2024 in Review
I love the cycle of seasons, particularly the fresh new start of January. And I’m thrilled to be embarking on 2025 with new experiences and wisdom gleaned from 2024. Here’s a quick recap.
Highlights of the year
I got to work with some fantastic food and beverage brands, both established and well-known, and brand new startups. My client work continually fulfills me and gives me the kind of variety I crave in my work.
Attending the Southern C in January was a big highlight. I got to meet amazing women like the incredible Leah Melby Clinton, of InKind magazine, and Monica Farber, who graciously ran me around town to take fresh photos, even though I had pink eye at the time! (What are the chances that I'd get pink eye the one weekend I had professional photos booked and was attending an out of state networking event?!)
This year brought a bit of a reorg at my day job and I was able to step into a new role and take on massive learning curves amid big management and marketing attribution changes. I love learning more about channel strategy and budget management. The second half of the year didn't have a single boring day, and I like it that way!
Lowlights of the year
I devoted too much energy to one particular area of my work and neglected things like this: creating my own content, building my own brand, and keeping in touch with past clients. The place where I put most of my energy ended up draining me quite a bit, without giving much back. Life is always a balancing act, and this year I'll still have the same income mix, so I'll need to keep investing in multiple places, but in a way that makes long term career sense.
Several ideal prospects reached out to me for work, but the timing, logistics, or pricing just didn't work out. From a New England catering company, to a German cookie bakery, these clients were right up my alley. As much as I'd love to work with clients for free all the time, I can't do that, and I'm continually learning how to run a business, and not just have a time-consuming hobby.
Lessons learned
To stay creatively inspired, you have to feed your creativity with good inputs and plenty of practice time.
Certain things will take all the energy you have to give, and more. It’s up to you to guard your time.
I have the best clients ever, and want to find ways to serve even more of them next year.
Businessy books I read (or tried to read) in 2024
Nobody Cares About Your Career by Erika Ayers Baden
I think I'm about halfway through the audiobook of this one. I have to take breaks because it gets a little intense, but I love the no-nonsense approach in this book. It's honestly a lot of common sense, but it helps to hear it straight. (Heads up there’s a lot of language in this book.)
Sales Pitch by April Dunford
April Dunford is brilliant and I love everything she says. My biggest takeaway from this book is something good salespeople and marketers have known forever: people don't want to be sold to, but they do want help buying. So make buying easy for them.
Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
Sorry, couldn't get into this one. His approach felt too idealistic and out of touch with most collaborative workplaces today. It seemed mainly geared toward university research professors which felt a bit odd and narrow.
Sweet Success by Candace Nelson
A fun, lighthearted business memoir that does include some useful wisdom along the way.
Sam Walton by John Huey and Sam Walton
Really interesting, if a bit rosy, story of Wal-Mart, which transformed how Americans shop in so many ways, both positive (spurring on small towns with a wide variety of merchandise at affordable prices) and, in my opinion, negatively (training consumers to shop by price, and paving the way for larger and larger corporations to take over the low-price game, forcing smaller manufacturers and higher quality merchandise out of the market).
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
Fascinating story but didn't really give me any personal inspiration.
If you have a book recommendation for 2025, I’d love to hear it! Send me know at anna@annakbradshaw.com