EP 1 + 2022 RECAP

 

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Shownotes:

This year was absolutely crazy and we’re so excited to talk through it all with you. Through a pregnancy, getting sued, hiring our first employee, come talk and hang out with us!

 

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Full Epsiode Transcription: 

Hi, my name is CarliAnna, and you are listening to season three, of C-E-Over it.

Welcome back to our official start of season three. I’m so excited and really, really nervous to be here. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. I think it’s just because I haven’t done the podcast in over six months. And I mean, obviously, I’m going to be nervous from that, right, like it’s reasonable to be nervous. I don’t know, I just I don’t know, like, well, I don’t know. But I’m excited to get into our episode today because we are going to be doing a 2022 overview. So don’t worry, you’re gonna be hearing all about what’s been happening in the past six months because a lot has changed a lot has been happening. And I’m excited to bring you guys along the ride for one of the most surprising and weirdest years that we’ve had in our business to date.

But before we get into that, we’re gonna do of course, my favorite segment. And what I’m learning through my Instagram DMS is your guys’s favorite segment too, and I was so happy about that. But what’s it called? Oh my gosh, I just What is the name of that segment? It’s snacks and checks. I haven’t said it until along I was like it’s the part where we like listen, we talked about what we’re listening to and what I’ve been eating and I couldn’t remember what it’s called me on that so welcome to a segment snacks and tribes we were talking about what I’ve been listening to what I’ve been eating while we’ve been working but I’ve been working a whole bunch lately so just in general you guys probably heard me talked about this on my Instagram story. rightfully so because it is absolutely amazing is a show that you guys all need to watch I know surprising are not starting off with a book but this show guys. Was that good.

before I even talk about any of the books that I read in 2022 we need to first talk about this show Arcane and I’m telling you, you have to go watch this show. It is so good. And I know it sounds so dumb. It is Arcane. It is the League of Legends cartoon cartoon show and I know it sounds so don’t but it is a beautiful masterpiece that needs to be appreciated more and needs to get more credit like especially if you’re someone who loves like okay people who love Avatar The Airbender people who love Throne of Glass just any like badass female leave like Alien gala Phineas it’s just got such a good storyline the characters are amazing and the animation as well. I was so shocked like it doesn’t feel like cheesy dumb animation. It feels like a mixture between anime but not again like cheesy and dumb like that it feels like the this like really elevated version of anime that I am super really into and I’m seriously like dying for season three. So what it’s about is it’s basically about League of Legends. And I got into it because I work out the League of Legends music and what else super embarrassed of at the beginning when I was first starting to listen to League of Legends but then I just fully embrace it with a fetch bam, my dogs came in here bad get out of here

anyways… so I first started whoa, I’m messing everything up. So fully started to embrace me listen to us even made this podcast it’s called going to war. And the reason I started listening to this when I workout is because I love to work out and like feel like I’m going to be someone else like I want to be ailing delphiniums. I want to feel like I’m training to freakin go to war and like nobody will ever be able to defeat me in battle because of just that badass. Like, I’m gonna be able to beat someone up that is my goal when I’m working out is to be able to destroy you. Okay, I said it. I know. It’s embarrassing, but whatever. And the League of Legends music is the only not the only but like some of the best music that I listened to that, like helps me feel like that. And it also like, it’s therapeutic to listen to it because it helps me feel so strong. Like, I don’t know how else to describe it. But like when I’m lifting weights, and I’m doing hard things and I’m listening to these like intense like, survivor songs like yeah, you’re gonna go through the world. I’m like, Yeah, I can, like I am so capable of doing that.

Like, guys, that’s why like, my workouts are so therapeutic and like needed for me, which we’re gonna talk about later. But anyways, I just I really became attached to the songs and they really have a special place in my heart now and so my brother in law who plays League of Legends like crazy, like watches, tournaments and does all that stuff. I told him I was like, Hey, I love these songs and I asked him about it because I’ve also been like, what is the storyline behind these songs like I want to know the characters I want to know like why? Going through a all this emotional trauma and stuff. And he was just like, well, I have a show like those the first things, you should watch the show and you can learn all about it and what? And as he was telling me more about it, I was like, oh, that sounds like something I would absolutely love because he’s like, the world building is cool. Like it’s a little like fantasy ish. And there’s a little bit of magic in there. But and I was like, Oh, that’s right. Like he doesn’t know I read fantasy books. So I was like, Oh, that is right up my alley. And I was like, week later watched it, pinch it in 48 hours. And seriously guys like vi the main character like there’s a few main characters VI and her sister are the two main characters but via oh my gosh, move over alien Gala. Phineas vai is my new queen. She owns my heart. And she’s now the person that like I imagined training besides when I’m working out like, I want to be
by I think she’s so so cool.

Oh my gosh, I can I’m gonna stop myself there because I really could talk about the show for days. I’m definitely gonna be you’re watching again. And I’m really excited for the new season to come out soon, which is hopefully coming out sometime last year. But anyways, just Just trust me. It’s not done. You guys need to go watch it. It’s my favorite thing that I watched this entire year, even more so than Yellowstone.

Okay, moving on. My snacks. What is something I’ve been loving to drink lately, I have become addicted to caffeine. Hi, that’s me. But when you have three kids, three, and a three, one is autistic and you have a newborn. This is generally when my caffeine addiction really comes through strong. So I’m just gonna be really basic here and say yeah, I’ve been really addicted to matcha and Dr. Pepper. Because guys my gas station and I think most gas stations do this. I can get like a 44 ounce for $1 a frickin dollar. And because I cannot drink canned sodas anymore. It has to be like from a fountain. And so obviously, obviously McDonald’s has the fizziest best soda in the world but gas stations. I was like, how did I forget about this magical place where they sell dollar 44 ounces, I can bring in my own cup. refill it. I tell my kids I’m going to the bathroom really quick. And I come out with a drink. It’s amazing. I was there’s one on like every corner. So gas station drinks, slash mochi. It’s just any form of caffeine has really really been hitting my vibe lately.

Okay, now I’m not even usually I’ll give you a quick update on like what’s been happening, but it’s been like six months since we had our last update. And we need to do obviously a 2020 To recap, so we’re just gonna get into it, like what’s been happening inside 2022?

Okay, and hopefully you guys can’t hear my kids upstairs because I can hear them and they’re being super loud, like scraping the chairs on the floor and stuff but whatever. Okay, first, we’re gonna do kind of like a timeline recap of what happened through the year, month by month and I will not even with my month.

Honestly, my year was really broken up into two pieces before a baby. And after a baby. That’s kind of what tends to happen when you have a baby your entire year. Even more so is like centered around having this baby and like every timeline is around that it changes your entire like, that’s the thing about having babies is it’s like it’s not just like, oh, I have the baby and then you have for the rest of your life. And it’s like a thing you just have with you it’s like it. It takes a while for you to obvious like you have. You’re pregnant for nine months. That is three fourths of an entire year where you can’t do things you feel sick, your energy is low. You don’t feel like your body is your body which if you haven’t been pregnant for the wild is weirdest feeling. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a beautiful and amazing I love giving birth. It’s my favorite thing. But it’s just it affects your yard affects your ability to do things. And then after baby your postpartum is like it’s not just like, Oh, it’s a few weeks. It’s not even six weeks. It’s honestly like, it is a full year until like you’re sleeping again.Normally you feel like you have a schedule back. Like you can just go back to normal life. So that’s like a year and a half, almost two, where your life is not dictated by you and your schedule is somebody else’s schedule. And your body is not your own body.

And so 2022 was a really really weird year for me January through May. We’re gonna start with that. One we had a lot of high hopes for this year. Which looking back now it’s not like they were I shouldn’t have had them. Like that was dumb to have have high hopes. But like, I think I should have been a little bit more realistic. Because 2021, we had a really high growth year, we like tripled our income, we had our first six figure launch, we had a lot of cash in our bank, like, we still do, obviously, but like, it was just like a lot of big huge first going on. And I was like, yeah, now in 2022, we’re gonna double it, we’re gonna do it again, when that’s not really how business works. And I’ve, I’ve looked at my business and past businesses, and I’ve talked to my coaches like that, it’s a very normal thing to not just have constant growth all the time, like, that is exhausting. And so while we did amazing, last year, last year was a little bit more of a stabilization year and a little bit more of a get back on our feet and get used to this growth. So then we can be ready for that next phase of growth type of year.

So January, is when we basically were like, Hey, we got to be prepared for maternity leave. And the very first thing that we did to get us prepared for maternity leave, was to hire a another coach. We hired Hannah to be another coach alongside me and 10k, Gigi, and inside bmm, which was absolutely terrifying. It was really, really scary and hard to hire someone who is basically supposed to replace you and is supposed to not only like, because like as a designer, you can find someone who has the same vibe as you and who has the same skill set as you but with a coach, it’s like they have to think the same way you do they have to answer questions the same way you do, or at least in a way that’s complementary to the way that you do.

Hey, LJ… Oh, my son, he came in and interrupted me and wanted to say hi.

Anyways, so we hired Hannah. And that was really, really scary. And it was really, really hard. But honestly, she has exceeded every single one of our expectations, like I was thinking it was gonna be like six months before I felt comfortable with her, like doing things on our own. But like, within three months, she was like killing it. And I was like, Yeah, you can look at these cards by yourself. And just really, really took advantage of that. And in our next episode, we’re going to be talking about like, how to plan for a big break in your business, whether it’s maternity leave, or you just like want to take two months out of the year off and how to do that profitably. And so I don’t know, we’re gonna be we’re gonna talk more about that next time. But like, I feel like something that really helped us doing that is all in January, like we focused completely on revamping all of our systems.

 

So that one, when we brought Hannah in, we were like, bringing her into a system that was like set up to scale. Because beforehand, 10kgg was like, we would launch it, we would like get a group and we would do it live with people. And like, of course, is a course program, where you go through the course and stuff like that. But like, I don’t know, we wanted to kind of have like, open all the time. And so we had to like set up a system for that. Nor is just like other things that like when we had first launch 10 kgg it was great for like 10 to 20 people, but like, our goals were to have 50 to 100 even 150 people in 1okGG at a time. And so we had to set up systems and stuff for like answering questions and all those types of things. And so setting up that system, and then also setting up like a really, really good guide for Hannah to come into and be like this is exactly what your role is. This is exactly how you answer questions. It’s like so many resources, and great onboarding plan for her like that was so awesome. Like it made everything so was so easy, and I feel like it helped her get her job 10 times faster. So thanks to Abby, my OBM for doing that. And also thanks to Mariah Coz we got a lot of her systems a lot of the systems from her, and she really, really helped us systematize from that and, um, so that’s kind of what we did in January.

February and March, we were really really just still like trying to figure out this new system while simultaneously like I think I told you guys in the podcast I was like we’re scratching all of life launches, I don’t have the energy to do live launches anymore. We just like completely scratched what we usually is our like main source of income, which is launching programs I mean, we do well with bmm not launching now only like we only launch it like once or twice a year. But I was like we’re just not going to live launch it anymore. We’re going to put it on evergreen, which if you’re not familiar with it, Evergreen is like when you basically can come into a program any time and like I don’t even know how to explain it beyond that like you just you don’t like open it and close it the doors are just always open to a program and there’s lots of systems I have any set up and it’s really awesome because like your energy isn’t it’s not like all or nothing like launches are but with Evergreen. It first of all, like what I’ve learned is it takes like I A year, like a full year, at least, for a program on evergreen to be six to start being successful, and for it to start working, because people like have to have that in their memory for a while before they like, you know, remember, it’s there all the time. Also, you have to market it still like crazy. It’s not like your job of marketing goes away when you stop launches. And that’s one of the reason why people like stop launching things is because like, oh my gosh, it’s so much energy, like, it’s a lot of work going into like one week of the quarter. And instead of like a lot of energy going into one week of your quarter, it’s like, middle medium energy going through your entire quarter. And so it’s kind of hard to like have that consistent medium, pushing advertising energy all the time. So I just didn’t have energy.

So anyways, it was just kind of dumb of me one to just completely stop what had worked for us in the past just completely, like I should have transitioned slowly out of that thing. So let this be a lesson to you. If you want to do something new, that’s great. That’s awesome. Go do it. But like, don’t cut off. The thing that is feeding your business, like keep that and keep going while you’re still trying to get the other thing to work. And so we lost a lot of income that first six months because we were figuring out systems, we were hiring people, we were trying to get evergreen to work successfully. And we weren’t doing any launches. And we were trying to get it to work. And it just like honestly, it wasn’t working like the Evergreen wasn’t working. I think we had like two or three evergreen sales like in that six months. And like, we wanted 10 a month. And we were just trying and trying new things. So let that be another lesson hopefully, like, we’re still we’re not getting discouraged. It’s honestly like we’re trying to figure out, Okay, what’s working like? Entrepreneurship is a lot of like, placing bets on different things and saying, Yeah, I think this is gonna work and trying it for an adequate amount of time. And then if it’s not working to get out of there as quickly as possible, and to try something new, don’t be hung up on the things that don’t work, just move on. And just get your boat over to something else that tries like that does work. So many entrepreneurs, like we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re just trying to figure it out. And so if you don’t get it right on the first time, you’re you’re honestly probably doing it right. Like most of us aren’t going to get it right the first time it’s going to take making a lot of bets, and trying to figure out which bets are working and which ones aren’t like that is honestly the key to success here is just trying over and over again and seeing business as an opportunity to learn and to grow. And as every thing that doesn’t work out as like, okay, cool. Like this is just another step forward instead of like, Oh, it’s a failure, and it didn’t work again, it’s, it’s just like, okay, cool. We have more information. We’re gonna try this again. Oh, that was like literally the story of my life from January through May plus, sprinkle a little bit of getting sued in there.

And you have a very, very awesome start to 2020 I was on which I’ll just I think I found out I told you guys this, but like, yeah, I was on vacation, for the first time with me and my husband just ourselves. It’s the first vacation in five years, six years that we’d ever been on by ourselves. We’re in Hawaii. And the second day of our vacation, I get an email saying we’re gonna be sued. So that was really fun. I’m stressing the entire time. Oh, and our tax, we got hit with our tax bill, which was $30,000… More than we were expecting. So I was really, really fun. Really fun. Again, we learned a lot though it was was a good thing we won’t be repeating, to say the least. So yeah, this, I think I told you guys the story. But clients tried to suit us and it didn’t work. And then we in June, we kind of like got our shows together. And I was like, You know what, like, I’m gonna go on maternity leave and a month. And I need to be making more money. And I need to have things more together than they are right now. Like, obviously, the Evergreen thing is not working. We haven’t figured it out yet. And that’s totally fine. But like we need to get money in place while we do. So we’re gonna go back to what it is that we do best and we’re gonna do a live launch and we did something we haven’t. It’s kind of like a different live launch. We’re done. We did have the high ticket designer, which at the time if you’re listening to this before January 23, we’re doing this again, it was so successful and so freaking fun. We’re doing it again on January 23 and 24th. It was really awesome. So we did that in June and it was Crazy, crazy stressful, because there’s so many systems that go in place when you’re doing a live workshop like that. We were doing affiliates I was teaching content I had never taught before. So I had to come up with like, five brand new, totally amazing workshops, which I did. But it was a lot of work. Oh, and I created a marketing personality guide to go with it, which took a ton of work like literally, the Saturday beforethe workshop, me and my husband were both up at like 11pm grammar, editing my marketing personality guide to get it ready for Monday, the next day, it was insane, we did that. And it was awesome. I loved doing live events. And that’s kind of something that we want to be doing more of in 2023. Because it was just so freaking fun.

And so another thing that I learned in 2022 was just that, like, I don’t know, I think I think part of the reason why I was like we’re gonna go evergreen, yes, because I didn’t have energy from being pregnant. But also like, I feel like I was really leaning into like, hearing what other people were saying where they’re like, you can’t rely on launches, you need to be an evergreen business, you need to have your business run, you run for it, you know what I mean? And I just totally disregarded again, doing things how I want to and things that sound fun to me. I love connecting with people. And I love teaching live, I love the energy for from it. And it’s what I do best. And so I just was like, I’m gonna tap into what I do best. And I did it and we killed it. We over we actually had a goal of how many sales we wanted to do. And we it was kind of like a big goal. Like, I was like, I don’t know if we can do this guys, I don’t know. And even in the first few days, we were like, not even a quarter of the way through. Like our goal, like we hadn’t even hit a quarter. And I was like, there’s no way I was talking to one of our team members. I was like, There’s no way we’re gonna hit this goal. And we were just kinda like planning on not hitting our goal. And I was like, It’s really sad. But like, yeah, there’s just no way like, we’re not going to do it. And let me tell you guys, by the end of our promotion period, we had hit over our big goal, like, it was insane. I was like, what the actual heck, like I just kept like, talking to our team. And I was like, What is life like what is happening, this cannot be real. This is not real life, someone pinched me this is a dream, because I don’t understand how we’re actually going to reach our goal, can’t even reach it. But like, do better than that when just a few days ago, I was not counting on that. So that was really exciting. Really exciting.

And then June 30, I went in and had a little sweet baby girl. And that was amazing. I know it’s not super business related. But this is my podcast, I’m talking about whatever the heck I want. I just I truly love giving birth. And it was such an awesome time to not and I’ll take a break. And just like for you with my family. I feel like ever after every time I have a baby, I transform into a new person, like, I have new desires, new wants, and I just have a whole new outlook on different things. And it’s a really weird period of time to go through that and to be like, Wait, is this really what I want? Is this really who I am now. But I don’t know what happens. And I feel like after this birth, I feel like all of a sudden the homemaker in me was like born before Evaletta I was like I do not love the job of being a mom like I love my kids. But I don’t love the job of being a mom. I don’t love like I wouldn’t want to stay home with my kids all the time. Like I if I didn’t work I would probably go insane like I would say those things all the time. And six months later after having a letter I can still confident be like confidently say like, I’m now considering homeschooling my kids like I started baking sourdough. I started really getting into just I don’t know, like homemaking. It’s weird. And I don’t even know why that happens or what did it but like I was just loving motherhood and I was just loving that stage of life I still am.

But I also it’s so weird how things can simultaneously just happen. It was also dealing with a lot of postpartum rage and depression. It was really weird. I haven’t experienced that until now I’ve had postpartum anxiety and it didn’t last very long. But this time I had a lot of depression and rage. Like the rage is the part that was really surprised me I’ve never heard of that before. But like I just want it to be off the walls all the time. And I just wanted to kill anybody who’s dead within five feet of me but it was weird because I was also enjoying motherhood so much I just Like would freak out at the most random things and just be pissed off all the time. It was weird. It was so weird. So that was like a really weird I was on maternity leave for two full months, two months. Now I was on maternity leave for eight weeks. That’s what it was. And during that time, my team ran everything. For me, they did everything. For me, it was amazing. I didn’t have to do one single thing. They did my calls. They even like planned this huge launch for me so that when I came back from maternity leave, I was able to just like pop into clientfest and launch client fest, again, it was crazy, which I wouldn’t do again, but because it was weird coming from maternity leave, and then like heading into like one of the biggest promotional events of the year, like, the energy for me was weird. I wouldn’t do it again. But team wise, it was awesome. And honestly, like throughout the last, like the rest of this year, I’ve honestly just been trying to deal with that postpartum stuff, trying to get back into a schedule.

Like I said, like, once you have a baby, it’s not like, oh, cool, like you had a baby. Now you get to go back to work. It’s like, you don’t have a schedule anymore. You don’t have sleep anymore, you don’t have, like I couldn’t even work out anymore, which is again, like my therapy. And so like, I’ve been really struggling in the past six months to just feel human and to get anything done. So like, I don’t even feel like I have a lot to say around the last six months. Besides like, I don’t know, just, it’s just been life. And we’ve just been trying to survive this schedule. And so yeah, that’s kind of like what’s been happening this last year, but I wanted to also talk about like, a few hard things, and then a few good things.

I’m gonna talk about the good things first, and get that out of the way. A few good things I feel like happened to this year that I want to highlight. So this episode is also going to be chaotic mess, I don’t really have a plan for I just wanted to talk about 2022. Okay, good things to happen in 2022. Organic marketing took off, we freaking killed it with our organic marketing. Like, we really, really scaled back we spent $150,000, less than we did the year before on Facebook ads and marketing, which is freaked on it’s still even more than like I would have like to spend $180,000 less. But our organic anyways, our organic marketing took off, we have been doing this thing called Slow lead generation, which is something we now teach inside take 10kgg we learned from Saffron, she came in and taught our team is freaking amazing. It is the coolest, most active, but also like non sleazy way to get leads inside your business. And I don’t even know it’s like, I don’t even know how to explain it. Beyond that. It’s just like creating really awesome relationships with people and like you being the first one to interact and start with that. Like that’s why I love it so much. It’s like, you just you know what I mean? Like you want to like create more friends on Instagram. And sometimes it feels like you’re just waiting for people to come and to find you and to like find your content and stumble upon your account. But like slowly generation is you actively going into and trying to find those people and you’re just like, No, I’m going to be the first one to start the conversation and to follow that person because they look really cool. And I want to be their friend and I want to work with them someday. And you just start the relationship. And it’s so it’s so simple. And so easy.

Anyways, we’ve been doing slow date lead generation, we have like a little bit more of a system than just like going and following and loving on people. It’s a little bit more systematized than that. But at the premise, that’s pretty much what it is.
And so we’ve been doing that we’ve been doing a lot more like podcast interviews, we’ve been just doing more organic stuff. And I’m really happy we did. Because one of the things that kind of happened with client first this year was our facebook ads account got shut down, like how many days into the launch, like four days into the launch? Which if you don’t know, anytime, and we were spending a crazy amount on the ads this year, it was like, more than I’ve ever spent before it like I can’t even remember and I don’t even know if I should say but it’s like it was like at least 50 plus 1000. Like at least like I think it was probably good 10 or 20,000 More than that. And our facebook ads account got shut down. And again, if you don’t know anything about Facebook ads, it takes Facebook a while to get it figured out to where it needs to send people so honestly, you’re like wasting your money the first i don’t know like tight like the first little bit first few days you’re gonna be wasting your money because you’re not going to get a lot of leads. It’s going to be slow conversions because Facebook is still trying to figure out where your ad is supposed to be and where to give it to people. And literally like it was the day we were like okay, we have it finally figured out like they’re starting to go vert. We’re gonna like hit gung ho and like, you know, pump money to it. So it can really like start converting is when our ads account got shut down. And it was so depressing, like, me and Ariel were like, we just cried. And it was honestly really sad because we were like, we just wasted money this launch is gonna suck. But But I mean, it still did really, really well. And we got our facebook ads account back, but it was just a really I was like, I’m so I was just really good. What am I trying to say? It’s a really good wake up call. I mean, I’ve been trying to focus this entire year more on organic marketing anyways. But that I was like, Oh, my gosh, I’m so glad. We’re not focusing so much on Facebook ads this year, like we were the year before. Because like, I’m never doing that, again, like that was so terrifying. And I just have been burned by Facebook way too many times to dump my money into it. Because it’s getting way too expensive. I’m just like, No, I think we’re done. Like I were fully confidently done with Facebook, so gay for organic marketing, and maybe tiktok ads.

Um, another good thing was happy high ticket designer, I already talked about that. So I’m not going to get into it. Another one was our awesome team members. I also kind of talked about that Hannah’s been awesome. We hired her. She’s our first full time team member and crazy crazy. We also hired I can’t remember if Christina was. Christina was I think Christina was this year. Christina is a VA. And we had Abby before doing all the VA work. But Abby needed a little bit of help. So we got Christina to come in and help us. And this is this one’s kind of a negative slash positive. But we’ve been kind of cycling through a few different accountants and trying to find like a good financial advisor. That has been helpful for us. Like I think last time you guys heard me talk about like, Oh, I’m so excited about this financial advisor, I’m so excited about this one. And honestly, after going through a few of them, I am paying a lot of money for it to just a few months ago, I was like, You know what, this is something I really need to take on. And this is something that I should know, like, I should not be trusting my money and the kinds of people and hands of people that like and I don’t know anything about it, you know what I mean? Like, because with our financial advisors, they would like say things like, Oh, you need to like invest your money in this or you need to make sure your CEO and compasses and blah, blah, blah, and I just would like blindly trust them. Because I have no idea when it comes to money things like, like I know how to create a personal budget, but like investing and like, I don’t know, like trying to predict like how much money we’re going to be making in the next year like that has a whole nother level of money that I don’t understand. So after trying that, and trying to trust someone else with that, I was like, No, this is something I need to do. And I need to understand, like, I need to take charge of my money and be the power, the person of power, handling all of our money. And so I’ve been reading a lot of really awesome books. And if you guys have any courses or anything else, or resources on learning that stuff. It’s been so crazy, insightful and awesome. We did hire a different accountant, but this accountant that we hired isn’t going to be a financial adviser, they’re not going to be giving us like, this is why you should invest into it. I mean, obviously, you’re gonna be giving us some type of advice. But I just feel like taking charge of that money as myself. I don’t know really empowering. And I’m excited about that.

Other things. Oh my gosh, I feel like I just been complaining this whole episode. I promise this year has been amazing. But it was also just like a really weird hard year. It was a really, really weird year. But I think just having a baby threw everything off. And also I don’t know, it’s just a really hard year, I guess with positives, two and a second. But this year, more than ever, I have had like, just people screwing us over. It’s so weird. You guys heard us talk about like, we had one person in 10k GG who was bullying other people inside 10kgg and then totally denied it and talk to shit on us and Facebook groups and Instagram posts and stuff. And totally just would not own up to bullying other people. And it was really sad. Then we had another person who joined 10k GG, and we helped her book a 10k client and we what else do we do? I don’t know. We just spent a lot of time with her and her for the first few weeks. And after we booked attend to help her book a 10k client she messaged us and was like, I want to be out of the program. I don’t find this helpful. And we were like, what? Like we had literally just helped this person booked a 10k client and now she was like I can’t afford the program. I want to be out and like I don’t find it helpful. It was so weird. I was I felt so backstabbed and we had a summit that we were a part of. Be so sketchy and refuse to pay us affiliate money.

You guys, I have the whole thing on my Instagram, you just need to go check it out there. I mean, I can do it more in depth stuff on the podcast, too, I guess. But like we literally had, we were part of a summit. And now yeah, I’m just, I don’t know if you guys wanna hear that story another time. I don’t know if I’m gonna go into it now. But the whole story is on my Instagram, I can have it saved in a highlight bubble, about how the designer boss summit completely screwed us over and another summit participant, they just screwed us over wholeheartedly. And we’re so sketchy and mean about it, it was really weird. So that happened. And we got sued, it was just a year of betrayal. Not to be dramatic, but it kind of was. But honestly, at the end of the day, and at the end of the year, like I feel very still grateful for everything that we did, like, we made $80,000 less than we did the year before. No, it was 100,000, or I don’t know, it was anywhere between 80,000 and 120,000. And the year before we made less, but we also spent $150,000 or less on ads. So we actually made $20,000 more, we spent so much less on advertising, we actually instead spent way more of our time and our investment, just reinvesting back into our business. And investing into I paid for like a $50,000 program. That was amazing with Mariah cause I loved it.

We also paid for obviously, our first full time employee, Hannah, which is amazing, we spent a lot of time really training her. And so this year was just a lot of like getting ready, you know what I mean? Like just building, building, building building. And so I’m really excited to see what 2023 brings. Because 2022 was so much of a building year and so much of a internal year that I’m excited for 2023 to hopefully be like an external year, and just to like, put it all on blast and to just fully embrace our business how it is now, because I’ve been so proud of the work that my team has put into it and where we are now. Especially because well, so part of that $50,000 program that was a part of, I really get to look inside other million dollar businesses and hear from other million dollar business owners. And one thing that I heard across the board was just how so many other people are struggling during this year, and how sales, everything is just down. And it was crazy to me because like, these are people that I’ve looked up to for so long, and people that I have been like, at the pinnacle at the top where I’m like, they are the ones who have made it. And to see them like struggling this year. And to be like, Wow, this thing that we literally brought us you know, like 100 to $200,000 last year, all of a sudden this year, and 2022 just like wasn’t working for them, and they just like were all of a sudden not being profitable. And that was happening like across the board for so many people. Again, things that were like working before it just all of a sudden not working.

And so I just I don’t know, like I just feel so grateful that not only did we like survive this last year, with a recession and everything just being weird with marketing. Like I really think marketing. We’ve talked about this in another episode. But marketing completely changed in 2023 the same things are not working that we not only survived and we did well, but like, really we made more money and we’ve done better than we ever did. On a year where it was internal. It was like not a year it was supposed to be growing. We did so freaking well so I’m so proud of like our team and I just like literally like the best thing you could ever invest in his team like because they are the ones like it would not be here without them and yeah, I just they’re the ones that like have so many ideas they have so many growth plans for for CarliAnna that I’m just really grateful for them.

So anyways, that’s kind of all I have for this year. It’s been a really, really weird year but I hope this was helpful for you guys let me know if you guys liked this episode. I’m so excited to be back. Oh my gosh, you have no idea. I have missed this podcast like crazy. But I’m excited to be back. Also, before we go we are doing happy high ticket designer in two weeks from this episode airing. I think it’ll be two weeks. It’s gonna be on January 23 and 24th. And seriously guys, it was freaking amazing. Like I was having people and I told her this to be like bragging and stuff but like, just because again, I feel so proud. Like, I just I just I love it. But we had so many people messaging us and they were like this is crazy. The amount of value that you’ve put into this $40 workshop. Like literally guys, this is a workshop that I would sell as like a $500 course if I didn’t feel like it was so needed for people at a $40 price point, like, it’s such an essential thing. And I really feel like there’s nobody else talking about pricing and talking about booking high ticket clients while still living your life. And being wealthy and happy. Nobody else is talking about these things that we’re talking about in the workshop. And I promise you it is worth it just to come for the marketing personalities worth it just to come for the q&a, or it’s worth it just to come for like the panel of guests that we bring on like it’s going to be it’s not going to be a fluffy little work.

What am I trying to say? It’s not going to be a fluffy little workshop. It’s going to be a powerful, action packed, awesome, amazing workshop for two days and you need to take part of it. So come and join us. Anyways, I will see you guys next time. Talk to you soon.