#93 2024 Reflection: Highs & Lows (+ My Vision Board Process)
Ahhhhh reflection season, my favorite! I've been looking forward to writing this issue. If you're new here, I occasionally share a more personal issue about how things are going in the business and in life. That's today. Welcome.
If that's not your jam & you're here for community how-to's you might have missed these gems in December:
I'll see you next week for my 2025 community predictions issue.
I published a short year in review post on Instagram – this issue will be an expanded version of that. You can expect highs AND lows.
Let’s get into it –
As I sat down to start reflecting on the year, my first move was to take stock of a few numbers.
I could NOT BELIEVE a few of these statistics.
46 newsletter essays published – This is my second year writing my newsletter and while my goal in general is to send an issue every single week, I gave myself 6 weeks off (light mode weeks). Nothing bad happened. I was still incredibly consistent. The takeaway: give yourself a break when you need it.
68 connection calls – Holy wow. When I reflect on some of these casual conversations... some of them turned into huge opportunities and friendships for me. I built a strong relationship with Jess Shirra and we ended up working together on some incredible projects including a new membership strategy for Vanessa & Xander 🤯. Tina Beliveau and I went to lunch after she replied to one of my newsletters and her team ended up helping my sister buy a house in my neighborhood. I could go on and on. The takeaway: make time for 1:1 calls. That's how you build community.
50 group workshops facilitated – I love teaching and I love facilitating these sessions. It is my highest value work and why my clients love working with me. My Dad always used to tell me "practice makes perfect" and when I saw this number I thought WOW I'm certainly getting enough practice. Reflecting on my projects this year, I *really* enjoyed any projects that involved workshops with clients. The takeaway: do more of what you really love and what you're really great at.
Let's talk about some of the highs:
(1) We launched our agency, Affinity Collective
If I'm being honest with myself, I've always wanted to be an agency owner ever since I ran my own practice at Spire Digital. And it has felt so good to start building out a team of excellent consultants.
We worked with some incredible clients this year – Vanessa & Xander, Spirit Daughter, Bosses In Beauty, and Vidal Coaching to mention a few.
We're building out platform partnerships and have client apps launching in 2025 – it feels so exciting to get back to my custom development roots, but with community-driven businesses I believe in.
(2) My husband joined the business as General Manager
Justin joined the business in May and this has been such a huge lifestyle upgrade for us. We have the flexibility to go where we want, when we want, and work from the road. We spent almost a month traveling this summer and spent so much time with our families.
Justin is killing it doing a lot of our tech buildouts and marketing admin for our clients. And he's learning the ropes of operations so that he can run the behind-the-scenes of our agency. I'm so grateful for him!
(3) I went on two amazing retreats
As an advisor in Anna Nassery's mastermind for agency owners, I went to her retreat in Austin, TX in March to run a full-day workshop for attendees. However, attending the retreat was a HUGE catalyst for me to begin my health journey, work with Vidal as a client, and change my life (I shared my health results in the vision board section below).
I made the trip to Portugal with my friend Cheyenne for Marissa & Carla's THRIVE retreat. It was incredible – I wrote a recap here about how they built real connection during this retreat. I took lots of notes.
(4) I was a guest on my favorite podcast
While I was having fun at Craft + Commerce (my favorite conference I've ever been to and highly recommend), my friend Jay Clouse texted me and said "want to record a podcast?" and 15 minutes later I was in Kit Studios with him and Chenell Basilio recording this episode of Creator Science. Pinch me?
Let's talk about the lows:
I have always promised myself (and you!) that I wouldn't be the type of creator that only shares a highlight reel. A lot of this year was hard.
I messed up, made bad decisions, questioned myself, and really struggled with my personal health journey.
(1) I made a bad hiring decision
This year we started offering membership and program management as a service and I hired someone very junior to help me, thinking I could save money on budget and train them myself. This was a huge mistake.
It was absolutely the wrong hire, a bad situation, and I took WAY too long to do something about it. It ended up costing me the contract renewal with the client.
Even worse, it wrecked my confidence and I avoided selling any more management until recently when I reflected on how we can do it much better.
(2) We struggled with our personal finances
I'm still learning how to deal with the highs and lows of financial success in business. We had a lot of momentum and incredible multi-5-figure months in the summer and so we invested and spent the extra, instead of planning for lower months ahead. And then we got rocked with a few barely-any-sales months.
The biggest lesson I'm taking into the new year is to plan my revenue goals in quarters, not months. And to focus on marketing and business development EVERY month, not just the months we need more clients.
(3) I burned myself out
I think there was a 6-week period this fall where I did the very minimum necessary to move projects along, I did 0 business development, slowed down content creation, slept a lot, and I read 13 fiction books.
My brain just needed a break. My health journey felt like a full-time job with the business being my second priority. Trying to give it my all to everything caught up to me.
(4) My audience & subscribers had marginal growth
Wow it's so tough to pour time and energy into creating so much content, writing this weekly newsletter, making reels, writing LinkedIn posts, just to have a very low amount of new followers or subscribers.
One day I said to my friend, "I'm not sure if it's even worth it for me to spend time making Instagram posts", and the next day I sold a $2000 service in an Instagram DM (and she wasn't a referral).
Maybe audience size doesn't matter so much – it's the relationships you build along the way.
Looking ahead to 2025
My health is in such a better place, my mindset is ready for growth, and I have 2 years of fumbling through business challenges behind me. There's so much I'm excited about going into next year. Here's my top 3:
I'm ready to build out our book of business at the agency.
I have an excellent team that is working to set up our membership & program management systems now. We have SOPs, templates, and workflows for everything and we're preparing to scale our community management services.
I'm going to keep creating content and sharing what I learn.
It might be small numbers, but the impact is huge. I'm so grateful for each of you that I've connected with. Thanks for being here, and thanks for reaching out and connecting 1:1. Those 68 connection calls were time well spent and I can't wait for more in 2025.
I'm co-hosting a retreat with my friend Cheyenne.
We've planned the most incredible 3-day retreat in Nashville focused on optimizing your product strategy, offer-suite, messaging, and marketing to increase your revenue. Think: two data-nerds working ON your business with you + connecting with other amazing entrepreneurs.
Make sure you subscribe to the email list where we’ll announce spots are open first.
Let's Chat
What is one high and one low from your year? DM me on Instagram, I'd love to hear from you. It makes my day 🥹
Next week I'm sending my 2025 community predictions issue – if you have a question or a prediction, I'd love to hear it.
My 2025 Vision Board
Every year my sister, niece, and I do a reflection exercise to journal on the previous year, and then we create physical vision boards for the next year. This exercise can be SO powerful.
My sister manifested every single thing on her 2024 board including a new home, travel destinations, and an insane jump in revenue.
In January 2023 Danielle Canty & I hosted a vision board workshop for the bossbabe community and it was our highest attended event EVER. We love a vision board.
Here's my 2025 physical board hanging in my office
Notes:
I'm trying to look like JLo while I cook my family dinner 🤣 ... in all seriousness, JLo is known for treating her body like a temple. And it shows. We're manifesting sustaining our health this year.
Justin and I want to spend a month in the mountains next year.
More books – I've had so much fun reading this year
More green – manifesting abundance and financial success
Ok, ready to make yours?? There are two steps that I'll break down.
Step 1: Journal & reflect
Create your wheel of life. Give each category a score of 1-10 (10 being totally 100% fulfilled) and then journal why you gave it that score.
Health
Personal Development
Business / Career
Family / Relationships
Social / Friendships
Finance
Environment (your home/workspace)
You Pick Category (Ex: Spirituality, Travel, Creativity)
Take note of which categories have top scores, and which categories have the worst scores. Choose one or two categories to focus on and set goals. In 2025 I am focused on my finance & business categories.
Last year health was a 3 for me – this year it's an 8. What you put your energy into is where you'll see results and impact.
Last step: Choose your images!
Build a board (physical or on Pinterest) with images that represent your goals and how you visualize your life.
Doing a visualization meditation beforehand can be super powerful. Let your mind see visuals for what it feels like to accomplish your goals, and then make it reality by putting those images on your board.
I'd love to see what you come up with, reply and share or tag me on Instagram.
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