#158 My Business Turns 3 Today (Here’s The Real BTS Of Building It)
In January 2023 I started a newsletter about community, thinking I’d be a side-hustle creator until someday I started a business of my own. I wrote in my goals journal I planned to help bossbabe scale globally over the next 5 years while I did that – I was Head of Product at the time.
But a few months later my plans went out the window. In May of 2023 Danielle exited the company, the vision for bossbabe changed, and Natalie simplified the business (totally fair!).
In June of 2023 I went out on my own deciding not to pursue another full-time-job. It has been the most difficult, rewarding, fun, and soul-filling journey. That saying that entrepreneurship is the most intense personal development journey you can go on is no joke.
Today's newsletter is a little different than usual... I wanted to share my 3-year reflection with you – the good AND the bad.
Let's get into it –
In June 2023 I knew I didn’t want to work for someone else again. Working at bossbabe & connecting with our members (online business owners) showed me that this industry over-indexes on marketing, and doesn’t focus enough on product. I decided I would bring product-strategy methodology from my tech experience to community businesses. I just had to figure out how...
By July 2023 (2 months in) I had hit 10k months (for some reason this feels like a right of passage for “online businesses”). I hustled to re-connect with my consulting friends, landed an accessibility audit with a healthcare company (niche expertise I have, ask me later), and a couple of fractional head of product gigs. I worked with Kim Gravel on her course community (yes, the QVC queen).
In December 2023 I sold way more work than I could handle and had my first 25k month — I reached out to a friend who was taking a sabbatical from product management in tech, and asked if she could help me. She supported our projects those first couple of years whenever I had more than I could handle myself, and now she’s our project lead and works with almost all of our clients.
A year after I left bossbabe in May 2024 I didn’t recognize myself. The stress of starting my business and processing loss left me inflamed, with chronic bronchitis, gaining weight, and unhealthy. I started an 18 month health journey to become the most metabolically healthy person possible, so that I could start a family, and have capacity for more. The business had marginal growth the rest of the year while my health became my number one priority.
At the same time, my husband, Justin, and I wanted to travel more and work remotely, and he had an in-person job. He was helping out with the business because I had too much going on to handle everything myself. So Justin quit his job & joined the business full time. This has been the best decision for our family, and we have a lot of fun working together.
In June 2024 I hung out with my creator friends at Craft & Commerce and Chenell, Jay & I recorded a bts of the conference episode on Creator Science. It felt crazy to go from Jay's customer to friend in only a couple of years, and to guest on my favorite podcast. Life was feeling very *pinch me* in this season. I was focused on improving my health, and business was actually fun. I was so busy this summer with one-off projects and my biggest membership management retainer to date.
But in September 2024 I lost my first membership management client after their membership didn’t go well, and I made a poor hire on my team to support them that didn’t help. Because the previous months were so busy, I didn’t do any marketing effort and my revenue was $2,500 (my lowest month ever).
While struggling behind-the-scenes with what felt like failure, I pushed forward on one of my biggest projects to-date. In October 2024 I launched my agency, Affinity Collective. I was resistant to an agency model because I had worked in one for 5 years and knew how tough margins and project flow could be. But after reading Built To Sell, I focused on productizing our offers, building partnerships, and I'm proud that we have *very* healthy margins for a services business. I always say I'm building my agency like a creator business, and I think that model works well for us.
In December 2024 I closed two huge management contracts, brought my friend in again to run those knowing that would be a better plan than my previous hire, and it went super well. We still manage one of these contracts today. I also brought on developers to my team – again pulling from people I worked with in tech – and we built a test app with Circle's new headless plan, and we started augmenting Circle's custom apps with custom features. Now we're a partner, and they send us leads.
In June 2025 I launched my podcast as an experiment. I wanted to see if I could make a voice-note style podcast successful – it takes me about 15 minutes per episode from idea to scheduled. It has been a huge success, and one of my favorite creative outlets.
I get asked all the time about my process... my business coach even launched a voice note style podcast of her own, Sell Well, that is blowing up. PodCraft did an interview episode with me breaking down my process that was great. I love the deep connection you can build with people with 10 mins of voice notes.
In November 2025 I had my lowest sales month since September 2024 because I redid my sales process and all our systems to rebuild the business and improve our close rates. I was so nervous because I knew we were having a baby soon while having our lowest revenue. It was worth it because we’ve had huge growth: December - April 2026 have been our highest revenue & most profitable months to date.
I was so nervous to get pregnant while not having a “consistent business” and wrote in my journal every day “babies bring abundance” … the day I found out I was pregnant I made sales for 12 days straight and had my best month ever.
In December 2025 I launched my framework, the 7-Figure Connected Community Model, and in February 2026 I publicly claimed I was going on a podcast tour to talk about my new framework... as if I was an author on a book tour, even though I wasn’t booked yet. I booked 10 shows, doubled downloads of my show, and sold over $13k in projects so far.
In 2026 I've mainly been in the sales and marketing seat of the business, while my teammate Danielle leads our projects with the support of our team. I hired an ops manager to help me build systems in the business and delegate more. Right now I'm building content and marketing systems to keep bringing in work while I take a maternity leave.
It all feels like a whirlwind! Looking back I feel myself getting more resilient. The lows don't feel so extreme. I pay more attention to quarterly revenue & profit than monthly. If we lose a client I know we have a healthy pipeline, and if a deal falls through I know another will come in.
Adding pregnancy hormones on top of business up and downs has been hard... I won't sugarcoat that. But I'm more hopeful than ever for what we're building. I mean... is there anything we need more right now than human connection and community?
I'm so glad I took a bet on myself and this business. I hope reading this inspires you to do the same... and that no matter what we see online it's not all rainbows and butterflies behind the scenes.
So what's next?
If you know me, you know I'm a big fan of publicly sharing goals. So here it goes:
(1) I want to do more podcast guesting and I've worked with a consultant to put together an outreach strategy to land ideal shows to guest on.
(2) I want to grow my podcast. People that listen to my podcast and book a sales call have an over 90% close rate.
(3) I'm working on submitting for PR opportunities to get more visibility to ultimately connect with more people... I was featured in Forbes last week, and have an interview coming out soon that I'm excited about!
(4) I want to do more speaking next year, and am going to start putting out feelers for that. I'm working on a keynote I've been dreaming up.
(5) I'm working on closing bigger brands and engagements for Affinity Collective. We recently worked with Audiochuck (aka Crime Junkie podcast), and have proposals out with global media & tech brands.
If you read all the way to the bottom here, thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting my journey... whether you read or listen to my content, forward it to a friend, quietly encourage me, or have worked with my agency. I'm endlessly grateful. Here's to year 4!