2021 Annual Review – The Year of the Rollercoaster
This post contains affiliate links. Don’t worry, I only share about things I love, and there’s no extra cost to you if you purchase
Happy New Year! I don’t know how it’s already 2022 already, but here it is! Last year felt like both the longest year AND the shortest year all in one. Do you ever feel that way?
2021 was a roller coaster of a year, that’s for sure! I had some of my best income months, felt super aligned, worked with dreamy clients and invested in some amazing coaching programs.
I also burned out, spent months in lockdown (and thankfully all made it out the other end in one piece - I’m sure all you mums of 4-year-olds will understand!) and dealt with some pretty intense morning sickness.
And yep, that was just a pregnancy announcement I snuck in there! 👶
We unexpectedly found out in October that we’re expecting, and will be welcoming our little girl to the family in May.
So yeah, a bit of a whirlwind around here!
I love to take some time at the start of the year to reflect on the last year in business, and make plans for the year ahead. I also love reading these posts from others, so I’m sharing mine here in case you enjoy these types of posts as much as I do!
I’ve previously shared more about how I set goals and plan for the year over here, so if you’ve been struggling with the process, go check it out!
Here’s what you’ll find in my annual review:
(You can click on any of these links below to skip straight to the juicy bits!)
I’m excited for 2022 so let’s dive in!
What went well last year?
Finding out we have baby #2 on the way
Obviously this is a big one, so it deserves the top spot on the list!
We were in lockdown here from July until October and as we started coming out of it, I realised I was pregnant. We weren’t exactly trying for a baby, so it came as a bit of a shock even though we’re excited about it!
It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster of morning sickness, exhaustion and feeling pretty much all of the pregnancy symptoms people tell me about but I didn’t expect since my first pregnancy was so easy. Thankfully we’re halfway through now, so I’m feeling a lot better!
We’re all excited to be welcoming our baby girl in May, especially our little guy, who’s already in love with his little sister and loves telling my tummy how cute she is! Oh, and telling me that she looks like an alien! 😂
Now it’s time to plan for maternity leave. I’ve never given this any thought before since I started my business after my son was born, but I know I’ll be off from May-August. I’ll share what I’m doing to prepare for maternity leave in another post.
Working with the most aligned clients
The clients I’ve worked with this year have been some of the dreamiest clients ever and I’ve really enjoyed the projects I’ve worked on this year.
I completed 4 website redesigns, 6 design days (which I don’t even have listed on my website!), and a heap of one-off strategy and lesson calls, and truly love the transformations that have occurred. Not bad considering I unintentionally took half the year off!
I noticed at the start of the year, my energy towards selling shifted in a big way, and suddenly I was attracting more of these dreamy clients and sales were easier than ever. I was getting immediate yesses on calls and even from chatting in messages. Up until this point, all of my sales have been on calls or from following up, so this was an interesting shift.
This year I also dabbled with affiliate marketing, which has been an interesting experiment. I made 4% of my total income from affiliate sales and it was probably the easiest money I made all year, since I only posted a handful of times about courses I’ve taken and loved. This is definitely something I’ll experiment more with this year!
Investing in coaching programs rather than courses
I love learning new things, so I’m a bit of an online course junkie. This year I decided to change things up and invest in coaching programs instead.
I don’t always have a good completion rate with courses, and found coaching gave me a whole new level of accountability and support, so I was able to achieve much better results. Having regular calls and deadlines helped me stay on track and kept me doing the work, rather than just saving the course to come back to sometime in the future.
These coaching investments have created some big changes in my mindset, how I structure my services and how I want to market my business going forward. I still have a few things to pull together, but I love the big shifts I’ve made this year!
If you’re wondering what coaching programs I’ve invested in, here they are:
5k Experience with Gemma Gilbert – This program was aimed at creating consistent 5k months in your business without working endlessly. We worked on upleveling my offers and pricing, creating a consistent lead generation process, audience growth and nurturing, nailing my sales process and creating a CEO mindset. I’m not sure if Gemma will offer this again in the future, but I highly recommend it if she does!
Feel Complete Marketing with Sam Kirk – This program was all about finding what feels good in your marketing so you can show up in a way that feels right for you. I’ve always felt like social media was necessary as a business owner, but it doesn’t always feel good as an introvert, so it was good to step back and look at what I do enjoy most. That happens to be my Facebook group, my blog and online summits.
The Self-Discovered Brand with Hollie Ellis – This program is all about your brand foundations and really nailing things like your vision, messaging, story, what makes you different, your position in the market, your brand touchpoints and so much more. I was feeling out of alignment with my business earlier this year after how much it’s grown and changed over the last 3 years, and this was a perfect way to reconnect with where I’m going again before I rebrand and redo my website.
Visibility Breakthrough with Rebecca Taylor – This program was all about getting visible so you can have a bigger impact and attract clients that light you up. I loved this program for the tips for tips around mastering video and selfies, ways you can get visible and the journaling prompts to help you uncover what is holding you back from putting yourself out there.
Experimenting with content
This year I started playing around with the content I shared. I am telling more stories and posting more thought-provoking posts and was more consistent with social media than I ever have been at the start of the year.
Storytelling doesn’t come naturally to me even after being a scrapbooker for a very long time, so it was really fun to experiment, and I found it had a really great response! My most popular post below was when a certain little mister broke into my LOCKED craft room and trashed it… Fun times!
I noticed for the first half of the year when I was experimenting with content, the ideas flowed easily and my posts were quicker to write. A big part of that was not second-guessing what I wrote and being more ME in my writing. It was a great way to build momentum and post consistently and I’m working on a daily writing habit this year to try to capture the fun of this again (more on this below).
Setting up Profit First
I’m actually quite good with numbers and money in general, but I’ve always found business finances intimidating! Towards the end of the year, I decided to read Profit First and started implementing the system in my business.
The Profit First system is pretty straightforward, but it made me look at my finances in a different way. I realised my expenses are way too high (mostly due to the online course addiction I mentioned!), so I’ve cut them down a lot and set up a streamlined system to prepare for tax, set aside a consistent income and also have profit in my business.
I’m only a few months in and still have some adjustments to go with the percentages, but overall it’s made me even more confident in my business decision making since I’m able to see right away when I have money in the right accounts and I know exactly what expenses I have due and when so I can save for them in advance.
Getting Visible
I set a visibility goal of being featured 36 times, whether it was from guest lives, online summits, guest blog posts, podcast interviews, etc. This is an ongoing goal I set most years for a bit of fun.
I didn’t quite hit my target (I only ended up with 33), but that was still an awesome effort since I unexpectedly took half a year off in my business! I ended up with:
24 guest lives and interviews in Facebook groups and on Instagram
Recorded 2 podcast episodes that will go live early this year
I unexpectedly ended up with 7 backlinks to my website from other bloggers who were referencing some of my blog posts
I was quoted on Greg Faxon’s blog where he shares some of the best coaching websites of 2022 and deadly website mistakes according to designers
I wrote a guest blog post for Katie Earl on the finding the best keywords so your blog posts get found on Google
I also did 8 Facebook lives in my own Facebook group and wrote 10 new posts on the blog. Click the images below to see the most popular posts on my blog last year:
Is your website booking you clients while you sleep?
This free website audit checklist will show you what’s working on your website (and what’s not!) so you’ll know exactly what updates to make to help you grow your leads and bookings on autopilot.
What didn't go so well last year & what did I learn from it?
I dropped the ball with marketing
At the start of the year, I built up massive momentum in my marketing by posting consistently, changing up the types of content I shared and running a marketing festival, but by July, I was feeling burnt out.
The virus-that-shall-not-be-named was getting on top of me, I was feeling isolated from family and friends, I was feeling burnt out with social media and then we went into lockdown, so I pressed pause on marketing for a while.
By the time I was ready to get back into things again, I was feeling quite a lot of resistance after not writing consistently for so long.
The Lesson: Consistency and habits make all the difference for me when it comes to marketing. I’m able to build momentum and writing becomes easier and more fun! This year I'm getting back into a daily writing practice.
Not having a dedicated office space
I’ve run my business from a desk in the living room from the start. It used to work really well for me since I was mostly working in the evenings after the boys were in bed or when I was home alone.
But then our buddy Covid struck and we went into lockdown.
With all of us home ALL THE TIME, it was impossible to focus and get anything done. It was too noisy, little mister would constantly have questions or want to play, and it was hard to shut down from work since the computer was always visible.
Basically, my set-up was failing as a workspace AND failing as a living area.
What’s funny is that I actually have a craft room/office space already, I just don’t work in there since it can be a little too quiet and secluded at times and I can’t easily move around since I don’t have a laptop.
The Lesson: I need a laptop and to set my office up in a way that works for me (and then set up the living room so it’s a relaxing haven!). This will mean a huge clean out and a new work desk and chair. I can't wait!
Mindless scrolling
During lockdown, I found myself more attached to my phone than ever. It started as a bit of an escape from the stress of everything going on, but the bad habit has now outstayed its welcome.
I already have all the alerts turned off on my iPhone because the little red dots that call for my attention stress me out way too much, but now it’s time to break the urge to always grab my phone to mindlessly scroll Facebook or Instagram or check my emails.
The Lesson: Random scrolling really impacts my focus so it needs to go! I’ll be uninstalling the apps that suck all my time (AHEM Facebook, Instagram, email and phone games) and I’ll be keeping my phone away from me while I work so I don’t get urge to check it all the time.
Hustling and not respecting my own boundaries
I’ve noticed a recurring money block that comes up for me is the belief that you have to work hard to make money. It shows up in the forms of overdelivering, not respecting my own boundaries (which is all from my doing, not client expectations), and doing a heap of little things that don’t actually move my business forward, and has led to burnout before.
Realistically, I know this belief isn’t true in any way, since my best months in business have always been the months where I have worked less, taken more time for self-care and have felt aligned with what I’m doing. My energy flows better and I’m in a much higher vibe state. Yep, I know that sounds a little woo considering I’m a very practical person, but I’m not sure of how else to describe it!
The Lesson: I need to work on this mindset block and create new habits to limit hustling. This means narrowing down what I most enjoy in my business and what gets the best results and cutting out other stuff that's just taking up time, and also reviewing my contracts and communications to better communicate my boundaries.
My favourite courses and tools from last year
It’s no secret that I love learning, and this year I’ve done some pretty amazing courses and used so pretty amazing tools to run my business.
Here are some of my favourite courses:
Marketing without Social Media, Work Less Earn More and Money and Manifesting courses from Leonie Dawson
The Today Not Tomorrow Masterclass Library (I especially loved the Game Planning sessions, Facebook Audience Growth masterclass, all of the content creation masterclasses, Sales and Objection Handling training and Profit First sessions)
The Digital Lab membership from Megan Martin
The Customization Geeks Club membership from Beatriz Carbello
And these are the top tools I use to run my business:
Squarespace for all things website. My clients and I all love it for its simplicity and design capability. Get 10% off your first year using the code JHD10
Dubsado for all things client management. Think sending contracts, invoicing and getting paid, proposals, questionnaires and automating all the admin. Use this link to get 20% off your first month or year when you sign up
MailerLite for all things email marketing. It’s free for up to 1000 subscribers, super easy to use, and has a lot of functionality built-in
Is your website booking you clients while you sleep?
This free website audit checklist will show you what’s working on your website (and what’s not!) so you’ll know exactly what updates to make to help you grow your leads and bookings on autopilot.
What am I working on in 2022?
Creating a daily writing habit
I touched on this a little above, but I am working on creating a daily writing habit. I’m aiming to spend 30-60 minutes a day writing content focusing mainly on blog posts and emailing my lists.
I definitely won’t be posting daily since it takes me about 3 hours to write a solid blog post, but it could be anything from outlining a post, fleshing it out, researching stats, editing OR updating an older post to make it more relevant.
Upgrading my office and getting a laptop
Since realising my workspace isn’t working for me, upgrading my office has moved up the priority list. I already have a new chair on the way and know which laptop I’ll be getting, plus I’m going through a big clean out and working out what desk I want.
I’m really looking forward to creating an inspiring space that I like to be in, but mostly I’m excited to have a laptop again so I have the option to work from cafes or the library again!
Rebranding and relaunching my website
This one has been on my list for over a year since I’m itching to move from Squarespace 7.0 to 7.1, but I’ve felt a bit of resistance to it because my website has gotten quite BIG over the years (50+ blog posts and 50+ other pages) and I get great feedback on it.
I’ve definitely outgrown this website though, and already have some ideas for a new look. I’m excited to have my first brand photoshoot later this year once bub’s out, then it will be all systems go! I’ll share more of the process here as I go, including plenty of tips!
Final Thoughts
So there you have it, 2022 in a nutshell. Obviously I’m keeping it fairly low key this year since I know I’ll be off for 5 months, but I’m feeling really excited for the year ahead!
If you want to check out my past annual reviews to snoop on whether I make the same mistakes over and over again, you can read my 2019 annual review here, and my 2020 annual review here 🙂
Do you do an annual review each year? I’d love to check out yours if you share it in the comments!
Is 2022 the year you create a website that you’re proud to show off and opens the wallets of your dreamiest clients? If so, let’s make it a reality!
