Episode 87: 2020 Recap + Takeaway

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Hey, everyone. Oh, my gosh. I meant to record this podcast at the end of 2020, but here we are in 2021. This was going to be sort of my 2020 recap report and takeaway, and it's now January 11th, but I'm recording it on January 11th. Who knows when you'll see it? But nonetheless, I'm here to talk about the year of all years. And I have to say, I did write this on my blog, and I've been procrastinating a little bit on sort of recapping 2020. And I think I feel so much conflict because this year brought so much stress and trauma and crisis to all of us. But in the midst of it, there are so many gifts and lessons that I've learned, learned about myself and my relationships, my business, that I don't really know what to think about 2020. And 2020 is also the year that I finally stopped keeping everything about my life and business in silos. You know, I was given the advice that you never, ever, ever want to talk politics or religion in business. And I think I held onto that for a long time. And 2020 was really the year where I finally broke free from that. And I have a few reasons why. I think one of the big reasons why I struggled to find my voice was because I was working in an organization and in a company that has values that are very different from my own. And it has taken me a long time to come to grips with just how much of the real me I was suppressing in order to fit a role that I was in. And, you know, I have nothing but, you know, warm feelings and respect for the people over at ClickFunnels because they have been, you know, critical to a lot of my knowledge and expertise and visibility. And so I just want to honor them in that. But there is a real thing that happened to me when I became a part of that company, representing that company, that my voice kind of went dormant and that's because my voice is in direct contradiction to a lot of the things that their voice is in. And so I left in 2019, but I think it took me, you know, seven, eight months to really feel my way back into the world. So for 2020, I started talking about politics, the election, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, and then I also started talking about fun things like plant based living and eating and gardening and birds and all that kind of stuff. And so this year was interesting because I've lost thousands of followers. In fact, I've culled my email list in half. And yet my business is still growing. So I know there's a really important lesson in there. I obviously sounds really cliche, but it is the stay true to yourself mantra and to continue to deliver value and your business will be fine, no matter how dorky or unpopular your opinions may be. So that's sort of a big overview of some of the significant changes that have happened in 2020 personally and what you've seen publicly through all my channels and my email list. Now, financially, 2020 was a great year for my revenue. In 2020, it was $2.24 million and my net profit was 1.4 million. Now that is an enormous success and also really important lesson there, which is that my revenue in 2019 was 2 million. My revenue in 2018 was 2 million. And so I know that for 2018, 2019, I was working with clickfunnels. So it was very hard to be a VP and run a business. And so you can see sort of that stagnation of revenue growth there because I'm not superwoman. And so this year was the first year, 2020, which was a crazy year where I didn't have any other obligations. I wasn't working at Click Funnels, so you can see that I went from 2 million to 2.2 million. Now, that may not sound like a lot of growth, that may not sound exciting, but I have trained all of my clients and my students to celebrate all wins. And the reality is, is that 15% growth year after year is actually excellent. In the real world, 30% growth is amazing. And it only seems to be in the Internet marketing world that people think that 100% growth is the only, you know, is the only kind of growth that you can have. Now to go from 2 million to 2.2 million is not quite even 15%. So I only grew, you know, whatever, 8 to 10%. So I'm like, okay, well, what do those numbers actually mean? What do they actually say about what happened in 2020, because you can't just look at the numbers, you got to look below them. And again, another reason why people spouting revenue numbers is not helpful. So a couple things changed. Number one, I stopped promoting ClickFunnels as an affiliate in 2020, which means I've lost a lot of revenue by no longer doing that. Now, I still am getting some recurring revenue, but my ClickFunnels affiliate was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So this was a big sort of change for me. I stopped selling my Create youe Laptop Life membership. I had, you know, about 700 or 1,000 people in a $50 a month membership. I sunsetted that so that I could work on this new project, FG Society with Kathy. I also stopped selling TDG and that was my $2,000 program. So basically I stopped selling everything except for digital insiders. So when I look at my revenue and I say, okay, I stopped selling, most of what I'd been doing still grew by 8 to 10%. That's a sign that it was an excellent year, right? Because that's, I mean, that's awesome. It means doing less, but making more, which is what everybody wants. Now if you look at my net profit in my business, which was 1.4, the thing is that that is my most profit year to date. So even though I only grew by whatever it is, 8%, 9% in 2018, 2019, my profit was less. So all in all, 2020 has been my best year yet. And that is despite the pandemic. I had a bunch of lost income due to people who couldn't afford to pay because they were losing clients. There's that ripple effect. So I did set up a scholarship fund for those people. So I absorbed a lot of that cost. So there's just a lot of things that. And so I'm really, really. Excuse me. I'm really, really proud of these numbers because of the story that they tell. And some. A bunch of people asked and they said, so does this include Funnel Gorgeous? Because a lot of you know that my personal business is Digital Insiders, but I co own Funnel Gorgeous with my partner Kathy Olson. And so people are like, what? How does that work? And so I just wanted to kind of share that because I didn't really share it in my blog post. So the 2.2 million that I earned for 2020 includes my post net after tax FG distributions. So basically whatever Funnel Gorgeous makes after the expenses, after we figure out the profit, then we cut 30% off for taxes and you pull that out and Whatever distribution I get, and it's just distribution Kath gets that is included in that number, it turned out to be somewhere around six or seven hundred thousand dollars. Right. So maybe a little bit less. I have to go back and check. But my point in telling you that is not. Is just to kind of create an accurate picture. And then my point also is to say that if I were an Internet marketer who was trying to wow you with my pazazzy Razzie numbers, what I could have done is take my profit and my revenue from my business and then taken out the distributions and then instead just talked about my gross revenue at Funnel Gorgeous. And I could be like, well, look, it was like one point, you know, 7 million in my business and 2.2 million or whatever it is over in Funnel Gorgeous. And I could take 2.2 and I could add 1.7, and I could be like, I did 3.5, $4 million this year. Now, that would technically be a true statement. And what would that number show? It would be like, oh, my God, she doubled her business. She went from 2 million to 4 million. And that would perpetuate the lie that it's easy to just double your business when you're up at these high numbers. And I think a lot of people, it's not. It's not sexy to say I went from 2 million to 2.2 million, but that's $250,000. How many of you listening would love to have a $250,000 a year business? How many of you have a $250,000 a Year business and work so very hard? But that number doesn't feel big at that level. And so this is what I've been trying to do. And you'll see in my upcoming podcasts that I'm really trying to kind of beat this drum to change the conversation around all of the stripe screenshots and revenue numbers and all that kind of stuff? So I have a State of the Union address on my site. I recommend you read it. I'm kind of giving you the highlight I went through. I tried to figure out how many podcasts did I do, which I was probably super inconsistent with, as you guys know, how many blog posts where I got to speak, how many emails I wrote, what kind of presentations I built, where I donated, what I was able to do with raises and bonuses for my team, and most importantly, how much I was able to change my lifestyle so that I wasn't burning out. And so that is the story of 2020. And I am incredibly grateful for everybody who has purchased from me, spoken about my business, followed, sent an encouraging word. I really value all of you and I just thank you for being on this journey with me. And if you have enjoyed my very inconsistent podcast and you would leave a review or share it or tag me on Instagram, that would be amazing. Guys, let's make 2021 a different year than 2020. I appreciate you all.

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