My Monthly Review - November 2023
I have been publicly sharing my monthly business reviews since January 2022 (scroll to the bottom of this post to see my others).
This is a reset process I go through on the first of every month to review the month that has just been and to plan for the month ahead.
I highly encourage all of my clients and students to do a similar process each month as it helps keep you accountable and see what is working and isn’t working in your business.
If you want a free checklist to use you can grab that here:
If you aren’t regularly tracking what is happening in your business then it’s very difficult to assess what’s working, what isn’t working, what progress you are making (or not making!) and how you can improve.
My review process normally takes me about 20 minutes to complete each month and when I look back on my previous entries I’m so grateful that I have a record of what has been happening so I can look back on how far I have come!
A quick note before we start…
I share this information publicly because I’m a completely open book and want to encourage and inspire other women and mothers about what is possible with their businesses.
When I was starting my ow business I used to follow a few business owners who did something similar to this and I found it hugely inspiring and helpful as it showed me what was possible in my own business.
However, I’m aware that some people find the sharing of business results and revenue numbers triggering, so if that’s you then I suggest you skip this post and jump in to some of my other free content instead :)
Here’s my review from November 2023.
Looking back - review last month
Revenue
Revenue for November was $413,427
Expenses
Paid advertising: $37,760
Virtual Assistant: $2,165
Software Subscriptions: $2,953
Social Metrics
Total student enrolments across all online courses and templates: 25,991
Email/newsletter subscribers: 63,060
Instagram - TLDC: 128K
Instagram - CLR: 10.2K
Instagram - SketchUp: 10.9K
TikTok: 2,927
Threads: 10K
Twitter: 195
YouTube - CLR: 11.9K
TLDC Facebook Page Follows: 29K
Facebook Group: 19.1K
Pinterest Follows: 12.02K
Pinterest monthly views: 1.15 million
LinkedIn Follows Personal: 955
TLDC Website visits: 43K
TLDC Bounce Rate: 78.65
Top 3 Wins Last Month
Biggest ever revenue month in the business :)
Completed 10 week health/fitness challenge with good results
Furniture, lighting and all other orders placed for house
Notes from Last Month
What went well, what didn’t go well…
This month was my biggest ever revenue month in business, making over $400K (largely due to a successful Black Friday sale). 🥳
Here’s what’s been happening in November:
BUSINESS:
I was secretly hoping to cross the $400K revenue mark during November, so this was exciting. I am always playing a game with myself in business - this is what keeps it exciting and interesting for me. I try to set myself ambitious goals and then reverse engineer these to think how I can reach them. For the $400K revenue I knew that it required me to be more organised with my Black Friday sale campaign. The last few years I’ve run the sale as a bit of a last minute thing - but this year I put a lot of effort into making sure I had pre-planned my sales emails, content for the weekend and the ads that we ran - and this all came together with strong results. The good news is that as these pieces of collateral are all now drafted I should be able to just adapt and update these to use next year, which should save me some time when this all comes around again next November.
One decision I did make in November was to close down the very new brand/page that I had only started back in October (One Person Online Business). Lots of people have asked me where that brand and Instagram page have disappeared to so here’s what happened with that:
I started creating content for the page and realised that in order for content about online business to perform well I had to play to the same awful tactics that others in the online business space played - e.g. being spammy, sharing non-stop screen shots of how much money I was making etc. When I created content like this it all performed really well, but it made me feel icky each time I did it and it doesn’t really align with my values. I love to be transparent and open about how much I’m making and I do share my revenue (e.g. in my posts like this) - but I only like to do this if I think that sharing it will add value in some way - e.g. the way I do here, where I unpack everything about what’s going on in my business, not just share a spammy screenshot of my revenue for no particular reason.
As I started to build out a content calendar for the online business brand I really struggled to come up with good content ideas that didn’t already cover all the same stuff that’s already out in the world, wasn’t spammy or were things I really wanted to talk about. The whole space just felt a bit gross to me and even though I think there’s a place for a non-spammy person talking about how to grow an online business, I’m not sure how successful I can be in that space (given it will be hard to grow without doing the spammy stuff). So it was a bit of a catch 22.
I also realised that by trying to build a second brand, completely from scratch, I was doing both my TLDC brand, and the new brand a disservice. I had my attention completely divided and was chasing my tail each day to try and make content for all the different platforms I had committed myself to. I was finding that because of this the content I was creating on both platforms wasn’t at the standard I was happy with (i.e. it felt rushed and not to my normal standard).
I was talking with my husband about all of this and he said “if you were coaching yourself about this, what would you tell yourself to do” - and this 100% made everything clear for me. I would never advise someone to be trying to build two brands at once, especially if they didn’t want to be working all hours of the day or night (which I don’t!). Instead I would find out from the person which areas are making money and then tell them to lean into those areas. For me this is quite obviously my TLDC brand. This is where the bulk of my revenue comes from and I still feel I haven’t built that brand to where it could ultimately get to. I’ve had so many different ideas over the years of other content I could be creating, other products I could be creating - all to serve designers and architects. So I decided I needed to continue to lean into this and not divide my attention across two different brands.
Trying to build two brands is totally possible - but it comes back to my other goals - e.g. I don’t want to be working more than a few hours a day, I want to maintain the freedom I have with my time, I want to actually enjoy building my business (not start to hate it and resent it). And if I want to maintain my current freedom of time then I decided I should just focus on continuing to grow and expand what I’m doing for the design/architecture community.
One final thing that helped me make this decision was really around my own personal brand. These days I’m well known in the design industry as someone who helps designers with their businesses. However I felt that if I started to talk elsewhere about how to grow an online brand that this would confuse people. So this also played into my decision making.
So at this stage I’ve paused my One Person Online Business Instagram page and brand building while I think about my goals and projects for 2024. I may still come back to it, but for the moment my focus is back to being 100% on TLDC (which is more enjoyable and less stressful!).
Due to preparing for Black Friday and other things I’ve had on this month (e.g. with our house build), I haven’t done such a good job of content creation this month. I’ve still been very consistent with it, but I’ve not created as much as I normally do. My main goal is to make sure I post on my main platforms every day (TLDC Instagram being the most important as this drives a lot of leads for my business). Interestingly the amount of content I create doesn’t seem to impact how much money the business is making - e.g. if I post once a day or twice a day the revenue results seem to be pretty stable. So in my mind I think why kill myself to make more than one post a day…??!
I continue to be particularly slack on my SketchUp Tips Instagram page. Back in October I did a big brainstorming session for this page but during November I have barely posted to that page. It does, however, continue to grow (even without me posting to it) so I think there’s an appetite for that sort of content - so I really should post there more often. If I can get a better batching process in place to record the reels for the page I think I would find that easier to be consistent with. I need to set up filming days for this purpose I think.
I did manage to post a few videos to YouTube this month - but they weren’t super interesting, they were product videos for a few of my templates (so people could see behind the scenes of the templates before purchasing). Again, I’ve done a brainstorming session of the content I would like to make for YouTube, but honestly I’m just so stuck on getting back to that platform as it’s such a heavy lift to get videos made. It’s now been over a year that I’ve been talking about getting more consistent with it! 🤦🏻♀️
PERSONAL:
I’ve just finished a 10 week health and fitness challenge with the people I train with. This was very successful for me with 2.5kg lost, 3% body fat loss and maintained my muscle mass (which is quite hard to do when losing fat, so I was pleased with this). My goal is to now continue on this trajectory to keep getting leaner and stronger for summer.
Have continued my 2x weekly online pilates sessions with Kirsti from Pilates to You. This work has been really helping me build a stronger core, which in turn is helping a lot of what I do at training - especially with deadlifting, squats and other exercise where my back can be problematic. I haven’t had any major lower back issues since working with Kirsti - which is about 3 months now. That’s a big win for me!
My sleep continues to be a disaster. In fact I’m writing this review at 3am this morning after waking up at 2am and not being able to get back to sleep. 😬 A lot of it is my fault as my sleep hygiene continues to be dreadful - e.g. watching too much Netflix before bed, having naps too late in the afternoon etc. etc. I know what the problem is but I don’t fix it because, frankly, I like watching a show before I go to sleep! But my sleep pattern is definitely suffering and I do need to work on this (rather than just say I’m going to work on it).
Our new house build is progressing well. We have chosen a landscaper to work with (ED Landscapes) and have started the planning process with them. The house itself has now been gyprocked and it won’t be long until the floor will be laid. Unfortunately everything will close down for some time over Xmas and progress will get delayed due to that of course. We have been given an approximate completion date of mid-March, so it’s getting closer! This doesn’t include landscaping though, so we still probably won’t get in until a few months after that.
So overall it’s been a fantastic month.
Tomorrow Paul and I are going away for a one night ‘staycation’ in Sydney to stay at Capella. It will be our 18 year wedding anniversary on Sunday so we are largely going for that reason, but also to celebrate another successful year in business. This will be our second night away from our kids in 15 years!!! So this is a pretty big and rare event for us!! Because Hugo needs so much help we don’t get many chances for our other boys to get minded, which is why we rarely get a chance to do this sort of thing.
The boys start school holidays next week so December will largely be about holidays. We are going to Byron in a week or so for our annual family trip. This will be our 5th year in a row doing the same trip (we stay at Elements). I haven’t really had a holiday at all this year, so I’m definitely looking forward to the break.
December is also when I spend time thinking about the upcoming year and planning my goals and projects. I normally do this while I’m in Byron and have some time to think about things. So I’ll get 2024 organised and think through what is to come next year.
Looking forward - plan this month
Focus this month:
✅ 2024 planning
👏🏻 Create lots of helpful content for my community
💪🏻 Continue to get strong and lean
Projects this month:
Map out 2024 goals, content and projects
Create table with metrics data to track progress
YouTube channel - content plan, new videos
Get ahead with SketchUp Tips videos
Goals this month:
150K in revenue
What would make this month amazing?
Plan for 2024. Enjoy some down time. Continue being really careful with my nutrition to reach my goal of being stronger and leaner for summer. Create helpful content for my community.
If you would like to follow my business journey you can read my other monthly reviews via the links at the bottom of this page.
And if you would like to download my free Notion template to conduct your own monthly business review you can do that here:
Courses and Templates for Designers and Architects
DO YOU WANT TO….
Improve your professionalism?
Find more clients?
Bring in more revenue?
Create better systems and processes?
Then check out my business courses and templates for designers and architects.
These courses and templates leave you with work done - not just a long list of things you need to do next. We have a really strong focus on taking action and getting things created that improve your business.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
Clare x
Dr Clare Le Roy
