#67 1 Year In Business
I’m writing to you from an airplane — it’s Friday night and I’m headed to my niece’s High School graduation in California.
I’ve been looking forward to writing this all week because June 1 (today when you’re reading this) is my official 1 year anniversary in business!
1 year ago I was leaving my role as Head of Product at bossbabe to be a fractional product strategist.
I wanted to spend some time reflecting on the past year — everything I got right, everything I got wrong, and how starting my business has impacted my life.
I decided to share it with you because it might help you reflect on your own business, or it may illuminate something that’s right under your nose.
Community is a huge reason I’ve been “successful” (my definition) and so you’ll see that sprinkled throughout.
If you’re new here, today’s issue is a little different than usual — stick around for tactical lessons on building communities, memberships & community-driven business.
I’d love to hear what you think — reply and let me know if anything helped or resonated!
Let's get into it –
In this reflection I share some of the questions I've debated over the past year and how I came to a decision.
Agency or consulting business?
This is a question I wrestled with for 6 months. Do I want to be an individual consultant or do I want to build an agency?
I worked at a custom software agency for 5 years. I worked my way up and ran my own practice managing a portfolio of 3 Million and a team of 25 building custom software products. I know how to sell projects, manage a team & build long-term relationships with my clients.
But here’s the question I’ve been wrestling with…
Do I want to focus on marketing, sales & team leadership? That’s what running an agency will look like.
I’ve always been a visionary. I can validate an idea and build a strategic roadmap… but I prefer if I’m not the one executing.
That’s why architecture didn’t work out for me — red lines and stair details? No thank you.
So I decided to build an agency and I can’t wait for the launch coming soon!
It’s super niche — we do product strategy for brands serving their customers with transformational experiences, and we manage communities.
To niche or not to niche?
Speaking of niches…
They say the riches are the niches. I could not sell my advisory consulting packages to save my life the first 6 months of my business.
When I started talking more specifically about memberships (only one of the many types of products I’ve built), the leads flowed. I was very quickly booked out.
I know there’s a lot of debate about niches being worthwhile and I think there are MANY ways to build a business, but I will say this…
My clients that serve a very specific niche are still selling courses and crushing it.
Teaching marketing or [insert basic topic here] to everyone has never been harder.
At the end of the day people want their experience to be personalized — made just for them.
How can you personalize the customer experience more with your business? This is the question that has helped me shape my services.
Experimentation isn't just for products
Experimentation is the crucial ingredient to find product-market-fit and nail your customer experience.
You keep iterating, testing, and improving until your product is growing like wildfire through word-of-mouth marketing and referrals. When an experience is really incredible people share it with a friend – that's the best sign of a winning product.
Experimentation is the core of what I help my clients with ... what I didn't expect is that I would have to do A LOT of experimentation with my services.
I would consider two of my services at this point to be "validated" offers – meaning people are buying, my clients have seen results, and they have referred their friends.
Transformative Product Sprint
Membership Audits & Consulting Package
I tested quite a few offers to get here (plenty of 0 sales offers). Here are some of the things that worked –
Beta testing services for a huge discount to get early feedback and testimonials (if they performed).
Productizing the offer – once you nail the process, have templates & SOPs, and you know that if followed it will achieve results for your client, then its time to productize.
Branding the offer – give the offer a specific name and make it feel like a "package" similar to a product tier.
I realized I am building two businesses
This one makes me laugh so hard like … why am I doing this?
I’m building an agency AND I am building a content business. A lot of service businesses do this because it’s the best way to scale your revenue with high profit margins. But doing it in year 1? That was aggressive.
This happened because I started the content business first. But it's good to start with content because that helps you learn so much to shape services and products – I wouldn't go back and do this differently.
There is a much higher margin opportunity with the content business but it takes a lot longer to build sustainable revenue from digital products.
Once you have a validated product (huge step) then you need a funnel that works, and strategies to send traffic to that funnel. This is going to be a big project for me with my membership resources in year 2.
I hired coaches and welcomed mentorship
I’m a huge believer in mentorship & coaching.
The first time I personally paid a coach to help me I was figuring out what I wanted to do next with my career. I felt stagnant at the agency I was at, and I didn’t love the projects anymore. At this point I had become slightly obsessed with the creator economy.
My coach had me create a vision board based on the goals I had set and I kid you not – I put leading Product at bossbabe on that vision board. Less than 1 year later I was Head of Product at bossbabe.
Don’t ever forget the power of speaking & writing your dreams into reality.
During year 1 of the business I have worked with Marissa Liesen 1:1 and through her program Ignite, Anna Nassery (aligned agency coaching) through her Aligned Agency mastermind.
I'm also part of a self-organized mastermind of a group of creators – all of them have been in the content business much longer than me and I've learned so much from them.
Now, I’m just starting with a health coach. We are working to balance my cortisol, hormones, and fix my gut health. I tried for at least 6 months to fix it on my own. I’m 3 weeks in, down 8 lbs, and my energy is normal again.
The right coach will help you achieve your goals MUCH faster.
Group Chats aka Micro Communities
I have a few group chats that I spend time in almost daily.
My self-organized mastermind group
2 women that started their businesses at the same time as me
A slack channel in my beta membership 👀 that has 10 people
Many of my pivotal business decisions have come from these small tight knit communities.
When I test something on social media that works really well for new leads, engagement or connection and I want to share it with someone… that’s not going to be my friends from college (mostly architects) or my sister (lawyer) because they just won’t get it. Of course they’d be like “that’s awesome! Go Becky!” But you know what I mean — they aren’t like oh shit what’s was your conversion rate on the opt-in page? 🤣
That's why it's important to surround yourself with people that are on a similar path to you, so that you can share learnings... and feel more sane.
My favorite membership I belong to is Jay Clouse's Lab (affiliate) – it's for professional creators and members share their business experiments. This past week a member shared everything they did to achieve a 250k program launch and the detail blew my mind.
Join small communities of professionals like this! They will help you go further, faster, and you'll have more fun and make friends.
The Wins
What are the things I want to celebrate?
I hit 6 figures in revenue 8 months into business. I had a serious plateau for 6 months straight around 10k months before I adjusted offers and began delegating.
I’ve validated 2 offers and have glowing testimonial videos from THE BEST clients. No one tells you that every offer & product takes a ton of experimentation until you get it right.
In month 10, my husband quit his job & joined our business. We're well on our way to living our dream life!
I can't wait for year 2, I know it's going to be epic!
The Sacrifices
The wins and hard work from this past year came with sacrifices that I am no longer willing to make. I'm focusing again on myself, my health, and my friends and family.
Health
I had a great mindset throughout the year – I honestly thought I was doing good. But I started to gain a lot of weight and I got sick quite often from October - February – I had bronchitis 3x and I'm typically a very healthy person.
It turns out that my cortisol and nervous system is all out of whack (aka I've had way too much stress) – but I'm already working with a health coach to fix it!
Friends & family
Because I am hyper-focused on building right now I am guessing many of my family and friends would describe me as MIA.
It doesn’t mean I have no friends or aren’t being social — I’m just spending more time going to business retreats, and breathwork class.
My Dad made a comment recently to send him a photo because he forgets what I look like – I don't want that to be the norm in year 2.
Always learning
I feel constantly aware of how little I really know and how much I need to understand to be a better consultant, leader, and person.
The books that helped me the most this year –
Built to Sell by John Warrillow– This book got me obsessed with productized services. It also helped me realized I want to build a niche agency.
We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers – This book help shifted my mindset, understand what my dream life looks like, and reverse engineer the kind of money needed to make that happen.
10x is easier than 2x by Dan Sullivan w Dr Benjamin Hardy – This book re-wired my brain and has helped me cast a much bigger vision for my business.
If you want to scale past trading time for money, being the only person in your business, or making riskier decisions… the only way is training your mind and getting out of your own way.
It’s setting bigger goals and reverse engineering what it takes to make it happen.
It’s accepting bigger risks and trusting the process.
It’s finding the balance of taking advice & trusting your intuition.
I felt I had a strong mindset going into business but it has been much harder to stay balanced than I expected.
I am doing a lot of re-wiring cultural conditioning of what I am “supposed to do”, the safe choices, and trying to reduce stress.
A few things that have helped me:
Practicing breathwork - if your mind races like me, breathwork is an incredible way to achieve a clear mind & connect with your body
Plant medicine retreat - I never thought I’d do something like this but it helped me connect with my why & get clear on my vision (happy to talk more about this 1:1)
Walking in silence / no audio - I used to always have a podcast or music in my ears. Now I try to have silent or meditative like walks to clear my mind.
Bodywork - releasing tension in your body will help you make decisions and operate from a place of clarity. If you hold stress in your jaw, a buccal massage will change your life
Attracting the right clients
The energy you put out is what you attract back – this is why mindset work is so crucial.
As soon as I started holding my boundaries and values firmer, and doing the somatic work in the list above, I started attracting my dream clients.
Reflecting is always worth it
Every month I track KPIs in my business, and typically I am pleasantly surprised and see progress I didn't know was happening. This is the best thing I have done for my growth.
I loved writing this reflection and it feels really special to share it with you! If you made it this far, thanks for being part of my community here.
I can't wait to see what this next year holds. And as YOU keep moving forward fast don't forget to stop and reflect on the past.
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