My Exact 2024 Revenue Number Revealed
AKA: How I made $500k last year without really trying.
What's with everyone wanting to know why last year was the worst of my life?
In my last piece, I shared that it really, really sucked.. and you wanted to know more, because the link to the Instagram post where I shared more was my most clicked link ever. Go figure.
Anyway, I want to follow up last weeks email with this:
Two things can be true, because in the hardest year I've had to date — my business did surprisingly well.
In this week's piece, I want to bring you behind the scenes of my business in 2024, and share with you some of the numbers that even surprised me when I recapped 2024.
Specific Numbers: Revenue and Revenue Stream Breakdown →
Overall revenue generated: $424,000 (excluding GST).
Breakdown by revenue stream:
Lifestyle Business School course: $379,248
Affiliate Income: $32,051
Small Courses: $10,212
And misc other things to make up the difference.
For context, I want to be really clear here— this is my worst annual revenue result for five years. But, it IS a testament to the incredible power of a leveraged business over time. If I hadn't done the work to build up my personal brand and create leveraged assets in the years prior, this wouldn't have been possible. More than anything, I am grateful to have a business that was able to support me in a "drop everything" year.
The revenue Lifestyle Business School made surprised even ME when I went through and reviewed my 2024 figures.
I launched only ONCE the entire year in October, and much of the revenue from that launch is still filtering through from payment plans so isn't included in this amount. So, the revenue was made from retained members from 2024 (before the model switched to a course instead of a membership, the retention rate was HIGH - around 92% monthly) and evergreen sales.
Specific Numbers: Revenue and Revenue Stream Breakdown →
For much of 2024, I worked significantly reduced hours. I talk more about this in this podcast episode here.
So, let's look at my effective hourly rate for the year.
This is something I teach inside of Lifestyle Business School, because it helps you to work out whether you have a business where your value is divorced from your time (it's also something I walk through in my free 90 minute workshop here). Effective hourly rate (a concept I learnt from James Schramko) is your personal profit (your salary + additional profit in your business) / hours worked.
Another way to look at it is:
[Revenue] - [Cost excluding Salary] / [Hours Worked].
I track my hours worked each month using the time tracker in my Operational Elegance course, so I can track this easily. Here's what they were:
As you can see, I started strong working a "normal work week" of around 35-40 hours a week (200 a month).
When things last year got tough personally, I stopped almost altogether.
And, when I went travelling from June - September, I worked a couple of hours a day most weekday mornings.
At the end of the year, I picked back up back to 35-40 hour weeks.
So, why does any of this matter? Because I can see that, even with significantly reduced work hours for much of the year, I still made on average almost $500 an hour.
This shows me how leveraged my business is, and how much how much I work is now divorced from my time.
Although it was my worst revenue year in years, it was ALL leveraged revenue from one digital course, there was no high ticket or calls, and worked very sporadically. Honestly, that last bit is in no way my preference but making that amount of revenue with one digital course and one launch was surprising and feels good.
Lessons, Insights and Actions →
Of course, I didn't click my fingers and end up with a business like this.
It required intentional business model design, a focus on profit and installing time leverage.
This year, I'm honestly excited to grow my revenue more and I will be doing that with a much more intentional 2025 plan.
I'll be sharing my 2025 game plan in my next piece, so keep your eyes peeled!
Lessons, Insights and Actions →
Of course, I didn't click my fingers and end up with a business like this.
It required intentional business model design, a focus on profit and installing time leverage.
This year, I'm honestly excited to grow my revenue more and I will be doing that with a much more intentional 2025 plan.
If you need some help with all of this for your business, this will help:
Free "Start 2025 Strong" Instagram Mini Series: Over on Instagram, I shared five days of lessons and actions to help you plan out your 2025 intentionally. Click for lessons on:
I love this share Stevie! Huge congrats for an amazing revenue year despite all of the personal time off. You’ve truly divorced your time from your value. I’d love to see a follow up poddy episode and blog on your expenses break down. So many business talk only about revenue and never expose their expenses. I think this is just as juicy as sharing revenue and really shows people what it takes on the backend to make the revenue come to life.