Annual Review For 2019 - The Year Of Visibility
Review time baby!
2019 marks the end of my first full year in business, and what a year it’s been.
If you don’t currently review and set goals, use this structure to help you get started. You won’t believe the kind of insights it leads to.
My review centres around 3 core questions:
What went well and why?
What didn’t go so well and what did I learn?
What am I working towards in 2020 and how will I ensure I make it happen?
WHAT WENT WELL in 2019?
Got visible as fuck. ‘Visibility’ was my word for 2019 and it pretty much sums up how I feel my year has gone. At the beginning of the year, I was nervous as hell about showing my face and doing videos. I was scared of judgement and wondered why on earth people would want to work with me. I pushed past this. I’ve since run three in-person workshops, one online webinar, three challenges for over 500 people, done over 150 Facebook lives and started and grew my FB group to over 1000 women. Speaking of which >>>
Started and grew my FB Group Mummy’s Got Clients to over 1000 kick-ass women. My Facebook group was a big turning point in my business. I love to teach and my group gave me a space to gather my people and show up and serve them - mainly through Facebook lives with loads of useful tips on growing your business and attracting consistent clients. I didn’t hold back - I led with value and put out awesome content to nurture and build trust with my audience. My FB group has been my biggest email list builder by a mile. If you want to learn more about how I grew my group, check out this blog post on How I Grew A Highly Engaged Facebook Group From 0-500 In Under 3 Months And Use It To Get Clients. It also led to my next win…
Filled my 1-1 client roster. Ahhh the ultimate goal (until you hit it). I attribute this to a mixture of small, consistent actions like weekly blogging, weekly FB lives and monthly networking, mixed with bigger high impact actions like starting a FB group, running in-person workshops and a running a totally kick-ass 5 day challenge. Together, this built momentum and built my local reputation too. In June 2019, I enrolled 5 new 1-1 clients (which incidentally, was far too many on top of my current client workload and I nearly hit burn out - head on down to what didn’t go so well for this story 😉).
Diversified my offering. My goal for 2019 was to fill my 1-1 roster. Hitting this goal in June made me step up further. Once you’ve filled your 1-1 spots, you quickly realise you’ve hit an income ceiling and it’s time to diversify if you want to continue to grow. I had two options I was drawn to - group coaching and launching a membership. I followed my intuition and launched my membership Mummy’s Got VIP Clients in September and sold out all 50 spots. I then used personal outreach and some already booked sales calls to fill my first group coaching programme with 5 totally awesome women in October.
Hit my income goal. I wanted to end 2019 having made the same amount of money as I did in my corporate job - I made 38% more. For my first year of business, this feels like a massive win. I took consistent and massive action, followed my gut and invested heavily in myself throughout the whole year.
Ran 3 incredible free challenges. You never know how things are going to go when you do them for the first time, but as with a lot of things this year, I just went for it and this one totally worked for me. I signed up 150 women for my first Get A Client in 5 Days Challenge in May and had amazing feedback. People took massive action, saw big results and loads of people got clients. I ran my second challenge in September, signed up 174 women and launched my membership off the back of this. I then ran a totally spur of the moment challenge in December and set the goal of signing up 100 women in 1 day for a last-minute Mindset Challenge. 143 women signed up and it was immense.
Continued to invest in myself (BIG!). I invested in my second kick-ass Business Coach in April 2019 before I had consistent clients and income. I bet on myself that I could make the money for the instalments each month and I did. I then joined a group mastermind in November 2019. Having the guts to go all in and invest in my personal development is one of the massive contributing factors to my success in smashing every single business goal this year. 2019 is also the year I invested in professional photographs, my branding and a new website.
Went on a dream family holiday and took the whole of August off. Sitting at a networking meeting on goal setting in April 2019, we were prompted to write down how much money we wanted to make over the next 3 months. To that point, I’d been eeking out 1-3k months and didn’t have consistent clients. I found myself writing down 15K. I decided that if I could make 15K in 3 months, we would book a dream holiday to America for the whole family. From April - June 2019, I made £26K in new sales, with June being my most successful month of the year. We booked our flights to America for August and spent 2 weeks travelling from San Francisco to Los Angeles where we got married on the beach.
Read 13 personal development/business books. I’ve always struggled with staying consistent with reading so this is a big one for me. Most I listened to on Audible, but I also added a half hour reading slot to my morning routine which meant that in the latter part of the year, I sometimes read 2 books a month.
This is Marketing - Seth Godin
Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
Get Rick Lucky Bitch! - Denise Duffield-Thomas
Chillpreneur - Denise Duffield-Thomas
Go For No - Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz
Building a StoryBrand - Donald Miller
You are a Badass at Making Money - Jen Sincero
Profit First - Mike Michalowicz
The Miracle Morning For Entrepreneurs - Hal Elrod and Cameron Herold
The E-Myth Revisited - Michael E. Gerber
Marketing: A Love Story - Bernadette Jiwa
The Big Leap - Gay Hendricks
Got consistent, focussed and disciplined. At the beginning of 2019, consistency and focus was something I struggled with. It’s ironic really - it’s much harder to be focussed and disciplined when you don’t have consistent clients than when you do. I’ve now mastered my morning routine, have a weekly structure in place and ensure I am continually learning and conditioning myself for success. This has done wonders for my mindset, which was one of my biggest business struggles in the first 6 months of my business.
Made some positive personal changes. I quit dairy and eggs, which then led to mostly full on Veganism (still eat fish, and eggs are sneaking their way back in). I exercise every morning and no longer have an energy dip post-lunch. I am captain of a netball team once a week which I love, and bought a standing desk which has me standing for most of the day. I feel great in myself because of the changes I have made.
WHAT DIDN’T GO SO WELL AND WHAT DID I LEARN?
Took on too many clients. Sometimes I get really caught up in wanting to help everyone. I went from not having consistent clients to having too many clients in just a few weeks. I was naive and unprepared for this, and I spent the next 2 months feeling incredibly pressured and stressed as I tried to uphold the commitments I had made. In July, I chose to end some coaching relationships with non-ideal clients which was a learning experience for me. I quickly realised I needed to raise my prices to hit my income goals, which I did. My learning here is that taking on too much serves no one - I couldn’t serve my clients fully, my work-life balance suffered and my own health suffered. I’ve adjusted my client commitment to work with five 1-1 clients at any one time.
At times, I’ve been really stressed. My business grew much quicker than I expected this year and it’s been a steep learning curve. As well as taking on too many clients, I made spontaneous decisions which felt inline with my intuition (which felt good), but in reality I didn’t have the resources for. This meant that I felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants for a lot of the year. Everything from challenges to workshops to launches were done last minute which caused a lot of anxiety and stress. If I want to scale my business, I need to plan things out in advance and stop telling myself the story that ‘I can’t plan’ or that it will ruin my spontaneity and inspired action. These beliefs are not serving me.
Inconsistent with blogging. This was one of my wins from my 2018 review and I feel disappointed I didn’t keep this up in 2019. I have written plenty of long form content in my weekly emails to my list, which could have been easily re-purposed for my blog. The reality is I didn’t prioritise this. I love writing and for 2020 plan to write 2 blogs a month. Blog posts always take longer than expected so I need to plan in exactly when this will happen.
I didn’t always get the family balance right. At the start of the year, I worked the school holidays citing that I couldn’t take time off as I was starting a business. I quickly realised this was the wrong approach and rewrote all my client contracts to state that I didn’t work in the holidays. Act as if you are already where you want to be. This was a positive change. However, I’ve still felt pretty biz obsessed this year. I’ve had less headspace for my family, my patience has my short and I’ve noticed I’ve been increasingly irritable with my son. I haven’t been fully switching off from my business and at times, often due to my poor planning, work has crept into family time. My number one goal for 2020 is achieving balance between business and family, setting clear boundaries and being 100% present.
WHAT AM I WORKING TOWARDS IN 2020?
Break six figures in turnover. It feels a little clichéd to write that, but I want to grow my business further this year and with what I have in mind, breaking six figures is in line with that. I’m excited to hit this milestone and challenge my upper limits of what I can achieve. I’ve got some awesome plans in the pipeline - watch this space!
Strategise and automate. I’ve begun implementing lead generation and client experience systems this year. 2020 is the year to put in place a few more (dare I say it) funnels to help me scale. Alongside this comes… planning. I’ll be leaving room for inspired action, but to achieve my big hairy goals this year, I’ve got the year mapped out with the big actions I’ll be taking. I’ll be planning these months in advance to reduce my stress levels and optimise my success levels instead.
Create a signature programme and course. This year I’ve been testing out marketing strategies and getting a feel for what works in the online space. I’ve become increasingly aware this year how I could better support clients if I had a structured course for them to work through alongside coaching. This is also an opportunity for me to support the members of my paid membership. I didn’t prioritise this in 2019 but it’s an absolute focus for 2020.
Balance. I created my business to give me greater flexibility to be there for my son, as well as doing something I love for a bigger cause. I’ve been biz obsessed this year, and in 2020 I choose to create balance. This means re-defining my boundaries, implementing strategies to switch off from work and being present and mindful when I’m with my family. I’ll be taking all the school holidays off too.
THIS YEAR’S THEME
2019 was the Year of Visibility - the year I got out of my comfort zone, built an engaged community and showed up consistently to serve them. I now feel most at home when I am interacting with my community - whether that’s emailing my list, showing up in my free group or membership group.
My word for 2020 has caused me quite a lot of grief. I started with ‘automate’ but in all honesty, it didn’t spark any of the feels. Then I moved to ‘intent’. I’d like this year to be deliberate - to plan. But again, honestly, not much motivation there.
I want 2020 to be the Year of Balance. That means I need to be deliberate and plan the shit out of stuff, so I get the balance right. It means I need to automate things so less stuff needs me to action it. So that’s what I’m going with - balance. If I ended 2020 being able to say in earnest that I’d had a kick-ass successful year whilst still being present for my family, I’d be chuffed.
Final thoughts
This has been a cracking year for me. I’ve worked my fricking ass off, put myself out there and achieved some of my biggest hairiest goals.
But know this… a year ago I’d just left my 9-5, I didn’t have consistent clients or income until June 2019. Everything can change in a heartbeat. And if I can do it, you can too. So go all in. Don’t accept any other path except you smashing your goals. Be consistent. Be totally badass.
Read my other annual reviews here:
