Ep 38: How did my business do in Q1? Reflections and plans going forward

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Description

You're getting a real, unfiltered look at Nicole's Q1 — the goals she set, the $134K in revenue she generated, the team she built, and the honest reflection that happened on a solo staycation at the end of it all. You'll hear what's working, what's still off, and how she's approaching Q2 with clear eyes. If you've ever had a massive win and still found yourself being hard on yourself, this one is for you.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome, welcome to the Hometown Advantage podcast. I am so happy to be sitting behind this microphone right now. If you've been around for a bit, this is gonna be a fun, juicy one. If you're brand new to me or my podcast, I don't know if this is the best first episode for you to tune into. I'm not gonna tell you to leave by any means, but without context to what I teach, what I do, the background of my business, this is gonna be hard to relate to, I guess. But either way, new or not, I'll give the quick reintroduction. If you don't know me, I'm Nicole. I teach Meta ads to business owners looking to scale systematically, stop relying on referrals, stop relying on organic content. And more importantly, right now, I use this podcast, yes, to share tips and tricks about ads to help you get going on your own, but also just to share behind-the-scenes business owner, scaling, working mom life for a couple reasons, okay? One, it's fun for me. I honestly love it. I have my whole life loved having these deep, vulneral- vulnerable conversations that go beyond the surface because it's just where I get enjoyment, where I seek meaning, where I learn more about myself and about other people. But two, when you start learning ads from me, you're gonna hear me use the T word a lot, which is trust. A huge job we have as marketers and business owners is to build trust with potential clients, with current clients, with past clients, and of course, there's so many ways we do that, especially once people are in the door. You want, you wanna deliver an excellent service or a product or what have you. But when it comes to marketing, there's a lot of other ways we can build trust before people are in the door, and one of those for me is being vulnerable, sharing behind the scenes, sharing openly and honestly when things go well, when things don't go so well. And so that's the purpose of some of these breakdown reflection episodes. If you scroll back You'll see I have some launch reflections. So I do these big launches of my program, and then I've done podcast episodes where I just break down, like, everything. How much I spent in ads, how much I made in revenue, all of this stuff. I got away from doing those because honestly, I've just not been able to stay consistent with the podcast. But I'm not mad at it, because I know it's still doing something for me. I still get people reaching out all the time saying that they listened, that they've binged all the episodes, that it's the reason that they bought my program. And every single time I sit down and show up like this, I'm getting closer to my goal of being consistent. You all know how it is. There are just weeks that can go by without you doing the things that you know you should be doing and you want to do because of life and business ownership, right? So that leads really well into this episode, which is gonna be my Q1 reflections, reflecting back on how my quarter one went, what my goals were, did I hit them, why did I hit them or why did I not, and then laying out what my Q2 goals are and my plans for hitting those. And yes, I realize we're, like, halfway through Q2 already, but I have been meaning to record this, so we're gonna get it done. This is a little side note, but just another tip that is seriously going to help you grow so much faster and simpler, is when you have weeks that go by and you didn't post to your social media, you didn't get another ad created like you wanted to, you didn't do these behind-the-scenes things that you have to be the one to do but you just don't have time for because you're supporting clients, you're supporting your team, what have you, don't beat yourself up for it. Don't talk negative to yourself because you were just experiencing life. Okay? That is something that I've gotten a much better at. I still have a ways to go,'cause yes, I still beat myself up about things. And even now as we talk through some of my reflections from Q1, my accomplishments have been insane. I'm, like, getting emotional talking about it now, thinking about this. My accomplishments have been so crazy. Little me four years ago when I decided I wanted to try owning a business would, would have never dreamed that this was possible for me. Okay, this is a first, crying on the podcast. And now not only is it possible, but so much even more than this is possible. It's so wild. So anyways, my point was that I've noticed myself being a little hard on myself for not continuing this speed of growth over the past couple months. Ugh. We- even over the past month, like I had one down month, and I was like feeling down on myself. So I really took a moment to think about how grateful I am to be here, how grateful I am to get to support the people I get to support, my clients, and now my team. We're gonna talk more about that. And how incredibly badass I am that I have made this happen. Woo. That is your pep talk, that if you freaking made the decision to start a business, if you are learning the skills it takes to grow that business, if you have gotten one client in the door because of that decision, those decisions, you are exactly where you're supposed to be. You are right on track, and you need to stop kicking yourself'cause it's only gonna slow you down. It is only gonna slow you down. End pep talk. All right, let's do this. So really fun story. Over Christmas and like the holiday break last year in 2025 coming into 2026, I was full of inspiration and energy and ideas and motivation and e- to execute on these ideas, and it was because I actually had time and space to feel that for the first time in a while, right? So- During that time, I said,"This is so amazing. I need to recreate this throughout the year," not just New Year's Eve, New Year's resolution vibes, right? So literally over Christmas break, I booked myself a staycation at this beautiful... How do I even explain this? It's called Stillwater Stables. It's in a little town in Michigan called Ortonville, Michigan. If you look it up, you'll see what it looks like. It's shipping containers on a lake, but the inside are these really cute little cabins. I booked myself one night, one room there. It had a hot tub. It has a sauna. It has big windows that oversee the lake. And I was like,"This is gonna be my getaway at the end of Q1 to reflect back on all these ideas I'm having now over Christmas break and goals I'm setting, and make a plan for Q2." And it was so awesome. I am doing that every year, for sure. Also, business expense, right? So why not? And I sat down, and I have one page front and back basically on reflections of how things went in the business overall. And for me, it's more than just about how things went in the business. It's about how my life is going, too. Because you cannot have a thriving business without a thriving business owner, and two, my whole reason of owning a business is to create my own dream life and help others be inspired to create theirs, too. So what's the point of all these big fancy numbers if I'm not actually enjoying my life? That's a constant reminder I have to give myself as well as somebody who's go-getter, goal chaser. Very ambitious to my core. I have to remind myself to cool it down every once in a while. So I have I think it's four sections that I ended up reflecting on. One, what my goals were for Q1 and did I hit them? Two, what needs to happen to continue the momentum? And- Get more time back to make things even better. Three, my specific Q2 goals. And then four, a more step-by-step to meet those Q2 goals. So you'll see the flow as I get going here. We're starting out with the fun, juicy part, which is the numbers, okay? I, like literally, I love talking numbers. I love talking revenue. I love talking profit. I love talking ad spend, revenue after ad spend, all of this stuff, which is why I make such a great ads manager, right? Because there's lots of fun numbers. But drum roll on my revenue for quarter one,$134,000. So insane in three months. Okay. And then I should have started with my goals. My goal is$125,000 and I made$134,000. It's just insane. And my profit margin goal is 40%. That's like my go-to profit margin goal. I'm personally not interested in running a business where I take all the money home. That relies completely on me all the time. I am totally fine with spending money to make money and investing money back in, always. What my actual profit margin ended up being was 38%. Girl, I will take that, okay? I spent a lot of money, so this is great. So goal one was to make 125K, check. Goal two was to make some new hires. Check. I made several new hires. So there was actually two iterations of this over quarter one fully. Going into 2026, my team looked like me, the founder, a part-time operations manager, and then my two ad managers, Melissa and Sam. And Melissa was also working as my virtual assistant behind the scenes and my Hometown Advantage co-coach. So we had multiple roles, but only three people So my goal coming into 2026 was to change that and make sure that the jobs are spread out, right? Cause you can only imagine when Melissa was sick or her kid was sick, I lost three roles in the business. So a couple things happened. One, I brought my operations manager on in more of a full-time capacity. She now is responsible for all the operations, managing the team, customer service, helping me get funnels set up and in place in the back end, all of these things, making sure the wheels keep turning, and that customers are beyond happy with the support they're getting. I also brought Melissa into the co-coach role. So actually she wasn't... I didn't have any co-coaches in the program, but she's been working with me for over a year. She's a brilliant advertiser. We were getting more and more people in the program. My attention and support by default would have started to get more spread out, and I didn't want that. I wanted to bring in even more personalized support, so I brought her on as a co-coach. Then we started bringing on more agency clients and more agency projects, so I needed to hire another ad manager to support with those. So we did, and we brought in a virtual assistant who works for me 40 hours a month. Okay? So everyone's contractors. But we're a solid team of five, and so far it's been a journey, but amazing. So we'll talk more about that in a minute. Goal number one, 125K revenue, check. Goal number two, hire, check. Goal number three was to launch the program two times, check. Goal number four was to launch my intensive offer. This is so crazy. I feel like all of these things have just been Part of the business for so long, and looking back, these are all things we did in Q1 only. It's so wild. So my intensive offer is called Ready, Set, Launch, and it's very much a middle ground between the program, Hometown Advantage, and our monthly advertising partnership, complete done-for-you- advertising strategy and implementation. We launched that off, like mid-January, and I don't even know how many we've done. I want to check. Okay, correction. We launched it end of February, and we've now done 10 intensives since then. So it's been really successful. My biggest reflection overall of, in my soul, how I felt about Q1 going, was this sentence that I wrote in my journal."With the done-for-you side of the business growing and a brand-new offer launched there, I've spent more time on client work and less on my own marketing and strategizing than I have liked to." That's it. That's what I wrote, which completely sums it up. Basically, when I first started really putting all of my effort into growing Hometown Advantage, I stopped taking clients, and I let go of all my clients except for one for probably, like 10 months, and it gave me so much space to pour into my Hometown Advantage community, to pour into growing it, to pour into making the offer so undeniably good. And when Jill, my operations manager, came on, she was like,"Well, we should make it a goal to start taking agency clients again by the end of the year." And I... It was a goal, but I wasn't in a place myself to be able to push it that fast. But with her help, I was able to get it done and get it out there. So we relaunched the agency offer, I wanna say in November And we've worked with or are working with seven done-for-you clients since then, which is our higher, highest ticket, most involved offering. So that just speaks to having an audience and growing an audience and being able to launch a new offer that could help even just a small part of that audience and being able to fill it quickly, which I've only grown my audience through ads and through the program. Of those seven people that we've worked with in the done-for-you capacity, five of them have come from the program. They bought the program first, and now they're in a place where they're able to hire out. So that's a note on offer stacking. A lot of our intensive clients have come from the program too. We actually give them a little bit of money off for being in the program and then hiring us to launch their ads in seven days. Anyways, the breakdown of my revenue between the program and done-for-you services is that 74% of that revenue came from Hometown Advantage, and 26% came from done-for-you services. I had$36,000 come from done-for-you services, which I think is amazing for it being a new offer in one quarter. The only thing is that my percentages here are off based on how I'm spending my time. And again, this could be because it's new, because I have to guide my team a lot closer as we're getting it off the ground, that I have to spend a lot more time on my done-for-you services and our clients there. So basically, this is something I'm gonna watch. As a business owner, I don't wanna give up the agency side. I really enjoy it. But in the end, if I'm spending the opposite amount of time for the amount of revenue, that's a business decision I have to make. So that's something we're gonna keep watching. Then I had two things I wanted to focus on to keep up this momentum. One was ad managers need better systems and training for copywriting, ad strategy, tracking, and client communication. They do an amazing job, but really leaned on me for support. And the only way I can keep growing this is to have people who can think and execute as close to as possible as I would, right? And then the second thing was that I just needed to bounce back from a second launch that felt like a little bit of a flop. It absolutely was not a flop. I enrolled 23 people, but didn't make the return on my ad spend that I've made in the past. I still made a return, a healthy return. Not my usual. And I just knew that I needed to work on my messaging and my offer positioning in order to do that. So I created six Q2 goals. One was to reposition the Hometown Advantage offer, which I worked at, but I'm not sure if I was super effective in. Launch twice is my second goal. Which it's looking like we might only launch once. More on that coming. That's okay. We can pivot based on how things are going. Third goal, increase revenue of done-for-you offers, which just means I need to sign two new clients this quarter and sell seven intensives. Which I can see us doing. Next goal was go completely off-grid during the Disney cruise. Me and my family are taking a Disney cruise in two weeks. And it's looking like this is gonna happen. I'm gonna be completely off-grid. Clients are gonna be so well taken care of. And the business is gonna continue on like usual. This isn't something that is gonna be able to happen all the time, but at least right now. But it's a huge step in creating my dream life and my dream business. So I'm really excited about that. The last two are, like, behind-the-scenes side projects I don't know if I'm ready to share here yet, and it's looking like one is definitely gonna get done, but the second one may not. We'll see. Okay, so the step-by-step of how are we gonna do these things? Let's start with team. And honestly, just my goal of leveling up my leadership skills altogether, we've done a lot of things. We have implemented short one-to-one weekly calls with the team so that I can give real-time feedback and advice, so that they can continue to grow their ad strategy brain and advertising skill set. We've been doing monthly trainings on really deep dives of ad strategy that they can completely understand. They just need the direct training, right? And then the last thing is I'm just getting out of their way,'cause honestly, that's the biggest thing. For years, I either was the sole one responsible for my agency clients when I worked at an agency or my own actual clients when I was a freelancer. And so it's just learning a new way of supporting clients is by letting my ad managers, who are incredible advertisers, super creative, really smart with the data, letting them be that and not overstepping. Right? Okay, so that's a big thing we've been working on. As far as my offer repositioning and my messaging, I worked at it on my own, but I'm starting to feel like I need a- an expert to come in because I've been talking about the same thing and the same topics for so long, which is not a bad thing, but my own creative juices are dying a little bit because of it. So that's why I need to come in and do more fun stuff like this, because this, just talking about my life, talking about business, comes very easy. When it comes to talking about local ads, they are so at the core of what I do and what I know. You can probably relate to this, no matter what industry you're in. It's like, how do I keep talking about skin health if you're an esthetician? How do I keep talking about photo shoots if you're a photographer? It's hard, right? So I just want somebody with a creative mind to come in and help kind of respark that for me. And then the last thing was I just needed to schedule out time for these secret side projects that I'm alluding to. And one has gotten scheduled out, and we're full on our way of getting it done. The other one has not. Can't even lie, right? Okay, y'all, that about sums up my Q1 reflections. If this made you feel anything, think anything, I would love if you reached out on Instagram or shot me an email. I'll put all of that below. Let's talk business. Let's talk numbers. It's so fun. Until next time.