🪞2023 Year-End Reflections

It's that time of the year and see my year-end reflections about work, ngo, sports, hobbies and 2024 plans below.

Work

In terms of work, to be honest it was not a stable year for me. I tested and tried many projects.

• Under Nataminds, we built 3 projects and micro-exited 1 of them for a small amount which is saasaffiliateprograms.net.

• The others are still live and generating some traffic. Regarding money-wise, we earned less than 100$ from the projects that are live atm.

• Instead of those, I provided consultancy service through Upwork and my network connections. I worked with 6 companies related to GTM, Google Ads optimization and positioning.

• I worked for Raklet as a full-time contractor for 3 months and was responsible for both marketing and sales in that short amount of time. Good experience.

• I tested Gumroad and added an e-book related to the audience building. It generated almost 250$ and helped me to get close to 1.000 emails.

• I became the local leader of SaaStock in Istanbul, successfully organizing our first event. In 2024, we aim to host more events for the SaaS community.

• Launched 3 newsletters, including one focused on SaaS Bootstrappers.

The year's complexity inspired me to spend its last days in Thailand, seeking a change of scenery and reflection. :)

NGO

• In terms of NGO, we decided to pause our operations under Sıfırdan Globale. We spent almost 4 years for that organization and reached to many people ages between 15 to 55+.

• It's much more related to personal reasons and I hope we will focus on SG in the coming years.

Sport

• This year I completed 2 half marathons and 1 olympic triathlon. Instead I started rowing and noticed that I missed team sports instead of solo ones.

Books / Movies / Podcasts

• I read books of Doğan Cüceloğlu, mostly related to personal communication. I think a good communication is so important and it's like an art.

• For me, Doğan Cüceloğlu is the master of that and totally recommend his book in Turkish, "İnsan İnsana".

• I watched some of the Korean movies and also Oppenheimer.

• In terms of podcasts, it's good to hear that Eray Erdoğan re-started his 5 kişi podcast.

• Huzursuz Beyin is a great newsletter related to human pyschology and personal development in Turkish and I read all of its issues. 100% recommended to my Turkish followers.

• And Süreyya Ciliv's biography is also a book I will read it again.

2024 Plans

• In 2024, I would like to have a more stable life in terms of business-wise. On my end, freelancing has many up-downs and I can't feel myself comfortable when I am focusing on consultancy projects. In terms of responsibilities I know what to do, but it's also clear that the project will end in 3 months for most of the cases.

• So, I will look for remote fractional or full-time roles which are location independent. When I work in different countries, I feel like I am more productive as Turkey's agenda effect my daily routine in most of the cases.

• In 2023, I noticed that one of my strengths is curation and organizing events. And I believe, those will be so crucial assets of marketing teams in the coming years. We will need more personal touch as there will be many AI generated contents around.

• I plan to continue doing interviews with SaaS Bootstrappers weekly.

What I learn from 2023 is, pushing is okay but too much pushing can be stressful in some cases. At that time, it might be better to stop and say;

"Let nature take its course".

In addition to that, sometimes it can be better to think about yourself. Being selfish in some cases is not a bad thing. Especially this is hard for me as I mostly think about "giving".

Let's keep in touch if you think I can be a great fit for your company / projects.