Business Revenue Goals for 2022

I have decided on a set of revenue goals for Personal Finance for PhDs for 2022, and I plan to use EPF to document my progress toward those goals.

I’ve been working on my own money mindset a LOT over the past few years, in particular my limiting beliefs about my earning potential through books like Overcoming Underearning and communities like We Should All Be Millionaires. As I write more (I hope) on EPF, I think you’ll see my very changed perspective on personal finance come through. I’m not much of a penny pincher anymore, but rather focused on earning more—lots more than I did in grad school.

I’ve targeted a revenue goal for my business for simplicity, but up to now I have run a pretty lean operation. I don’t have any employees (other than myself) and work with contractors on a limited basis. That may change—I hope it will change—in 2022, so my profit margin may not be as high as it has been in previous years (> 75% in 2021), but that’s fine.

Following Megan Hale’s Good-Better-Best framework (taught to me by Lucie Bland), I have three tiers of revenue goals for 2022.

I considered revealing the numbers here… and almost did, but ultimately I decided against it. The personal finance and entrepreneurship communities celebrate revenue and profits. Unfortunately, in academia, the attitude is not the same. I am concerned about backlash from my clients (university administrators, typically) and end users (PhDs and PhD trainees) if they perceive my profit to be “too” high. (Of course, there’s no determining what amount is acceptable and what is not; it’s all relative.) While I have shared my target numbers with Kyle and some fellow solopreneurs, I’m not going to do so publicly.

Suffice to say for this post: The ‘Best’ goal is VERY ambitious, over double my 2021 revenue, but I don’t think it’s out of the question if I apply myself. And that’s what this series of posts is for. I’m wont to get caught up in the minutiae of the business, but I need to keep my eyes on the big picture.

I plan to track my process-based goals that should help me generate that revenue. I spent 2021 doing a LOT of creating, so 2022 is going to be more about sales and delivery. I’ll also share how my revenue generated each week matches up against my monthly goal (percent-wise).

Tax season is a higher-revenue time of year for me, so I actually should try to get ahead of these milestones this spring if I want to meet the yearly goals.

Thanks for coming along this journey with me!