My 2024 wrapped up

In today’s newsletter, I’ll share my retrospective on 2024, what worked, and what didn’t. This will be more personal than other newsletters, but I promise I’ll get back to more sales-oriented newsletter after this one.

Let’s dive in:

Q1: Business as usual

Q1 2024 was quite similar to most Q1s since I started working for myself. I launched The Prospecting Engine. With 65 customers and around $20,000 in sales, I was pretty happy about the results.

I also ran a few sponsored posts, and trained a few sales teams with the content of The Prospecting Engine. In terms of revenues, the first quarter was pretty similar to most other first quarters.

Q2: Darkness

At the beginning of Q2, we went back to France after spending 3 months in Mexico. My wife was pregnant of 6 months, and everything was all right. That was until we went for the third trimester echography, right before our flight back to France.

We discovered that our daughter had a life-threatening malformation, which made it impossible for her to live.

We lost our baby.

This was the worst time of my life. From April to June, my wife and I fell into a dark hole, and our lives were completely turned upside down. We kept working to numb the pain, but it was impossible to function normally in these few weeks after loosing our baby.

If you’re ever in this situation (or was), and you need to talk to someone, please reach out, you’re not alone.

Q3: Doubt

As a result of these tough 3 months, I wasn’t able to create quality content like I used to. Couple that with the summer, an algorithm change, and my LinkedIn performance tanked. I went from having 50+ reactions on my posts to 2, 3 reactions.

It was hard.

But I started recording videos for LinkedIn, worked on my copywriting, and my post engagement came back to a normal level. I also noticed that my engagement fell, but I was still able to turn conversations into revenues (coaching, online courses, sponsoring, etc.).

I also worked really hard on a course called Close Your First Side Gig. I set up a segmentation survey on my website, I ran interviews with salespeople who wanted to work for themselves, and I created a waitlist.

This launch was a flop. I made less than $600.

Q4: Rebuilding

Q4 was much better than the rest of the year. My wife became pregnant again (we’re having a boy in May 2025), and we moved to Mexico. We decided to leave France because our life there wasn’t nearly as fun an interesting as what we’re building in Mexico. We’ve been there for 3 months and we’ve experienced more than in two years in France.

I have also launched a 1:1 coaching subscription where my customers and I work together for 1 hour per week, while having unlimited WhatsApp access to me.

Another great success of 2024 has been the revenue I was able to generate for affiliate partners. In total I generated over $96,000 of revenues for my partners in less than a year. If you want to discuss how we can do this together, go check my sponsor page. I’m looking for long term sponsors for my newsletter and a new show I’m launching next year.

In conclusion, 2024 was the worst year of my life. My wife and I have been through hell, and our professional lives have suffered immensely. 2024 has also been the worst year in terms of revenues since I started my business in 2018. But in all that darkness, it was a year of learnings, transition, and resilience.

I have learned that nothing is constant, and you need to keep reinventing yourself if you want to keep paying your bills. I’m now more grateful for what I have, and I cherish every moment I get to spend with people I love, while building my business.

Happy New Year to you and your family!

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris