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As a business owner it is super important at the end of the year to do a review. Whether you’ve had an awful, average or amazing year it is important to acknowledge what has happened and what you have learnt. I practice what I preach and in December 2021 I sat down to review 2021. It was my first year as full-time in my business and there were a lot of lessons I learnt in 2021, but here are the big 7 lessons I learnt in 2021.
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Lesson 1: You should never rely solely on one social media platform, but one social media platform can make a massive difference to your business.
At the end of 2020 I shared the 7 lessons I learnt in 2020 and my third lesson was ‘Don’t chase after every shiny object, but be open to experimenting’. Little did I know that the next month a new social media platform would arrive to allow me to apply that lesson. I joined Clubhouse on the 11th January 2021 and said I would treat it as an experiment. Within my first month on the platform I had signed a client, been invited to co-host rooms with other business owners around the world, was invited to appear on podcasts and saw growth on my Instagram following (at that time you couldn’t send messages directly on Clubhouse so lost of people would come from a Clubhouse room and follow the conversation on via Instagram DMs).
I decided that Clubhouse wasn’t just a shiny object to distract me, but was offering a good return for the time I was investing on the app. I decided to run a weekly room ‘Entrepreneurs: Wins and Wine’ where business owners could share their win of the week and then share one thing they wanted me to hold them accountable for doing over the next week. When I look at the mentoring clients I signed in 2021 there is one strong trend – having attended that room a number of times.
Even though the hype from earlier 2021 died down I still found Clubhouse a really valuable place to have spent my year. Not only did I sign mentoring clients from Clubhouse, but it was also where I fostered a relationship between myself and Lauren Tilden, who later invited me to be the co-host of the Making Good Book Club. You can join the mailing list for the Making Good Book Club here.
Lesson 2: Growth isn’t linear
This year was my first year of being full-time in my business. Having run my business on the side of a demanding marketing career for a number of years I was excited by the prospect of having more time to work on my business and what that would enable me to do in relation to the content I could create, the number of clients I would work with and the revenue I could generate.
Content wise going full-time allowed me to do A LOT! To create my end of year Instagram Reel I tallied up what I had created:
View this post on Instagram
- 52 blog posts
- 52 newsletters
- 45 ‘Entrepreneurs: Wins and Wine’
- 41 IG lives on my page (including 4 Marketing Mondays interview)
- And more Instagram posts than I would like to count up.
However, whilst my content creation massively increased my sales didn’t. One of my main business goals is to build a business that allows me to enjoy the summer. During the summer I reduced my hours, enjoyed playing tennis, reading books in the sunshine and having picnics. I also used some of that time to really think about the services I was offering.
In September I launched my new 1:1 business and marketing mentoring programme. That combined with running Strategy Days (which I’d be offering for years) resulted in me seeing substantial growth (3x month-on-month). This experience taught me that success isn’t linear. You don’t have to grow by 5 or 10% month on month. When you make strategic changes you can grow at 50%, 100% and even 200% month on month.
Lesson 3: You’ve got to push yourself outside of your comfort zone if you want your business to grow.
I’m a big believer that a business can only grow as much as a business owner grows. One of the areas where I’ve really had to push myself is on LinkedIn. Because of my professional marketing career and a network that I spent a decade building I found it very hard to talk about my business on my personal LinkedIn page. However, I knew it was important to get over that fear and start using LinkedIn more. The reality is the organic reach on LinkedIn is great and my ideal client is on there (and I can easily find them) so it made sense to use the platform to the max.
With the knowledge that it was important for my business, but with a personal block around the platform I decided to tap into the power of accountability. In Autumn 2020 my life as I knew it was falling apart and I took it as a sign from the Universe it was time to go full-time in my business. At the same time I came across Kerry Lyons and signed up for The Imperfect Life Leaders. As part of that programme I had the opportunity to declare what I wanted to be held accountable to and I used that accountability to push myself to regularly post on LinkedIn, to slowly write posts that felt outside of my comfort zone and eventually to go live.
Lesson 4: You don’t need a magical website appear on Google in the featured snippet position
I’m a big fan of SEO and the reason why I started blogging for my business wasn’t because I loved writing, but because I knew if I wrote optimised blog posts and ranked well I could generate traffic for my websites. In 2021 64% of sessions on my website came via organic search and that rose to 78% of sessions in 2022 (as of 18th December 2021).
As those numbers show, organic search is so important for driving traffic to my website. For a while I’ve been well aware of my ability to rank on page 1 and I have had a number of blog posts hit the number 1 spot. However, one thing I wasn’t sure about was whether a page on charellegriffith.com had the capabilities to be chosen for featured snippet. That question was answered this year when my ‘How to create your 2021 content marketing plan’ blog post became a featured snippet on Google for the keyword 2021 content marketing plan.
This marks a massive landmark in my SEO journey. Featured snippets have a larger percent of coverage on page 1 so it is what most business owners want. Now that I know it is possible I will target some keywords in 2022 with the good goal of hitting page 1, the best goal for ranking number 1 and the better goal for gaining featured snippet.
Lesson 5: Regularly review your services
This year my services went through some major changes and all for the better. Historically my signature service had been a strategy day and I also offered power hours. This made sense when I was running the business alongside a full-time job. If someone booked a strategy day I’d just take the day off work to deliver it. However, now as a full-time business owner I had the opportunity to make changes to my services.
In March 2021 I created the Pricing Power Hour. I’d been running marketing power hours for a while. I stipulated that the session had to be just on one aspect of marketing, but that was dictate by the needs of the clients. This meant I ran sessions on Instagram, SEO, content planning and more. However, pricing is something I really excel at and so many business owners get wrong so I decided to make it ultra clear that you could have a power hour to sort out your pricing. The service has been really well received and I can’t believe I didn’t think to offer it sooner.
“I had a Pricing Power Hour with Charelle yesterday, and wowzers what a session! We covered so much in an hour. From my mindset over pricing (offering discounts before I was even asked!) to the way I was packaging my (too many) services. She took me through each service, how many hours I was spending before, after and on that service, what the client got from it, and then helped me figure out a price that truly reflects the value of what I’m offering. Shock horror! I have been MASSIVELY undercharging, and working towards burn out. I now feel much more confident about my pricing, and will be able to work with ease and the freedom I want to achieve! Thanks so much Charelle for an incredible hour, absolutely jam-packed with expertise and tonnes of stellar tips for my marketing too! Highly recommend!! – Siobhan Strodes, This Sister Scribes
“Charelle has so helped us as a Creative Agency get super clear on our pricing structure and strategy. We had a power hour that helped give us clarity on something we had been struggling to decide on for months. her clear, structured model gave us immediate answers and systems to work too. Even the pre-questionnaire was helpful and straight after the call we received a detailed spreadsheet of what we’d discussed. I’d recommend anyone to have a power hour with Charelle!” – Ange Cassidy, Boomfly
If you would to gain clarity and confidence around your pricing, just like Siobhan and Ange, you can book a Pricing Power Hour you can book one here.
I also reviewed my signature services. In the first half of the year I had two different services based on what stage the business owner was at. I learnt from everyone I worked with and created the 1:1 Business and Marketing Mentoring Programme. Since changing I’ve found selling much easier. I’m happier with the service I deliver and I’ve structured the service in a way that is more manageable and supportive for clients, but has also allowed me to have a better work / life balance.
Learn more about how I structure my week (and follow and A/B work pattern) in ‘How I structure my week as a solopreneur’.
Lesson 6: Running an online business as an extrovert can be difficult
Last year I wrote about how in 2020 I really learnt about the beauty of running a location independent business. It wasn’t because I was sitting on a beach with a cocktail, but because I had to move around a lot and luckily it had no impact on my business.
However, one of the biggest struggles I faced with going full-time in my business (a purely online business) was that I really missed physical interaction with people. Before I worked in busy marketing departments by day where my extrovert self would be fueled by working with other marketers who’d geek out with me. Now I was running a whole business by myself and I could go weeks, even months, without meeting someone face-to-face to have a good business or marketing chat with.
I don’t think I even realised how much the lack of human interaction had until towards the end of the year. Towards the end of the year I started to go to in-person networking events again and OMG it became so apparent how for most of the year I had been running on say 50 – 60% of my energy. I would come away from a networking session absolutely buzzing with loads of ideas and so excited about the work I do.
For 2022 I know it is important that I ensure that I regularly have opportunities to meet other business owners and keep my energy levels topped up.
Lesson 7: It’s important to think about marketing outside of my regular weekly marketing
I’m very good at is being consistent with my marketing. I blog, send out a weekly email and post on Instagram and Linkedin, and run my clubhouse room week in and week out with no problems. However, as someone who is building a business that I want to run for years and years I know it is important from time to time to step out of ongoing marketing and do other marketing activities.
Earlier I mentioned how my blog post ‘How to create your 2021 content marketing plan’ became a featured snippet on Google. Now hitting that spot was amazing in itself because of the traffic it was generating, but the real value it had to my business was because of the things I did around it.
I had created a content marketing plan workbook to accompany the blog post. This meant that business owners would search online, find my blog post and then some downloaded the accompanying workbook. I was building my mailing list without doing anything and because so much of the traffic to the blog post was via search it was people who were brand new to me.
There you have it! You now know the 7 lessons I learnt in 2021.
I hope by sharing these lessons has inspired you to review your year and think about what you learnt this year. You can learn from the highs and the lows. Writing down the lessons will help ensure you truly learn from the past and move forward in the right direction.
In the comments I would love to hear one of the lessons you learnt in business this year.
Related: 7 lessons I learnt in 2020
HAVE YOU REFLECTED ON THE LAST 12 MONTHS? HAVEN’T GOT A PLAN IN PLACE FOR THE NEXT 12 MONTHS?
It is never too late! I run Annual Planning Strategy Days all year round because I know not everyone runs their business on an annual calendar or by the income/corporation tax year.
When you book an Annual Planning Strategy Day and you’ll get my questionnaire to help guide you through the reflection process in advance of the day. Then on the day we’ll use your reflection and my review to put together a plan for the year. You’ll leave confident with about your goals and then a clear map of how to achieve those goals through your offerings, pricings and marketing strategy.
You can find out more and book a 2023 Strategy Day here.
Want ongoing training, support and accountability to grow your business? Find out the other ways you can work with me here.
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