Since I'm not in the hospitality sector, and none in my family got covid, I had a great year.

We did have to cancel our conferences - CXL Live and Elite Camp - but there's always 2021.

It was a year of new beginnings, and also endings.

Here's my 2020 thread -->

BIG changes.

#1. The launch of @wynter_io in May (initially as @copytesting).

This is super exciting for me on many fronts. About 10 years ago (pre-CXL) I shut down my failed SaaS company Traindom. I've been waiting for a new chance to build an epic SaaS business. This is it.

Some have asked me why the name change Copytesting --> Wynter.

1. Literal, descriptive name is a weak brand name, yet brand is the long term moat https://twitter.com/peeplaja/status/1195398955250659335
2. Our product roadmap puts us way beyond testing copy, and the name made us mono-functional.

3. Copy is not taken seriously by senior leaders (often delegated to the most junior), but messaging, narrative design, and positioning are very senior level things. By changing our positioning, we changed the conversation about how we fit it.

We've been bootstrapping it so far.

After the initial May launch bump (#1 on PH), the revenue went initially down but has shown great month over month growth since. We're ending the year on a very strong note.

Got clients like Drift, Unilever, LogMeIn, BMW, and top agencies.

In this uber-noisy world, your messaging and narrative are critical to fueling your growth.

You need message/market fit to successfully scale your marketing (make it effective), close more deals, and stand out.

If the messaging is not resonating, you won't convert many.

The easiest and fastest way to know whether what you're saying to the world is resonating is to ask the people you're selling to. Not existing customers, but prospects in your target market.

Wynter solves this by putting your messaging in front of the audience you're after.

What gets me super excited is how much value customers are getting from this. Our new business panels (target people by title) are lit.

People have changed their growth trajectories and increased their pricing by 10x thanks to Wynter.

See reviews https://www.wynter.io/solutions/reviews

With @wynter_io, we're on a journey to make messaging testing as normal as any other type of data-driven activity: like analytics or user testing.

Insane growth is in the cards.

I'm hiring! Looking to bring in Panel Relations Manager - recruit and manage panels for us. DM me!

Big change #2: Spinning our CRO agency out into a separate brand - @Speero_agency.

CXL got started as an agency back in 2011, but will continue as a pure elearning business.

If you go to http://cxl.com , it's now all about the marketing training subscription business.

As the world has evolved, so has our agency. The world we live in now is The Retention Economy. And it's not just subscription companies that live in it. It's all of us.

The focus on conversion rates and outdated concepts like the linear funnel are actually limiting growth.

In this new world, the game is about keeping your customers and improving your brand. The metrics to focus on are LTV, revenue retention, pipeline dollars, and so forth.

It's about the whole customer experience.

The way to win in this new world is systems thinking, measurement of all things, continuous research to identify patterns and themes, and experimentation.

Speero is helping mid-to-large companies grow in this new reality. The new name represents a new direction.

Big change #3 that's in the works: Integrating @UseAdeft into CXL.

Online learning is broken for many, and we're gonna fix it. Our crowdfunding campaign this fall was super successful, and further proof this is what the people want.

Launching the combined thing around June 1.

Other things I have learned this year:

1. It's very hard to manage a lot of projects at once. I'm currently the CEO for both Wynter and CXL. It has its drawbacks. Context switching is costly.

I also added on Adeft as my third company, but managing 3 at once proved too hard.

Knowing your own limitations is important, as is changing your mind in the light of new evidence. My co-founder took Adeft over from me, but we're now integrating it into CXL anyway.

2. We become a remote company almost overnight in March. And what do you know, just trying to transfer office life into an online setting doesn't work. Not everyone likes to work from home, kind of alone. We lost people who didn't feel like we're in this together anymore.

3. Who not how. Reading the book by the same name really changed my paradigm, and I'm now 100% who-first. I've been able to dramatically increase my productivity, scale myself, do way more than I was able to previously.

In 2021 gonna do even more as I'm getting better at it.

Now getting some nice family time.

See you in 2021!