My 2023 year in review
Business highlights
1. Major internal work on the business and redefining growth
I’ve written about the process of rewriting my website and changing how I show up on LinkedIn here, but I want to mention this as a significant highlight of 2023.
I reviewed and revamped all my digital touchpoints, including my website content and design, experimented with my LinkedIn presence, created a website logo, and reviewed the unsexy internal stuff like contracts, how I want to show up on a call, etc.
While there’s always more to do, I’m reminding myself to celebrate how far I’ve come.
This is the most grounded I’ve felt in my identity as a small business owner and an independent contractor, and I love the feeling. Although it did feel at times that I was putting in so much time and effort into stuff that saw no returns for the business (at least monetarily and in the short term).
But it’s also a reminder for me that growth isn’t always defined in monetary terms. And 3-6 months is a very, very short period of time when you see your business in 3-5 year cycles.
2. Pushed myself to position myself as a specialist in long-form journalistic content
In 2023, you can’t go 10 minutes without someone mentioning something related to generative AI, ChatGPT and all the other AI tools that have mushroomed this year.
I wonder if this has prompted a general state of soul-searching in content marketing. The SEO playbook of the last 10 years has fundamentally changed. Google remains dominant in the search engine market, but there’s a rising wave of disillusionment at the dropping quality of Google Search (not to mention ads everywhere on major social networks further affecting the search experience).
Used well, AI is a powerful assistant. After all, with the right prompts and engineering, you can create drafts that are pretty solid. But thanks to AI, it’s so much easier to fill up search results with shitty AI-produced content.
As an Internet user and creator, that annoys me.
There's nothing worse than trying to find an answer to a problem and stumbling upon an AI nothingburger (i.e., something that reads like AI wrote it, sounds completely different from previous content pieces, says nothing new and you know it's published just to try to rank through SEO.)
Use AI improperly, and you risk damaging hard-earned brand trust (extreme example in journalism: when Sports Illustrated created fake, AI-generated writers which turned into a PR nightmare) or stumble in the murky waters of running into copyright issues thanks to AI.
However, AI content is also getting better fast. With the right prompts and engineering, you can create drafts that are pretty solid. They won’t win any awards, but do create serviceable pieces of content.
But here’s my hypothesis: Since AI is everywhere, content marketers who:
Learn how to use AI to help with manual stuff like outlines, brainstorming or line editing
Can lean into their humanity and creative energy to create content worth paying attention to
Focuses on the fundamentals Colette Keane, who writes an excellent newsletter thinking about this stuff, puts it as:
“How do you create things worthy of others’ attention, and make things that are worthy of attention financially sustainable? How do you inform and inspire and educate, and move people forward from point A to point B rather than into a virtual black hole?”
Maybe these questions can become the guiding North Star for anyone thinking about content marketing in 2024, even beyond.
For me, I’m pushing myself to lean into my humanity (hence me talking more about my personal interests and being less constrained to B2B Joshua) and getting better at my skillset- writing/research/interviewing for a piece. It keeps things interesting for me too.
Other things I’m pretty proud of this year:
1 year anniversary of living in our new house
I started a personal weekly(ish) newsletter as a general safe space for writing (You can only write about B2B topics for that long until you need a change in flavour). It’s now 13 issues and counting, and been a wonderful way for me to reconnect with that side of me who writes for pleasure.
My wife started her home-brewed Hong Kong milk tea business in December; and she’s already made enough sales to cover initial costs into the business. Pretty cool, considering we’re a not even a month in! It’s also our first foray into physical e-commerce, which I wrote about here
Lowlights
1. Health issues
I don’t get sick often, maybe once or twice a year, but this year has definitely upped the frequency. I think (and this is definitely a me problem), I find I tend towards being unkind to myself. Instead of and shifting stuff I wanted to do to another day/time, I try to push myself through the discomfort (100% not recommended) which makes it worse.
So I talk a lot about making time to rest but am still figuring out how to practice what I preach.
Persistent foot injury flares up again: Essentially, I have inflamed toe joints in my left foot and that’s why it keeps reoccurring and while I’m glad I’m finally taking steps to fix it in the long term, I’m annoyed it took so long to get here. And the cost of everything combined is eye-watering. I think to myself, “OK, long term investment”. And investing more time into strength work, joint mobility and flexibility
My wife got COVID + asthma: And when one of two members of the household are down, you’ve gotta step up and do more stuff. It’s a delicate balance.
This aspect doesn’t get mentioned much, so I’m writing this as a mental note for myself and whoever needs it. You Are Not A Machine! There are times when you’re firing on all cylinders and doing all the things, and there are times when you are a potato.
2. My list of untouched online courses (and books) gets longer and longer…
Note to self, online courses work by selling you the dream, and scarcity.
The thing is, you actually have to sit down and go through the course to get value out of it.
I.e: it takes work! And time!
Compare self-guided courses to my experience with coaching. There’s accountability, community and a more substantial investment which gets you thinking “ok I wanna get the most out of my investment” which pushes me to put in the work.
But info-products and self guided courses? It’s a hit and miss. Some I’ve gone into years later, others languish in my dusty info-vault, waiting for me to unlock their secrets. That being said, I DO go back to the material, but only when there’s a specific need for it - a hole in my education where I have many course-shaped keys. Funny analogy now that I think about it, but I would also like to make better use of the digital products I purchase for both work and personal life.
I also didn’t read as much in 2024. Somehow reading became a chore, and I kept associating it with some form of work. (Although I’ve been playing narrative-heavy RPGs, so does that count as reading? I think so!) I do want to get back into fiction reading, rather than mostly reading non-fiction this year.
3. Neutral: General industry slowdown and industry soul-searching
Frankly, this is both a positive and a negative. Lowlight because it happened, but also highlight because I’m quite happy with how I responded to it.
Business-wise, it has been A YEAR.
While I intentionally slowed down this year since I wanted to take time to figure out my brand’s foundations, get a logo done, really think about all the non-sexy stuff like contracts, service offerings and all that stuff, macro factors also meant that work was slowww.
I didn’t lose any clients, but I did notice a slowdown in the number of projects and enquiries (also the drop in enquiries could be also attributed to a bunch of confidence issues I was dealing with on how I was showing up online, particularly on LinkedIn.)
For context, tech layoffs were insane in mid-2023.
Lots of layoff posts on LinkedIn, my work velocity slowed down, and people I know were struggling as they lost major clients, or had clients stop working with them thanks to good ol’ AI. People I know from the industry got laid off as well.
Turns out I wasn’t the only one seeing a slowdown. Terms like content recession started flying around. Job board revenue of Superpath, a content marketing community I’m in and follow regularly, also saw a significant dip from July to October this year, with it starting to recover last month.
On my end, projects from existing clients are picking back up as of November. New enquiries are coming in, so now my focus is now 1) figuring out client-fit and identifying my best-fit clients and 2) investing in client relationships and retaining them for the long haul.
For me, I’m proud of myself this year as I stayed the course. It’s been a tough year (especially relative to my other years), and I’m glad I took the decision to go inward and continue working on the business + take a break to do other stuff instead of stressing out constantly about my gaps in client work this year.
Reminds me of this quote:
“When fishermen cannot go out to sea, they repair nets”.
And truth be told, slowdowns will continue to happen (either into 2024, who knows), or some years down the line.
Because things run in seasonal cycles. There’s no such thing as permanent prosperity, neither is there permanent slowdowns. Slowdowns aren’t great, but they’re also opportunities to really take a hard look at your internal operations and how you show up in your business.
2023 has been a year of extremes. While I didn’t make as much money as I did last year, I also feel stronger in my identity as a small business owner, and the value of my work and services to both my clients and the industry. So I’m cautiously optimistic for 2024 - a great place to be mentally, I feel!
Btw, I have a client slot open for Q1 2024
If any of this resonated with you, and you’d like to make thoughtful content that opens sales conversations, educate your customers and generates leads a more significant part of your business, I’d like to invite you to work with me.
Here’s how we can work together:
B2B SaaS product-led content: People look for solutions and information online. Why not position your product to illustrate a point and show why your product is the best at solving a problem? It attracts visitors and educates your customers while motivating and guiding them to use your product. Talk about a win-win!
Customer case studies: Highlight how you’ve worked with a customer and celebrate their success! Case studies build trust with potential customers and show how your work has solved their issues. Attract customers like your ideal clients who want to solve a similar issue.
Whitepapers, research reports and e-books: Nurture valuable leads for a marketing campaign with an in-depth, persuasive long-form piece highlighting an issue and articulating your brand’s expertise. They help start sales conversations and showcase industry authority with original data. Besides interviewing stakeholders and research, I'll assist your team from outline to design to publication.
Content repurposing: Don’t let the content you worked so hard to put together collect digital dust after publishing. Repurpose your existing content to reach a new audience. For example, I’ve worked with clients to repurpose speaker recordings into blog posts and turned internal sales slides into e-books.
