January 1st, 2025…

And another year’s gone by, just like that.  I can’t get over how fast time goes, and so I write, in a feeble attempt to capture small snippets of it…

Two weeks before Christmas 2024, I attended a live workshop where we took 90 minutes to review the progress we made throughout the year.

The idea was to write down what we did, what went well, what failed, and why.  It was so interesting and helpful I wrote an entire email to my list about it (click here if you want to read it)… and now I think it deserves a blog post all of its own.

2024 was a year of launches for me…

I went all in creating my own products — and all in believing in myself and my ability to help people.  As a result, it was a year of growth; and I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t mention that it came with its fair share of challenges!

My centrepiece was The Facebook Ads Lab, my very own coaching program that I launched on February 2nd 2024.  I mentioned this in a previous blog post and I’m very proud to say it’s done well, both for my students and myself.  More on this later…

Shortly after the first Facebook Ads Lab session, I dove into the world of memberships and created Sophie’s Circle, which I launched in April 2024.  Sophie’s Circle is a membership that is specifically designed to help those who want to get started with affiliate marketing.  I wanted it to be affordable and helpful to everyone. 

I put all my courses in this membership: “The Affiliate Starter Kit”, “The YouTube Masterclass”, “Autopilot Leads” and “The Mindset Mastermind”; I added free downloadable resources in there, as well as templates; members can ask me questions too, and we meet once a week for Coffee Hour.  AND I give members a piece of exclusive content every month.

In September, I launched yet another “product”: this wasn’t a course, but it was more of an experiment that I named “Build a Business from Scratch”.  I was determined to show how to build a super simple business from scratch, in any niche, and how to monetise it with affiliate marketing.  I recorded my progress on YouTube every week for 11 weeks.

November 2024 saw me launch the natural progression of The Facebook Ads Lab: The Ads Lab Follow-up group, a six-month coaching program to help all those who’ve gone through the initial six week training and want to continue working with me.  In this program, we dive deeper into the world of email marketing in particular.

And finally, for Black Friday 2024, I created another product: “Your First Affiliate Commission — with the help of AI”, a seven day guide to making your first commission…

So how did all this go?

Let’s start with the wins:

The Facebook Ads Lab and its sequel, the Follow-up Group, were clear wins on all counts.

I took three groups through the initial six-week journey: one in February/March; the next one in April/May, and the last one in September/October… a total of 27 people!  Out of these, six have decided to continue working with me in the six-month follow-up group. 

I enjoyed every minute of working with these groups — and I can’t wait to start with a new group soon!

The testimonials from members made me blush: everyone had very kind words to say about my expertise and level of support.

And most importantly, the students who took action started to see results: their ads are bringing leads, building a quality email list for them, and sales are beginning to happen. 

I LOVE teaching something and seeing people get results from applying what they’ve learned.  It’s so motivating!  They’re happy, I’m happy, it’s a win all round!

And now let’s turn to the “failures”:

“Building a Business from Scratch” was one of these good ideas that was just that: a good idea, but not so good when it was put into practice.

It turned out to be A LOT of work for me, for very little in return.  I needed to build the new business AND record my progress, and it was just too much on top of everything else.  I tracked my numbers too, in terms of views, and noticed that very few people were interested in this experiment anyway… so after 11 weeks, I dropped it.

Can’t win them all, right? 

What about the rest?

Sophie’s Circle is in the middle: it’s not a resounding win, but not a terrible failure either!

It started quite strong with 24 Founding Members when I launched in April, giving all these first members the chance to lock in their membership for a lifetime price of $7 a month.  It grew to reach 35 members at one point, but then quite a few people dropped off. 

Right now I have 30 active members. Whilst this is good, it’s not enough to make this a financially viable product in the long run.  The cost of the membership is $9 a month right now; the income I make from it, taking yearly memberships and Founding Members into account, works out at just over $200 a month…  If I factor in the weekly hour I give for Coffee Hour, the admin work needed for the membership as well as the hours I put in to create the exclusive content, I can safely say I put in eight to ten hours of work a month into this… which in turn means that I’d be paid more working at MacDonald’s lol!

But of course, this is not purely about how much money I make per hour! I LOVE spending time with members, answering questions, getting to know them, helping them out… I’m honoured that some members turn up every week for Coffee Hour and value their time with the group on Zoom.  I LOVE seeing how the group is bonding, with members helping each other out, encouraging each other, etc. 

So even though it’s not exactly an economic win, it’s got “something” that I feel is really valuable.  Which means that I’m going to keep it going for now… but with a fairly significant increase in cost for new members very soon.  

Aside from this, my Black Friday offer “Your First Affiliate Commission” was also in the middle: I sold six guides, and this probably sounds really low, considering I have a list of over 4000 people now.  However, looking at the CTR rates from my launch emails, my conversion rate was actually really good at 7.6%.  I’d created everything myself: the sales page, launch emails, offer… so I was proud of these results!

So now what?

Looking back on 2024, I’m struck by how, yet again, I did too much. 

I could kick myself, honestly!  I’m INCORRIGIBLE!  But anyway, it is what it is, and I have to let it go. 

By November, it was clear to me that my “thing” is group coaching. 

Working with people in a group is a win on so many levels:

• It’s affordable for people: I can offer them quality coaching for a fraction of what it would cost them in a one to one setting
• It’s realistic in terms of time for me: I can work with a group for two hours, with an hour or two of preparation; this fits in extremely well with my family commitments
• It’s profitable for me, without costing people a fortune
• The energy of the group is so positive for the students and for myself. 

With this in mind, here’s my 2025 plan: 

I want to turn the Facebook Ads Lab into an evergreen program. And I want to offer the Follow-up Group regularly too.  I’ll need to write a separate post to explain how I’m doing this — for now, let me just say that I’m working on this!

Anything else?

Well, yes, of course!  There are plenty of other “things” I could report about 2024…  But where do I start?  I don’t know lol!  Let me just jot them down here as they come into my mind: 

I still work for, and with, Dean.  This is a wonderful and invaluable collaboration; I can’t begin to say how much I LOVE working for Internet Profits!  Dean isn’t just an employer, he’s a fantastic mentor who’s always there to help me; he taught me a lot this year, and it’s 100% thanks to him that I made so much progress.  I learn from the coaching sessions we have together every month, I learn from the events where he invites me to be a speaker, I learn from the conversations we have on WhatsApp and I learn from watching how he manages his own business.  And I learn from hours of conversation with my dear colleague Glenn Shepherd, as well as from all the questions we get from the people we coach together.

Sometimes I still have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming… yes, I really am working for Internet Profits!  I’m SO, so grateful for this!

Income wise… 2024 was my best year again!  Every year, I make more than the previous year!  So in spite of all my mistakes (doing too much, not pricing my membership right, wasting time with crazy projects…) I still made more money in 2024 than in 2023. 

In my personal life, things calmed down… I got my strength back after losing my Dad in 2023.  Grief is a journey, and it’s not easy every day, but I’m a lot better than I was a year ago, that’s for sure.

The end of 2024 was marked by a holiday :-). One of my dreams had always been to go somewhere warm and sunny for Christmas… well this year, this dream came true!  On December 18th, we flew off to the Canary Islands, where we had ten days of blissful family time. 

I’m coming to the end of this 2024 review…

It’s imperfect!  As I write this, it’s late on January 1st, I’m tired and I feel there’s at least a dozen things missing from this post.  But I want to hit my perfectionism in the face again and just post anyway.

Just before I go, I want to go back to my “pre-Christmas” review exercise for a second and add this: we were asked to pick our top three goals for 2025.  They could be business related or personal, or a mix of both.  I picked two business goals and one personal.  I gave them each a name:

1. Explode my income
2. Success coaching
3. I matter

  These are my top three goals for this new year: 1) I want to take my income to a whole new level and hit $100k this year, 2) I want to have a solid, evergreen, group coaching offer that I open the doors to regularly, and 3) I want to put myself in the centre more (and if this sounds self-centred and selfish, so be it… I need to stop putting myself last all the time).

I’ve started working on all these three goals already, and will continue to do so throughout the year.

I commit to being focused and I will do my utmost best NOT to do too much!

That’s it for me… what about YOU?

What are YOU committed to for 2025?  Have you reviewed your 2024?  What happened?  What do you want to do differently this year?  I wish you all the very best for this new start!  Just do it!  Life is way too short to wait. 

Much love, Sophie