January 2018 Goals – Writing Entirely Too Much!

Every month I review how I did during my last month and plan out my focus for the next month. Since I do these goal posts monthly, you might want to read them all by checking out the betterment category.

January 2018 Goals

Last month my focus was on developing a content strategy for Minafi based on what I learned at FinCon.  January is going to be a lot of execution on that strategy – basically just writing a whole lot. I’ll be traveling for 10 out of 31 days in January, which means the more preparation I can do ahead of time the better.

By February 1, 2018, I will have turned Minimal Investor Course here on Minafi into a draft of a paid course that brings great value to those learning how to invest.

I wrote the first pass at the content of this course, then promptly gave it away for free to anyone who wants it. I’m hoping to expand on that free course with a more in-depth and helpful paid course. The email course will stick around as a free way for people to learn too, but the paid course will expand on it with a bunch of new content (and without the need to wait 10 weeks to get it all). One of my goals with Minafi is to help as many people as possible learn how to invest on their own, and I think this will be a great next step.

Create Videos Explaining the Main Topics

There’s only so much you can do with text. In Code School courses, using video, animation and more has been tremendously effective in helping topics connect with learners. I’m hoping to try exploring this area by teaching financial topics. This will involve some keynote voodoo to make things work, combined with some editing. These videos would be part of the course, but I’d also like to create an ad video to demonstrate some of the value of the course.

Create More Diagrams, Flow Charts and Visual Aids

Same as with video, visuals help a topic stick. I’ve recently been reading about How We Learn, and I want to try using some of the concepts from this book in this course. There were a bunch of takeaways I want to try, and only some will make their way into this course. Concepts like pretesting people, teaching a wide topic rather than a deep topic (one that covers multiple concepts), learning over time, providing deliberate interruptions, encouraging learning in different environments and even giving people a chance to teach others.

Investing is a tough topic to learn by just reading a book. I’ve always thought the best way to learn is to learn by doing, so some components of this course will include walkthroughs of how to set up accounts and make actual investments.

Not For Experts

The audience of this course isn’t going to be experts that already know how to invest. It’s for people who are just getting started investing and are wanting to make their first educated investment.

What are your goals for January? How are you working towards your yearly goals?