2023 in Review

We moved again, got married, and visited Finland for the first time. I took my online business offline and traveled through four different countries to meet my favorite internet people in real life. At least two years’ worth of life happened in 2023, and thankfully most of it was good.

I’m sharing all the details on what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what I’m looking forward to in 2024.



What went well — Personal

1. We moved to Switzerland.

When Sean and I arrived in South Korea in January 2022, the plan was to stay for at least three to four years.

I should have known better. Partly because the first time I moved to a new country (with my parents and sister), we went to Sri Lanka thinking we’d stay for three years. We then proceeded to put down roots and lived there for the following 10 years and then some.

So I knew that plans almost always change. It almost makes perfect sense that we left Seoul after only a year and a half.

In all seriousness — even though this move to Switzerland meant cutting our time in South Korea short, we chose it because it meant living the bigger life, as the author Gretchen Rubin puts it. For us, this means creating a life that brings us closer to our joint vision board.

  • We live in a house with a yard, surrounded by postcard-perfect mountains and lakes (many just a short drive away).

  • Mari, our dog, spends her outdoor time mostly off-leash. Exploring hiking trails and zooming across open fields are now part of our daily routine.

  • We live a slower-paced life, mostly because the people and businesses around us work fewer hours and take holidays and breaks seriously. Although we still miss some of the conveniences we’ve grown used to (like affordable ride shares and next-day grocery deliveries), we’re happier and less stressed.

  • We never worry about the air quality outside. #IFKYK

  • I can cycle to anywhere I need to go on a day-to-day basis.

  • I feel safe and comfortable going about my day, even as an obvious outsider in our most white, Swiss-German-speaking city.

  • We can easily travel to other countries in Europe and beyond, often without having to get on a flight. (Plus, there are non-stop flights between Zurich and Seoul.)

You know what? This time, we plan on staying for more than just a couple of years.

Selfie of Sean, Mari, and Danbee sitting in a grassy field by Lake Rot on a sunny day.

Family selfie with Mari and Sean, enjoying the sun in a grassy field by Lake Rot

Sean and me with my parents and sister during their visit to Lucerne, with the Kappelbrücke and Old Town in the background

2. We got married!

It was truly the wedding weekend of our dreams.

Sean and I had always talked about having a tiny, intimate wedding, and 26 of our closest friends and family (including babies and children) joined us in Switzerland. We had a civil ceremony at the historical Lucerne Town Hall, and our siblings were witnesses.

Our outfits — including Mari’s — were perfect and didn’t cost a fortune. Mine was a modern take on the traditional hanbok. For gifts, we prepared gorgeous, handmade Korean fortune pouches from a small South Korean design house called J Home. We also landed the best photographer we could have asked for — Becky Wright fit right in with our friends and family and created photos we’ll treasure forever. (Many of our guests wanted to know, “How does she make everyone look so attractive?”)

One of our favorite photos by the super talented Becky Wright

Fortune pouches for holding our heartfelt gratitude for our guests + our wishes for peace, comfort, and wellbeing in all of their lives (photo from the J Home online shop).

These round decorative knots symbolize fate and destiny (photo from the J Home online shop).

After the ceremony, we had a relaxed brunch at one of our favorite waterfront restaurants in Old Town Lucerne, then went on a mini road trip through some of Switzerland’s most breathtaking landscapes — stunning, even in the October rain.

The skies magically cleared for pre-dinner drinks at Sean’s parents’ house. They live in a beautiful village in the French-speaking Swiss countryside. It’s where Sean and I (and now, also Mari) spend every Christmas, and it was so special to get to share it with our guests.

The wedding dinner was a full-course meal of local ingredients at the village hotel. In the morning, we got everyone back to Sean’s parents’ for a breakfast feast with baked goods from the local bakery.

Over the weekend, we visited a chocolate factory, toured the medieval town of Gruyères (where we also indulged in a fondue dinner), and took a cog train up from Montreux to Rochers de Naye, a spectacular part of the Swiss Alps overlooking Lake Geneva.

Our friends and family are scattered across the world — our guests came from Switzerland, South Korea, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands, the US, and the UK. It made my heart feel so full to have everyone gathered together in one place at the same time, and I also loved getting to be the main character for the day.

All photos below are by the wonderful Becky Wright.

3. We explored Lahti and Helsinki

Sean and his dad both competed in the Ironman 70.3 Championship race in Lahti, Finland. So naturally, we turned it into a family vacation.

This was our first time in Finland, and it was such a fun and relaxing trip. We ate multiple cinnamon rolls (korvapuusti) and butter buns (voisilmäpulla) every day, swam in cold, clear lakes, and explored what could only be described as enchanted forests.

Sean and I also got some time by ourselves in Helsinki, and we thoroughly enjoyed our day at the Fortress of Suomenlinna.

Another highlight? We got to meet Jenna Hellberg in person! Jenna is a Finnish podcast strategist based in San Jose, California. We met early in my online business journey — I knew she was special because after a single Zoom call, I felt like we were already friends.

After multiple attempts over many months, we finally managed to meet up in Helsinki. She introduced us to Löyly, a sauna and restaurant by the Baltic Sea, and I think it’s a testament to our friendship that it didn’t feel weird that the first time we met IRL, we were in bikinis heading into the sauna.

Post-race family selfie with Sean and his parents

Bunkers at Suomenlinaa Fortress covered in all shades of summery green

Me and Sean on the ferry from Suomenlinna back to the Kauppatori Market Square at sunset

The stunning Helsinki Cathedral

The Design Museum, where I learned so much about Finnish design icons (like the Fiskars orange-handled scissors)

Me and Jenna at Löyly

Sean and Jenna taking a cold plunge in the sea in between hot sauna sessions

4. I got really good at Pilates.

I started doing Pilates about ten years ago, but only when I moved to Seoul and found the best instructor at a nearby studio did I develop a regular practice. For 16 months, I attended a private class twice a week (almost) every week.

Here’s what I learned from this experience:

  1. I thrive on predictable routines and just the right amount of external accountability from the right people. 

  2. Maintaining a regular practice doesn’t mean never taking breaks, it means bouncing back into my routine after each break.

  3. I can prevent flare-ups of backaches and knee pain by paying attention to my posture throughout the day.

  4. The power of convenience cannot be underestimated when it comes to protecting my routines. My studio was literally next door to our apartment building (2 minutes door-to-door), and this extreme level of convenience made it impossible for me to justify skipping a class (unless I was ill, of course).

  5. It takes time and repetition to internalize new information. There were exercises that just “clicked” one day, and I couldn’t believe I’d been struggling to execute them with the correct form for months.

  6. A robot vacuum cleaner that automatically starts on a schedule is more effective at getting me out the door than an alarm on my phone.

Because I trained for so long with a wonderful instructor, I feel confident about continuing my Pilates workouts on my own at home, which has been a blessing during this transitional period in my life.

5. I got LASEK eye surgery

This was hands-down the best investment I made in 2023. Almost a year on, I’m still amazed at how life-changing it’s been.

I started wearing glasses when I was 8 or 9 years old. I remember looking out the window from my backseat on the car ride home after picking up my first-ever pair of glasses. I realized that I could see the individual leaves on the trees we were passing by. For ages, I had thought seeing them as blurry green blobs was completely normal. My mom was understandably horrified.

I switched to contact lenses in middle school when — like most other teenagers — I became more self-conscious about my appearance. I wore contacts almost every single day for 18 years.

The surgery was a little scary, but thankfully, I found a great clinic in Seoul where they provided a lot of helpful information, both before and after the procedure. (If it’s good enough for Cho Gue-sung, the South Korean footballer, it’s good enough for me.)

The first three days of recovery were brutal. I hid in the bedroom with makeshift blackout curtains, using up multiple boxes of facial tissues because my eyes would not stop tearing up. By the second day, I couldn’t see properly because my eyes had gotten so puffy from all the involuntary crying.

But it eventually got better, and while lying in bed, I listened to the entire audiobook of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It was probably my favorite “read” of 2023.

I love my post-LASEK life. My eyes are never dry. When I get up to pee in the middle of the night, I can see the time on the bedside alarm clock. When I wake up in the morning, I can see 100% clearly right away. When I go hiking, skiing, or open-water swimming, I no longer pack emergency contact lenses. After a shower, I don’t debate whether to keep the contacts I’m wearing or put on new ones. On flights, I don’t take my contacts out an hour after takeoff because my eyes are so dry. I don’t fish around my bag looking for my glasses. It’s fucking awesome.

If you, like my entire immediate family, have always had perfect vision and have no idea what I’m talking about, feel free to not tell me. Thank you.


What went well — Business

1. I met my internet people IRL

In June, I spent three weeks in Newcastle, Edinburgh, Paris, and Amsterdam, meeting some of my favorite internet people in real life and experiencing new (to me) parts of the world.

Online business can feel unreal sometimes. Most people you spend hours and hours talking to — you’ll never meet in person. It can almost seem like they exist only on Instagram or Zoom.

I decided that wasn’t good enough for me. After all, I started my business because I wanted to choose the people I surround myself with. I’d put a lot of effort into finding and getting to know some amazing human beings, and it was time to meet them in person.

My tour started in Newcastle, at Atomicon. This is an event for small business owners organized by Andrew and Pete, who in 2019 gave me some of the best business advice I’ve ever gotten. There, I spent time with so many wonderful folks, many of whom I recognized from Facebook groups I’ve been in for years. I’ll I’ll never forget immediately becoming fast friends with Mai-kee Tsang (a younger me would have avoided her to prevent being stereotyped as someone who only hangs out with other East Asians) and feeling a little starstruck talking to Lizzy Goddard and Chris Do, founder and CEO of The Futur.

Mai-kee and I were each other’s anchors at the conference and kept each other feeling grounded even in the hectic chaos that a conference of almost 1,000 people can create.

Lizzy has had an outsized impact on how I think about how I make money online. It was unreal to meet her in person!

I finally got to meet Andrew and Pete, nearly 4 years since they helped me get my business started on the right foot!

Spending a whole day with Ruth felt like such a normal thing to do, even though we’d only ever talked online.

Then I spent a surreal day with Ruth Ridgeway at the Middleton Lodge Estate, which is probably what you’d see a photo of if you looked up “idyllic English gardens that feel like a fantasy.” Our agenda consisted of spa treatments (I definitely fell asleep during my massage, it was so relaxing), an outdoor lunch, and a wander through the gorgeous grounds. I couldn’t believe this was our first time meeting in person. With Ruth, the conversation was so easy yet profound. After I hugged her goodbye and sat down to wait for my (wildly delayed) train to Edinburgh, I felt inspired to dream bigger about what I wanted in life, beyond the daily to-do lists.

Edinburgh was dreamy. I walked all over the city, visiting museums, wandering through parks and along the river, and finding beer spots with the best views. I had coffee with Sophy Dale, a book coach based in Edinburgh, who made me realize I wanted to write a book someday and showed me the way to the Water of Leith Walkway. I also met Rachel Mess, a web designer and accessibility expert, who came down from Glasgow to spend the day with me. We had such a fun day filled with great food, slow-paced sightseeing, and day drinking.

Picture book views at Dean Village, one of the highlights along the Water of Leith Walkway

The touristy but beautiful Victory Street

After my last fish and chips for a while, I hopped over to Paris and could not believe how beautiful this city was. I took far more photos and videos than I could ever edit. The street corner bistros. The balconies and facades. The green boulevards. And yes — the Eiffel Tower, which I genuinely found impressive and awe-inspiring. My hotel room even had a small balcony where I could sit at a proper table and drink champagne with a view of the Eiffel Tower. Especially after a lifetime of being told how rude and mean Parisiens were, I was not prepared for the kindness and friendliness that I encountered during my admittedly short stay. I’ve always low-key judged people (usually Americans) who are obsessed with Paris and was taken aback by how much I loved it. 

The fact that I happened to be in town for the annual Fête de la Musique was a happy coincidence. It was such a treat to walk through the city and find DJs, dancers, and other performers at every corner — that’s saying a lot coming from someone who generally avoids large crowds and loud noises.

On my last day, I met Michelle Pontvert for lunch at (what felt to this tourist like) a very French bistro. Michelle is a former mentorship client and now friend. Having gotten to know each other so well over the years, it was so special to finally spend some time in person.

Golden hour shot of a gorgeous building in the 6th arrondissement

Another beautiful building, this time in the 15th arrondissement

At the Arc de Triomphe, a stranger offered to take this photo of me and it turned out to be one of my favorites from the trip.

Michelle showed me some of the fanciest spots in the city, including the Galeries Lafayette.

I rounded off my tour with a week in Amsterdam with one of my oldest friends. Annelie Wambeek is an intercultural trainer. Because we both work in the intersection of business and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and we’ve been friends since we were 10 years old, we always have lots to discuss late into the night. During my visit, we also spent a few days in Maastricht (and a couple of hours in Liège).

Mariana Peña, an instructional designer who is a former client, mentor, and friend, joined us for a magical day of home-cooked Mexican food, Sri Lankan arrack cocktails, and conversations about race and identity. Mariana has had a profound impact on not just my business but also my understanding of who I am and why I think and feel the things I do — it was hard to believe she was standing right there, teaching me to make different kinds of salsa.

While in Amsterdam, I also met up with Marre Smit, founder of Smit Club and creative mentor for web designers, and Cheryl Porcelijn, a web designer. I had so much fun talking about life, business, and design, and felt so lucky to get to spend face-to-face time with these smart and talented women.

On my flight back to Seoul, I felt exhausted, but also incredibly fulfilled. Running a one-person online business doesn’t mean doing everything on my own. In fact, it involves working with so many other human beings. The thing about being human is that there’s a depth of connection that’s only truly possible to achieve when you’ve spent time in each other’s physical company. As much as I love my alone time, I also crave this kind of connection.

This trip was no doubt the best thing that happened in my business in 2023. It gave me renewed energy to focus on my goals, and I returned feeling inspired to dream bigger and more freely about the life I want to create.

This was also my first work trip as a business owner (thanks, covid) and I felt pretty boss flying business class, staying at comfortable hotels, and indulging in great food — all paid for by my business!

Me and Annelie in Maastricht, with the Sint Servaasbrug (bridge) behind us. This was the most quality time together we’d had in many, many years and I’m so grateful.

Mariana and me at Annelie’s! Mariana has had a profound impact on the way I show up online.

2. I created Globally Inclusive Websites.

When I first started speaking publicly about global inclusion and helping online business owners better support customers based in different countries, this work felt completely separate from my web design projects.

Creating my new course, Globally Inclusive Websites, made me feel like I’d finally found a way to bring together the global inclusion and web design halves of my business. Launching it and sharing it with 

It’s not an exaggeration to say that this course had been living in my head for years. It reflects how I think about universal design, cultural competency, and ethical business practices.

It’s all about how to create websites for:

  1. People who speak English as an additional language (How do you make your content easy to find and understand for people who speak English as an additional language?)

  2. People who hold different cultural identities (How do you reflect diverse identities and perspectives in your content while practicing cultural sensitivity (and avoiding cultural appropriation)?)

  3. People who live in different locations (How can you make it easier for your international audience to buy from you and work with you?)

Globally Inclusive Websites covers topics I wish every business owner understood about serving everyone with the same level of compassion, respect, and patience that they have for folks who come from familiar backgrounds.

Learn more about Globally Inclusive Websites here.

Globally Inclusive Websites

3. I grew my email list.

Growing my email list was my top priority for 2023, and I’m proud to report I smashed my goals in this area.

One of those goals was to participate in summits and bundles — and I contributed to seven different events. My favorites were:

  • Shannon Mattern’s Simply Profitable Designer Summit (which I’ll be returning to in 2024!)

  • Women of Web by WP Mavens (Emma Kate and Haley Brown)

  • Lizzy Goddard’s Low Ticket Live and Lizzy’s Christmas Party

After cleaning out my email list and removing cold subscribers, I recorded a 50% increase in the number of subscribers compared to the end of 2022.

A couple of noteworthy numbers:

  • On average, 85% of the people who signed up for my resources through summits and bundles were new to my email list.

  • I estimate that roughly 75-80% of my subscribers are web designers or interested in web design (based on their downloads and purchases).

Participating in these summits and bundles has been one of the most fun and easiest ways to grow my business and I’ll definitely continue doing this in 2024. I love it because:

  1. I get to work with wonderful and talented people who are doing amazing things online and off, and teach me that there are so many different ways to run a successful business.

  2. It lets me share some of my best ideas about running a globally inclusive online business with people who want to learn from me.

  3. Creating presentations that are informative, entertaining, and thought-provoking leaves me feeling deeply fulfilled.

  4. This is how I meet other online business owners who also love to experiment and share what they learn without gatekeeping or keeping their knowledge secret.

  5. It starts one-on-one conversations with web designers who want to make more money doing what they love, without overworking or hiding who they are — aka my people!

Number of email subscribers — Look at that 50% jump from 2022 to 2023!

4. I sold more courses than services.

This year, I finally completed my pivot from being a web designer to a web design mentor.

Although I still love making websites and will happily work with good-fit clients on a case-by-case basis, I stopped actively selling web design projects. I also limited my service-based offerings to private mentorship for web designers and short-term speaking and consulting engagements for online businesses.

My main business today is selling courses and other digital resources that help web designers build profitable businesses.

Making this (huge!) change brings me closer to building a business that doesn’t require more hours to earn more dollars. I want my business to support a life of exploring new places, spending time with friends and family, and making art. That means earning enough to never worry about money and also having enough time to do fun things out of the office.

Here’s a graph showing the different ways I made money in 2023 (hover over the segments to see the percentage figures):

Where my revenue came from in 2023

For comparison, here’s the same graph for 2022, which I shared in my 2022 in Review:

Where my revenue came from in 2022

5. I moved countries without worrying about how to make a living.

As someone who likes to move often, it’s always been important to me to be able to run my business from anywhere in the world.

Even though 2023 brought far too much chaos for me to be able to run my business full-time (more on that in the next section), I’m grateful that I’ve been able to continue working without changing where my business is incorporated, or how I pay myself, sell my offers, or support my customers.

One of the reasons Sean and I were able to make the life-changing decision to move to Switzerland so quickly and easily was because my career was not one of the considerations. Only a few years ago, when I was still at my day job, had Sean been offered a big promotion that involved an international move, we’d have had to ask ourselves:

  • Do we want to move?

  • Could I ask my employer for a transfer to not just the same country, but also the same city?

  • How would that affect my career progression and the projects/clients I wanted to work on?

  • Would I quit and look for a new job – in a part of the world where I don't speak the official language or have professional connections?

  • Could we coordinate ourselves and move together, at the same time?

  • Would we consider doing long distance? (The only definite no, given that we already did this twice for multiple years at the start of our relationship.)

Thankfully, my business allows us to ask only the first question and skip the rest. We knew that I could run my business from anywhere — because that’s the way I built it.


What didn’t go so well

1. I had less time to work on my business

There were a lot of “life” projects that took up my workweek this year, including:

  • Applying a Swiss resident visa

  • Preparing Mari for our move to Switzerland (if you’re looking for a gap in the relocation/pet market — definitely look into supporting dog parents with international moves!)

  • Never-ending doctor’s appointments

  • Trips to five different countries

  • Packing up our apartment in South Korea

  • Planning and hosting a wedding

  • Renovating and decorating an unfurnished house

  • Unpacking and organizing all our belongings

  • The usual “moving to a new country” work like sorting out health insurance, finding healthcare providers and medical specialists, getting new phone numbers, opening bank accounts, applying for new credit cards, etc.

I’ve been saying I feel like I lived two years’ worth of life in 2023, and this is why. It was a lot by any measure.

Through consistent time tracking over the last couple of years, I’ve learned that I feel best when I get about 5 hours of deep work done in a day. I keep a 5-day workweek, so this works out to 25 hours of focused work time each week.

In comparison, I logged an average of 13 hours of focused work per week in 2023 — so I was in effect working at 50% of my ideal work capacity.

I’m generally happy with the way I prioritized certain life projects over my business. I want my business to support my life, not the other way around.

Of course, I’m frustrated that there wasn’t enough time to take action on many of the plans that I’d made for my business — but because I’d created a slower work year on purpose, I’m feeling good about how things panned out.

Pre-takeoff selfie on our Seoul-Frankfurt flight. Mari and her crate were “too heavy” for the Zurich Airport, so we flew to Germany and drove the 400 km (250 mi) to Switzerland.

We are so incredibly proud of the way Mari handled her first ever flight. Thankfully, all our work paid off and everything, from check-in to customs, went smoothly (more or less).

Here’s the advice I recently gave another online business owner who was preparing to move countries, based on my experience:

  1. Get clear on your minimum viable income. If you don’t know how much money you have to make in order to cover your basic living expenses, you’re more likely to stress about not making enough. It’s hard to do a good job on anything when you’re under that kind of pressure.

  2. Choose one offer to sell. Make this decision based on your minimum viable income and the fact that you’ll probably have less time and energy to work on your business. 

  3. Choose one main way of promoting the one thing you want to sell. Look at what’s worked for you in the past, and look for ways to do more of that on repeat.

  4. Let the rest go. Just for this season of your life — plan to not work on anything that’s not related to promoting, selling, or delivering your one offer.

  5. Keep a list of lower-priority projects. If and when you find yourself with more time than you need to sell your one offer, you’ll be able to make the most of that time if you can quickly decide what you want to work on.

If you’re going through something big in your life and need to reduce your work hours while still earning enough money, I’d be happy to help. Consider booking a Voxer Hour — you can tell me about your specific situation and we can come up with an action plan together.

2. I made less money (again)

This is not a big surprise given that I didn’t get as many work hours as usual and my business wasn’t set up to make money without me actively selling.

I’m not in any existential danger here — I was still able to pay myself a decent amount. (If working fewer hours meant having to worry about my survival or even comfort, I’d have made very different decisions.)

Also, my partner is literally the biggest supporter of my business. He makes me feel secure about the decisions I’ve made in and for my business, and I’m grateful.

At the same time, for most of my adult life I was taught that each year you must make more money than the previous year — that the only acceptable business result was more revenue, falling employee engagement and customer satisfaction be damned.

This has been one of the hardest lessons to unlearn and I’m still working on it, which is why it’s on this list of what didn’t go so well. If I’m being 100% honest, making less money (even if only temporarily) feels like a bad thing.

3. I deprioritized creating evergreen content

When I revisited my original 2023 plans in April-May, I knew some things would have to go because of my limited capacity — and creating evergreen content (like blog posts and YouTube videos) was sadly one of those things.

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to publish written and video content that’s more timeless, easier to find (than old social media posts, for example), and strategically designed to sell my courses and digital products. Unfortunately, 2023 wasn’t the year to make progress in this area.

On a happier note, my YouTube channel grew by almost 40% even though I only published two videos the entire year.

4. I didn’t get enough sleep

According to my Oura 2023 review, I got an average of 6 hours 47 minutes of sleep a night. I know that to feel and perform at my best, I need at least an hour more.

I hate feeling too tired to move or having to rely on multiple coffees just to stop yawning all day. I also know that one of the best things I can do for my health (and reduce the amount of time I spent at doctor’s appointments) is to get enough sleep.

On days when I wake up after more than 8 hours of sleep (not just of lying in bed), I am always amazed at how happy, energetic, and optimistic I feel — I love that feeling and I can’t get enough of it.

Part of the challenge in 2023 was experimenting with later bed times but feeling like I still had to wake up by 7 am most days. If I slept in, I felt like I didn’t have enough hours in the day to do everything I wanted to do (including things for fun and relaxation). Also, Mari would come and whine to be taken outside for her morning toilet break. 

I think the answer here is to go to bed an hour earlier.


What I’m looking forward to in 2024

1. Helping more web designers grow with Fast Track

Fast Track is my course for web designers about creating a solid, reliable process that they can follow every time they build a new website for a client.

Creating websites is easy — it’s working with clients (even the best ones) that’s the most challenging when building a web design business. If you want to earn a full-time income as a freelance web designer, fine-tuning your process is key.

I was able to grow my web design business to six figures (of profit) in less than 3 years because of my client process. The practical strategies and step-by-step methods that my customers get inside Fast Track are based on this experience — and on my 10 years of running high-profile client projects as a project manager and a tech consultant at multinational corporations.

I created this course to give people the fast track to streamlining their client processes and systems — so it includes all the tools for taking action, like my own runbook (i.e. detailed how-to guide for selling and delivering client websites), email swipes, templates, checklists, tech recommendations, and more. 

After implementing what they learned inside Fast Track, web designers have become trusted advisors and partners for their clients and found it easier to keep getting new clients without stressing.

Fast Track can change everything for someone who wants to build a profitable web design business that feels fun and easy to run, and I want to focus on sharing this course with more people.

If you’re curious about Fast Track, you can learn more here.

Fast Track

2. Working 1-on-1 with mentorship clients

My private mentorship program is one of my favorite ways to work with web designers, but I had to hit pause on it in because of my limited capacity and irregular schedule. I’m looking forward to keeping a more predictable work schedule in 2024, so I’m bringing it back!

Every one of my clients comes from a different background, has a unique vision for their dream life, and wants different things from their business. I love getting to know each person and their specific situation, and helping them figure out what to do so they can grow their business and make good money their way.

After trying both private and group formats, I’ve decided to focus on my private mentorship program this year. I now have the capacity to give individual clients more time and attention, and previous clients have shared that the 1-on-1 time is what’s most important for them.

Learn more about my mentorship program here.

3. Meeting online business owners IRL

Spending time with other business owners in person filled me with so much energy and inspiration in 2023 — I want more of this.

Now that I’m in Europe, I’m also geographically closer to many of my business friends and clients. It also means that there are more in-person events for small business owners within an easy travel distance. If you’ve got recommendations for conferences, retreats, and meetups, please send them my way! Email me or send me a DM on Instagram.

I’d also love to organize my own casual get-together here in Switzerland. It’ll be so much fun to meet in person, chat about the parts of running an online business that no one else understands, and just get to know each other over good food at a beautiful location.

4. Learning to speak German

We live in Lucerne, where the main language is Swiss German. Swiss German is a dialect that’s distinct from High German (the standard German spoken in Germany).

While I am learning simple Swiss German phrases that I can use in everyday life, I’m taking the general advice that I’ve gotten from many Swiss people and formally studying standard German.

Virtually every person I’ve interacted with so far in Switzerland has spoken some English, and I could probably get away without learning German. But having lived in seven different countries (only one of which uses English as an official language), I know that my quality of life would improve significantly if I could speak German fluently.

Plus, I find learning new languages fun and intellectually satisfying. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been learning a new language — starting with English. Since then, I’ve invested quite seriously in French, Swedish, Mandarin, and Bahasa Indonesia. I also love to learn new words and phrases in the local language whenever I travel, and tend to absorb bits and pieces of my friends’ languages.

According to the US Foreign Service Institute, German falls into Category 2 of foreign languages for native English speakers, which means on average, students need 900 class hours to become proficient in that language (36 weeks if you manage their standard of 25 hours of class hours per week).

I’m not a native English speaker, and my mother tongue (Korean) is a Category 4 language in this system, so I’m not entirely sure how well this applies to my situation — but by the end of the year, I’d like to be able to speak more German than English in my day-to-day life.


Want to read my 2022 review?

This is my second time writing a year-in-review post. Here’s the first one I put together, for 2022.

Also — if you have any questions or comments about things I’ve covered here, use the chat in the bottom right corner of the page or send me a DM on Instagram.

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