🔒 My Q1 Biz Recap — Highs, Lows & How Much $$ I Made

Amelia HrubyWelcome to the Off the Grid Clubhouse. Thank you for being a paid supporter of the show. Let's get off the grid and into this super secret episode. Hello, and welcome to the Off the Grid Clubhouse and our Q1 biz recap. I'm your Clubhouse host, Amelia Frooby.

Amelia HrubyYou likely know me from the show Off the Grid Leaving Social Media, which hopefully you enjoy and that's why you decided to become a paid supporter of the Clubhouse. Thank you so much for your support. As a perk of your membership, you get biz recaps with me. And I've done these in so many different ways in the past, and I'm trying something new at the end of q one twenty twenty six. I'm gonna record this video, or you may be just listening to the audio, but there's a video on Substack where I'm sharing highlights, challenges, financial updates from the quarter that just wrapped, and then looking ahead into what is coming up in the quarter ahead.

Amelia HrubyIf you don't like to use quarters and you prefer seasons, this is a recap of a winter twenty twenty six. Everything that's been happening in my business and my life and the world at large, you'll see that, too. And in it, I'm gonna talk through, again, some of those highlights, some of the challenges, and then take you pretty deep into my business finances. I was especially intrigued to see how things were in q one twenty twenty six because I am actively in real time moving my business from being primarily softer sounds service provider business to off the grid content creator business. So I myself was also curious, did I make money?

Amelia HrubyHow did it go? And that's why I'm recording this Q1 biz recap for you. So let's get into it, shall we? Thank you again for being a Clubhouse subscriber and for supporting my work and let's dive in to the Q1 twenty twenty six biz recap from me, Amelia, at Softer Sounds and Off the Grid. So the first thing I wanted to share were some highlights of the winter season, and those highlights really had a lot to do with my book.

Amelia HrubyI was able to do two book events in March. And the first, I flew out to San Francisco and was hosted by Blackbird Bookstore and Sarah Fontaine, and we did just like a beautiful, gorgeous gathering and reading from my book. Sarah asked me questions. I read passages. The audience and people who gathered were just so amazing, and it was truly, like, a highlight of my creative career.

Amelia HrubyI could not have been more grateful for how it went, and I put a picture here in the Notion dashboard or the Substack email for this because it was just such a joy. Honestly, I loved it so much. And, you know, as a little kid who dreamt of being a writer, having a bookstore reading like this and having my books on sale there and people are buying them, like, it was just such a joy and a pleasure and I'm so, so grateful to Sarah and to Blackbird for hosting me. A few weeks after that, I also got to go to Traverse City, Michigan to do a book event with my friend and inspiring mentor Cody Cook Parrott. Cody just published a book called The Practice of Attention.

Amelia HrubyIt came out with Sounds True just a few weeks ago as I'm recording this. And Cody was doing a local book event and asked if I wanted to come and be in conversation with them and share my book. And so we had a beautiful event at The Folded Leaf in Traverse City, and it was so fun. I also got to meet Cody in person for the first time. We took some silly photos.

Amelia HrubyIt was a really, really lovely time. Another bookish highlight of the month is that I put together what I called Free Little Library four packs, which were these sort of versions of my book where you could get four books for the price of one if you promised to take them to free little libraries in your area. And I did a very limited edition of these, I suppose, like, I only had 10 available, and I sent it out to actually my personal email list. It's the one where I write pretty rarely, maybe once a month, and I share some of just, like, the quieter updates from my life. It's the list that has the most people I actually know, IRL in it, but you're welcome to join it if you like.

Amelia HrubyAnd I sent that list, basically, I was like, look at my free little library. And I'm always taking my book to free little libraries around my neighborhood, and I wanted to invite other people to see if they wanted to share it with people in their neighborhood. So I sold out of those within, like, two days, and I've been getting some really lovely photos from folks who have taken the books around Chicago, around the Hudson Valley. I know I'm missing some others, but just it's very cool to see them all over The US being shared and distributed for free and I'm grateful to the people who bought extra copies to support that effort. And then one more highlight from the winter season is that I spent the winter running a small program called Close Biz Friends.

Amelia HrubyThis is a program where I have been teaching and guiding people through my three step process for cross promotion, which is create resonant content, share on strategic marketing channels, and amplify by cross promoting. And so this is really the way that my work has grown. It's the way I think you can be a content creator without social media, and I wanted to teach it and do it with other people. So I have been working with the Close Biz Friends since January. There are are 30 of them in this group.

Amelia HrubyAnd this week, as I'm recording this and you're receiving it, is our big week of cross promotion. So everybody has made something incredibly cool, sent it out to their own marketing channels that I helped them fine tune in March, And then now in April, we are sharing each other's work on those channels. I sent out a really gorgeous email to the off the grid list, I guess, just this morning as I'm recording this, and it included all of the very cool free offerings that the close biz friends made, and I have put that page here. It'll be linked on Substack as well. There is a whole list of all of these amazing people and the free resources that they've made.

Amelia HrubyThere are a few paid things in here, but it's primarily totally free resources that we are offering to each other, to you. You know, things like the You Don't Need More Advice audio series, a brand energy audit workshop. Podge has made a DIY YouTube video library. This resource from Carrie, You Are the Expert on Your Body, a support kit to help you retain agency in medical settings, is amazing. Adrian made a dial in phone line for listening practices called We Are a Murmuration.

Amelia HrubyThere's a guide from Cassie on how to heal burnout and trauma. Catherine's new creative container video series is so cool. I'm tempted to truly just read you all of the things on the list, but I'll pause there and say that it is well worth heading to the show notes and grabbing the link and then going through it yourself, like claiming everything that feels good or interesting to you and bookmarking this list, because also these people are all, you know, designers, lawyers, financial planners, strategists, nutritionists, therapists, coaches, like, so many amazing providers here. So when you need a brand designer or when you need a lawyer who actually gets what artists do and how they work, those people are on this list, and I'd love to recommend them to you. So working with the Close Biz Friends, running Close Biz Friends as a program has been one of the highlights of winter and spring for me for sure, and it is really a pleasure to bring all of their amazing work to you.

Amelia HrubyYou'll probably hearyou're gonna see it pop up in the off the grid newsletter, hear it on the podcast over the summer. There is more to come, and I'm really, like, just very excited to be sort of wrapping up the program in the next week or two. So those are my highlights of q one twenty twenty six, some very fun and lovely things. Now let's move into the challenges, which I have shared a little bit about on the podcast and some of which you've also all lived through, so will not be surprising to you. So the challenges of the first, you know, three months of this year, one has for me personally has been grief.

Amelia HrubyMy grandmother passed away just a few weeks ago as I'm recording this, but she was ill and then entered hospice and then passed, and then because of scheduling issues with various parties, it took a long time for her to get buried, and so my family was just in this grief portal for most of the winter and early spring. And we're still kind of moving through it, going through her belongings and, you know, clearing out this house that she'd lived in since 1955, where she raised all 10 of her kids and my dad grew up and where I had dinner with her every Tuesday night, and we played Scrabble since I've moved here five years ago. So it's been a real loss for the family. She was clearly a matriarch, and I've had to navigate how to talk about that in this setting or not, who do I share that with, you know, what do I cancel, what do I take off my plate because I'm grieving and tired? What do I keep on because it brings me joy and reminds me of life and feeling alive?

Amelia HrubySo that's been a a challenge this spring for sure, but as I always like to say or as I've written in the past, death is a sacred inconvenience. It's a reminder to, like, prioritize what we really want to spend our time on and who we wanna spend our time with, and it's an interruption of the status quo of our daily life that I think, as hard as it can be, is often needed. So that's been a challenge for me personally in q one. And then I don't even have the words to describe how horrible the political landscape has been because of the fascist government in The US. You know, in the day that I'm recording and releasing this, Trump is threatening to completely decimate and destroy Iran, and it's just horrifying to watch him bully and bullshit his way through global politics.

Amelia HrubyI'm, like, I feel so helpless. I just feel like I have no agency. Right? This president that I didn't vote for but represents the people of the country I live in, myself included, is doing these horrible things that I adamantly disagree with, and I can, you know, go to protests and put up signs in my house and, you know, reach out to my senators and congressmen, and also, I think so many of us in The US are just at a loss and really overwhelmed by it all. So that's certainly been a challenge.

Amelia HrubyRight? And it's a challenge as a human being. It's a challenge as a business owner. Like, you know, when Trump's put these deadlines out there, I'm like, well, should I plan to not do anything the rest of this week? Should I hold on sending or scheduling any other stuff?

Amelia HrubyDo I need to just really be in the moment? Should I proceed as usual anyway? Like, these are big questions that I don't have the answers to. I'm still just trying to figure out myself. So I think that this is a reminder to me to take a deep breath, and I think I'm gonna go back to my class on how our businesses can create change on 50 ways that our creative work can fight fascism.

Amelia HrubyI'm gonna revisit those resources because that's what I feel like I can hold on to during this time in a way that I can recenter myself and my agency even when I feel the real loss and lack of it. So those have been the challenges of winter or q one twenty twenty six. Now let's talk about my biz finances, shall we? I know so many folks tune into these because they wanna know how much money I've made, and I too am someone who loves to know how much money other people have made. If you've listened to this before, you know I have some disclaimers here.

Amelia HrubyI request that if you listen or watch this section on my q one financials, that you do so with Energetic Sovereignty, that you remember that my money is not about you, even though I'm very grateful for the $5 a month or $50 a year that you pay me for access to videos or episodes like this. But still, I hope you can remember that each of us has a very specific context in which money flows through in our lives. We have different needs, we have different circumstances, we have different privileges, we have different challenges, and so my money is about me, not about you. You may look at it and feel like, wow, Amelia made a ton of money, and I didn't, and I don't know how you feel about that. Well, you may look at it and be like, wow, Amelia made way less money than me.

Amelia HrubyWhy do I listen to her? Right? So that's all okay. You can notice, you can feel, but I ask that you do not project or make too much meaning of those similarities or differences between us. Your money journey is your own, your business is your own, and you can remain sovereign in that as you listen to me talk about my biz finances.

Amelia HrubySo with all of that requested and in mind, let's look at the money, shall we? That was your free preview of this off the grid Clubhouse episode. To hear the whole thing, just go to offthegrid.fun/clubhouse. That's where you can learn more about the Clubhouse, which is our private podcast and newsletter that's exclusively for paid supporters of the show. It only costs $5 per month or $50 per year to become a paid subscriber, at least at the time I'm recording this.

Amelia HrubySo if you would like to hear this whole episode and many, many more just head to that link again, it's offthegrid.fun/clubhouse to learn more and sign up. When you do, you get access to so many bonus episodes, as well as tech critical and creative business link roundups, and more personal behind the scenes business updates from me, Amelia, your favorite off the grid host. Thanks again for tuning in to the show and I'd appreciate it so much if you upgrade to paid today. Until then, I'll see you off the grid and hopefully in the clubhouse.