Announced the first live (online) cohort for the Executive Presence course!
Subscribers: 9,699
Passed 9,000 subscribers! (9,054 to be precise). Woop!
Passed 8,600 subscribers!
Doing a little CRM enrichment on the email list and some excel analysis it look like 60% or so of subscribers are director level or above. Great proof point for the value of the audience.
It’s almost exactly a year since I launched the first course so I wrote up a detailed and reflective look back at year 1, what worked, what didn’t and what’s ahead for year 2.
Passed 8,000 subscribers! 🥳
Recorded a podcast with Daniel K Cheung about getting buy-in, soft skills, SEO careers and more. Lovely to record a podcast episode with someone who’s graduated from the SEO MBA course!
Published a newsletter How to make an SEO Strategy that looks at a practical way to go from a list of recommendations to an actual strategy.
Subscribers: 7,373
Today I implemented parity pricing for the courses meaning that if you visit the page from a range of countries outside the US (for example Brazil, Mexico and many others) you’ll see a discount code. It’s not perfect - and certainly not exactly fair (I have to manage the tradeoff between complete fairness and admin overhead). But it’s more fair than it was before! So that feels good.
I was inspired by this post and relied on some data from this parity pricing calculator.
I’ll write more about this soon but for now it’s kind of a soft launch to check it’s all working as intended.
Passed 6,500 subscribers! 🥳
Published a newsletter sharing a skills matrix for SEOs: The SEO Skills Maturity Matrix.
This is part of the core thesis that soft skills are the path to the best paying jobs in the industry.
Subscribers: 6,183
The Art of Client Management Launches Today!
Very excited to launch the second SEO MBA course: The Art of Client Management.
The next course: The Art of Client Management launches next week!
Sent a note to the newsletter.
Subscribers: 5,951
Published a newsletter: Good Client Management.
Subscribers: 5,874
This is a video I recorded with Ross Hudgens from Siege Media. Love hearing some details of how Siege onboards and manages clients. Also, some pics of my bedroom as I begin video shooting for course #2!
Published a newsletter: Pace Layers of SEO.
Subscribers: 5,757
This one builds off a framework I developed for my new course on client management. Both beta programs wrapped up and I’m starting video production hopefully next week!
Published a newsletter: Managing Expectations by finding Good Comparisons
Subscribers: 5,492
I put up a dedicated page for corporate workshops and group buys with some clear pricing options for teams that want to engage with the course. I’ve had a handful of 10+ groups enroll in the course and I’d like to have more of those!
In particular, it’ s fairly well established the finding a cohort of peers to learn with improves learning outcomes. More insights into the cohort model in this post.
Launched the SEO MBA log!
You know the word blog used to be short for “web-log”. But we don’t call things web-things anymore. We just call them, well… things. So maybe we need to stop calling them blogs and just start calling them… logs?
The name feels right for me because I’m specifically using this as a kind of public record. I want to document the behind-the-scenes, talk about the process of building and launching online courses, growing email subscribers and more. But I also want it to be a personal log of things I did! I want to remember a bit of how I felt when I put my first course live, or where I was when I was running a beta course.
The SEO MBA is increasingly my full time income and who the F knows where it’s going - but the least I can do is keep a record of where it’s been.
It looks something like this:
Published an SEO MBA email newsletter: The Consultant’s Stance: Expert consultants don’t solve problems, they show opportunities.
Subscribers: 5,427
First week of the beta course for the second course! Working title: Client Management Masterclass.
Put up a simpler homepage design, with some supporting testimonials. Looks like this:
Subscribers: 5,000 🥳
Published Is SEO Worth It? to 4,943 subscribers.
Published Navigating an SEO Career to 4,832 subscribers.
Published Being Mid-Career Sucks: The Context Crisis to 4,759 subscribers.
Over 200 students enrolled in the course on Executive Presence 🥳
Created a testimonials page dedicated to the course. So heart warming to see all of the nice things people have said!
Looks like this:
Posted up a Twitter thread with a recap of 2021 and looking ahead to 2022:
I've had a ton of fun and learned so much building the SEO MBA this year.
— Tom Critchlow (@tomcritchlow) December 21, 2021
Here's a thread of reflections, notes and learnings from the journey so far.
Enabling Stripe Climate
Now, 1% of all revenue goes to carbon removal. Thanks Stripe for making this easy.
Executive Presence for SEOs Course Launch!
The first SEO MBA course is finally live! After staying up until 3am, polishing pixels and inspecting infrastructure the course went live with a bang:
I've poured my heart and soul into this! I've seen first hand how important business, leadership and consulting skills are for SEO professionals.
— Tom Critchlow (@tomcritchlow) November 3, 2021
The course is finally here. Enrollment open today!https://t.co/F5WbQbF8Hf
Filming starts for the first course! It takes a village - here’s a photo of the whole family in Erin’s art studio setting up the lighting and camera..
The second course beta cohort starts today!
I was traveling all summer so it’s been a while since the first beta cohort. From the feedback there it was clear that a second cohort was needed - lots of refining the materials, creating new examples and clarifying models.
The first course beta cohort starts today!
I run beta cohorts to try and test out material. It’s one thing to know what you want to teach, but figuring out the right way to explain those ideas clearly is a whole other matter. The beta cohorts allow me to get feedback and refine my delivery.
I launched the SEO MBA email newsletter on Substack:
Today I'm launching something new: the SEO MBA.
— Tom Critchlow (@tomcritchlow) February 2, 2021
It's a newsletter (and soon online course) exploring leadership and management skills for SEOs. Read more in the launch post:https://t.co/1exvOxs2zO
What a response! I was blown away by the initial reaction.
I forced myself to wait a full month after the initial idea to make sure it was a good idea. I waited. It still felt like a good idea, so I bought the domain name:
After spending a lot of time hiking through national parks with my family - Roxy scrambling over rocks, Indy chilling in the hiking backpack - the idea for the SEO MBA was first born:
