Columbus marketing playbook: A record low month in business? May 2026 Retro

Kind: captions Language: en What's happening people? Welcome back to the monthly retros series. If you guys are new, first of all, welcome to the channel and welcome to the series. This is my habit where every single month I give you a deep dive into my business as a marketer. It is currently June 1st and for the last 26 months, the first of every month or sometimes like the last day of the month, I record a transparent financial monthly retro going into all things profit, loss, expenses, team, lead generation, exciting projects, updates to the podcast, the business, etc. So, if that sounds interesting to you, let's dive on in. All righty. So, I've got a bit of an interesting setup here. Um, and you guys will see why here shortly. But man, has it been a hectic time. I'm going to start here in notion where we can go all over all the P&L uh in the business and then we'll start to talk about wins, losses, reflections, and I'll also open Monarch Money, which is our like financial aggregator. C categorizes everything into business, personal. Absolutely love Monarch Money. Definitely check that out. Okay, so this is kind of our master spreadsheet here. um where you guys can see the last just so many months where I've been doing this. We're getting a little bit of lag right now. But yeah, just been tracking it every month since February of 2024. Wow. I'm not even going to go into how fast that went. So, as you guys can see, um painfully obvious here, record low month of revenue. It's the lowest since midway through last year. Um, and I wanted to be very conscious about the not making any excuses in terms of making this video, but if you guys watch last month's monthly retro, I acknowledge that finding the house, spoiler alert, we'll go more into this in a little bit, but finding the house, moving over, doing all this stuff was directly going to come at the expense of some time that I could put into the business. And um, it definitely showed itself. It was very stressful. I set a deadline of getting that done by the end of this month. And this day in particular was just a huge amalgamation. Um, between the house signing, moving in here, you know, I got up at 6:00, went on a run, uh, went over to Cohatch in Westerville and worked for two hours before the signing. And then from 11:00 to like 7:00, we were just moving [ __ ] and doing all that. So, I will not make excuses. But um we also have uh 15K in invoices and a rears. And I'm kind of jumping the gun here, but yeah, topline profit loss, business revenue, 7,600 business expenses, 33 3,118. Here's screenshots of both to verify. Uh 524 bucks in personal revenue. That's mostly um mostly just dividends from investments, personal accounts. uh and 4,600 in personal expenses. Um and that was due to our fun little housing situation. So, let's go into the P&L. This is the bread and butter, guys. You know, show me where um you can tell me you have a good business, but until you break out the P&L here, um we can't really tell anything. So, here in Monarch Money, I'm going to break down all of our transactions from last month from 501 to 531. Um, we can start to subcategorize. Uh, I'm going to start with business expenses. So, I can just do remove all categories. Go down here to business. Now, we have all business expenses written out by tax deductions. Um, so let's start here at the bottom. Wow, it's doing some weird stuff. Um, all right. Going through these one at a time. Uh, remitt is our contractor is where we how we pay our contractors. Everything from remittly is contractor labor. Um Google Workspace, Shopify, that's a client account that we're getting refunded for, so I'm not crazy worried about that. 500 bucks. Uh Monarch Money tool we're using annual subscription of 100 bucks. Definitely worth it. Co-hatch business rent 200 bucks. Contractor labor 500 bucks or 55 bucks, sorry. Uh contractor labor $69. Nice. 15 bucks for whisper flow. uh web flow hosting uh bonsai that was a payment recount so I'll categorize that as a business income so that's kind of a not doesn't really belong in that category uh anthropic so um let's see how many um first of all I can go further subcategories what we're spending money on here and I can see how much directly last month we spent on software hit apply view the summary Uh, last month we spent 193 bucks. No. Yeah, 193 bucks on software. That one kind of transaction messes some stuff up there. But, um, yeah, a lot of money to Mr. Anthropic, as you can tell. A lot of $5 recurring purchases there, which comes from our usage of the API, which is good that it has usage based pricing, but it's still a lot. Um, Folk, Web Flow, Canva, TA, that's a year we purchased right there, so that kind of adds up. ClickUp, which we're transitioning our business to. Um, SE Ranking, 129 bucks a month. We have all of our client SEO information in there. HubSpot, we won't have that next month. Uh, that was just in one month for the HubSpot AEO tool that we used to record that video. Uh, Moxy 25 bucks. That is for um invoicing, client management, and yeah, it's a little unfortunate how that's stacking up there. Um, I don't see a whole lot of fat we could trim here. Obviously, we're going to trim out HubSpot. Um, instantly is a cold email tool. We're going to keep that. You know, quick up. I'm not going to move off that. All these I see are as essential to uh to the workflow. So, again, not seeing a ton of fat here. I'm not overly concerned with a lot of this. Back to the categories. Um, one thing I do want to look at is contractor labor. If I change this to boom, contractor labor spent last month. Hit apply. um 1,37 on contractor labor. That's a lot. That's more than usual for us. But now we're sending work to five five contractors. We have Dan, Roa, Sam, Ali, Clark, and now John. So, six six subcontractors, guys. That's um wow. Didn't I never thought I would be managing six people, but uh that's where we are. Uh we pay all these on contractor hourly basis. So that's why you know I think all six people it's only 1,300 bucks. Well that's why um let's go back to filters and just go through all business accounts here. Queer back business. What else did we spend slash um spend money on uh taking a client to dinner? 220 bucks on a conference that we're attending next month uh called WIC. It's a really good leadership conference for healthcare that's in Putin Bay up north. Um, so I'm going to have to do some travel arrangements on that. Um, really get my stuff together there. It's going to be stressful with all the moving information, all the current moving that we're doing. So, try not to get stressed out, guys. Trying not to. Uh, we'll manage. Um, oh, big one. 1,200 bucks. Had to buy a new laptop. Um, not an impulse purchase. I the screen on my old Mac still works. Just the screen just absolutely crapped out. Um I remember opening it and thinking, "What the heck just happened?" And I was going into the gym. I went I had to go get my license renewed for dumb reasons. And I just went to open it afterwards in the car and it was just would not start. So I went directly over to Best Buy and had to buy a new MacBook Air. Um the next weekend I went over to the Apple store uh to look at the old one and you know uh it was just a graphics issue. The core processor still works. The fan doesn't work. So I can technically plug it in here and I can't use the keyboard because I can't open the screen. So I just have a Bluetooth mouth and a Bluetooth a Bluetooth keyboard here. So yeah, 1,200 bucks on a new MacBook. That's definitely a business expense. Um, yeah, just came at a hell of a time, uh, managing all this stuff. Um, I think that's all we'll review financially. Again, total spend 3,100 bucks. Um, not a great profit margin. Uh, let's zoom on to the recap here. By the way, I am in a new house right now. I don't know if I can do a tour because I don't want to be bound to the laptop, but I'm literally in my living room of my new house in Columbus, Ohio. Um, and I have the whole desk set up and everything. Um, so if you guys could see me, it's just hilarious. But, um, I'm also don't have Wi-Fi, so I'm using my mobile hotspot, which might run out at some point. So, I'm going to try and make this quick because I would be real sad if I got to the end of recording this and it didn't work. Um, yeah, I want to go into a recap here and then we'll talk action items, goals for next month. Um, before closing this out, uh, recap some screenshots from this month. Um, I'll go through the the bulleted items here. So, we closed the house. I said at the end of last month, my number one priority is getting into Columbus and getting a house. Um, and it was crazy because almost immediately after recording that, uh, we found the house and we put an offer in shortly after, uh, and ended up going pretty well. Um, accepted the second offer. Only had to counter once. Closed on this house, uh, Dresden Street right here. I should have the report, inspection report pulled up. Hit space. That's the outside of it. Now you guys all have my address. Lovely. I'm just going to hide that. But yeah, four bed, two bath, closed at 207. Um, which was relieving this morning. We saw that another comp in this very neighborhood just a couple houses down the street closed for 15,000 more. So, love to see that. I think we got a good deal. It's just it's a big thing to manage obviously with the business going on, which we talk about under the concerns. Um, yeah, biggest win close on a house. I'm trying to be content with that because it is a big milestone but it's it's just uh work begets more work as you guys know. U personally I feel very dialed in. Um I am in a small mastermind with three other agency owners. Um shout out the scaling studio is what we call it oursel maybe name pending name may change but um it's has me very motivated and we're actually doing a um a group challenge. So I built this app for us. So, we're doing like a 75 hard challenge and it allows us to all 16 days straight. Um, if you guys don't don't know what 75 hard is, it's basically a challenge group challenge where you hold each other accountable and we do we have certain metrics we have to hit. So, one of them is 64 ounces of water. It was 128, but Ezra can't handle water, so I moved to 64. Um, two 45minute workouts separated by three hours and following a diet. My diet has been 2500 calories and 160 grams of protein, which um I I really struggled today to hit because I just was busy. Um so here I am. I'm I This is like the text book definition of a boy house right now. Like it's comical. Like I literally have a a mattress on the bed in there and dad's coming tomorrow to help out. But for dinner, I just grabbed some rusted potatoes. I just went to Kroger. grab some rusted potatoes and uh this half tub of cottage cheese, which is it's actually not a bad not a bad combo. You guys are you guys are going to think I'm weird, but um yeah, it's 13 grams of protein times six. So, like 100 80 grams of protein right there. I mean, come on. That's three three bucks. I paid like five bucks for dinner. Um anyway, uh yeah, so that's what the uh you can already see I'm starting to make a little bit of a transformation here. Uh I'll go to my profile here and you guys can see I've been taking photos every day to stay accountable on the fitness challenge, making sure we're getting our gains. Um again, I want to be mindful of the Wi-Fi here because I'll be super sad if it cuts out. But we will be able to see our photo gallery here if it loads. Boom. Come on. Here we go. So, here is day one getting a little pudgy and then on to day 16, which man, just brutal. Yeah. So, we're starting to see some definition coming in the abs. Starting to feel the cut a little bit. Um, I have cravings for food. Um, but I just I feel focused. I feel dialed. I even told the guys on the call today, we just had a a mastermind group. I was like, "Man, this is like we we're dialed right now. Let's keep encouraging each other." Um, okay. So, going through the rest of these here. Uh, Ro is doing a great job. Our assistant taking on more tasks. Added 10 more hours per week. Uh, which is doing great. Hired Dan as a video editor officially. So, if we go to our website, which if we can get it to load, um, you'll see him on our about us page. He's been crushing it with the podcast. And I'm super stoked to have him as officially a member of our team. Uh, got a bio on our website right here. Shout out Dan. little team's growing, baby. We growing. Um, love that. Um, we are still in the hiring process of working with an SEO specialist and he did a great job. So, he went in and did I did a trial task with several SEO specialists on basically auditing an entire website, performing a technical audit, recommended content strategy, page builds, keywords, etc. Just doing a full day of research and he did a great job. Um so tenatively next step is going to be bringing him on the team and um getting him on retainer to do that on all of our client sites. Just have to weigh out a strategy uh because we're starting to offer that to our clients. Uh we were once a translation team site they are thrilled. Um and the way that it worked is built a site in Webflow. Um the way that timing worked, they ended up launching right at the end of the month. So, we didn't get the the full project invoice for this, but it looks great. They're thrilled with it. Joshua, shout out Joshua and Michaela. They, you know, really nice web flow build, really great uh search optimization. Um, this is going to make a big this going to be a big turning point for them as a business. Nice little mega menu. That's what Shad CN mega menu blog pages. Oh, so nice. How about this section? Oh, so nice. Um, yeah, great launch there. We'll be working with them in the future as well. Um, doing some SEO and site maintenance work. Uh, Peter Guba podcast launched on YouTube, got a great response. Interviewed Ryan Hawk, the man that myth, the legend on the podcast. He's got a top 10 business podcast in the entire world. So, that was really cool. And he absolutely loved that interview. He sent me a shirt. Um, his team sent me a shirt and a Moleskin notebook, which I was like, bro, come on. It's awesome. Um, full pipeline. Again, just the sales cycles with this stuff is just it I feel like I say every month that we're close to closing a big deal. Um so it's another recall to be mindful on follow-ups, you know, never resting on the pipeline, even if it looks promising. Met some great people. Um Evan James, the first time he works at an agency, his mom owns an agency called MJ2 Marketing in Columbus. Incredibly sharp guy. Like he's literally literally the same age. The first time, and I said this to him, too. the first time I've met someone that was like this guy is like this is someone that my age that I want to be like if you guys know me I'm very diligent on spending my time with high quality people creating my environment was very impressed with him and we have a recurring co-working session scheduled so shout out Evan Kennedy Worth um my home girl marketer in Columbus I met her for coffee last week that was just a really fun conversation um she's a homie and we'll be getting coffee again sometime soon um yep Um, uh, Christina spelled with a K. I voice dictated these. Christina is a professor at Otterbine University, has five degrees, lived in three countries. I shouted her out in this week's newsletter, but, um, yeah, awesome conversation. We're going to have her on the on the podcast. And Nate, uh, is another marketer in Columbus that I'm getting I'm getting coffee with next week. Really excited to do that. Well-connected dude. Uh, register for the Wit Conference that is in Putin Bay up north. So, I got to get my travel arrangements together, but there's a really high quality guest people there, and it's only healthcare focused. So, really excited to do that. We're testing a vlog format for the channel. Um, if I can pull up this week's content, you let you guys see my address again. Um, pull up this week's content. I spent all weekend doing content because I knew this week was going to be hell in a hand basket. Um, but we had Dan edit a personal vlog and he did an amazing job. So, this is the final upload right here. I'm going to be honest with you guys. The last couple months have been a bit of a drag. As of right now, I'm in contract six. I was contract on a house in Northern Columbus. It's really well edited. Kind of talks about my mindset. It's a typical Sunday in the life for me. I do a co-working session. I talk about the projects I'm working on. So definitely check that out. That'll be out on Thursday of this week. Um, so yeah, playing around with that content format. Got a nice little thumbnail, which isn't great, but it'll work. So yeah, experimenting with some of the founder brand stuff. Um, and seeing how that goes because I enjoy doing it. And now I have an editor uh who's way better than I am. Um, I'm going to I recorded a full pricing video. So this is like very typical bottom of funnel concept or bottom ofunnel content. and also uploaded a blog on it uh for the site that's got some good keywords in it. I think it'll help us rank a little bit. That's basically how much does a healthcare website cost. I recorded this video and Ro is going to attach it with this blog post here. Um by the way, using quad for HTML tables like this is super dope. Love doing that. Um yeah, nice little blog there. Recorded a full video on pricing tiers. Basically slotting us in the middle there. I work with a studio mid-market company and um yeah, I think that'll be that'll be a really helpful video just to reference back to and also to send to clients. Like it's that's something that clients always ask is or they're always thinking is like how are we getting quotes? That's what marketers think is like how are we getting quotes for 10,000 and also 100,000 when it comes to your website build? Like what's the difference here? Um and we know so we went in and talked about it and it's a really long blog post. Definitely check it out. uh mmg.studio articleshealthcare website pricing. Go check that out. Um, moving right along. We're already at 20 minutes. Register for a half marathon. Shout out Aaron Arnett, my friend whose daughter I have a I have a crush on. Um, anyway, she's someone I met last week and um, she's run over 50 marathons and she's like I think she's in her 50s, late 40s, early 50s. I don't want to miss there. But yeah, she convinced me and I'm in, you know, one of the best shapes I've ever been in just because of the challenge. So, that'll be fun. Um, okay, on to losses. Um, record low month for revenue. We had a really strong inbound lead that found us through AI. Had a really good sales call and I lost the pipeline. I didn't send a good control email. I didn't control the sales process and ended up going with the competitor. And that was that one hurt because it would have been a really good fit and it was a big project. Um so that's unfortunate. That's definitely a loss. It's also a lesson. Um warm inbound didn't close. Um I definitely own that. Um so it's it's yeah, that's the same project. So it's not not great. Uh concerns 15K outstanding invoices. Um doesn't look great on P&L. Not great for momentum either. Um, I think next month is going to be it will be reenccouraging when those hit and it's like, man, okay, we're on track again. Um, but yeah, I don't like having pending invoices, especially at the turn of the month. Uh, managing the house and tenants on top of the on top of work is a tough balance. So, we have a ton of work to do on this house. We have to do some foundation issues. We have to get we have to fix the I-beams and the basement. We have to put in dirt around the foundation. We have to paint. We have to do the floor. Uh, then I have to rent it out to tenants. So, I got three rooms I can rent out. I'm going to rent out two uh and take the place upstairs and then get as close as we can to cash flowing the mortgage. And here in a few years, hopefully in less than two years, uh, just pay the whole sucker off. Um, pay the whole house off so I don't have to worry about interest. So, but yeah, it's it's really stressful. Mortgage gets really real fast. Um the mortgage on this house is around 1,600 a month, which is not that bad, especially for this area. It's very good. We we got a good house. Um it was an onmarket property. It wasn't, you know, a back-end deal, back door deal, but um yeah. Um concerns because it's it's very real, you know, mortgage used to live in lean, having a low rent. Um that on top of groceries and other expenses is really going to add up fast and on top of repair costs as well. So really being mindful moving forward. Uh no excuses. Okay. Action items and goals. How are we going to integrate? Uh last month's goals. Business was 20K revenue. Did not reach that. Close two pipeline deals. We did not do that. Grow newsletter to 150 subs. We did not do that. So we missed all three goals in the business. Um life go to church once. Did not do that. Close on a house. We did do that. 11k steps a day. 3k cows a day. 60 miles of running. We did do that. doing good in life, not so good in business. Which I think I think you guys can even see if you have watched a lot of these, you can tell that it's it's so interesting to go back and see these because I can see like when I'm happier, more energetic, doing good on the life front, not good on the business front, and then when I'm a bit more down, I could be doing great on the business front, and then on the life front, I'm not taking care of myself. So, really interesting shot out there. Goals for this month moving forward, 20K revenue. We're already at like almost 15 to the closed invoices from this month. So, I think we're already there on a recurring basis, but we want to lock down some more recurring revenue. Uh, close new project deal. We were we're in very close to our biggest contract ever, and I want to be very mindful of controlling the sales process this time. Grow Columbus Marketing jobs to 150 subs. We're currently at 113. I think we can get there by the end of this month. I think we can get there. Invest in team. for something that we kind of talked about in this scaling studio mastermind is I have the one of the lowest pay rules there and it's not a good thing. I've been overly focused on controlling margin and I'm taking steps upward. I've did a good job of hiring this month. You know, it's 1,500 a month. I've looked at the numbers and contractor labor. I want to continue to do that because it means I'm headed in the right direction. Uh weekly YouTube videos. We've got some fire coming, guys. Like I've been really enjoying the content creation process and letting myself giving myself permission to enjoy it. Um, look at some of the content that's coming up. Got some really cool I want to do like a full B2B web SEO master class. Really cool whiteboard thumbnail there. Um, obviously the website pricing video is going to be a big one. the vlog. I'm just I am excited with YouTube and I'm starting to see some escape velocity with the channel and we're doing a good job of repackaging it for LinkedIn. So, that I'm enjoying. I want to continue that. Want to continue doing the parts of the business that are giving me energy. Continue 75 hard streak. Shout out Ezra. I'm going to kick your butt. Um yeah, I'm not going to break it. Going to continue doing that. House repairs. I'm going to limit it to three for the goal. Floors, walls, and drainage. and one group exercise session, whether that's a CrossFit workout or a run club now that I'm hearing the sick. So, got a lot of options and I'm excited to diversify on the life front now that that's an opportunity. All right, so that's going to be it. 26 minutes in. Uh, again, some highs and lows this month, learning as we go. Um, I highly recommend you guys have some kind of financial habit like this where you just try and look at money objectively. increasingly difficult for me, especially it being a low month of revenue. But, um, I hope you guys learned something. Stay tuned for next month. And remember, if you don't quit, you win. Have a good one, guys.