Goals for 2021

Transcript

building and indie business in the center of venture capital i am alex edmonds people call me supremerumham on the internet and this is the building indie business podcast okay um so today i want to go over goals um my goals for 2020 will review those um the ones i you know the ones that i got i reached um the the goals i failed to do um and i'm gonna split up my goals from open podcast to uh revenue research and then we're gonna talk about 2021 i'm going to be talking about my goals for revenue research the podcast and my personal goals also goals that i considered but uh i didn't think were good goals okay so let's get into it 2020. now um i started 2020 working on open podcast pretty heavily my first goal was to finish the forum um i did this this was like the first thing i did um in 2020 it took me about two weeks so yeah then to start a newsletter um yeah i started the newsletter i used mailchimp i did about 40 of them i got 60 subscribers and the reason why i uh stopped doing open podcasts part of the reason is because i only had 60 subscribers after 40 um email newsletters right so i didn't think there was growth there okay uh on the podcast episode i didn't mention this but one of my goals was to make one dollar online from open podcast that was achieved when i wrote the book and got a pre-order okay um i didn't like these two goals but they were my goals that i mentioned on the podcast um to rate more and to grow the community and i don't like these two goals because they're vague um i could write you know let's say in 2019 i wrote two articles so if i write three articles i've written more but uh i don't that doesn't mean anything right and then grow the community that's not that's not actionable or measured measurable right same thing with raymore actually um so yeah revenue research i have two goals for every new research um the first being to get 10 reports and the second being 10 email subscribers and right now um the amount of email subscribers is about 25 after four reports it's growing every week so that's great so yeah um 10 email subscribers is the one i reached okay um 2020 personal goals um at during the episode i said that i wanted to get 52 episodes i did this i did this in uh march of 2020 because i started the podcast in 2019 and so 52 weeks later is march of 2020. yeah another goal i had for the episode or that i said in the episode is that i wanted to get a new job and i did this i got a new job in march but no i got it in february at the end of february i was supposed to start in march but everything got delayed and i started in may right after memorial day unfortunately i lost this job in july so yeah um i'll talk about that a little more later um another personal goal is a hundred podcast episodes in december of 2020 i reached 100 episodes this wasn't my goal for this year but i started doing a second podcast episode for the week and that had me reach my goal of 100 episodes this year instead of in 2021 okay failures of 2020. um none of these i set out to do in the podcast episode in 2019 but these are some goals i had along the way in the year so i'm gonna go over them and i didn't reach these right so i didn't sell 25 books that was my goal for um what's the deal with podcasting and i talked about this earlier i wanted to sell 25 books to have a certain amount of money so that way i could write another book or figure out another way to monetize open podcasts further without having to worry about the fees for a year and so i only sold two books right so that sucks um thank you to the two people that bought the book i appreciate it um okay so 2020 failure number two i uh i didn't keep a job right that's not all my fault but it's a failure of mine i didn't keep a job so i got a job and i wanted to keep it but i wasn't able to yeah okay and my third failure that i uh have for this year is i didn't fill up my ira right so my goal is always to fill up my high ra um for the year and i didn't because i lost my job and i haven't found another one so yeah again that one's not entirely my fault but it is one of my goals and it is a failure of mine so yeah okay 2021 goals uh revenue research um the one of my goals is 10 revenue research reports i think i'm at number six at this point so yeah i have four more i can probably reach that by march if i really pushed it uh yeah monetize revenue research and so i want to make money from revenue research faster than i did open podcast it took me um see may of 2019 um open podcast was started and i made the first dollar in april of 2020 so that's 11 months so i will probably end up monetizing revenue research with pre-orders if i wanted to um beat that time um yeah for the book which i don't at this time um i don't know what the book is really going to be right now so i would be taking pre-orders just to beat that record um i need to grow the email list first to have more potential customers so yeah there's that okay my next goal for 2021 is to learn to create images for revenue research what i'm really trying to focus on in terms of the images is two things style so i want people to immediately see like a color or a color scheme and recognize that this is revenue research i'm thinking of using some like uh the green color which i refer to as breaking bad green and then some sort of style something else like a font or the background image something like that and then the second thing which i think is more important than style is i'm trying to figure out how to provide value in these images instead of just like a summary of the the blog post for revenue research i want to make sure it provides value so maybe a summary plus um i don't know something else or like images that summarize each point and reven in the report right so that way someone or like on twitter i can add each image and that would give someone a better visual um or i can just take every image and post that as a tweet thread um yeah so that's my thinking okay and then i want to uh another goal is to improve my research skills so um with every report i have to come up with new things to research right and i need to learn how to find the information like quicker not just finding information but quicker right so i need to develop um i like places where i can research i need to know okay i'm researching the topic on candy so i need to know that uh candy information is found on like openpodcast.com or i'm researching um the taxi industry so i need to know that that information is found on openpodcast.net things like that um yeah okay so another thing i want to focus on or another goal of revenue research for me is to learn more editing techniques and for my writing right now i have my system my uh what is it i put it through grammarly i put it through hemingway and i listen to it um i want to add more to that i want to maybe um learn new new techniques for editing that i can do myself that i don't need um software for and that way i can uh provide more value through my editing because um my writing would be more concise for my readers right so yeah um okay so my goals for the podcast um i got a taste of interviewing this year which i didn't plan to um so that was really interesting to me and uh you know because i wasn't creating the content for the episode so that was pretty nice i just had my 10 to 15 questions and i'd asked people those 10 to 15 questions they were different for each episode because i don't do that kind of podcast where i ask the same questions let's be clear um and so i think it'd be cool to have someone who's a little out of my network on the podcast so maybe not like anyone in the maker law community but maybe another maker like that i don't really conversate with or that i'm subscribed to their email list but i don't really talk to them and see if i can get them on a podcast and then write good questions to ask them on the podcast that's the main thing is like i want to get value out of the interview and i need to figure out who can i reach um that would be willing to come on the podcast but even before that i need to figure out who do i want to interview to get value from them right so there's that okay the next thing i want to do is i want to have a little fun in terms of web development and i want to improve the podcast website so a couple features i'm thinking about adding are search functionality for the archive so that with the filter so that way let's say you look up dogs and the two episodes that would come up are the dogs and web development episode or like you're looking for information about book editing so you would be able to type in editing and that episode shows up i think that would be cool and then uh there's a delivery system for the book the when it's on stripe and i have to figure out a better delivery system um right now i'm using zapier and um uh gmail and i think there's a better delivery system for the book so i have to come up with that um i was also thinking about adding a timer to the home page that was a countdown to like oh when the new episode comes out i don't know if i'm gonna do this one for sure because i don't know if it provides value i i'm the king of light mode and dark mode like every episode every website i've ever built before this has had a light mode and dark mode there's something very simple i don't even need to wait till next year to do this um but i'm thinking about adding it i'm not sure i don't know if it provides value right um the next thing i'm thinking about adding is a page to post my work in progress episodes so like maybe the outline that i currently have and then the um like the title of the episode the yeah something like that i don't know i don't know if i'm gonna do this um okay and the last thing i want to add is i want to allow people to add reviews of each episode for the future people that are looking at the website and looking at the episodes i don't know i think it's something that would be cool okay the next goal i have for the podcast is to organically grow the email list and the reason why i want to do this is because i want to practice my copywriting and my sales um so i want to grow the email list to 20 subscribers and that way um i can get an idea of how my copywriting skills are growing right um yeah and then the final goal i have is to put a little more effort into youtube um add all the extra stuff that is um that i have to wait for usually this is just a test of patience because there's all this like elements that you can add to the to the video but when i upload it like on the live stream um it doesn't give me the option to do that because it the whole video has to load and so i never do this but i realize like my twitter following um it can't hurt to grow my youtube subscriptions so i want to put a little more effort into that one so yeah personal goals oh jesus um okay so my first two personal goals are same as last year fill up the ira as usual find a job to fill up the ira with um yeah so those are pretty self-explanatory my next goal is to travel somewhere by myself i've never traveled anywhere with without someone just all my own and so i would like to do that maybe go visit a friend or i don't know just go to some place i don't know um i'll update you guys on this but i don't know my next goal is to be a podcast guest because i'm always podcasting alone or i've had three guests on this year but i've never been a podcast guest i was supposed to be one but that fell through so i have to find out a way to be a podcast guest right okay um this next one is really unique 12 rejections and what this really means is um i have to search for opportunities to be rejected right so maybe that's asking someone to be a podcast guest on their podcast um so this will not be related to finding someone to be on the podcast related to jobs or women so yeah um just 12 rejections one every month i just keep like let's say people keep giving me stuff let's say i do one a week i find one opportunity to ask someone for and they give me all four opportunities that's okay i would not mind not reaching the school right so okay the next goal i have personally is to um learn a new technology i want to learn a new technology that um improves something i do it i've thought about this a lot right so like this year i learned how to use stripe so that's a technology that i learned and that benefits me and people that i interact with so something like that i have to figure out how to i haven't determined what technology it is right now but i will find out and i will tell you guys as soon as it happens okay my last goal is to host an event because i wanted to host an event for the podcast book like like a webinar or something like that and i did not get the response to the book that i was hoping for that would allow me to host an event so i never got to so i want to figure out something to host and host it right okay the thing with goals in general is that you don't have to reach them but there's something that you should be thinking about like i don't have to get 12 rejections i don't have to do any of this it's just something i want to do and it doesn't hurt me if i do it or i don't do it right it only benefits me if i do it so yeah that's why i have so many goals this year um okay goals i considered um so these are some goals that i just thought about but decided they're not i can't do them or it's not that i can't do that it's just like these goals are too out of my control to have them as goals or they're too simple to have them as goals and like feel a sense of accomplishment when i reach those goals right so let me go through that my first goal that i considered was performing stand-up and as you know if you're listening to this podcast i love stand-up comedy and i even write my own jokes i don't perform them anywhere or do anything with them i just like writing jokes so i had the idea to take those jokes that i write and perform stand up somewhere but the reason why i didn't make this a goal specifically is because um right now a lot of the places that i would go to perform stand-up are closed or at least closed for um performing stand up so um i don't know when this will open back up as of today or yeah today this week whatever whenever you're listening to this so i don't want to have this as a goal and not be able to achieve it because of something out of my control right okay my next goal that i considered is um to get 500 twitter followers um and the reason why i didn't make this my goal is because it's too easy to achieve i already have 200 twitter followers like around 200 let's just say um and that only means i need 300 so i'm already 40 percent away from my goal um i'm not 40 away or besides the revenue research reports i'm not like involved in any of my goals right now i'm not doing anything about them so yeah and to reach 300 more twitter followers i could probably just follow like 500 people and get those people to follow me back right so it's not a lot of effort right um my next goal that i considered but didn't is to grow the revenue research email list to a certain amount of people and the reason why i didn't do this is because again it's too easy i can just you know go around adding people's emails or buy the email list of another person and i just rather have it grow organically and that's why specifically for the open podcast email for the podcast email list i just said 20 because that way i know it's growing and it's more about the copywriting not the number so yeah um and the final goal i considered but didn't uh add it to my goals is make um grow an seo score to a certain number and the reason why i didn't do this as a goal is because um seo is too unpredictable i don't know when my if my even if my score will just pop up to that number or if it's possible so i was able to grow my um the revenue research website to like 15 in two weeks but that was because i was just starting out i don't know if to get to 20 it's harder um so yeah i don't because i don't know i can't make it my goal and it's too out of my control so yeah okay that's all i have for this episode it's a long episode if you're hearing me right now thank you for listening have a nice day bye