Hanami Mastery 2022 - Year Summary and next plans.

It's this time of a year, when your mind works in a special way. You can close a chapter, and start fresh, adjust, rethink, adapt.

However hard this year was for you, you are here, and this is great! This is a huge achievement in itself. Now what will the next one look for you?

Life is running, but it's always worthy to stop for a while and think about last months.

• What did you do well this year?
• Who could you thank for?
• Are you closer to your goals?
• What are your next steps? Will you keep or change the direction?

I encourage you to try answering these questions, and below I will try to do it myself, at least in the part related to Hanami Mastery.

A look back

2022 was a blast.

I know that the whole world is shaking, lockdowns put many people into a very harsh situation, and in Poland, this is very well felt.

However, in all that, in the fire of war next to our border, drama after Elon buying Twitter, and all the markets going down, to keep my sanity, I've rolled my sleeves, and worked.

Here are the results, and the plans for the next year.

But why?

If you are wondering, why I'm writing it, there are a few reasons.

1. Documenting the journey for others

Hanami Mastery is a result of multiple businesses, and people I've met directly or indirectly in my life. It was possible because those people documented their journey.

I've written last year about why I give so much appreciation, but nothing changed since that. If Ali Abdaal would not publish his crappy first video recorded on the phone, he would not be a multimillionaire, but neither I would know, that first 100 videos on youtube does not matter.

Maybe, just maybe, somebody will find it useful, that I've tracked my Hanami Mastery finances since day one, and documented chronologically, what I achieved.

2. Documenting the journey for myself

While other people do matter, I also have personal interest in all of this. This interest is - make thinking easier.

Let's be honest. My memory sucks.

I remember bank accounts and phone numbers after hearing them once. I remembered a code to the gate's electric lock only because I saw somebody typed it once a year earlier. At the same time, you need to say your name to me 5 times before I will stop asking about it - and even then you cannot be sure I finally remembered or just got embarrassed enough to shut down.

I find myself not remembering correctly facts from the past. The more time passed since the event happened, the more blurred the memory becomes, and I start remembering only the most important facts, instead of the whole context around it.

While this is not so extreme, I would love to remember more. Remember when sth happened, what were my thoughts then, and what other events could affect it all.

I don't remember long-term suffering. I don't remember sleepless nights. I don't remember the euphoria from the first person who supported my work! After some time I only know that I was happy, or struggling during a given tome period.

That's not something I enjoy. I'd love to remember things better, to remember the process, and to be able referring to that in my future work.

This is the other big reason why I'm doing this summary. I never want to forget how many people helped me get to the place I'm right now, and I never want to lose the fact of how much effort I've put to make all of this possible.

So here it is.

2022 goals

Last year, in my Obsidian Second Brain, I've set my yearly goals:

• personal
• career-wise,
• and related to this blog.

In terms of Hanami Mastery, I've set several goals to be met in 2022.

1. Read 12 non-fiction books
2. Figure out the process to release videos weekly
3. Help with delivering Hanami 2.0 by contributing to the guides.
4. Make Hanami Mastery Profitable ($2000/month)
5. Start Hanami Mastery PRO - premium subscription
6. Practice Guest blogging
7. Build a team to spread the work needed to produce great screencast
8. Reduce the daily Job engagement to 4-days per week.

Let's dig into each of them.

1. Read 12 non-fiction books.

Since my first kid had been born, I definitely reduced the amount of books I'm reading. In the past I was able to read dozens of books during the year, but not anymore.

However, to grow as a person, as a programmer and entrepreneur, books are like a sport. You can live without them, but you'll loose a lot of potential.

I'm reading tons of articles, as I'm paid for being up-to-date with Ruby and engineering stuff, but its not the same. In reality, reading articles is similar to memories. What I've read was blurred and mixed together, and often I could not recall the source form where I knew something.

Another thing related to that, and possibly even more important is, that I wanted to get back to the habit of reading, but not just reading.

I wanted to Read, annotate, process, and reuse my knowledge. With the help of knowledge funneling, this actually was possible. I'll write about it on the other occasion though.

At the end of the year, I met my goal and even more. I've read 21 books, either technical or helping me to grow in different directions I'm targetting.

At some point I'll make a list for you, with reviews - because with Second Brain it's possible :).

2. Figure out processes to release videos weekly.

One person said, that "almost does not count". I don't agree, but... Yeah, I did not met this at all.

In 2022 we released 25 episodes. 2022 Had 52 weeks, so I've been releasing a video more or less every other week.

It's not my target, so I'll definitely continue improving in 2023. However, I do need to admit. I'm proud of what we were able to achieve. 25 episodes with kids and full-time job, is a grind and I don't gonna lie.

However, comparing to the previous year, this is more than twice as much! In 2021 I've released 11 episodes, so there is progress, and this is the thing that matter.

Despite not meeting this goal, I'm excited because it's just the beginning!

4. Help with delivering Hanami 2.0 by contributing to the guides

This goal was super important, but it was very hard to find the time for this. During the year, I've found that development was very active, and whatever I've wrote, got out of date very quickly.

This was very demotivating, and it was tough for me to consistently contribute to the Hanami guides.

In the end, thanks to the Andrew Croome who jumped into the team when we needed him, we've been able to pull Hanami 2.0 guides together :). Teamwork is everything!

This goal would never be met if I would work on this alone, but fortunately, I did not need to! Thanks, everyone who contributed to the endless slack discussions, for making it possible!

Especially:

• Andrew Croome
• Konor Rogers
• Sean Collins
• Hanami Core Team

It's the cheers! time :).

5. Make Hanami Mastery Profitable

The key to make Hanami Mastery a long-lived project, is to make it self-sustainable. The more income it'll generate, the more time I can spend building on top of it.

I had several ideas on how to get to the magic barrier of $2k of monthly income, where I would be able to reduce the daily job by one weekday.

1. Start premium subscription

Initially I had setup my Github Sponsorhip page, so people could support Hanami Mastery in the early stages. However, I wanted to give back more value in exchange and also encourage those people who needed some additonal support when it comes to working with Hanami-based projects.

I've started then the Hanami Mastery PRO as an extension to the free content I'm publishing, and several folks registered before it was fully setup!

That was surprising! I didn't even had fully configured tax processing, so at the end I needed to ask everyone to cancel their subscriptions!

However, at the end, I could not create a process out of it so far. Publishing premium content was just too much.

I will put more focus into it in 2023, for now keeping Hanami Mastery PRO as just another way for good souls who want to support this initiative.

2. Practice Guest blogging

In 2021 I've written a few guest blogs, and this appears to be quite good income channel for anyone, really. I've got some offers from seeral companies to write for them, and I tried.

At the end, however, I've just focused on my job in Ascenda, because that was challenging, entertaining, and more profitable.

I still keep doors open, to do more guest blogging in next year, as it brings different benefits too, like backlinks and reaching out to the wider audience.

Will see. For now, completely missed a goal.

3. Build a team to spread the work needed to produce great screencasts

Delegation and automation are the keys to scale up anything.

In Programming, at some point, when you start reaching staff-level roles in the company, learning how to delegate is crucial.

The same when you drive a company.

I knew I cannot do everything on my own for long. Working 60+ hours per week is not healthy, especially when kids do not allow you to sleep in night.

And you know what? I did it!

I've met amazing people, who decided to work with me on Hanami Mastery episodes and other initiatives we run (Check out our content_for

• Adam Mrowiec - took over the whole video editing part!
• Alex Niebrzegowski - jumped into audio recording, reading our scripts with quality I could never think of!
• Federico Iachetti - offered his help with recording the coding footage, writing own articles, and driving podcast with me!

This was a blast. Thanks to them I could recover a bit, recharge, and now with great expectations look to the upcoming year!

6. Reduce the daily Job engagement to 4-days per week.

Reducing my daily job is the next step, to ensure consistent publications. Even though I've planned to change that in April, I did not make this step just yet.

There were several reasons.

1. Because of Hanami 2 was not yet released, traffic and interest were quite low and I could not generate enough sales nor support.
2. War, inflation, unstable situation in Europe made me more careful, and I decided to play safe.
3. My third child was born, and naturally she got my priority. She also appeared to be not the most peaceful child im the world.

At the end, I needed to take a step back, slow down, and regroup. but that's fine, I'm not im super hurry :).

Unexpected events.

I did not meet all my goals, but I was elastic, and several different things happened, that positively affected the final result.

Companies supporting Hanami Mastery

• DNSimple agreed for regular support!
• Ascenda Loyalty joined to sponsor future episodes too!
• MVP match supported us for almost whole 2022!
• Saeloun supported us for a few months.

This significantly affected our progress, and while I cannot say I've made Hanami Mastery profitable, thanks to these companies and all the good folks who decided to buy Hanami Mastery PRO or join Github Sponsors, we are now here.

Thank you sooo much!

Starting Podcast!

Another great thing that happened, is our new initiative! I've met Federico, with whom I've started content_for

Summary of 2022

At the end of year, I can look at the past, and despite not meeting all my goals, honestly say: It's a successful year.

• I've read 25/12 non-fiction books (and 2 fiction!)
• Hanami Mastery generated budget allowing me to delegate some work on the episodes
• We've published 25 new episodes, some articles, other publications, and attended to local conferences.
• I've helped with guides to deliver Hanami 2.0 to the world.
• We've started a podcast.
• And I started a process of upgrading Hanami 1.3 apps to 2.0 in Ascenda. This is big, but I've learned a lot!

So what's next? Is it the end?

For sure no!

What's next? Plans for 2023

2023 Will take 12 months and my goals for this will be as below.

1. Publish 50 new episodes.
2. Reduce my daily job to 4 days per week.
3. Use this time, to ensure regular content publications (weekly)
4. Generate $10k/month of income, so we can bring education to the next level.
5. Develop processes for Hanami Mastery PRO, and bring more clients to it.
6. Automate some processes.
7. Encourage more companies to support Hanami Mastery and Content for devs.
8. Release 25 Podcast episodes!

In 12 months I'll send you the summary!

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Wish you the best year ever!