2020 Year in Review: The Year of the Covid Pivot

In this episode, we’re taking a peek back at our entire 2020 – both the good and bad – for a little introspective business review. From our month-to-month projects and tasks to actual numbers and percentages, this is a comprehensive overview of what a year full of pivots looks like for a creative biz!

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Cami’s rapid-fire 2020 recap (8:05)

So overall, this year in 2020, I saw a 26% income increase like overall income, but a 13% profit decrease. So I was making more money but not pocketing as much money. And that’s because I spent a whole lot of money this year, launching new products adding on a VA, which I didn’t have that expense before, and then paying for Instagram followers with giveaways I did a ton of those and those were not cheap. And last year, I did mostly weddings. So my expenses are way lower with weddings, Expense wise, weddings just take up more time and mental capacity more so than actual concrete monetary business expenses.

Cami’s income goals + her pivot to selling mostly products

So my income goal for 2020 that I wanted for myself was $250,000 and I hit $200,000. So still pretty good. And with the weddings that I had slated that were postponed or canceled, I would have been really really close to hitting that number. But also at the same time, I’m not sure if I would because I wouldn’t have put as much focus into the product so it probably would have evened out.

Now that I’m thinking about it, but I am really proud of my shift this year towards going towards more products. II think this shift really happened in May and June after I did the one a day in May challenge and  just like figured everything out just kind of like all started to click very slowly and if you like look at my numbers of the year on like a little graph you can see it’s just like flat flat flat and then in like June July it just like starts to go uphill so fast and then December is just like a skyrocket and so I’m just like oh my gosh like it’s very cool to see like the timing of exactly when I was like okay, I’m gonna start focusing on products now and literally like shifted my attention how much that started to pay off. So like that’s why I’m so excited for 2021 I think it’s because this will be like the first full year where I’m going to have like the majority of my focus on products so it feels like the first year of business actually is what it feels like a little bit. You know, because It’s like a whole new, not new, but like a whole new direction for a full year if that makes sense. 

Cami’s 2020 revenue at a glance (18:31)

So obviously, the huge takeaway here is that, really, my products are basically 80% of my revenue this year, you know, with retail and wholesale together, so I really shifted in a massive, massive way from weddings to products. 

Elisabeth’s rapid-fire 2020 recap (6:16)

I sold 97 wax seals. I sold 300 ornaments. I had two weddings postponed because I didn’t have a ton booked for 2020. So in a way, I guess that was kind of like a relief that I didn’t have to deal with a zillion postponements. I launched my new website. So one new website launched. One successful secret project, one Glowforge purchase, and one new house.

Elisabeth’s Income goals (24:30)

I am going to break down kind of really similar to how Cammy did percentages of things like between 2019 and 2020 to just show you guys how things shifted. My revenue goals were very different from Cami’s. Cami you are just like powerhouse weddings and products and just everything you’re doing so my new goal was $60,004. Well, at the beginning of the year what I thought was going to be all weddings, haha, like hilarious.

And I ended up doing $57,000 in revenue. So income, that’s not profit. But I’m still happy with that because obviously, Cami and I are on the payroll for his birthday bash as well, which is like the really great thing about having two businesses so I don’t put like a ton of pressure per se, on revenue goals for ElisaAnn because I just seek a very like happy balance between the two businesses and I just like don’t have as much energy as Cami. 

Elisabeth’s  2020 revenue at a glance (26:80)

So my weddings look very similar because in 2019, they were 60% of my revenue and this year they were 25% so actually higher than I thought because when I estimated this At first, I kind of like threw out a number I was like, oh, I’m pretty sure this drop to like 10 maybe 12% and once I went back and crunched the numbers I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that it was 25% because I was like Oh yeah, I forgot I addressed them envelopes here or I did this like random project here and Oh yeah, I did get some like really big payments like down payments for clients that booked even if they did postpone or reschedule so I was like I said, relatively happy with that and wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

So then the products went from 10% in 2019 to 13% of my revenue in 2020.