Episode #14: Reflections on 5 Years in Business & 6 Figures in 4 Months

In my first ever solo episode, I’m celebrating my 5-year business anniversary and making 6 figures in the first 4 months of 2023!

I’m taking you behind-the-scenes of my business and sharing what’s been working, what’s not been working, and where things might be going.

So, listen and let me know what you think. Does this solo format work for you? I’d love to know.  

 
 

Listen to the Episode

 
 

Show notes

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  • Hey, and welcome to Mistakes That Made Me, a now multi-award-winning podcast.

    I am Eman Ismail, your host. And this episode of Mistakes That Made Me is going to be a little bit different from what you’re usually used to. This isn’t an interview. This is my first solo episode. 

    So originally, my plan was to do a late kind of mid-year business review of 2023, but actually, I’ve just celebrated my fifth business birthday. As in, I have been in business officially for five years as of September 3rd, and I just thought a solo episode would be a really great way to celebrate that. I spend so much time digging into other people’s businesses. I think now is a really good opportunity for me to open up a little bit and tell you more about me and my business. 

    So in this episode, I will firstly share a little bit about how I came into business, what my business looks like, and then I’ll talk about what has been working in my business this year, specifically, what’s not been working, and the mistakes that I’ve made and the kind of things that I’ve learned from, and then the future and what the future looks like or what I hope the future will look like.

    So let me start off by telling you where I am today. Today, I run a six-figure copywriting business called Eman Copy Co. I am on track to hit multiple six figures this year for the first time, more on that soon. So in terms of what I do, I do email strategy and copy for six and seven and eight-figure online business owners and e-commerce brands, so that’s coaches, creators, course creators, podcasters, membership makers, product owners, et cetera, et cetera. I also have a different revenue stream, which is coaching copywriters. So I have some digital online programs, masterclasses, digital products, that kind of thing. I have my signature course, Like a Boss, which is a 12-week self-study course that teaches copywriters how to go from order taker freelancer to boss business owner.

    And so, yeah, really two sides to my business: the email strategy and copy side where I help businesses make money through email, and then there’s the coaching side. And I think I really like having both at the moment because it allows me to kind of tap into all different sides of my brain, right? And also, it means that obviously, I’m getting money from different streams. So while I do kind of focus more heavily on the one-to-one client work side because it’s just so much more profitable, I do really enjoy the copywriter coaching that I do. So that’s what my business looks like today. I obviously have a few other different things that I’ll also mention like this podcast, but we’ll get into that a little bit later.

    I think it might be helpful for you to know how I came into business before I kind of start telling you about my business now, so that you can really kind of get my journey, where I’m coming from, all that good stuff. 

    I’ve talked a little bit on the podcast already about how I came into business, but just to kind of remind you a little bit, I was working for a food charity, and I was basically doing their copy, their website copy, email copy, everything in between, like printed marketing materials. I was basically the communications and marketing department, me, one person, that was me. So I did pretty much everything from creating the social content to creating video content. It was a lot. I did loads of different things. And in that, it was very clear to me that I loved the copy side. I loved sending emails out and watching people donate because of an email that I had just written. It was amazing to me, and it really kind of helped me understand the power of email.

    This is in 2018, so this is five years ago now. Well, actually, no, I started in 2017. So by 2018, I was kind of getting a little bit tired of this job. There were a few things. So the first thing was that I was having to commute every day to a different city. I had a then two-year-old, so I was waking up at God knows what time of the morning to get him to nursery and then I’d drive to a different city and I couldn’t get back in time to pick my son up from nursery. So I had to hire a childminder who would go pick him up three days a week and then I could pick him up the other two days a week.

    I was just exhausted after a year of doing this. I remember just feeling so down and depressed because every day was basically me trying to rush home so that I could see my son. And I would get home at about 7.30 p.m., 8.00 p.m., having left the house at 7.00 a.m. So 7.30 a.m., this is already a 12-hour day. I’d get home just hoping that my son would be awake so I could just spend a little bit of time with him, and every single night, he would be asleep. And I’d walk in, see him asleep, and just be devastated because that was another day that I hadn’t seen him. I really hadn’t seen him at all. He’d always be asleep on the sofa because he would wait for me to come home. He would refuse to go to bed without me being there. So he’s trying to stay awake. Remember he’s two years old, right? So as a two-year-old, he knows that I am not there, but he knows I’m coming, and he’s trying to stay awake so that he can see me, but he can’t because he’s so exhausted, and he ends up falling asleep on the sofa. I walk in, see him asleep, and every single time, I just want to cry. Pretty sure I did cry at some points.  

    So there was that. That was weighing me down every day. This wasn’t kind of what I had imagined motherhood to be. I’d taken this job because I really, really thought that it was what was best for our family and I was trying to build my career. And I just remember thinking, this isn’t what I wanted. I took this job for my family and now I don’t see my son. I don’t see him. And that started to really weigh me down.  

    The other thing was that I really wanted to be paid more. And so I had a conversation with my at the time manager, and I mean, I won’t go into details, but I will say that we couldn’t come to an agreement. Because, I mean, my first option wasn’t to leave the job. It was, you know, can I work from home? And the answer to that was, no, this role will never allow you to work from home 100% of the time. And even though the job would have allowed me to, it was a job I could’ve definitely done from home, and actually, when I did work from home, I performed a lot better. Concentration levels were a lot higher, productivity was a lot higher when I was working from home and not in the office. But I understood that that’s not how he wanted to run his company. Okay, cool.  

    So that was really good to have a clear answer on that. And then I just made the decision that, well, I need to resign. So I handed him a resignation. I had a month’s notice to work. I had no savings, no backup job, I had my two-year-old to take care of. And I just knew that this was the time for me to start a business. I’d always wanted to do it. I tried to do it twice before, like I tried to sell book proofreading and editing kind of thing,  just did not work out. I had previously kind of done some on-and-off freelancing, you know, lots of different things, editing, proofreading, blog writing, it just would never work out, which is why I’d taken that role. 

    Anyway, because I just kind of thought, right, I probably just need to take an in-house job, give up on this business thing. But then this all happened, and I just realised that now is the time. If I don’t do it now, I will never do this. If I don’t start my business right now, I won’t do it. And I can’t have any backups and I can’t have any other kind of, I guess, anything waiting in the sidelines to save me. I think for me, I realised I needed to jump in and I needed to be in it, and I needed to know that there was no other option now, and I needed to make this work. Because I had a son, things were different, I had a child now, and this really needed to work. Failure was not an option. 

    So it was Monday, the 3rd of September, 2018. I had just resigned from my job. Friday had been the last day. I sat down in my office, in this office that someone had kindly let me use. It was a basement office, no windows, no other people. And I’m sat there and I’m just so excited to build this new business. My rate at the time was, I think on that first day it was like £10 an hour. It went up eventually to £15 an hour and eventually £20 an hour, and it kind of went up and up from there. 

    But I just remember being so excited. Life changed dramatically. I was finally able to pick my son up from nursery. And that was a huge deal. It was a really huge deal. So on the days now where I’m like, oh, gosh, I have to pick up the kids from school, I’m exhausted, I’m tired, I try to remind myself of those days that this is what I dreamed of because it’s those small moments for me and my kids’ lives that are so important. It’s the consistency and regularity of me, of mum being there to pick you up from school every day, and that was really important to me. 

    So I finally was able to do that. I was finally able to join my son on his school trips. And I remember we went on one trip to the farm and he was just so happy that I was there. Again, at this point, he’s still two. He was just so happy that I was there. We had the best times. I look back on those photos and just think, it was so hard back then. I didn’t know where my clients were coming from, I wasn’t making very much money, but I was new and I was eager and I was determined, and I just wanted to be this present mum. I wanted to create this life for myself that was flexible, that allowed me to put my kids first, where I didn’t have to ask a HR manager to take time off or where I didn’t have to call anyone to let them know, hey, my son is sick. Is it alright if I take the morning off to take them to the doctors? It just felt like I had no control of my life. And then everything completely changed.  

    So that’s what the journey into business looked like for me. Lots of things have changed since then. I mean, like I said, I was charging £10, £15 an hour until I quickly realised that could not continue. I threw myself into investing and coaches and courses and memberships, and it was really terrifying because I didn’t have any money. So for me, it was never that I didn’t have clients. I was actually booked out very quickly, very early on. By the end of 2018, I was booked out with clients, but I was still only making like £1,000 a month. And I’m thinking, clearly, I’m doing something wrong because I’m maxed out, like all my time is taken up with client work, but I’m only earning like £1,000, and this can’t be right. 

    So I knew I needed help, knew I needed coaching, and I needed help raising my rates, and so that’s what I worked on. I remember at the time joining a $27 a month membership, and it was so much money for me, and I remember thinking at the time, oh my gosh, this is a huge investment, like, do I actually have this to invest? And I need to take this very seriously because this is $27 a month. This is a lot. And I laugh now looking back because I’m amazed at how far I’ve come. Thank God. But also, I laugh because it’s so lovely and it’s so sweet to just see that progress and to see me still investing in myself, even back then when I didn’t have a lot of money, that I believed so much in investing in myself when $27 a month was a lot of money for me and I only had a few hundred dollars per month. That was a lot for me. I’m proud of 2018 me for doing that. 

    Eventually, by 2019, I think it was like by April 2019, so maybe six, seven months into freelancing, I had my $4,500 month, and I think that was the point where I just thought, oh, okay, so, I can make some good money doing this. This is actually a thing. So now I’m starting to look at people making $10,000 a month and more, and thinking, how do I get there?  

    So things had clearly improved, but I was still having a lot of ups and downs. It wasn’t that I was having $4,500 months every single month. I was not at all. I was having the odd high month and then every other month was low. So I was stuck in feast and famine, lots of ups and downs, and it really became a case of, look, I need to figure this out so that I can actually feel like I have a consistent, profitable, successful, reliable business. 

    So the turning point really came when I specialised in email in early 2020. I decided that, I mean, I’d already fallen in love with email, I loved writing my own newsletters, and I just thought, what if that was the only thing I did for everyone, for all my clients? And so that’s what I did. I specialised in email strategy and copy. I went out into the world and told everyone that’s what I was doing. 

    And then, of course, in March 2020, COVID happened, and that was really difficult for me. I mean, I won’t even go into it because I just feel like it was hard for everyone, right? I had barely any clients. I had one client, I remember, and it was just the worst. It was the worst project ever. It was blog writing. I had to do five blog posts a month, and it was on the most boring topics you could possibly think of, just like listicles. And it was just so boring, mind-numbingly boring. I needed to get rid of this project and for it to just not exist anymore, but it was the only thing that was bringing in any money, so I had to keep it. 

    And lots of things happened that year. But I came out of it much stronger. I started working with some really big clients. That year, in 2020, I was hired by Emily Thompson of Being Boss, Belinda Weaver, Joanna Wiebe got in touch with me to write an email as well for her, for Copyhackers. And so it felt like things were really turning around. I started having $10,000 months. Initially, I remember thinking, oh, this is just a fluke, right? But then it was like, okay, September, October, November, and then consistently having high revenue months. That’s when I kind of realised, okay, something’s changed here. 

    And then, I mean, 2021. So that’s 2018, 2019, 2020. 2021, I ended up—It was a big year, actually. I had a big move. I had another baby, and I needed to figure out a way for my business to self-fund, like to fund my maternity leave. I needed my business to fund my maternity leave because I couldn’t rely on the government to do that very well. 

    And so I just changed up all my offers. I got my crap together. I started offering a high-ticket VIP Week to clients. My VIP Week is a seven-day offer where I complete the entire service from start to finish in seven days. Client walks away with their project done, delivered. And yes, it was intense, but it was really profitable for me. But right now, I think I charge close to 5,000 for the VIP week, but back then it was 4,000, 4,500, I think 4,200 in USD, and so it was very profitable for me. 

    And by the end of that year, when baby was born, so my second son was born, I had also launched Like a Boss, my 12-week course for copywriters, and I managed to—I mean, I think I wasn’t that far off hitting six figures that year. And I mean, that was with me only working—I mean, I didn’t work the final quarter of that year because I was off on maternity leave. In the end, I managed to self-fund seven to eight months of maternity leave, which was amazing for me considering the experience I had in my first pregnancy and first maternity leave. I didn’t really get maternity leave the first pregnancy. If you want to hear more about that, go listen to my episode with LaYinka Sanni, where we talk about what my initial experience was for maternity leave versus the second one. It was a lot. It was a lot.  

    But I came back in March 2022, having had my second baby and I had my first six-figure year that year. I worked seven months of that year because some of that was me taking maternity leave and then others was me taking lots of time off for my kids’ school holidays. I take July off every year. And so I only worked seven months of the year in 2021, ended on 120,000 USD, and then in 2023, here we are, present day. 

    This has been a good year so far. In the first four months of the year, I hit 100,000 USD by the end of April. By July, I had, in revenue, made what I had made in the whole of 2022. And, so, we got off to a really good start in 2023. Well, I do want to remind you that revenue is not the same as profit. It is not the same thing. I am not taking home a six-figure salary. I mean, I hope I will one day, but we are not there yet. We’re working towards it, but we are not there yet. 

    So let me tell you a little bit about what is working before I go into what’s not working in the business. And I’m going to focus on 2023 because obviously, that’s what’s in my mind right now. That’s what I’m thinking about. That’s where my thoughts are. So let’s just focus on this year. What is working for me right now in my business is the client results that I’ve been getting and having happy clients. And this is a really big one for me because customer satisfaction and client satisfaction is so important to me. If you have been following me or you’ve been to any of my workshops or anything like that, you’ll have already heard me talk about how important it is important to create a great customer experience for all my clients. It’s very important to me that they’re happy and that enjoy working with me and that they’re happy with everything I deliver and that I get great results for them. And so we’ve had a great year of that. 

    I have been focusing a lot on creating case studies so that I can highlight all these great client results, some of those include my newest, a £1.2 million case study. So there’s one client, Samara Michael. I worked on turning her live launch into an evergreen funnel. She is a coach and a course creator. So she sells her course and she wanted to stop live launching and turn it evergreen. So I came in, I worked on her sales page, her email sequence, and of course, all the evergreen strategy, all that good stuff. And when I checked back in with her, to date, she’s made £1.2 million and counting because of course this is an evergreen funnel, so she continues to make money from it every single week. And so that figure is only going to go up, which is amazing. 

    I have other clients that I have made lots of money for, which is really, really great to know because of course I want my clients to see a fantastic return on investment, and that’s what they’ve been getting. And there was one client, they’re a duo, they didn’t get the results they were hoping for, but they still loved working with me so much and was so happy with what I delivered that I actually decided to create a case study on what happens if you hire me and you don’t hit your sales goal because we didn’t hit their sales goal. So I created a whole case study around that. 

    I think in honour of the theme of this podcast, I wanted to create almost like a failed case study for me. Like what is the worst-case scenario? What is the worst-case scenario for when you hire me, you invest in me to work on your launch, your emails, whatever’s going on in your business, and we don’t hit the sales goal that you’re hoping for? And so that’s what this case study is. It’s like a worst-case scenario, and it’s actually still an amazing case study and an amazing scenario. And these clients still came out of it so happy, so excited, so satisfied with the work that I produced them, with the results that I got for them as well. 

    And so it was great knowing that. And it was great for me as well. It was a good experience for me to see that it’s not all about the money for my clients. And especially with those particular clients, they could see that we might not have hit their goal that time around, but we had a launch debrief and I dove into all the data and the results and I gave them some strategies to move forward with so that the next time they launched, we would hit that goal. And the next time they launched, they did in fact increase the number of sales they made. And so it’s literally just about that continual growth.  

    And so having clients who understand that this is a process is so freeing and so enjoyable. And that’s another thing. I’m really loving the clients that I’m working with. I feel like I have met my people, my people know how to find me, they’re attracted to me, they come to me, which is amazing, and I just really enjoy working with them. I have so much fun with them, and they enjoy working with me, and not everyone can say that, so I appreciate how blessed I am in that. So those are the things I’m excited about and happy with, with my client results and having happy clients.  

    So the next thing that is working for me is my digital product side of my business. So I have one specific digital product that’s selling really well. It’s called Design Your VIP Day. It’s a two-hour online masterclass that gives you a behind-the-scenes walkthrough of my VIP offer, which is my VIP Week. Well, actually, I pulled out this lesson from my bigger course, my signature course, Like a Boss because I knew VIP days are a thing that everyone talks about. But here’s the thing, not everyone loves VIP days. 

    I personally hate VIP days. It’s very stressful for me as a mother of two kids. I cannot guarantee that I’m going to be around on the day. Something might crop up. A kid might be sick. I might be sick. I might not have slept the night before. It is a very bad idea for me to set up a very intensive VIP day that relies on me having a heavy writing day because I need to be in a certain place mentally to have a writing day, and I don’t know if that’s always going to happen always, at the right times. So VIP days are a no-no for me.  

    Instead, I created my seven-day VIP week. And it just means I have more time to work on the client work. And clients are happier with the idea of me spending longer on their project. I’m not rushing, and they know that they’re getting it still very quickly. It might not be a day, but seven days is still very fast.  

    So obviously, I already mentioned that my VIP week was a huge success in the year that I was pregnant, really helped me hit my revenue figures, take on more clients, take on more projects, work fewer hours, make more money. It was fantastic. And a lot of people were asking me about my offer. So I decided to—I mean, I’d already put this content inside my bigger signature course, Like a Boss, but then I decided to pull out that lesson and sell this two-hour online masterclass individually as its own product, and that’s been selling really well. I have regular sales for that without me doing really much promo for it. I’m only now getting into really promoting it on social media regularly, talking about it here, for example. And also, the copywriters who are buying this online masterclass, which, by the way, is available for you right now and you can find on my website, they’re getting really great results and they’re super excited and happy about it. So it’s great that I’m selling this product, the people who are buying it are getting great results, and it feels really good. I feel really good about it. 

    Yeah, so I’m working on just building more, I guess, pathways to Design Your VIP Day, so that more people know about it and can buy it. And it’s really for the person who loves the idea of having a VIP Day but feels like the traditional day rate doesn’t really work for them. What other options do I have? That’s what Design Your VIP Day is all about. And while I’m a copywriter, I created it for copywriters, the examples I use inside are around my own copywriting business, I have had loads of business owners who are not copywriters, who are coaches, consultants, service writers, that kind of thing, I’ve had loads of non-copywriters buy Design Your VIP Day and love it and find it really helpful. And they know that everything that is inside is transferable to their business. So if that sounds like something you want or need, I’m going to put the link in my show notes, but you can also find it on my website, emancopyco.com. And you can find it on the Learn With Me page.  

    The other thing that’s working in terms of digital products is my Like a Boss signature course. So to give you some background, I launched it initially, and it’s a 12-week coaching program essentially. Live coaching with me, Slack community with me, 12 weeks of training course content being released. And this whole course is for copywriters who want to go from being order taker freelance copywriters to boss business owners. You want to stop being that pen for hire, feeling like you’re just totally disregarded, not respected, you’re not listened to, you’re not seen as the strategist, the leader of the project. It’s for those copywriters whose clients are kind of bossing them around, leading the way. They don’t know how to get in the driver’s seat. They don’t know how to be in the driver’s seat. By the way, their clients really need them to be and actually want them to be. They’re not being paid enough and they want to raise their rates. They don’t know how to. All that good stuff. 

    And I love this program. I love Like a Boss so much. We’ve seen so many amazing results come through this program. It works when people join and they’re open to learning and they implement, it works. I have an entire sales page filled with video testimonials and written testimonials to prove it from people who started off, entering the program, having $2,000 months to now having consistent $5,000 months and the odd $10,000, $11,000 months. It’s amazing to see. 

    But here’s the thing. I don’t want to do three-month programs all year round because it takes a lot from me. It takes a lot of energy. The first time I ran it, I was actually heavily pregnant, right? Remember, I ran it in 2021 when I was pregnant in the run-up to maternity leave. So I was literally—I ran it while I was seven months pregnant, it started, all the way up to nine months. So it was seven, eight, nine months pregnant. It was a lot. It took a lot from me. I loved every moment of it, but I realised that I really do need to conserve my energy and be very intentional about how I use my energy and when I launch and when I do the big three-month coaching program version of Like a Boss. 

    So what I decided to do instead was to only launch Like a Boss: The Live Experience, which is with the coaching and me basically live, all the live elements, I decided to only launch Like a Boss: The Live Experience once a year. And I decided to make the course content, all the trainings, the five core training modules, which is the heart of the program, I decided to make that available all year round. And so I sell that separately in Like a Boss: The Course. So there are two versions of Like a Boss—Like a Boss: The Course, which is a totally self-study DIY course with all the five core training modules that you need, and then there’s Like a Boss: The Live Experience, which is, again, exactly the same as Like a Boss: The Course, all the same core content, trainings, plus all the live elements with me. 

    And that just means that firstly, people who want it at a certain time of the year have access to it. They don’t have to wait for a launch because I found that I was losing a lot of sales because of my launch cycle. When I’m only launching once a year, obviously, you know, when people have a problem and they need help, they want a solution to their problem then, right then, not, oh, in four months’ time when the doors open. 

    So that’s what I’ve been working on. I’ve just finished creating my evergreen funnel. Honestly, this has been such a huge thing. It’s taken probably four, five months of really hard work getting this funnel together. Thankfully, I have an OBM who helped me with all the tech, which I will get into that in a minute. But if there was one thing I wanted to do this year, it was to finish and set up this evergreen funnel, and that is now done, so it feels like already it’s been a successful year. Great, I’m happy with that. 

    And now, it’s time for me to work on promoting it and getting traffic to it. So I’ve never dabbled with paid ads or paid traffic. I have always done everything organically, and it’s slow progress. It’s slow progress. And so I am trying to figure out if I want to try new things, if I want to try paid ads, I don’t know, if I want to experiment with that. I don’t know. We’ll see. But it’s something for me to think about. 

    What is going well is when people join. I mean, there’s still a lot to think about, but the reason I’ve put it in the what’s working pile is because it is working and it gets great results for copywriters. And I’m so proud of this program. And honestly, I realised that in a community where there aren’t a lot of people who look like me, that it is important for people who do look like me to see people who look like me in a coaching kind of mentor capacity, and I feel like my voice is needed and appreciated in this space. And while maybe I’m not Amy Porterfield [laughs], I’m not selling those numbers of courses, I don’t have those kinds of course sales in my back pocket, I really do think the work that I’m doing is important here and I can see that it’s growing. And so I’m just going to continue going down that path, working on it until it’s exactly where I want it to be.  

    Next up, what’s working? Revenue. So I mentioned last year, I worked seven months of the year, and hit six figures. I ended up with like 120,000 USD by the end of the year. And this year, I hit 100,000 in the first four months, which was mind-blowing for me. It was mind-blowing. And then by July, I’d made what I had in the entire year of 2022. It was a lot. There was a lot of growth. There was a lot for me to learn. I’m still learning a lot, I feel like. My company is a limited company now. And so it’s not just me freelancing anymore. This is a company with a small team. And so I think I’m doing a good job, but of course, I’m still figuring it out. 

    So in terms of, I think, how maybe I got to that revenue point, I know that I worked with fewer clients with bigger budgets. That’s a very big thing. Instead of having 20 clients, 30 clients, I’ve had five clients this year. Three of them are repeat clients from last year, and all of them have hired me for more than one project. And I’ll go into that in a little bit because it’s something that’s worked really well for me, so I do want to give that its own point. But definitely, instead of it being about quantity and the number of people I’m working with, it’s definitely been more about quality and making sure I’m working with the right people who fit my client requirements and also, of course, have the budget to work with me. 

    I think the other thing that’s worked really well for me and helped me get to this revenue point is that I say no a lot. I have a really strong qualification system. So we won’t even get on a call if you don’t meet X number of points. Why? Because I want to save your time and I want to save my time too. This goes back to how and why freedom and flexibility is so important to me. They’re actually two of my business and personal values, freedom and flexibility, because that’s one of the biggest reasons I left my full-time job. 

    So now, in business, of course, freedom and flexibility means a lot to me, and I can’t have freedom and flexibility if I’m always on calls. And if I’m always on calls with the wrong people, I’m just trying to drive myself insane. It’s just not okay. So instead of getting on calls with the wrong people, I have a very strong qualification system that allows me to see almost immediately, I know almost immediately if this person is going to be a good fit or if they’re not going to be a good fit. I say no many more times than I say yes. And so what happens is I don’t get on a lot of sales calls. I have maybe two or three sales calls a month, maybe sometimes even one, but guess what? I know that when I get on the sales call, it’s a high-ticket service that I am offering, and more times than not, I get a yes than a no from the other person because we’re just a good fit. We’re just a good fit, and we figured that out before we got on the phone call. So by the time we get on the sales call, it’s all just like formalities. It’s me explaining my process. Usually, the person’s already decided they want to work with me, usually at that point they already know. And so yeah, it’s a formality.  

    Those are some of the things that have kind of helped me get to this revenue point. But of course, with bigger revenue and higher revenue, there are more expenses, and I think this is something that people don’t talk about a lot. So I do want to talk about it. I now have a team, a small team. I’ve never wanted a big team. I’m a big fan of Company of One, a book written by Paul Jarvis and a concept that he came up with, the idea that your business doesn’t have to be big to be better. It can be better by being better.  

    So I never wanted a huge team, but things have grown as I kind of needed more support. So I now have an OBM, an online business manager, and a social media manager. Those are my two team hires. Now, just in case anyone’s wondering, if you follow me on social, I do still write all my social media copy, but Nyla helps me, works with me on all my strategy, and she’s just fantastic. So you’ll see that the quality of my social media posts have really improved over the past few months, and that’s because we’re actually really sitting down and thinking about it and putting a lot of work into it. And then my OBM, Rukeya, she’s cool. She’s absolutely fantastic. She’s my VA, but just so much more. She manages so much. She did all the tech set-up and well, her specialism is kind of tech as well, so she did all the tech set-up for my evergreen funnel. She enjoys that stuff. She manages my inbox. She helps with customer service issues. She just does so much. She’s also helping me tidy up the back end of my business as well. So that’s a slow process, but an ongoing process, one that’s very much needed as the business is getting bigger. 

    Now, I did have a whole hiring process at the beginning of I want to say it’s like March 2023 and I did actually go out into the world looking for an OBM or a VA and a marketing manager. And I did actually hire a marketing manager at the beginning of this year, but it didn’t work out. I feel like that requires its own episode. I don’t know. It might be a mistake that made me, I don’t know. But I learned a lot. It just was not a right fit. Things ended very amicably, very amicably, but, it was a very difficult process because I had to fire someone, and I am a people pleaser naturally. When you’re a business owner, you just can’t be a people pleaser anymore. It just doesn’t work. 

    So that was actually a really horrible experience for me, having to fire someone. But I did it in the best way that I could and that I knew how and I got through it [laughs], got through it, and ended up hiring my social media manager, and that was a fantastic hire. I’d already kind of worked with Nyla anyway. I’d worked with her before my maternity leave and in 2021 so I knew what working with her was like and it’s great that we’re working together again. Things are going really well. I’ve needed time to figure out what help I needed. That in itself was a whole thing. 

    Okay. So next up, things that are working still, referrals. I kind of mentioned this, but no matter how much time I spend marketing elsewhere, like on social, on this podcast, wherever else, referrals always win. Word of mouth always wins. So many of my clients find me through word-of-mouth referrals. And so I have baked into my process getting word-of-mouth referrals from my clients because I know it works. 

    Upselling has been really working for me. I already mentioned that I’ve had five clients this year, three of them repeat clients from last year, and all of them have hired me for more than one project. I love upselling to my existing clients. So someone will come to me for one thing, and I’ll say, hey, fantastic. Let’s work on this thing. But have you thought about this and this and this and this and this? And here’s the trick. I mean, some business owners do that. Some business owners don’t think about doing that, but business owners that do do that, they wait until the end of the project to pitch clients new projects. Here’s the thing. I pitch my clients new projects while I’m still working on their project, even before we started the project. So I once kicked off a project and we’re doing the briefing call, and as we were going through the briefing call, it was like, oh, okay, look, you’ve hired me for this and this, but I actually also think you need this. And here’s why. Shall we add that to the invoice? Yep, absolutely. Let’s go.  

    And so before I’d even started the project, I’d bag myself another project. And so for me, working with clients is never a one-off project. For me, I’m always looking for opportunities to pitch them on new things, new ideas, new projects, so that I can really, I guess, make my life easier ‘cause it’s so much easier to pitch existing clients than to have to keep finding new clients, right? As long as you’re doing a good job for your existing clients, they’re going to want to hire you over and over again, which makes their life easier and my life as well. 

    Time off. Time off is working for me. So remember I said flexibility and freedom are two very important values for me. I take a lot of time off in my business, and I’m very happy about that. I mentioned 2021 to 2022, I took a lot of time off on maternity leave, and then in 2021, I only worked seven months of the year. I took over four months off. One of those months was the month of July. I take every July off just so I can enjoy the summer with my boys. And quite frankly, I might start taking August off as well because I finish July, and it’s time to go back to work, and I’m always like, I could do with another month. Why don’t I just do another month? 

    So I don’t know, that’s something that maybe I might aim towards because why not? Why not? On top of me taking this summer off and just always having such a great time and having that time that I need to just take a step back from work. I also take off all my kids’ school holidays so that I don’t have to worry about working while they’re around. So presently, I have a seven-year-old and an almost two-year-old, and it’s just impossible with my younger one to work. So you know what? Why be stressed? Why stress him out? Why stress myself out? Why stress him out by me being stressed? Just don’t work in the school holidays, Eman. So that’s the kind of business and life that I’ve created for myself.  

    But that means I’m taking a lot of time off. Remember, I also have to—There’s a lot of time off in December. I end up taking the last two weeks of December off and the first two weeks of January. So already, I mean, we’re talking three months off a year. But that works really well for me, and I can pay myself during that time, and I do pay myself during that time. It’s always paid time off. It’s always paid leave. And so that feels really great that I’ve been able to do that and create that kind of system, business, and life for myself. 

    Now, there’s so many other things that I want to talk about, but I think it’s time to move on to what’s not working. Before I do that, let me just give you some more highlights, just highlights of what is working. I want to say doing speaker stuff and being featured in stuff has been really working for me. I just had Copyhackers, which is a huge company in the copywriting world. They just released their book on six-figure freelance copywriters. And I have been featured as one of the 21 six-figure freelancers in that book. There’s a whole chapter dedicated to how I went from earning £15 an hour to hitting 100,000 in revenue. And that book just came out, and it’s a real honour to be featured. The book was written by one of my coaches and one of the most respected copywriters, Joanna Wiebe. And it’s a real achievement and something I’m super proud of. 

    You can get that book by the way, on the Copyhackers website, if you’re interested in that. Again, it features 21 copywriters and all the different methods and strategies that they’ve used to get to 100,000. And I know that this book was written for copywriters and not everyone listening is a copywriter, but I will say that I think service providers and all different types of people, all types of different business owners will actually find it super helpful and will definitely find someone in there that they relate to. 

    Other things, Jordan Gill asking me to speak in her amazing community. If you listen to the podcast Systems Saved Me by Jordan Gill, you’ll know Jordan. She asked me to speak in her community earlier this year. She also pitched me on this podcast. I’m very excited that that is coming soon. And things like being asked to speak at in-person events. I can’t disclose which event [laughs] because it’s a secret right now. But you will find out soon that I’ve been asked to do quite a few international, actually, speaking events. I can’t say yes to everything because I cannot travel everywhere. 

    I don’t actually want to travel very much right now in this season of my life. I enjoy being with my kids and don’t really want to travel internationally without them. Also kind of don’t want to travel internationally with them, honestly, if I’m being completely honest, because [laughs] if I’m going to do a speaking event, the last thing I want to be thinking about is, are the kids okay? I just want to be focusing on the speaking event. So don’t want to bring them, but also don’t want to leave them. So I’m also just like, hmm, guess it’s a no for international speaking events right now, which is frustrating sometimes. I mean, I just got an email inviting me to another international speaking event last night, and it’s really hard saying no sometimes, but also, I realised that this is just a season of my life that I’m in right now, and it’s no right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be no forever. 

    So yeah, speaking, features, all that good stuff, that’s going really well. And I do want to say, by the way, if you have a podcast that you want me on, I would love to be on your podcast. If you have a community or a mastermind that you want me to come in and do Q&As on, I speak about email, how to make more money from your emails, how to get really good at email, and then also talk about how to be a great business owner as well. So you can head over to my speaker page on my website and fill in the short contact form and get me on your podcast or get me in your mastermind community or membership community. I’d love that.  

    So I know I said I was only going to do highlights for what’s working, but I do think it’s important that I mentioned this podcast, Mistakes That Made Me. Mistakes That Made Me has been an amazing project. I started this as a creative project. I started it because I needed a creative outlet. I’d wanted to start a podcast for a while. I had this idea and it was festering inside my mind and it became one of those things that just was painful to keep inside me. And I feel like that’s how you know that you’re creative. When an idea actually becomes painful to keep it inside and it just needs to be created, that’s when you know you’re creative and you were born to create. 

    And so I created this podcast, and it’s been absolutely amazing. I have been able to sit down and speak for an hour and a half with some of the people I respect and look up to most in the business world. And where else would I have an opportunity to ask them all the questions I want to ask them for an hour and a half? So this podcast has just been amazing at opening doors for my, I guess, relationships, business relationships and new friendships as well. And also connecting me with new people like you. And I think just knowing that I’ve created something that actually speaks to people literally and [laughs] metaphorically, it feels so good to get your messages, your DMs, your emails saying how much you love the podcast, how well-produced you think it is. Thank you, Zuri. Zuri’s my podcast producer who makes sure that the show sounds beautiful. It means so much.  

    And so this show has been really great at building my authority, at growing my audience, creating better and I guess stronger relationships with amazing people like you and the guests that I’ve had. And I think I’ve been really able to show a different side of me, my creativity, my personality, my business side. And I’ve also had some pitches from some really cool people. So it’s amazing to think some really cool people want to be on this podcast, which is great to know.  

    And then finally, I do just want to say that I think I’ve created a business which allows me to respond to life events, which is great because, again, I’m a human first and a business owner second. So, okay, trigger warning: death, firstly. My lovely Nana died in the end of June, and so it was a really difficult summer for loads of reasons, a very difficult summer, as well as all these lovely moments that I had with my kids. We had a lovely summer. It was also very difficult. Lots of family stuff going on. I took four weeks off and then I needed to go home and to be at the funeral, did the funeral, came back, I was supposed to start work and actually was just so emotionally exhausted that I needed to take another two weeks off. So I ended up taking off six weeks, the final two, just to recover mentally and emotionally from what had been a very difficult time.  

    And right now, I just had a family member visit me for a week and a bit and I took the week off. Well, no, that’s a lie. I guess I worked flexibly around them being here and then also took some days off so that I could spend more time with them. So my business is good at that. My business is good at allowing me to respond to life events, which is very important, I think, as just human beings because we don’t know what life holds, and as someone who has kids as well, it’s very important for me to be able to be flexible.  

    Okay, I’ve spoken a lot about what’s working. I think it’s time for me to talk about what’s not working. Are you ready for this? Okay. So remember how I said that one thing that’s working is this podcast? One thing that is also not working is this podcast. I already explained why I started this podcast. But here’s the thing. I am a perfectionist. I have a real problem. I don’t say that in like, oh, I’m a perfectionist, I’m so perfect. No, no, no. I have, I want to say psychological problems when it comes to perfectionism, as in I need therapy, have been in therapy, continue to need therapy about my perfectionism. This is not a good thing, okay? I do not celebrate perfectionism.  

    What that means is I’ve created, if I do say so myself, this amazing show that requires so much of me [laughs], so much of me. Now, I did do one thing right. I created this show so that it was seasonal because I knew that I didn’t want a show that would need an episode to be released every week or every other week even. I just knew my energy levels couldn’t do that. So I didn’t do that. And I did that from the start, which is fantastic.  

    But also, this show still requires a lot from me. So I would say that to put one episode together, it probably takes like, I don’t know, seven to ten hours per episode. And that doesn’t really include the work that my editor does, Zuri, like the actual producing of the podcast. That’s just all the stuff I’m doing, from researching the guests, to then inviting the guests, to getting the guests on. And I know you’re gonna say like, get a VA to do this, but It’s not even like I need a VA because I have all the—I mean, obviously, I do have my OBM who is here to help me with this, but honestly, I’ve already created all the systems and processes. This is a system. It’s very easy for me to do it once it’s done, but it still takes time inviting the guests, getting the guests on, before they get on, researching them quite a lot. I do a lot of research on my guests so that hopefully you’re listening to the show and you’re actually learning something from them that maybe you never knew about them. I don’t just want it to be another interview. I want you to walk away and think, oh, wow, that was a really great interview. So I put a lot of work into researching my guests and coming up with great questions and all that kind of stuff. Then there’s interviewing the guests. So I interview them for 90 minutes. And then there’s all of the scripting, so the scripting of the intro, the scripting of the outro, and then the recording of the intro, outro, and things in between, any ads as well that I want. I mean, it’s just a lot. It’s a lot.  

    And so what this also means is it’s not just an investment of my time, and I just want you to know how much I love this show, and I say this just to give you an insight into the process. It’s not just the time that I’m spending on the creation of the show, it’s also the time that I’m not spending doing other work. So I obviously have to make time for this, which means I’m saying no to other projects or I’m delaying working on client projects, which are very profitable for me. And so it’s really also about opportunity costs as well, as in there’s the cost of me doing the podcast and not doing client work because I’m doing the podcast. And then there’s the time I’m spending on the podcast. And then there’s also the money I’m spending on the podcast. So to have an amazing producer like Zuri, it’s obviously a financial investment as well. So I’m paying a significant amount of money per season to have this show sound the way that it does and be the way that it is. And I cannot do the show any other way because this is what I imagined. This is what I envisioned. I absolutely love this show and I want it to be the way that it is, but that just means that there are financial investments involved. 

    So I can’t continue to pay for it from my pocket, realistically, if this show is going to continue. So I really need to look at some ways to monetise this podcast. Whether it’s me getting more clients finding me through the podcast and hiring me through the podcast because they’ve listened to me here, whether it’s me selling more of my courses and digital products through this podcast, or whether it’s me creating some kind of extra special subscription where you get like behind-the-scenes content for paying X amount every month to help keep the podcast going basically.  

    And so I have some things to think about, and I have to really sit down and think about this. And it’s been something that’s on my mind all year long. And it’s the reason you don’t get more seasons, quite frankly. You would have more seasons if it wasn’t for the fact that this is all on me financially. And I say me, I mean the company. But of course, it’s me. [laughs] So that’s what I need to like to think about. 

    Now, what that means is as I kind of try to figure this out, you will be hearing more ads on the podcast. I don’t know if sponsorship is a thing that might be possible in the future. I don’t know. If it is, you know, I’m an avid podcast listener, I love listening to podcasts, so what I can promise you is that if I’m ever sponsored in the future, that it’ll only be companies that I absolutely love and I’m passionate about and that I genuinely think will interest you and help you and support you. But I do want you to expect that there is going to be more of me talking about my services, talking about my courses, so that I can keep this podcast going. More ads as well or promos, I want to say, maybe not ads, like more promos, so that I can keep this podcast going.  

    And also, if you do want to support this podcast, please do rate and review it and tell everyone you know about it. Post about it on your Instagram, on your LinkedIn, on your Facebook. Post about it on your newsletter, tell your email list in your newsletter about it. And if you have a podcast, share, tell everyone on your podcast about it. There are loads of ways you can support this podcast and help keep it going. But I do want to know if you would be interested in extra behind-the-scenes content, for a subscription kind of model, or Patreon kind of thing, I don’t know, I’d be interested to hear that. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on that. So let me know. You can find me on Instagram @emancopyco. And yeah, let me know. I’d be interested to know what you think of that. 

    Okay, so with that, I do want to say also you’ll probably start seeing some more solo episodes. You will probably hear me talking more about what I do, email marketing, business kind of coaching, all that good stuff. Again, to help keep this podcast going. So with this podcast, I mean, the audience growth has been amazing, but it’s also not been as fast as I want it to be. And I realised that audience growth through a podcast is hard and it is slow. So that’s just something that I have to just keep working at. Same thing with my newsletter growth. Same thing with my social media growth. It’s all just slow because it’s organic. It’s just one of those things where you just have to keep going. 

    I heard this amazing quote by Jay Clouse recently. Jay Clouse is the founder of Creator Science, a fantastic newsletter and podcast. If you don’t know about Creator Science, go check it out. Jay Clouse says, “Persistence is a competitive advantage available to anyone and yet taken by a few,” and it’s just so true. And I just keep reading that over and over again. Whenever I feel like giving up on something because it’s not happening as fast as I want it to, I just keep thinking about that. Just keep going, just keep going. Firstly, enjoy the process and don’t always just think about the end goal. Just enjoy the process, which I do with this podcast. I really do. And, but also, persistence and determination and consistency is a thing as well. So that’s what I also need to focus on. Just keep going. Especially with something like this, like a podcast, where it really is the more episodes you have, the more seasons you have, the more your audience grows. If you stop, it won’t grow.  

    Another thing that’s not working. I mentioned already that I am really happy about the fact that I can have time off in my business, that my business allows me to respond to life events and take time off whenever I need it, and that it’s always paid time off, which is fantastic. I love it. But here’s the other side of that, which by the way might be the case for a lot of people that you hear talking about this, so always question what you’re being told ’cause you might not be being told the full story. So the full picture is that while my business allows me to take all this time off, and it is paid time off, while I am taking that time off, I’m not making any money. As in my business is not making money when I am not in it, and that’s a problem. Yes, I’m paying myself. It’s paid time off. But the money doesn’t continue to flow in when I’m not in the business, and it does need to continue to flow in when I’m not in the business. That’s the only way this will truly work. It’s the only way this will feel like It’s a business, a company, and not a job that I’ve created for myself. 

    And so this is what I am really working on now. This is a real serious problem for me that I am working on solving. I, yes, have small payments that come through for my small digital products, but actually, I need to be able to make money even when I’m not in the business. So this is something I’m going to be working on. One way that I’ve done that is, of course, I mentioned Like a Boss has now gone evergreen. You can get it all year round. And so that means that people aren’t having to wait for doors to open and that people are buying this course, which is $1,800, all year round, which is great. And so I have set up the main evergreen funnel for it, and I am starting to set up kind of like lead magnets for it that go into it and create all that content for it. And it’s loads of fun and it’s loads of hard work. But the end goal is that I am finding ways to make money while I’m not in my business. So we’ll see how that goes. I’m at the beginning of this kind of evergreening experiment, so I’m going to test and tweak and optimise and just really focus on getting traffic into the funnel. 

    2024 might be the year where I start experimenting with paid ads. Maybe. We’ll see. We’ll see how that goes. But I really want the system where my newsletter is—My newsletter is my best content. That’s where I put out all my best content. So first of all, if you want the best content from me, join my newsletter. You’ll also get my free email class, The Email Rules, it’s called. It’s a 35-minute email class. You’ll also get that when you join my newsletter. And I send two emails a week usually. I usually send two emails a week of really my best content. And the idea is that I want a system like Laura Belgray’s. Go listen to her episode if you haven’t. Where I send out emails and then people buy my stuff. And my newsletter, I want it to be a real money maker for me. 

    And so for that to happen, I need newsletter growth. I’m at 2,100 subscribers right now. Constantly getting more, but obviously, I’m always constantly getting unsubscribed. It feels like it’s plateaued at this number that I can’t get past, which is really frustrating. So I realised I just need to put some thought and energy and strategy into this now, into newsletter growth, which is what I’ll be doing. Using SparkLoop, I want to create a newsletter referral system. So I’ll be working on that to really grow my newsletter. 

    I was actually just featured by ConvertKit, which I’m very excited about. So ConvertKit has just featured me on their creator discovery network, which means that it’s easier for people to find me and refer my newsletter to their subscribers, which is very exciting. Definitely seen more subscribers coming through. And by the way, I’m a big fan of ConvertKit. I’ll also put my referral link to ConvertKit in the show notes as well because honestly, I moved from ActiveCampaign to ConvertKit five, six months ago now, and it was the best thing I ever did. Love ConvertKit. Expect more content on that soon because I am passionate about this email service provider now. But that’s great. So more referrals coming in from ConvertKit, and I’m also going to be creating my own referral system using SparkLoop. 

    Okay, so yeah, my ideal system is my newsletter is my moneymaker. People join my newsletter and I get lots of sales from it. I want it to be as simple as that. And I know it’s possible because I do it for my clients, so now it’s time for me to do it for myself, right? 

    So here’s another thing that is not working right now in my business. Like a Boss, my signature program or my signature course. So here’s the thing. Remember I said I have two versions. I have The Live Experience and The Course. The Live Experience is the one that has all the coaching elements, biweekly coaching with me, and on demand Slack community with me. And then I have Like a Boss: The Course, which has none of the live elements and just the pre-recorded training content, like the heart of the program, the course, right? 

    I said Like a Boss is working for me because it is, but it’s also not, because here’s the thing. I do this because number one, I love it. I love coaching copywriters. And then I also do it so that I can have another revenue stream. But here’s the thing about doing a three-month coaching program, which is what Like a Boss: The Live Experience is. It’s only profitable if I sell out all the spots, which doesn’t always happen, right? And so when that doesn’t happen, it’s so much more profitable for me to just search for a new client and get a client project. 

    I can make what I make in those three months in like a month and a half with clients, in half the time with my client one-to-one project work, which is why I talk about profitability. It really matters. My business is very much kind of, I want to say like 80% one-to-one client work and then like 20% digital products and courses and that kind of thing. And I do want to increase that percentage so that I can make more passive income. I did the little fingers thing, “passive”, because we all know that passive income takes a lot of work and isn’t truly passive, but you know what I mean. 

    I really need to think about whether it makes sense for me to continue to run Like a Boss: The Live Experience. Maybe I just need to get rid of the three-month coaching program and just have Like a Boss: The Course, the self-study, DIY version, where you can get it all year round. And I have an evergreen funnel set up, which obviously kind of gives you a special offer for a certain amount of time. And then if you join within the time limit, you get the special offer. If not, it goes back to full price for you. That’s what the evergreen funnel looks like. And that’s why I’m confident that it works. I’ve already tested that it works. So it works. It’s just now about getting traffic into the evergreen funnel. 

    So that’s where I’m at with the Like a Boss: The Live Experience. I love coaching copywriters, but does it make sense for me to continue to do it? Even if it’s just once a year, that live experience, does it make sense for me to continue running the live experience? I don’t know anymore. I really don’t know. It takes, again, so much time and energy. The coaching calls, the Slack community. And, again, I love it, but it does take my time and energy. And if we’re talking about freedom, flexibility meaning a lot to me, time, energy meaning a lot to me, profitability meaning a lot to me, then it makes sense for me to focus more on the one-to-one client work, which brings in much bigger numbers much more quickly. So there’s that.  

    Finally, I do want to say that I feel like I’m coming to a crossroads where the split in my business between me working on email strategy and copy and then coaching copywriters through my courses, my digital products, I feel like it’s hard. It feels like sometimes two very different businesses, like I’m running two different businesses. And I can only imagine what would happen if I just put all my focus on one thing, either the email strategy and copy side or the copy coaching side. Sometimes it feels like the split is too difficult and I just need to choose one. I really love all the email strategy and copy work that I do, and I can’t see myself letting go of that anytime soon. And so, I don’t know. This is what I have to think about. These are the things that I have to think about. Maybe I create digital products, sure, but they’re all email-focused and email-related so it fits in better with my email strategy and copy side. 

    I didn’t mention this when I was talking about my team, but I’ve started working with a couple of subcontractors, which means that I hire copywriters to work with me on projects, and that’s been going really well this year. It’s meant that I can take on more projects, deliver faster, have more time for time off [laughs] because instead of having a waitlist, I don’t, which is fantastic. As in my waitlist is—I don’t know if it counts as a waitlist. It’s maybe four to six weeks long. It’s never months and months in advance, which is exactly how I want it. I once had a waitlist that was six months long, and it was one of the worst things I ever did. I hated it because I was trapped for six months and couldn’t do anything except these projects for six months. So with working with these subcontractors, it’s meant that I can build more flexibility into my business, which is everything to me. 

    So maybe I need to focus more on email copy strategy side of things, maybe building a small kind of boutique agency type of thing. I don’t know. So much to think about. These are the things that I’m going to be thinking about as we go into 2024. 

    Now, in terms of the future, like what’s next for me, I was aiming for, and I was on track to hit 250,000 USD this year, and that would have been my first multi-six-figure year. Now, with the time off that I took and the extra time off I took with my grandma passing away, I am a bit behind on that financial goal, and that’s okay because it was just a goal. But I’m still aiming to hit 200,000 at least. I think that’s still doable. And, I don’t know, maybe I will hit 250,000. Let’s see what happens. All I know is I’m not taking my foot off the gas [laughs], but I did need to give myself time to just recover from a very dramatic summer. And that’s what I needed, that’s what I needed to do. So, yeah, I’m okay with that. 

    I’m focusing on evergreening Like a Boss. It’s available all year round for you copywriters who want to honestly just learn how I’m doing what I’m doing and the strategies, behind-the-scenes stuff that I’m doing. It is the only way to get inside my business and find out everything. I’m so open and honest about what my business is, how I do things, how I work with clients, how I manage clients, how I deliver projects, how I find clients, how I offboard clients, how I do marketing and visibility, and all that good stuff. That’s the only place to find all that information. So if you’re interested in learning how to go from order taker freelance copywriter to boss business owner, check out Like a Boss. It’s on my website, emancopyco.com. And if you go to the Learn With Me section, you’ll find it there. I’ll also put it in the show notes. 

    But this is what I’m focusing on this year, evergreening Like a Boss. My newsletter growth is a big deal for me. I really want to get into that kind of newsletter system, the Laura Belgray newsletter system that I spoke about, making more money from my newsletter. Speaking and features is a big thing. I have an international conference coming up, which I’m very excited about, which I can’t tell you about yet, but you’ll find out soon. And I want you to expect new things and fun things from this podcast, new different types of episodes. I will always go back to the interview style with interviewing extraordinary business owners. At the heart of the show, that’s what it’s about. But I also think I have a lot more to give and offer. And I think that I want you to also know me and my business and see inside my business as well. And so expect to hear and see different types of episodes that hopefully you love just as much as the interviews.  

    Again, I want to remind you to expect a little bit more promo on this podcast so that I can keep this podcast going. And, again, if you do want to support this podcast, go to ratethispodcast.com/mistakes. I’ll put that in the show notes, so many links in the show notes, so that you can rate this podcast, rate and review it, and also tell your people about it. Take a screenshot, post it on Instagram right now, and tag me @emancopyco, or do the same on LinkedIn, tag me, Eman Ismail, and just tell people about the show because the more people that listen, the more likely I am to get the support, the sponsorship support, that kind of thing that I need to really keep this going. 

    So now that I’ve gone through how I started my business, where I’m at today, what’s working well in my business, what’s not working well in my business, what the future looks like, what I’m going to be focusing on, I just want to say, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I really hope you enjoyed this new solo episode. It’s been very interesting for me talking to myself. It’s been a really actually very interesting, very kind of self-reflective episode. It’s been fantastic for me. I think I had written out the things that I wanted to talk about and then decided that, you know what? I just need to record this now. Stop taking notes, Eman. Don’t be a perfectionist [laughs]. Time to record. Just hit record and do it. So I really hope you enjoyed this solo episode. 

    I do want to remind you that I’ve put the link in the show notes to join my newsletter because that is really where my best content is. So if you enjoy this podcast in the slightest, join my newsletter to get regular emails from me. I talk about business and share lots of business stories, and I also talk about email as well. So link in the show notes to join my newsletter. Find me on Instagram @emancopyco. Screenshot this episode right now. Tag me. Say hi. If you don’t use Instagram, do the same on LinkedIn or Twitter. I’m there. I’m everywhere [laughs]. And again, if you want to have me on your podcast or speak to your mastermind or community, then go to my website and get in touch. You just go to the Speaker section at emancopyco.com, and we’ll make it happen.  

    And finally, if you are someone who is looking for support with your emails, you want to make more money from your emails, whether you are a creator, a course creator, a coach, a membership maker, a service provider, a product business owner, get in touch. I can help you. I can help you make more money through your emails. I can help you create an email community that actually adds to your revenue and also that helps you turn your fans into super fans, people who really feel connected to you and want to buy from you and are ready to buy from you. So get in touch if that sounds like something you might want to talk about. Of course, I have full packages where I do the done for you, like I do it all, I do the strategy and then write the copy and do it all for you. Or even, I have email consults where we can get on a call and I help you come up with a strategy. So maybe you don’t want me to do the whole thing. You just want the strategy so that you can go do the thing.  

    Okay, I’m gonna leave this here. Thank you so much for listening to this solo episode. I hope that you found it interesting. I hope that it gave you some insight into my business, into me, into this podcast, into what’s coming soon in the future. I am really looking forward to just getting your feedback on this episode and seeing what you think of it. Okay. Don’t forget all those links in the show notes. They will be there. And my aim is to get Season 3 of Mistakes That Made Me into the world, into your ears, by early 2024. So that’s the aim. But before then, I might sprinkle in a few bonus episodes to kind of whet your appetite a little bit, get you a little bit excited about Season 3 coming. And until then, take care.

    Thanks for listening.

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Episode #15: My 2023 End-of-Year-Review (Spoiler: I Didn’t Hit My Revenue Goal)

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Episode #13: Ghosting My Email List