Last Updated on February 23, 2024 by Paula
Am I the only one glad that 2023 is over?
To be fair, most of the year wasn’t bad.
2023 was a good year for my business. Income wise it was my biggest year yet. I also got out of my shell and participated in some collaborations which I enjoyed so much. I launched my new web design VIP Day package, Two Days to Launch, which I’ve had great feedback on. So overall 2023 wasn’t bad, but those last few months were rough, which I’ll go into more detail later in the post.
Right now, let’s look at what I learned in 2023.
It’s ok to pivot your goals
My big goal for 2023 was to speak at 7 summits or podcasts.
I spoke at 3 summits and was interviewed for 2 podcasts.
So it may look like I didn’t meet my goal but on a whim one day I decided to apply for a Bundle and got hooked!
It was so much fun so I started focusing my efforts on those instead and I ended up participating in 7 bundles last year! So if you add those to my original goal I exceeded it!
One reason I decided to focus on bundles is because my second goal was to grow my email list to 1000+. And I was able to do that because of bundles.
Pivoting my main goal just a bit to include bundles as part of my collaboration strategy helped me reach my main two goals!
How Podcasts, Summits, and Bundles actually help you
Going into 2023, I had never participated in the above though I had many clients who did.
Actually participating myself really helped me to see how these things work to help you grow your business.
Podcasts and Summits helped to bring in leads (only a few) to my business but didn’t really help me grow my email list like I thought they would. Part of that could be my lead magnet which I plan to refresh this year, but I’ve also heard from others who had the same experience.
Podcasts and Summits are great for helping building authority. Not just for myself as a business owner, but the backlinks I received from these helped to increase my domain authority too! I went from a 14 in 2022 to a 25 in 2023. I’m really pleased with that!
Bundles are the best for helping to grow your email list. The key is to participate in ones that are for your target audience so that you’re building a list of people who actually want to hear what you have to say.
So including all of these in my collaboration strategy is definitely the best option for me. Though I do want to look into some new collaboration options in 2024 – things like email or Instagram takeovers and guest blog posts.
Come before winter
Winter was rough for my family and community.
In the span of just 3 months I went to five funerals. I lost my uncle, my husband lost his Grandma, my brother-in-law lost his Grandpa, my best friend lost her Grandma. And our church lost a young man, named Terry. He left behind a wife and two young children.
It was a heartbreaking few months. As a Christian, I know I will see them all again someday but that doesn’t ease the pain of losing them.
The loss of my uncle was very hard on me. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. I kept saying I would go, but for some reason kept putting it off.
In 2 Timothy 4:21, Paul tells Timothy, “Do thy diligence to come before winter.” I didn’t. And I don’t want to make that mistake again. If there is someone you love tell them. Don’t wait until it’s too late.
Goals for 2024
1. Participate in 10 collaborations. This will be a mix of podcasts, summits, bundles, and other opportunities that may come my way. This will allow for one collaboration per month with two months off. I feel like this will keep collaborations from becoming too overwhelming or time consuming.
2. Grow my email list to 2000+ – email will always be where it’s at if you’re a small business owner! So it’s important to grow your list and grow an engaged list. One thing I will be doing to help that this year is creating a new lead magnet or revamping my current one. I also need to refresh my welcome sequence.
3. Add more Canva templates to my shop – y’all! I had so much fun creating Canva templates last year! I’ll definitely be adding more this year! It’s fun to creative projects like these just for my business.
I’d love to hear how 2023 was for you and what your goals are for 2024! Comment below and tell me all about it. 🙂
