Happy New Year!

2021 recap and my goals for 2022

Hi Friend,

I hope you had a restful and restorative break. Given the tone online it seems as though many didn’t, but I hope that you were able to rest in some way.

In this post I’d like to recap what happened in 2021 and share my big audacious goals for 2022.

The numbers:

My 2021 goals

Events

• to speak on 24 podcasts

• 4 events

Revenue:

• Make at least what I made in 2020 (I had to completely start from scratch with clients in 2021, so I didn’t set crazy high revenue goals)

Clients

• Buyer Persona projects

• Content strategy clients

The goal was to not write for a client in 2021, to stick to buyer personas and content strategy.

The 2021 reality

Events

• I spoke on 15 podcasts

• 10 events

• I hosted my own Buyer Persona Summit with Audiense where I was able to chat with greats like Adele Revella, Rand Fishkin, and Michael King

• I taught at three workshops for agencies and in-house teams on how to perform buyer persona research that will result in an awesome buyer persona.

I’d call that goal accomplished!

Revenue

I increased my revenue by 8.6%!

This year I earned 133,500.

The lowest earning month was February- $5,200

Highest earning month was July- $30,000

My income swung pretty dramatically this year month to month, but that’s because of the buyer persona projects.

Projects:

4 full persona projects -(each takes 6-8 weeks to complete)

3 smaller customer/marketing research projects

2 content strategy retainer clients (because my services are very white glove, I don’t take more than 2 clients on at a time)

Sold 3 products

Costs-

I keep my overhead very light, but this year I did contract out some help, hired an accountant, and kept my most expensive SaaS tools subscriptions. Not really sure the exact cost yet, but it’s under $20,000 for the year.

I’d say I met or exceeded most of my goals! Yay!

2022 Goals

Marketing and Events:

• I’d like to get on a few stages and speak at conferences or local events. Obviously, the state of the world will rely on this goal, so I’m not making it a hard set one.

• I’d like to speak on 12 podcasts

• Create daily content for LinkedIn. (That’s a big scary goal!)

• Host 4 workshops about the buyer persona process.

  The topics will be:

  • Interviews- who to talk to and what to ask

  • Survey Design- how to ask the right kinds of questions for a survey

  • Job to be Done segmentation- How to segment your audience according to JTBD

  • Audience Research- how to use tools and data to learn more about your audience

  This is in the works and will be available to purchase soon!

• Work on my digital products- I know I can do better than selling 3 products. I need to work on the landing page, and the structure of the products themself.

Revenue:

I want to double last year’s revenue- so bringing $265,000

Clients:

I’d like to grow to helping 4 companies a month with their buyer personas. This will require outsourcing more, but I know it can be done!

Content Strategy clients

Customer and market research projects

That’s it! As always I’ll keep you posted on the ups and downs and struggles along the way.

Thanks,

Adrienne