2022 in Review
We moved countries, adopted a puppy, and finally got to travel again. For a while, I was worried that my business would take a hit because I didn’t put in as many hours as in the previous two years, but everything worked out okay (even though I made less money).
Read on to find out what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what I’m looking forward to in 2023.
What went well
We moved to Seoul
Sean and I had always wanted to live in Seoul, so when he was offered an internal transfer within his company, we said yes. After months of planning (and a 6-week break in Switzerland) we arrived in South Korea in January 2022.
I was born in South Korea, but when I was 7 years old, my family and I moved to Sri Lanka, where I grew up. Since then, I had made a handful of trips back, but this was the first time I was returning for longer than a couple of months.
After a 10-day quarantine, we started working through the usual list of post-move projects:
Finding a place to live (this was extra challenging with record-high and still rising rental prices)
Moving into a new place and making it a home
Getting new government IDs (surprisingly complicated for me because I “should” have done this when I turned 17 but never did)
Getting new phone numbers (and making the switch without locking ourselves out of any accounts with two-factor authentication)
Setting up bank accounts and applying for new credit cards
Converting our foreign driving licenses to Korean driving licenses
Finding new doctors equipped to continue existing treatments
It almost took the entire year, but we now feel settled in our new home and couldn’t be happier.
Our living room — still a work in progress, but it feels like home!
Hyangwonjeong, a pavilion located within Gyeongbokgung Palace
Sean in Bukchon, where you can find beautifully preserved traditional houses
We spent more time with my parents and sister
Somehow, by the time Sean and I moved to South Korea, my parents and my sister were also all in the country, after almost three decades abroad.
We celebrated big traditional holidays like Lunar New Year and Chuseok, which we didn’t really get to do while living in foreign countries where school and work calendars didn’t account for them. We did small, everyday things together, like going for walks along the river where my sister and I used to play as little kids. We also saw a Cirque de Soleil show and visited the highest observation deck in the country for a nighttime view of Seoul from the 123rd floor.
I’m used to seeing my parents and my sister only once or twice a year, so the additional family time has been a welcome change. It’s also given Sean a chance to get to know my family better, which feels like a gift. This is what we’d hoped for when we decided to move to Seoul, and I’m grateful for how things have worked out.
My dad, sister, and mom with me and Sean at Cirque du Soleil
We spent more time outdoors
Sean and I absolutely loved experiencing the four seasons again (after many years in densely built-up, tropical cities) and spending more time in nature.
Whether we were hiking, cycling, or just hanging out at pretty outdoor cafes, these everyday activities made me feel more connected to my home country, which was unexpected but deeply satisfying.
Me at Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon
Me and Sean during cherry blossom season
Me defying death at Bukhansan National Park
Me enjoying peak autumn foliage in Incheon
We unwound in New Zealand
After almost 3 years of canceled travel plans, we were thrilled when New Zealand’s borders reopened in May — we were in Wanaka by August.
New Zealand is another home for us, so we were able to relax and unwind without the “obligation” of seeing the sights or experiencing lots of new things.
We focused on getting great sleep, taking our time with home-cooked meals, and going on local hikes. We did set time aside for a day of skiing and another day of vineyard touring, and it was the perfect amount of excitement and activity.
Me and Sean on the Rocky Mountain trail in Wanaka, New Zealand
We met up with my childhood friends
Sometimes, plans that normally would have taken months to coordinate just kind of come together within a couple of days. This reunion trip with my three bestest friends (we’re all the same age and have been close since we were nine years old) was one of those times.
After a successful Ironman 70.3 Championship race in Utah, Sean and I flew to Washington State, where my best friend lives with her husband, baby, and bernedoodle. When we arrived, the other two were already there (having traveled from Sri Lanka and the Netherlands) and we spent an unforgettable few days together. It felt like one big sleepover party — much needed after years of covid-related travel restrictions.
Me and my childhood friends soaking in the wet Pacific Northwest autumn
We adopted Mari
If you’ve read my email newsletters or seen my Instagram stories recently, you’ll know that Sean and I welcomed the sweetest little puppy into our lives this year.
Mari is a black border collie and golden retriever mix, and she was three months old when we got her. After a couple of terrible experiences at different dog shelters, we found her at the third rescue we visited. Based on the photos on their website, we went hoping to adopt her sister. But when we arrived, Mari came and sat with us the whole time, looking into our eyes and wagging her little tail. She chose us!
Mari showing us her best “sit”, just a few days after we got her
Me walking Mari wearing an old, wrinkled t-shirt #puppymomlife
We decided to keep her shelter name, which comes from an old Korean word for head or mountaintop. As a name, Mari means leader, the greatest, the best, supreme.
I don’t know how to describe the way she makes me feel, other than that my heart feels full when I’m with her. She gives me a happiness boost every single day, and it’s been such a joy watching her as she figures out how to swim, learns to play nice with other dogs, and discovers how much fun it is to run around in the snow.
Creating a great life for her naturally means living my life to the fullest — playing outdoors and moving my body, exploring different parts of Seoul and beyond, and taking lots of cuddle breaks throughout the workday.
Puppy parenting has also prompted new conversations that Sean and I hadn’t had before, around parenting equity and division of labor at home. I call that relationship growth!
Sean and Mari at our favorite dog park in Chuncheon
I worked fewer hours without making (much) less money
My main goal this year was to make the same amount of money as I did last year without working as much.
2021 was the year I said yes to everything, especially when it came to speaking at summits, getting interviewed on podcasts, and teaching in other people’s programs. I had tons of fun working with many kind and talented business owners, but by the time December rolled around, I was exhausted. I decided that I wanted to work less going forward.
Things turned out pretty well. I made 90% of the money I made last year (measured as profit).
I worked way less. Instead of one half-day workday a week (I used to swim Monday mornings in 2021), I took two half-days (I now do Pilates on Monday and Thursday mornings). Instead of working at least a couple of weekends a month, I worked almost no weekends.
For the first time since I started my business, I took a real two-week break from work (while in New Zealand) — and then did it again (when we went to the US). I also gave myself random and spontaneous holidays to spend exploring the city and hanging out with my family.
As with everything else in my business, this was an experiment — and I’m pleased with the results!
I raised my prices and focused on high-ticket services
I was able to work fewer hours without sacrificing my income because I focused on providing done-for-you web design and copywriting services for a few select VIP clients, like Ran Segall (Flux Academy), Meredith Alvarado (Decolonizing Your Health), Sue Hassmiller and Lew Sandy (Sulu Coaching), Bob Easton (Easton Coaching), and Jess Feldt (Jess Feldt Coaching).
These folks are doing amazing work in their respective industries to break down barriers and provide equitable access to inclusive education and coaching. They each approached me with perfect timing, and I’m grateful I got to support them by doing work I love.
I wish I could say that focusing on high-ticket services was a clear, strategic decision that I boldly made early on in the year, but it wasn’t. It was actually the result of a series of smaller decisions, like:
Increasing my prices to reflect the higher quality of service I was bringing to my business (as a result of more experience, research, and training)
Offering one standardized web design and copywriting package for new clients and selling zero customized packages
Narrowing down my copywriting services to deliver either sales pages or launch emails and offering them only to businesses I was already familiar with
Rolling off existing clients who needed support outside of these services and referring them to other, better-fit service providers
Not inviting my mentorship clients to continue working with me at the end of our contracts, even though I thoroughly enjoyed our time together (my mentorship is currently a lower-cost offer)
Canceling or postponing collaboration projects that could have been super fun but required showing up for calls and investing time and energy I didn’t have
Promoting my digital products or courses only when it felt easy (which didn’t turn out to be very often)
Here’s a graph showing the different ways I made money in 2022 (hover over the segments to see the percentage figures):
49% of my revenue came from done-for-you web design and copywriting services this year. For reference, this number was 26% in 2021.
In hindsight, I can see I made the most of my limited time by doing more of what was working well in my business. I already had a well-established process for providing high-quality web design and copywriting services, thanks to the work I’d put in during my first two years in business — and I leaned on this heavily.
I brought my whole self to Fast Track to More Clients
I created Fast Track to More Clients (aka Fast Track) as a live beta program in 2020 to share how I sell and deliver web design projects. This year, I updated the course so that it’s even more helpful for web designers who want to build their own businesses.
For a long time, I felt like my business was split into two: the web design part and the global inclusion part. With Fast Track 2, these two halves really came together to reflect how I think about building a successful web design business while embracing all of your identities. I’m so proud that my signature course is now all about how to make money without compromising who you are.
I published more YouTube videos
After months of practice, creating YouTube videos finally started feeling easier, which meant I continued to publish new videos despite my limited work hours. This is one area of my business that just feels 100% fun. Putting new videos out into the world reminded me how much fun it is to get better at doing new things.
Find my YouTube channel here: youtube.com/@danbeeshin
I got help with my business
With fewer work hours available this year, I knew I needed more help. Even when I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for (in most cases, it was my first time investing in these kinds of services), my amazing village stepped up and helped me keep moving forward.
Megan Taylor gave my website copy a complete overhaul. Thanks to her, it now reflects how my business has grown, the work I want to do, and the people I want to do it with. Working with Megan was like hanging out with an old friend who knows me inside out and understands the strange and wonderful world of online business.
Yiseul Shin (my sister!) created fresh designs for my shop products and YouTube video thumbnails. She also took my rough notes and turned the Web Design Business Roadmap into a beautiful PDF, which has since been downloaded by over 400 people. It was such a relief to be able to hand over graphic design decisions to Yiseul, knowing that anything she created would be excellent and on-brand.
Zoe Linda prepared the perfect affiliate packet for my Fast Track 2 launch. Having had not-so-great experiences promoting other people’s work as an affiliate, it was important to me that my affiliates had all the information and swipe copy they needed, in a way that was easy to access, and with plenty of time leading up to the launch. Zoe made all of this possible.
Jenna Hellberg helped me work through the anxiety that came with working fewer hours. Thanks to her, Minimum Viable Effort became my guiding idea this year. With Jenna as my coach, it also became easier for me to keep my business “boring” and efficient and highly profitable — and satisfy my need for novelty outside of work.
Christine McAlister has guided me through decisions big and small since I went full-time with my business in February 2020, and she continued to be my rock this year. She’s the reason I was able to stay grounded in reality instead of catastrophizing when I struggled to find time for focused work as a new puppy mom (more on that later).
Sarah Moon co-created an SEO content strategy with me to attract people who want to build successful web design businesses while showing up as their whole selves. I’ve always admired how Sarah applies her wealth of knowledge about online marketing to amplify small, mission-driven businesses. Working with her got me all pumped up to make Fast Track an even bigger part of my business in 2023.
What didn’t go so well
I panicked and broke down after getting Mari
I was utterly unprepared for the work that goes into caring for a 3-month-old rescue puppy.
My Voxer messages to Christine, my business coach, quickly went from cute photos and videos of Mari to barely coherent voice notes filled with panic. I told her there was no way I could run a business with my new daily schedule, which felt like 10 hours of watching and training my puppy, 10 hours of cleaning up after her, and 4 hours of REM-less sleep.
My friend and coach Jenna helped me reframe the situation to recognize that this was a reflection of how I approach things that are important to me — like setting Mari up for a happy life as part of our family. I could have spent less time and energy on Mari, but I wanted to give her my best. This was helpful, but it took some time to sink in. While I was still in the thick of it, I judged myself harshly for not being better prepared, which affected my overall confidence — as a lifelong high achiever, and as a business owner.
Naturally, these challenges put stress on my relationship with Sean. With a traditional 9-5 job, he was out of the house most of the day, and we had to figure out a way to share the work fairly. I’m really proud of how we handled the difficult conversations — still difficult after eight years together — and I’m excited about our future together as a family.
Thankfully, Mari is the best dog, and things quickly improved. Especially once she was house-trained (no easy feat living at the top of a skyscraper) and I could sit down for some deep focused work without worrying about her having an accident, running a business felt doable again. We soon figured out a daily routine, and within a few weeks, I felt like I was in control of my life and work schedule again.
I let my mentorship clients go
For a few months after adopting Mari, I struggled to show up for calls with my mentorship clients. I continued to ensure that they each got all of my attention during our time together, but it became clear that I couldn’t keep it going.
Supporting other web designers as they start and grow their own businesses, and do it their way, without compromising who they are or what they stand for, is one of my favorite things to do in my business. But it takes a lot of emotional energy to keep up with what’s going on with someone else and help them figure out their next best step toward building a sustainable business that supports the life they want to live. I had to accept that in this season of my business, I couldn’t continue to serve my clients at the level that I wanted to — and that they deserved.
My mentorship program is also a lower-ticket offer, so I couldn’t justify prioritizing it over other areas of my business. Once my clients completed their contracts, I rolled them off instead of inviting them to re-sign with me.
I canceled plans to meet business friends
I’d originally planned to spend a few weeks in the US in July, visiting friends and attending in-person business events. The first and only time I attended an “offline” workshop for my business was back in 2019 (when my business was still a side hustle), and I had essentially built my entire business working with people I’d never met. So I was really looking forward to what would have been my first official business trip.
But after we got Mari in May… I think you can guess what happened.
I deprioritized audience growth
Compared to 2021, when I participated in so many summits, bundles, podcasts, webinars, and other collaborations that I honestly couldn’t even keep track of them all, this year was very quiet in terms of publicity and audience growth.
I did one podcast interview (Shannon Mattern’s Profitable Web Designer Podcast) and participated in one bundle (Lizzy Goddard’s Christmas Party). Both happened in December because I only started feeling like I had the space for things like this in November.
There was a real impact on my audience growth. Here’s what happened to my email list size and Instagram following.
At the end of 2021, I had 2.4 times as many email subscribers as I did at the end of 2020 (140% growth). In 2022, I grew my email list by a mere 14%.
In 2021, I almost doubled my Instagram following (90% growth). 2022 saw just a 7% growth.
These numbers are much more than vanity metrics in my business because most of my course and digital product sales come from people who read my emails and Instagram content.
The lack of audience growth affected all my promotions, so I sold fewer courses and digital products this year.
I made less money
My business makes more than enough money to support my lifestyle. But a lifetime of capitalist conditioning is hard to unlearn, and there’s a big part of me that feels like I should have made more this year than last year — or at the very least, matched what I made last year (I fell short by 10%).
Writing this review post has helped me realize this has been a fantastic year. I prioritized building a life that makes me happy over making as much money as possible. And at the same time, I want to be transparent about the fact that I still wish I had made more money.
What I’m looking forward to in 2023
Meeting business friends IRL
I’m craving quality time with people I’ve gotten to know online but have never met in real life. I have a summer trip planned with pitstops in the UK, France, and the Netherlands. There will be big conferences and small group retreats, and I cannot wait.
Podcast guesting and speaking at summits
I have so much fun whenever I get to chat about running inclusive web design businesses. In 2023, I’d like to spend more time having these conversations on podcasts and at summits. If there’s a podcast or summit you think I’d be a good fit for, please email me (hello@danbeeshin.com) or DM me on Instagram.
Selling with evergreen content
It’s time for me to take what I’ve learned from years of experimenting and create a more intentional, evergreen body of work that says, “This is my take.” Of course, I’ll continue to share day-to-day stories and updates via email and Instagram. But I also want to produce written and video content that is more timeless and easier to find — and, strategically designed to sell my courses and digital products.
Supporting mentorship clients
There’s nothing quite like getting personalized support from someone who understands who you are and where you want to take your business. That’s why I continue to work with Christine McAlister, who’s been my business coach since Day 1. That’s also why I’d like to provide that kind of support for other web designers who want to grow their businesses and make good money, their way. I missed this part of my business in the second half of 2022, and I’m excited to bring it back.
Questions?
I started writing this review post mostly for myself — as a way to document and reflect on the year — but I hope it’s been an interesting read for you, too.
I’m happy to answer any questions! Use the chat in the bottom right corner of the page to send me your questions.
