Rethinking my business for 2024
Every year in December I spend time reflecting on the year that has passed and plan for the year ahead.
Last year I decided to start documenting this process publicly on my blog 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 enjoyed reading my 2023 review earlier today and seeing how my thinking has changed throughout this year).
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 new things and (most importantly) taking messy action.
I have always seen 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 2023 and head into 2024.
2023 - what’s gone well
Here’s a brain dump of what has gone well in 2023:
I survived (and recovered from) my third major brain surgery back in February. Recovery went well as I went into the operation as fit and healthy as I could. For the moment my health is very stable but I still have another brain aneurysm (I have 4 in total) that is being monitored by my neurosurgeon. I may still have to have another brain surgery to repair that one if it changes :( I realise this isn’t strictly business related - but as I am the person running my business it obviously has quite a bit impact if I’m either not here or not fit to work!
The business has had another record revenue year (my goal was to make $2.2 million in revenue in 2023 and we hit that back in November and are on track to hit nearly $2.5 million this year).
We had our biggest ever single month in November with over $400K in revenue 🤯
We have been building our dream home, which is due for completion in a few months (also not business related but is so exciting and has also taken up a significant portion of my time throughout the year)
I launched my new business templates for designers in July and these have been a huge hit with my community and now make up about 1/2 of our monthly revenue.
My SketchUp courses have continued to grow and be a huge success. TLDC continues to be a well recognised brand in the space of SketchUp training. I have over 11,000 students in those courses now.
My Instagram page hit 100K followers (now at nearly 135K as of writing this)
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 push me to do more, create more and show up each day. :)
I reorganised all the free content on my website into topic themes to make it easier for my community to find the content that will help them make progress in the areas they need help with right now.
I improved the look and feel of my courses and templates shop (e.g. new product images, adding in behind the scenes videos, adding more social proof etc.)
I created lots of new lead magnets (free guides and templates)
My husband and I completed a large course migration and back end system upgrade
2023 - what I haven’t enjoyed
Here’s what I haven’t really enjoyed about 2023 or think hasn’t gone that well:
As happened in 2022, I spent time this year creating content across two brands TLDC (The Little Design Corner) with content to help designers grow profitable business and my personal brand (Clare Le Roy) where I was sharing content about how to start and grow an online business (like I’ve done myself). I even created a brand new IG account and brand for a month or so (One Person Online Business) - but closed this down shortly after for reasons I’ll explain below.
This is now a mistake I’ve made a few years in a row (trying to run multiple brands) and each time I haven’t enjoyed the process - so I need to learn to stop saying yes to every “shiny” idea that I have and keep focused on the one brand/idea that is currently working well and making the majority of the revenue in my business.
The reason I was trying to run these different brands on two topics was because I had more and more non-designers asking me for help with creating online courses and growing an online brand. So it seemed like a natural progression for me to create content and products around this topic, given how much success I’ve had with this myself.
But what I’ve found each time I’ve tried to do this is:
it’s way too much content to be creating on my own and if I want to continue with multiple brands 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 this isn’t the right answer for me.
the online business world is super spammy (and I’m not). I hated having to create content all the time that talked about how much money I was making. But 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 always feel I need to be talking about that, which I don’t 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. This doesn’t feel genuine to who I am as a business owner. I don’t mind sharing revenue and thoughts in posts like this (or in my monthly reviews) but I don’t want to be doing it daily on social media. Whenever I get an ‘icky’ feeling posting something - which I often did in the online business space - I know it’s not right!
running multiple brands, on two topics, was starting to confuse my communities. It was confusing to non-designers that I had a whole other content side where I only talked about design businesses and it was confusing to designers in my community that I was also talking about online business (not just running a design business). As I was the ‘face’ of both brands, this was a confusing message to be sending.
My Online Course Creator program has been running for about 18 months now and a number of students have had some really great results from this program - e.g. I’ve had a number of students with a40K+ first launches of their courses. However, the Online Course Creator program was created in response to what I was writing about above - i.e. for people who wanted help launching an online business. But because I don’t really want to create content about that topic any longer, it doesn’t really make sense to be advertising and selling my Online Course Creator program. So for the time being I have removed that course for sale from my shop. I am still actively supporting students who have purchased the course, but for the moment I don’t feel I want to be enrolling more students in that course. It has been a strong product nevertheless, with more than 320 students enrolled and making nearly $400K in revenue over the past 18 months.
Because I was trying to create so much content on my own across two brands I wasn’t able to spend enough time on strategy and fixing up things that aren’t working well in my core TLDC 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. By going back to a singular focus on TLDC I will have time this year to spend fixing up those issues.
There continues to be 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!!). As was my aim throughout 2023 I will 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, after many years of getting up at 4am, I have decided in the past few weeks that this isn’t meeting my health and fitness needs any longer. I was going to bed later and later and getting less and less sleep. This was then causing a pattern of being quite productive for a few hours in the morning but then completely crashing in the afternoon and needing an afternoon nap to function. The afternoon nap then disrupted my ability to get to sleep at night - and so the vicious cycle continued! I was regularly getting about 5-6 hours of sleep a night and was feeling pretty rubbish as a result. But after having about 8-10 hours of sleep per night while we were away on holidays recently (and realising how great I felt because of this) I’ve decided to not have any strict rules around when I get up any longer. I will wake up when I’ve had enough sleep and start my day then.
My Dad also passed away on the 30 July of this year, which was obviously a very upsetting part of my year.
2024 - what I’m going to change
Here are some questions I’m asking myself as I think about 2024:
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 2024 fun and enjoyable?
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. This was exactly what I told myself this time last year and for some reason totally ignored my own advice!!!
So this year I am choosing to focus ONLY on TLDC. If you hear me starting to say I’m going to start creating content on another second brand you have full permission to write to me and tell me to stop being a nutcase and to stick with one brand. :)
I run my business to have a great life - e.g. create things I enjoy, work with people I like, have freedom in my days to do what I want and make money at the same time.
My aim for 2024 is to do less, but do it better.
The thing I continue to enjoy most in my business is creating content. I want to continue to do this and build things that are helpful for people. The main platforms I want to focus on this year are:
TLDC Instagram - with an aim of getting to 200K followers this year (currently at 134K).
My YouTube page - where I want to share mini-trainings that provide a solid business education to designers (for free). My aim is to publish trainings at least weekly and get to 50K followers (100K is the stretch goal) this year (currently 12K).
My weekly newsletter - where I enjoy collating all the content I’ve created each week. My aim is to grow that to 100K subscribers this year (currently at 64K).
Any other platforms I create content on are really just to have a presence (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook etc.) - these are not the core focus of my content strategy.
I am thinking of creating a ‘Social Media Growth Club for Designers and Architects’ in 2024. This will be a membership community that helps designers learn how to use Instagram as a strategic business tool. Instagram is still one of the top 3 ways that designers find clients - but most designers do a terrible job with their Instagram content (I follow a lot of you and can easily see why your pages aren’t growing and your content is not performing). I have learned so much about social media marketing over the 10 years I’ve been in business and I am excited to share this in more depth with those who want to join my membership.
I want to remake my SketchUp course once the 2024 version of the software is released. This keeps that course completely up to date and positions it in the market as the most up to date training that’s available. My aim is always to exceed my student/client expectations. Keeping my courses and programs up to date (and providing these updates free to all existing students) is one way that I do that.
I also want to continue to get better at marketing my business courses and templates for designers. There is a lot more opportunity for growth with these products. This is a project for 2024.
I still don’t want staff in my business - this is a core part of my business and means I will only ever grow to a certain point. I continue to have a VA who works with me about 10 hours per week. This is 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 (or their careers) 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 courses and student support). 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 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 a $10 million/year business but I have no interest in building out a machine like that. So staying a manageable size, with no full time stuff continues to be a strategic business choice. This one is always a bit difficult for me as an ambitious person who continues to want to see growth and progress :)
So given those thoughts here are a few things I’ve decided to change going into next year:
For 2024 my core products I’ll be focusing on are:
My Sketchup courses (which I will be remaking early in 2024)
My business templates and short courses (which I will continue to update as needed)
My social media growth club (membership) for designers (which I intend to launch for start of 2024).
My aim is to make these three core products the very best they can possible be and then find ways of getting more attention on these products (via valuable free content).
So the biggest aim for 2024 is to get more people to join my community. Although my community is already reasonably large - there are still so many designers in the world who haven’t heard about my business (but who would likely find the content I’m sharing helpful). In order to grow my brand and community I will be creating a lot more content and I have quite a few ideas of different types of content I want to create during the year. By only focusing on a single brand, this will mean I can put all my creative energy into creating that content and enjoy the process.
Related to that, I want to think about a rebrand for my TLDC business in 2024. I have a new domain I’ve purchased that I really like and I much prefer the name of (I have always hated the name of my business - The Little Design Corner!). But I need to think through the implications of changing my brand, given the fact I have quite a lot of brand equity out in the market at this point. This will be a big decision, but one I’ll be seeking some professional advice and input on during 2024.
I will likely completely close down my Online Course Creator program to new sales in 2024 (but continue to support students that are already in the program)
My revenue goal for 2024 is $2.4 million. We will surpass that by the end of 2023, so this is very realistic to be aiming for in 2024.
We are also looking forward to finishing our new house and moving in :) That will be a proud moment knowing that we’ve built our dream house because of the success I’ve had in a business I’ve built up from nothing but ideas, trying to be helpful and lots of hard work. 🥳
Overall I’m excited to continue creating content for the design and architecture community and helping them build the best (and most profitable!) businesses possible. This is the community I am still 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 my 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 2024.
Thanks for reading and catch you in my next post :)
Clare x
Dr Clare Le Roy
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