Rethinking my business for 2023
Every year in December my family and I take a trip to Byron Bay and while I’m away I always spend some time reflecting on the year that has passed and planning for the year ahead.
I normally do this with my iPad in an app called Good Notes but this year I’ve decided to also document this process publicly on my blog.
I’m doing this because:
I always enjoy reading posts like this myself on other people’s blogs
I like to be an open book when it comes to my business - I figure sharing things publicly may help others in some way
I like the idea of having things documented publicly so I can refer back to them in the future and see how my thinking has changed
I never want to appear like I’ve got everything figured out. I’m always just trying stuff out myself and seeing what works (and what doesn’t work) in my business. I figure sharing my thought process publicly helps others see that running a business is all about trying stuff and (most importantly) taking messy action.
I see the process of building my business as a game.
I don’t see anything as a win or a failure. I see it all more as a process of trying things, tweaking things and stopping things that I either don’t enjoy or that aren’t working well.
And because I see it all as a game I have no ego tied up in any of this. It doesn’t matter to me if I try things and then abandon them later on because they haven’t worked (or I haven’t enjoyed them). The thing I’m most interested in is doing things I really enjoy and creating things in the world that are valuable to other people.
So with all of that in mind the following post is a brain dump of what I’m thinking about as we finish up 2022 and head into 2023.
2022 - what’s gone well
Here’s a brain dump of what has gone well in 2022:
I’ve had a record revenue year (my goal was to make $2 million in revenue and we hit that in early December).
I’ve been extremely consistent with content creation and created heaps of valuable stuff that people have told me has been really helpful for them. The DMs and emails I get each day from people who are making changes to their lives/businesses continue to be what push me to do more.
I split out my TLDC (The Little Design Corner) and personal (Clare Le Roy) brands and have been creating content for both brands for nearly 9 months of the year.
After being asked for this for ages I finally created and launched my Online Course Creator program. This has been a success and definitely worth creating - with over 200 students enrolled and generating nearly $250,000 in revenue from that product alone.
My TLDC courses, especially my business short courses, have grown a lot again this year. I now have nearly 1500 designers in my short course platform and I think there’s heaps of unmet potential in that community that I’m not yet making the most of. I see that as a big opportunity for 2023 and one that I’m excited to explore further.
My SketchUp courses have continued to grow and be a huge success. TLDC is now a well recognised brand in the space of SketchUp training and I’ve had quite a few very ‘high profile’ people who have come and taken the course (who do so under private names or aliases to stay anonymous). That part has been exciting as it shows the brand is really building across the industry, which I’m proud of.
I survived (and recovered from) the first of my two major brain surgeries. The second one is coming 21 February 2023 :(
2022 - what I haven’t enjoyed
Here’s what I haven’t really enjoyed about 2022 or think hasn’t gone that well:
I haven’t enjoyed running two brands. It’s way too much content to be creating on my own and if I want to continue with two brands I think I would need to have a content manager who can help me manage and produce the content that’s required to make both of them a success. But as I don’t want staff, I think the answer is that I need to cut back.
The CLR brand was born out of the fact that I was getting more and more people in my TLDC community who weren’t designers and who were looking for content from me about how I had built the online part of my business. I decided to split that content out into a separate brand because I was worried that the designers in my community wouldn’t be interested in that content. What happened in reality is that heaps of designers followed me over to the CLR brand - so I was now running two brands but essentially still had a very similar audience (albeit with some new people who aren’t designers in it as well). So I’m now running two brands for essentially the same audience!
It has been weird (and potentially confusing to others) having two brands that are basically both ‘me’. It makes it hard for me to think where to post things - especially on Instagram stories, which is a place where I enjoy creating content. As a result I think both the TLDC and CLR brands have been a bit diluted this year. I think part of what makes my brands successful is the ‘me’ factor that goes into them - i.e. people like hearing about what I’m thinking about and what I’m up to and it’s hard to share that across two brands without repeating myself (and many people do follow me on both so I’m very conscious of not doing this).
Because I’m trying to create so much content on my own I’m not able to spend enough time on strategy and fixing up things that aren’t working well in my business - e.g. my TLDC website really needs an upgrade and there’s lots of back end stuff that needs to be fixed up that I don’t have time to focus on.
As part of my brand split I also launched a second newsletter about 6 months ago. So I’m now writing two newsletters a week. I did this to address what I saw as a problem of having split my brand into ‘design’ content and ‘business’ content. So I tried to split my email list and provide a newsletter that was focused on design specifically (my Tuesday ‘Design Notes’ newsletter) as well as one on Friday (my Friday ‘Business Notes’ newsletter). But what I’ve found is that the newsletters have the same problem as the other aspects of having split my brand - and that is that I’m really just the same person running two brands. :) I don’t want to repeat myself by saying the same thing in both newsletters (as I have lots of people who are on both) but at the same time I keep asking myself which newsletter I share the updates of what’s going on in my business/life?? It’s been a quandary!! I also haven’t found it all that fun writing two newsletters and I feel like it’s not the best user experience either.
While the Online Course Creator program has been a success, building that to a million dollar product means having to grow a completely different brand in the ‘online business’ space. I’ve found that hard to do that without coming across spammy and salesy - as what makes me an ‘expert’ in the online business space is the fact I’ve built a multi-million dollar business and in order to show my credibility I feel I need to be talking about that quite a lot, which I don’t really like doing. The ‘online business’ space also doesn’t feel quite as authentic to who I am as a person and I don’t want to have to compete with the spammy (mostly American) people who are already well established in the space.
There’s lots of ‘copy cat’ people popping up on the internet who are trying to copy my business model and what I’m up to - especially designers who are trying to become ‘business coaches for designers’ (but who haven’t actually built successful businesses themselves!!). I want to continue to evolve my TLDC brand so it is ahead of the copy cats and so that I’m always introducing new ideas/content that meet the needs of my community. Although I mostly just ignore the ‘copy cats’ I do find it irritating seeing people stealing my branding, content and ideas and trying to pass these off as their own (e.g. the amount of people I see using my brand colours and fonts now is crazy - as are the number of people trying to build copy-cat SketchUp courses!!). But I’m a competitive person and all this really does is push my competitive instincts and help me ensure I stay well ahead of these people via innovation and new content ideas that they can’t copy.
Finally, I’m currently working more hours than I would ideally like. The pattern of work that I love is to get up at 4am and work hard until around 11-12 each day (with an exercise break in the middle) and then have the rest of the day free to do whatever I want. Sometimes that’s more work, sometimes it’s rest. My idea of success is having heaps of freedom and free time in my calendar and this isn’t always the case at the moment.
2023 - what I’m going to change
Here are some questions I’m asking myself as I think about 2023:
If I were my own business coach what would I advise myself to do?
If my business were simpler, what would that look like?
Which parts of my business do I enjoy (bring me energy) and which parts don’t?
How can I cut out (or reduce) the parts of my business that I don’t enjoy?
How can I make 2023 fun and enjoyable?
How can I manage my business around my next brain surgery and recovery? (based on what happened last time this is likely to be around 3 months of the year where I don’t feel like doing much work)
Giving these some thought, here are some of the things I’m thinking about:
If I were coaching myself on my business the first thing I would ask myself is why on earth I’m trying to build two brands at the same time - especially when one of the brands is already doing extremely well (TLDC) and has heaps more opportunity that I haven’t yet tapped into in terms of content to create and updates to make to what I’m already doing.
My aim should be to do less, but better. That’s going to be a goal going into 2023.
The thing I enjoy most in my business is creating content. I want to continue to do this and build things that are helpful for people - but do it in a way that doesn’t overwhelm me.
I still love the design industry - I open every design newsletter I subscribe to, I mostly follow designers on Instagram, I read every design magazine issue that comes out in the shops, I’m about to do our own house (which will be great content for my community). This is still the industry that gets me the most excited and that I enjoy the most as my ‘hobby’. I didn’t get the same feeling about hanging out in the ‘online business’ world this year, which feels much more spammy and salesy and doesn’t really align with who I am as a business owner.
I would also ask myself what my goals are in my business - and the answer to that is that I want to create content that is helpful for others BUT do it in a way that means I still have plenty of freedom in my life to do things I enjoy and not feel overwhelmed and stressed by what I put on my plate. I also would like room to have time to think strategically about the business and not always be so busy creating and doing that I don’t have time to do anything else.
I still don’t want staff in my business. In fact this year I have gone from having two VAs to now only having one. It’s still a strategic decision to continue to work this way as I don’t want to manage staff and I don’t want the pressure of having other people to look after. So my business needs to stay at a level where I can largely manage it on my own (with the help of my husband, who works with me and with Kate, who helps with my SketchUp course). I think the revenue cap for that is likely to be around $3 million/year. Beyond that I would find the student support/queries level far too high to manage on my own (or with just one or two VAs). So I need to accept that if I don’t take on staff then my business will have a natural ‘capping’ point. If I did take on staff I could easily see a path to $10 million/year for my business but I have no interest in building out a machine like that. This continues to be a strategic business choice, but one that is difficult for me as an ambitious person who always likes to see growth.
The other thing on my mind is that going into 2023 I have another major brain surgery coming up in February. This isn’t the time to be doing more and trying to overload myself. I want to simplify rather than complicate, especially in the first half of 2023.
So given those thoughts here are a few things I’ve decided to change going into next year:
re-merge my TLDC and CLR brands to get around the issue of having to create so much content (and because it’s hard to put personality into two different brands that are essentially both ‘me’ without repeating myself)
go back to sending just one newsletter a week (on a Friday). This will be re-branded to be called 🚀 The Profitable Designer Newsletter and will combine design and business topics into one newsletter.
Reduce my content creation back to a more manageable level - a good place to start with this is to continue with the same amount of daily content but only create this for one brand (TLDC).
The ultimate goal going into 2023 is to continue to build TLDC so it becomes the go-to platform for high quality business and SketchUp content for designers and architects around the world. There is a lot of unmet potential with that, which I would love to explore further.
Continue to run and sell my Online Course Creator program as this has been a success - but bring this under the TLDC brand instead of having it as its own brand/content pillar. If people who are not designers want to join that will be fantastic as the course isn’t specifically created for designers, but I won’t continue to try and build an audience around online content specifically as I have found that a pretty spammy place to hang out and it doesn’t align with how I like to run my business or the type of content I like creating.
Have very few projects for Q1 and Q2 of 2023 so I can focus on my brain surgery and recovery without feeling guilty when I’m not working (like I did after my surgery this year).
Overall I’m excited to get back to focusing specifically on the designer and architect community and helping them build the best (and most profitable!) businesses possible. This is the community I am still so passionate about helping and the community that I know the best (as it is the root of my own business experience).
Also - just because that’s how I’m thinking about things today doesn’t mean it still can’t change! That’s the joy of having your own business, building it in public and trying out lots of things. But this is where my thinking is today and my current plan moving into 2023.
Thanks for reading and catch you in my next post :)
Clare x
Dr Clare Le Roy
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