My Monthly Review - September 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 September 2023.
Looking back - review last month
Revenue
Revenue for September was $243,614
Expenses
The main expenses this month:
Paid advertising: $36,345
Virtual Assistants: $2,393
Software Subscriptions: $728
Social Metrics
Total student enrolments across all online courses and templates: 22,445
Email/newsletter subscribers: 59,155
Instagram - TLDC: 114K
Instagram - CLR: 11K
Instagram - SketchUp: 6,293
TikTok: 1,950
Threads: 9,320
Twitter: 195
YouTube - CLR: 11,515
YouTube - SketchUp: 498
TLDC Facebook Page Follows: 27K
Facebook Group: 17.1K
Pinterest Follows: 11.74K
Pinterest monthly views: 1.1 million
LinkedIn Follows Personal: 891
LinkedIn Follows Business: 219
TLDC Website visits: 38K
Bounce Rate: 76.27%
Top 3 Wins Last Month
Ran my content challenge for the month with some very successful results
Focus on my health and fitness - specifically eating really clean
High revenue month
Notes from Last Month
What went well, what didn’t go well…
This month has been another strong revenue month. The second half of this year has been particularly strong so far.
This has been for two reasons I think. Firstly we’ve been playing around with some things with the ads (by we I mean Paul!). We have increased ad spend a little bit (not by much though) but ROAS is higher than normal - with some ads performing at a ROAS of 10x. Paul has been working with our ads manager rep from Meta to make tweaks to the account and this seems to be paying off so far.
In addition I’ve run my content experiment for the entire month where I’ve been posting 300 pieces of content a week (read my review from last month to learn more about exactly what I’m doing with this). This is driving a lot more organic leads into the business and no doubt impacting revenue as well (in a positive way).
Here’s a bit more about what’s happened this month.
Business:
I’ve run my content experiment for the entire month. At last check this has resulted in a huge increase in engagement on my social media accounts as well as an overall increase in revenue as well.
The content experiment has been fairly easy for me to implement each day and I don’t have issues with creating all the content. Some days I don’t create as much content if a post is performing particularly well on one of my channels and I want to give it a bit more time to continue getting out there before posting something else. So I play that part by ear a little bit.
The SketchUp Tips page has been the hardest one to be consistent with as I haven’t got into a good system of batching content for that page yet. I am planning on spending a day or two this month just creating reels for that page to help me be more consistent with that moving into next month. Despite this the page has grown well so far and have added more than 4,000 new followers in this month alone.
TikTok is also growing (the SketchUp Tips page I launched there). But I honestly hate TikTok. It’s such a mean platform. People are so quick to write nasty comments - even about something as mundane as SketchUp! Makes me wonder if I want to bother trying to add content there or not as I don’t really feel like engaging with the people over there at all.
I don’t have any large projects on in my business at the moment so my aim for October is to keep going with my content creation experiment and keep iterating what I’m doing with that to see how it impacts business growth and engagement levels. One thing I do want to do is to be a bit more strategic about planning out our Black Friday sales this year. I only run one really big sale per year and want to do some interesting things to promote it this year (as normally we just do all this in a haphazard way each year).
Personal:
I’ve been working hard in September on getting stronger and leaner for summer. My focus has been on eating heaps of protein and really clean fruit/veg. I’ve been avoiding as much processed food as possible and I’m feeling pretty good for these tweaks to my diet.
However despite this I’m not feeling very strong at training at the moment, which is annoying me (given how well I’m trying to eat). I’m trying to play with different things with my nutrition to see how that impacts my energy levels - e.g. eating more/less carbs, adding BCAAs, timing of my meals and things like that.
I’ve been trying to sleep better as well as I’m sure that impacts my training. My husband started taping his mouth at night after listening to a podcast about it and he’s had some interesting results from doing that for the past 6 months (he feels he sleeps better, he’s not snoring much anymore). So a few weeks ago I decided to try mouth taping while I sleep as well. It does definitely help me sleep more soundly I think. I’m going to continue with this and see how I feel and what my Whoop (a tracking device I wear) monitors about my sleep patterns. It’s definitely not that romantic though - two people both sleeping side by side with their mouth tape on LOL! That’s 20 years of marriage for you :)
Our house build is going well but it’s been a bit slow this month. Upstairs exterior is now finished and painted so it’s looking more like a ‘real’ house now, which is exciting! Still lots more months until we are in (probably March/April 2024 I would say).
Overall it’s been a really good, consistent month - but quite uneventful really. It’s a reminder to me that being disciplined and consistent is sometimes what’s needed in business (and life). There can’t always be fun projects and exciting things happening.
So my goal for October is really more of the same. More consistency with both my content creation experiment and with looking after my health and nutrition.
Looking forward - plan this month
Focus this month:
👏🏻 Keep going with my content experiment
💪🏻 Get strong and lean
Projects this month:
Black Friday sale planning
YouTube channel - content plan, new videos
Get ahead with SketchUp Tips videos
Content brainstorming session
Create house furniture/styling schedule
Goals this month:
$150K revenue
What would make this month amazing?
Continue my content creation experiment and see what this does for business results. Continue being really careful with my nutrition to reach my goal of being stronger and leaner for summer.
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
