Episode #15: My 2023 End-of-Year-Review (Spoiler: I Didn’t Hit My Revenue Goal)

Solo
Written By Eman Ismail

Hey You! It’s been a while. So let’s catch up.

In this episode, I walk you through my 2023 – which honestly was a bit of a challenge!

I missed my financial goals, I went through a client drought at one point, and I had some personal losses too.

I review the year, share my ups and downs, and give you behind-the-scenes access to my business. Then I look ahead to 2024 and share the goals I’ve set for myself.

Plus, I make a BIG announcement – so stay until the end to hear what it is 🙂

 
 

Listen to the Episode

 
 

Show notes

  • Hey, welcome to Mistakes That Made Me. I'm Eman Ismail, your host, and this episode of Mistakes That Made Me is not an interview. It's my 2023 end-of-year review. I'm sharing how my 2023 went, following on from the solo episode that I shared with you back in October. Spoiler alert: I did not hit my financial goal for 2023, and I have a lot of feelings and thoughts to share on that.

     

    Don’t worry, the interviews you know and love will be back in a couple of weeks. My first interview of 2024 is with Jordan Gill from Systems Saved Me, and that's going to air on the 15th of January. I'm so excited for you to listen to this interview because it is so great. Jordan is so vulnerable and open and honest about her biggest business mistake. If you haven't already, follow and subscribe to the show so that you get notified when this episode with Jordan drops. It's great. You don't want to miss it. 

     

    I want you to stay right until the end for this episode because I'm going to be sharing some major news about the future of this podcast and my business—news that I have been keeping mostly to myself for months, and I am so ready to share it with you.

     

    Before I go on, I just want to say, if you haven't already listened to my solo episode called Celebrating 5 Years in Business & 6 Figures in 4 Months, go and listen to that episode, then come back to this one so you have some more context. I recorded that solo episode in September, published it in October.

     

    It was supposed to be a mid-year review, but I published it too late because I sat on it for weeks. I recorded the episode, and then I was unsure about whether to post it. And me and my podcast producer, Zuri, had differing opinions on how that solo episode would go down. We had different thoughts on how you might respond to it, but I really felt like you would love that solo episode, that you would love me diving into my business a little bit more. But I was a little bit unsure, so I recorded it, sat on it for weeks, finally released it in October. And honestly, I have never had so much positive feedback from any episode. 

     

    So many listeners got in touch to tell me how much they enjoyed that solo episode. So I will be doing more of them so that I can give you an insight into my own business and my life as a business owner, and so that you can, I guess, follow me and be up to date with what's going on with me and my business and the mistakes that I'm making. And I'm sure there will be very soon an episode of my own, the mistakes that made me, but soon. Not now, I'll do that soon.

     

    So let's get into this 2023 end-of-year review. In case you don't know what I do outside of this podcast, I run Eman Copy Co. I'm an email strategist and copywriter for online business owners—that's online business owners, e-commerce brands, personal brands, service providers—and I basically help businesses make more money through email. That's my main thing. So I work on a lot of live launches, a lot of evergreen funnels, and really just lifecycle emails, so email campaign sequences that are constantly running in the background to either nurture someone's audience or get them to buy, or, usually, a bit of both.

    In terms of my team and who I'm working with, I have a small team. I have an assistant called Rukeya. I currently have a social media manager called Nyla. Both are brilliant. I occasionally hire trusted subcontractors and work with those copywriters to deliver client projects. My experience with this in the past was that it didn't work too well, but now, it works brilliantly because I truly trust these copywriters and also, my brain is still all over these projects. So I'm never handing off projects for another copywriter to do and that's it. It's me working on the strategy with them and then we deliver the project together. So from the client's perspective, they get two copywriter brains on their project for the price of one. And that went really well, especially in the first six months of the year. So I definitely see myself doing some more of that. I also have my podcast producer, Zuri, who I work with, obviously, when this podcast is in season, and we've been working together quite a bit recently to get the new 2024 episodes to you.

     

    So when I was sitting down and planning this end-of-year review, it was difficult to remember how the year had actually gone. I sat through my entire 2023 photo and video album and month by month made myself remember how the year went. I wrote down some of the highlights or things of importance that happened, and I was really happy to see that so many of those things that I jotted down were actually personal, family, life-related highlights. Some of them were business of course, but actually, more of them were life-related, e.g. my mum coming to visit and staying with me in January, a barbecue with friends in May after a long and grueling winter, a date night at my new favourite pizza place, and then, trigger warning: death, my Nana's death and funeral in July and August, this podcast winning two podcast awards in September. 

     

    I feel like I have lived life more than ever before this year. I had more of a life outside of work than ever before. And I feel like something that my old therapist once told me when I was struggling to, I guess, communicate the then state of my life, she told me that life isn't always black and white. Life can be great whilst also being really rubbish at exactly the same time. And I feel like that has been this year for me in business. Business can be great, and it can also be not great at exactly the same time.

     

    When I was trying to remind myself of the year that I've had, I went back to my 2022 end-of-year review because I thought it'd be helpful to look back on, yes, the 2023 goals I'd made and whether I had actually reached those goals, but I wanted to remember the context of me creating those 2023 goals, what was happening in 2022 for me to then create the 2023 goals that I did. So I want to rewind and take you back to the things that didn't work in 2022 because I made a whole list, and it was really interesting to see because I'd completely forgotten about this.

     

    So before I even talk about my 2023 goals, let's just go back to 2022 and see what wasn't working in 2022 for me to make these 2023 goals. And I just want to say I think this end-of-year review process is really important for me to do because it allows me to just give myself the time and space to reflect and think and honestly ponder about where my business has gone and where it's going. I think it's so easy to just get caught up in the doing, doing, doing of being a business owner. And this end-of-year review process just gives me the time to create an intentional business. And I want to do this more often where I'm doing even quarterly end-of-year reviews—where I'm doing quarterly reviews. And I probably won't share them all, but I do like to share my end-of-year review because I think it's really important that I give you a more balanced view of my business. 

     

    I think so many of the time, it's really easy to just highlight all the good stuff. And I think if I'm going to highlight the good stuff as and when the good stuff happens, I think it's really important that I also share the stuff that isn't going so well, because, again, it's all about balance, and it's so easy for this to just become a highlight reel, and I don't want it to be that.


    Okay. So, what didn't work in 2022? This is what my 2023 goals are based on. Are you ready? Admin, particularly my emails. So I find admin generally just really hard. I find replying to emails difficult because it's not just emails, it's messages from everywhere. Sometimes I feel very overwhelmed by the number of ways in which people can contact me. [laughs] So there's always messages going off somewhere, and I just feel like there's always someone who's disappointed in me because I've not responded to their message or I’ve not responded to their message fast enough. And so I can get really overwhelmed by that. And so emails were something I was really struggling with.

    The other thing I've written here is that I overcommitted to webinars and masterclasses for other people. So I was getting a lot of requests from people to do webinars, masterclasses, speaking stuff, which is great. I love being requested to do that. I love doing that, but I definitely said yes to too many things in 2022, and all of them were free as well. And I was completely overwhelmed. And I just remember thinking, imagine if I'd put this much effort into creating webinars, masterclasses, and that kind of thing for my own audience, on topics that I really wanted to speak about. And so that made me think a lot about, I guess, just being more intentional about saying yes and no to things. Really saying no [laughs] to more things.

     

    I was inconsistent with my social media marketing. I just kind of posted whatever, whenever, instead of having a real solid strategy. And I remember first hitting six figures and thinking, oh, I did that without really posting on social very much, definitely without having social media strategy. So I wonder what I could do if I actually had a social media strategy. So that's kind of where my thoughts were back in 2022.

     

    In that same year, I made a wonky hiring decision. I can never say that I am blameless. I was not blameless in that situation, but I will say—and I think that's me being generous if I'm completely honest with you because, listen, this person over-exaggerated their abilities. They oversold their service. They promised me the sun, the stars, and the moon, and delivered like, I don't know, not the sun and the stars and the moon, [laughs] just not. 

     

    And so we had a whole situation. I actually sought advice from a couple of people first before I requested a refund ‘cause I was like, is it me? Are my expectations just too high? And they were like, oh, no, this is terrible. So yeah, I requested a refund. The person said they couldn't pay me back, or wouldn't pay me back, whatever. Anyway, so I then had to request my money back from the bank, and the whole thing. It was just so stressful. It was all so stressful. It actually happened at a time when I'd just come back from maternity leave. So, really, it was a significant investment for me at that time. And I was really disappointed in the whole thing.

     

    And what I learnt then was, number one, yeah, I probably do have high standards, for myself and for other people. And number two, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with having high standards. So yeah, the wonky hiring decision of 2022. There was also a wonky hiring decision of 2023, which I will get into. [laughs] I'll get into that in a little bit. Oh, I feel like you're going to think I'm the common denominator there, and I guess I am. But also, that was much more mutual. The wonky hiring decision of 2023 was much more mutual, so yeah, anyway.

     

    I also said in 2022 that I had not designated any time for learning so I learnt less, which was frustrating for me because I love learning, and I hadn't created any time to learn, which meant I just didn't learn very much. I didn’t increase my skills very much. I felt anyway, actively. Maybe passively, I did, I don't know, but actively, I hadn't. So that was something that I wanted to do but felt like, oh my gosh, I'm going to need another day in the week to have time for the learning and courses and that kind of thing.

     

    The other thing that wasn't working for me in 2022 was that I felt like I hadn't mastered any one marketing channel or platform, that I was doing a little bit of everything, and I was everywhere across platforms, but not really doing anything amazing on one specific platform. And I really wanted to be known for one specific platform more than any other, ideally, my newsletter.

     

    I also wrote down that I wasn't happy with the lack of physical exercise in my life. There was just no exercise. Bar walking, there was no exercise. That also decreased quite a bit once I got a car, but I do like to walk so I was walking, but other than that, just no physical exercise whatsoever. 

     

    I also wrote that my diet was an issue. Honestly, eating for me is not an enjoyment thing. I kind of just eat to survive, and I eat whatever I can to just eat as quickly as possible and move on to the next thing, which is something that I don't—I don't want that to continue. I have a very complicated relationship with food. So I also need to be kind to myself around that. I know that that's a whole lifestyle change, as is the wanting to have more physical exercise in my life. So I'm doing that, and I'm working on that slowly but surely.

     

    The other thing that I wrote down for what didn't work in 2022 was my lack of sleep. Now that was something that's kind of difficult for me to control because I have—I'm going to say baby ‘cause he'll always be my baby, but he is now two. At the time, he was one when I wrote this, and it was, is really difficult. I have spoken about this a lot, so you might be tired of me saying it, but some days I just feel physically ill. I just feel ill because I'm just so tired from how much me and him, baby, how much we don't sleep and the shared number of times that my sleep is interrupted and his as well. And so that's something that's been really difficult for the past couple of years. Just continuing to function feels really difficult sometimes. I nap a lot. Even just before recording this episode—I wanted to record this morning, but I couldn't because I was so exhausted. I needed to take a nap before I could. So I've been prioritizing naps because I've realised I can't function without them, which is frustrating because it means things get pushed, like I'm now doing this later than I wanted to, but also, I'm listening to my body, which is a good thing.

     

    And then the final thing that I wrote about what wasn't working in 2022 was that I wasn't reading enough, and that is linked to the lack of sleep because I was too exhausted to read. When you're that tired, who wants to read? I'm sorry. I don't want to. And this is coming from someone who has always been a huge reader. It's just part of my personality. Books are in my blood. But when you're so tired, when you're that tired, you just don't want to read. I'd rather just put on Netflix and consume a bunch of pointless shows. But I wasn't happy about that. I really wanted to get back to reading. 

     

    So this was the list of stuff in 2022 that was not working for me. And on the basis of that list, I then created these 2023 goals. So I like to divide my goals into life goals, business goals, and financial goals. So that's what I did for 2023. I'm going to walk you through my 2023 life goals, business goals, and then financial goals. But as I go along, I'm going to talk about how that goal played out in 2023 and review how that goal actually turned out, whether I hit it, whether I didn't, all that good stuff.

    Okay, so I'm going to start with life goals because I love that I incorporate life goals into my review of the year. I think it's so easy for me, me specifically, because I love my work and I love my business and I'm sure you feel the same way. It's so easy to just get wrapped up in your business and forget to have a life outside of work. And, again, I feel like this year is the year that I've had the most fulfilling life outside of work, which is great.

     

    So I'm going to start off with that. 2023 life goals. I wanted to travel. I put travel, and I did travel in 2023. I travelled twice. One of those times was to Barcelona in May with my family, and we just had the best time. It was really fun. We did something every single day. I'm one of those people who, on holiday, I'm an active kind of person. I like to go out and about and do things a lot. I know some people love to chill on holiday and stay in a hotel or Airbnb, that kind of thing. I really like to get out, and we did something every single day. It was so fun.

     

    I also had the chance to meet up with three friends, two business friends who live in Barcelona. So shoutout to Dionne, Delia, and Diana and we—Yeah, I love that alliteration as well. But Dionne is a copywriter who was actually part of my Like A Boss coaching program—so this is back in 2021—and helped her go from order taker business owner to boss business owner. And I've really been able to see that in her since knowing her, and obviously, I've stayed in touch with her and then I met up with her in Barcelona and she took me to the most gorgeous Caribbean restaurant and we just ate way too much and had so much fun and just caught up. And I loved being able to do that and me and being able to meet her face to face. Same with the other two girlies. So yes, travel, tick.

     

    The next goal was to take as much time off as I want. So in terms of the time off that I did take in 2023, I did take most of my kids' school holidays. I want to say all, but actually, it's December 29th and I am working, but that's because—I mean, I wouldn't usually be working at this time of year, but I wanted to catch up on a few things. So here I am. So almost took most of my kids' school holidays off, which is great. I took all of July off and half of August. Half of August was unintentional. Again, these are the months that my Nana died, and so I had to deal with that and take some extra time off for August because my head was just all over the place. I think ideally, I probably would have taken more time off, but also, I realised, you gotta work as well. So I am happy with the amount of time I took off.

     

    Number three, hire a PT, a personal trainer. I remember writing this goal and thinking, God, personal trainers are understandably—I respect you all personal trainers, but personal trainers are not a light investment. Mine certainly wasn't. And so I was like, I don't know how realistic this is going to be, but actually, I made it a priority and I did hire a personal trainer. I joined a gym, and I was really happy with the gym that I joined because as a Muslim woman who wears a hijab, it's really difficult for me to find a gym where I feel comfortable working out in. 

     

    And so I finally found a gym that actually has—actually, I found a whole franchise of gyms that have a women's section in that gym. So they have the main gym and then they have a women-only gym within the gym. And it's great because it's not just for Muslim women like me, you see all different types of women working out in this space and they also work out in the main gym as well, or they go back and forth. And basically, for whatever reason, some women choose to work out in this gym. I'm one of those women. It means that I can take my religious garms off. I can take my hijab off, my headscarf, my dress, and just work out comfortably. And so I was really happy to find that gym. And oh my gosh, a free car park. It has a free car park, which was very exciting for me. So I joined that gym and then I signed up for a personal trainer. 

     

    Now there was a bit of a spanner in the works because I ended up working with one personal trainer who was great, really enjoyed working with her, but then she left the gym. And so the way that it works is I couldn't go with her ‘cause she was leaving to another gym and my package was with the gym, not with the personal trainer individually. So I then had to wait for them to recommend me another personal trainer. So they did, but then I had to switch gym to—it was the same gym in a different location, which was just a bit difficult. And then of course you have to start all over again with a new personal trainer. And if you've ever had a personal trainer, you know that having a personal trainer is like choosing your therapist. There needs to be a relationship there, there needs to be a bond there of some sort. And so, you really just can't make that up, and it takes time to build that as well.

     

    So it was really frustrating for me that I kind of had to stop and start and stop and start, but I thought, you know what, I'm going to be adaptable. I'm not going to allow this to be an excuse for me to stop working out because it was actually going well. I'd finally got into a consistent pattern and a routine as well.

     

    So I ended up working out with this new personal trainer. And unfortunately, the bond just wasn't there. It didn't feel like a safe space. I have really complicated feelings about this, and I didn't even plan to share this much about this situation. But I feel like this person had really, really good intentions. However, they were just so subconsciously biased and racist. I'm just going to say it. That was the situation. Every session was somehow about my Blackness, was somehow about my religion. It was someone who was trying to come across as open and open-minded and I want to say hip, I don't know, but what it actually was, was it was an obsession with my race and my religion.

     

    And there were some really, really offensive comments made. And then there was an apology and there was an open discussion and we kind of got past that and I kept going, I kept training, and then I was just exhausted by the whole thing because when I go and train, I just want to go and train. I don't want to talk about being Black every single time [laughs] I go to train. I'm a human being, okay, we're all just human. And it became exhausting, like emotionally exhausting.

     

    So I stopped training with that person and now I'm probably just going to continue training by myself. I feel like I learnt enough to be able to move forward with what I learnt and we're going to keep going. We're all good. We're good now. I do want to say—No, I'm not. I was going to say what a nice person this person is, but I'm not going to go into defending them. I'm not. This is such a difficult topic. I'm not going to go into defending them because that's what I naturally want to do. But I do want to say that I'm not saying that this person was a terrible person, just that there was a lot of educating that was needed. And I don't always want to be the person who has to educate people. I really don't. Sometimes I just want to go to the gym, and I just want to work out, you know?

     

    Okay. So the next thing was that in 2023, one of my life goals was that I wanted to read more books, and yes, audiobooks do count. So, I did, I did. I read way more books. Okay, my favourite had to be Spare by Prince Harry. I love Harry and Meghan. I have a thing with the whole royal family. I love following what's going on with them. I love that the whole world is just so different from what we know. I don't know, even as a teen, from my teen years, I was always just like, I want to know more about this royal family. Anyway, I'm a big fan of Harry and Meghan, and I loved his book.

     

    Funnily enough, my most popular tweet ever, which is really annoying [laughs], was about Prince Harry's book. It got 582 likes, 77 retweets, and 16.5 thousand views. And it was a quote from the book. This was the quote, “He hated their hate, but oh, how he loved their love.” And that was Prince Harry talking about Prince Charles. He hated their hate, but oh, how he loved their love. So that's Prince Harry on Prince Charles on how he feels about the British press. I did read some other books, but that was definitely, probably my favourite.

     

    Another life goal was to, my final life goal actually, was to be more in the moment, to be more present. So as someone who has a history of anxiety—I say history of anxiety like I still don't have anxiety. I totally still have anxiety, and I'm still dealing with how to manage my anxiety. Being in the moment and being present is something that is very difficult for me because I'm always worried about the future and worrying about the future and living in the future thinking about the future, which means you're just kind of missing the present, and I want to stop doing that. And so something that I practised with my therapist is mindfulness, practising mindfulness, and that is just being in the moment, living in the present.

     

    And so I've been doing more things like grounding, which for me is putting even my feet in the ocean. And you know what, I'm going to look up the actual definition of grounding. It's a therapeutic technique that involves doing activities that ground or electrically reconnect you to the earth. And so, for me, that included putting my feet in the ocean, just taking my shoes off, socks off, feet in the ocean, and just really feeling the water around my feet and the coldness of the water and just allowing it to make me very present in that moment. There was a lot of walking in nature. I felt like this mindfulness was—I am very mindful when I'm exercising when I'm at the gym because you're so focused on your breathing, on the weights. And so that really works well for me. 

     

    And I also took up playing basketball this year, which I absolutely love, minus my injured finger, which by the way has been injured for like weeks, months. I was convinced that I'd broken something. I went to the doctors. I said, I need you to X-ray my finger because I have definitely broken, fractured something. Something's going on with my finger. They're like, nope, it's all fine. I'm like, fine? This is not fine. It's now been like three months and my finger is still hurting so badly and every time I knock it in the slightest, it swells up again. It's really frustrating because it's just not healing. And so I think I need to tape it—well, no, I do need to tape it up. It started healing but it's healing wrong because I just can't bend my finger.

     

    I could talk about this for days. Let me not. All you need to know is that I've started playing basketball. I absolutely love it minus the injured finger, and It's actually one of the best things I've done as an adult for myself, just playing sports again. I absolutely love it and I can't wait to start playing against other teams because I am very competitive and I'm also kind of good at basketball. I mean, okay, I'm not a pro basketball player, come on, but for someone who's not played basketball in 20 years, 15 years, it came back to me pretty quickly. It's fun. It's one of the highlights of my week. 

     

    So yes, that also has been fun and ensuring that I'm in the moment. My phone goes in my bag. I'm not available for emails or messages. I'm only away for like an hour and a half, and my eight-year-old really is just belling up my phone. I'm gone for like an hour and a half and my son is just calling and calling and calling and I can't answer his call because the phone is in my bag and I'm present and I'm playing basketball and this is just for me and I'm loving it. So I'm really glad that I did that for myself.

     

    So, all in all, my 2023 life goals have gone really well. I'm happy with that. So let's move on to 2023 business goals. So the first thing was to find my one marketing thing and be great at it. Yeah, I absolutely did that. So, for me, that was my newsletter. I really went in on my newsletter, on making it better, sending higher-quality emails. I increased the frequency of the emails I'm sending from one a week-ish to sending two emails a week. And that went really, really well. 

     

    If you go back and listen to my interview with Laura Belgray, I actually talk about my experience around this. Laura Belgray basically teaches the more emails you send, the more sales you make. And it's so true. That has definitely been my experience. We are fearful of sending more emails because we think that if we send more emails, we're going to annoy people. Actually, what happens is you send more emails—and I say more emails, please remember these are strategic, intentional emails that always provide value. Even when they're pitching something or they're selling something, they're still providing value and are good, great even, emails to read.

     

    So yes, I'm sending more emails. When you send more emails, you are really making yourself known to your subscribers. They are tuning in more. They are expecting your emails more. They're getting used to reading your emails more. They're getting to know you and your business more and what you do more, and they are learning to trust you more.

     

    And so yes, the sales increased. This year, I have made more money through my newsletter than I have ever made before in my five years of business by far. Definitely five figures. I wish that I had sat down and calculated it for you, but I will say that all my digital products I sell through my newsletter, and I mean, I'm going to go into figures later, but that's already five figures. And I've also gotten my first client, significant client, from my newsletter directly, which was amazing. So that's another 13K. It's gone really well.

     

    And I think what I will be doing is I will be continuing to focus on creating amazing content so I can firstly, increase the number of subscribers on my email list and work on growing that. Number two, continue to send great valuable emails. And number three, make more sales. So hopefully in 2024, I'm going to send three emails a week instead of just the two. We'll see how that goes. But I'm going to talk about 2024 goals after I review my 2023 goals. So we'll get into that soon.

     

    I will say one big thing as well is that I moved to ConvertKit. Absolutely love ConvertKit. And just using a tool that I actually enjoy using versus the one I was using before means that I'm able to email more because I'm not stopping myself from emailing more because I don't want to go in to the email service, I don't want to use the tool. Actually, with ConvertKit, I love the tool, I want to use the tool, so I'm not avoiding using the tool. I go in, send the emails, and it's just a great experience all around. I will put my ConvertKit affiliate link in the show notes in case you want to check out ConvertKit because it really, really is worth knowing if you want to get serious about your emails.

     

    My second 2023 business goal was to hire a VA/online business manager, and I did that. I hired Rukeya. Rukeya is in South Africa. She helps me with all my admin stuff, my tech stuff. She's very good at tech stuff. She helped set up my evergreen funnel, all that good stuff. She replies to emails and manages all my inboxes—I have multiple. She helps me with customer service stuff. And she is also really big on systems and processes so she's helping me kind of clean up my backend with better systems and processes, with the standard operating procedures now that she's creating. I don't want to do this without Rukeya, put it that way. 

     

    She's been amazing and I'm so glad. I'm so glad to have her on my team. She is so thorough. She is so detailed. Put it this way. If there's ever a mistake that happens, I have learnt that Rukeya did not make the mistake. Eman, you made the mistake. It wasn't Rukeya, so don't even bother going to her. You go find out what you did wrong [laughs] because it was you. Rukeya doesn't make mistakes. That's how amazing she is. So I'm very, very pleased, blessed to have her on my team, and I like to think she enjoys working with me as much as I enjoy working with her.

     

    So my next 2023 business goal was to hire someone who can help manage my marketing/social media efforts. So this did happen, and then it unhappened, and then it happened again. So let me tell you. This was the wonky hiring decision of 2023. There was a whole hiring effort around hiring these two people—my virtual assistant, VA, and then also a marketing manager. I've created the most detailed job descriptions you've ever seen. Took me a week to create both, and people ended up stealing my job descriptions, by the way. 

     

    So what happened was I thought I'd found the perfect marketing person. I was so excited to work with her, and then it all just went downhill. And if I'm completely honest, I knew in the first week that this wasn't going to work, but because I'm too busy trying to be nice, I didn't do the hard thing that I needed to do, which was to just fire the person in the first week. So a bunch of stuff happened, and if you were to ask this person, I'm sure they have a different story because recollections may vary. “Recollections may vary”, in the words of the late queen. And everyone experiences things from their side of the story.

     

    Now my side of the story is that in the first week that we were working together—and I haven't shared who this is, so there is no history anywhere on the internet about who this is, so this is why I can tell you this. Otherwise, I wouldn't say it. But in the first week of working together, basically we'd agreed that this person was going to work a certain number of hours, they were going to deliver x, y, and z, and then I just didn't hear from them. That week, they just disappeared. And that really sucked because I was super excited about working with this person. And just goes to show that those first few touch points when you're onboarding someone, when you've just hired someone, is so important because they're excited. There's an excitement there. This person has spent a lot of money, usually, in working with you. And so, you just meet their excitement, make their excitement justified. And unfortunately, that didn't happen. The person just disappeared for that week.

     

    And so, then I had gotten in contact with them and was like, hey, everything okay? And then they said, basically a bunch of stuff happened, which by the way, it was just like, all the client stuff, all the like work stuff, things didn't pan out the way that they had planned it to. And that wasn't the issue because I know that life stuff happens. I know this, I get it. My issue was the lack of communication around this work stuff, this stuff that had just come up.

     

    I wish that the person had told me and let me know and communicated that. And I knew immediately through the lack of communication and also the lack of understanding about the lack of communication afterwards when we're having discussion that this was not a good fit because we just had different expectations of what was okay and what wasn't.

     

    And so, at that point, I should have just dissolved the partnership, but I didn't because I thought maybe that's a bit too harsh. Maybe that wouldn't be nice of me. I don't know if that'd be nice of me. I should probably just give them another chance and let's just see how it goes. But already I'm feeling like, oh, this isn't going to work. But I let the situation go on for another two months until the person really proved to me that this just isn't working. And it wasn't all their fault either. It was also me because I was so interested in being nice that maybe I didn't communicate clearly enough, as clearly as I should have, as a leader, as someone who's leading a team in this situation. That's the problem with wanting to be nice and being a people pleaser, is that nice isn't going to get you anywhere.

     

    So I think my new goal is to not—my goal shouldn't be to be nice. It should be to be respectful and compassionate. There's a difference because I feel like sometimes in wanting to be nice and to be liked, I am walking all over my own boundaries and I am kind of sacrificing myself, my values, my business in some ways so that someone can say that I'm nice and liked and that they like me. And so we're not going to do that anymore in 2024. We are looking to be respectful, and we are looking to be compassionate, but also, I'm going to respect myself and respect my own business as well. 

     

    So the wonky hiring decision of 2022, [laughs] maybe I didn't learn too much from that because, again, I had this wonky hiring decision of 2023. But I will say that one thing I probably did learn is the first wonky hiring decision made me probably realise very quickly that the second one was also a wonky hiring decision that I should get out of. I am proud of myself that I eventually got out of that situation a couple of months in because I think the old me would have just stayed in it for months and months, paying a lot of money to someone that I just wasn't happy working with. We left on good terms. There's no bad blood between us whatsoever.

     

    And, again, I am sure that if this person were here telling their side of the story—I did consider bringing them on to the podcast so that they could maybe talk about the mistakes I made, but actually, I don't think this person would be open to that, so that's not gonna happen. I'm sure their version would be different because, again, recollections may vary, and that's okay.

     

    The next business goal was for me to create a teeny tiny Eman Copy Co. team of copywriters, a maximum of two copywriters plus my editor. Yes, that did happen. I did informally, it's not formalized, create a small team of copywriters that I work closely with on certain projects. It's two copywriters that I work particularly closely with regularly. And I want to formalize this in 2024. Moving forward, I want this to be a more formal thing. I want to share who these people are with my clients so that when my clients think about working with me, they're not necessarily just working with me, they know that it might also be this person or this person and, you know, it's a collective. It's us working together. So yes, they come to work with me, but they also get these people working on our projects as well. And so it's looking like it'll probably be the two copywriters and then a messaging expert who does interviews, surveys, that kind of thing. And then also my editor as well. So, yeah, I'm excited to make that more formal and I imagine it being a kind of micro agency potentially, but we'll see, we will see.

     

    And then the final goal for my 2023 business goals was to sell more digital products. And I specifically put that my goal was to sell between 30K to 60K USD, and I did achieve that. I did achieve that. So I just calculated this earlier, and I do want to say these are not exact numbers because I've had to exchange the currency and all that kind of stuff. And also, these are not numbers from my accountant. They are numbers from my records. And so, again, it is revenue. And this does not include Stripe, PayPal fees, it doesn't include taxes, anything else. It's all just pure revenue. So in 2023, I sold $31,605 worth of digital products. So basically $31,500, which I'm really happy with. I'm really happy with that. And I can see that was an increase on the previous year, and hopefully, that will just continue to increase.

     

    I will say the number is actually slightly higher because before I went to bed last night, someone else bought my course through my evergreen funnel, which was super exciting. By the way, if you remember what I spoke about in my previous solo episode, Celebrating 5 Years of Business, I was working on creating an evergreen funnel so that I could create passive income, and I did that. And the passive income is passive incoming. Yesterday, I was sat just getting ready for bed in front of the TV and someone bought my course, and it's just the best feeling ever. So hopefully that will continue to increase. 

     

    Okay, let's move on to my 2023 financial goals and share what my final numbers were for 2023. Okay, so first of all, the goal was to hit 200K USD, so that would have been 50K a quarter. That would have been 16,700 a month. Now, when I was actually writing these 2023 financial goals, I was actually ahead of that goal, and so I was feeling quite good about this goal. And by the end of April, I had already hit 100K, so I was feeling particularly good about this goal. And it felt not just achievable, not just realistic, but really, really doable. I was like, this doesn't feel hard. This feels natural. It feels like I'm doing this and there is no tension or resistance. It feels natural and good and like this is going to happen.

     

    And so, I'm going to actually share what I did end up making, which I've already, spoiler alert, told you. [laughs] I've already told you in the spoiler alert that I didn't quite hit my financial goal. But before I do share my actual figure, I do want to share that I am talking about pure revenue here. So, again, this is just everything that I made, but I also do want you to consider that I have expenses as well. I paid, obviously, taxes, corporate taxes. I have other business expenses. I pay myself my salary. So there’s loads of numbers to consider here and there are loads of numbers that I'm not sharing here, but I do definitely want to clarify that I did not take home this number. I did not take home a six-figure salary. This is revenue that I'm talking about.

     

    So the final number of 2023, which by the way, is already, again, slightly outdated because I made some digital course products last night passively, but okay. The number I ended on, on the 28th of December, as of recording this, is $157,658. So again, basically, that's 157,000 and a half, or if we're going to round up, we can round up to 160,000-ish, right? So let's break that down. First of all, it was just over 40K below my actual goal, which doesn't feel like a huge number. I feel like a few years ago that would have been like, oh my God, I was so far away from my goal. But actually, with the numbers that I've been playing with for the past couple of years, this really feels like I was just at the edge of my goal. I was so close. This is just two clients away from the 200K. And that already I think in itself is just something I want to note because that's a huge mindset shift. Again, a few years ago, 40K would have been like, oh, I was miles away from my goal, but no, it feels like I was right on the edge. I was just a couple of clients away.

     

    So let's break that figure down. I already said that $31,605 of that was made from digital products and course sales. So that equals about 20%, almost exactly 20% of that final figure. And then the rest of that, 80%, was from client work, one-to-one client work from Eman Copy Co. and the work that I do with my one-to-one clients. So let's break that down even further. That almost $160,000 was made up of working with nine clients in 2023. Eight out of nine of those clients, again, eight out of nine of those clients booked me for more than one project. I worked on 26 projects altogether with those nine clients, and the one out of nine who didn't book me for more than one project is someone who I literally just off-boarded yesterday on the 28th of December. So we didn't get time to book her next project, but she's already said that she does want to book me in for another project.

     

    And so what's been really, I think, important for me is that I don't work with a lot of clients. I work with a few clients, and I maximize the number of times I'm able to work with them. I really, really prioritise retention. I talked about this a lot in my previous solo episode. Go listen to it if you haven't, but I really do prioritise retention over acquisition. I focus on retaining existing clients and working with them as much as possible versus the effort that it takes to go out and find new clients all the time. And, again, my rates are at a place where I don't need millions of clients. I need nine clients, okay, maybe ten. Ideally ten to twelve clients. And okay, no, that's not even true because if I just had my existing clients book me in for a couple more projects, I probably would have hit my goal, and that's still nine clients.

     

    Interestingly, in 2022, I also had nine clients as well, so nine feels like a good number for me. I like that number. Four out of nine of those clients were clients from 2022—so people that I'd already been working with in 2022 that, again, hired me in 2023. And then five of those nine clients were brand new clients. Thought it might be interesting to just share where they found me. 

     

    So the thing is, is that actually, this information I'm about to give you is not about clients, like where clients found me. It's about where leads found me. And it's worth noting that leads don't always turn into clients. So I might have a billion leads from LinkedIn, but I know personally that my leads from LinkedIn just don't convert into clients like ever, ever. So while the figure that I'm about to share is that I had 14 leads from LinkedIn in 2023, I know that none of them converted into clients, but I still thought this would be an interesting exercise.

    So where did my leads find me? Other. 29 leads found me through other, which is frustrating because I don't know what other means. Dubsado, which is how I got this information, doesn't allow people to give me more information on what other means. So frustrating, but there we go. The majority of people, I don't know, I don't know where the leads found me. 28 leads said they found me through a word-of-mouth referral, which I knew. I know that word-of-mouth referral is one of my most powerful ways of finding clients. Then it was Instagram. 18 leads said they found me through Instagram. 14 leads said they found me through LinkedIn. 5 leads said they found me through a podcast. 3 said they found me through a webinar or some kind of class that I did as a speaking engagement inside a community probably or a mastermind, that kind of thing. And 1 lead said they found me from Facebook, which is really interesting ‘cause I'm really not on Facebook and my business is not on Facebook. So yeah, that makes sense. But I'm surprised that even that one person found me.

     

    So, again, the majority of these didn't turn into clients, usually because most of the time, I'm very picky about who I work with because I know who I can help and who I can't help. So a lot of the time, I would have said no. And then in some other instances, the rate just didn't work out, their budget and that kind of thing. And a lot of these, I would have referred out to another copywriter who I think can do the job better, e.g. a farmer got in touch with me recently to do some email marketing for their farm. And it looked like such an interesting project, but I didn't think that I was the best person to help. So I recommended him to a copywriter friend of mine who I thought would be a better fit. So that kind of thing.

     

    Okay. So that is my 2023 review, the review of my goals. And so I just want to touch on how I'm feeling about not hitting my goal and I guess why didn't I hit my revenue goals because I’ve been thinking about that a lot and the things that I’ve learnt from not hitting my revenue goals.

     

    But I do just want to say that if you are interested in going back and watching my 2022 end-of-year review—because it's super detailed. I actually hosted it as a part of a—it was a paid product as part of my week of workshops back in January 2023. I shared my 2022 end-of-year review as like a webinar and I go into a lot of detail there. So if you are interested in that, I'm going to give you free access to that. Just head over to the show notes or to emancopyco.com/2022, that's emancopyco.com/2022, and sign up. You just need to put in your email address, and then I will send over the 2022 end-of-year review webinar for you to watch again, totally free. I share a lot about the state of my business then, what it looked like, that kind of thing, and really the foundations of my business. So if that sounds interesting, go get that.

     

    Now, how do I feel about not hitting my revenue goal in 2023? So initially, if I'm being completely honest, I was a bit embarrassed. And I was a bit embarrassed because—this is the only reason—Copyhackers, one of the most prestigious copywriting training centres in the copywriting world, featured me in their new book about six-figure copywriters. They featured me as a six-figure copywriter in this book. There's a whole chapter dedicated to me as a six-figure copywriter about how I got to this point, basically sharing the story of how I got to this point. And the idea of the book is that it helps copywriters who are not at the six-figure level get to the six-figure level. There's 22 of us sharing the different strategies we use to get to six figures.

     

    It's a really great book. And actually, I think it's probably beneficial to not just copywriters. I'm in that stage of my business where I didn't just want to learn from other copywriters anymore. I want to learn also from, yes, copywriters, but also all different types of people in all different types of businesses. So if you’re that type of person, maybe you're not a copywriter, but maybe you wanna still just see what other people are doing in other industries, this book might actually be helpful for you. Again, I'll put it in the show notes. I don't get any affiliate or anything like that for this. This has nothing to do with me. This is all a Copyhackers’ thing. It's just one chapter that is dedicated to me.

     

    Now, you will see, if you get that book or if you have read that book, that in my chapter, the final chapter, I talk about how I'm on track to hit 250K in 2023. Now, obviously, I didn't hit 250K, I didn't even hit 200K, but when I was being interviewed for the book, I absolutely was on track to hit 250K, as in it really just seemed inevitable, which really just proves that nothing is inevitable and business is just a rollercoaster. You never know, you never know what's going to happen.

     

    I do remember actually calling my friend, Summer, and saying, look—because Copyhackers actually sent us a draft of the book so we could review our own chapters before they went ahead and printed it. So they sent me the draft, and I immediately called Summer, and I was like, Summer, they've written that I'm on track to hit 250K because I told them that I am and I am on track to hit 250K, but I kind of don't want that in print because what if I don't hit it? How embarrassing is that? And Summer was like, Eman, just stop doubting yourself. Give me your numbers for the year. So we talked through my numbers, and she was like, yeah, 250K seems super doable. Have some confidence in yourself. Go for it. So, I was like, you know what? Yes, this puts extra pressure on me knowing my personality and my anxious personality sometimes, but okay. I'm gonna believe in myself. I can do this. And also, if I don't hit it, so what? I'm trying to convince myself, so what? But really, inside, I'm like, oh my God, if I don't hit, how embarrassing.

     

    So what I was worried about did happen. I didn't hit the 250K goal. I didn't even hit the 200K goal. So I felt initially a bit embarrassed because I was kind of thinking, oh, what are all the people reading this book going to think when I then share my end-of-year review on this podcast and I was just so far behind what I thought I was going to hit?

     

    But I don't feel that way too much anymore. I just feel like, you know, it is what it is. It happened. I really don't have anything to prove to anyone. Am I happy with my final numbers of the year? I really am because quite frankly, and I'm going to talk a bit more about this in a second, I still remember what it was like to be charging £15 an hour. And so I continue to be happy with what I have done this year. And hopefully people will, with me, learn lessons about why I didn't hit the goal and how we can maybe continue to work on hitting our goals, and also, how do we react when we don't hit our goals. It's all just learning lessons. There’s just stuff to learn in all this.

     

    The other way I feel, the other feeling I have about not hitting my revenue goal is, I feel like I have the obligation to be open about not hitting my, initially, 200K goal. Forget 250K because that's just what I thought I was on track to hit, but my actual goal was 200K. So I feel like I have an obligation to be open about the fact that I didn't hit my 200K goal because I share so much of the good money stuff. Even in the last episode, Celebrating 5 Years of Business and Celebrating 6 Figures in 4 Months, I feel like when I share the good stuff, I also then need to share the not-so-good stuff. So, again, you have that balanced and honest look into my business, so that I'm not presenting my business as something that it's not. Could I have done more to hit my revenue goal? Yes, absolutely. I absolutely could have, but I didn't. And this is something that I'm learning to change the way I think about this.

     

    So, here's the thing. I have been invited to speak at some really cool international speaking stuff and I haven't said yes to that. Inside me, I really want to say yes, but I say no. And I have said no. And in my mind, I tell myself, oh, it's because I have two kids. I can't travel all over the world and be doing international speaking stuff right now. I'm not in that season of life. And in a way, that's true for me. I know it's not true for all women. We all make different decisions around this and have different feelings about this. But for me, that was the case. That was the case for me. 

     

    And then one day I realised, well, it's not that I can't travel all over the world and do international speaking events. It's not that I can't, because I absolutely can, it's that I don't want to. I have chosen to prioritise being at home and close to my kids. And just changing that language from “I can't travel” to “I have chosen not to travel because it's not my priority in this season of life” gave me so much power back. And I just thought, that's it.

     

    And, again, this doesn't have to be for the rest of my career. This is the season of life that I'm in right now. This is what I've decided to prioritise. And in the same way, I think, could I have done more to hit my revenue goal? Yes, I absolutely could have. I could have done more. I could have worked harder. I could have spent more hours chasing clients and trying to find new clients. But I chose not to. I chose to not be a workaholic. I chose not to work myself into the ground. I chose to stay at my general reasonable working hours. I chose to prioritise my kids over my work.

     

    I chose not to work weekends when I didn't have to. I sometimes work weekends in extraordinary circumstances. If me and the kids have been sick and then I have some work to do, I'll generally work, I'll work on weekends then. But generally, I'm not working weekends. I choose not to work weekends. I choose to make less money than I could so that I can prioritise what's important to me. And so, again, that makes me feel really good about my revenue goal. I sacrificed making more money because I know what's important to me, and money isn't the most important thing to me. 

     

    And so, moving on from that, the next feeling I have about not hitting my revenue goal is I am just grateful. I'm really, really grateful. I think, again, in these circumstances where we don't hit our goals or achieve what we want to achieve, it's so easy to only come from a place of just dissatisfaction or frustration or annoyance or sadness. And actually, I'm just really grateful because, again, I remember what it was like to be making £15 an hour, and I've come a long, long way from that. And, again, it wasn't overnight. It's been five years in the making and I'm just grateful. I think moving forward, I really want to come up with my enough number.

     

    If you don't know what an enough number is, go and listen to my interview with Jason and Caroline Zook. That episode is called Falling Prey to New Ideas, but they talk about the importance of not just creating random arbitrary revenue goals. Why is my revenue goal 200K anyway, like why? And also, what number is going to be enough? When is it going to be enough? Am I just going to continue to chase higher figures for no reason? What am I chasing? Why am I chasing it? I don't know. So I think in the near future, I really want to sit down and figure out what is my enough number and what is the goal I need and I want to hit, and then just work towards that number and know that I'm not just randomly chasing the goal to hit a million dollars for no reason. I don't need a million dollars. I mean, a million dollars would be nice, I won't say no to a million dollars, but I don't just want to keep working towards something for no reason. I want to figure out what my enough number is.

     

    Why didn't I hit my revenue goal in 2023? This is very easy to answer. I had a client drought in September, October, and part of November. So, to recap, I explained in my solo episode, Celebrating 5 Years in Business, that I ended the year 2022 at about 120,000 USD. Then in 2023, I hit 100K in revenue by the end of April. And then by the summer, I'd reached 120K. So, by the summer of 2023, I'd already hit in revenue what I had reached for the entirety of 2022. So, for me, it was like, oh, I'm going to be okay. I expect to make at least double this. For in another six months, I plan and I'm on track to make another 120K to 130K. Things are really taking off. Things are very busy with my clients. Again, I was working with other copywriters to help me manage my workload, had support from them. Again, my goal for 2023 was 200K, and I thought I would exceed it. It felt super doable. 

     

    Then the summer comes. I always take July off in the summer, but this was a really difficult July. Trigger warning again, I know I've mentioned this a few times, but it really was a difficult part of my year and really did affect the rest of my year as much as I tried for it not to. In July, my Nana died, but actually, she was really sick. And so, it was a very slow death. So all of June, we were just kind of waiting for it to happen. And so I was really kind of distracted in June. It was very difficult for me to focus on client work. And then by the time July came, where I usually just stop, 1st of July is a clear stop, then I'm off for July. I was just so ready. I was just so done, and I was ready to just stop. Tried to have a lovely summer with my boys, which I did. I always do. Thank God. And then my Nana died. And then I spent time with my family, funeral stuff, and all that stuff. And then I was supposed to come back to work at the beginning of August and I just couldn't.

     

    I mentioned I had so much family stuff going on. So I don't even think that I appreciated how difficult that time period was for me. And so then when I tried to get back to work on the 1st of August, I couldn't. I was physically exhausted from the emotional turmoil that I had been through over those past few couple of months. And I took an extra two weeks off, which wasn't planned.

     

    So ordinarily, before I take the summer off, I will always have clients lined up for when I return. Always. And that's how I just get straight back into things. This time, I did have clients and projects booked in for August. And so when I came back, I started working on those immediately. And these were clients who had already paid for their projects back in June, July, before I'd left to go off for summer. And so I was working on these project clients, but I wasn't even paid because they'd already paid me.

     

    So usually, what would happen is I would get inquiries in that time, but there were just no inquiries. There were no inquiries. It was just a ghost town. It was a ghost town. And the one reason I think this end-of-year review is really important to share is because I know that a lot of business owners had a very difficult 2023. It was a difficult year for a lot of business owners. And so I guess I want you to know that I wasn't exempt from that. August, September, October, and the first part of November were like a ghost town.

     

    I've had a few inquiries. And from those inquiries, none of them were super qualified inquiries. I got on a few sales calls, and to be honest, most of those sales calls, I wouldn't have even got on if it hadn't been like a ghost town. I would have known immediately that these people weren't the right fit, but I thought, well, I'm not working with anyone else or working on anything else right now, so let me speak to these people and at least see if we could be a fit. I think one of those people were a fit and then they decided that their budget, my rate didn't work. They said I'm on their vision board for us to work together in the future, which is really nice. But yeah, it just wasn't happening. I had no new projects, no new clients, and a few key things happened all at the same time.

     

    So what are my biggest clients? And I already know—and you're going to hear about the importance of this in my interview with Steve Folland that is coming up, but I already know to not only have one big client. I know that. So I have lots of big clients, usually, but the biggest of those was a partnership. It was a duo, but they actually closed down their business. So then I lost the continuous revenue that would come from working with them.

     

    And then at the same time, a contact at one of my other biggest clients—this is a company—my contact for that company left that company. She was really the one who believed in the email marketing and was really pushing for more email marketing. So when she left, there was no one really that prioritised what I did anymore, really. And so that's another client gone. 

     

    And then there was another client who had been a big client in 2022 and 2023 who really just didn't need much from me. The evergreen funnel that I'd created for her was working really, really well, and she was just really happy with that. And she felt like we didn't need to do much more. I can always think of more to do with people's email strategy and email marketing, but she was happy with the work that we've done and really didn't need much more than that at the time. So that's three clients out the door gone. And then there were just no inquiries coming through for months.

     

    And this was a very difficult period of time because I kind of started having whispers of like, is this it? Have I finally reached my peak? Is this the end of my business? But no, of course, it's not. I had to snap out of it. There were some days that it was just really difficult to keep going to work and keep doing things because I was like, I don't know when the next client is coming. And then something happened where I just decided like—and by the way, I was still going to work every day. I was still working every day. I was working in my business. I was doing everything I could to get new clients and that kind of thing. But something happened where I just thought, I kind of sat myself down and was just like, Eman, is it likely that you will never get another client again? No, it's not likely. [laughs] That is not likely. So it's really just a matter of when. When is the next client going to come? And when can you close the next client? ‘Cause it really wasn't a case of me just sitting around waiting for a client to come. I was doing a lot to try and get clients in as well, but it was really a case of when, not if. Okay. So if that's the case, this is really a resilience game. This is a resilience game, and this is about how long can you hold out. How long are you able to hold out and keep going without clients? 

     

    My digital products were selling in the background, but of course, again, I'm not Amy Porterfield, so I wasn't making millions from that. [laughs] I wasn't even making hundreds of thousands from that.

     

    As you know, in 2023, I made 31,000 and something dollars throughout the entire year. So it was great because it was enough to continue paying my team, but it was a real drought. So I always say—and this is what I teach inside Like A Boss, my course and my coaching program—that these client droughts happen. It happens. Business is a rollercoaster. There are ups and there are downs, and really, the success of your business depends on how well you prepare for those downtimes. Now, thankfully I had prepared. I made very little money in those months, but I had prepared for the downtime.

     

    And so I'm gonna just talk about some of the things that I learnt in these months that were very difficult when I had zilch clients. Financial growth isn't the only type of growth we should be measuring as a business owner. There are so many other types of growth that we should be focusing on as well, and that we should be seeing as key performance indicators. I have grown so much as a business owner, and this is what 2023 taught me.

     

    You know, a couple of years ago, I might have given up on my business if I had gone three-ish months without clients. There's no way my business could have survived that. There's no way I could have continued paying my team. There's no way I could have continued paying myself. But I have grown as a business owner. I have a stable business. Thank the Lord. Alhamdulillah. I have a stable business. And having a stable business doesn't always mean that you're flushed with money all the time. It's also like, well, what happens when the money isn't coming in? How stable are you then? So here's how I know I've grown as a business owner because in that period of time, I still paid myself and my team every month. So I'm really happy with my money management and how I managed the money that I made in the first six months of the year.

     

    There was one point in early 2023 that I realised if something terrible happened and I didn't get another client for the rest of the year, I'd still be able to pay myself, pay my team, and pay my other expenses. And it's so funny that I had that thought as I was looking at my finances, the business finances, because that's exactly what happened. Something happened where I didn't get clients for at least another three-ish months. And then I was still able to pay myself, I was still able to pay my team, and I was still able to cover my business expenses. I didn't have to cut any team members. I didn't have to fire anyone, though I did think about it for a second, I'm not going to lie, but I didn't. And I didn't cut my business expenses either because I just thought I am not that business owner. 

     

    I'm not the business owner anymore who panics and starts cutting things all over the place. I believe in my ability to make money. I know I can make money. I know I'm a good business owner. This is just one of those dips in the roller coaster of running a business. This is going to happen. You were expecting it to happen, Eman, and now it's happened. Keep going. 

     

    Rachel Rodgers talks about making a broke backside—that's not the word she uses, but broke backside decisions, as Rachel Rodgers would say, and I didn't want to make broke backside decisions. [laughs] I wanted to make a million-dollar decision, which is not about making millions, but it's about having the right money mindset where you're making the good money decisions and not money decisions from panic, scarcity, fear kind of thing.

     

    So I didn't start firing people or destroying my team. Instead, I was open with my team and told them, look, this is actually a difficult time in the business right now. So here's what I'm planning to do to rectify this. And I brought them in, which I was worried about because I wondered as a leader, is it my job to pretend that everything's fine? But I was like, I don't know, maybe some leaders would. I think it's my job to keep everyone feeling good and stable and secure, but I think I can still do that whilst being honest with them. So I felt stable and secure, and so hopefully I communicated that with them. And when I did share with them that things are difficult right now in terms of client work, hopefully, they got from that, that I was looking for solutions rather than an impending doom kind of situation, and they responded really well, and we worked on strategies to get more clients in.

     

    I know I've grown as a business owner and 2023 forced me to grow as a business owner because I did not lower my prices. Oh my gosh, I didn't lower my prices. I mean, maybe for a split second when I was on some of those sales calls that really weren't going to work out or where someone was like, oh, my budget isn't high enough to hire you. I maybe for a second thought I shall lower my price and I didn’t. And I thought nope, don't do it. We don't do that anymore. We don't.  And it wasn't even difficult. I was just like nope, we don't do that. I'd rather have no clients at this point than lower my rates because I know the work that I do and I know the work that I do is worth what I charge and I know that because I have many, many happy clients behind me and lots of client results behind me. And I did not lower my prices. A couple of years ago, I absolutely would have. 

     

    I also did not take on any bad-fit clients or projects in desperation or panic because, again, well, that's not what we're doing here in 2023. We're not doing it anymore. I would have done that a few years ago. Didn't do that. I forced myself—well, this whole situation, it forced me to create opportunities for myself. Not having clients was probably the best thing that could have happened to me because it really kicked me into gear. I don't know if I had been complacent or was feeling complacent. I mean, I don't think I was, but I don't know. This really forced me to start creating opportunities for myself, to really start getting intentional about what I wanted, who I wanted to work with, what I wanted to work on, where I wanted the business to go. I finally had time to think about that stuff and then also plan for that stuff. So instead of just seeing what came my way, well, what do I want to come my way and how am I going to make those things come my way?

     

    So if my business wasn't bringing in a whole lot of money, I knew I needed to keep sowing those seeds anyway for future work. I also know that not every success is money-related. So here are some wins that I got while I had no new clients. And by the way, some of these wins that I had in my business were some of the biggest business wins I've ever had, which, again, is so funny. It goes back to what my therapist taught me about. This isn't a black-and-white thing. Things can be great and not so great at exactly the same time. I won two podcasting awards in this time. Mistakes That Made Me won Best Business Podcast and Best New Podcast at the Black Podcasting Awards 2023. So there's that.

     

    I was invited to do an Ask an Expert session for MarketingProfs, so there's that. I pitched to be on my favourite podcast and got on the show, Cubicle to CEO with Ellen Yin. Go check out that episode with Ellen, that interview, if you haven't already. I really enjoyed that conversation. I talk about how to become the go-to expert in your field. I did a bajillion speaking stuff. I did so much speaking stuff. And I also landed the thing that I'm going to announce at the end of this episode. I finished setting up my evergreen sequence because I had the time to, and I've started making passive sales through this new funnel. It works. It's so exciting to see that I can create this for my clients, great, but I can also create it for myself. That's been really exciting to see. I had so many wins that weren't necessarily money-related in the time that I was struggling to have clients, find clients, that kind of thing. So, again, just taught me that not every success is money-related.

     

    I attended a conference that sparked a bunch of great ideas for me. And I also started cold pitching again. And I pitched my dreamiest of dream clients, and she wants to work with me. So I'm so excited. If not on the project that I pitched her on, hopefully, for a project that she has coming up in a few months. So I'm very excited about that. I started cold pitching again. And again, as an email strategist and email copywriter, I'm good at writing cold pitches that don't feel like cold pitches and that usually get yeses or at the very least a response. So I decided that I'm going to do more of that because I really want to just be in charge of my own destiny a little bit more and who I'm working with. So I'm not always just waiting for people to come to me, but also getting in front of the people that I want to work with.

     

    This whole 2023 situation validated my desire to have high-ticket offers. And I say this because sometimes I've had doubts about the route that I've chosen to go down. I have a friend, Liz Wilcox, she does all kinds of low-ticket stuff, and she is so good at what she does. And sometimes, I watch her, and I'm like, maybe I also need a bunch of low-ticket offers. But here's the thing—I can't and shouldn't make that comparison because, number one, people are just different. We have different stuff going on in our lives. We're in different seasons of our lives with kids and all sorts of things, whatever else. But also, Liz is really good at the low-ticket kind of stuff. That's her thing. And she has her values, her mission, the things that she wants to do in her business mean that going low ticket for her, it makes sense for her and her audience.

     

    But the thing about low ticket is that you have to be reaching a lot of people to sell a lot of low-ticket stuff that allows you to create a sustainable business. You need to be selling to a lot of people. And so to sell to a lot of people, you need to be doing a lot of audience growth stuff. And here's the thing. I don't have as much time as I want to be able to do that big audience growth stuff. I'm very limited in my time. And so there's only so much of that I can do. So I don't have a huge audience, but I know that by going down the high-ticket route with my offers and my services, that means that I don't need a huge audience. I just need one or two clients a month.

     

    When I was going through this period of not having any clients, I started creating this product called the Welcome Sequence Bootcamp that I was going to sell, a live bootcamp type of thing where I taught people how to do a welcome sequence. And I was just calculating how many of these I would have to sell for it to feel like worth my time and energy. And then I did the maths, and I was like, why am I spending time creating this product? And then I have to do the launch of getting X number of people to buy when really all I need is one client. And I have energy to go find that one client. So I did, and things turned around.

     

    I know now that a high ticket is what works best for me. I find that it takes the same amount of energy to sell a low-ticket item as it does a high-ticket item, and I personally would just rather put that energy into high-ticket stuff. Now, I am, in the future, looking forward to releasing things like different priced products so that some of my stuff is more accessible to people, but also that's where my products come in. My services don't have to be priced low. So I'm happy with the decision I've made, and I felt validated and justified in that because, again, I didn't need to sell a bunch of products. I just needed one client. And in November, things turned around quite dramatically.

     

    So November was a 20K plus month in revenue. November came and I got back into my groove. So the first thing to know is so much of all this is about mindset. It's about staying positive. It's about not quitting if you're able to not quit because I know that some people don't have that luxury, but I just think imagine if I decided to just quit my business on the 1st of November and my next client was coming in on the 3rd of November. I was so close. I would have been so close but so far. So, again, it just makes me think about how much of this is about mindset—staying positive, resilience—and then actual strategy, actually doing the work and finding the clients, because a lot of work did go into finding that client as well and getting that client.

     

    So the clients started coming in again in November, and then I also signed another client in that same month. And in terms of how I got those clients, one of those clients found me on Instagram. Oh, sorry, was on my Instagram and had been for years actually when I checked. And when I spoke to her, she said, oh, I've been meaning to hire you for years. And then finally was like, oh, do you know what? I'm going to hire Eman for this thing. And so after years of following me on Instagram, she finally came forward and hired me.

     

    And, again, I think that's really important because it's a reminder that you just don't know who's in your audience and you don't know when they're going to come forward and decide to work with you. So the work that we're doing every single day in putting ourselves out there and the social media stuff and the marketing and all that stuff, it works. Sometimes it doesn't work overnight, but it works over time. So keep going.

     

    The other client found me through my podcast and then my newsletter. So she's on my newsletter. And in the spirit of trying to get new clients, I had created a trigger-based automation. If you want to know what that means, join my newsletter because I talk so much about email and how you can make more money through email. But yeah, I created a trigger-based automation that basically meant that she showed interest in potentially working with me in the way that she behaved through her clicks when she received my newsletter and then I followed up and she loved the follow-up because the follow-up proved to her that I know what I'm doing re email strategy, and she hired me, and that was a 13K project, actually more than, so that was really great. Yeah, that was really great.

     

    So two new clients. In December, I decided that I'm exhausted. We were sick for half the month, me and my youngest son. So I decided to take it slow. I have a lot to launch. I'm working on this podcast. I want to make this great. So I'm continuing to pitch dream clients, but I didn't take on any new clients, that was intentional, in December. Instead of doing what I would usually do in December, which is trying to make as much money as possible in those final few days so that I can hit my targets and my goals, I just decided to just chill. Just chill out, Eman, just chill. So I did. I took December slow, and I'm focusing on relaunching the podcast.

     

    So we’re nearly at the end because that's the end of my 2023 end-of-year review, but I do just want to set some 2024 goals. And I'm going to divide these into life goals, business goals, and financial goals like I did earlier on. Okay. And then after that, I'm just going to tell you what to expect for 2024. I'm going to share that announcement that I've been keeping to myself.

     

    Okay. So, 2024 life goals, make more in-real-life friends. It's so hard. It's so hard to make friends in real life as a 31-year-old. It's just so hard. It's just so hard. But I will tell you that basketball has helped, and also, I have some—okay, so my best friends are just all over the world, but wanting to make more local friends. I do have some really good friends, but kind of in that space where the relationship is growing, you know, it takes time. It takes time, and it takes spending time with each other for relationships to grow. And sometimes you don't always have that time. So it's gonna take some more time. But yeah.

     

    I did download Bumble BFF. I found out about Bumble BFF, which is the friends version of Bumble. Yeah, I don't know if you knew this, but there's a version of Bumble on Bumble where you can set it so it's not the dating app, but it's the BFF, like best friends forever, version where you can find friends. And I found this out because I love 90 Day Fiancé, and on 90 Day Fiancé, there was a couple, a guy and a girl, and the guy was going crazy because he found Bumble on his girl's phone and she's like, no, no, no, I'm on Bumble BFF, not Bumble like dating. And he's like, what is that? And so, she's going to explain. Then I was like, oh my gosh, that's an actual thing. So I looked it up and it was an actual thing. So thanks to 90 Day Fiancé, I downloaded Bumble and have been swiping left and right on people. And it's been so cool, and I've been having a really great conversation with someone.

     

    And it really does feel like dating, which is really funny. I guess friendships are like dating in some sense. She's invited me out to go for coffee and to go to the cinemas. And so I'm going to take a rip on that. We're going to do it. We already have so much in common, so we have lots to talk about. So, I don't know, maybe I have met my new BFF and don't even know it. But yeah, make more in-real-life friends.

     

    I also want to continue with the hobbies that I've started. That's basketball and gymming. I'm continuing to be consistent with that. I want to read even more than I did last year. So some of the books on my to-read list—I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi, Atomic Habits, James Clear. I also want to read some fiction books. I've got a Yellowface in front of me. I've got Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. So hopefully, I will get some reading done. I also want to reread all the Harry Potters as well. My son is currently loving HP. And so I'm in that era again. I need to reread it from start to finish.

     

    I also want to do this new thing where I set family goals as a family. So I have life goals, business goals, financial goals. I actually want to start setting family goals. So I want me and my family, I want us as a couple, and also, I want my oldest son to join in, and my youngest son, when he's old enough, to join in and start setting some goals for our family. What are our spiritual goals? What are our personal goals? How can we support one another in achieving our personal goals? What are our saving plans, our travel plans for the year? Again, I just want things to be more intentional because I've seen the power of setting goals. I want to set relationship goals, you know, date nights, lunch dates, whatever. I want us to plan what we want and what are we going to do to make sure that that happens. So I'm really looking forward to that, and I think it's going to be fun to work with my son as well to help him set some goals. I already know that he wants to start a new hobby and activity, so it's up to me to help make that happen. Hopefully, we'll make that happen for him. And yeah, we'll see how that goes

     

    Another life goal is I want to improve my sleep. And, again, this has not changed from 2022. We're still having those same issues, but this is what I know now with my youngest son, it's a medical issue. I nearly cried when I found out recently that this is a medical issue and this is why he doesn't sleep so well. And so with the worries that come with knowing that it's a medical issue is also a hope that the medical issue can be fixed and that hopefully we can start getting some sleep and also him as well because this is, you know, it's hard for him too. He's not getting the sleep that he needs. So hopefully things will be better in that respect soon.

     

    I also want to do more physical exercise. I already mentioned gym and basketball. I got really consistent at one point. There was a time in 2023 where I was moving my body four times a week. I was going to the gym two or three times a week and then also a session of basketball. And I just felt really good about it. Also doing walks in between that. And I just want to get back to that point because in the past couple of months, with sickness and everything, it's kind of gone down the drain, but that's my goal.

     

    I want to learn a language. I am bilingual. I mean, the woman that I was trying to speak to in my mother tongue this morning kind of cussed me out and was like, oh, you don't speak it very well, do you? But I mean, I am bilingual. How well I speak that language is another story, but yeah. I want to learn another language. More on that soon. I will figure out what the language is going to be, and I'll figure that out.

     

    I want to cook more. I love baking and I hate cooking. And quite frankly, my family suffers from my hate of cooking. They suffer because of my hatred of cooking. I mean, thank God for fish fingers is all I can say at this point. So I really want to enjoy cooking more. I want my family to eat better. 

     

    I just bought a cookbook. It's called The Ramadan Cookbook, and it's by a woman called Anisa Karolia. She's on Instagram. She's called @anisagrams on Instagram. And the recipes inside are gorgeous. A lot of it is, I believe, South Asian food, which is very exciting for me because I grew up in a very multicultural city, and a lot of my best friends growing up were South Asian. So they would invite me to their house, and the parents would make me all the best food. Usually their mums, really. Their mums would make me all the best food. And now I have some of these recipes, which is really exciting for me.

     

    I already did try out a recipe a couple of days ago. We've got some guests coming tomorrow. I'm going to try another recipe tomorrow. I want to get better at cooking, and I want to love cooking. I want to like it and enjoy it and just feed my family better because when I did try the other recipe, when I tried my first recipe a couple of days ago, my youngest son wolfed it down, and he asked for three portions, three portions. He finished one and was like, more, more. He finished that one and then said more, more, and then he had a third portion. I was like, oh my God, all this boy ever wanted was for me to cook this meal for him. Poor boy. So I'm going to continue to do that.

     

    I also want to cook more East African food, more of my cultural food. I found someone on  TikTok, a woman called ilhanm.a— well, that’s her account on TikTok—and she shares some great recipes. I really love video recipes because it's so easy to follow. So I'll be doing more of that, hopefully. Also, I really need to learn how to cook some Caribbean food. I really need some rice and peas in my life. So hopefully that's something I'm going to master as well. [laughs]

     

    And then finally, I still want to continue to take off as much time as I want.

     

    2024 business goals. I want to launch my new website. Well, I say I want to. I've already put down part of the payment, a third of the payment. I'm launching a new website in 2024. I think I'm launching as a micro agency with me and two or three team members, which is really exciting to just kind of change the messaging around my business and how I offer and deliver my services. More on that soon. We start that project in March, and it should take a few months. So, I don't know, hopefully by summertime, my new website will be up.

     

    I have goals for my newsletter. I just want to continue sending great emails. I want to up it to three emails a week of really good emails. I get so much great feedback about my newsletter. If you're not already on it, do sign up. Head over to my website and sign up. Actually, I’ll put the link in the show notes to my newsletter. I'm just writing this down as well so I don't forget these links. Go to the show notes, sign up for my newsletter because people really do enjoy my emails. Someone just sent me an email yesterday saying, I love your emails. You would think that because I'm sending more emails than most business owners that it would be a problem. Actually, the people on my newsletter really love it. So I want to up it to three emails a week. I want to make even more money from my email list than I did last year and just continue on with the way that's going.

     

    I want to launch a membership, and it's going to be bonus podcast content related. I want to, I guess, create different tiers for the pricing. So I'm not sure what the pricing is going to be yet, but I do want to offer bonus podcast content. I want to offer live Q&As with the guests that come on this show. Some of them have already agreed to that. So I'm really excited for that to happen. I want to offer cool stuff like inviting a few people to the live recording of the podcast with certain guests, just really cool bonus podcast content that you're going to love. And the reason for that is because, again, I am still working on monetizing the podcast and making sure that we can keep it going. And with that though, I also want there to be an element of seeing the behind-the-scenes of my business and learning from the behind-the-scenes of my business. So I have an idea of what this is going to look like, and I think you're going to love it, so look out for this.

     

    I want to redo and relaunch all my existing digital products so that they serve all business owners and not just copywriters. So if we go back to the first solo episode that I put out, Celebrating 5 Years in Business, I talk about the fact that the digital products that I had, I wasn't sure if they were working. And actually, I realised that the doubt that I had around it was the fact that my audience has changed since I started creating these digital products. I don't just serve copywriters anymore. I serve all different types of business owners, all service providers and coaches, lots of different people want to benefit from and buy my digital products.

     

    And so, I'm actually going to be relaunching Like A Boss. There are two versions of Like A Boss. There's a 12-week course and there's a DIY course. But there's also a 12-week coaching program with lots of live coaching elements with me, and both those teach you how to go from being an order taker business owner to a boss business owner. So I'm really excited to be updating all the content and re-releasing a new version, relaunching a new version, that is not just for copywriters, because the past version was, but so that it's accessible and created for all different types of business owners, whether you're a copywriter, designer, I don't know, any type of service, an accountant even. You could be anything, any service provider, and this Like A Boss will help you. So I'm excited to relaunch that this coming year.

     

    Design Your VIP Day, which is currently created for copywriters, I'm going to relaunch that and redo the content so that it's not just suitable for copywriters, but for all service providers and coaches. And also, my Borrow My Brain coaching course, which is currently, again, just for copywriters. I am launching it so it's suitable for all different types of business owners, service providers, coaches.

     

    And then my final business goal for 2024 is to create more revenue streams—so podcast sponsorship, podcast monetization—to help keep the podcast going. I still need to work on monetizing the podcast. So there's that.

     

    And then speaking as well. I do a lot of speaking right now, but so much of it is unpaid. I did charge more than ever before in 2023 for speaking engagements, which I'm really happy about. I started saying, this is how much it's going to cost. It wasn't a whole lot, but just to even just get into the habit of charging people for speaking engagements, I was very excited about that. And there was one speaking engagement that I was asked to do where they wanted to pay me $800 and I negotiated up to $1,000. So I was really excited about that, and I hope to continue to do that. I hope to continue doing speaking that I'm actually paid for.

     

    And Michelle—who is a really good friend of mine and who was also someone I interviewed on this podcast, her episode was called Playing the “Nice Black Girl”—Michelle is a negotiation coach, and so I will probably be having a session with Michelle to help me set my speaking rate so I have something to go off. So I'm not just, as my friend Brie Weber says, plucking prices out of my word-I-won’t-say in case there are kids listening. So I'm excited for that. 

     

    And then finally, my financial goals. So we've spoken about my 2024 life goals, we've spoken about my 2024 business goals. My 2024 financial goals. I'm going to stick with 200K. That's going to be my goal for 2024. I don't want to up it because I didn't reach it this year. So hopefully, in 2024, I will hit 200K, hopefully. I am hoping to increase the sale of my digital products to maybe from $31,500 this year in 2023 to $50,000 to $60,000-ish. So then the percentage would be 70% of my revenue comes from one-to-one client work, and then 30% comes from digital products and courses. And if I get more than that, I'll be super happy.

     

    And then another goal for me financially is to significantly increase my salary to meet the increase in the cost of living, quite frankly, because, as we all know, my shopping list is exactly the same as it's always been, but that price keeps increasing. And so I didn't give myself a pay rise. Actually, I did give myself a pay rise last year, but it didn't feel significant to me. So I'm going to pay myself more monthly in 2024. In 2023, I've really prioritised the growth of my team, and this coming year, I really want to prioritise my salary so that I can see my hard work showing up more in my life, especially with my son getting older. He's getting to the age where he's going to need some spending money of his own. He wants to do loads of hobbies and activities. Signing him up for lots of camps and things like that. But yeah, I just want more disposable income.

     

    Okay. I hope you enjoyed my 2023 end-of-year review and me setting my 2024 goals. Obviously, at the end of 2024, I'll come back and review my goals and let you know how it all went. I hope that you got a great insight into my business and enjoyed listening to this and maybe hopefully learnt something that will help you in your business.

     

    Before I let you go, I just want to make the announcement that I promised I was going to make at the end of this episode, and this is really me just telling you what to expect in 2024 from this podcast and my business. I am so excited to announce that Mistakes That Made Me is officially part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.

     

    The HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals. I am thrilled to be part of the HubSpot Podcast Network because, in my opinion, it is the best network for business podcasts. I already love this network and the shows that it puts out. I'm a fan of so many of the shows on this network. I binge Jay Clouse’s Creator Science, a podcast about how creators are finding success. And there are a bunch of other amazing business owners whose podcasts are also part of this network, including Amy Porterfield, and soon-to-be Mistakes That Made Me guest—her interview is out on the 15th of January—Jordan Gill.

     

    If you love this show, I know that you'll love the other shows on the HubSpot Podcast Network too. So you can listen to Mistakes That Made Me and more shows like this one on the HubSpot Podcast Network from the 15th of January. So when I release Jordan's episode, you will see the podcast on the HubSpot Podcast Network Website, hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.

     

    What does this mean for Mistakes That Made Me? Let me tell you because I think you're going to be really happy about this. The first thing it means is that there are going to be more episodes. This is no longer a seasonal podcast. I mean, I'll still talk about seasons because I'm thinking about seasons in my head, but now, the season will be the whole year. The podcast will be an all-year-round podcast. And from now on, I'll be releasing two Mistakes That Made Me episodes a month, two episodes a month, so that's at least 24 episodes a year, which is super exciting. It also means that you will hear promos in the show, a HubSpot promo, you'll hear promos of other shows in the podcast network, and you might also hear promos from other tools, businesses, things.

     

    And, again, this is all part of trying to monetize the podcast so I can keep it going because my HubSpot agreement isn't a paid one. I'm not being paid. They're not paying me. So I still need to monetize the podcast.

     

    And if you want to get more details and information about what this HubSpot partnership means, how it happened, what our agreement looks like, I am gonna be sharing a bonus episode of Mistakes That Made Me, one that's with my producer, Zuri, where we'll be talking about the making of this podcast. So I will share the HubSpot partnership stuff there as well. I'll also talk about how I came up with the idea for this podcast, the behind-the-scenes decisions I make around who to invite, the interview process, the pre-interview process, the production process, the promotion process, all of it. So if you ever wanted to know how things work behind the scenes of this podcast, you're going to want to listen to this bonus podcast. It's going to be called The Making of the Podcast, and it'll be with you in mid-Jan. So look out for that.

     

    The final thing I want to say is just know that I am working on relaunching all my digital products so that if you're not a copywriter, you can also benefit from them too. I'm going to be updating all the content and re-releasing them so that they are relevant and helpful to you as well. So, look out for these relaunches.

     

    The best way to stay on top of all this stuff is to join my newsletter. Again, the link to join my newsletter is in the show notes. You'll also get my free 35-minute email class, The Email Rules, to help you learn how to make more money through your emails, just like I do and just like I do for my clients.

     

    Okay, that's everything. I knew this was going to be a long episode because it's an end-of-year review. But, oh my God, hopefully, Zuri can make this a little shorter for you in the editing process. I don't know. But I hope you love this episode. I hope you're excited by my announcement. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think. And I'm so excited for the coming year, for this podcast, for my business, and for you as well. So thank you for listening. Thank you for continuing to support Mistakes That Made Me, and look out for the newest episode with Jordan Gill on the 15th of Jan.

Eman Ismail
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