Looking Back + Looking Forward: Making Changes in Your Business

Hello!!! How is it already time to start thinking about 2023?? I feel like this year was such a whirlwind, so many changes and so many ups and downs but we made it (almost) and it's time to start thinking about next year. 

If you've never set goals for your business, now is the time to do it. It helps so much to sit down and reflect on the last year and make specific plans for how you can hit your goals in the future. I'm not going to go into all the specifics about setting goals in this post (we have a whole download that helps you with that), but I do want to talk about flexibility and making changes. 

Each year Arabela and I sit down and review the last year and talk about how we can make improvements for next year. We think about what we need to KEEP, START, and STOP - the things we should keep doing, the things we need to start doing and the things we need to stop doing in every area of our business. We have a lot of goals and dreams but the reality is that we are just two people and we can't do everything. 

This year I did something new for the first time (that I really should have been doing all along) and I looked at the NET profit for every area of our business, so I listed out each income stream and the income it made and then the expenses that we had in order to create that specific stream and subtracted those expenses to find the net profit. The actual income that we made. I did this for 2020, 2021, and 2022 so we could see if a stream was growing in income or decreasing. 

The data from this was interesting. I always look at our overall profit/loss so I can see if our company is profitable overall but looking at each stream really clarified if it is worth the time and effort we put in. For example, our podcast takes a TON of work and so far it has not been profitable. That doesn't mean we haven't made any money off of it, we have. But our net profit is negative. Same with our studio. 

We also were able to see the top areas of our business which are photography (client work), adobe/external education, downloads, and this community (yay). This helped us to have clarity on what we should focus our energy on. We want to make these four income areas even more profitable and even more valuable to anyone who benefits from them. 

We also decided to take one area that is not profitable and figure out how we can raise that income to create profit, and we chose the studio (for now). We decided to table the other areas for the future and revisit them once we have worked on the studio more. 

It's important to realize your limitations - if you try to do everything you end up doing nothing well and burnout which is what we have experienced for the last few years. By narrowing our focus, we will be able to work more on what we really love and also see more return on all the time that we put into our business. It's not all about the money of course, but to run a sustainable business for the long term you do need to think about profit and you do need to see a return on your investment. That return is motivating and also allows you to continue growing your business. 

We also decided to test a new way to work throughout this year in order to be more focused which I share in the video above (i also give a sneak peak about what we want to release next year!). 

I will be the first to admit that I struggle to make changes. I want to stick to old ways of doing things, and it's hard to let go of some things that we have built that we've worked hard on. 

Even something like coaching calls - we did TONS of coaching calls in 2020 but since then there has been a decrease (probably because of this community) and it's not really worth our time to continue them at this point. We have to pay for scheduling on Squarespace and even though it's not a huge expense, it doesn't make sense anymore when you look at our business as a whole. It also takes up a whole page on our website which means it could be distracting someone from another area of our business that is much more profitable like our shop. 

We also had invested a lot of money and time into setting up Teachable but realized that now that we've had it almost a year and a half, it's not worth it. It's hard to admit but that was not the best use of our time and money so we decided on making a change there as well. 

While these changes are tough sometimes, we wouldn't be able to really see that they need to be made without having goals and tracking those goals. We have the data that we can examine that tells us really important things about our business. I highly recommend setting some goals for yourself this next year and then checking in with yourself monthly to see how things are going and pivot as needed. 

Here are some questions to think about as you reflect and look forward:

What is the mission and vision for my company? What do I want to be known for or doing 10 years from now?

What did I do really well in 2022? What were the areas of struggle?

What are the things in my business that bring me joy? How can I grow those things?

What are the things in my business that I really don't like? How can I make those easier or outsource them?

Which areas of my business are most profitable? How can I capitalize on those areas to increase that profit?

Which areas of my business are least profitable or are costing me financially? Do I need to drop these areas or can I make changes to change the profitability?

Make a budget for 2023. Review all of your expenses from the past year and reflect on ways that you can lower your overhead. Make sure to plan for taxes, savings, and your own payroll. 

What specific goals can I set for myself for 2023? How can I break each of these goals down into specific action points that will help me achieve them?

What changes do I need to make in my business?

If you have any questions or want some accountability on your goals, please feel free to share below!!

Is it the weekend yet?
Elle