2020 Year in Review (better late than never)
Matt D. Smith looks back on 2020: launching Shift Nudge, his design course, going full-time on his own product, homeschooling during the pandemic, and personal milestones. A solo reflection on a year that changed everything.
Foreign.
So I'm a little bit late on this video. This is my 2020 year in review. And yes, it is currently right now at the time of this recording, January 2022, because time has just been an absolute blur. Probably experienced the same thing. It still feels like 2020 in a lot of ways. But here goes. This is for posterity, for future generations. This is 2020 year in review. Here we go. All right. January. This was one month after I launched my Shift Nudge interface design course beta to 100 students. And I was heads down in January supporting those beta students doing lots and lots of design critiques for the work that they posted in the Slack channel. My son justice also turned 10 years old. Happy birthday dear.
Just.
We planned a trip for him to go to the Grand Canyon, bought the tickets, we were going to do the whole like outdoor glamping thing, rented a car, everything was prepared. Big travel plans for January, they didn't make it on that trip. February rolls around, still heads down supporting the beta students. And the Shift Nudge course was not fully complete. I had only recorded about half the videos. I had only edited about 80% of those videos. I still had a lot of work to do to, to finish the course and to just get everything packaged nicely and done. But in the meantime I was still, it was really almost a full time job supporting the existing students while I was producing the rest of the course. March rolls around in 2020. March was perhaps the most tense month of the year. Possibly. I'm thinking back, it was probably tense the entire year, but March feels like it was more substantial. It was very chaotic online in general. And I thought to myself, there is no way I could publicly launch a project and try to sell it and market it and charge money for it and promote it in the middle of all of this stuff going on. However. However, I'd already turned down a lot of client work, people reaching out to me asking if I was available to design things. And I had been telling people no for the last three to six months because I was trying to focus on this course. So I was a little bit nervous. So I decided to run a second wave of Shift Nudge beta signups in March. And I just sent an email only to the people who had asked to be notified about it. To my absolute surprise, I had another hundred people who were willing to pay for the course. In that moment a lot was going on, but a lot of people were staying at home and they didn't have anything to do. So and so now I'm, I am Personally reviewing the work of about 200 people. And I'm reviewing their designs and I'm giving them videos. I'm doing a little video critique of all their work. And that quickly became basically what I did the entire year. In addition to finishing the course March, we also took a little bit of a spring break trip to the mountains. The pandemic was becoming real in March. And that was the first time I ever heard of the term social distancing on some random podcast. That's kind of funny to think about now. Two years later, April still supporting the students. And also January, February, March, April. I was actually working out a lot. I was pretty focused on working out November, December of 2019. But then 2020 hit. I was hitting it hard. And then in April, I post me in 2010 and me in 2020 and I was very proud of that. In May, my son Nixon, my youngest, he turned 6 and then pretty much May, June, July, all summer I was just heads down trying to finish this freaking course that was taking forever. And on top of trying to finish the course and film the videos, I had everyone at home, we're all quarantining, all the kids are home and kids are loud. They don't care if you're filming a video. They are going to interrupt you left alignment here for this little. Hey, Nixon, I need to finish recording a video. I'm recording a video right now, so you're right. Now you're on the video. Didn't mommy tell you not to come in here?
No.
Yes, she did. What do you need, buddy? Tell me what you need.
Can we have a piece of candy?
No. Okay. That was my 5 year old asking for a piece of candy. So on this page. But finally August rolls around and I'm fully done with the course, everything is buttoned up and I'm finally ready to launch PO publicly. I had a decent idea that the course would continue to be successful because I had. I'd had two successful beta waves of students. But at the same time, it's always a lot more nerve wracking to publish something live. Everyone gets to judge it, everyone gets to give feedback on it. It's kind of a scary feeling. And there was a huge sigh of relief on my end because the launch was successful, it was received well, and that was a huge weight off my chest knowing that I could continue to work on this, to pursue this, that this would now allow me that I could spend more time making it better, fine tuning it, adding to it, building the community, supporting the students. It was a huge Sigh of relief. We also celebrated my wife's birthday in August, followed two days later by my son, my oldest son, turning 13 years old. Officially a parent of a teenager. Can't believe it. This is the one for X and S. Oh, there's one more frozen I forgot to give you. Officially a parent of a teenager. Can't believe it. September. We are full on homeschooling our kids because all of our schools were shut down and remote learning with a first grader, third grader, fifth grader. It was just not fun and it was not working. It was not the most ideal thing to do. But my wife is a trooper homeschooling them. I say we homeschooled them, but she did like 99% of the work and I am super grateful that she was able to do that and we survived. In October and November. I'm actually still finishing up the Beta student critiques. I told all of the Beta students the course that I would continue doing personalized critiques all the way through the end of the year even though I just had a new wave of public enrollment students coming in and there was just work piling into the Slack channel for people students posting their work from the course. And I was just completely ignoring that because I had to focus on the Beta students work to finish out that commitment that I made to them through the end of the year. So when November rolls around, I hired Michael Rittering as my first part time shift nudge design advisor. And now I had an amazing advisor to give feedback on all these students work. And he was just chugging through catching up on all of the public enrollment students giving feedback on all that work. Just absolute beast mode during all of that. And then as we approached the end of the year, November, December, I thought you know what, I need to get like five or six more design advisors to really help with the load that I've got. All these students posting work from the lessons from the course into the Slack channel trying to get feedback. And I only had Michael to help out while I was still giving feedback on all of the Beta students. So I hired five or six more in November December to get ready for a January enrollment. So I was I launched in August. Five months had gone by. I was going to do another enrollment period in January 2021 and I'll have to save what happened in January 2021 for the next year in review video. But I thought this was going to solve a lot of my problems and it ended up making things way worse. It wasn't like a huge big thing and I don't want to be too cliffhangery about it. I just don't want to make this video too long. I will post another video very soon. Probably the next one after this one with my year in 2021 review. But December, that was officially marked the first full year. 2020 was the first full year that I had ever done. An entire year with no client work. I was able to survive and thrive on only my own product. So that was a huge, huge win for us and for me personally. My daughter also, she turned nine years old in December. My sweet daughter. I'm sure there were a lot of other things that happened in 2020, but that is what I put in my notes and that is what I'm gonna have in this video. So thank you for watching this and I'll see you in the next one. Now I need to go ice my foot because it is throbbing.
It.
