Behind the Lens 005: 2024 Year in Review

Whoever said entrepreneurship can fight is 100% correct. 2024 was a wild year of wins, losses, and lessons; reflecting on this year has been a sobering and enlightening experience. Productivity comes down to understanding what gives you energy and what activities drain your energy. I would say I’ve been pretty productive this year while publishing

• 35 YouTube videos

• 26 YouTube shorts

• 19 podcast episodes

• 50 social videos on Linkedin

• 262 total posts on Linkedin

• 95 newsletter articles

And that’s not including my semi-secret projects. 😎 I started my year with a document in Notion where I wrote my annual goals and had pages for each quarter to check in on my monthly progress. I ended the year with a check-in on this document – not to beat myself up for the things I didn’t accomplish or to put myself on a pedestal for the things that exceeded my expectations. I check in to see what goals still matter to me now, and which strategies and tactics were actually helpful in allowing me to achieve those goals. My favorite part is seeing the unexpected wins along the way. You can make any plans you want, but life still has a way of working things out in your favor that you least expect. Jesse Itzler held a live webinar that gave me some tips on how I can make this system even more robust yet simple in 2025. But before the new year rolls in, I wanted to give a transparent look at my 2024 wins (including social network growth), challenges, lessons, and the things that kept me dedicated to putting myself and my work out into the world.

P.S. If you’d like me to send you templates of my Notion docs for my yearly and quarterly digest or my marketing analytics dashboard, let me know!

Social Network Growth

I don’t have a lot of platforms that I focus on, but the ones I do focus on, I try to put my best foot forward. Not to just gain subscribers, but to really share things that educate people, inspire people, and connect with people. Across the platforms I focus on, here’s how I’ve grown (with context below):

• Youtube: 75+ new subscribers (now at 616 subscribers)

• Podcast: 15K total downloads (up from 11K total downloads last year)

• Newsletter: 600+ new subscribers

• Linkedin: 200K+ impressions

• Websites: 6K+ visits (across 3 websites)

I was very inconsistent on YouTube this year and stalled out on the podcast after Memorial Day weekend. I’ve posted a few videos and episodes in the second half of the year but I really want to get consistent on those platforms in 2025. I’m hoping to post more social videos on Linkedin in 2025 as well now that the platform is pushing for more video content. My websites need some love. I haven’t really revamped them or pushed traffic to them since my main focus has been the newsletter. I’m putting the finishing touches on my new personal website in Framer and hoping to update the website for Rootful Media once that’s finished.

Wins

Before we get to the vegetables, let’s have a little dessert first. There are a lot of things that went well this year. Here are some of my highlights:

• The short film crowdfund announcement on Linkedin really set the tone for the campaign. We hit our goal in 2 weeks with 14 more days left. A huge achievement.

• Having short video assets ready when a podcast episode drops really helps with engagement and first 24-hour listens.

• Social videos in general. I really wanted to learn more about creating short form video this year and I think I’ve been pretty successful and have an idea on how to scale them.

• Going all in on long-form and focusing on packaging for YouTube, the podcast, and the newsletter. Ironically, I think writing this newsletter helped me understand how to better package YouTube videos.

• I've gotten a great response to the newsletter and it feels like it's growing at a good pace. I still want to tighten up onboarding, developing a nurture sequence, and newsletter design. But I’m off to a great start with quality and consistency.

• Got some paid speaking opportunities. Very nice surprise, I could get used to that.

• Got my first multi-episode podcast sponsor. Money isn’t everything, but it is a great validation of the product we’ve built with the podcast.

• Got into a great fellowship program that really helped me think about this newsletter in a broader and more meaningful sense.

• Creating the best original content of my life, yet. I love to create, and having an original short film, an incredible podcast, and a newsletter under my belt feels incredible.

• Film festival acceptances have been rolling in for Trail Therapy. I anticipate our run will end around August 2025, one year from when we began, and I’m super excited for this ride.

You’ll notice that I’m not sharing money or big client names. Those aren’t “wins” to me, those are the byproduct of all other things running smoothly. If your intention is to make a lot of money from big clients, which wasn’t my biggest intention this year, then I could see those being wins. This leads me to my challenges…

Challenges and Lessons

I don’t feel comfortable sharing my revenue yet, but I will say that this wasn’t our best year. I think that’s largely due to me wanting to pivot away from doing mostly client work. I’ll still take on client projects, but wanted to focus on figuring out how to monetize my original work. This was my biggest challenge of 2024.

I made a severe miscalculation at the beginning of the year. Instead of focusing on scaling media through my personal brands and original media, I focused on revenue streams that had a high cost of acquisition. Hindsight being 20/20, I would've

• edited my own podcast. Outsourcing my podcast editing didn’t really save me time, as I had to continue communicating with my editors on what I wanted. The social video quality and quantity weren’t what I wanted, and I did a better job handling that on my own. This is an area I could’ve saved a lot of money and had a better ROI from establishing my brand standards better.

• spent less time applying for grants and RFPs. grants and RFPs are extra, not a reliable part of a funding plan. They're largely based on your relationship with the funder and how your project/proposal fits into their funding portfolio. One of which has nothing to do with you. I've paid grant writers for grants I didn't get. I budgeted a lot of time for grant writing in Q1 since that's typically a slower quarter for me. Only to receive 1 of the 8 grants I applied to. I may still apply for grants and RFPs, but they’ll get drastically less time and effort from me.

• sought help securing brand deals. I sent some emails to brands at the beginning of the year but didn't do a lot to cultivate those relationships and promote the opportunity on social media. That’s not my strong suit, as it’s a whole different ball game than freelance creative work. I’ve found a partner for these on my semi-secret project but would love a partner for my main platforms.

• invested in my home studio. I co-rented a coworking space from April-December and honestly, I truly wish I would’ve just invested in my home space a lot sooner and hosted guests and business friends, virtually and in person, there. I purposely got a 2 bedroom apartment for this purpose, and feel like I could’ve taken advantage of it more and saved money in the long run. I would’ve had a space I could set up how I wanted and would actually use more regularly than I visited my coworking offices.

I truly wish I would’ve gotten the cheat codes to these sooner, but some things you just have to experience and learn from your mistakes. Luckily, mistakes aren’t the end of the story.

What Kept Me Going

Ultimately, I tried some things and they didn't work out. That's life as an entrepreneur. Sometimes winning is just living to fight another day. This year felt like an endurance test in creative entrepreneurship. I'm feeling the pressure of figuring out how to sustainably diversify my business income streams. I’m learning what to say 'no' to, how long to test something, and when to pivot. Getting through this will only add to my confidence to weather new storms that will inevitably arise. And I don’t have to do it alone.

It's important to have fun even while things are hard or busy. I was doing 20,000 things but still made time to be present for my fellowship, creator industry events, social events, and personal time. I got sick in March, got rear-ended less than a week into the crowdfund, and got COVID for the first time in July. I’ve had to listen to my body and care for myself to show up as my best self, and I think I did that this year much better than I have in the past.

I did achieve my ideal week: at least 2 days with absolutely no meetings so that I could put more time into creating, at least 2 days of spin class, and intentional social time at least one day per week (not including random but welcome friend hangs). Checking in with friends, making new friends, and deepening my relationships with other creators and entrepreneurs have been my saving grace.

I hope this transparent look at my year is helpful, or at least entertaining.

Let me know how I can help you create things you're proud of in 2025.

🤙🏾✨

Angela