I love the idea of setting NEW GOALS in the beginning of the YEAR.
I got inspired from Chris Guillebeau’s Post on How to Conduct an Annual Review. I’m linking to the 2020 version, but I have been doing this since 2014. It really helps to know what you have achieved and more importantly, where are you “standing”.
Also, it helps to get more realistic with your future goals and bring you to places you would never imagine!
Check out how I closed my 2020 Goals in this blog post.
Create more Courses!
MY STORY – ONLINE COURSES
The main core of my project “Chemical Engineering Guy” has been always helping Chemical Engineering Students & Professionals to have quality educational content online. There are many ways in which this can be provided, but I think Online Courses are one of the best ways to deliver quality and value.
Since I first launched my first course on “Mass Balance” back in 2014 I have learnt a LOT… And when I mean a LOT is really a LOT.
I was a young engineer with no knowledge in online businesses, digital marketing, social medias, e-mail listing, website creations, course hosting, online bakning & finance, e-commerce and so on! Yet, I decided to do this as I felt it was the RIGHT path to go… Long story short, I still believe this is the RIGHT path to go!
You guys know me most likely from my YouTube Channel, UDEMY or directly from a Google Search to either my blog or my courses. That’s great! This has been the main ways in which I get traffic to my website and be able to sell courses and make a living.
My dream is to expand and create a team of engineers making online content for more engineers! Hopefully I will be able to do this soon!
CHANGING ONLINE COURSES FORMAT
As stated, I have learnt a lot from online courses. I consume a lot of them! And I’ve seen a trend in educational courses, specially on “technical courses” or “engineering courses”. People are starting to prefer shorter versions of courses such as 1-3 hour courses vs. 10-40 hour courses. To be honest, I prefer long courses, but the data has not shown this in both: my case and the online community. Students are each time preferring shorter courses which most likely mean that quality and delivery must be improved in order to pack so much educational content in a shorter time.
Because of this, I will be switching to shorter version of courses. I will maintain the courses I have for existing students, but I will also be making shorter versions of courses. For instance, my Petroelum Refining Course is 14-15 hr. long. I will be making shorter courses for that specific course, for instance, Petroelum Refinery Products, Cracking in Petroleum Refinery. Distillation in Petroleum Refinery, Gasoline Production in Petroleum Refinery and so on… As you can imagine, all this content is already present in the course, but I also think students will get more motivated if they get to “learn” a lot of things in separate courses.
Because of this, I also will shift towards a ONE SINGLE SUBSCRIPTION model. That is, you pay a monthly subscription, and you get access to all these courses.
I’m actually preparing a blog post on why I’m going towards this. It makes more sense as courses will be shorter, and the platform income will be more “predictable” than online “single” purchases.
MORE COURSES
Now, because of this, you will see a lot of new courses which will be great! This way I will know which topics are getting “hot” and which topics are not quite marketable.
Grow my YouTube Channel
Guys, I gotta be honest: I’m a great YouTube fan… I love binge watching videos from all kind of stuff, either educational, entertainment, game streams, science vids, sports vids, film trailer, cooking recipes, whisky and beer, etc…
I’m still wondering if I should shift from posting just educational content to post more “entretaining” videos in youtube, or if I should maybe start a new channel for this, or make a hybrid.
Either way, we know YouTube is still the KING of video watchers so I will be working towards this goal.
I’m still guessing the number, but may be 80-100K subs by the end of 2021 will be a nice goal to achieve and actually work towards it.
Currently, social blade predicts that by end of 2021 I should have 72K subs.
More & Better E-Mails!
If you are my subscriber, you know that I use mailing mostly for:
- Big News
- Blog Post
- New Courses
I am working towards more automations and e-mail content for you guys!
I want you to open my e-mails and expecting a lot of value from it, and no longer just skip it or open it for the sake of “checking in” the box of unread to read.
Currently I’m using ConvertKit and they have a lots of content for growing Mailing Lists.
Website Improvement & Optimization
I know I need to improve my website. Specially the homepage, as it takes a lot to load due to the high quality image I used in the front (which I love, some beautiful reactors)
I want to increase website traffic by at least 100% that is, double my traffic.
In 2020, I got a traffic of 64K, approx 5K per month.
Therefore, for 2021, I would want to aim for at least –> 100K. Meaning that I need 8.5K per month.
Of course 10K per month sounds great, but let’s see how it goes. Thing that will help:
- My Podcast!
- Blog Posts on educational content
- Courses
Write Two E-Books
Stil pending to write 2 e-books. This was a goal for 2020 which I wanted to bring to 2021, just for the sake of challenging me.
I want to make at least 1 E-book for FREE and 1 E-book for sale. Let’s see how it goes!
Get Certified in AspenTech Software
As you probably know from my previous blog post, AspenTech offered several certification exams for FREE (typically cost about $150 UDS each).
I enrolled to some of them so I can now finally be a CERTIFIED USER for both Aspen Plus and HYSYS.
The exams are in January and February! I haven’t studied that much so it will be quite a challenge for me to prepare for these exams in 1 month.
I’m sure I will be using my own courses for these exams!
More Instagram!
I did increased my Instagram activity by the end of the year, but now I want to be more constant in posting both: stories and posts.
More importantly, I want to do more “Reels” which I think is a great challenge for myself. What do you think? Some exotic booty dancing twerking!
Post more on my Blog
I hate and love that blogs are still relevant today!
Who would have thought that by 2021 we will still use that much blogs for SEO and educational content.
Anyways, there is no excuse for me to set up goals for blogging. I will aim for 100 blog posts for 2021.
This can be dene easily:
- Make Educational Content Blog Posts from existing courses
- Chemical & Process Engineering News Blog Posts
- Course Announcements & Promotions.
I think that should be enough for 2021!
Increase Membership in Groups
As you may know, I have created several groups in order to create communities related to chemical engineering. For this, I will need to post much more content in LinkedIn which for sure I will be doing!
Feel free to join!
- Aspen Plus & HYSYS Forum – Facebook Group: Goal – From 8K members to 15K
- Aspen Plus & HYSYS – Q&A Support and Forum – (Unofficial) Goal – From 550 Members to 2K.
Podcast Goals
The Podcast was not originally planned for 2020, but something itched me so much that I wanted to launch it in mid 2020…
My main goal is simple:
- Air One episode per week for ALL of 2021.
Links: Anchor, Apple Podcast, Spotify.
Chemical Engineering NEWS Review
I am planning to do more Chemical & Process Engineering News Review. Literally just check out what’s happening in the ChemE world, for instance which companies are investing in what and where.
This format will be very relaxed, just reading some news and reflexing on them… I may make this a Morning Routine for Monday.. Maybe?
What do you think? Can I rock ChemE News?
This is it! My 2021.
For sure more goals are to come, and many of them might not get achieved, but having a plan is better than having no plan at all!
Lets hope for the best for this New Year!
What do you think guys? Let me know in the comments or via e-mail!