Here we are at another new year! This year I celebrated my 10th year in business. Every year I fall in love with my business even more and can’t wait to see it grow in the coming year.

Overall in 2021 my business wasn’t impacted by the pandemic. I was fortunate enough to be able to hire a new employee, launch a branding course and continue to build new digital products for the shop.

But, not everything I tried was a success. I’m breaking down what worked and what didn’t work for my business in 2021.

Read → What Worked and What Didn’t Work for My Business in 2018

What Worked for My Business

Here are some of the highlights from the past year. I’m so proud of these achievements!

Launched a Branding Course
In early 2021 I launched my first course, How to Create a Brand in 5 Simple Steps. It took many months of planning, writing, and recording but this is my biggest achievement. I set aside specific days in my schedule to work on building the course and I created a spreadsheet that broke down all of the steps I needed to take into manageable to-dos.

Hired a Virtual Assistant
During the begining of the pandemic I hired a developer to work for Sugar Studios. He’s turned out to be an amazing employee and in 2021 I was ready for my next hire. Taiba came to me looking to help Sugar Studios with administrative tasks and her timing was perfect. It’s been awesome to have someone help keep me accountable and to help communicate with clients.

Email Marketing
Throughout the year I worked hard to maintain my email list by sending out weekly emails. Every Sunday I publish a new blog post and send it to my subscribers during the week.

In addition to weekly emails, I also have email opt ins throughout my website and I use Convertkit to create email automations – so helpful!

Weekly Planning
Every Sunday I plan out my week ahead using a Weekly Planner I created. Not only do I use it to manage my business work schedule, but I also add in appointments and events I have planned for the week and our dinners for each night.

The weekly planner sheet includes:

• Editable Month/Day field
• Appointments for the week
• Areas to write to-do’s for Monday-Friday
• General to-do’s that aren’t assigned to a particular day
• Weekend plans

You can download your copy right here for free!

What Didn’t Work for My Business

Consistent Work Hours
At the start of 2021, my daughter Mackenzie was 6 months old we were still working on getting her to sleep through the night consistently. This left me feeling exhausted and I was stuck in a hamster wheel of staying up late at night to work since I didn’t know if I would be able to get anything done the next day. Some mornings I would wake up extra early to work before anyone woke up, which left me extremely tired at night. It was rough!

Choosing Client Work over Creating Products
Custom branding and website designs is a huge part of my business. I love working one on one with clients to create the business of their dreams. At the same time, I love offering digital Canva templates and Showit website templates to clients who would not be able to afford hiring a professional designer. Over the past year I wasn’t able to dedicate as much time as I would have wanted in order to create more digital templates.

That’s my main focus for 2022.

YouTube
In late 2021 I launched a YouTube channel and while it took a few tries to figure out how to record and edit videos, I realized I loved doing it. Videos are vital to almost any business. I’m sorry that it took me this long to realize it.

This year I plan to release more videos to help supplement my digital products and share as much expert information as I can to help others grow their beautiful business.

Conclusion

When looking back at my business over the past 10 years, I realized I didn’t always treat my business as a legitimate business. I failed to plan my year ahead, create goals and analyze what I could have improved on in the previous year.

Read → 5 Biggest Mistakes New Business Owners Make

What do you think of this article? Do you have any questions for me? Ask me in the comments box below!