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The Goal Digger Podcast | Top Business and Marketing Podcast for Creatives, Entrepreneurs, and Women in Business
838: 2024 Review: What I Nailed and What I Failed This Year
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Jenna Kutcher
Having these strategies that allow me to step away a little bit more, that allow me to have the boundaries that I desire to have, that is like the biggest win. And the way that we have found to be able to do that and stay profitable and continue to generate revenue is through really strong automated and evergreen funnels. I'm Jenna Kutcher, your host of the Gold Digger Podcast. I escaped the corporate world at the age of 23 with nothing more than a $300 camera from Craigslist and a dream. Now I'm running a seven figure online business that feels even better than it looks. All from my house in small town Minnesota with my family here, we value time as our currency. We mix the woo and the work and we are in the pursuit of building businesses that give us the freedom to live lives that we love. I've always loved turning big goals into reality and I'm here to help you do the same. This isn't just a peek behind the curtain. Come along with me and my guests as we tear the whole curtain down. Every week we tackle practical, no fluff marketing strategies and host honest discussions on what works and what doesn't. Join me and my expert guests for actionable insights to help you grow your dream business with confidence. Pull up a seat and get ready to be challenged, inspired and empowered. This is the Gold Digger Podcast. Welcome to one of my favorite traditions and episodes of the year, which is a full, unfiltered review of the past 12 months. Now, this isn't just an annual recap. I kind of look at these episodes almost like a time capsule. It is this moment to hit pause, to reflect and to take you behind the curtain of my life and my business. I'm going to share what worked, what flopped, the surprises I never saw coming in, the lessons that I am committed to carrying into the new year. Now, why do I do this? Because I have seen time and time again that oftentimes we move so fast we forget to look back and really evaluate what's happening. And this episode, for me, every single year, is a way for me to hit pause and be honest about the wins, the challenges, and everything in between. And maybe, just maybe, and hopefully you're going to walk away inspired to take a deeper look at your own year and make some decisions for you and for what's next. So grab a cozy spot. Let's dive into the highs, the lows, and everything in between with all that I learned in 2024. Picture this. You're at a party and someone asks you what you do as a marketer like how do you even begin to describe it? You have to generate leads, score them, contact them, create content g their data and tomorrow you have to do it all over again. And you also are spending time wondering if all that you're doing is even working. Marketers are spread way too thin, but HubSpot has a better way. With the help of HubSpot's collection of AI tools Breeze and features like Content Remix, you can turn one piece of content into a suite of assets. You can also pinpoint the best prospects with predictive lead scoring and level up your campaign KPIs with a new analytics suite so your day to day becomes less busy work and more driving revenue through the roof. And most importantly, you'll have a way easier time describing what you do at parties. Visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more. That's HubSpot.com marketers for as long as I can remember, I've been doing these annual recaps on the podcast and I absolutely love recording this specific episode. And this year I'm going to do it a little bit different. This is going to be very candid, very off the cuff. And what I ended up doing to help my ADHD brain is I kind of broke up the year in two sections. So I'm going to talk about what worked first, what didn't work, and at the end I'm going to talk about the results that I have to share from our business. But I also added in a few new categories that seem entirely fitting for 2024 and what it held for me. So let's start off with what worked, the biggest thing that worked. And I will say that when I look at 2024, this is a year that the business worked like it just simply works. And so much of that is attributed to the fact that business has been relatively the exact same for the last six years since I became a mom, minus the fact that I launched a book one year that threw things off. But beyond adding a book to the mix, my business has not changed very much over the last six years. It has had a very similar rhythm, it has had the same sort of offers, and it has become very predictable. And it's interesting because the creative in me in the past would have hated predictability. I thought predictability was boring. But the person in me now who wants to be creative in my life, I want to be creative at play. I want to be creative with my kids. I'm going to talk about all this in just a bit. I love the predictability of My business, the rigidity that used to scare me, the structure that used to feel stifling, now feels like ultimate freedom. And so the biggest thing that worked for me this year was the fact that my business has been relatively predictable and very much rinse and repeat. And I love it. And so what's interesting is, even as I'm planning into the next year, I was actually talking to my therapist about this last night, is that I don't have a lot of planning to do because I love the rhythm and the flow of my business and I am absolutely appreciating the freedom that the rinse and repeat system has given me. And so if you are someone who's listening to this and your business is not rinse and repeat, or you have never really been able to take what works and really just leverage that for the next year and the year after that and the year after that, I would beg you to consider it because I truly believe that if you want a freedom based business, if you want to have a business that supports your life and not a life that revolves around your business, the rinse and repeat nature of a business can be the greatest blessing and not a burden. So another thing that worked really well this year, and this was more just personally exciting, was that we did a huge rebrand. I did an entire episode about what went into our rebrand, who we worked with, all the different steps of it, how we kind of lined everything up, but that was just really personally exciting. One thing that I've realized is that branding is mostly tied to your ego, right? People don't lose sleep over what your logo looks like. People aren't sitting there at 2am Thinking about your website. But you are right, it's an extension of you. And our rebrand was a really big undertaking. It was really the first time in my business in over 13 years that I had a professional logo attached to my name. And it was really exciting for me. And so our rebrand was a huge undertaking. We kind of did most of the work during the summer when we weren't launching anything. And I just, I love my website. I love my brand, I love my logo, I love my colors. It's been so fun. And so I would chalk that up as a really big win this year. And it was a big undertaking, but it was absolutely worth it. And it's something that feels like it's going to stick with us for a long time. And so it felt like a very worthy investment and project. Another thing that worked really well, and this is, I mean, a little Oh, I don't know. But not traveling much for work. And it's interesting because right now I should be on a plane for a trip. And I backed out of it. I hadn't fully committed. But I also just. It was interesting because I am so fortunate to be invited to amazing things like masterminds and events and different things like that. And I just had this feeling where I wasn't booking my flight in hotel, even though I had this date on my calendar. And I finally checked in with myself and I was like, I just want to be home. I want to be with my kids. This time of year is so busy. We have the holidays, we have both of my girls birthdays. There's just so much going on. The weather's beautiful. I mean, it's snowing right now. And so what worked this year was not traveling much for work. I think in the entirety of the year, I did two work trips without my children. And they were really lovely trips. I left coming back feeling more rejuvenated. One of them I got to bring my best friend from college with. And like we. We had the best time. And I like using that time if I am away for work to just get so much done. And so I've canceled a lot of travel. I've said no to a lot of travel this year. And I think it really benefited me and I think that it benefited my family as well. The other day I was talking to a really good friend of mine and she has a project coming out and she had asked me, like, I really want you to speak for this. Can you fly? I really want you to speak. And I was like, I'm so sorry, but like, I cannot commit to being away from my kids unless it is absolutely worth it. And these are the parameters that make it worth it for me. And I am so sorry. This is not a reflection of you. This is just where I'm at. And you know, I was kind of nervous for her response and she responded and she said, as a mom, you're doing the right thing. And that actually makes me a little emotional because, you know, there are so many opportunities that I have these days that I dreamt of, that I prayed for and to be in a place where I can confidently turn them down, knowing that my life at home is better and more important than these fancy events and amazing rooms filled with incredible people, that my children matter more to me than CEOs and business leaders. Like, it just feels right. And so I would just say that that is a win in this stage and season of life, and I'm really enjoying it. And I know that someday my kids are not going to want to hang out with me as much as they do. And so I just want to have no regrets. And so, chalking up not traveling much for work as a big win, I can count on one hand the amount of days that I was away for work this year, and that just feels really good. And it also just reminds me that ultimately I am in control of what I'm saying yes and no to. And the boundaries are only getting stronger, and I'm only getting stronger at enforcing them. You know, running a business is a lot like growing a garden, which is something I am obsessed with. You start with an idea, you nurture it, and before you know it, things are growing and fast. But here's the thing. Just like any garden, running a business has its weeds. The payroll, the hr, the paperwork. And that's why I have to tell you about a move we just made in my own business in switching to Gusto. Gusto takes the hassle out of payroll and hr. They're like that expert gardener who steps into weed water and make sure everything's blooming just right. Like, imagine having all of your payroll taxes filed automatically, onboarding a breeze and benefits that work with your budget, because Gusto makes all of that possible. Plus, they genuinely care about small businesses like yours and mine. I mean, it's no wonder Gusto is rated the number one payroll product for small businesses. Four out of five employers say Gusto helped them stay compliant with federal and state regulations. And with Gusto's simple guided software and user friendly interface, payroll and HR are no longer exhausting. They're rewarding. Do you want all of this and more with no hidden fees? Try it out for three months free@gusto.com Golddigger that's gusto.com Golddigger Another thing that worked was, and this is a little nitty gritty shifting from the email, but to the nitty gritty business stuff is we really did a good job this year of systemizing processes. And again, coming from me, this is, like, wild because I was the girl against rigidity, against systems, against, like, anything. That made me feel less creative. And so it's interesting because I feel like this year we were the business that actually has, like, SOPs, standard operating procedures, and we created playbooks for different departments. And, like, we basically, like, took what we do as a company and systemize it. And it sounds so trivial and so silly, but I'm also just so proud of us. I Don't think people realize, like, we are a small team. I think salaried, we have a total of seven people, including myself. And with contractors, it's a team of 10. And so I am so proud of what we can accomplish and how quickly we can move. And so some of the processes that we were systemizing. So one thing that we've been doing a lot this year is we've been looking at our top freebie opt ins for our email list, and we have been going through and fully refreshing. So with the rebrand, we recognized, whoa. We have like a million web pages. We have so many landing pages. Thank you. Pages, guides, all these things that need to be updated. We cannot update all of them all at once. And so we basically created this process and said, all right, which freebies get the most leads? Let's start with those, then we'll move through. And so we created this beautiful process and we've basically been able to again, rinse and repeat that process with each freebie as our bandwidth allows. And so overall this year, I believe we updated seven or eight of our top performing freebies. And we updated everything from landing pages to thank you, pages to email copy, to ad copy, to add graphics to the guide itself. Like, we just really optimize it and we're actually really seeing the fruits of that labor. And so this is a reminder, if you are someone who has kind of set it and forget it when it comes to your email strategy or to the freebies that work, maybe it's time to optimize and systemize when it comes to that. Another thing that I feel like we worked on, systemizing was just our podcast process. I feel like when I think about this show, you know, it is a huge part of my business. And a lot goes into it, from ideating the episodes, to outlining them, to contacting guests, to coming up with guest questions, to coordinating social media. Like, there's just a lot into it. And so I feel like we've done a good job of really looking at, like, the process of podcasting. How do we want to leverage it? How and where am I involved in the process and what does that look like? And so I feel like this is something we're consistently refining, but it felt like we made some huge progress. Okay. And then the last process was our social media process. And this was a year where, like, I put out a ton of content. I recently did an episode about how I posted over a hundred times in 60 days. Like, I am cranking out content these days. And so I am really proud that we were able to create more of a process around it and less of like Jenna, just post on the fly, even though I still sometimes do that, much to my own dismay. But I feel like we created kind of a system that helps me work through that and plan more in advance, specifically around launches. And so that also felt good to kind of systemize it because I have been running my social for over 13 years, and, you know, most of it is just like when inspiration strikes, when I have an idea, and that works until it doesn't. And so that has felt really good to kind of systemize that as well. Okay, we have a few more things that were wins of 2024. So I've also talked about this on the show, which is utilizing data to optimize just our business. And this is an area of business where I put off for a long time in terms of getting the insight into what is working, what are landing pages, what are our goals, what are our projections? And again, I think that there is this part of me, this creative spirit, who felt like this would take the fun out of it or this would make it feel too rigid. And I've really been leaning into data. I've always been a numbers person because to me, I'm emotional about my business because I care about my business and I care about you. But numbers give me facts, and that helps back up the emotions with, like, figures. And so using data has been really helpful. Even just yesterday I was, like, reviewing our landing page conversion rates and like, that stuff, as nerdy as it is, is exciting to me. And I feel like that's how I've almost gamified my business so that the rinse and repeat doesn't feel boring, so that I'm still striving and trying to outdo myself in really minuscule ways that nobody on the Internet will see, but hopefully you will feel. And so utilizing data has been a really big one. Another thing that worked really well for us was our evergreen content and strategy. And so this was an interesting year, and I'm so excited to share our results with you because, ooh, there's a number that I'm like, dang. But a lot of our results came from really looking at what is our strategy when it comes to evergreen or automated content. How can that fuel the business? And I will argue that my business is incredibly peaceful because I am only doing four launches a year, and those launches are about seven to 10 days long. So when I look at my whole year at a glance, I am in launch mode for like 40 days or less. And the rest of the year is really reliant on these automated evergreen funnels and content. And so we went deep on what does that look like? And how do we optimize that and how can we make that even a better experience for you? And so I think that was a really huge win and just a good place to focus in on. For me, like, I can't imagine, like 10 years from now still being on the Internet doing the same thing, talking about the same things, like, that is not my vision for my life. And so having these strategies that allow me to step away a little bit more, that allow me to have the boundaries that I desire to have, that is like the biggest win. And the way that we have found to be able to do that and stay profitable and continue to generate revenue is through really strong automated and evergreen funnels. And so that was a really big focus. Okay. On a more personal side, for what worked, one thing that was brand new to us this year, in our six years of parenting, we had never had any outside help with our kids. And it was really interesting. We were very resistant to it because it's always just been us, our family. And Drew is a stay at home dad. Yes. But we decided that we were going to get very, very part time help. And it has been so life changing to give Drew a break because really, he's with the kids Monday through Friday, and then on the weekends, we're doing family stuff all weekend. And so he gets a break. So actually, as I'm recording this right now, our amazing nanny, who we absolutely love, is playing with Quinn. Coco's at school, and Drew is at a breakfast date with one of his friends, and he gets like, adult time. And I think that's so important. And so we have childcare so that we can do a date night each week, and then Drew gets a little breakfast. And it has just been so transformative for us. It's been amazing for our kids, and it's just kind of given us a tiny bit of a breather to step out of parenthood for a hot minute, to, you know, go on a consistent date night, to connect in that way and to just remind us and give us time to be adults outside of parents. And so that was a really, really big shift for us. It was something that we were really hesitant about. And it's just been a game changer, and we absolutely love it. And then I will say on a personal level, which I'm going to talk about in a bit, is this was my, like, Year of learning who I am outside of work and motherhood and being a wife. And so I'll talk about that in a bit. But it was just, like, so much experimenting, so much joy, so many hobbies that you've heard about on this show. That was a huge win. And then lastly, Drew and I did our first ever trip away from our kids. That was longer than, like, two days. We went to Greece this summer. Our amazing friends Kat and Joel invited us to go to Greece with them, and there were five couples, and we had the most incredible time. And my parents were amazing and watched our kids, and our kids had the best time. They had cousin camp. They had a wonderful time. And I just really didn't realize, like, how special it is to get out of nap schedule and carrying snacks in your person, all those things, and, like, be with adults and have adventures and make memories as a couple and as a collaborative group. And, like, it was. It was just absolutely magical. We might actually go again this year with the same group because we had so much fun. But that was a huge win of 2024. Okay, so now that we've covered the good stuff, let's dive into what didn't work. So I have five main things that were kind of the sucky parts of 2024. So the first one is this YouTube. Oh, my gosh. People are going to come at me for this. So I talked about last year how I was going to try YouTube. I was open to it. I was like, all right, let's go on in. I've done this podcast for years and years. How much different could it be? It was so different, and I did not like it. So we invested in YouTube strategy and really going hard on that channel for, like, six months. And I recognized that it made me start to really not like podcasting, because the reason why I started this show in the first place was to not have to worry about what I looked like, to not be concerned if I looked at my notes, to not worry if my lighting was right. Like, it added so much complexity for my brain. And when I was recording, I couldn't really stay candid because I was just staring at a lens, right? Like, I wasn't looking at anything in particular. Even when I recorded guest interviews, I had to just look at my lens so it didn't look like I was looking down. And it really removed a lot of the reasons why. I absolutely love podcasting. And I understand that there is a wave towards video, and I get it, and I can see it, and I understand it, and I Honor it, but it is not for me. And so we finally quit doing YouTube or, like, @ least going hard on it. We still have our content on YouTube, and it was such a relief. Not only was it an expense that we were investing in, but the growth was really slow for us. It was really impacting how I felt about recording. You know, a lot of times when I do solo shows, like, I will record them at weird hours of the day. I will be in my sweatpants. I am not camera ready. I am, like, literally just winging it in the best way. And I think that's my best content. And so thinking about the video side of things, it was just too much for me. And it took me away from what I loved the most about podcasting. So we started it and we quit it. That was something that didn't work for us. Another thing that didn't work, and I'm gonna, like, put a caveat here because it works, but it just wasn't, like, exactly aligned with us is LinkedIn. So I actually really enjoy LinkedIn. I am still posting on there a few times a week. It is me posting my posts. But we went hard on LinkedIn for a long time. And what was interesting is, is that we were getting a ton of results. Like, when I first started, like, I had very few connections. I didn't understand how any of it worked. We were growing our following, our connections, our engagement. Like, everything was like, when you looked at numbers, ooh, LinkedIn was crushing it. But it wasn't tying into business results. And if you know me, you know that, like, I love a good vanity metric. But at the end of the day, if I'm going to be spending time, energy, and money on something, it has to tie back to the bottom line. And we could not make it work with LinkedIn. And it wasn't because of the platform. It was because my content is to help people start their own businesses. And most of the people on LinkedIn are business professionals. So if you are in the B2B market, LinkedIn is absolutely amazing for you. Like, when I look at LinkedIn ads for B2B businesses, that is where I'd be investing my money 1000%. But when I look at organic content and really connecting it to the bottom line in my business, it just wasn't fiscally making sense. And so what's interesting with LinkedIn for me is that I am still running it and I love it. And I actually really love connecting. I just found a guest for the podcast on LinkedIn the other day. Like, I really Enjoy that channel and spending time on it. But now I'm just doing it more for connection and not in trying to move the bottom line, because that just wasn't working. And I felt like we were almost playing this game of only focusing on what performed well, quote unquote, which was vanity metrics. And at the end of the day, I'm like, but this isn't actually leading to, like, real results for us. And so there are a few reasons why we just decided to kind of put a plug in LinkedIn for right now, not forever. And I am the one managing and running it now, and I love it. So if you want to come hang out on LinkedIn, I will be there. It just didn't work for the way that I was investing into it in terms of how we were running it. Okay. Another thing that didn't work great for me is I feel like we had a lot of, like, interesting team transitions this year. And, you know, I have a team. We are all women. And so there are things like maternity leaves and pregnancies and different things like that. And so it can create a little bit of chaos, and it can make things a little bit more challenging in terms of covering people's leaves and what does this look like and who's doing what. And so I feel like this year we just had some interesting transitions that I maybe hadn't anticipated. We created a new role, we lost a role. And so it was like a restructuring of things. And one thing that I found that is challenging is, like, especially when you're a small business, figuring out, like, who is responsible for what. If you are creating a new position that many other people have covered, how do we shift all that ownership onto that one person? What does training look like? How does training not take away from other team members, maternity leaves, what does that look like? And so I just felt like there was a lot of team transition. And I felt like a lot of times I was catching a lot of balls or I was the linchpin in my own business, where people were waiting to hear back from me. And I had, you know, 10 slacks of, like, 10 fully different projects. And so with my ADHD, it was really hard for me to do deep work and to make sure that it felt like I could finish a day and not feel like I was forgetting something. Like, that was a. A feeling that I had a lot this year where I would see something and I'm like, oh, I gotta remember that. And then another thing would pop up and my brain, like, couldn't, couldn't Keep track of it all. And so my right hand gal, Marissa, is on maternity leave right now. She had a sweet little baby, and I cannot wait for her to get back because she is like the jelly to my peanut butter. And, like, together we catch everything. And so I've just. I think I've just been missing her, to be honest. Okay. Another thing that didn't work, and this was an interesting challenge to share about, especially on this show, is we have been trying different things with podcast monetization. And you've probably noticed them as a listener, and I feel like we are still trying to figure out what we want to do and what the best path forward is. And I just want to say thank you for always rolling with us as we try new things. I look at everything as an experiment. We started working with a new media company. We kind of had some interesting, different ideas as to what the best monetization strategy was. We were trying some different methods out. Like this year, when I look at podcast monetization, it's been a huge experiment. And a lot of times I do experiments like this because I teach, like, a course on podcasting and I want to teach monetization. And so I am trying all the different ways to monetize the show so I can teach my students all the different ways they can monetize their shows. And I feel like this was an area where we were consistently kind of figuring out, okay, what feels good, what doesn't feel good, what is too much, how do we maximize this without overwhelming our listener? Which ones are in alignment, what is out of alignment, like, how do we want to do this? And so I just feel like this was a sticking point where it was something that we were constantly trying to figure out. And we're still trying to figure out what is the path forward for the Gold Digger podcast so that we can maximize our profits in a way that doesn't take away from the listener experience. And so that's a question I'm asking myself. And we're still up for experimenting. Like, I actually really enjoy the experimentation process, so you can look ahead for next year. Just knowing that that is something that is a focus for us and something that we're working through. The last thing that didn't work for me, and I talked about it in an episode, is like, I just got really burnt out with social media. You know, social media has been such a part of my life, but the role that it plays in my life has dramatically shifted in the last few years. And it's interesting because, you know, I Kind of grew up on social, my business grew up on social media. And so for a lot of my life, my life was content and that was beautiful and that worked. And I'm a personal brand. It makes sense. And I feel like over the last few years I've really shifted from seeing my life as content to just my life is life. And if content comes from it, great, but I'm not forcing it. And so I felt like this year I had a lot of burnout and I also had a lot of, what do I even have to share right now? Like, I don't share my kids faces online anymore. So that really wipes out 90 of my camera roll. I keep my phone in a box almost all the time when I'm home with my kids. When we're out and about, we try to not have our phones out. And so I would come off of like one of my favorite weekends of my entire life and I'd have nothing to show for it, which was beautiful, right, because it meant that I was like, present and in the moment, but at the same point from a content strategy and from just showing up and connecting with my followers, it was a struggle. And so I just feel like social media burnout was really real. I feel like I've done a lot of work on trying to navigate, like, what weight I give strangers on the Internet opinions. I've worked a lot on just how the Internet can trigger me and how I want to use it to spread joy and goodness and share my life, but also how I want to keep boundaries around what is sacred in my life. And so, you know, the social media burnout was really real. And I think too, coming off of a year where I felt like I had to push harder to get the same results that I did in the past, it felt like it was more of like, the Internet right now is like more of like a churn and burn mentality where volume is winning because one out of every five posts will pop off. And so you need to create 10 posts if you want two to do well. And that mentality just doesn't really sit with me because I am way more about quality than quantity. And so it was this year of like, seeing the game, understanding the game, but asking myself, am I willing to play by these rules? And sometimes I was and sometimes I wasn't. And so like this summer I posted 3 times total in the entire summer on Instagram Stories, and that was it. And so it was just really figuring out what feels good right now, what serves me right now, and how do we leverage this tool that we have, but use it not only to spread goodness, but also to get results. And so that was kind of a big thing of, like, this kind of sucks. And I feel like there were a lot of times where I was texting my friends, like, I am so sick of social. And they were as well. Okay, so now I'm going into the new territory that we haven't totally covered before in these episodes. And I have three categories that I want to cover personally and just walk through a little bit of what they were for me this year. So first one was just relationships. I feel like this year was a really special year relationally. And it's interesting because when I look at these past episodes, they were very, very, very focused on the strategy and the business side, and I love that. But I also. When I was thinking about this year, I was like, you know, I have certain things to report about the business, but, like, when I really think about this year, I think about relationships. Like, I had consistent distant mom hangouts with local moms who have just become, like, this little sisterhood. We were just texting this morning, and we would get together. We get the kids together. We do Friday night pizza, birthday parties. Like, it just felt like we had this little community where it was to the point where you could just walk into each other's houses and, you know, the sitcom type friendships, where you wonder as an adult, does this really exist? And that was really special, especially when I think that just a few years ago, I was recording an episode about, like, how to make make friends as an adult, because I think it's freaking hard. So big win was relationally with friendships. I also had a ton of time with my family. Like, I'm talking grandparents, I'm talking my parents, talking my siblings. Like, we have just gotten into this really beautiful rhythm of, like, everyone gets together and watching the kids. I mean, for Thanksgiving, the kids literally disappeared together with their cousins, and I barely saw them. And they had the best night of their lives, and nobody cried and nobody got in an argument, and they worked it all out, and, like, they had so much fun. And, like, that was me as a kid with my cousins. And so just seeing that, like, is really beautiful in seeing that bond. We also hosted a lot at our house, whether it was friends coming over or family. Like, we hosted Thanksgiving. We've hosted birthday parties. We've just had friends come over. Like, it's been a year. And I. Like, we used to not be hosters at all. Like, we used to avoid hosting. And now I really love it. I think I love our house so much. It's a great space for hosting. I love. I don't know, I just love it. So that was shocking for us. I'm like, wow, we're actually learning how to host and we're actually getting, like, relatively good at it. I'm. I was laughing because with Thanksgiving, we didn't have like a gravy boat or like a butter tray or like, you know, some of those, like, formal things that your parents have that apparently our generation doesn't have. So we're gonna get even better at hosting. And then I also started volunteering consistently in the community, and that was really life changing. Really, really beautiful. So I randomly applied almost a year ago to volunteer at our local soup kitchen. And it's interesting because as a kid, I actually would volunteer there with my mom, and we didn't do it a ton, but I was just thinking, you know, I do a four day work week. I have Fridays off. Maybe this would be a really great way to spend my Friday. And so immediately they called me back and they needed space. And the first day that I went, they said, you know, can you sign up to do this the first Friday of every month? And so every single first Friday of every month, I've gone. And then a lot of months, we've ended up going in at least an extra day or even sometimes two if they need help. And it's been amazing. I've gotten a lot of my mom friends involved because we need like three to five volunteers every time we do it. I've also gotten my grandpa involved. My mom has come, Drew's come, our friends have come. And so it's been a really beautiful way to spend a Friday every month. And I just really feel like I am seeing the community in a new way. I am really understanding some of the, like, socioeconomic issues in our community advocating. It's just been. It's just been beautiful. And so I think for a long time I had more money to give than time. And now I have time and money, and that has been really special to me. And just like a really big highlight of my year. Like, I'm going in on Friday and my grandpa's coming to serve, and I'm going to be with some of my mom friends. And, like, we get to chop potatoes and make salads and butter bread and communicate. And it's like, we could either do this at a coffee shop or we could use our gifts and our skills as moms for something good and communicate and catch up and so it's just been really, really beautiful, and I have really enjoyed it. Okay. From a health standpoint. So the next category is health. I think my biggest win this year was just consistency. Like, I honestly didn't change much, and for me, that's a big win. Like the fact that I've stayed incredibly consistent with my healthy habits and my routine has been amazing. I will say my treadmill has become like my bff. I use my treadmill at least five times a week, usually six times a week. Oftentimes, if I have an internal call with somebody on my team, I'll walk on the treadmill. I started adding a weighted vest to it. Other days, I will use it to catch up on my crappy TV shows that Drew won't watch with me, like Real Housewives or Love Is Blind. So I'll watch it for 30 minutes. I'll walk at an incline. Yesterday, I did, like, hit training on it, so that has just been amazing and just offered me a lot of consistency. I used to not be consistent at all with movement, and now I actually crave it. I never thought I'd be that person. And so that's been a huge win. And I just think my health overall has just stayed incredibly consistent over this last year. And my habits just feel so second nature now. Whereas before, it felt like new things and, you know, stacking habits, stacking all these things. And now it's just, this is my life, and this is how I do it, and I stay very consistent, and so I'm really proud of that. And then also, I recently stopped breastfeeding. Three years later wasn't my plan at all, but now I feel like we have successfully weaned. On Quinn's third birthday, I kind of stopped sharing this part of my life because people on the Internet were pretty mean about it. But now that I am finally not nursing or pregnant, I feel like I can dive into my health even further and really just focus on optimizing my energy, leveling my hormones, and just some of those things that I wasn't able to do because I was breastfeeding. So it's kind of crazy when I think about it where I'm like, over the last seven years, I was pregnant for two years. I breastfed for four and a half. I basically have had six months to myself leading up to Quinn's pregnancy. And so I feel like I'm finally getting my body back to myself fully and returning my energy back to me. And now I get to decide, okay, how do I want to move forward and what does this look like? Like, okay, final personal category is just personal growth. And this was my year where I couldn't even really measure personal growth by, like, the metric of, like, a smart goal. Personal growth. For me, this was my year of joy. Like, I hope that you felt that in my podcast. I hope that you saw that in the glimpses you caught on social media. This was my year of, like, who am I and what do I love outside of what I do and what I create and the roles I play? I took a community Ed Sourdough making class with my mom, fell in love with the artist Sourdough. I baked two loaves a week. One of them we eat, one of them we give away. I planted my first garden this year, which was absolutely life changing and so much fun for us as a family. We started beekeeping, which was, like, so incredible to learn and something so special for the kids. I joined the local rowing club. I just can remember this particular morning going out and rowing on Lake Superior as the sun was rising. And afterwards I texted Drew and I just said, I'm the happiest I've been in a long time out on the water. And it was just beautiful, like, to enjoy the city that we live in, to enjoy the lake, to be with community members that I might not have crossed paths with if I hadn't joined to be a part of something bigger than yourself. I did a rowing regatta this summer. It was hilarious. We totally got dead last place and it was so much fun. I just felt like this year, my life and what was most interesting about it had nothing to do with work. And that felt so incredibly refreshing to me. I also did consistent therapy two times a month. I just had a session last night that was super transformative. This was like my first whole year of therapy and I stayed super consistent with it. And I just feel like I've really been working on myself and within myself and it just, I think that was like, where the real wins were this year. I also read some books that weren't just for fun. I'm a reader. I love reading. I read every single night. But I went outside of, like, my for fun books and read just some books that challenged my way of thinking or introduce new ideas to me and, you know, books my therapist recommended or books a friend recommended. And I think that that really expanded my consciousness and just like, had more expansive thinking for me, which was beautiful. And I feel like I kind of tuned out a lot of the noise. I think one of the things that was interesting about this year is Because I wasn't traveling so much for work and I wasn't a part of any formal masterminds and just, you know, different areas. In that way, I felt like I kind of was able to turn the volume down on the world and everyone else and what's working for everyone else and just get quiet with myself of like, what do I want? What's working for me? What is in alignment with what I say I want and how I want to move? And so it just felt like a more peaceful year. It was cute. I had on a necklace that I made earlier this year and Coco was looking at it last night. She's like, mom, you didn't tell me. There's a word on it. And on the back of it it says ease. And my word this year was ease. And I feel like when I look at this year, there was so much ease. There was just a lot of space to explore and be creative. There was a lot of flexibility because I wasn't on the road. I was able to be home and wake up and go to the garden and start work a little bit later. And we took the summer off from launches and no work on Fridays. And there's just a lot of that freedom that I think a lot of us crave and why we start our businesses in the first place. Okay, so we are on to the final countdown. So here are our results to share. So while I will say that 2024, most of my favorite results of this year wouldn't necessarily land on a sliding scale like this. I will share some of the numbers behind our business. So we finished our year with a 30% increase in our online course sales, which is absolutely huge. Like that's like a seven figure increase in our own online course sales. We also were able to donate more money locally and globally. We are looping giving into our lives in both expected and unexpected ways. So we did a big Black Friday Cyber Monday push. I took almost all of the proceeds of that and just donated that money. And so it's just been really fun to look at. Like, where is the greatest need? How do we support people both locally and globally? And that was really special. We grew our email list by over 200,000 subscribers. So that was a huge number. When we were looking at that, we increased our net operating income by 30%. So that is absolutely huge. I remember our accountants reaching out in quarter three. They were like, holy cow. Like you. Whatever you guys are doing, it is working. And I think a lot of that has to do with optimizing and looking at data and making things even better. And so that was a really big win. And if you're curious about kind of the breakdown of my revenue, I kind of broke it down. So digital courses are about 56% of our business income, then affiliate income is about 32%, podcast sponsorships are about 10% and speaking is about 2%. And so when I looked at all those different areas of our business, it was very clear that really doubling down on making our courses the best they can be, really serving at a high level inside of our community. It was amazing. So that really just spoke to us. For the podcast. We had over 6 million downloads in 2024. Our average 7 day downloads per episode is up 13%, our average 30 day downloads per episode is up 27% and our average 30 day audience is up 32%. And so that is pretty dang awesome. We had a really great year this year. Gold Digger. So there you have it. Here is my year end review of 2024. Overall, it was just, just an incredible year. My girls are growing like weeds. Three years old, six years old. They are just absolute joys and delights. They're growing and they're so smart and so fun. And it was just a really wonderful, wonderful year. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode, Gold Digger. Thanks for letting me share a little peek into my life and business from this past year. I hope that you learned something or maybe kind of highlighted a new focus for yourself as you move into 2025. And thank you so much for choosing this podcast as one that you listen to. If you haven't yet and you are able to, could you take a minute to rate and review the podcast? Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss the show. I read every single review. I take the feedback. I love hearing from you. I love hearing what stood out or how an episode changed your life and it would just mean the absolute world to me. And again, thank you so much for listening to the show. Until next time, Gold Diggers, keep on digging your biggest goals. Thanks for pulling up a seat for another episode of the Gold Digger podcast. I hope today's episode fueled you with inspiration, gave you information that you can turn into action, and realigned you with your true north in life and business. If you've enjoyed today's episode, head on over to gold diggerpodcast.com for today's show notes, discount code codes for our sponsors, freebies to fuel your results, and so much more. And if you haven't yet, make sure you're subscribed so that you never miss a future show. We'll see you next time, gold diggers.