What’s a New Years Eve’s eve without a Year in Review? Rubbish, that’s what, so we’re not going to let that happen! Before we look to Goal Setting for 2024 next week, we need to wrap up 2023 in typical Tog Spot fashion by doing a year in review. There is a video to go with this, and it’s not like the normal Year in Review stat-filled videos. Instead, it covers the good, the bad and the ugly of the year from my own point of view. It’s fairly chunky though, so don’t say I didn’t warn you! It’s here:
I could just give you my bullet point list that made that video happen, but I won’t. There’s more to share, so aside from and as well as those mega things, I thought I’d sort of do a teeny-mini-stat review here too.
As you’ll know if you watched that video above, 2023 was the first year since the YouTube channel started that we missed a weekly upload. Only, it wasn’t just a week, it was months. Because of that, the 2023 stats aren’t comparable to 2022 but we still hit over three-quarters of a million views on the old YouTube channel, with just 29 videos released throughout the entire year. I’m fairly surprised by this, but you can never predict the internet, that’s for sure!
Online, we had MTog 2.0 for the membership, where we moved into the Vault and got a whole lot more connected! There was also Self Critique for Success launched at the same time, an online course built specifically for members who didn’t manage to grab one of the limited Deep Critique spaces. That happened in June, but later in the year, things got busy!
After traveling, we launched our very first part live, part-pre-recorded online course: Studio Bootcamp. Studio Bootcamp has been the most stressful and rewarding online course to date I think, rivaled only by the OG, the Online Advanced Outdoor Canine Portrait Course. Speaking of that, the OAOCPC got a revised Book which has been updated with a newer workflow and some specifics on the technology that is more readily available now.
Alongside that, and the revised videos going into OAOCPC soon, Photoshop for Beginners has had a complete re-recording. An overhaul of mammoth proportions, the entire course was re-filmed to ensure it was as up-to-date as possible with all the Photoshop CC 2024 changes added in there too.
Oh, I nearly forgot to add – All the courses also moved fully to the Courses. website. That means that we’ve removed the weird “enrol here then go there” step that students used to have to complete. Instead, the courses are enrolled onto over at Courses. and then consumed there too. Much simpler!
This all seems like a lot, right? All this alongside the insane travel schedule and other personal bits and pieces too?
Yes, you’re right.
The truth is, I knew I’d need a fairly empty January to March, as empty as I could get anyway. That’s because we’ve been working towards a couple of things outside of work that need super focus and a fair bit of time. I had hoped that at the time of writing, and filming the video above, that I’d be able to talk about them more freely but sadly it hasn’t worked out that way.
Therefore, patience is being hard-line implemented and we’ll review one of those things in Goal Setting next week, before hopefully sharing another a couple of weeks later! In reality though, if we boil it right down to one thing, 2023 was mainly all about the travel and teaching in-person, where I met these wild groups of people whilst traveling the globe. Thank you all, you’ve made the year exactly what is has been for me, super fun and truly connected in all senses of the word!
Thanks 2023, you’ve been awesome for the most part, and thank you to everyone who made it what it was!