Behind The Scenes | Recap of 2021

The countdown is on to leave 2021 behind us but before we do, I thought it’s the perfect time to look back on what worked, what didn’t and what we want to take into 2022.

For those of you who have been with me for a while (can I just say- you are the bomb.com??), you know how much I love planning ahead and this year, I’m the most prepared as I already did my 2022 planning together with my incredible side kick Chelsea in November.

Fun fact- Chels was a student of mine in 2020 and certainly a standout, so I asked her if she was interested to work with me and here we are, 12 months later she has become an incredible support in so many aspects, from creating content for social media to coming up with campaign ideas to making my sometimes very abstract ideas a reality.

Our planning session has been hands down one of the most enjoyable sessions so far as we bounced off ideas, finished each other’s rough concepts and come up with a rock-solid plan that we now just need to follow through.

If you’re anything like me, then you love looking behind the scenes and learn how others manage their tasks, priorities, time and where to focus on to get the most ROI on any of your commitments.

And what better way and place to do that than on this very podcast!?

So here we go – a month by month summary of the year that was.

JANUARY

Real talk: my 2020 plans that I wrote out for this year look quite different to what actually happened this year to say the least.

Why?

Because I got exposed to some incredible human beings, with that, got inspiration and more clarity for what I actually want and also learnt a lot of lessons (not all of them were wanted).

But let’s backtrack for a second:

January was a continuation of my commitment in Nov 2020 on a 3 month retainer with a OBM who helped me build more online and digital assets. I launched the Agile career course earlier in 2020 when covid hit, followed by the LinkedIn academy. I delivered both courses as live programs as I didn’t have the set up for a self-paced option. Plus: I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to focus on them long-term. I knew I wanted to add more value for my 1:1 clients and also offer lower-price point programs plus: I love teaching and sharing what I know so it felt right.

What I realised more and more, after running 6 cohorts of the agile career course and 3 of the linkedin academy is that the people I love working with the most don’t necessarily want to pivot their career; they want to elevate it. May it be in form of building a portfolio career and adding board roles, speaking engagements or more senior appointments to their current role. Or: building out their own practise in form of consulting, teaching, and coaching.

It was completed cemented after running a professional development program for Microsoft Austria where I got to work with incredibly driven and smart professionals who wanted to stay in the company but get into the C-Suite. Their problem: a massive gap between self-awareness and how their current C-suite perceived them. Plus: they just weren’t visible for the right reasons and one of the Senior Exec’s even told me that one of the highest potentials in the cohort wasn’t trusted with more people responsibilities as he is too focused on working on projects. That hit me like a brick because building a bigger team was the one and only goal this leader had but his senior management didn’t know that, nor saw that he had what it takes as he focused on the ‘wrong’ activities to get there.

FEBRUARY

Was a big month, in many way. Not only did I sell my city apartment but I also moved to the burbs after having lived in the city for 10 years. Now it’s been a shock to the system to say the least and although I do enjoy some aspects of it, I’m actually in the midst of apartment hunting in the city again. Hahah!! Well- can’t say I’ve given it a good shot for a year, right?

I also worked on 3 big projects that literally kicked off at the same time:

The QLD government wanted to develop an employability program for 18-24 year olds and since I’ve been doing a lot of career development work and also designed quite a few courses for the Diploma and other national accredited courses for TAFE, I was the lead on this. And boy- it took a massive chunk of my time as I was writing, scripting and scatching 5 modules.

At the same time, I was also in the middle of building the Future of Work campus (which I retired in July and come back to later) but we got so many new sign ups in January that I couldn’t get the foot of the gas.

Lastly- I also enrolled the highest number of 1:1 coaching clients to date so that kept me busy.

So much to an easy start to the year.

MARCH

 March was an exciting month as I had my first big international paid speaking engagement for the career thought leaders’ symposium and it was a massive it. That certainly confirmed my drive for making international speaking gigs a bigger priority in the month to come.

This was also the month that I invested in a high-level mastermind which meant a significant financial commitment.

I knew that taking my business and career to the next stage requires new ways of thinking and I haven’t not had a coach since I started my business, so I was happy when I found the perfect match for me.

Little did I know that this would change the trajectory for the rest of the year.

One of the biggest challenges that I had was doing too many things; little things that were important and created some momentum but didn’t leave space, time, energy or many resources to focus on those massive results.

Running a membership sounded like a great idea first and it was as I got to meet the most incredible human beings but it only really makes commercial sense long-term when you either have a high number of members and can keep a low ticket rate or the opposite. I wanted to make continuous learning and development affordable for any level, so I didn’t want to raise my price but at the same time, the return from the time, energy, resources and also money that went into the membership wasn’t justified by the commercial results.

So the call was made: it’s time to retire the membership! One of the projects that I not only enjoyed so much but also where I learnt so much about running an online business.

I knew I couldn’t do it straight away and wanted to give people time but also take them on the journey whilst I figure out exactly what I wanted.

July was decided as retirement month (new fin year etc) so the planning started.

APRIL

April was a rollercoaster as a lot of energy went into the planning for what’s next, what would it look lie, testing some concepts and ideas, all whilst enrolling more and more 1;1 coaching clients.

It was also the end of the term so lots of marking for me across 3 different classes. If you don’t know – I also teach as my paid hobby at 2 universities and even after nearly 4 years doing it, the admin still kills me. Every. single. term 

MAY

Was a bit of a write off with all the behind the scenes work that was going on. It was so frustrating because I knew I was so close with my next direction but didn’t have a name for it. I intentionally didn’t want to call it personal branding as this is such an overused, whilst also most misunderstood term. It always creates different reactions and mostly confusion which I didn’t want.

JUNE

Was all about wrapping up the Future of Work campus, creating content for the final 2 months of the membership whilst preparing for what’s next.

At that stage, I still haven’t come up with another name for personal branding so I called my online program that I developed ‘Personal Branding Hub’. It is one of the most (f not THE) most comprehensive on demand trainings you’ll get to build and monetise your Personal Brand. It’s also the add on for my high-ticket 1:1 clients so they can learn in their own time in between our sessions. Turned out to be an incredible asset as so many who couldn’t invest in 1:1 coaching, took up this offer and enrolled.

In June I also had my first in person speaking event for the year with AHRI and I loved it. It was so well organised; the energy was high, and it was just a good feeling to be back with people.

JULY

It was D-Day or more so D-month as the retirement of the Future of Work Campus was on the cards, the launch of the Personal Branding Hub and new offer whilst also retiring the FoW podcast. At the same time, I also committed to going all in with Personal Branding so I also started working on a new podcast as I wanted to have a smooth transition and again, take people on the journey.

One of the biggest game changers that happened was my (never before experienced) urge for writing a book. Honestly – I have never ever wanted to write a book; nor did I see it as necessity for what I was doing. If you know me, you know that once I have set something in my head, it’s hard to shake that so I was committed to also start writing my bok. Can’t eb that hard. 45,00 words was my goal – I should have that in 4 weeks.

My partner and I went away for a little staycation and I mapped out the book: the content, the flow, the experience I want people to have with it and the look and feel I wanted.

The next weekend was the start of writing my book: 18,000 words in 2.5 days… only to backspace the whole thing again as it didn’t feel right.

Lots of research went on and I started writing again. Finally, I got into the groove of the first part and again, 18,00 words were back on. This time, 18.000 I liked and was happy with.

When I write, I write a lot. Id didn’t write consciously as some weeks I was too busy and then other weekends or nights, I wrote for hours and just got lots done. I did have an outline, so I just followed that or sometimes wrote other parts that felt easier at that time.

I also started recording episodes for the new podcast and batched a lot. It was such a process to design the new creative, to find a flow, to do the marketing, to set everything up. It really is true when people say that running your own business is the best and qickest personal and professional development course that you can ever do.

AUGUST

Talk about new fin year … August was certainly a first for me in many ways:

1.) I launched the new podcast, and it was a much bigger success straight away. Even my first 2 episodes had more downloads than my best performing episodes on the Future of Work Campus podcast had; after 5 episodes.

Goes to show the power of niching down; being specific and focusing on a topic from a different aspect.

That wasn’t it though – I mentioned before that I’ve been teaching for nearly 4 years as my paid side gig (which I also absolutely love). I put my hat into the ring for teaching also the bachelor program, marketing for managers and finally got the acceptance that I got it! So prep mode was on: time to develop content and the 3h session delivery for that too.

SEPTEMBER

Was the first month when I felt like things started to take on a rapid pace. You know, you work so much and for so long on things and nothing seems to happen or don’t feel you’re making significant progress, but September was certainly not that month.

I finally had the breakthrough moment and landed on Trusted Authority for my program as I have done so much research in the evolution of trust and what the future of work looks like. With more decentralised teams, flatter hierarchies and more freelance workers, waiting for the senior title to have influence and make things happen is a thing of the past. If you want to make an impact, you need to be trusted and be known as the Go-To in your field. Book – trusted authority was born. Now that opened another can of worms because my book which initially only entailed by personal branding process that I have been applying for the last 5 years. However, this new take on things just presented so much mor potential (and nearly also a breakdown) as I struggled to see how I can make those 2 frameworks work together. Thank god for coaches because my coach snapped me out of this and that meant… a lot of re-writing, re-organising and researching. Again.

It happened however at the best time that I could have asked for because September was also the month were I gave my biggest online keynote to date. The Deloitte  API days where I was aksed to speak about the future of leadership. Boom- match made in heaven (and also the perfect opportunity to concept test my approach and insights what it takes to future-proof your career and progress on your terms.

 It resonated so well and I had never been given that much feedback after a keynote than after this. BTW- I also repurposed it as podcast episode and you can listen to it in epi.

I knew that I was onto something and had to build my audience with those who resonated with the message. So September was the kick off for many joint masterclasses which I absolutely loved. Not only because of the new connections I made but also because of the relationships I could deepen with my co-hosts. Absolutely fab experience.

OCTOBER

Is usually the start of the conference season so sure was a busy month with 5 big speaking engagements and workshops. It ended up being 84h TTT compared to September where I thought I hit an all time record with 78hTTT.

One of the other in person events (2/3) that I did this year was for PMIQ and let’s just say: incredible project management (pun intended). From the pre-organisation to the set up to the actual night- everything was perfectly orchestrated, and I had a blast.

Since I realised that I had to do more research for the book and I’m all for learning from the best, I also out my big girls pants on and reached out to some of the heaviest hitters in the branding, content, marketing and influencer industry that I had been following for quite some time. I had 13 names on my wish list and everyone but 2 came back to me straight away and agreed to an interview for the podcast. I also told them that I’d love to repurpose some of those learnings in my book and again- amazing experience and learning curve. Whilst I had interviewed some really big names also on stage in front of 3,500 people, I had never been that nervous than I was before those interviews. I prepared a LOT (I also learnt that over-preparation is a thing hahah) but it worked out!

NOVEMBER

November was a massive sprint with finalising the book, prepping the intake for the Trusted Authority program that we kick off in January but launched with 3 connective masterclasses. Good reminder (and also first-time experience) to never ever schedule 3 high energy masterclasses within less than 48h… lesson learnt,

DECEMER

Here we are! At the time of the recording, I just got back from another week staycation with some more exciting news!

The intake for the Trusted Authority is in full swing! A bunch of incredible high flyers signed up in the first 48h when doors opened.

I also officially announced that I joined my own mastermind, the team who helped me progress so much over the last 8 month as their latest addition! I’m coaching students on personal branding, LinkedIn, and monetising and packaging their IP.

One other offer that I didn’t expect also came from a Melbourne university to be a lecturer for 3 new courses that they launch and don’t have the capability for: Digital marketing, advanced diploma of digital marketing and the diploma of social media. It’s one of the best gigs as I don’t only get to geek out on the topic but it is a fully flexible schedule where I can deliver and develop content at anytime and have 1:1 sessions with their students. How cool is that? I wish there was something like that when I went to uni!

Now we are in the week that seems to go into nowhere’s land as no one remembers what day it is. I hope you enjoyed a lovely Xmas get together, indulged in all the yummy food and get some rest in.

For me, it is a mix of chilling, long beach walks & talks as well as coaching my new students and developing brand-new content for the Trusted Authority program their new courses

I honestly can’t tell you how excited I am for 2022 with so much already happening.

The word of the year that I chose is ‘optimising’ as I want to build on every foundation from this year and optimise it for operations.

That includes more automation, a bigger next intake for the Trusted Authority (yes, if you missed it or Jan is too early for you), the next enrolment happens in March. Definitely still a lot to learn but I’m ready for it.

I can’t wait to be sitting down and writing my 2020 reflection to see what I have accomplished and now over to you! I’d love to hear your biggest wins, lessons learnt and what you’re excited for in 2022.

Send me a DM on LinkedIn or Instagram – and I’ll make sure to share it! Public commitment drastically increases the chances for you to achieve it! Have a fantastic New Year and enjoy your down time. I’m so grateful for you being on this journey!