Welcome to my 2023 Annual Review: a year where we boldly diversified Forte Labs’ revenue streams and retired our cohort model, while I also pursued personal milestones in fitness and travel. This reflection captures my journey through the projects and experiences that shaped 2023, offering a glimpse into the lessons learned and the paths I’ve charted for an exciting 2024.
Work Highlights
I truly enjoyed working on a wide variety of projects giving me broad experience in running an online business. This included among others sponsorships and partnerships, instructional design, email marketing, marketing analytics, social media, and YouTube,
The theme for 2023 was diversifying our revenue at Forte Labs. With cohort sales declining it was time to establish other revenue sources. And that’s what we did!
Here are the major projects I led and worked on:
Launched the last 4 cohorts of Building a Second Brain
2023 was the year we retired the cohort model and the only time we’ve ever run four cohorts in 12 months:
- Cohort 16 in January ($455k): This was the last cohort that Tiago taught himself and one of the shortest email sequences we’ve ever sent for a launch.
- Cohort 17 in April ($178k): 200 new students joined us for the first cohort completely taught by BASB Facilitators.
- Cohort 18 in July ($115k): The lowest revenue generated by a cohort, even though we made it available for purchase right after Cohort 17 ended.
- Cohort 19 in October ($237k): 269 new students joined us for the official last cohort of Building a Second Brain.
Newsletter Sponsorships
We started accepting paid ads for the first time in our weekly Forte Labs newsletter which now reaches over 125k subscribers. In total, we made $16,350 from eight sponsorships. A few of the sponsors came back a second and even a third time because they loved the results.
Affiliate Marketing
We supported another creator’s course launch, established a dedicated page with tools we recommend, and started recommending online courses we love in our Circle community. Overall, revenue from affiliate marketing is just scratching five figures.
Second Brain Summit
After a free, week-long summit in 2022 (fun, but very time-consuming to organize), we experimented with a paid, one-day event to drive awareness and sales for Cohort 17. We sold 730 tickets and made $21k (the replay is available for purchase).
With alumni joining for free, we had almost 1,000 people registered, of which 56% joined live at some point during the day. Only 50 attendees ended up registering for Cohort 17 which started right after (7% conversion rate).
BASB Foundation 2.0 Launch
We completely refilmed our signature self-paced course and launched it with a 2-week pre-sale. The incentives were a 1-hour live Q&A with Tiago and a recorded walkthrough of his Second Brain. During that time, 237 new students joined us for a revenue of $107k (less than the initial launch of the course on Black Friday in 2022).
AI Workshop
As a second experiment with one-off events, Tiago hosted a 90-minute AI workshop. We made $30k from 401 seats sold and around 300 people attended live. The recording is now available for purchase.
YouTube
I took over our YouTube team in August 2023 and established a bi-weekly publishing cadence on our channel. In total, we published 18 videos in 2023 (15 of which were released in the second half of the year). We also started publishing YouTube shorts (45 in 2023).
A major milestone was hitting 200k subscribers (almost exactly a year after reaching 100k subscribers).
Even with several sponsored videos worth five figures each and four figures in ad revenue per month, the channel still consumes more money than it makes (at least directly). However, when surveying new customers, the majority of them have heard about us first through YouTube. So ultimately, the channel is a crucial part of our top-of-funnel.
The PARA Method book launch
Tiago’s second book The PARA Method launched in August and also became a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Having learned from the previous book launch, we kept the pre-order incentives simple with just two tiers for one book or 3+ books ordered. By now the book has sold around 25k copies and gained over 1,000 reviews on Amazon with 4.5 stars.
Pillars of Productivity course launch
On Black Friday 2023, we launched our first brand-new course in seven years and made $390k during the 4-day launch window from 2388 sales. I’ve written an in-depth retrospective of the course launch, revealing the sales results, marketing activities involved, customer insights gained, course structure, and tool stack used.
Audience Growth
YouTube and Twitter are by far our biggest social channels, followed by LinkedIn and our Facebook Group.
Let’s zoom in on the email list growth since that’s the most valuable asset. A highlight was crossing 100k subscribers early in the year.
The two dips in the total subscriber growth come from removing 13k cold subscribers each from our list. We do this cleanup once a year.
In 2022, we gained 77,368 new subscribers, and lost 25,326, for a net growth of 52,042. In 2023, we gained 93,608 new subscribers, and lost 41,112, for a net growth of 52,496.
Last year showed a more stable subscriber growth compared to 2022, which had more spikes and troughs. However, since 2023 had more launch events, we sent more emails which also resulted in more people unsubscribing.
This year, we’re aiming to bring the unsubscribe number down by focusing on segmentation and personalization.
Newsletter Performance
I’m happy to see that I beat our 2022 average open rate even with growing our email list size considerably. We lost on the click rate though. Check out my lessons from 85 Weeks of the Forte Labs Newsletter for a deep dive into our newsletter.
Personal Highlights
Health & Fitness
Crushed it! I truly feel stronger and fitter than ever thanks to a combination of strength training (I’ve been following Booty by Brett for over a year), martial arts, yoga/stretching, and running along Toronto’s beautiful waterfront. In 2023, I walked on average 13,376 steps per day, up from 11,890 average steps in 2022. I got the Krav Maga Brown Belt and Muay Thai blue shorts, did my first pull-ups and side splits, and hardly drank any alcohol.
Travel
2023 was a perfect combination of exploring new countries and visiting familiar places to reconnect with friends. I visited the West Indies, Prague and Amsterdam, camped at the Dutch North Sea coast, spent time with family in North Carolina, and saw the snowy Rocky Mountains for the first time on a winter vacation.
Connecting with people IRL
Since I’m working fully remotely I’m spending a lot of time at home (I can’t concentrate in coffee shops) which can be isolating. That’s why I cherished every opportunity to connect with people IRL such as on two retreats with the Forte Labs team, ConvertKit’s Craft + Commerce conference in Boise, Idaho, and meeting my college friends for a weekend in Germany.
Experiencing Toronto
I thoroughly enjoy living in the heart of Toronto and being able to take advantage of all the amazing restaurants, concerts, comedy shows, festivals, musicals (Hamilton, finally!), and sports (went to see my first ice hockey game).
Favorite Books, Courses & Podcasts
Two books stood out for me this year. The first one is the Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. It’s an essential guide to how our minds work and what it means to have all these thoughts. Where do they come from? Who is saying them? Should we listen to them? It helped me access a calm, inner center that’s always available no matter what’s going on outside.
The second book I couldn’t put down was Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins. His story is beyond inspiring. Whenever I feel unmotivated, doubtful, or a bit lazy, I just think of David and it kicks me back into gear.
I took two cohort-based courses in 2023 that have made an impact. Ultraspeaking helped me feel more confident in my public speaking abilities. (I’ve summarized what I learned here.) And Nervous System Mastery allowed me to tune into my body to positively influence my mind. Join me in the next cohort in April: use the code ALUMNI and mention my name in your application to save $200 on enrolment.
I also started taking in-person improv lessons at the Second City in Toronto. These have become some of my favorite hours of the week. It’s honestly like being a kid again – I get to play and explore without any critical thoughts or limitations.
My favorite podcasts were and still are Modern Wisdom and the Huberman Lab podcast.
Challenges
My Business
I sent 24 newsletters in 2023, got interviewed on one podcast, and helped seven course creators build and grow their ideal businesses. Not too bad!
Now to the embarrassing part: I didn’t post once on social media, didn’t update my website (even though I have new headshots sitting on my hard drive), and Course Creator Lab is still only a janky Notion site.
I feel like I should do more to build my authority and reach but I didn’t spend dedicated time doing so in 2023. I prioritized the work at Forte Labs and only when I had some free time, I’d work on the newsletter or something else.
We all know that’s not an approach to making meaningful progress on something you say is important to you.
Why am I not being consistent with working on my business even though I’m able to consistently make progress in so many other areas? I think it’s because it involves more of “the same kind” of work that I’m already doing for Forte Labs, which already takes up most of my time. At the end of the day, I want to get away from screens and recharge with other activities.
Making Friends and Meaningful Connections
How do you make friends when you move to a new city in your 30s? This has been a struggle in the last few years. It’s not like I’m not meeting people. I haven’t done a great job at following up and developing relationships further.
Open Questions for 2024
- How can I challenge myself in new ways?
- What in-person workshops/retreats/courses/conferences could I try to expand my horizon and meet new people?
- How can I build meaningful, lasting connections with the people I meet?
- How can I give back to a community?
- How can AI support me and help me grow?
- How can I dedicate focused time to building my business again?
- How can my husband and I stay connected through an ever-evolving vision of our future as we both develop and grow as humans?
- How can I spend more time away from screens and outside?
- How can we build a thriving Second Brain community?
- How can I make [whatever I’m working on] more fun?
- How can I consistently identify the 20% and let go of the 80%?
Picking a Word for 2024
For the second time, I’ve followed Susannah Conway’s guide to finding a word (think theme) for the coming year. My word for 2024 is PUSH as in pushing and challenging myself. A secondary word is useful. I vibed with the title and message of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new book “Be Useful.”
