I've been working hard in my first year in business, late nights and weekends sometimes.

It's easy to not see much progress in the day-to-day, questioning when it'll pay off.

But this fall, I'm starting to feel the momentum, harvesting the fruit of my labor after what seems like many long, hard days in the metaphorical garden.

Some of this can be seen with my growth numbers for Q3.

At the end of each quarter, I like to look back and reflect, so let’s do it together!

My newsletter grew by 72% to 467 subscribers. This was due to a few factors:

(1) The Power Pause and Strictly Internal drove many new subscribers to my newsletter (I haven’t been able to find where I mentioned, so if you found me via that, forward me the email!)

(2) I hosted a virtual workshop and got 100 registrants! I added all of those emails to my email list (hello 👋 if you’re still following along)

Open rate and click-through-rate (CTR) also went up. This quarter I experimented with segmentation, creating one segment as a “marketing list”—anyone who’s RSVPed to an event, booked a call with me, or downloaded a free resource.

My hypothesis is that this audience may be more interested in what I offer, so I can send targeted emails directly to them about launches without sending extra emails to those who only expected a newsletter.

If I started from zero and designing your ideal lifestyle were my top posts, which combine personal storytelling + how-to type content, so I’ll continue to lean into that!

My followers grew by 20.8% to 3,474, impressions by 57%, and reach by 64%.

The reason? I started posting more frequently on LinkedIn. What used to be 1-2x per week grew to 3-4x per week, depending on capacity.

I find it comical that my best performing post was a post about eating at Dishoom. I guess I need to share more of my fave experiences?

The second best post was a more visual storytelling post where I described almost getting my phone stolen with the lesson of following your gut.

And this post sharing my solopreneur tech stack also got a lot of attention. Tagging brands and other solopreneurs to share helps!

My learning is that I need to keep consistently posting content and experiment more with tagging people/brands to boost engagement.

Instagram hasn’t been my primary focus, but I’ve been doing more repurposing of content from my newsletter to Instagram.

This quarter I’ve also been conquering my fear: talking directly to camera! 📸 I feel exposed, and I still find myself re-recording multiple times, but I know I’ll get more comfortable eventually.

Finally, I’ve been keeping my eyes open more for opportunities to partner with brands (free for now) and made a video that Freelancing Females featured on their page, which got 9K views! I’m also collaborating with Kindred on some content soon 👀

In Q4, my main priorities are consistent content creation, building the Just Start cohort, and creating a new website for my event/retreat services.

I’m also going to use Q4 to do some dreaming and planning for 2026! How is the year almost over already??

My theoretical numbers I made up of the beginning of the year will most likely not be met, but I’ve build a muscle of posting more consistently and that’s what matters.

P.S. I’m looking for quotes to feature on my “subscribe” page for this newsletter. If you’ve enjoyed the content and want to support, please email me back with a quote, your first name and preferred title! ❤

I went on an all out sprint for the last few weeks, but the end is near!

This week I’m onsite at two retreats (and there’s another two in Austin I helped coordinate), so it’s a busy time!

But the craziest thing happened on Friday. I found out I won a fully sponsored spot to the Beat Burnout retreat at Canyon Ranch Lenox!

I was choosing between trying to find more work in November and December or rest and I think this was a sign that rest is what I need and deserve right now 🙂