I know what you’re thinking. Not another annual review from a blogger about their business and personal endeavours in 2011. Hell no. This is my FIRST EVER Annual Review I’ll have you know and I’ve decided to do it a little differently than others.
In this epic post I will not only tell you all the wondrous things that made this year rock, but I’m also just as happy to tell you where I screwed up and how that actually made this year more exciting and enlightening.
I’ve split this post into a brief intro on why you should consider doing an annual review, how to do one with some fab examples of others, and then I answer two very important questions on how I did this year – quite reflective and enlightening. Finally I get into the results based numbers on how I made money and travelled the world.
If you want to skip this and just get to the results that I’m openly sharing with you then just click here.
Why Do An Annual Review?
I’ve come to realise they’re just so frickin useful. I mean you go through 365 days of year and while you may not remember what you had for breakfast yesterday, you sure as heck should remember what amazing things you did this year, no matter how big or small, and just what you learned that you want to put into place for 2012.
Gazing through photos of places you travelled, events you attended, conferences you enjoyed or parties you celebrated is one great way to look at whether your life is really rich and rewarding, or whether you need to get out more.
Looking at how your business came along or plunged into the abyss of `nothingdom’ is also very valuable. I’m not trying to be a downer here, but if you really did have a shitty business year then you definitely need to look at every aspect of why that was so that you won’t repeat it in 2012.
How To Do An Annual Review That’s Fun
You may have read a number of ways of doing an annual review as there are about a gazillion out on the blogosphere right now. At the end of the day it’s an exercise performed to ensure you look back on what the heck happened in 2011 – the good, the bad and the ugly.
Two I recommend viewing are Chris Guillebeau’s 2011 Annual Review: Looking Back where he asks:
What went well in 2011
What did not go well in 2011
And then proceeds to show you that he is in fact on par with superman with his superhuman feats and goes on to do 4 more reviews! I’m not saying you need to do that but the man has a multiple six figure business and plans out years ahead so, if anything, learn from what he does and emulate it where humanly possible!
Or Benny Hsu’s excellent 2011 Year In Review post where he kindly provided his community with an awesome template on which to base their review. I’ll aim to include answers to a few of his question in this as I really liked how he made me think about the year that was from a new perspective.
Why My Review Is Different
In case you missed it, my motto on this blog that I have for you and me in life is to Create Freedom and Business and Adventure in Life, and this is what I’ve based my entire review on.
So I have asked the two questions:
Did I create enough freedom in business this year?
Did I have enough adventure in life?
Clearly the answers to these two excellent questions are very subjective depending on whether you’re you, or me, as to what is deemed `enough’ . Given that I am the only me, I get to give the answers based on my expectations. However I definitely encourage you to provide your answers in the comments below.
Answer 1: Freedom
This business gives me freedom to manage my own life and my own work in the way that I see fit, where I want and when I want. At the end of the day that’s what 86.7% of the people this community tell me they want out of life and their business (ok slight guesstimation there).
The best part is that I get to touch hundreds, if not thousands of others through what I do. So it’s only fitting that I throw in a quote (from me) that will hopefully go down in history:
“As entrepreneurs we must never forget that we are doing VERY IMPORTANT work. We are changing the world. We are making a difference. We are unlike the other 95% of the world’s population who work for others. We create our own destiny, our own opportunities, our own sources of revenue and our limits are only bound by our own imagination.”
In terms of `actual’ freedom gained I would say I still have some work to do on this. I’ve written enough posts and created 10 Toolkit Time videos to show myself and others that choosing the right tools and systems for your business can save you a whole heap of time and money by becoming more efficient at all you do. Not to mention smarter, savvier and that leads to sexier …naturally, right?
Answer #2: Adventure
Nat in front of the three Torres, Patagonia
I am truly grateful for being able to live and work out of my suitcase and go on some great adventures, but I think I could have more. Hiking the famous W trail in Patagonia, Chile for 5 whole days was pretty amazing and I wrote about how an 86km hike can save your life.
My most recent 2,500km road trip in the South Island of New Zealand certainly changed my perspective on being the master of your own day and working way less.
I recently recapped on all the places I have visited in the world since 2006 and asked if you could travel anywhere right now, where would you? This has definitely been a year of less countries visited, but more experiences had while doing so.
For example living in a fantastic studio apartment in Buenos Aires, Argentina for just over 5 months allowed me to integrate into the real community, hang with the locals and win the most gold medals and awards for Ultimate Frisbee ever!
I made the USA my second home with one 3 month visit (the maximum time I can stay as a tourist) and some other extended stays, and realised just how many great conferences and events go on there that I got invited to but couldn’t attend. Plus I have a ton of incredible friends and entrepreneurs there who inspire me to be better.
I know that 2012 will see many more travel adventures including the 6,445km ride of my life in Africa so I’m preparing for some serious time spent on a bike seat and with my suitcase in constant use.
2011 Business Highlights
So on to business as I’m sure you may be just a tad interested in the growth of my platform this year and what I did well and what I really didn’t.
My business growth in 2011 was, on the whole, pretty excellent. What’s more I have finally begun to congratulate myself for being in business for myself that I love for just over 1.5 years now (first revenue generating product was launched in October 2010, first social media client was in July 2010). That in itself is an achievement to me.
Revenue Growth
2011 has been a stellar year in comparison to 2010 when I was just starting out and hustling like a crazy woman. According to Clay Collins hustling must die and if you’re doing it right , with excellent offers, people will just come to you and business shall be easy.
I may have laughed at that at the start of the year when I launched my Ultimate Toolkit book and premium site and made just one sale on launch day (in fact I laughed and cried if I remember rightly). But since then those two products have gone on to be one of my best sellers and my launches have gone from strength to strength.
If you have no idea how I actually make money from the Suitcase Entrepreneur, let me break it down for you.
Digital Products and Programs
I’ve managed to produce quite a lot this year. Possibly too much as every single launch has been bigger than the last and I have to say doing this while of no fixed abode has made it extra challenging. That said I’m very proud of my BizShop and over the moon with the fact that people continue to buy my creations every week. This September I had the biggest launch of my life with my joint venture partner in crime Natalie MacNeil with WE Mastermind. Not only did we generate more revenue in 2 weeks then I made in my first decent job in one year, we also have an incredible group of members who are making stellar progress and who we are honoured to coach and mentor.
Rapid Results Coaching (started July 2011)
I never realised how much I enjoyed coaching entrepreneurs with all their lofty dreams and desires until I got more clients. As we work through their challenges and unique situations I realise that I can actually help them from articulating and applying my own lessons learned in a way that works for them. I never advertise this, it’s a link on my blog under work with me and in the last few months, since deciding I want to coach more people, I’ve been receiving more and more emails from people wanting to work with me. So I’m thrilled. I put out a call to the Universe and it answered. In January I only have room for one more special client. So yes. I’m very grateful and honoured to do this important work.
Social Media Coaching:
Since I’ve built my business on social media I obviously enjoy sharing all my knowledge with others who want to learn how to do the same thing. I do one-one one coaching, group coaching and I do it either in person (when I’m in the same country as my client(s) or on Skype with screensharing.
Social Media Workshops:
I really LOVE running workshops and getting to see people progress right in front of me and have those ah ha moments. I’ve run these in Canada, USA and New Zealand now with up to 10 people max (this photo below there were 16 keen ones!). They’ve gone from a few hours to two full days and yes they make me good money but boy do I work for it! They’ve really helped me to better understand what people struggle with and what people really want to know. Which leads me to..
Engaged Workshop Audience
Social Media Bootcamp online:
Taking all this content I produced and honed in my workshops, just made a natural progression into an online program. The first one I produced took over 2 long weeks of endless videos, retakes, editing and producing. I actually just relaunched and totally revamped all the material and step by step videos in late November to produce Sculpted Social Media. I think it’s my best work yet and the feedback from new members so far has confirmed this – next program opens January 15th.
Social Media Club
I designed this club as a totally cost effective way ($20 per month) to access my social media coaching every month and be part of a club that helps to educate each other, share their lessons and and market each other’s work through social media. With just under 60 members of this club I love that it keeps me on my toes with having to stay on top of all the updates, changes, new features and business benefits of the major social networks for the monthly coaching calls I host.
Client Work
This has kept me busy in spurts this year with PR based work, strategic blog post writing, social media analysis and recommendations and pays well when I accept it. I do find balancing this with the growth of this platform and my desire to create and produce my own work quite trying at times, and I’ll be pulling back on this in 2012.
Affiliate Commission
I make money from my blog, oh yes I do and, to a lesser extent, from webinars I run. I love that I do that from recommending products, programs and people that I truly respect, believe in and use myself. My Biz Tools page lists the top tools I use to run this business, my travel tools page lists tools and programs that have helped me to save money on flights and learn languages. In addition I review products from time to time and people who have a need for them will buy them and I get a cut from that sale. It’s a win-win all round especially when my mission here is to help you build your online business you can take anywhere with you.
I often get emails or tweets from people asking if I sleep, and yes I can honestly say I do, I’m just a very fast typer and learn and implement quickly.
Over on the Suitcase Entrepreneur blog
Earlier this year I finally transferred over WomanzWorld.com to do a hard redirect to SuitcaseEntrepreneur.com and at the same time I essentially lost all my previous data as well as social shares on my previous posts.
That said it had to be done and I’m thrilled actually with the increase in traffic to my website without a solid focus on it. In the six months since July 1st, which is when I did the complete change over, Google Analytics tells me I’ve had:
- 60,380 Visits
- 39,844 Unique Visitors
- 104,115 Pageviews
- 65.25% % New Visits
Top 10 Locations of visitors and percentage of new visits
- United States 66.21%
- Canada 58.37
- United Kingdom 62.67%
- Australia 49.38%
- New Zealand 43.46%
- India 88.86%
- Philippines 66.70%
- Germany 58.06%
- France 75.36%
- South Africa 69.93%
To put this in perspective there are over 27,000 visitors from the US and just over 500 from South Africa in that 6 months. So international aren’t we!
Clearly that means most of my visitors are English speaking but there’s a growing contingent of international languages. That’s why I’m over the moon to announce the SPANISH version of the BYOB Build Your Online Business Guide.
Blogging Progress
This year I have managed to:
- Publish 146 blog posts
- Receive 2104 comments (more of these please!)
- Block 6100 spam comments (less of these)
Top blog posts have always been ones where I’ve let you in on my innermost thoughts, my trials and tribulations and, I guess, let my guard down.
Other posts that have been hugely popular are when I tell you why Nice Should Be Banished from the English Language or refer to Dr Seuss (who doesn’t love him) and why you’re off to great places, or tell you how to bust the location independent myth.
Highflyer Newsletter
My weekly newsletter has now surpassed 3,000 subscribers and continues to grow month on month by around 200-300 subscribers.
Stats for this year show:
- 107 sent. Every single week without fail and sometimes 1-2 extra emails in an important week
- 1700 new subscribers to my newsletter this year with the biggest month being August when I launched the BYOB blog series.
- USA accounts for 45% of all subscribers followed by Canada, UK and Australia
- 40% open on their iPhone and 22% on Gmail followed by Hotmail (yes this is useful data!)
- 13.3% (390) also like my Facebook page and 9.8% follow me on Twitter (289) and 9% (263) I’ve connected with on LinkedIn.
It still hurts (and I really don’t know why) when I see people unsubscribe but luckily this is a tiny percentage of people who genuinely want to hear from me every Tuesday (which changed from Saturday earlier in the year during an experiment).
11 Greatest Achievements And Screwups in 2011
While I could list a gazillion I’m going to stick with 11 because it’s 2011. This is the good and bad mixed up for entertainment.
Having JustHost essentially shut down my blog and business and take them prisoner for over 24 hours when they deactivated and locked my hosting account for overuse of data and had me in panic mode. Lesson learned the hard way.
Seeing that my Forbes Top 20 Women To Follow on Twitter blog post has now had close to 15,000 views!
Attempting to launch my Passport To Business Program within just 10 days off arriving in Argentina when I was still getting to grips with even finding my way around
Recognising that my mission to empower more women entrepreneurs to start thriving businesses and impact 10,000 women by 2014 is totally possible thanks to this business and WE Mastermind.
Holding a webinar while sitting next to an old red phone box out in the middle of a beautiful campsite when the audience could hear birds tweeting in the background (do you see a theme here?)
Nat running a webinar outside in Karamea Holiday Park
Receiving a bill for twice the amount I thought I had to pay for the design of my beautiful Ultimate Toolkit book which was not covered by the one and only initially launch day sale.
Having my guest posts accepted and published on Problogger, Jonathan Fields and several others.
Being asked to join and represent the Nike Make Yourself Movement, along with 19 other fabulous women
Going to sleep 1 hour before the sales page went live of our biggest launch of the year because it was 3am and I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer and then finding out when I woke up that it had not gone live due to an international mis-communication
Writing a chapter for Danny Iny’s Engagement from Scratch book and being able to say I’m actually featured in a published and awesome book.
Receiving so many lovely emails from people all over the world who have found my blog and become part of my community and who took time to tell me how I had helped, inspired or motivated them – Priceless!
On that note I think I’ll call this a wrap. This review has become a book in it’s own right and if you’ve read this far then I thank you from the bottom of my heart and for being on this journey with me.
I absolutely can’t wait for what 2012 brings us, and for what I have planned to bring you – and yes the Suitcase Entrepreneur Podcast will be back in January.
So let me know below, how did you create freedom in business and adventure in life in 2011?