Foreword
2020 sucked. There I said it. The good news though is, if you are reading this, you survived it. Mentally, physically…metaphysically.
Athyna survived it also. Although if you had told me that would be the case around March 25th this year I would have thought you were mad.
My mate gym owner mate, Will Sartori said to me around end of April this year when his business was just hanging in there also that ‘if we survive this, business wise and make it out alright, we are going straight to the business hall of fame’.
Well guys, we are Hall of Famers. Well done to everyone.
Here is the overview of the year…
2019 v 2020 Stats
1. MRR = $24,098 v $40,575
2. ARR = $289,173 v $486,906
3. ARPU = $831 v $1,691
4. LTV = $13,843 v $20,165
5. Marketing = $150 per week v $550 per week
6. Profit = $200 per week v $635 per week
7. CoH = $2,800 v $29,177
Meaning…(growth)
1. MRR = +68%
2. ARR = +68%
3. ARPU = +103%
4. LTV = +45%
5. Marketing = +266%
6. Profit =+217%
7. CoH = +942%
Note on stats
When reading our stats will look relatively impressive at 68% ARR growth. But due to COVID we actually bottomed out at $115,000 ARR in May. Meaning that we have actually grown by 293% in the last 8 months.
So…What worked?
🕵️♀️ Recruitment | Our biggest (owned by me) failure of the first 18 months was our product. 70% of the time we’d nail it. Which is nowhere near good enough. Since Dianne, then John & Sofia joined we are starting to rectify that.
📬 Outreach | Totally reshaped since Drew left and now a fully scalable, repeatable system for growth.
📈 Ads | Only used Facebook for a small period in the year but what we were able to do was impressive. Great creatives from Ed and Matias meant great ROI.
❤️ Team | I love our team. Always have. I feel like we are very much more strategic with our hires in 2020. Which is the smart way to go.
Ok, that’s nice…So what didn’t work?
👨👩👦 Partnership | Not all good things are made to last. 2020 brought the end of the founding partners at Athyna. However, I for one really enjoy being the sole decision-maker and believe we will be a better company for it (don’t tell Drew and Mads, haha).
🧛♂️ Churn (kinda) | Churn is still the only thing that can de-rail Athyna. We went through a period of 5+ months of zero churn which we should all be very proud of but we still have work to do.
💸 CoH | Ok, so now, we are doing very well in this department but in March of 2020 we had to let go of more than half of our team due to our lack of money in the bank. This ladies and gents, is what I call the ultimate fail.
Where are our opportunities for improvement?
✨ Brand (fancy part) | I like our brand but in 2021 we’ll tweak the brand (more pastels, illustrations), then we’ll re-do our site.
⛰️ Brand (foundation) | We need to continue to build a brand people know, like and trust…then we need to build a brand people LOVE. This will be done via impact, sustainability and storytelling.
📹 Content | We don’t do any content. With Walo and Ed, myself and Matias (and Tommy) on deck this is about to change in 2021 with the rollout of blogs on the site and at least one, probably two podcasts. EXCITING!! Yipee.
📈 Biz Dev| Expect in January for us to hire 2 Business Development Reps to help me scale the shit out of new business from the growth side of things.
🧑🏫 Onboarding| We NEED to improve on how we onboard in 2020. Small businesses and startups alike are shit-shows with systems. We can help reduce churn and get results for our clients with more support throughout the onboarding.
What to can we expect in 2021?
🔥 Team growth | Expect us to be aggressive with hiring. Key hires will be primarily in biz dev and recruitment. I will be happy for us to allow things to break or stay stagnant while pushing hard on growth of our overall ARR.
🚀 Business growth | As above. We are leaving the year on $500k more or less of ARR. I’d be disappointed if we did not hit $5M in ARR by the end of 2021. This is not an official target or quota as of just now. Only my thoughts.
🌱 B-Corp | Although key hires will be in growth and delivery spaces expect someone to come in and own the HR Department again in 2021. This may be Carmela is she is back from her time away or otherwise a new team member.
☀️ Carbon neutral | This was a misfire this year. We announced on two occasions that we were carbon neutral and we did pay at one point but we are still not carbon neutral as the provider did not offer what we expected. The reason this is still not solved is I am toying with the idea of Athyna build it’s own carbon neutrality platform to run as a non-profit. Probably shouldn’t be worrying myself about this but it’s an idea I cannot get out of my head.
💲 Investment | There are a number of ways that we can bring money in at Athyna. VC’s (probably a stretch here), Angels (more of our thing, we are very backable) or Pipe (self-funding). Let me be clear…we do not need money. But Athyna is a very positive impact on the world, therefore I think we should grow it as fast as we can.
⚡ Impact | I am only holding one card close to my chest for this report. And this is it. I am researching and planning something grand here. I will release more details in time…
Summary
I am very proud of our team at Athyna. Those who are with us and those who are not. We navigated one of the wildest times known to man and have positioned ourselves for a huge 2021.
None of this happened by chance.
It happened to due hard work, resilience and skill.
Onwards and upwards in 2021!
