2023 Business Year in Review
I’m nosey.
I love reading other people’s year-in-review content, learning what they experimented with, what worked and what didn’t, lessons they learned – all of it.
At the end of every year, I like to sit down and write my own reflections on my business and goals for the upcoming year. This year, I’m publishing my reflections on the off chance that these ramblings of mine provide some help or insight to you.
Or, if you’re like me, satisfy your nosey quota for the day.
The year 2023 brought a lot of things. Grief, stress, joy, uncertainty, success, celebration, relaxation – much within a one-week period.
Despite the low points, this year did have a few highs.
What went well in 2023
Retainer clients
At the start of 2023, I had a ton of plans for what I wanted to accomplish in the year. By February (due to some personal life circumstances), that list had dwindled to just two things:
Get one more retainer client
Make $100,000+ from retainer client work
I’m happy to report that both of those things worked out! I signed an amazing retainer client in February/March, helping me crack the six-figure mark with my retainer work.
Money
Not only did I hit my financial goal for my retainer work, but I also did a decent job holding on to the money the business made in 2023.
Granted, I still probably spent more money than I needed to on courses (my kryptonite). BUT I continued to pay myself a reasonable full-time salary, paid all business expenses and subcontractors well and on time, and kept some profit in the business (which I plan on putting to work in 2024 – more on that below).
Maintaining work-free weekends (for the most part)
Having work-free time is incredibly important to me. I don’t want to be one of those hustle-and-grind-’til-your-brain-is-mush-and-you-have-to-take-a-year-long-sabbatical-just-to-get-back-to-baseline kind of business owners. That might mean slower growth or less money, but I’m okay with it.
My partner, Joseph, and I take our Wednesday date nights and weekend chill time very seriously. It’s just not something I’m willing to compromise for my business, or for any reason, really. And in 2023, I did a good job of honoring that.
There was the occasional weekend of work or date night skipped to catch up on client projects. But it was (and will continue to be) the exception, not the rule.
What didn’t go so well in 2023
Setting big goals
As I mentioned before, at the beginning of 2023, I set out to conquer the world. But life had other plans.
Within the first two months of the year, everything was completely derailed by personal life events. I balanced grieving, caring for a family member and their affairs (legal and medical), building/maintaining a business, growing my clients’ businesses, and prioritizing my relationship with Joseph.
Honestly, reading this right now, I have no idea how I did it. But I (barely) did! And I’m proud of myself for the way I showed up in this difficult season.
I learned a lot about myself that I’m proud of today. Most importantly, I learned that – as Glennon Doyle would say – I can do hard things. But also, here’s to hoping 2024 has fewer hard things in store. Ya girl could use a break!
Hiring team members
I hired two contractors in 2023: one to help me with screening candidates/hiring for my clients and another to help with general operations assistant-type work.
Both of them were/have been great. The reason hiring is on my “bad” list for 2023 isn’t because the hires themselves didn’t work out. It’s because I realized that I actually don’t want subcontractors in my business.
I briefly considered turning my business into an agency (i.e. hiring other OBMs and Operations Assistants to work with my clients under my business umbrella). But after a small taste of it this past year, I realized that I’d rather help my clients hire their team members directly.
I came to this conclusion for a few reasons:
It’s too much responsibility. I don’t want to be responsible for someone else’s income (on the contractor side) or results (on the client side).
It’s really tricky with retainer clients. My retainer client work is so custom. It’s not like a productized service where I can bring someone in who knows exactly what to do and it costs the same thing every time for every client.
It feels icky. This may be a limiting belief or whatever, but I don’t like the idea of making money directly off of someone else’s work. And if you operate an agency right, that’s exactly what you’re doing. So the subcontractor makes less money working with you than they would working directly with the client. The difference goes into your business’s profit. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this model (it’s just how business works). It just doesn’t feel great to me.
After a few months of working with one of my hires, I dissolved our agreement and had her contract directly with my (now our) client. She’s making more money, which is good for her. And because she’s making more money, it made financial sense for her to stick around longer and even drop one of her other clients to work more with my/our shared client. Because she’s been an amazing team member, that’s a win for the client!
I plan on doing the same thing this year with the other team member I hired in 2023. The plan going forward is to only hire subcontractors for (hypothetical) future productized services. Any other team members I bring on board will just be contractors for projects in my own business.
Productized services
I spent a lot of time last year thinking about, planning/mapping out, and creating backend systems for my productized services. But I didn’t do much of anything in 2023 to promote them, so I only did a few projects outside of my retainer work last year.
I’d originally planned on scaling my business via productized services (i.e. services that offer the same outcome/deliverables for all clients with clearly-defined pricing). However, now I’m leaning toward other options (see goals below).
Overcommitting
Even though I did a relatively good job of prioritizing work-free weekends with Joseph, I still committed to too many things in 2023, especially given my personal circumstances.
When it comes to client work, I always aim to underpromise and overdeliver. For much of 2023, I overpromised but still overdelivered. And by that I mean I still hit and/or exceeded the goals I set with my clients for hiring team members, creating and implementing systems, etc. But I stressed myself out and lost a lot of sleep in doing so. Going forward, I need to be better about setting more realistic expectations with clients.
On the personal side, I started volunteering for a wildlife rehabilitation center and am now in the process of becoming a permitted wildlife rehabber myself. Starting this spring, I’ll be caring for wild animals (probably just squirrels and opossums) on my property. This is absolutely not a responsibility I needed to take on. But it sounded fun. So here we are.
Marketing
I’m not sure I can say marketing didn’t go well in 2023 because it really just… didn’t go. lol
I didn’t really do anything to promote myself in 2023 except pitch a handful of podcasts. Which I got, by the way! Here are two of the three podcasts I was a guest on last year (one hasn’t been published yet):
Unbusy Your Business with Megan Robinson - The Small Business Mindset
Mastering Business Systems with Megan Robinson - Straight Up Small Business
But other than that, I didn’t do much in the way of marketing. No social media, no ads, no emails. Definitely something I want to do better at in 2024.
Speaking of, that’s enough reflection. Let’s talk about what I’m doing differently this year.
Goals for 2024
Launch a product my audience wants
My top business priority for 2024 is to launch a product that people (including you) want. This isn’t super specific, and there are a lot of smaller goals and projects tied into this one.
Like, before I can launch a product, I need to:
Grow my email list. (If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of ~50 people on my list so far.)
Note: I’m planning to experiment with Facebook ads for this and also just pitching the shit out of podcasts.
Email people consistently with valuable content.
Find out what people want.
Build/sell what people want.
I can feel my shoulders tensing up as I write this. All things marketing make me feel a little ill. I’m reeeeaaaallllyyy good at the work I do (business systems and operations). But I’m not so great at selling or marketing it. And I hate being in front of an audience.
So there are definitely some personal feelings/limiting beliefs working against me here. But I know it’s the direction I want to go in my business (more scalable offers, less retainer work), so I know what I have to do.
Experiment with content
In this case, content = marketing. And marketing has always been really difficult for me to wrap my head around.
Right now, I’m taking The Strategy of Content Marketing course on Coursera. Just trying to wrap my head around how content marketing works.
Then there’s the actual creating of the content, which feels daunting. I’m not sure exactly what that’ll look like yet – writing posts like this one, videos, definitely email.
This goal is also a few different goals. I want to:
Understand content marketing strategy
Create a simple, doable strategy for 2024
Stick to the plan
If I can do those things, I’ll consider it a huge success.
Drop retainer client hours to 20 hours/week
I love my retainer clients. And I appreciate the hell out of them. They’re the reason I was able to make $100k+ my first year full-time in my business and keep my life together last year when everything seemed to be falling apart. They were understanding and gracious in every way possible.
And I want to have less retainer work in my life. Here’s why:
It’s a full-time job. My business right now is mostly a full-time job. I’m tied to my desk for ~8 hours/day. Sure, it’s probably more flexible than most full-time jobs. Outside of meetings, I can technically work whenever I want. But the time I spend on retainer client work right now is equivalent to that of a full-time job (maybe more). I’d like to do more of the work I enjoy, less of what I don’t, spend more time building my business, and work fewer hours overall.
There are A LOT of meetings. In any given week, I have 10-15 hours of client calls. Sometimes more, rarely ever less than 10. That’s a lot, especially for an introvert like me.
It doesn’t scale the way I want to scale. Like I said before, I don’t want to hire a team of subcontractors to work with my clients. I’m more interested in exploring digital products (templates, memberships, courses, group programs, etc.) and productized services.
I don’t have a plan for this one yet or know exactly what it’ll look like. Realistically, I’ll need to have some sort of scalable offer making money before I can move in this direction. I’m just putting it out into the ether in the hopes that it comes true/is a natural bi-product of goal #1.
Take care of my health
This isn’t really a business goal. But then again, when you run your own business, you can’t always separate the business from the personal.
In 2024, one of my top personal goals is to take care of my health and heal my body. I’ve taken pretty good care of my body for the last 10 years or so (ever since I met my partner). But last year, I had some tests done that made me realize I need to do more.
So now I’m addressing all the root-cause possibilities one at a time – parasites, mold/environmental toxins, bacterial/viral infection, etc. – in an effort to heal some health issues I’ve been dealing with for the last few years.
That means more sleep, more rest, and possibly less work needed this year. Which may impact some of my other goals, but health and family > everything.
Roundup of things/content I loved in 2024
I always love seeing what content other business owners are consuming, tools they’re using, etc. So here are a few of my favorite finds of the year:
SmartSuite (affiliate link): I’ve been looking for a work management tool that I could get behind for years. At first, I thought it might be ClickUp, but then I heard/read all the complaints people have had about it over the last couple of years. And a lot of “systems experts” I know left ClickUp in 2024. Then I found SmartSuite, and I love it. No software is perfect, but this company is doing a lot of things right. If you’re looking for a tool to manage all of your work processes and systems, I highly recommend you check it out.
My First Million podcast: I may be late to the game on this one. If you haven’t heard of it, this show is basically two millionaire entrepreneurs who brainstorm business ideas and interview other rich people. It’s fascinating. And I swear it’s rewiring my brain, normalizing success on such a massive scale that I find myself thinking, “For sure I could build a multi-million dollar company.” I don’t even think I want to do that, but it’s making me think I can. Maybe that’s healthy/will help me in some way. Maybe not. But these guys are very entertaining and an easy listen either way.
Lexi Merritt @ Pretty Decent: I think I technically found Lexi in 2022, but I attended her Big Paper Planning Day for the first time in 2023. Lexi is a business strategist and copywriter for creative businesses. What I do might not be all that creative, but I like to consider myself an artist in a way (it’s the INFP in me). I love everything Lexi does, and her planning/goal setting workshops are so fun and different from anything I’ve seen before.
Specific favorite podcast episodes from the year:
If I had $5,000 to start my business, this is where I would spend it for maximum results – Imperfect Action
How she turned a $9 membership into a six-figure business with Liz Wilcox – Imperfect Action
5 Internet Goldmines to Spot the Next $1B Trend – My First Million
SaaS CEO QUIT His Job to Start a Trash Company – My First Million
Arthur C. Brooks – How to Be Happy, Reverse Bucket Lists, The Four False Idols, Muscular Philosophies, Practical Inoculation Against the Darkness and More – The Tim Ferris Show
That’s a wrap!
I hope you got something out of this, whether it’s a new favorite podcast, work software, or some insights from my personal business ramblings.
Thanks for being here and witnessing my messy middle. Here’s to being unbusy and unbothered in 2024.