My 2020 In Review

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.

Checking the Goals 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:

  1. Keep on the high performance for my job
  2. Read 8 books
  3. Make progression with CRO-tool.com
  4. Make some money to break even with CRO-tool.com
  5. Write 25 blogs on my personal website
  6. Create a mastermind group
  7. Be the guest of 3 podcasts
  8. Being a good daddy! < Most important one, never forget

Did I reach them? Let’s check!

  1. Keep on the high performance for my job
    NOPE – didn’t work out, sadly enough, found a great new job!
  2. Read 8 books
    YES! Even read 10, never done that before, most of the books were about self-improvement or UX/product (check my Goodreads for the books).
  3. Make progression with CRO-tool.com
    Definitely did this together with @Roelof Jan Elsinga.
  4. Make some money to break even with CRO-tool.com
    Also did this one! Gave us a big boost, more about that later.
  5. Write 25 blogs on my personal website
    Sadly enough, didn’t reach this one. Nonetheless, I still wrote 16 blog posts and learned a lot about SEO!
  6. Create a mastermind group
    Now doing monthly meetings with a group of 6 individuals, helping to keep each other on track with our side projects.
  7. Be the guest of 3 podcasts
    Done this! I’ve joined two Dutch podcasts called CRO-café and Marketing Done Right. Also, I’ve joined the Australian podcast called Designing Behaviour (to be honest, this was my best one!)
  8. Being a good daddy! I think this is successful, did my best, and we’re having a wonderful kid.

Overall very happy with my results and progress, but I know I could have done more, so I will keep going at it!

Highlights 2020

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.

Changing Jobs, again …

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.

CRO-tool.com

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.

My 2020 in review

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!

Side-projects Mastermind Group

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.

New skills

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.

Goals for 2021

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:

  1. Make CRO-tool successful (successful means having at least XXX subscribers)
  2. Start a podcast with at least 10 episodes
  3. Launch a new side project with stories from a daddy’s perspective on pregnancy and raising a kid or kids (at least 25 blogs)
  4. Write 35 blogs for my personal website
  5. Read 12 books (I’m such a slow reader)
  6. Being a good dad for both my son Wolf and my unborn child
  7. Start doing sports 2 times a week

My 2020 In Review Conclusion

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.

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Working remotely from Groningen, the Netherlands. Get in touch and let’s schedule a meeting, no strings attached.

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