My 2020 in review … Wow, 2020 … a year we will not forget easily, probably the same counts for 2021 but who knows! In this post, I’ll share some of the goals I set, what I’ve achieved and what I didn’t achieve and, highlights of 2020.
Let’s start with the goals I’ve been setting all year. I’m not only setting goals at the start of the year but also during the rest of the year. I don’t know if that’s good, but it works for me. Here’s the list:
Did I reach them? Let’s check!
Overall very happy with my results and progress, but I know I could have done more, so I will keep going at it!
It was a crazy year, but to be honest one of the best years for my side projects and learning new skills. Let’s have a quick look at them.
During the past 5 years, I’ve been having 4 different jobs. You might consider me a job hopper as we like to call it in the Netherlands. This might be the case, but I just haven’t been able to find the right position and company culture yet, sadly enough.
In 2020, I switched jobs from Parkos to Buro Staal, which means from an in-house team to the agency. Got to be honest here, that’s something totally different! I’m very excited about Buro Staal and learned more about Google Analytics, SEO, and strategy in the past few months. Looking forward to the upcoming keep and keeping the performance high at Buro Staal.
Also, a big change, I’m working full remotely … like forever, not only because of the COVID-19 situation we’re in.
The very exciting side-project I’ve been working on for over 1,5 years. But only in the last half a year I’ve been making a lot of progress! What is CRO tool you might ask? It’s one place where you can find all cognitive biases that can be applied to optimize websites and increase conversions.
In September or so I started doing marketing on for example LinkedIn, and now we’ve got over 200 users from KPN, Accenture, Santander, eBay, Ikea, JDE, L’Oreal, Specsavers, TUI, and, Wehkamp. We started out with a free version and in 2021 we’re moving to paid access, so no more free accounts!
In 2020, I took the initiative to start a Mastermind group with like-minded people about side-projects. The fun part is, that they are all local people, so when this COVID-19 is gone we even do in real-life meetings. The mastermind group consists of 6 people, including me. We’re doing monthly meetings.
During the 60 min mastermind sessions, 3 people get to talk. Each person has 20 min to talk about their progression and the problems they walk into. Within the 20 min, other people from the group are able to answer questions or give feedback.
The past year has been crazy, focusing on learning more about CRO in combination with psychology. Besides that, I’ve been learning more about UX (user experiences) techniques to collect data. Like that isn’t enough, I’ve started to master SEO (both on-page and the technical side) + I got to learn more about Laraval (the framework we use for CRO-tool) and TailwindCSS to quickly create the layouts I design.
You might ask yourself: Why learn so many different skills, Sander? Well, that’s because I always wanted to be a specialist, but I figured I’m better off as a generalist. My weak points are being bored too quickly and going into depth too much! My strong points are communication and prioritization. That’s why I started to move into the generalist area instead of a specialist.
We’re going fully add it again this year, so I wrote down some goals! I like to aim high and I will do my best to reach them, but I won’t be unhappy if I don’t get to them in the time since another child is on its way into my life … and yes, that’s a lot of work!
Goals 2021:
When people ask me, what’s your review of 2020? I would answer: It was a fantastic year, got to spend a lot of time with my son and girlfriend, reached a lot of my goals which I set at the end of 2019, and my side project CRO tool took off. I’m happy about it, and I’m looking forward to 2021.
Working remotely from Groningen, the Netherlands. Get in touch and let’s schedule a meeting, no strings attached.
Get in touch
