Before making my goals for 2015, I wanted to review 2014. Sometimes we lose sight of what we've accomplished the previous year. Here's the framework I'm using to review myself personally - you can get the worksheet here.
If you're like me, you get energy from creating something, and having people connect with what you've made.
What counts as "making" something? Here are some things I shipped in 2014:
A lot of those things seemed small when I was making them (like writing an individual blog post), but over a year those little things can add up to larger body of work.
My friend Hiten Shah says: "Before you make plans, take a look at what's already working." Looking at what worked for you in 2014 is a great way to think about what you should do in the next 12 months.
This blog was viewed about 300,000 times in 2014. My top posts of the year were:
You can already see a pattern here: most of my "hits" came early on in the year, in January and February.
A notable mention is the post I wrote for Sprintly in November called Your Developers Aren't Slow, which was viewed 126,850 times.
Here are the most shared posts from my website from 2014.
Here are my top products, ordered by revenue:
In total, I made around $40k in side-projects this year. A few notes on this:
My goal for 2015? Double side-income again to $80k.
The number of people subscribed to my newsletter grew 184% this year (from 1786 to 5076).
I also switched to Nathan Barry's Convert Kit for email.
After 6 years, I left my Product Manager job at Industry Mailout, and became a full-time contractor at Quick Left. I've been working with them on product marketing for Sprintly since August, and it's been a blast.
I love meeting new people, and exploring new places, but travel itself (planes, trains and automobiles) always feels like a huge drain. I'm generally happy to stay home around Vernon, BC.
That being said, I had some great trips this year:
- January: My buddy Chase Reeves pulled me into doing a panel with him at NMX this year. I also got to hang out with other great folks: Caleb Wojcik, Mike Vardy, Michael Schecter, Nathan Barry, Omar & Nichole, and so many more. Here's some photos.
- April: Visited Edmonton, and it snowed!
- May: Visited Portland with my wife. This is when I first talked with Joe Stump about working with Sprintly.
- August: Had my first trip to San Francisco with my Sprintly co-conspirator, Justin Abrahms. Met up with many internet friends: Hiten Shah, Brennan Dunn, Corbett Barr, Andrew Culver, Ryan Delk, Jessica Jalsevac, Chikodi and Austin Gunter.
- September: Went to XOXO Festival in Portland. Amazing.
- October: Back to Portland for the Quick Left office grand opening.
I have a few themes I'm going to focus on this year:
Here are the projects I'd like to launch:
That's enough about me. How was your 2014? What are your plans for 2015? Sign-up for my newsletter below, and I'll send a Year in Review worksheet you can use to do your own review.