Whenever performance review season came around in my previous corporate jobs, I always had a hard time remembering all I had done.
I knew that I had worked hard as the months rushed by. But what exactly did I have to show for?
When I started the position as Marketing Manager for Forte Labs, I vowed not to let this happen again.
That’s why I diligently wrote down every day what I was working on (called interstitial journaling) and summarized my achievements every Sunday in my weekly review.
Because of that, I had an easy time answering the three questions I asked myself for this quarterly review:
- What have I accomplished?
- Where did I fall short?
- And what do I want to change next quarter?
I answered these questions not only for my Marketing Manager role but also for my own business and my health and wellbeing.
Let’s dive in…
What have I accomplished?
As the Marketing Manager for Forte Labs
- Set up the Marketing space in ClickUp (our new project management tool). I love to get things organized. That now includes an editorial calendar to manage our content workflow, a To Do list for our department to keep track of projects, SOPs for ConvertKit, our newsletter, WordPress, YouTube and more, as well as a calendar to capture meetings, events, and the agendas and notes associated with them.
- Finalized the cleanup of our ConvertKit account, weeding out unused and outdated forms, sequences, automations, tags, segments, etc. From there, I created a standardized naming convention and SOPs to keep in check how we use ConvertKit. These were just the first steps to implementing the system I learned in the Mastering ConvertKit course.
- Designed and ran a reengagement email sequence for about 15k cold subscribers on our email list. As a result, I deleted 13k subscribers that remained cold, which immediately increased our email open rates by about 10% across the board.
- Designed a new newsletter template using the Creator Email Template Pack by Brennan Dunn (now being renamed Palladio). Moving away from a bland plain text style was a big step. I also introduced a new format and took over responsibility for creating the newsletter every week from Tiago (if you want a taste of the new format, subscribe here). To keep track of the performance of the newsletter and email list growth in general, I created a dashboard in Google Sheets. With the new template and format, we’ve consistently achieved >50% open rates.
- Took over responsibility for publishing blog posts on WordPress and the promotion of our content on all of our social channels. It’s not enough to publish new content consistently; we also need to get the word out about it.
- Implemented the Productivity Potential Quiz and the Second Brain Quickstart Guide (a free mini email course) as new lead magnets to drive email list growth. These were prepared in cooperation with marketing agency PenName. The results are promising: We more than doubled our average net new subscribers (new subscribers minus unsubscribes) per day from January to February.
- Set up a public brand guide in Notion to share our new brand identity and provide guidelines on how people can spread the word about Building a Second Brain while protecting our intellectual property.
- Drafted new pages for buildingasecondbrain.com and coordinated implementation with our web developer in Webflow. This included establishing a Wall of Love as a repository of all testimonials and reviews for Building a Second Brain (something that didn’t exist before). I used Testimonial.to to collect additional testimonials from students of our recent Cohort 13.
- Helped select, onboard, and manage our new Social Media Specialist, Claire. She quickly became the ghostwriter for the Forte Labs Twitter account, using Hypefury as our new Twitter scheduling tool. We found that tweets written by her often performed better than tweets created by Tiago, accelerating his follower growth.
- Drafted new site architecture and web pages for Fortelabs.co which had become outdated. This is now ready for implementation in Q2. Stay tuned!
- Organized and led the first-ever Second Brain Summit (14-18 March). The results blew past our expectations: 9457 people registered, and we hosted 12,374 live attendees across 15 sessions with an average session rating of 4.44 out of 5. This was a major project that involved…
- Developing the agenda and scheduling speakers, making sure that they had all necessary information
- Setting up a dedicated landing page in Unbounce and individual pages for each session in Luma
- Scheduling all webinars in Zoom
- Creating a dedicated Slack channel for the Summit
- Hosting most of the sessions and handling the Q&A
- Processing and publishing the recordings in a playlist
I’m truly proud of this accomplishment.
- Connected with the wonderful folks from Teachable to secure a session for us at The Creator Experience: A Teachable Summit and an additional event as part of our cohort launch. I realized how important these connections and partnerships are for the business.
- Implemented the fulfillment of our first pre-order bonus for the Building a Second Brain book (to be released June 14th): a replay of a 3-hour masterclass teaching the BASB system.
- Mapped out, partially wrote, and managed the launch email sequence for Cohort 14 of Building a Second Brain. This encompassed 33 emails over the course of a whole month, with an average open rate of 45% (and no email lower than 35%), reaching around 45k people.
- Created regular internal Marketing updates to keep everyone in the loop of what we’re working on and get additional input and feedback.
In my own business
As this was my first quarter working as the official Marketing Manager for Forte Labs, my business took a step back.
I sent out only 3 newsletters (yikes) and published 13 blog posts or Twitter threads.
I did celebrate a few wins, though. A fellow copywriter sent me an Amazon gift card to thank me for getting new clients because of my job board on Course Creator Lab.
I was invited to speak in the Writer’s Guild Twitter Space one Sunday and got a great shoutout from Alex & Books in a Twitter thread about females to follow.
For my health & wellbeing
I’m happy to report that I worked out consistently (4-6 days a week, mostly weightlifting) throughout Q1. An assessment and three sessions with a personal trainer helped me understand where my weaknesses lie and improve my form. This was money well spent.
In March, I started taking Krav Maga and Muay Thai lessons, and it’s been super fun so far. I have always wanted to learn martial arts, and I enjoy how it challenges me on another level. The not-so-fun part: lots of bruises.
My sleep has also improved thanks to a few tweaks in my setup and routine. I’m now doing 20 minutes of Yin Yoga before bed (here’s my favorite routine), use a weighted blanket, and listen to sleep stories on Calm to fall asleep faster. On many days, I’m also just super tired because of workouts.
After reading How Not To Die (highly recommended), I reduced eating meat to 1-2 times per week and I’m not missing it one bit. My lunches are now a power smoothie that ticks many of the boxes of what’s recommended in the book we should eat every day to stay healthy (e.g., oats, protein, berries, flax seeds, kale).
In general
Other highlights from Q1 include moving into an awesome apartment in the city center of Toronto after living in AirBnbs for the last 1.5 years.
And reading Die With Zero (yes, another book with “die” in the title) which has changed my perspective on how to spend money/time throughout life. I can highly recommend it.
Where did I fall short?
As things started to get busier at Forte Labs in anticipation of the Second Brain Summit and Cohort 14 launch, I completely stopped creating my own content and sending my newsletter. I even dropped checking Twitter.
My focus completely narrowed toward making the Second Brain Summit and the launch a success.
While I got a whole lot done, I also felt guilty for neglecting my subscribers and followers. The consistency I was so proud of last year completely vanished.
My mind was so full and occupied with Forte Labs work, that I couldn’t squeeze anything else out of it.
That meant that I also didn’t make any progress growing Course Creator Lab. My big list of additions I want to make to the site still looks the same as on January 1st.
On my way to becoming a T-shaped marketer, there’s an area I noticed I don’t feel confident in at all: marketing analytics and tracking.
I want to do a much better job at tracking and analyzing our marketing performance so we can focus our energy on the right things that move the needle.
What do I want to change next quarter?
Overall, I’m happy with my progress and trajectory.
The next quarter will be focused on finding balance between Forte Labs work and growing Course Creator Lab.
The great thing is that the two are not mutually exclusive. I’m at the center of marketing and growing one of the best online courses out there and can share what I learn with other course creators.
That means getting back to tweeting, writing blog posts, and sending my newsletter regularly.
As for my Marketing role, I’m looking forward to working on v2 of buildingasecondbrain.com, the new fortelabs.co, and optimizing our content for conversions to email subscribers. I’ll implement the next set of best practices from the Mastering ConvertKit course and we’re gearing up to make the book launch on June 14th a success.
I’m excited!
