2023: The behind-the-scenes review of my online business
I love an end-of-year review: seeing all the juicy details about what’s worked, what didn’t and lessons learned from my favorite mentors and educators is so helpful and inspiring as I look back on my own year and start thinking ahead to next year.
So I’m sharing my very own year-end review, and just like last year, I like to do things slightly differently than the typical stats and wins and instead share my thoughts on the big and small shifts my business has gone through this year.
Enjoy!
Things achieved in 2023:
This was my first year going all in on my digital products and courses in my business! And I think it’s fair to say, it’s paid off!
In 2023, I launched 24 products 🤯 with a mix of 7 workshops/courses and 17 digital products including ThriveCart templates, Notion dashboards, Canva templates and more!
I didn’t quite realize just how prolific I’d been this year because I’ve been leaning into creating things that feel fun, exciting and motivating for me and it’s been an absolute pleasure creating so many new offers over the past 12 months. Though I’m not sure I’ll be putting out quite so many new things next year!
I also set up some evergreen funnels for my larger courses including Work Your Website and Sell Without Sales Calls (which was rebranded from my Low-Stress Productized Services in the process for extra clarity and marketing oompf!)
With all of these updates and new offers, I was happy to be able to retire my done-for-you web design services for good, though I do have one retainer client I work with and have adored supporting throughout the year.
I also decided to quietly close the doors to my Mentorship program. I LOVED supporting people in this close 1:1 capacity but it proved to be too energetically draining for me at this point in my life.
Actually, this year was a big one for personal growth for me, learning a lot about how my neurodivergent brain works and how to better accommodate, support, and respect my own needs within my business. Which is what led to me realizing that supporting others directly in a 1:1 capacity is more taxing than I’d realized.
What I didn’t accomplish in 2023:
Traditional goal setting doesn’t really work for me as I don’t find certain income or growth metrics particularly incentivizing. What I prefer to do is set myself projects, and as you might be able to guess from my prolific product creation this year I managed to finish quite a few of those!
But some of the things I had hoped to accomplish in 2023 that I didn’t get to where starting a YouTube channel (it’s still in the works but no promises for when it will happen!) and hosting a collaborative event of some kind.
Both of those projects were put aside as they sounded “too big” and draining for me at the moment. They also touch on some areas of my past life in film and event management, which made me realize I had some lingering stuff to deal with before I could really put myself into that sort of work.
Biggest Business Win of 2023:
One is continuing the podcast and growing my second business Like a Mother Movement with my business bestie Olivia Radcliffe. It honestly never feels like work when I get to do stuff with her and it continues to amaze me just how well we get on as a duo. We’re wrapping up our second year of the Marketing Like a Mother podcast and are well into preparing for it’s third yer already. And we’ve had the absolute pleasure of supporting some fellow multi-passionate entrepreneurs inside our super fun Shiny Squirrel Chaser’s Club Membership.
The other big win for me this year was intentionally removing almost all deadlines for my business. As part of learning more about how my brain works I realized I struggle with Pathological Demand Avoidance which basically means if something external “demands” I do something, it suddenly becomes very hard and stressful for me to actually do it 😅 So I’ve been restructuring my internal processes to remove “due dates” and “deadlines” as much as humanly possible and being very intentional with any outside collaborations to avoid adding too many external deadlines to my plate too. This has made a huge difference in how productive I am, and more importantly how I feel about my work!
Biggest Ah-Ha Moment of 2023:
A big shift for me this year was intentionally removing almost all deadlines for my business.
As part of learning more about how my brain works, I realized I struggle with Pathological Demand Avoidance - which basically means if something external “demands” I do something, it suddenly becomes very hard and stressful for me to actually do it 😅
So I’ve been restructuring my internal processes to remove “due dates” and “deadlines” as much as humanly possible and being very intentional with any outside collaborations to avoid adding too many external deadlines to my plate too. This has made a huge difference in how productive I am, and more importantly how I feel about my work!
Most Interesting Experiment:
I love experimenting in my business and some of my very best results - and most impactful lessons - have come from these experiments.
This year, I wanted to give myself more space for the inevitable life stuff that comes up. Between childcare falling through, illness and my fluctuating energy levels, I can’t always bank on when I’ll be able to work. So I’ve put extra effort into building out a content buffer for my emails, blog posts and social posts so my business can still show up to market & sell my stuff, even if I can’t be actively working each day.
And I’ve used that buffer many times, including the entire month of August when we had no childcare at all (thanks to Paris basically shutting down for the holidays 🙈) and the bug that took my little family down for a full 3 weeks. Each time I’ve been able to step fully away from the business, let my content go out as pre-scheduled and still make sales! If that’s not a Life-First Business, I don’t know what is!!
Most excited to try in 2024:
There are so many things I want to do and try and test out in my business, but for next year I really want to prioritize creating assets in my business that help me lean even more into my Life-First Business approach. That means more evergreen sales systems, long-term content marketing and - of course - launching more helpful, practical tools, templates & trainings to help you do the same 😘
If you don’t want to miss any of my new experiments, offers and adventures in the online business world, go ahead and join my email list by signing up for the Life-First Business Assessment below!
