Annual Review for 2021 - The Year Of Alignment
Since I started my business in 2018, I’ve written an annual review. It’s an awesome way to reflect on my progress and challenges and I love sharing the behind the scenes stuff.
You can catch up on 2018, 2019 and 2020 if you want to follow my whole business trajectory.
Every year (except this one) I turn it into a blog post to share in January.
This year I just didn’t get my act together and publish the review that I’d half written. I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps because it was a big transition year for me. I made some big and difficult decisions that saw me tear down my whole business and re-build it. I let go of a lot of income to do this which was scary AF.
It was hard to look back in January 2022 and see 2021 as a success. But with the distance that naturally comes with the passing of time, I’m sitting here in July 2022 and can clearly see 2021 as my boldest year in business yet.
In 2020, I set ‘align’ as my word for 2021.
And without really knowing what that meant at the time, that’s exactly what I did throughout the year. I let go of big money-making offers and simplified my whole business so it all felt more me.
Let’s dive into the grizzly details.
There’s 3 simple questions I ask to frame my review:
What went well and how did you make it happen?
What was challenging and most importantly, what did you learn from this?
What are you excited about in 2022 and how will you make it happen?
WHAT WENT WELL IN 2021?
Health & Exercise. I have never consistently exercised in my entire life. Prior to 2021, I played netball once a week and occasionally went for a run. Sometimes I’d have periods of getting into an app like ‘7 Min Workouts’ but it was always short-lived. I ate pretty healthily, but had never found my groove with exercise. It had always been something that ‘had to be done’ rather than something I chose to do (apart from netball, which is just super fun). In fact, my health was so poor in 2020 it was one of the core challenges I listed in my 2020 annual review.
In January 2021, my osteopath started offering PT sessions and I started strength work outs once a week on top of netball. I then started working with a PT at my gym who said to me straight: ‘If you’re going to come less than 3 times a week, it’s really not worth it’.
This was the kick up the arse I needed. Since June 2021, I have done 3-4 strength work outs, netball and 30 mins swimming a week. I finished the year in the best shape I’ve ever been in. I’ve lost weight before but never been physically strong. I feel completely differently about my body - it's got definition and tone and I feel more confident. The best part? I used to get LOADS of back pain and now I don’t get any. I never thought I'd be someone who exercises regularly and to be enjoying the gym feels like some sort of miracle.
Learning: if you value something, invest in it. I kept saying my health was important and had a gym membership but wasn't investing in the support to really take it seriously.
Re-branded the membership and moved platforms. Counting this as a win even though I’d closed it by the end of the year! When I started my membership it didn't have much of it's own identity - it was basically an extension of my Facebook Group Mummy's Got Clients with 'VIP' shoved in. The 'mum' in the name was feeling more and more out of alignment. I mostly attract mums, but some aren't and honestly, as I had my own fertility issues I realised how problematic the term 'mum' can be.
As we'd grown to over 200 members, it felt time for a new name and whole new look, as well as an upgrade to our membership platform Podia which we'd outgrown in terms of functionality. I thought it was going to be impossible to find a name I truly loved but when I stumbled across Today Not Tomorrow it just felt so right. The branding Danii Martynowicz designed was incredible, and even though I've now closed the membership, I feel connected to the brand and want to continue to use it if I can.
Moving to Kajabi was a massive project and I couldn't have done it without my team members, Bethany and Cerian. We did a good job of building excitement in the run up the launch and I was impressed at how many people came with us to the new platform.
Learning: Before the TNT brand, I’d always felt pretty ‘meh’ about branding in general. I wasn’t in love with the ‘Gemma Gilbert’ brand someone created me back in year 1, way before I really knew my business. Going through this re-brand was such a fun experience and taught me the importance of identity and values and how they can shine through in your marketing.
Work/life balance. I used to work 3 days and look after my son for 2 days a week and I fricking loved this time with my son. But in 2020, my business income reached a point where we had the confidence for my husband to quit his teaching job and follow his music passion. This also meant that we swapped roles - as the sole earner it made sense for me to work 5 days a week - at least that’s what I told myself.
Spring 2021, I had this sudden realisation. Charlie was due to start school in September - 5 days a week with no more opportunity for weekday farm visits. The summer was my last chance to have those glorious weekdays together. I decided not to run my core programme The 5K Experience in the summer so I could go down to 4 days a week and I had the most incredible summer with my son before he started school.
Learning: Choose family, every time. I also realised that my current offer structure didn’t support the lifestyle I wanted and this was the first step in me tearing down my whole business.
I finally niched. I’ve always known the power of niching, but I didn’t niche further because honestly… I had consistent clients. So I was your standard Business Coach offering to help you get better at marketing and sales to attract more clients and hit that 5K mark.
But over the years, I felt more and more disconnected with this niche. As my business progressed to 20-40K months, I felt drawn to help those who had established their marketing foundations and wanted to reach that next big money goal. Plus, I was enjoying 1-1 coaching less and less so helping others attract 1-1 clients as my core offer felt a little out of alignment. What I really loved was creating group programmes and coaching groups. Maybe it’s the ex-teacher in me, but I love creating learning pathways, motivating a group and facilitating group sessions.
This led me to my new niche… helping fully-booked service-providers like coaches and therapists to create or scale an evergreen group programme without exhausting launches. My new programme Amplify started in September 2021 and I haven’t looked back since. I fricking love my niche, love the clients I attract and it all just feels ‘right’.
Learning: niching is an evolution. You can’t force clarity but it comes naturally through serving clients.
CHALLENGES AND LEARNINGS
Realised I’d built a complicated business. In my 2020 annual review, I talked about how confused I’d felt with my message. As I’d added more offerings, I was serving multiple ideal clients and it was feeling messy and unclear. This ultimately wasn’t a messaging problem, but a foundational business structure problem. Serving multiple ideal clients with lots of different offers is hard AF. I was constantly launching the ‘next new thing’.
My 2021 offers included:
A 30 day lead generator
The 5K Experience - a 12 week intensive
Freedom & Ease PowerMind for those scaling to 10K months
Today Not Tomorrow Membership - to help you attract consistent clients
1-1
The pros? I was making 20-40K months.
The cons? A lot of client delivery hours, constantly creating new stuff, never having time to improve my existing offers, no time to breath, unclear messaging, constantly feeling behind.
The result of this realisation is a win: I made the decision to simplify my entire business, let go of all my offers and build it back up again with one core offer (the one I mentioned in the ‘I finally niched’ win above!).
Learning: Do one thing really well, if you value freedom and simplicity.
Closed my membership. The timing of this could not have been worse. We had spent months re-branding the membership and moving platforms. This was costly (both the re-brand, moving to Kajabi and the admin support to make this all happen). All in all, it probably cost 10-15K.
We did this in May 2021, and just a few months later I realised a low-end membership is simply not the business model I want. I crave simplicity in my business. There is nothing simple about a low-end membership. There are so many moving parts and it's a beast in itself to run with a lot of admin enrolling, serving and retaining members. If I just wanted to run a membership and not have other services, I could see it working for me - but I didn’t.
I really want to work deeply with clients. I see such a need for this in the online marketing landscape. The membership did not allow me to serve each member as deeply as I wanted to. I found the never-sleeping nature of the membership exhausting and I found my energy being drawn elsewhere. You can read more on why I closed my 160K membership here.
I decided to sell the membership content at a one-off price in December 2021, which brought in a welcome £5k or so when money was tight. You can still buy it here, if you want to establish your marketing foundations.
This decision to close the membership was bitter sweet. Over the years, over 1000 women had joined me inside the membership and it was such a magical space. I miss the connections with all the women in there to this day.
Learning: Make bold decisions, even when it’s hard. It’s OK to let things go, even if you put in a lot of resources to create the thing in the first place. (and maybe sense check you are totally aligned with an offer before re-branding it and investing in software lol).
My income nose-dived from June onwards. This was intentional but scary. I’d made the decision not to run my signature programme The 5K Experience again, and then I closed my membership. I started the year making 20-40K a month, and ended the year making 8-15K a month. That might still sound pretty great but the reality was the minimum I needed to make each month was 15K to cover my business expenses and our family expenses as the sole earner. I’d made some expensive investments (e.g. Taki Moore’s Blackbelt) back when my income was much higher that it suddenly felt very stressful to honour. Each month I made less than 15K, I had to make up the shortfall with my profits (which luckily I had a lot of from the past year). It was humbling to remember how fragile our businesses can be. I’d had 2 years of rapid growth, and was facing that ‘money fear’ for the first time in a long time.
Learning: Keeping the faith in the face of money fears is hard and it all comes down to mindset. Trust in your ability to grow and don’t expect it to happen on the timeline you want.
The Great Challenge (Success &) Fail. In Feb 2021, I ran my biggest ever challenge - Easy Peasy Clients School II - with over 600 people. The challenge itself was awesome and converted well - 61 new members to my membership - my highest intake. However, this led to a huge number of people leaving the membership - around 40 over the next 2 months as the huge influx of people really changed the dynamic of the group. It was a huge learning experience - to have this success high followed by this client delivery low. It put a bad taste in my mouth about launching, and was a good lesson in prioritising client delivery and experience over growth.
Learning: Always prioritise client experience over rapid growth, and before adding lots of clients to a programme, consider the impact on existing clients.
Audience Growth Stalled. Other than the challenge I mentioned above, I didn’t really grow my audience in 2021. In fact, I ended the year with less people on my email list than when I started. I don’t really have a good excuse. I basically got a bit complacent. I think part of me felt ‘you’ve got 2500 on your list - that’s plenty big enough’. Plus, I had a bit of fear from The Great Challenge (Success &) Fail above. I didn’t run any events, didn’t put much money into ads. Every other year I’ve grown by audience by at least 1000 people, so to realise how much I dropped the ball is a big wake up call. The other challenge here is that with my niche pivot, a large percentage of my existing audience aren’t my ideal client and don’t need my offer. Feels a little bit like starting again and I know I need to seriously up my audience growth game in 2022.
Learning: Never stop growing your audience. Add 100 new people a month, minimum.
Charlie started school. This is obviously a hugely positive thing in itself but it was definitely a challenge! It was a much bigger shake up to my routine than I expected. I’m an early-bird and my mornings are my most productive time. I used to drop Charlie as nursery at 7:30 and be at my desk by 8. Having my start time pushed back to 9:30 was challenging and I resisted it for ages. Charlie found the transition to primary school hard as well, so emotions were running high and he needed me much more than usual. It took us a good few months to find our new groove. But huge win - I have a business which is entirely flexible and I was able to be there for him throughout this time.
Learning: Any significant change to routine takes time to adjust and get used to. Go back to the drawing board with your weekly plan and don’t cling onto previous structures which don’t work anymore.
Creating the content for my new programme Amplify was hard AF. If you’ve ever written a course, you’ll probably resonate with this one. I started off trying to release a pre-recorded module a week for my new Amplifiers. This was a big mistake. The workload was so intense and I found myself working every weekend to honour the commitment. This was the first time I’d pre-recorded content and there were some steep learning curves in terms of equipment, planning, recording times etc. This added to the stressful nature of the last quarter of the year!
Learning: Course creation always take longer than you think. It’s a huge commitment so don’t do it too often! I’d already done it once with my previous programme The 5K Experience and have no desire to do it again any time soon!
WHAT AM I EXCITED FOR IN 2022?
Completing Amplify content. And I’m pleased to say on writing this in July 2022, this is done! To have a pre-recorded programme which delivers awesome results is magical. It’s exactly where I wanted to be, and now I can give my full attention to serving clients within Amplify, and marketing and sales.
Reach 30K recurring months with one offer. It’s all growing nicely and now I just need to hold laser focus and stick to one thing.
Grow my audience by 2000. I’m making up for my complacency in 2021 and want to grow my email list by at least 2000 in 2022.
Start a You Tube Channel. It’s been a long time coming and this was one of my 2021 goals which didn’t get done. I’ve been wanting to move away from social for years but not taken the action. 2022 is the year.
Write a book. This has been my life long dream. Initially I thought it would be fiction, but now I see the non-fiction book I’m going to write as clear as day. Watch this space.
THIS YEAR’S THEME
2021 was the year I tore down my complicated business model to build it back from the ground up. My word for the year was ‘align’ and it couldn’t be more fitting.
My word for 2022 is Simple. One ideal client. One message. One core offer. One audience growth strategy. One sales system.
Read my other annual reviews here: