My Monthly Review - December 2022
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 my free Notion template and 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 December 2022.
Looking back - review last month
Revenue
Revenue for December was $96,016
Expenses
Paid advertising: $19,770
Virtual Assistants: $1,330
Software Subscriptions: $1,495
Social Metrics
Email/newsletter subscribers: 42,336
Instagram - TLDC: 77.9K
Instagram - CLR: 9,652
YouTube - CLR: 9,256
CLR Facebook Page Follows: 362
TLDC Facebook Page Follows: 24,340
Facebook Group: 11.3K
Pinterest Follows: 10.74K
Pinterest monthly views: 614K
Twitter followers: 184
LinkedIn Follows: 552
TLDC Website visits: 22K
Bounce Rate: 79%
CLR Website visits: 1.5K
Bounce Rate: 71%
Top 3 Wins Last Month
Moved and settled into our new house
Had a great holiday to Byron
Completed my planning for 2023 and feeling excited about what’s to come
Notes from Last Month
What went well, what didn’t go well…
The good thing about running a specific business model for a few years is you start to get used to seasonal patterns in the business.
And after running my online business for about 3 years now I know that December is always a slow month with course sales. So I was expecting that this year and didn’t start to freak out that my entire business was dying (like I have in the past haha - it drives my husband crazy!!!).
I think December is normally slow for a few reasons:
I run my only major sale of the year over Black Friday weekend in late November, this means that lots of the people who might have been thinking about purchasing do so over that sale weekend (and means slower sales in December)
People are busy in December doing more important things than thinking about online courses - like taking holidays, preparing for Xmas celebrations and things like that
Having said that, this December has been stronger than others I’ve had in previous years and although my goal was $80K in revenue we ended up doing nearly $100K in the end, which was quite strong for December. I looked back at December of 2021 and revenue was just under $60K last year, so it’s a good improvement on that.
As a result it means that I have hit my annual revenue target for 2022 of $2 million. In fact, in the end the annual revenue was $2,112,642 - crazy! 🤯 I’ve also just crossed over $5 million in total revenue in just over 3 years, which is also so unbelievable. If you had told me 4 years ago that this is what would be happening for me I would never have believed you!!!
Just shows how much things can change in a short space of time when I push myself and believe I’m capable of big things.
I’m planning on writing an annual revue post with all my wins and learnings from the full year, so I’ll keep my thoughts about the year as a whole for that post. However, for the month of December here’s some of what happened:
we moved house, which has been the best decision we’ve made. This is a rental that we are in for a year or so while we rebuild our other house - I’ll be sharing more about the plans for that very soon. This has been a great move as the house is so much more functional, has a pool and just works a lot better for us. So we are much happier here than in the old, quite rundown house. We are also super excited about what’s to come with our renovation!
had a great holiday to Byron Bay. This was our 4th time doing this holiday and it was as relaxing as always
boys started their summer holidays so we are all enjoying some downtime
have been spending the downtime thinking a lot about my business and how to make even better content for my community. I’m nearly ready to start sharing about all of that but I know that it’s going to include a brand refresh, a move to more content that I would love to see exist in the world and some other secret projects! 🤫
hosted my family for Christmas Day 🎄 and then Paul’s Dad for Boxing Day 🥊 in our new house (which works really well for entertaining)
passed $5 million in online course sales (in just over 3 years) 🤯🤯🤯🤯
booked in for my next brain surgery - boo. It’s on the 21st February 😢
I scrapped 75 hard after getting about 45 days through it. Trying to do it on holidays was a pain (as I wanted to enjoy life a bit!) and then I realised I can’t now restart and get it completed before my brain surgery, so I might redo that again at the end of 2023, once I’ve recovered from my surgery.
with the move and holidays I got off my YouTube posting schedule again. I’m planning to get back to that again now my new office is set up at the new house.
I made a plan to remerge my CLR and TLDC brands again. It was too stressful running multiple brands and trying to build CLR up from scratch in the online business space. I also realised I don’t really like hanging out that much in the online business space as it feels super spammy and not aligned with how I like to do business. I also think there’s so much untapped potential in what I’m offering the design community that I want to try and improve in 2023. I wrote more about all of that in this post if you’re interested.
I made a decision to use my CLR instagram page and brand to just share content that I enjoy making and want to put out into the world. I’m sick of creating for an algorithm all the time and having to ‘niche’ down. I have heaps of interests that I want to explore and share about under my personal brand - so that’s what I’m going to do! :)
Overall I’m pretty pleased with how December has gone, given it’s always a quiet month.
I’ve set some pretty ambitious goals for myself for 2023, so I’m excited to get stuck into those, although a scared in some ways as well. After a year of feeling a bit too comfortable I feel like 2023 needs to be a year of pushing myself out of my comfort zone again. I am always at my best when I’m really busy and feel like I’m making progress as a person - so that’s my aim for this year (post brain surgery recovery, which will take a good portion of the beginning of the year).
For January my aim is to still just take it pretty easy though. The boys will be on holidays for the whole month and we have another trip planned for a week or so that I want to enjoy without stressing too much about work.
I am also on a mission to get as fit as possible before my brain surgery in February. I’m sure I recovered reasonably quickly last time (although it didn’t feel like that at the time!) because I had gone into the surgery with such high fitness levels. So I’m going to be pushing myself for the next 55 days to get in really good shape before that surgery.
I’m excited to start the year and look forward to seeing where 2023 leads me :)
Looking forward - plan this month
Focus this month:
🏡 Design new house
🏖️ Enjoy our holiday to Gerringong
👏🏻 New content
🤩 Commence brand refresh
💪🏻 Get as fit as possible before my brain surgery
Projects this month:
Scorecard project completed
Start brand refresh
Start new content plan
Design new house
Create new TLDC lead magnets and share
Goals this month:
$150K revenue
Focus on pushing myself at training to get as fit as possible before my brain surgery
What would make this month amazing?
Enjoying the rest of the summer holidays, get the new house designed, have a relaxing break in Gerringong, get started with brand refresh and my new plan for 2023 content creation. 🥳
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
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Then check out my business courses and templates for designers and architects.
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Enjoy the rest of your day!
Clare x
Dr Clare Le Roy
