I’m writing a year in review for 2022 for the first time ever in the 6 years of my entrepreneurial journey. 

The reasons are three-fold:

• I love reading these myself from other entrepreneurs I admire even as a not-so-beginner entrepreneur. It gives an in-depth summary of the entrepreneur’s journey, more than any social media post can.
•  I want to document my journey better in 2023, for my own reference and see my thought process, decision-making process evolve over time. And in doing so publicly, I think it can help other entrepreneurs as well. 
• I promised myself I will make space for writing more. So here we are, writing and making it productive for business in the form of a blog post. 

I have divided this blog into below sections:

1. Q1 2022 summary – Jan-March 
2. Q2 2022 summary – April-June 
3. Q3 2022 summary – July-September 
4. Q4 2022 summary – October-December 
5. Biggest Business Decisions in 2022
6. Biggest Mindset Lessons I’m taking with me in 2023:

Here we go:

Q1 2022 summary – Jan-March 

I came up from my quintessential New Year’s break with an idea. An idea to create a high-level community of entrepreneurs and create a safe virtual home that leads to leveling up their profits, impact, and inner peace.

As with all the offers I’ve ever launched, I didn’t start building it immediately, I sat it and jotted down what this offer could look like and how it can help people. In January, I was completing the delivery of my mindset program so I was already fulfilling another offer. And I didn’t want to jump into creating a new offer without good reason.

We started Jan 2022 with a team of 6 full-time members including me and 2 part-time freelancers. So I thought we could do a lot. We sold tickets and executed our first-ever virtual event for 3 days called A-Z Decoder. We sold 50 spots in the first hour of launching it so we knew it was going to be super impactful. We ended up selling 620+ tickets to A-Z. 

My first-ever virtual event for 3 days was nothing short of fun. It was a challenge for me to do more live virtual events and hone my skill of doing epic events. Which gives people not just the right mindset, but practical strategies to implement. I believe this is my novelty because a lot of people either just teach a heap of strategy, or don’t cover mindset which leads to inaction. And a lot of people just teach mindset, without touching on how to get things done which leads to procrastination. I really love bringing the mindset + practical viewpoint to the coaching world. And the event attendees seem to agree on that as well. 

While I was preparing for this launch, the team and I decided to launch a new offer during this event on top of our usual Marketing Accelerator course launch. So it was a complex launch to execute by selling event tickets first, fulfilling the 3-day event, and then going to launching 2 offers at the same time. One offer which was not proven, not battle-tested, not even built yet, and at a high-ticket price atypical for the industry. But I knew it was time.

We ended up selling a lot of units for Marketing Accelerator as usual. But we also sold 8 new spots for the Vortex Mastermind during this launch. I went on sales calls for the founder’s round to truly cherry-pick who can be in the founding member round with me to truly build a product that gives entrepreneurs all the tools to transition to 1:many offers and scale their business to 6 and 7-figure brands. 

Once we had the founding members all set, I started off by hosting a Vortex Kickoff party.

I spent the majority of this quarter building the first couple of modules for the Vortex Mastermind. Creating a good product from scratch takes time, and I don’t personally recommend anyone building their own course/coaching program or mastermind to schedule chaotic things like travel/work stuff or anything else during this time.

With highs, come lows as well. And I want to be straight up about both equally. I don’t want anyone to think that my life or anyone life’s and business are perfect. That doesn’t exist.

Team-wise, I had to make the tough choice to let go of two of our team members. As a leader, I think this is the hardest thing to do but I think if it’s no longer a fit, it is better to let people go so they can find the next right meaningful workplace. Too many entrepreneurs avoid taking such tough decisions, which leads to non-ideal work vibes.

Personally, Q1 of 2022 was a lot of healing. Physical healing as I went through the worst bout of cystic acne ever that started in 2021. I did that with medicines, working out in the gym, going on walks in parks, and meditating. It was a long process to fix my skin. I also went through a tough period emotionally trying to heal my past traumas. The emotional healing happened while I attended a meditation retreat for 2 days in Singapore. It was an immersion and I observed a full day of silence. It taught me a lot of things about myself and led to me looking inwards.  

Looking back in hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t push myself unnecessarily work-wise to hit crazy numbers or buy into the hustle culture. I believe I show up with the best I have at all times, and I 100% trust myself to figure out when my mental health needs to take priority. Looking back, I also realize that I become tough as nails during those tough times.

Q2 2022 summary – April-June 

April started off with me taking my quintessential quarterly break. I went to my favorite resort in Singapore for a vacation by myself. Rachit was traveling for work, and I took it as the best opportunity to rest, relax and change up my environment so I can focus on the next 90 days on just one thing – Vortex!

The majority of this quarter went into me building the trainings and modules for the Vortex Module. These 6 modules are my most updated, best work so I truly immersed myself in them. I didn’t do any big launches or really anything of note in this quarter. As I mentioned, focusing during the building phase of your offer is important. We also executed our very first Vortex Mastermind quarterly event and it was so fun. 

Home Operations wise: we hired a helper in Singapore. Which led to simplifying our life to a great extent. Before this point for almost 1.5 years, we had part-time help with cooking/cleaning. Which was complicated to manage, expensive and the onus of home operations still landed on me and it is something I do not enjoy doing. This decision led to more peace in our relationship, our home is cleaner, and we get to eat healthier because of it. I think entrepreneurs are decision-making athletes and we need to take care of our sleep, nutrition, and workout as much as work. Delegating home operations is key!

The end of this quarter led to me taking a 9-day-long birthday vacation in Bali, Indonesia. After building and selling out Vortex Mastermind completely, I was really looking forward to this social media free break. Birthdays are a big deal to me, so usually I go quiet on socials and look within myself to see what I can learn from my previous year and how I want my next year to look like.

This vacation of devoid of any input. No inputs from news, social media, or any discussions about work with my loved ones. This means for the first time in a long time, I was listening to just myself on what I wanted out of my business. I thought about my brand 5 years down the line and a couple of the things I manifested on my birthday also ended up happening before the year ended. 

Here are some pics from Bali celebrating my 29th birthday.

Q3 2022 summary – July-September 

Coming on to Q3 and after my Bali trip, I wanted to get rid of the things that didn’t serve me or my company anymore. Which didn’t fulfill me and I was only doing it because I had been doing it for a long time. I think change is important, and smart people change their minds when the time requires it.

We decided we were going to shut off our signature course, Marketing Accelerator, and fully focus on one offer, Vortex Mastermind. We are fulfilling all our active customers and will keep doing it in 2023 as well but we stopped taking enrollments in July 2022. We announced this change to our community of 2200+ customers.  

We had an outpouring of love and gratitude in the community with people sharing how the Marketing Accelerator course and community changed their lives for the best. How they had been able to buy a home, buy cars, create a safe financial situation for themselves, become entrepreneurs, quit their jobs, level up their mindset, become confident, and more. Words cannot describe the impact that Marketing Accelerator created.

We also had a handful of people angry with us. For me, I know we fulfilled (and over-delivered in my opinion) everything that was promised to our customers and I also know it’s impossible to make every single person happy with all company decisions. But it was a decision that needed to be made.

We wanted to work with a small number of entrepreneurs in a deeper way with Vortex Mastermind. We only wanted to work with the best 1% of our audience who were ready, and committed to working with us. And so we decided to serve 99% of our audiences with our free community, youtube channel, content, and very low-cost virtual events we do occasionally. If people want to check out my coaching style, they can do so with my free content and low-cost events. And they can keep learning from us for free until they wish to work with us closely inside Vortex.

I trained 2 of my team members to handle sales calls for the Vortex Mastermind. Which meant doing a tonne of mock sales calls, creating sales scripts, and sales SOPs, figuring out each team member’s sales style, and keeping a hawk’s eyes on leads, calls generated, and sales rep close rate. They did a phenomenal job, and we enrolled a decent number of people into the vortex mastermind with zero calls taken by me. This was a huge win for me as a leader to be able to delegate sales calls completely which means I can focus on my zone of genius activities as a CEO.

Team-wise, my General Manager and the right-hand person who worked with us for 3 years decided to move to another country and hence another work-related adventure. 

This meant that now we were a lean and mean team of 3 full-time people including me. Our team was now half of what we started 2022 with but I think it turned out for the best because I wish to have full stack people in my team. I also realized I personally do not enjoy running a big team, with multiple operational overheads at this point in my business. I wish to run a lean and machine company focused on impact, profits, and inner peace.

Personally, I spent close to 2 months visiting family all across India. To be able to have the freedom to travel, meet my college best friends, meet family, travel and spend extended time with them because of my business is a privilege and I don’t take it lightly. We also execute an event, and a launch while I was working out of office so that was quite cool.

Q4 2022 summary – October-December 

October was a month of preparing for our next 3-day event in November. It was also the month of Navratri and Diwali so we took it slow as a team. 

In November, we did a free 3-day virtual event called Profit Maximiser Live. 3600 people registered for it. The event was loved by all the attendees mainly because I think they really resonated with my 2023 predictions for the industry and how I think they should position their offers, traffic generation, and sales process for 2023. 

We went in-depth about content machine, community, virtual events on the strategy front and people seemed to get a tonne of value from it. We also sold Vortex Mastermind for all 3 days and enrolled a  decent number of new members inside. 

There were some challenges associated with this launch as a small team, so we took note of it to do better operationally on our future launches. During this launch, I also got the idea to do a Christmas sale for the first time ever in 6 years of running my company. I don’t really believe in discounts or deals but it felt like a good time to do our first one, to introduce a lot of new high-quality people into our customer base. I’m excited to do a live goal-setting session on 6th Jan with these customers and set them up for success in 2023. 

For the Christmas sale, we ran 0 ads. It was a fully organic launch dependent on our content machine strategies. The launch was well received even by our audience because the launch content was less promotional, but more fun and value-giving. We focused on providing a great experience to everyone in our audience with our content regardless of whether they bought it or not. 

On 23rd December, the cart for our Christmas sale opened and our 2 member team was handling all of it end-end. While I did a 6-hour live event with our Vortex Mastermind customers for our Quarterly Event. It was a true testament to a small team getting it done. 

After 2 back to back launches, the team was exhausted so I announced a 4-day company-wide off and announced it to our customer communities. I wanted me and the team to start the New Year fully rejuvenated and eager to get started. 

Personally, we attended the Singapore F1 Race, celebrated Navratri and danced our hearts (me more than Rachit) out for the first ever in Singapore, and celebrated Diwali. I also traveled to two new places in December Bintan, Indonesia, and Phuket, Thailand. I’m glad I get to live in a lovely country like Singapore, and some of the most beautiful tropical gateways are near to me for exploration. My best friend visited me from Ireland, and I got to see Singapore’s history since she loves the art/culture side of things. It was kind of our turning 30 trips as we both turn 30 next year. I also got to attend concerts from some of the bands I’ve listened to for years, Blacked Eyed Peas and Maroon 5. Memories were created.

Biggest Business Decisions Taken in 2022:

• Launched, Beta’d, and Fulfilled Vortex Mastermind
• Shut down Marketing Accelerator and all our other offers
• Launched the Relentless Skool Community
• Downsized the team
• Launched a company in Singapore
• Became super clear about the future of my brand for the next 5 years
• Became a first-time angel investor in a Silicon Valley startup I believe in
• Decided to 100% focus on growing our organic channels and not do ads 
• Decided to take writing seriously for 2023
• Decided to stop chasing crazy revenue and growth numbers year on year and to focus more on 3 things – profits, impact, inner peace

We will see how some of these decisions pan out in the next 5 years.

Biggest Mindset Lessons I’m taking with me in 2023:

• Thought more about what kind of money is “enough” for my own KPIs. Instead of blindly chasing money and growth numbers.
• Family and time spent with loved ones are important to me.
• Not all money made is the same. I wish to create financial independence so I can decide what I want to do with my time (like writing a book) instead of working 24×7 pursuing revenue growth by brute force.
• I attended meditation retreats and learned a couple of meditation methods in 2022.  I wish to explore them deeply and add them to my habit stack in 2023. I notice when I move daily and meditate daily, I’m happier and at the end of the day, I just want to be happy. So creating happiness from within is key.
• Got clear with what kind of lifestyle business I wish to run. And want our team and I to have fun while achieving business goals instead of being stressed out about crazy numbers.

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog.

If you want to work closely with me in 2023 to achieve your business goals, 15 new spots are opening for the Vortex Mastermind on 18th Jan. Want priority access to the spots + all the details? You can sign up for the waitlist here.

Also, if you liked reading this blog post, I would love it if you would share it in Instagram stories and tag me @rootamittal, I’ll try to share as many as possible.

I’m sending you the best vibes for 2023 and hope it gets to be your best year.