I feel like a different person each time I write my year in review. I look back on the previous year, embarrassed by how little I knew then.

Really, I feel we are just getting started, which is a weird thing to say when you have been in business for almost four years.

The theme for this year is levelling up. 2021 has been about building TCLA as a company: working out who we wanted to be and what kind of values we wanted to have. It has been less flashy. Thinking, building systems and documenting processes have taken time away from execution, but they have been fundamental in setting the foundation for our future.

My personal high-level takeaways from this year are:

1. Time is the most sacred resource I have. If I’m not rigorous and intentional about how I spend my time, I will default to areas I don’t want to spend my time on.

2. I can’t say ‘X’ is a priority if I review my week and find I am spending a fraction of my time on ‘X’.

3. Whenever I am solving a problem, I should ask myself: “Is this repeatable?”. If it is, I should document the process of solving the problem. Making these decisions to save future time is among the highest forms of leverage I have at my disposal.

4. Asking questions can be a helpful mental shortcut to doing great work. My favourites include: ‘What would a great founder do?’ and ‘If I could only work on one thing today, how would I make today a success?’.

5. Separating the operation of my business from my life is not the same thing as separating the values of my business from my life. When the values of your life and business align, it creates a pretty unstoppable force.

6. Identifying a goal is just the starting line. Translating the goal into daily and monthly actions, habits and reflections are necessary steps to achieving the goal.

7. It is now my job to largely focus on the few things that grant the highest leverage for the business. These include: strategy (crafting the vision, setting the metrics, internal and external communication), accelerating the team (hiring, putting people in the right places, removing blockers), and filling the gaps in-between. Outside of this, I should continue to talk to customers 1-1, even if it doesn’t scale.

8. Many things are worth investing in, even if the cost outweighs the direct financial reward. Investing in tools and programmes that accelerate learning, teach new skills, align with our values or improve the happiness of the team have a long-term multiplier effect.

What I am celebrating this year:

We revamped the TCLA forum in early 2021, complete with a new design, leaderboard and improved search system. Our most popular thread was locked in April 2021 after reaching 20,000 posts and (subsequently) three million views.

This year, we surpassed 16,000 members and 88,000 posts - not quite the 100,000 posts outlined in my 2020 Year in Review, but I am proud to have doubled both our members and posts from this time last year. Most importantly, I couldn’t be prouder of the way our Community Managers - George, James, Avni, Jess and Dheepa - worked closely to deliver on our values in the forum. Many communities become toxic over time and it’s important to me that we haven’t lost who we are as we have scaled.

We hired fantastic people across our operations, mock interview, forum, application review and commercial writing teams. Hiring has been an incredible source of leverage, allowing me to step back from the day-to-day and focus on the areas where I am most needed. Importantly, these people are able to carry out their roles with more vigour and expertise than I can. (As I write this review, the application review team - Genevieve, Jess, Nicholas, James, Elizabeth, Aishwarya, Rachel and Elizabeth - have been reviewing almost 50 applications over the past two days to support candidates before their January deadlines.)

Special thanks to Dheepa and Beatrice as we levelled up our operations this year, transitioning from Basecamp to Notion to maintain our documentation and processes. As we increasingly invest in the organisation of our written communication, this has improved everything from our output in meetings to our ability to service our customers. Tools like Scribe, Zendesk and Superhuman have made a further difference to our organisation, efficiency and ease of working. I am excited for a new year where we invest in operational excellence.

We hired our first social media coordinator (later promoted to social media manager - congratulations Orla!). I learned a key lesson here: once I have set the foundations, I need to step back to allow the team to realise their full potential. Since then, we have surpassed over 10,000 followers on Instagram and 24,000 on LinkedIn. Our social media presence has long been a fundamental extension of TCLA; by interacting with our community where they are based and building genuine relationships with our followers, we have learned so much about our audience - and ourselves.

I am particularly proud of our Private Equity for Commercial Law course and our series of technical lectures on the basics of corporate finance - no surprises that both are brought to you by our exceptional former team member Arun. He doesn’t know this (yet), but watching Arun in action taught me a helpful hiring question: If the roles were reversed, would I be excited to work for this person?

In taking his place on our mock interview team, Mahesh and Chloe answered this question with a resounding yes. I never thought I could receive so many positive testimonials for two people until they joined the team.

I am also delighted to have worked with Leading Minds to run a webinar on understanding anxiety disorder and clinical depression. I have long admired how open our members are about discussing their mental health in the forum, and it was a pleasure for us to be able to discuss this openly.

Finally, this month has been about crafting TCLA’s vision. With the help of a coach and an entrepreneurial community, I have a deeper understanding of my overarching mission, namely to build kinder communities that empower people to make more informed decisions about their future.

(We’ll work on simplifying that sentence 😉).

My weaknesses this year:

In my 2020 Year in Review, I saw the need to build a system to gather and interpret data, however, I did not make progress on this goal. This is my first big weakness of the year, which has inhibited my ability to gain a more accurate understanding of TCLA and to make more informed decisions. It has also led to confusion on performance for the team.

Second, together with metrics, I need a more singular focus to drive substantial change. I still find my time being consumed by things I shouldn’t be working on. It’s very easy for this time to fill the days and the weeks.

Dharmesh sums up the problem nicely: ‘Although my heart says yes, I MUST SAY NO.’

Third, I need to support my team in operating as one cohesive whole. At the moment, I am the bottleneck, whereby team members still have to wait on me for answers.

Finally, our platform is bloated. This is driven by my prior hesitancy to remove older content and the need for a technical member of the team. While we made some improvements to TCLA Premium, this was not enough of a radical change to call it TCLA Premium 3.0, as I hoped for in my 2020 Year in Review.

Our goals for 2022:

With these weaknesses in mind, I have three overarching goals for 2022:

1. We will make building and improving the community of TCLA our singular focus. Ultimately, this is the most important part of our business; it provides the team with meaning and is also our competitive advantage. Aligned with this, rather than building more features, we will focus on improving the quality and simplicity of our existing product.

2. We’ll build a dashboard that collates data from all parts of TCLA, from our subscribers to our forum growth, allowing us to have a real-time gauge of our progress.

3. We will improve the cohesion of the TCLA team to increase the flow of information. Each team will be provided with clearly-understood metrics, so we amplify each other’s success.

My next step will be to turn these into SMART goals and break these down into quarterly, monthly and daily habits.

Thank you

Finally, I want to end 2021 with a thank you to you for reading this. I’ve loved our journey of building in public this year and it’s made all the more special to have an audience.

I wish you a Happy New Year - if you are looking to write your own personal Year in Review, I found using a pen and paper to work through Anthony Gustin’s review to be particularly eye opening.