The January Inside Scoop: 🚀 Lemon7 Investor Style Update
Lemon7 Monthly Investor Style Update
Hey!
Welcome back to my sixth monthly investor-style update, where I transparently share the highs and lows of running my business. It’s running late this month - apologies but as you can see below we’ve been busy busy!
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 January increased 7.4% over December. A slowdown on the 11.11% in December, but we purposely slow rolled a lot of client work into February with our eyes on a different metric this month - getting our resourcing right.
Sales Pipeline: Our pipeline continues to perform well, our 66% success rate was continued which we were very happy with. We have a whopping 31.67% growth from January going into February.
Customer Retention: We did experience churn in January that is factored into the above growth rate. One of the most bizarre churn experiences ever though - a client just randomly started ghosting. Which was even more bizarre because their ads were actually working and I never got a formal email to shut things down. Strange one! I also have a key client who has gotten more internal resourcing which may impact my revenue over the next few months - but most of those kinds of things are just outside of my control. Still good to factor those in now.
Market Trends: Market spending power is definitely moving in the right direction. Myself along with every agency I’ve had a chance to chat to had absolutely killer starts to the year.
Team Expansion: We hired lots of new talent in January. We are digging in with a new graphic designer on a more regular basis (who did some projects for us already) and we have a new PPC specialist starting tomorrow and a new part time video editor. 3 New key hires that are super exciting and we’re going to be rolling out more roles as the year goes on so long as churn remains as healthy as it has been and growth continues.
Key Metrics:
In January we predicted that we would grow 4.25% so to have 7.4% growth was a nice bump! This was a strong month given that we were in hiring mode and getting back in control of project management and the chaos of new year marketing and January Sales.
In February we pre-booked almost 32% growth - but I think there’s risk of one deal in particular falling through - so this may come in a little lower, but still set for a strong month. That being said we’re in a really strong position kicking off the year and the agency is growing. I suspect a few down months are going to catch up with us soon as projected growth can’t continue forever, but here’s what we’re seeing for February and including since we kicked off in July
Here is what we can predict the business will look like in February of next year if we continue to hit 10% month over month growth. It puts us on a run rate of just over €1.2million ARR
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 700k mark.
I’m actually more worried about churn as the business gets a little bigger. It’s always the question of “ok how can I predict what will go wrong next” and how fast can I resource for that to avoid it. I also need to factor in the pivotal stage of growth where I start hiring more customer focused team members. We’re officially at the stage where I need to relinquish some control - that comes with risks and benefits that need to be navigated carefully. The biggest risk of course being churn.
Team & Expenditures:
Unbelievably, if all holds well into February we’ll be back at near 60% expenditure to income ratio. Specifically we should hit 61.77% - however if the numbers don’t pan out exactly as expected I may reduce my own wage to line things up better to have stronger months going into March and April as more new team members become a little bit more client facing and to increase my “bubble wrap” around potential margin of errors there.
This may fluctuate over the next 2 months as I factor in additional expenses that inevitably add up like all the extra subscriptions new team members will need to be added into etc. But we’re so close to our target that I am pretty happy with how it has been managed over the last 2 months. It took a lot of long days and hard nights of sitting with a spreadsheet and making sacrifices where needed to get those nuts and bolts nailed down.
We are always in a process of continuous improvement internally. I find getting the accounts done at the end of the month a great opportunity to actually get rid of lots of wasted subscriptions, review processes at the same time and make efficiency improvements. I am never married to a subscription either. If I find another tool that does an action that I need cheaper - I always move.
Diversification of Revenue Streams:
Courses:
Dare we ask at this stage. My god was this put on the back burner. That being said - my developer is actively putting in hours on this towards the end of the month. So we should be in a good position to fire this back up asap. I also need to spend time this month reviewing all of the old content I made before. See what is still relevant and what is out of date and start bringing what I already have in the bank back to life.
Sponsorship:
TikTok deal wrapped up and again moving back into 0 sponsorships. Stripping back options for diversified revenue here will help me focus on the courses and training for supporting income and to monetise my 200k+ followers across all platforms to myself rather than others - the main reason for stopping all sponsorships.
Marketing Experiment Results:
I’ve crossed 165k followers and burnout is thankfully behind me. I now have a second editor in the mix and no excuses left. As soon as I finish sending this email - my recording session for my weekly videos is back. I want to focus more on the marketing side of things. A lot of my content is around AI tools, but since my views are naturally going to be low as I fire things back up by virtue of being in the bad books with the algorithm from a consistency perspective - now is the time to change things up. Next month I will have a report on the performance here.
Email Marketing Evolution:
Growth of the newsletter really took a hit from me not creating content and then when a video went viral it SPIKED. It’s wild. Each time I send one of these I get drop offs which is to be expected and although the chart below is wild - we can see growth technically. I’ve also made it much clearer what people are signing up to - so it will be interesting to see over time how this gets impacted.
What I feel good about:
Social Media Growth:
I crossed 165k 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 (well I did do a handful of videos). I am really excited to hire this back up though.
Hiring:
I’m so excited about the new hires and the growth from a team perspective over the next few months. I know there’s a ton of people who applied who I haven’t personally gotten back to yet, but I will be in touch asap. It’s just taking time to get through all of the applications.
From Launch To Date:
From June 2024 to January 2025, the business achieved an impressive 95.11% 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. That metric blows me away every time I think about it but it’s a testament to the team around me and everyone who is supporting me.
What I Am Freaked Out About
Growth is always exciting, but with growth comes new challenges, and right now, my biggest concern is churn and scalability.
We had some unexpected client churn in January, including one bizarre situation where a client just ghosted despite their ads performing well. On top of that, a key client has ramped up internal resourcing, which could impact revenue over the next few months. Churn at this stage of growth is different because it’s not just about replacing one client with another, it’s about ensuring we have the right systems and team in place to retain long-term relationships.
Speaking of the team, hiring is both exciting and daunting. It’s a tough shift for me because it introduces new risks - if we don’t get it right, it could directly impact client retention. The balance between expanding fast enough to support growth while keeping churn in check is tricky, and it’s something I need to stay ahead of.
And then, there’s financial planning. We’re so close to getting our expenditure-to-income ratio to a stable 60%, but with new hires and additional expenses creeping in, I’m keeping a tight watch on cash flow. If February doesn’t land exactly as expected - I have to roll into some plan Bs pretty quickly.
Despite all this, I’m optimistic. The numbers are moving in the right direction, the team is growing, and market conditions are strong. But I’m very aware that staying ahead of potential issues, especially with churn, hiring, and scaling efficiently - will be the key to making sure this momentum continues.
Freaking out is important. It helps you nip issues in the bud before they even happen.
Personal & Fun Highlights in January
January was full of fun little moments. Getting back into fitness more seriously I quickly was reminded that the reason I don’t like running isn’t fitness, it’s the frizz that slowly builds up while I am on the run - meaning there’s an extremely high risk of bumping into someone I know… because of course that would happen when I look liek this….
Spent lots of time in the outdoors getting my personal time as digital free as possible. A hugely important thing to do when you work in marketing and spend 8-10, sometimes more hours on a laptop every day. You have to squeeze in the downtime and it can’t be digital based.
Of course I inevitably got hooked on a TV show regardless of my attempts to be screen free outside of working hours and managed to get addicted to a show from 2014 called Alaskan Bush people. Inevitably when the storm hit Ireland last month I was more prepared than most for the electricity to go out with my bush skills… 😂😂
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 :)
January 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.
Warm regards,
Jen