow like that. Each year, I focus on tightening up my margins – not cartoonish bursts of money cannons. 

It’s easy to LOOK BACK and see all these lessons. 

It wasn’t easy to live it. 

Especially not amidst the din of growth hackers and funnel fraudsters telling me that if I wasn’t in the 3 Comma Club yet, it’s because I just hadn’t signed up for the right program. 

Which is why I’m writing you today. 

Because if your graph looks like mine, you might be eyeing your towels to gauge their throw-ability. 

Or maybe you’re eyeing a course, a mastermind, a coach who swears they know a secret you don’t. 

I can’t tell you that your business will succeed or fail. Capitalism, y’all. It’s a bear. 

can tell you that you’re not “one funnel away” from explosive growth.

And that’s good news. Because a healthy business isn’t at the end of a webinar rainbow. You don’t have to dump your hard-won pot of gold into a guru’s pocket to get to the next level. 

Your next growth spurt is totally in your hands. One small action at a time. The email you write today. The sales call you take tomorrow. The systems tweak you make on Monday. The mistake you correct the next morning. 

These are the “hacks” that keep your business on a healthy climb. You’re already doing them.

Entrepreneurship is a long game. If you want to play to “win” (whatever that looks like for you), focus on building your endurance, not chasing your next explosion. 

This is also why my pal Lanie Lamarre, the data geek who inspired me to look at my numbers and who helps overwhelmed bosses stop crying in the shower, and I decided to host a summit.

We’re calling it the 7 Figures From Your Toilet Seat Summit because: 

1. IT’S HILARIOUS. 

2. We know it’s hard out there for an online business trying to market itself in a way that doesn’t feel icky. That’s why we decided to not only poke some comic relief into all these bro-tastic promises, but to deliver practical, actionable advice that doesn’t make you want to take a shower.

In this summit, happening November 5-7, we’re not going to teach you how to growth hack your way to a garage full of Lambos, but we are going to talk:

WHITEBOARD MAGIC

Marketing

Because “selling” shouldn’t include your mother-loving soul

YACHT HACKING

Online Authority

The kind you don’t even need a yacht or a private jet to prove

LAMBO LOA

Sustainability

Where 80% of that next 7-figure launch wasn’t spent on ads

And we’ve enlisted some of the best in the biz to present you their sleaze-free strategies for running a profitable business online.

As one of our amahhhhzing speakers Jess Manuszak put it, “Now, this is normally when people put something pressurey (that’s usually a lie), like: Act fast! Seats are filling up!

Guys, this is an online conference. There are no seats. Space is not running out, and you can act as slowly as you’d like as long as you get your ticket by November 4th.” 

If you’d like to learn how to grow your business ethically and sustainably, without all the hyped up bro-tastic promises of overnight success, I’d REALLY LOVE for you to join us. It’s free!

Grab your ticket here. 

Yours in fiercely holding onto that towel, 
Rachael

Rachael Kay Albers

Rachael Kay Albers is a creative director, business comedian, and brand strategist gone wild. She writes and performs about branding, pop culture, tech, and identity. When she’s not muckraking about marketing, Rachael runs RKA ink, a reinvention studio and branding agency for businesses that burn the rulebook. She's also on Instagram a lot.