The October Inside Scoop: 🚀 Lemon7 Investor Style Update
Lemon7 Monthly Investor Style Update
Hey!
Welcome back! This is my third email in the new investor style monthly updates where I transparently share my business highs and lows with you.
If you missed August or September, here’s the link to catch up for August and here’s the link to catch up for September.
As always in this email -
✅You’ll see our goals, sales, successes, and failures—every month, in your inbox.
✅ Our financial data
✅A front-row seat to every decision, every strategy, and every pivot we make.
✅You’ll know exactly where the money goes, what’s working, and what’s not.
This isn’t just a newsletter; it’s an open book.
Here we go! 👇
TL;DR
Revenue in October is up 8.18% on September this is down on the 20% growth range from August to September.
Our pipeline is continuing to closing at a 66% success rate (Give or take 2 out of every 3 proposals are accepted)
We didn’t experience any churn this month which is great, but we did slow down onboarding a little because we want to always maintain a strong experience for the client but we were risking that a little while we were getting some extra helping hands on board in terms of freelancers.
Market spending power is shifting. Most companies are going all in on Q4 especially our eCommerce client to squeeze the last out of the year, especially when most companies had a tough first 2 quarters in the market.
We’ve got new team members and are continuing to hire into the market but in a very non-traditional way.
Key Metrics:
Our momentum is still strong across all of our metrics, but in September we predicted a 14.12% growth but we only hit 8.18%. Growth is still growth, we’re very happy with the metrics, but growth at all costs is not something as a business we want to partake in. This is one of the biggest reasons startups can fail early, so I’m taking building the team, processes and goals very seriously and happily slowing down growth in order to facilitate that.
Business booked and retainers starting in November is accounting for an additional 10.12% growth over October which is a good starting place. There may be 1-2 more we close out before the end of the month. Not experiencing churn this month has also been an additional alleviation of pressure after the September churn of 13.55%. We covered this in September itself but also we’re very stable now coming out of October.
Here’s what our growth looks like so far with next month predicted both for MRR and ARR.
Here is what we can predict the business will look like in November of next year if we continue to hit 10% month over month growth. It puts us on a run rate to hit around €750k ARR by November.
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.
Last month I noted that I was not worried about churn as much moving through Q4 as business ramp up into a marketing heavy time of year between Halloween, Black Friday and Christmas. This is holding true which is great and we have sales calls continuing to press into the Q4 season. Usually I will stop taking these clients that need Q4 planning in Q3 but this year we have streamlined a lot more processes reducing the production time on the team so we can turn around Black Friday and Christmas campaigns faster.
Team & Expenditures:
Last month I noted the good news that our expenditure was down to about 60% of our total revenue. In October that remained stable as we began onboarding a few new faces to Lemon 7!
We’ve cracked a little bit of the nut on the hiring side and I am super excited about the process. I have spent vase majority of my October working on the hiring needs which over the last few months have been a key point in this email in terms of a problem I was endeavouring to solve. I did not want to hire again directly. So I have decided to go down a bit of a less traditional route and also just combine some of my ideas below.
Hiring from the market is really hard. Great people are often taken and work in tech or bigger agencies with more clout, but the best people are freelancers. The ones who know how to get sh*t done and want some autonomy to work for themselves. I was thinking so much about working with freelancers more that I had thought about the collective idea but had put it so far into the box of diversifying revenue - that it didn’t dawn on me that it was the best solution for my hiring problems despite being right in front of my face the entire time.
In October I got to work creating a system that would allow me to only work with the top and best freelancers out there. What I have done is put a really stringent application process in place and it’s invite only right now. Once approved, a freelancer gets added to our slack channel. Our slack channel then has each client broken out into different sections and freelancers can pick up tasks as they see them come into slack, get great work done and then it goes into approval with an internal marketer before shipping work back to the client for approval. The worry with hiring anyone is that the quality of the work drops. Freelancers rarely do bad work, so it is an automatic improvement on hiring, plus there’s the benefit of working to the amount of work you actually have.
I am an early stage business, like any startup I can’t guarantee hours unless I have a specific core business requirement (eg. I always need designers because ads need to be designed constantly etc.) But this allows me to work with the best across any industry to get really specific. I imagine in 6 months time my slack channel will be filled with some of the best industry freelancers in the world working together. I already have folks out of Prague, Amsterdam, Ireland and the UK being added. I’m really excited about this process.
Diversification of Revenue Streams:
Courses:
Last month I managed to get a lot done on the course side, but this month I have to slow it down a bit. I am going to push back my launch date from the 11th to slightly later in the month. Some things just went outside of my control the last few weeks. My transport broke down unexpectedly leaving me without wheels for a few weeks making it difficult to get to the studio to record etc. Sometimes life just happens and we have to work around it. This is one of those times. I still am tracking our goals though and we have about 350 on the waitlist now to kickoff with!
Sponsorship:
I finally have wrapped all sponsored posts. Last month I mentioned that I had closed one final offer after being focused on not doing anymore and it’s tough to say no! I have turned down a few thousand euro in potential revenue here, but I know I am doing the right thing long term to have that audience for myself and not growing other peoples businesses with it. It’s such a short term view to growth and I am eager to go beyond that. I think the only exception I may ever make is a perfectly aligned brand that is bigger than myself and very well respected in my industry.
The Collective:
Well I have changed my thoughts on this one! Now that I may just roll this into what Lemon7 is doing it’s already underway which is super exciting!
September Marketing Experiment Results:
LinkedIn Organic Launch
Experiment Reminder from last months email: We launched my new LinkedIn organic experiment. I have over 20 videos prepped and ready to launch on September 9th thanks to my amazing video editor Aoife McNamara. I did the 100 days straight on Instagram to grow my following to 146k+ but now I am lasering in on LinkedIn for the next few months of focus. The content needs to be a completely different process, pace and strategy which I’m looking forward to kicking off and sharing the learnings of down the line.
✅ This experiment lead to new business but LinkedIn since launched their portrait style feed the same as IG reels and TikTok so the experiment is going to be adjusted to align to the platform shift to determine performance.
Email Marketing Shift
Experiment Reminder from last months email: You’re reading experiment 2! I will keep you all posted about the feedback on this new newsletter approach as time goes on also.
😬 I had a little subscriber drop off again when I sent out the last email. This is not unusual for a total shift in gears in terms of content. In the same breath I had the highest open rate and engagement rate of any email I ever sent. Over 50% of my subscribers read the email. Also - I can see how many times someone re-opened the email. This spiked way up too - making me hope the information was valuable or interesting. You can see below the two drop offs from the last 2 emails.
Big change here: Everywhere where I collect emails that get added to this newsletter, I ensured to update the messaging to explain what the new newsletter is about, this helps better align the user with the experience they are going to get - so lets see if the dropoff declines further this time around because the first drop off was definitely sharper than the second.
New experiments:
For November and December we’re going to work on a B2B outside of the box campaign to provide overflow support for other agencies. It’s an idea that’s been knocking around in the back of my mind, but it’s not yet been solidified into a strategy. Because we can undercut most agencies on pricing, but often overdeliver in comparison on output (based on feedback from clients) we fit quite nicely into supporting agencies as well as clients. We’re still only in the ideation phase for this and likely won’t have a roll out until we move into Q1 because of November and December demand on advertising. We have to cater to clients first and ourselves second.
What I feel good about:
Social Media Growth:
I finally crossed 150k on Instagram and 30k on TikTok and 200k when I look across all channels (IG, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn and Newsletter) which is a really exciting milestone to have reached.
Hiring:
I also feel really good about the hiring solutions I am putting in place. I know I have discussed in my previous emails that I have had some bad experiences with hiring but all of those things that made me worry are actually completely mitigated with freelancers. I am really excited about pulling together what feels like a really close knit team under this model. It’s all about process, process, process.
New Website:
We wrapped up new branding with the world class branding expert Fabian Geyrhalter a few months ago. Finally this is in the works to come to life with a new website. It’s in the works right now on webflow and is due to go live probably in early December which I am super excited about.
What I am freaked out about:
While there’s a lot to feel good about, there are also some concerns on my mind. Last month I was worried about having to start to decline business because of hiring constraints, but this month what is top of mind for me is making sure that the Lemon7 experience in maintained as we roll out the process structure in the background. I want all of my clients to have a great experience. I have always been someone to try to go above and beyond and feel terrible when the expectations are not met. As a result, that rarely happens. It’s times like this though where you make changes to the machine behind the scenes where you’re more susceptible to errors. Monitoring that closely is the only way to mitigate those issues as much as possible. That’s also why we always make sure to work with people that I feel are “Top 1%”. We get CVs/Applications/Requests every single day and we only end up talking to less than 10% of people who come through and of those, even less are moved into the working environment. Marketing talent is a little bit of a needle in a haystack style of recruiting. There’s a huge amount of people out there who classify themselves as marketers, but very few actually are worth their salt.
Personal & Fun Highlights in October.
In October I finally got a chance to head over to the Netherlands to visit my brother living in Tilburg for the first time despite him living there for the last 2 years. My mother came along for the trip and we had some really nice family down time in what has to be one of the most relaxed countries in the world! Highly recommend for anyone who hasn’t been.
Every year I try to go back and rewatch this show on Netflix because it just makes me feel really inspired around thinking outside of the box when it comes to marketing and work. If you’re a marketer, product designer or founder this is one of those shows that is really interesting and gets your mind firing 101 ideas without it feeling like work. I would highly recommend it. I managed to get some time to watch it while I was travelling and I am always blown away by episode 2 where Neri Oxman goes through her work in bio-architecture. It’s phenomenal.
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.
Agency:
If you know anyone who works in an agency that does white label work I would love to speak with them if they are open to chatting with me on their approach to lead gen on that front while I am still toying around with that idea.
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 :)
October Sign Off:
Happy to answer any questions you might have. Replying to this email will send you straight to my inbox. If you have feedback on insights you’d like to see in this email - just let me know.
Thank you for all the support.
Jen