2023 in Review; Goals for 2024

February already! Summer holidays are over and I’m overdue in writing up a look back on 2023 and my goals for 2024.

2023

2023 was a good year. We had several opportunities to catch up with extended family we hadn’t seen a lot of in the last 3 years, the boys are all continuing to do well at school and unlike many we did not have to personally deal with any major crises or unexpected events. My personal highlight was finally gaining the motivation and discipline to exercise regularly and eat more moderately. I’m fitter than I’ve ever been, and I lost some excess weight and dropped several clothing sizes. The resulting compliments were equally flattering and horrifying - I never realised how much attention anyone paid to my physique!

On the professional side of life, 2023 was my first full year working independently. It was a humbling year and I’ve learnt a lot.

I didn’t achieve the goals I set for the year, but I made progress in the right direction on all of them and where I didn’t progress as hoped I’ve been able to identify why and how I can apply that to my future work.

Most encouragingly, none of the lessons I’ve taken away from year have caused me to revaluate the vision and mission I’m pursuing, nor the overall strategy by which I plan to get there.

Scoring

See original goals if you need to refresh your memory.

1. Consulting - Dropped mid-year at a score of 3/10.
2. Product Development - 5/10. In the first half of the year I launched co2mon.nz and learnt I’d built something without a market. In the second half of the year I made good progress on applying those lessons to a new product, which is receiving promising early feedback but has not launched or achieved revenue yet.
3. Networking - 6/10. I put a lot of energy into this early in the year, but then almost entirely neglected this goal in the last quarter as I let the new product consume my time. Overall I met the numerical targets I set for myself, but the lack of recent writing and uneven effort across the year means I can’t honestly score this higher.

On-Call Optimizer

I have not yet written explicitly about the second product referenced above which has the working name of On-Call Optimizer.

I spent 2-3 months conducting market research and customer interviews around the idea and opportunity, and since October I’ve been heads-down developing a Simple, Loveable and Complete implementation focused just on scheduling.

The feedback from the small group of foundation customers I’m working with is positive and I’m looking forward to writing more about On-Call Optimizer as I pivot my time from building into marketing and selling it over the next few months.

2024 Goals

With the lessons from 2023 in mind, I’m setting just two professional goals for this year and one personal.

1. Launch On-Call Optimizer (scheduling) and develop a mature, sustainable sales pipeline that delivers growing revenue and happy customers.

   The sales pipeline is where I plan to spend the majority of my time and energy over the year. The product is the tool that I will use to learn and develop the sales and marketing skills I feel I lack at the moment, and the growing revenue and happy customers are the trailing metrics that will show I’m succeeding.

2. Consistently invest in the development and maintenance of my professional network.

   All of the motivation for having this goal last year remains, but this year I’m also adding a few words to the goal to encourage myself to be more consistent in doing this regularly throughout the year (e.g. a few hours each week carved out for networking/social tasks).

   The sub-goal of writing regular posts was a particular struggle for me to consistently achieve last year as I struggled to get thoughts into written form at a level of coherency and quality I was satisfied with. This year I’m planning to target shorter, less comprehensive posts as a strategy to address that. The end result will hopefully still be as useful, but delivered in smaller, more manageable chunks than I was targeting in 2023.

3. Exercise at least three times a week and maintain a healthy diet and weight.

Onwards!

As always, I’d love your thoughts and feedback. Don’t be shy - hi@mattb.nz!