(And one thing I DID spend money on at the end)

I’ll be honest. I did not make a declarative commitment to buy nothing for my business in 2024. What I was sure of was how bad I felt after overspending and under earning in 2023. I’d awakened to how much damage the “education economy” of the online business space was actually doing. It had brainwashed us into believing a bunch of unreal aspirations, and goaded us into spending way beyond our means. 

I’ll lay it all out for you.

At the beginning of 2023, I was making between $10,000- $15,000 per month as a copywriter. It was mostly funded by 2 high-paying retainer clients, one an agency that was overworking me like a dog, and the other, a celebrity-without-a-cohesive-marketing-plan paying me to write their biweekly newsletter.

I probably should have known this monthly income was too good to be true and not sustainable. Well, I didn’t. Instead, I believed I had *finally* arrived as a business owner, making the $10k/month ideal that was sold as making it as a copywriter. I’d uncovered the secret that no one in IRL corporate America knew about. Unlimited potential! Overflowing revenue! ABUNDANCE!

I made it, and was ready to spend all that money (like I wasn’t already spending it before I made it heh.)

In January, I signed up for the mastermind I longed to be in— full of copywriters destined to be famous in our online space. The who’s-who of up and comers, led by a wonderful duo who had built their own 6-7 figure businesses online. I truly believed the $1,000/month I was investing for 12 months would not only make me a household name in copywriting, but lead to effortless customer lead gen, fully supported and promoted by said mastermind, and basically just be booked out for years to come. Though no one promised fame, I’d argue the underlying message for selling all masterminds is that “being in this group will elevate your business beyond where you’d go alone.”

By March, I had lost both retainer clients. At the agency, the person who brought me aboard left to (ironically) start his own business. The celebrities let a third party fire me without warning. They later came back and asked me to work with them again and even APOLOGIZED. It was a shitstorm of unfortunate luck. All the while, $1,000 was coming out of my bank account monthly, along with all my other bills and life expenses. Kids still needed shoes. People still needed to eat. And I chose to stay in the mastermind because I assumed it would all turn around. I was IN THE MASTERMIND- so it was just a matter of time. I transferred automatic payment from my debit card to a credit card. *Temporarily* 😉

Around summer time, I realized I had to stop the mastermind. It was painfully embarrassing, but I kept digging my debt hole deeper and deeper.

Yet mentally, I STILL BELIEVED that everything would be okay and my business would bounce back. Why? Because I was equipped with a healthy mindset, an endless amount of determination to keep this thing afloat, 17 years of experience, and of course, let’s not forget I’m an upper middle class white woman. All the cards were stacked in my favor!

The rest of the year I had small projects here and there. I had 2 major clients paying me $4,000-$5,000 at various times as retainers that never went longer than a month or two. No security. One client even tried to stiff me on payment after doing a full month of work. Now, there’s something I want to say, because at the time it was deeply defeating for me to do so, but at the urging of my therapist, witnessing my distress, I signed up for SNAP benefits. Yep. That’s food stamps! My brain told me that privileged people don’t partake in these resources. I didn’t even deserve to, because my own poor choices had resulted in this. The stigma is high. I’m sharing it because I want you to know it’s okay to make sure your basic needs are covered, no matter what.

During this time, I also attempted to transition my copywriting business into some kind of pseudo-mindset life coaching format, but it never took off. Because that’s how you SCALE (the holy grail of online business is SCALING, of course.)

I share the backstory because I want you to understand that the debt I found myself in at the beginning of 2024 wasn’t from making extravagant purchases or buying fancy clothes or too many self care appointments. It wasn’t from going on a retreat to a private island in the BVIs. It was from a “reasonable” monthly payment of $1,000 to people I trusted and still love. It was from a lovely and wonderful experience that felt really nice and connected me with lifelong friends across the globe, but did not deliver on my assumed outcome and move my business forward. $1,000/month quickly racks up when you keep waiting for the one big client who’ll change it all. I treaded water for a long time.

I entered 2024 so far in the hole that I had no other choice but to have a “spend nothing year.” And that’s what I did.

Truthfully, I had little desire to buy anything from anyone because I came to see that the people creating cute little courses and PDFs had no more idea what they were doing than I did. Hitting financial rock bottom, where I nearly returned to corporate to save my family from destitution, was the thing I needed to snap me out of the online business trance.

It felt like freedom to no longer bounce from one group to another, to not buy another course, and to stop believing that a $27 PDF would be *the ticket* to my endless wealth and abundance. Or my favorite- realizing that I no longer had to pay for “community” that I could go out and get for free in my own backyard. 

Finally, I had the room to be 100% myself and learn to trust my own intuition and acumen once again. THAT was the piece that had been missing for 3 years.

Here’s what I did spend money on in my business this year:

• Subscriptions to Canva, Zoom, Calendly, and Adobe Acrobat/PDF reader.
• Paying for my website (Squarespace) and email service provider (Flodesk.)
• New business cards with my actual phone number on them lol.
• Hardware for my Macbook so I could host presentations and workshops.

These were my bare minimum needs and I didn’t miss all the extras. After a year of minimalist business, I see I probably don’t even need some of the tools I still pay for (looking at you, Zoom.)

• Just this month, on Black Friday, I happened upon a course from The Financial Feminist, Tori Dunlap, about creating a debt repayment plan. I bought it for $72. Why? Because despite 2 college degrees and being raised to never spend more than you can pay off monthly, I still fucked it up. I am financially illiterate for the world in 2024, and I am determined to learn a better way. Well worth $72 to have some structure there.

Here’s where I stopped wasting time and energy this year:

• Creating Reels or fancy Canvas graphics for each social media post. What a waste.
• Selling my copywriting services on Instagram, where I haven’t gotten a client in more than a year.
• Spending hours on social media, waiting for connections and dopamine hits (aka validation)
• Pitching strangers or really, pitching at all
• Feeling like I need to do it all. (Ex: I record my podcast when I’m able, not every single week like I thought I *had* to.)

I 100% de-conditioned myself from the norms of the online business world. And it was my best year in business yet.

Here’s where I DID spend my time and energy this year:

• Focusing on sustainable income. No more waiting for the perfect high end client to pay me large chunks of money. I partnered with the most divine group of creatives at a local agency and they’ve kept me busy ALL year long.
• Staying open to opportunities
• Building IRL relationships and spending time in my local community
• Workshops and mentorship in high needs areas (nonprofit, underserved communities, etc.)
• Confessions of a Copywriter, my weekly newsletter

That’s it, guys. It doesn’t have to be difficult and you don’t need to spend much to find sustainable success. The online business space is designed to make you question your own abilities and that’s how PEOPLE MAKE MONEY off of you. 

The absolute best investment you’ll ever make is learning to trust yourself- because guess what? You know more than you think. You’ve actually got this.