In Horoma's Head 24

2022 Review

Here we are, reaching the end of 2022. This newsletter is a bit early but I'd rather catch you before you leave on vacation :)

As expected, November and December flew by so quickly it was hard to finish off everything I wanted to, but I won't skip my yearly review of Horoma, and goal setting for 2023.

Horoma in 2022

There was a fun mindset shift that occured early in the year where I completely abandonned the idea of reaching goals I've set, because I knew these were not proper drivers for my motivation. I think that issue came mostly from setting output goal rather than input goal, and also just blindly setting random numbers. I'll definitely do a newsletter on that topic as I think it has a major impact on motivation in the long run.

So even though I can consider this year to be pretty successful on several aspects, I actually achieved almost none of the goals I wanted to for 2022. And yet, I think it's much better that way anyway.

So what happened?

I worked on 34 contracts this year, so only one more than last year
But I did work on 103 images, which is 20ish more than last year
Also there was a 25% increase in revenue, which I didn't really see coming, and most probably will not happen ever again.

One thing though that differs quite a lot, I had a completely different rhythm than last year where I had 5 months with absolutely no work, this year I always had a minimum of 2 contracts per month. I think it is better for me to have a more constant stream of work because I tend to more easily switch to personal work when I'm in the flow, rather than when I have zero contract and there's a huge dip after the last project and then it gets very complicated to get back on track. Paradoxically, it would mean (I don't really have the exact data though) that the more I have steady commission work (while not being overworked), the more I'm able to work on side projects (this year was the course for instance)

However 2023 is, I've been designing a new routine that hopefully will help me be consistent in my side projects whatever my workload is. I'll probably do a newsletter on that subject too.

Newsletter

Speaking of newsletter, I managed to do my 12 installments again this year, and even got here and there some good feedback on the content. I see in my notes that last year I already wanted to rework the concept of that newsletter, and while I haven't done that completely, I do have a clearer idea of what I want to do with it now (and it is actually thanks to my friend Marion who I did have a pretty long discussion with about how to properly design those newsletters).

Making those newsletters more focused on one subject should also help me in getting back on track for writing articles, which is one of my main goal for 2023.

Youtube

Nothing happened on the YT front, which does feel a bit odd. I'm hoping to find some time to get back there because there is a lot of content I want to tackle that I still don't see anywhere else, and by the look of it, I think it will never be out there if I don't do it... Maybe this means the topics I think are interesting are boring... or maybe these are just not the best ones to earn followers and subscribers. Who knows :)

Social medias

Regarding the rest of social medias, I've been overall very inactive. I almost haven't posted anything on Instagram during the whole year.
I'm actually still struggling to see the interest. Social medias are typically the kind of thing you do because you have to or others do it rather than actually taking pleasure in doing it. Unlike the course where I do it anyway, or Youtube
Next year will be all about automating/delegating this part in an efficient way in order to promote my course.

Course and workshop

Even though I focused for the whole year on the course, it's still not entirely over, but we're getting there.
I've had many setbacks with the editing team which are getting more and more frustrating as time passes.
I'm still happy that everything is now uploaded and that all the content is there for the students.
The workshop organization was unfortunately a bit of a failure on my part and had to be postponed to next January. I think it's all for the better anyway, so that everything is a bit more neatly organized and everybody is prepared. Rookie mistake on my part, but this is how you learn anyway.
Overall I'm just looking forward being done with the editing part so that I can dedicate my time to working on more content. Ideas have been accumulating, and even though the course is already broad and dense, there are some parts that I'd like to refine even more.

Podcast

This year I again had the opportunity to talk about my work on a podcast in the company of host Georgi of The Creative Insider. As usual, talking about the industry is nice, and taking the time to expand on some topics can make all of us come up with some valuable insight.
You can listen to the episode here if you missed it : https://open.spotify.com/episode/1mrC9AojivUuh6fQNYhDnl?si=30b5110142524ad4

Biggest failure of the year

I think the biggest failure for this year was my inability to carve out more time for experimentation and personal projects. The course literally took 100% of this time and nothing was left for me to write articles, refine my knowledge on some plugins, do more extensive research on AI-powered softwares, or simply do some images for fun.
Hopefully the new routine system I want to implement next year will help me in keeping a better balance between all the topics I want to research and enable me to make better progress on several fronts.

Mindset on the future

This year has been pretty good overall. It's not exempt of my usual frustration of feeling like I haven't done enough progress on what I wanted, but I'll get there eventually. I think my main excuse is that the course really has been a huge time sinkhole.
Next year will again be about trying to implement a proper routine to facilitate side projects, refining the course, and digging out my social medias to make them a bit more active again.
More on that next year :)

Black friday, christmas and FTGU for free.

Also, as you may have noticed : there was no black friday for my new in-depth archviz course From The Ground Up

Why is that?

In a nutshell :

• The course is young and the cost of running it is not completely evaluated and settled yet hence why it's hard to make a discount.
• The course includes several live workshops that will include me spending weekends helping you finetune your understanding of the course and how to deal with a brief. While it's easy to make discounts on passive incomes, this course still requires some of my active time on which I can't and don't want to make discount.
• Black Friday has this tendency of decreasing perceived value. And while it's good for customers to be able to grab a course at a fraction of the price, it also directly impacts the level of involvment the students will have with the course. I'm personally more after dedicated students that want to learn and will actually go through the whole course rather than making some extra bucks and having many students that did 5% of the course 6 months after buying it.

With that being said, it's Christmas, so I want to make a little gesture to give a little taste of how this course is, and hopefully motivate some of you to purchase the course in the future.

You can now **access for free the first Diamond of the course**. While this Diamond is short (approximately 30 minutes), it deals with the most fundamental word in archviz : composition.

This word that we hear is often anchored in misconceptions and misunderstandings. This whole Diamond is about clarifying what is composition, what it is not, and how, once understood properly, we can leverage its power to make better visuals, learn faster, and communicate better with clients.

Whether you opt-in the complete course after or not, this introduction should already give you some food for thought to question your practice and hopefully help you in expanding your archviz horizon.

Goodbye 2022

With all that being said, I hope you all find time to do this little exercise of meeting with yourself (!) to assess how things have been for you (personally and professionally) in 2022. It's important to be as unbiased as you can when you look at the result, and as personal as you can when it comes to how you want to change things.

I wish you all happy winter and Christmas holidays, and will see you in the next installment of this newsletter, in 2023

As usual if you find this utterly boring and useless, please let me know before unsubscribing 🎀. If on the other hand you do like it, then I'm glad, and feel free to share it with your archviz pals that would maybe like it too by sending them here : https://www.horoma.net/newsletter-subscription

Cheers

Simon