My 2024 End of Year Biz Review (Part 1)

The money & the facts

The Sustainable Solopreneur is a weekly newsletter about seasonal, cyclical, supportive business strategy for solopreneurs and creative souls who want more out of life than the status quo, hosted by business coach and strategist Jenni Gritters. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while and you receive value from it, I’d encourage you to sign up for a paid subscription.

Did you know: I’m running a business retreat in Central Oregon in February? It’s a long weekend and we’ll spend our time diving into branding (so you can authentically express who you are within your business in 2025), 2025 strategic planning, and money mindset. There are also fun wellness adventures on the agenda: A snowshoeing trek, crafting by the fire, a hot sauna/ cold plunge in the lake by the lodge, live music, gourmet food, and beyond. There are just THREE beds left (one solo king, one queen in a shared room, and one rustic cabin). I’m closing registration on December 31st so snag your spot soon!

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Every year, I write a year-end business review. (You can read last year’s here.) Y’all love these posts — they consistently rank at the top of my most viewed posts — so I’m back with the 2024 version!

As always, I’m going to share some context first:

• In 2023, my husband left his job as a critical care nurse to join my business. Over this past year, I also brought on two contractors. All of that is to say: I’m not doing this by myself! Our business was our only source of revenue this year.

• I also have two children, ages 2.5 and 5 at the time of this writing. Our expenses are high (compared to many people’s) because we are still paying off my husband’s student loan debt, we have a mortgage, and both kids are in nearly full-time childcare. (Also, inflation sucks. Our grocery bills are so high!) Also, we live in a mountain town in Central Oregon. While things are a bit cheaper here than in urban centers, life is still pricey!

• I worked as a journalist for 12+ years before letting go of that line of work. I have a lot of experience writing all kinds of content! I also went through a coach training program in 2021 and 2022; I am a certified coach through the ICF, too. I’m telling you this because I have a lot of expertise in the areas where I’m building business relationships — I’m not brand new to this, which helps!

• This year, my business included offering coaching services, creating journalism, working with sponsors for the events I ran and running a small content agency.

Alright, ready to dive in? This year, I’m going to follow the head, heart and gut format I talk about a lot.

• Head = the rational perspective. This includes the numbers, the conversion rates, the strategies.

• Heart = how it felt. This includes my month-over-month reflections, themes and intentions.

• Gut = intuition. This includes what I am visualizing for next year, where I might feel misalignment (despite things making money) and what my wise self believes about my work.

Today, I’ll share the rational take. Next week, you’ll get the intuitive and emotional take!

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The finances

In 2022, I made $80,000 net (and took 4 months of maternity leave) as a freelance writer and editor (with a little bit of coaching). In 2023, the business brought in $210,000 gross (before expenses) and $186,800 net (after expenses).

This year, in 2024, the predicted revenue is looking like it will map out to $315,000 gross (before expenses) and $303,400 net (after expenses). I’m proud that we increased our income pretty significantly! What’s interesting, though, is that a lot of that money went back into the business. I spent the year making a lot of investments in myself and my systems, including:

• hiring an operations and community assistant for the coaching business

• continuing work with a beloved contractor in my writing business

• hiring a high-caliber coach (who charges $2,500/ month) to support me as I scaled sustainably

• bringing on a bookkeeper and new (more expensive but more helpful) accountant

• a membership for two at a local coworking space

• switching over to using more robust tools for my coaching business, like Canva Teams, Kajabi, higher level Zoom accounts, and beyond

When I look at our take-home earnings, I was actually bringing home about $9,000 per month in 2024. My husband, who is also on payroll, was bringing in the same. That means we took home about $18,000/ month in cash between the two of us (even when we earned $30k). This is is one of those things that I get angry about when I see people posting their total earnings online. If your expenses are high, or you employ multiple people, or you’re on top of paying your taxes, your take-home for a complex business may be the same as someone running a more simple freelance business!

In 2025, I’m pulling back on a lot of those expenses (where possible). I definitely needed them this year because I was in pure building mode (more on that in a moment) but next year, I’d like to approach expenses with nuance. The goal is to pull some of that financial margin into our family’s accounts instead so we can remodel our kitchen, rebuild our emergency fund and contribute more to investment funds. The rest will continue to be invested in my own learning, supporting contractors, and mentorship.

Still, getting to regular $30,000+ months feels like a pretty wild dream come true. I spent years making $10,000/ month in my business and never thought I’d be the kind of person to run a higher revenue business. But when my husband left his job in 2022, it became a necessary experiment! I’m proud of these numbers.

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The type of work

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I have been splitting my workload between journalism and coaching for a long time. In 2024, I decided that I wanted to lean in on coaching and step out of journalism. Why? Because back in January 2024, I started to notice that my product review work was really slowing down significantly. Rather than try to find other writing clients, I knew I wanted to do the work I really loved. So I hired a coach and started pivoting my business model.

In 2023, I made about $50,000 from coaching work.

In 2024, I made about $150,000 from coaching work.

That might be what I’m most proud of this year: Executing a pretty wild pivot and tripling my revenue for those coaching offerings!

2024 still contained some product review work (which I narrowed down to my favorite clients and only discontinued last month). And we officially opened doors for our content agency, The Riverwoods Media Group, in 2024. My husband designed websites and I managed content (newsletters and marketing content, primarily). We brought in a solid $115,000+ from that work.

However, as we moved into summer, we decided that while the lifestyle was great. (We have so much freedom to choose our own schedules, without a full time job in the mix!), working together was too hard on our marriage. (If you work with your spouse: I am in awe of you!) I’ll write more about that next week. But the tl;dr is that as of a few months ago, my husband went back to part-time nursing work and he opened his own website design firm. I still refer clients to him but we don’t work together directly (which has been a major improvement for both of us!).

When I go through my end-of-year review process, I also look at which programs and clients brought in the most (and least) revenue. It was awesome to see that my group coaching program, SUSTAIN, made up almost $70,000 of my revenue this year. (I’m obsessed with this program so the fact that it’s also financially aligned is just a dream!) Another $36,000 came from 1-1 coaching, and the rest trickled in from workshops, intensives, pods, brand sponsorships and other small offers. Nothing about this surprised me but I did notice that selling courses and resources on my website is great for my audience — and it brought in a very passive $3,000 last year. Not too bad! More of that in 2025.

Some other fun numbers from 2024:

• I completed 128 free business audits.

• I coached 72 people 1-1.

• 137 people joined SUSTAIN and over 80 stayed for lifetime access.

• 500+ people attended my workshops this year.

• My email list grew to nearly 3,500.

• This Substack newsletter grew to 1,700+, with 25 paid subscribers (even after I made it all free mid-year).

• My free resources were downloaded almost 2,000 times.

It wasn’t all shiny, though. I built (and never launched) 5 different programs that I ended up getting bored of or not liking. I opened up a mastermind group, then closed it. There were times when my marketing felt arduous, my content work sluggish, my coaching vibes more overwhelm than abundance. We got an unexpected $13,000 tax bill and had to pull from savings to pay it off. And sometimes very few people signed up for my programs — the Authentic Marketing Masterclass, for example (which I was stoked about!), brought in negligible revenue. (Most of the attendees got in for free because they were in SUSTAIN already.)

Still, if you read this newsletter, you know that I tend to measure success not by numbers but by the joy I experienced. For example:

• I bought one paddle board.

• I paddled on 10+ lakes.

• I worked 25 hours max every single week.

• I potty trained one toddler.

• I took 95% of Fridays off to be with my children or to create art.

• I traveled across the country for two business retreats.

• I invested in one guided psychedelic trip.

• I ended up landing permits for three popular hikes.

• I went to marriage therapy with my husband more than 14 times.

• I met with my own coach 12+ times.

• I started one book project.

And mostly: I got to work with hundreds of the most creative, passionate, incredible solopreneurs I know. That is the good stuff. I got to teach so many of you that there’s a different way of working and running a business. How lucky am I? This work is my dream come true.

Next up: The feelings & the intuition. You’ll get that newsletter next Monday since this one is already getting quite long.

More soon,

Jenni

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Curious about my background? I’m a writer and business coach living in Central Oregon. My goal is to teach everyone who will listen that it’s possible to build a simple, stable, successful business that support your human needs first. Join my group coaching program, SUSTAIN, for more conversations like this (and a community of people who are all about the path less taken), and follow me on Twitter & Instagram.