This is our annual retro/goal-setting episode. Here's what we cover:
Personal updates from 2021
- Tyler
- Goal from last year: ✅Spend more time with family and friends once vaccinated
- Other updates
- Started exercising
- Froze embryos
- Rick
- Goals from last year
- ✅ Get sleep under control
- ✅ Adjust to being a dad
- Other updates
- Wasn't good about exercising
- Has only been on one date with Sable
Professional updates from 2021
- Tyler
- Goals from last year
- ✅ Get marketing to a point where if can be delegated
- ❓ Design a new appointment scheduler product
- ✅ Biggest worry: Growth leveling off
- ❓ Want to learn: Re-learn how to iterate and move fast
- Biggest disappointment: Losing a developer right when the product team was building momentum
- Biggest learning: Wants to be a product designer
- Other updates:
- Fewer management responsibilities
- Signed biggest client to-date
- Full-funded the treasury
- Rick
- Goals from last year
- ❌ Get to $10k MRR.
- ✅ Automate/delegate so service can be scalable.
- ✅ Biggest worry: Being able to scale service.
- ✅ Want to learn: Learn more coding, especially working with API data and generating dynamic emails.
- Biggest disappointment: Not being able to work on LegUp Health full time
- Biggest learning: Sharing the journey at LegUp Health is better than going solo
- Other updates:
- Tried bringing on another friend as a Marketing contractor, but he decided to take a full-time job before he ramped up
2022 Personal themes/goals
- Tyler
- Plan for travel as part of relationship
- Build more schedule flexibility so things can be done without needing willpower (e.g. exercise mid-day)
- Rick
- Reprioritize daily personal health habits (write/exercise before family wakes up, daily calorie tracking)
- Spend more quality time with Sable (have a date most weeks) and Oliver (take on errands)
2022 Professional themes/goals
- Tyler
- Theme: Spend more time working, but on my own terms
- Make space to do more individual contributor design work
- Other things
- Release 3.9 design
- Two blog post-worthy releases per quarter
- By end of year, have an equal balance of tech debt, core CRM, strategy, and product-led growth work on the dev team
- Run the coding fellowship
- Rick
- Support the growth of LeUp Health
- Structure a partnership and financial plan that enables JD to go full-time
- Grow the business to 400 clients
- Fully automate the new user onboarding experience
- Help scale Windfall the right way
- Prioritize both performance and people
- Be a team player
- Deliver on my responsibilities
Biggest worry
- Tyler: Growth slowed in 2021. Will it come back?
- Rick: Retaining JD for the long term
What do we want to learn?
- Tyler: More professional visual design
- Rick: First principles of leading others (e.g. influence, motivation, habits, trust, negotiation, communication, and decision-making)
Predictions
- Last year
- Tyler: ❌ San Francisco will become a good place for early-stage startups again
- Rick: ❓ Asynchronous video will become big in professional settings
- Next year
- Tyler: The world will be less interested in speculative bubbles (NFTs, meme stocks, etc.)
- Rick: VR headset use is going to become as common as playing a Wii
