It’s that time of year again where I need to reflect on what did and didn’t work for my online brand. At the same time I always spend some time considering if I want to continue pursuing working on and growing a digital business. I’ll let you know what I decided at the end of this post. This end of year recap is a mixed bag like always and I’m curious to also hear about how your year went.
Welcome to the Brand Building Lab, I’m your host Michelle Jackson and I help online entrepreneurs design businesses that lead with empathy and intention while earning money.
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What Worked
- Keeping content niches separate-I create content in 4 different niches. A few years ago I decided to separate that content and create new platforms for those projects. In fact, The Brand Building Lab is one of those platforms. At the time what I didn’t realize what I was doing was creating niches. Keeping content in the right spaces has made it so much easier to collaborate with brands, identify affiliate partners and keep things organized. As a result of keeping things in their different niches, I had a couple of cool opportunities crop up in the Colorado/Outdoor content creation space.
- Invited to my first Media Trip
- Participated in a paid lifestyle modeling shoot for a week in New Mexico (Taos and Santa Fe)
- Personal Finance Content vs. The Business of Online Content Creation-There is a reason why so many personal finance content creates shift and completely focus on content about making money online-it’s so damn lucrative. The partnerships, page views and affiliates. But, for me, I really was leading with my mission to help help others and continue having financial conversations. Creating The Brand Building Lab, where I can talk all about the business of online content creation, community building, etc. has been great and I’m looking forward to growing that project in 2023.
- Slow but steady content creation-I don’t have a content creation schedule anymore. I do have the goal of publishing a podcast episode a week whenever possible. But, other than that, I don’t have a content creation schedule.
- Batching my work-At the time that I’m working on this episode, I am several months ahead on my audio and YouTube content. Yep, the YouTube channel that I haven’t officially launched yet. Batching my work has become a game changer and has significantly changed the passing of my week. Things are so much easier for me to do.
- Being myself-Sharing what I’m passionate about, focusing on topics that for many would be considered unappealing such as access, equity and policy and still being able to make a living sharing what I’m deeply passionate about.
- Attending fewer conferences-In 2022, I attended just 3 conferences and one of those was a free event in Denver. I love attending conferences and connecting with other creators in the communities that I’m in…but, they can be a HUGE time suck, throw me off for weeks and don’t always pay off in the long-run. And sometimes I’m unable to meet the goals that I’ve set for my business through attending a conference.Where did I decide to go this year?
- Podcast Movement Evolutions Los Angeles
- Denver Start Up Week–Caught COVID
- Afros and Audio-Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Extending the deadline for my upcoming personal finance book “Not a Financial Unicorn” originally, I planned on releasing it in May 2022-it was clear that I needed more time to work on it. So, I pushed it back by a year.
- Diversifying my income and working with brands that were in alignment with my mission. I LOVE working with brands! It’s a great way to share a cool resource with my community while getting paid to produce content specific to the resource. Diversifying my income has been a HUGE blessing and this year it gave me room to reconsider my business model.
- Short work retreats to the mountains-I spend about a week every 5-8 weeks in the mountains. I soak in the hot tub, I relax, I get a ton of work done. I meet new people. It’s just a great recharge my mentally batteries, reset and honestly gives a lived benefit to working for myself. Next year I’m planning a few really cool retreats and I’m really looking forward to them.
What Didn’t Work
- Not trusting my gut and reacting fast enough when I had an intuition that something was working out. It happened a couple of times this year and each time I ignored the feeling-I regretted not leaning into my intuition.
- My fitness and fashion-I need get back into shape. I just don’t feel like myself and it’s driving me crazy. I also don’t want to invest in a new wardrobe while I embark on this journey. So, I’m going to sign up for Rent the Runway. I’m very excited about this!
- My old headshot-I am WAY overdue for a new set of headshots and other photos. But, because I don’t feel like I look my best, I’ve been dragging my feet on this.
- Not Getting an ADHD Assessment-A few years ago I had a friend do an intervention with me because they saw that I was doing some things that they did and they have ADHD. They were concerned that if I wasn’t aware of how ADHD can railroad focus that it would be a problem. It’s clear to me that there’s an issue and in retrospect I have always had systems. Two major events disrupted those systems: quitting my job and becoming a digital entrepreneur and COVID. Now I’m really focused on maintaining systems to minimize the impact of disruptions.
- Adding a new mastermind-I love masterminds, they can be an impactful and powerful way to grow a brand, learn new things and stay focused. But, it wasn’t the right season for the other members of the group to be a part of a mastermind. It just was always last on their list of things to do and I would end up frustrated because I would always show up and no one else really did. For a year.
- Socializing-I am an extrovert who became somewhat introverted during COVID. I’m starting to become a little more extroverted again and I’m really needing more people time. I’ve decided on a course of action and will share in an upcoming episode what I plan on doing. I felt very lonely at times this year. So, it was wonderful when I had a group of friends visit Denver during the summer. These are folks who I am in an informal mastermind with and I really appreciate that group so much.
- Projects that are basically unpaid or underpaid-2022 will be the last year I say “yes” to any unpaid projects hoping that there will a return on time invested. It takes away from my own projects that actually get me paid.
- Not having video content-I have NO video content on my platform and this is a HUGE mistake. I can’t state this strongly enough. In 2023 that changes.
- Playing small-In some ways I feel like I still have moments when I “play small” No more.
- Not publishing enough content on my niche sites-This was a result of not having systems in place so that I could work on these projects at a reasonable pace.
What Worked and Didn’t Work at the Same Time
- Cash Flow-For the most part, cash flow has been consistent. However, every once in awhile it did tighten up. Now that I’m recalibrating my business model, I expect this to stop being an issue moving forward.
- Podcasters Getting Paid Substack-Podcasters are still at the point where they aren’t completely convinced that it’s possible to make money or sustain their shows financially. Because of that, they aren’t looking for ways to speed up their trajectory towards the goals that they’ve set for themselves. If you believe it’s possible then you’re looking for a course, book, etc. to help you achieve your goals faster.
- Earning money
- Working with brands
- Collaborations
- Freelance Writing-I have a love hate relationship with freelance writing. My goal is to eliminate this revenue stream from my brand hopefully by July of next year.
- Podcasting Sponsorship Workshop-This actually worked better than I anticipated. But, during the holidays I discovered there was a small issue with the tool that I used to deliver the digital product.
- Writing romances again-My pacing was slower than before COVID. And then I caught COVID. BUT, I’m very happy to be selling romances again even though I haven’t focused on sales.
- Make Money with Ebooks Course-I quietly reopened my Make Money with Ebooks course. It has 3 tiers and I love this course so much. But, it does require some focus. I haven’t advertised that I reopened but do plan on doing that aggressively in 2023.
- Podcasters Getting Paid Course-There are some people who just want to take a course. So, I stop fighting it and am working on a self-study course that podcasters can use as a reference to monetize their shows. I
2023 It’s Time
I’m not interested in playing “small” in 2023. I have some very big goals that I’ve set and it’s time to move forward with them. I also think that the pace that I have been on was the trajectory that I was meant to be on personally. I’ve now built up the knowledge and toughness to move forward with my brand building goals. I will share what those goals are and how I plan on achieving them in the first podcast episode of the New Year.