My Theme for 2023 – Level Up

For the past 9 years, I set aside time in late December to reflect on the past year and choose a theme for the year ahead. 

Last year, my word was Adventure.

For 2023, my theme is Level Up.

my theme for 2023- level up
  • In December, I realized I’ve now been working for myself longer than any individual job I’ve ever had. 🤯
  • I sent my newsletter consistently each month (Barely) 📝
  • I recorded 25 episodes for The Remote Work Tribe Podcast. (Related: it blows my mind that people in 93 countries that have listened to this podcast. 🎙)
  • I grew my business revenue by 10% YoY. This was less growth than in 2021, but considering I worked at a much more sustainable pace for the first three quarters of the year I’m thrilled by this outcome. 💵
  • I hired a freelance marketing assistant in Q3 to help with my own marketing, particular as it relates to The Remote Work Tribe. 💪
  • I traveled a lot more in 2022, including many new-to-me places like Steamboat Springs, Minneapolis, Milan, Rome, and Cabo. ✈️

Now for some of the cons:

  • At the beginning of 2022, I raised my prices for the first time in a long time for new clients  and had some growing pains that I had to iron out, particularly as it related to onboarding.   
  • I got COVID for the first time in August. 
  • My struggles hiring and retaining VAs resumed when my best and longest-running assistant, who was great, quit at the beginning of Q4. 
  • While super fun, I overdid it with business and personal travel in Q4. 

So why did I make my word for 2023—level up—and what exactly do I want to achieve this year?

Up until 2022, the only way that I’ve been able to increase my revenue was to work more. This leads to a tenuous relationship between making more money and overworking. This was the first year that I started to break away from this slowly and with some setbacks.

If I want to grow the business, it became clear that I need to invest more in building up and training my small but mighty team to:  

  • Cover the areas that I’m less skilled at or don’t particularly enjoy (like operations and design) 
  • Build more and better systems and processes so that projects and tasks get the same or better results while being able to delegate more parts.    
  • Free up a little time each work to focus “on” the business instead of “in” it. 
  • Be able to take vacations without having to work like a crazy person before and after.

So, here are some of my goals in 2023.

  • Speak at 2 business conferences / events in 2023. I did a fair amount of speaking at in-person conferences in 2018 and 2019, and then a bunch of virtual gigs in 2020 and 2021. I want to get back to doing more of these! Here’s my speaking page. Hint, hint. 😉
  • Hire and train an operations coordinator to buy back some of my time and take over many administrative, research, and internal ops tasks.   
  • Continue to refine my systems and processes so I can show up at best for my clients. 
  • Double my email list again. 
  • Publish The Remote Work Tribe podcast and newsletter twice per month. 
  • Travel to either South America or Africa for the first time. (I’m thinking Argentina, Morocco, or Tanzania, but open to any and all suggestions!) 

When I think about the goals that I want to achieve this year, the common thread is a need to level up my systems and processes (and to a certain extent my mindset) so that I can grow sustainably without compromising quality.

Jessica Malnik works with B2B SaaS and professional service firms to build marketing moat that compound over time using her signature content framework. As both a strategist and executor, she helps clients develop strategic content marketing roadmaps, scale content production, and provide guidance on campaigns and individual pieces.
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