My 2022 Annual Review – Not Great!

General /

As usual, time to do an Annual Review, I’ve been doing this for years already, you can check out 2020 and 2021 reviews if you want to.

To be honest, this has been one of my “worst” productive years, and you will see this clearly. Not only my goals were very ambicious, but I didn’t actually work towards those.

This is something I’ll consider for my 2023 goals, if you want to check those, click here.

Summary of the REVIEW: Rather than set goals, focus on WORKING on them!

Content Index

  1. Business Direciton/Plan
    1. Business Plan, Branding, Product&Services re-definition
    2. Market, Pricing, Discounts & Promo
    3. Inorganic Growth (Ads)
    4. Trimester Checks & Accountability
  2. Course Creation
    1. New Coures (O&G, Reactor Engineering, Free Process Simulators, AspenTech)
    2. MiniCourses (Free Webinars, AMA, Q&A, Courses, etc)
    3. Course Standarization (Downloadable Content, Homework, projects, solved problems, tests, etc.)
    4. Update existing Content
      1. Mass Balance, Momentum Transport Courses, O&G Courses
  3. Website
    1. Redesign, Growth Traffic Strategy
    2. Optimization
    3. Blog Strategy
  4. E-mail
    1. Strategy + Content Creation
  5. E-Book & Content
    1. 2x Free E-books for 2022
    2. 2x Premium E-Books for 2022
  6. YouTube
    1. Strategy, Content, Scheduling, Goals
    2. Playlist Structure & Series
    3. Video IDeas
    4. Shorts
    5. Rebranding + Secondary Channel
  7. Social Media
    1. Facebook (Groups, Pages, Posting)
    2. LinkedIn (Strategy)
    3. Quora, Udemy, Reddit
    4. Instagram + TikTok + YT Shorts
  8. Podcast
    1. Season 2 (publish 2022)
    2. Season 3 (perapre for 2023)
  9. Skillshare, Udemy & Others
    1. Stratey

The Goals

Remember that goals must be SMART

  • specific
  • measurable
  • attainable
  • time bound (realistic)
REVIEW: Definetively ok, they were specific enough, measurable, attainable with realistic time goals. Main problem was the motivation/discipline to work towards them. I would get started with ACTUALLY DOING THEM, and for this, I need to implement habits. I’ll be using James Clear’s Method for “Cue, Craving, Response, Reward”… but more importantly, the actual steps to improve my working habits: 1) Make it Obvious, 2) Make it Attractive, 3) Make it Easy, 4) Make it Satisfying… So yeah, I’ll be working more towards improving my WORKING HABITS, rather than my actual goals… this is KEY for 2023. 

1. Business Direction/Plan

This 2022  I will be remaking (REDEFINE) my Business Plan,. There will be some re-Branding strategy, colors, names, themes and templates.,

REVIEW: So, truth be told that I was
wondering wether or not work towards the rebranding overall… I did
work in my website, but the branding is pretty similar. Now Im not quite
sure if I want to change the overall branding. I think a “person” or
“human” is much more relatable in social media, so for sure, TikTok IG
and youtube will remain with the “personal brand”… I may be openning a
new “academy” or something of that sort for courses and training.

Competitors, Strategic Allies will be described.

REVIEW: So, I do have a competitor list now, but tbh, those are not quite ahead of myself, so what I need to do is to get inspired from other sources i.e. may be mechanical engineers, computer science mayors, or programming influencers, all this to improve content and “be on the loop”

A Product & Services re-definition. Mostly on the standard content of courses, downloadable materials, video lectures, style, didactic, etc.

REVIEW: I did launched a course, and re-definition was made totally. I love it now, more modern approach, images and videos in screencast will be much better. Video lecture formats are improved, i.e. talking head videos, better video edition, etc… Adding and improving downloadables will be something important to consider.

Market, Pricing, Discounts & Promo Strategies will be discussed as well. Mostly going into the “Monthly Subscription Program” Increasing single and bundle “One Time Purchase”

REVIEW: The shift from “buy a course” to “get your membership” has been applied. Although I see the market still loves “one purchase, lifetime access” courses, I will still market both, maybe in a 80-20% principle, i.e. 80% of effor towards my monthly subscription, and 20% towards the Lifetime Purchases. Pricing was modified, but sill no relevant results from the elasticity of the change.

Inorganic Growth (Ads) will be a strong key point in 2022. Inorganic growth especially for selling courses will be placed

REVIEW: The good: there was no AD expenditure, the bad: there was no AD expenditure… So I really think I need to work towards ORGANIC growth first, once we ensure flow of cash, we can shift to AD Expenditure.

Trimester Checks & Accountability will be issued constantly (every 3-4 months at least) as well as a report

REVIEW: FAILED TOTALLY… I’m pretty sure that if I were to do at least once or twice, the business may have improved. It is always great to go back to basics, ensure to chec out goals and mission from time to time.

 

2. Course Creation

By far, this is the one that excites me the most. Create more courses for you guys!

This is the core part of my online project. Its all about launching new courses.

REVIEW: FAILED TOTALLY… I still think this is about 90% of the business… create courses for students and young professionals… That’s it! Just focus on that, and the main problem is that I did NOT focus on that! MORAL: Focus on course creation.

Upcoming New Coures (Oil & Gas Training, Reactor Engineering, Free Process Simulators, AspenTech Process Simulation Cousres, Mass Transfer and most likely, Heat & Momentum Transport.

REVIEW: For now, I’ll re-direct to work with: Oil & Gas, Process Simulation, Reactor Design. As well as “updating” previous courses.

MiniCourses (Free Webinars, AMA, Q&A, Courses, etc) will be added to the offering (mostly free) to: add value, keep organic growth.

REVIEW: FAILED TOTALLY… Don’t even remember proposing this goal. Migh consider doing some MASTER CLASSES, which will drive traffic to my social media, as well as to the course and landing pages (sales pages).

Course Standarization (Downloadable Content, Homework, projects, solved problems, tests, etc.). This is one of the most important issues mostly for branding, and customer engagement.

REVIEW: Partially done, I did work on the structure and contents of courses, but I really need to focus on this, especially downloadables, bonus, promotions, upsells, etc…

Update existing Content. There is a lot of value on the “old” courses, but must be fitted to 2022 strategy and student needs.

REVIEW: FAILED… I do need to work on this… especially on best-seller courses…

3. Website

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REVIEW:  Can’t believe I left this as a blank template or filler… Well, what I wanted to do from a long time was to update images, and more importantly, improve website performance, i.e. it was slow and now, I have lowered from 7 s, to 2 s loading time. For sure there is much more to do, but it was ok for 2022

4. E-mail

As stated before, I’m not a great fan of creating onlin content via newsletter (e-mail) but I will make my best to bring value to you guys. Some educational posts, and of course video posts as well will be introduced.

REVIEW:  Ok… I do want to create a newsletter, so for sure I’ll be adding at least 12 e-mails to my newsletter, NOT related towards course creation, promos, etc… It will be focused towards value alone

5. E-Books & Content

Free E-Books – For growth and value. Most likely for general engineering purposes, i.e. “Best Rules of Thumb” or “How to get a job in the Process Engineering World).

For the Premium E-books, most likely into high value product, i.e. technical or simliar.

REVIEW:  FAILED. Not even tried. To be honest, I do want to work on an e-book, but I’m still wondering on what exactly… may be on news? trends? industries? studies? technical stuff? — Best Rules of Thumb Book (above) sounds great tbh. Should have worked on that!

6. YouTube

This is also one of the most important pieces of strategy. This will halp the channel grow, but also will help dscovery of other courses.

Strategy:

  • More Series/Playlists such as: Book Reviews, Tips for ChemE, Storytimes, Vlogs, Salary Review, Industry Review, ChemE News Reviews
  • at least 1 per week. (total 52 in 2022)
REVIEW:  Although I would say my youtube content improved, especially on quality, I didnt see a high increase in views , although I did see an increase in retention, click thru rates, and subscribers… So I’ll keep doing this for sure…
More importantly, I’ll focus my videos to 5-10 mins, as well as YT Shorts.

7. Social Media

  • Facebook: Keep growing audience, still not that relevant for marketing. Facebook Groups are still valuable for content distribution.
  • LinkedIn: Keep growing the network, post more (articles)
  • Instagram + TikTok: Prepare more content, specially “reels” or “stories” that better suit the platform rather than just repost from facebook (mostly video links or posts in image format)
  • KEY: create actualy value to the consumer to generate trust.
REVIEW:  Ok, so now that FB has changed from old “facebook walls and groups” to “facebook shorts and reels”, I need to work on that! so I’ll be working on the group for sure, but also, and more importantly, in uploading reels.

8. Podcast

Podcast in 2021 was almost inexsitent. Marketing and growth was mediocre, so this 2022 there must be video content as well.

More interviews, more varied candidates, and air (publish) at least season 02 (8-10 episodes)

Also prepare Season 03 for 2023

REVIEW:  FAILED… Still wondering wether or not a Podcast is a good fit for my audience and more importantly, for my business. It takes a lot of time, and last time I tried, the response was not quite what I expected.

9. Udemy, Skillshare & More

Still wondering wether or not try marketing in these platform.

Udemy

Positive: Good market, easy sells, valuable candidates and students.

Negative:No e-mail control, no pricing strategy, no creation of audience, mediocre payout

Skillshare

Positive: Relatively high conversion, students know price-value ratio, easier to promote for other courses

Negative: Not my platform, no control of student

REVIEW:  UDEMY is still king for course creation, so I’ll be uplading, of course I’ll be adapting my “master courses” or “flag ship courses” into smaller courses. Skillshare is now a NOT-EVEN-BOTHER appraoch, I’ll simply ignore it as the main goal of SS is not to pay instructors on video consumption, rather on how many clients you bring them.

So… this is a quick review of 2022 Goals… Definetively important to get started with 2023. I’ll be doing a blog post soon!

What do you think guys? Let me know in the comments or via e-mail!

Enroll for news on Blog Posts!