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Another year is nearly over and as I recommend I always take the time to sit down and reflect on the past year. Whether you’ve had an awful, average or awesome year you can learn from it. I have a tradition of sharing 7 lessons I learnt in the year. You can check out my previous end-of-year reflections (2023, 2022, 2021, 2020). And keep on reading to find out the 7 lessons I learnt in 2024.
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7 LESSONS I LEARNT IN 2024
Lesson 1: Being a solo business owner and grieving
In the summer of 2024 someone I loved dearly died and I experienced the worst grieving I’ve had to date. And for the first time since starting my business in 2018, I didn’t want to work. But as a solo business owner, with 100% active offers, I knew all too well if I didn’t continue to work I wouldn’t make any money. So I continued.
I delivered every training or workshop I had in the diary. I continued to support all my one-to-one mentoring clients. I went live every week as per usual on LinkedIn and Instagram. And my marketing continued as per usual (2 emails per week, 1 blog per week and daily posting on Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok). I dug deep and ensured on the outside it looked like business as normal even though behind-the-scenes I was struggling.
I’ve always known that by only having active offers is risky. But as someone who loves my work, and till this year has never struggled with the energy or enthusiasm to work, I wasn’t too worried. However, one thing I know for sure is more people I love with die. Grieving, unfortunately, is a part of life and therefore I need to ensure I have a business that will enable me to be kinder to myself in the future.
So as I move into 2025 I’m considering a number of changes including adding in passive offers, changing my marketing strategy, building bigger financial reserves, creating more space in my working schedule and hiring support. These changes in the long-term will mean when the inevitable happens again my business is better set up to allow me to grieve, and it will inevitably make my experience in the business in the meantime more spacious.
Lesson 2: I was made to be a public speaker
This year, on my vision board, I had a picture of a brown hand holding a microphone to represent my desire to speak more on a professional level. Weirdly for me, I didn’t have a concrete goal, I just knew of the back of my speaking experiences in 2023 I wanted to do more speaking and training – and I sure did.
When looking back at the end of the year I calculated that I had done
🎤 1 keynote speech
🎤 1 TV appearance
🎤 2 national radio interviews
🎤 6 online training sessions
🎤 1 in-person talk
🎤 1 live event – 2025 Visionary CEO Planning Day
🎤 4 quarterly planning workshops
🎤 3 times a guest on a podcast
🎤 12 sessions as the host of PropelHer’s Book Club
🎤 12 episodes of the Making Good Book Club
🎤 50 lives on Instagram and LinkedIn
🎤 300+ TikTok videos
The biggest lesson came from delivering my first keynote speech at the Ticketing Professionals Conference. When they approached me to deliver the keynote I was excited and nervous at the same time. Delivering a keynote was the opportunity I’d been waiting for, but delivering this speech was pushing me outside of my comfort zone in terms of topic, type of audience, and audience size. I was fearful and to say I was nervous beforehand was an understatement. But as I walked off the stage I was buzzing and knew that I was made to deliver speeches on stage and couldn’t wait to get back on stage. To find out more about me as a speaker, or to book me, click here.
So this is a reminder that often we do know what we want. And that being afraid doesn’t mean you aren’t meant to do something. The first time will be the worst, but by trying something you’ll then be able to make a decision if you want to do more of it or not, but you’ll only know by first trying.
Here I am living my best life with a Britney microphone
Lesson 3: Not everyone treats their business as a business and not everyone wants to grow their business
The work that I do means I attract a wide range of service providers – especially with the training side of the business. Some with a freelancer mindset. Some with a business owner mindset. Some who are happy to take what work comes their way. Some who are actively packaging their knowledge and selling offers. Some that market their businesses. Some that don’t.
I used to get frustrated with people saying they wanted to grow their business, but not marketing their business. Or complaining they don’t get enough time off but they do no planning or financial forecasting in their business. It would make me want to scream. But now I’ve realised – they are just not my people.
I exist in a world where there are service providers who see themselves as freelancers and others who see themselves as business owners. And I’m here to serve the latter.
Now I no longer feel frustrated, because I know they aren’t people who I want to work with or be friends with. And now I feel empowered to focus on those who treat their business as a business and who want the support to become the best CEO they can be. That’s why I created my mastermind LUMINARY.
| LUMINARY is the ultimate hybrid mastermind experience, for the business owner who wants to build a global, online, empire.
The internet has changed the game. You can be small in team size and make a lot of money and impact in the world – if you want to! In LUMINARY you’ll be given the strategy, support and community for you be the best CEO and build a business you love and are wildly proud of. |
Lesson 4: It’s OK to Start Small
In November 2024 I hosted my first in-person event – the 2025 Visionary CEO Planning Day. Running in-person events has been something I’ve wanted to do for a while now, in fact, it was something I spoke to my business coach, Kerry Lyons, back in 2021. So yes it was a long time in the making.
I got to a lot of marketing and business events (you can check out my review of the events I attended in 2023 here) and in many ways seeing lots of businesses throwing these massive impressive events was intimidating.
For a while, I felt if I wasn’t going to be able to do something of a certain scale what was the point. But thankfully I was able to get out of that mindset and see the beauty in starting small. I decided to keep it local, keep it focused on something I excel at (annual planning) and create an epic intimate experience. And that is exactly what I did.
I hired a gorgeous co-working space, The Createry, in Nottingham and crafted a highly interactive workshop that all attendees would be able to put together their plans for 2025. In the end 5 people attended and we had a brilliant day planning together. At the end of the day everyone walked away with their 2025 annual plan, and on average having increased their confidence in achieving their 2025 goals 2.2 (on a scale of 1 to 10).
In addition to the attendees getting a lot out of the day, I did too. I learnt a lot (and have shared some of those learnings here). And I’ll be able to use those learning in the future. On top of that, it felt great to finally do something I’d wanted to do for so long. It was a great reminder that it’s better to start small than not start al all. This can be difficult when you are ambitious, but everyone who has a membership with thousands once only had a few people. Everyone who fills out arenas once was in a tiny room struggling to sell it out. Everyone who has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media once only had one.
If there is something you want to do in your business don’t think it has to be 0 or 100, all or nothing. Start small and build from there.
Lesson 5: Streamlining by taking an evergreen approach
Towards the end of 2024 I started to look at how I could streamline my business and that resulted in me embracing a more evergreen approach in my business. As someone who loves creating integrated marketing campaigns and someone with high energy I love launching and over the last few years I had done a number of launches.
But as I move into the next phase of my business I’m focusing on streamlining my business as much as possible, which has led me to deciding to have a more evergreen approach.
That doesn’t mean I won’t be doing launches again. I will. But at least from an offer suite perspective I want to have offers that are available all year. This meant having to let go of some offers, such as Start Strong. Removing offers, especially ones you like and work well, can be challenging. However, this is where having a clear purpose is helpful.
Embracing a more evergreen approach impacts both my offers and my marketing. If an offer is available all year round rather than for a small window of time it also means you can put more focus into optimising the buyer journey. This has meant thinking more about evergreen blog content, lead magnets and automated emails.
| GROW YOUR BUSINESS ON YOUR TERMS
There are so many ways to grow a business and it is important for you to work out what is right for you. In my 1:1 Business and Marketing Mentoring I’ll be by your side to help you grow your business on your terms. You come with a clear vision for the future of your life and business, and I’ll help you work out how to get there. And then by your side with the training, support and accountability to ensure you successfully implement. |
Lesson 6: Using social media for business is so different to being a content creator
In the summer of 2024 I set myself the challenge of posting for 100 days on my alternative TikTok account. Running two TikTok accounts was so interesting. On my business account, it was very rare for me to get over 1,000 views, but I realised that achieving that number on my other account was a lot easier. I can easily have a post every week that goes over 1,000 views and then there are the ones that hit 10K and 100K. And then one day I had a video that went viral. At the time of writing this it has had over 2.7 MILLION views, 316,000 likes, 1,088 comments, 10,700 saves and 82,200 forwards. And it got accounts like Google Pixel, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
On many counts it was a successful video, but it didn’t have a financial benefit to me. One of the things I teach is that as a business owner you need to create for leads not likes – and that can be difficult because it’s easy to be led astray and want to get likes. But as a business owner the reality is most people aren’t using social media to consume the type of content you are sharing. So rather than comparing yourself to social media as a whole, or even others in your industry, just monitor performance against your previous content. Stay in your lane and keep on improving.
Lesson 7: The reality of being a LinkedIn Top Voice
In January 2025, to my surprise, I was named a LinkedIn Top Voice. Given the amount of followers I had at the time I didn’t think I had a chance of being a LinkedIn Top Voice. And whilst it is an honour there is a lot of mystery around being a LinkedIn Top Voice so I wasn’t really sure what it would entail.
For me it was interesting how having the title meant people saw me differently. My LinkedIn expertise and approach was the same in December 2023 and February 2024, but people treated me differently. Now people wanted me to teach them, or their communities/employees, how to use LinkedIn, which I really enjoyed doing.
One thing I had hoped would happen was to go to the LinkedIn HQ in London again, but that didn’t happen.
That’s it. You now know the 7 lessons I learnt in 2024.
I hope reading this post inspires you to take a moment to think about what you learnt in 2024 and maybe think about what you’ll do differently in your business in 2025.
I would love to know in the comments below a lesson you learnt in 2024.
TAKE THE LESSONS YOU’VE LEARNT AND MAKE 2025 EVEN BETTER.
Reviewing and reflecting is the first thing I make business owners do before doing any planning. You need to understand where your business currently is and why.
If you want to grow your business in 2025 and would like some strategic or mentoring help them click here to check out my services.
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