2020 Year in Review

Whilst the world was in chaos I managed to make a lot of breakthroughs in key areas and I now feel like I have a real platform to build on.

I've been building towards this moment for a long time. But finally, I feel secure in my business, my skills, and my ability to work on my own terms providing value to businesses and people.

I had my best year freelancing, learned a lot of skills and a lot about myself. Whilst 2020 was far from perfect, it was my best year yet.

What Went Well?

On a personal level 2020 was a great year for me, everything I've been working towards for the last 3+ years just seemed to click into place.

From my freelance business to my relationship. Everything I'm working on has progressed and I finally see a clear path towards further progression.

Freelancing:

Probably the biggest breakthrough of the year was reaching a point in my freelance business where I started to feel secure. I doubled down in the Webflow and automation space finding great clients I enjoy working with.

Whilst there's still plenty of room to grow in terms of income, it's at a healthy level for a 21-year-old [but not where I want to be at 31].

Towards the back end of the year I realised that I no longer want to just operate as a freelancer. Instead, I want to scale up operations, build a small team and make a bigger impact.

Perhaps the biggest breakthrough of the year was the feeling of self-reliance that I gained through freelancing...

Self-Reliance:

I feel like freelancers, creators and entrepreneurs all go through this mindset shift a few years into their business. You begin to realise that everything will be okay in the end.

It's hard to explain if you've not been in the situation yourself. But once you strike out on your own you build self-reliance, you start to back yourself more.

Eventually reaching a stage where you know that if everything was taken away from you tomorrow you could figure it out.

This mindset shift largely stems from the required self-education that self-employment demands. Once you overcome so many challenges you start believing in your abilities to overcome the next one.

This sense of security is worth more than money in the bank and perhaps one of the most liberating things about entrepreneurship.

Relationship:

I'm extremely grateful I got to spend multiple lockdowns and the majority of 2020 with my best friend/partner Simone. 2020 helped solidify our relationship. Enabling us to understand what the other person needs, and offer support as we build our careers following unconventional paths.

Health:

Having weights and a squat rack at home certainly came in handy. Living, working, and sleeping in the same place can get pretty tough after a while so workouts became a pivotal part of my day.

Weight training and walks were the main pass time besides work, cooking, reading, and watching Netflix.

What didn't go so well

Plenty of things didn't go to great last year.

Creating:

The main area that caused a lot of frustration was my lack of making content. Ever since setting out on this path of entrepreneurship and making things [6 years ago now] I've wanted to have an outlet to talk about my passions, ideas I'm interested in and stuff I'm learning along the way.

I know what an incredible impact making videos and writing articles on the internet can have on your life, but for some reason I've always put it off.

I have redesigned my personal site countless times in the last few years yet I've missed out the most important component. Writing great things to populate the site.

A lot of this comes down to fear. I'm scared to make things because the things I create will kinda suck in the beginning - Ira Glass refers to this as the Gap.

In the past I justified this fear by pretending to myself that I didn't have enough time. When I did have the time I'd justify why I needed to re-design my personal site again.

I'm working on this as we speak (this year's review is a part of it).

No more excuses, it's time to make bad things until I develop the skills to make good things.

Friends:

I realised this year that I've been operating my business and my life in general on hard mode.

What I mean by this is that I have a lack of friends who think and do things like me [besides my partner].

Most of my friendships are based on shared location not shared interests, work, or hobbies.

There's nothing wrong with that type of friendship. But I feel like I'm lacking the support and community that I need long term to push myself further in business and life.

Working for yourself, by yourself can be challenging. As someone more naturally introverted it's easy to not make the effort to socialise with other freelancers, entrepreneurs and creators.

Yet the best thing I can possibly do [for myself and my business] is to make that effort and build relationships with people doing interesting things. Because the right people will challenge your thinking, accelerate learning, and energise you.

Focus:

Throughout the year I had periods of time where I'd get really caught up on wanting to build a "business" but not knowing what business to build.

I'm currently a freelancer [more on how that's changing later], but I've always known that I want to build a stand-alone business and potentially build a portfolio of products/ventures.

I have ideas all the time but nothing has felt fully right yet. At least to the degree needed to bootstrap a business with little capital.

I went through this phase of spinning in circles trying to push through with business Ideas I didn't really want to pursue then circling back.

Finally, I managed to overcome this towards the end of the year. I realised that I'm still very much in a learning phase. Operating a service-based business is the perfect opportunity to acquire skills quickly.

So I'm doubling down on running a service-based business with a bit of a twist. The aim is to build up a small studio/agency that specialises in design + development [webflow] & automation.

There is no grand plan to scale this business into a huge agency. Instead, do great work for clients with a view to building our own products in the future.

What did I learn this year?

Spending more time indoors meant I had a lot more spare time to commit to taking courses and learning. But in this section, I'm not going to focus on hard skills and instead focus on life lessons I've learnt in 2020.

1. Optimise for Skill Acquisition when you're young

The general consensus of "good advice" to someone in their 20's is to find a high paying job, work your way up and start investing/saving your money as early as possible.

But in your 20's you have very little responsibility, you're risk tolerant and don't need much money to get by. I believe that your 20's are best spent acquiring skills instead of money.

Through re-investing a large chunk of your earnings into learning new skills, starting businesses and side projects you learn faster, increasing your earning potential in the long run. Making money is a learnable skill, just like marketing or web development.

Spend your 20's optimising for skill acquisition and you will significantly increase your earning potential in your late 20's, 30's and 40's.

Plus skills are recession proof. Once you learn how to make money for yourself you gain the freedom to pursue your interests.

2. You find your voice through speaking

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you need everything figured out before you start making things. This is what holds most people back from ever starting.

If you haven't identified your "niche" or you don't think you have good ideas that's okay. The only way you find them is through speaking up and taking action.

3. Freelancers and Entrepreneurs are very different

I used to think that freelancers were just solo-entrepreneurs. Turns out I couldn't have been more wrong.

The difference between freelance and entrepreneurship is in systems, delegation, and leverage.

Freelancers create a job for themselves [in many cases a very good job] building little leverage long term. For a freelancer to earn money they need their butt in the chair.

Entrepreneurs on the other hand think in systems. They approach problems in a totally different way to the freelancer. They look to build infrastructure, define processes and then automate or delegate most of the work to someone who can do it 80% as well as they can.

Entrepreneurs build leverage so they can focus on the things that are most important. Ultimately they create assets that are able to earn whilst they sleep. Whereas freelancers sell their time.

One is not better than the other but it's important to note the differences and choose which path you want to follow.

Long-term I want to build a healthy lifestyle business so I'm choosing entrepreneurship. Freelance consulting is a great stepping stone on the journey, now it's time to build more of a business.

4. Why not me?

This year I started asking myself a liberating question. "Why not me?".

Over the course of the year it sunk in that no one has any idea what they are doing, we're all just making it up as we go.

Whenever I see someone doing something I want to do I just ask myself "Why not me?".

I know that if I really want something I can learn the skills and put in the work to make it happen, so why not me?

Looking forward to 2021

2021 will be another year focused heavily on growth. Growth in my personal life, growth in my business, and growth in my creative ventures.

Here's what I'm looking forward to improving this year.

1. Focusing on three things

In my experience, I find it difficult to focus on more than three things at a time. So every year I define those three things upfront and iterate on them every quarter.

This year's focus is on:

• Building the Studio - Increase the revenue and bring on some people to work with me
• Consistently creating - Make videos + write articles consistently and focus on continuous 1% improvements
• Learning to Code - Build on my existing knowledge and creating my first product‍

2. Executing on my vision

For the last few years, my vision has been kinda blurry. I had some idea of what I wanted but it never felt right. After 3+ years of exploring I feel like that vision is 90% clear.

My vision for what I want to build over the next 5 - 10 years looks something like this:

• Studio: Build out a small studio that does great work for clients, transitioning towards building products + tools‍
• Creation: Build an audience and community through consistently providing value at scale on platforms like youtube, Twitter, my blog and the newsletter.‍
• Lifestyle Business:  Diversify income through the studio and building an audience. Focus on quality of life over profits, optimsing for autonomy, learning and happiness.

Now I understand what I want, I need to do the hard work and execute on my vision.

3. Moving into our own place

Whilst building up my skills + business I've lived at home to help save money and mitigate risk. Now I have a solid base to build from it's time for me and Simone to move into our own place.

Simone is still working on building her own PT business along with acting but once covid eases we will look to find our own place.

We're still not set on where to move [likely still in the UK for now]. but the most important things from my end are having space to work from home and community.

4. Friendship + Community

As I mentioned earlier I currently have very few friends who do things similar to me. This year I'm making a much more active attempt at engaging with people on Twitter, in communities, and scheduling virtual coffee chats.

5. Moving with intention and intensity

I admire people who are very intentional about what they do. They protect their time and ensure they're focusing on the things that are important to them.

It's easy to get caught up in what everyone else is doing but I want to follow my own path and focus on the things I want to do.

This year I'm making an effort to be more intentional about how I spend my time and what I say yes to. Once I decide on doing something I want to strike while the iron is hot and move with intensity.

I'm impressed if you managed to make it this far as this post felt self-indulgent [but also extremely helpful for me]. I plan on checking in halfway through the year to update my progress and check if any of the goals no longer apply.

Have a great 2021.