The December Inside Scoop: 🚀 Lemon7 Investor Style Update
Lemon7 Monthly Investor Style Update
Hey!
Welcome back to my fifth monthly investor-style update, where I transparently share the highs and lows of running my business.
If you missed any of the past updates, you can catch up here:
In this email, you'll find:
✅ Goals, sales, successes, and challenges.
✅ Financial data.
✅ Behind-the-scenes decisions, strategies, and pivots.
This isn't just a newsletter—it's an open book. Let’s dive in! 👇
TL;DR
Revenue Growth: Revenue in December increased 11.11% compared to November. A slowdown on the 21.17% in November over October, but with the year wrapping up we were happy to get a bump before heading into the new Year.
Sales Pipeline: Our pipeline continues to perform well, our 66% success rate was bumped up to 80% for December which we were very happy with. The only proposal that isn’t signed off yet is due to launch in January instead - so may not be lost yet!
Customer Retention: We didn’t experience any churn this “technically” this month, which is encouraging. We did, however, have a couple clients pause to take time off or have some downtime over Christmas - so we paused some retainers temporarily.
Market Trends: Market spending power is definitely moving in the right direction. The global and Irish economy are both independently due to grow, though small it’s meaningful after a few years of stagnation which impacts spend across the board. My gut (which might well be wrong) is that 2025 will finally feel like the economic growth everyone had hoped for in 2024.
Team Expansion: We have not hired anyone new in December but are eagerly hiring for new Paid Advertising Specialists from January onwards. Applications are open here.
Key Metrics:
In November we predicted that we would grow 11.97% in December. Instead we grew 11.17%. This was still strong for us given the month we were in. December in agency land is a chaos of Black Friday campaigns moving into Christmas Campaigns moving into January sales. There is very little scope to onboard new clients in that environment so we moved a lot of that onboarding into January.
In January we pre-booked 4.25% growth in terms of new clients and an additional 8.81% growth is pre-booked for February. Staggering this onboarding continues to aligns with our commitment to sustainable development.
Here is what we can predict the business will look like in January of next year if we continue to hit 10% month over month growth. It puts us on a run rate of just over €1million ARR (€1,012,896). Last month I hoped this newsletter would be the first to predict a €1million+ business run rate and it’s exciting to see that come true.
But, here’s what the business will look like if 5% of revenue churns or goes away every month despite a 10% month over month growth rate. The growth is much slower but manages to cross the 550k mark.
I’m way less worried about churn as we move into the new year if anything I may purposefully look at removing one or two clients that might not be a perfect fit for the agency. That’s always a very hard decision, but anyone who works in the service line knows that sometimes you can have misalignment. I usually am able to spot a bad fit client at proposal stage and only occasionally do some slip through the cracks.
Team & Expenditures:
With our new hires in place we are working really hard to get back to our 60% expenditure of total revenue. So far we’re back to about 64% which is strong given we’re only a few weeks after that round of hiring. We are definitely starting to see the benefits of a few extra pairs of hands.
We’re also hiring for Paid Advertising Specialists full time. Those roles can be viewed and applied for here.
For paid advertising specialists we’re open to both long term freelancers and people who are looking for full/part time roles. We’re pretty flexible when it comes to hiring.
One of the key areas we have been developing internally to get back to our 60% expenditure to open us back up to 40% margins is the world of automations. I personally did an entire overhaul of all of the administrative tasks in the business over the Christmas break and used Zapier, Make and AI to stitch together so many things to save so much time.
Example: Now if someone completes the request a proposal form on Lemon7.ie, that automatically creates a record in our CRM, and sends them to book in a call with us. They have a 2 day delay built into the calendar which is to give us time to sign off on a proposal. In the background, the form information is being added to a marketing proposal automatically and then shipped to the client ahead of the call. Once the call is completed it initiates a contract, the contract signing initiates project management templates to be set up in our Asana. This saves us an unbelievable amount of time. This is just one example of several areas of the business that are fully automated.
We also integrated automations directly with our clients that we feel gives them a better experience tool. For example we made custom forms for our eCommerce clients that ship to them on a recurring basis to ask them if there’s any product changes they would like in their ads (currently they manually email these to us). Once they complete the form, it automatically sends us a task in their project in asana and everything runs a little more smoothly. No more “I better send X an email to get X update” - everything from an admin standpoint is being ironed out and streamlined.
Diversification of Revenue Streams:
Courses:
I have been so focused on getting our margins tightened up that I had to clean put all of the revenue stream diversification on the back burner. That is going to very much change this month as I get back into the weeds of getting the courses set up. Much of the content has been recorded so we’re back into project planning for this to go live in Q1.
Sponsorship:
I’ve canceled all sponsorships except for one—an exciting deal with TikTok themselves! I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to work directly with TikTok, given their alignment with our goals and the unique credibility it adds to Lemon 7. All other sponsorship deals have been rejected, as I’m fully focused on growing our audience and long-term brand value without promoting external businesses.
Marketing Experiment Results:
As I mentioned in my last email - my content creation efforts after 18 months of consistency were leaving me feeling quite a bit burnt out. To be frank, I was becoming allergic to the thought of creating another Instagram video. Instead of giving up I decided to take the break I needed, come up with some new ideas and jump back in once I felt reinvigorated with new ideas and concepts. No point in working myself into the ground with content that would inevitably die a death due to my lack of enthusiasm over time. It was a better decision longer term to stop and start again.
I’m back regularly posting as of today which is exciting but I am still working through the process I need to create to launch some new videos that are in a very different style. I’m excited about that and it’s what has lit a fire back under me when it comes to content creation.
Luckily because I had some killer content in November, my account still grew. I am nearly at 163k followers.
Email Marketing Evolution:
Growth of the newsletter really took a hit from me not creating content. Because when I create content more people inevitably hit the newsletter sign up button. But you can see here that I really haven’t been pushing anything and growth stagnated completely. I suspect that will start to turn around as I get back into my groove creating content again.
A big learning for me this year when it comes to content is to actually put a few videos in the back pocket for those down times when you want to take a break. I’m going to take November and December off again this year when it comes to creating content, but I will have a back catalogue ready this year.
What I feel good about:
Social Media Growth:
I crossed 163k on Instagram and almost 31k on TikTok and maintaining above 200k when I look across all channels (IG, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn and Newsletter) which is a really exciting milestone to have reached considering I wasn’t creating any content. I also updated my bio to align with getting more agency business rather than course subscriptions while I get my act together on that side of the business. I feel really good about getting back into this.
Hiring:
I’m becoming so thankful and grateful for the team and the people who believed in me enough to stick with me to get back to this growth. When I was winding down my last company there were definitely so many times that I questioned my skills and ability to lead a team. I had also made some rookie mistakes in terms of the hiring process so I am slowly being instilled with a new confidence and motivation as things are panning out. Lean teams with strong AI and ML leverage are critical and I am really enjoying the process.
Reminder that we have Paid Advertising Specialist roles open here.
Year to date:
From June to December 2024, the business achieved an impressive 86.75% growth in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). This far surpasses the typical industry growth rate for digital marketing agencies, which averages between 15-30% annually for well-performing firms. This extraordinary growth underscores the strength of our strategies, our team's execution, and the demand for innovative, results-driven digital marketing services. This is also not as impressive as it sounds when you factor in the early stages of our business - where growth tends to be more rapid, but nonetheless it’s an exciting metric to have hit in the first 6 months of business.
What I Am Freaked Out About
While December has been full of wins, I’ve noticed a few challenges creeping in that I want to address head-on.
First and foremost, motivation around content creation remained a struggle. Content has been a major pillar of our success, but after 18 months of consistent output, I’m still battling a bit of burnout. That said, I’m learning to approach this with more intention. Taking breaks has proven valuable, and with the guidance of Aoife, our senior video editor, we’re actively testing new formats and creative approaches. The goal isn’t just to keep the content machine running it’s to rediscover the joy in creating while ensuring it adds value to our audience.
Beyond content, structural changes within the business have me on high alert. While automations and streamlined processes are critical for scalability, they come with the risk of unforeseen hiccups that might impact client experiences. It’s a delicate balance: innovating behind the scenes while safeguarding the exceptional service we’re known for.
Finally, hiring continues to be a pressure point. We’re aiming for “Top 1%” talent, which means rigorously combing through applications for the Paid Advertising Specialist roles. So far for every only 1 in every 50 applicants have made it to interview. It’s exciting to see so much interest, but it’s a constant reminder of the high stakes involved in growing a team that aligns with our values and standards.
Despite these concerns, I’m optimistic. These challenges aren’t insurmountable and they’re opportunities to rethink, refine, and grow.
Personal & Fun Highlights in December.
One of my favourite things about my partner is that she works in a widely different field to me. She is a Vet and her work held a Santa Paws fundraiser in December which meant bringing along the dogs to visit Santa and raising money for charity. Something I would not do under any other circumstances is bring my dog to see Santa, but it was a really good laugh and a really worthwhile cause.
One of the strangest things that I found as a result of content creation burnout was my complete lack of desire to take out my phone to bother even capturing personal moments. I had to pester Evelyn to get this picture above. Instead of carting around my usual iPhone, I spent a lot more time with this in my pocket instead. I would highly recommend picking one of these up if you want to spend more time away from your smart phone. They are super cheap to pickup on eBay.
What’s next and What I need help with:
Hiring:
As always, I am always looking to find great candidates, but in particular great freelancers. If this is you or someone you know, please feel free to reach out to me.
Clients:
If you know someone looking for paid advertising or social media management we’ve streamlined out pricing and proposal requests. Those can be shared here. Also, we’re opening up a commission structure for people who refer clients - so definitely reach out to me if you have someone in mind and we can negotiate your kickback :)
December Sign Off:
Thank you for taking the time to follow along on this journey. Your support means the world to me!
If you have questions, feedback, or just want to chat, hit reply - your email will land directly in my inbox.
Here’s to a bigger and brighter 2025! 🎉
Warm regards,
Jen