2023 Growth Waves Wrapped

Hi there👋,

As 2023 comes to a close, you may be looking back on the last year and reflecting on your successes. Make sure to give yourself a pat on the back for everything you have achieved.

This newsletter is a reminder to take the time to appreciate your challenges too.

Rather than shying away from discussing failures, acknowledge them and think about how you can build on them in 2024.

I wanted to extend my heartfelt thanks to all of you who have subscribed to the Growth Waves newsletter and reflect on the past year…

As well as sharing some of my top resources to help you on your growth journeys, as a thank you for your support.

Celebrating success

I often skip my successes, eager to look at what I didn’t achieve yet. The same happens with growth, we get caught up on the next target without celebrating the last.

So I try to take some time to make a list every year and it always ends up longer then I expected. Here’s this years:

• Finally accepting I couldn’t and shouldn't try and do it all on my own, and hiring the incredible Lola Hylander

• Helping with advisory and consulting a total of 17 brands

• Acting as interim Head of Growth at Whole Supp and growing monthly revenue over 9x with the team since starting in May

• Launching the Women in Experimentation speaker list and community (reply to this email to get added)

• Launched my own courses - Message-Market Fit Crash Course, Full Message-Market Fit Programme, Growth Experiment Tracking, and Growth Onboarding (the last one together with the incredible Rosie Hoggmasacall)

• Wrote 13 medium articles, 50+ newsletters, 80+ Linkedin posts and was published for the first time by Entrepreneur’s Handbook, Bootcamp, and UX Collective

• Spoke at the Growth Marketing Summit (Frankfurt), How to Web (Romania), and Experimentation Elite (London)

• Finished my first Olympic distance triathlon, 100km+ bike ride, and Half Ironman

But, it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t also share my challenges

That being said, there were also bumps along the way:

• Struggled with promoting my own courses as B2B business vs D2C

• Newsletter didn’t grow as much as I’d hoped with it now being at 2,000 when that was my goal for last year

• Same goes for my Linkedin, around 14k to 18.2k

• Taking on far much more than I can chew at times and ending up sick as a result

• Turning 30 (mentally challenging to process)

• Not starting my second book like I’d hoped

• Tendonitis twice when training for a second marathon

• And the latest, sadly, a family situation

Explicitly acknowledging where things didn’t quite go right lays the foundations for planning my 2024 goals.

So here is what I have planned:

1. Switching to a 4-day week with Friday optional to give me more time for family and myself

2. More focus on growing Growth Waves as a brand that helps D2C brands with the messy reality of growing a startup

3. Saying no to more, staying focused on fewer clients and projects

4. Giving my all to help with 4 brands I work with

5. Once I have room in a few months, take on some more sustainable startups

6. Much more free content: through my newsletter, Medium and Linkedin (and a new collection of content - read on to learn more…)

7. The first Women in Experimentation Online Summit

8. A half ironman in under 6 hours

9. Maybe book 2 shall be started…

And your new year’s gift

As hinted at, in January 2024, I’m excited to announce the release of:

My Ultimate D2C Growth Swipe File…

After 9 years in growth, 200+ brands, 850+ hours of writing.

This 1 free, constantly growing swipe file will cover everything I know for D2C brands.

Search your challenge in it, find relevant resources.

And the good news is, it’s exclusive to my newsletter subscribers as a thank you for your support.

Here are some top pieces of content and recommendations it will feature that I just couldn’t wait to share with you:

• How to solve retention with loops - Article

• The secret guide to product growth - Podcast episode

• The power in personalisation - Book

• Mailcharts - preview competitor emails - Tool

Hopefully, those will keep you going in the meantime until I release the swipe file in January.

And until then, enjoy the rest of your year. I can’t wait to continue to grow together in 2024.

Daphne

P.S. This year, another amazing thing that happened was meeting Growth Waves readers at a conference. Would love to meet more of you. I’ll be speaking at Conversion Boost in Copenhagen on the 19th March. There will be incredible speakers there from companies like Spotify, Ikea, Lingoda, and Sky. Hope to see you there!