By Brad Thomas

Question: Why did the yak apply for a job as a tour guide?

Answer: Because he was great at yakking about the highlights! 

OK! I acknowledge this is a terrible joke. Let’s move on and look at the highlights for the year.

We grew significantly

2023 felt like our first fullish post-COVID year which turned out to be our largest growth year on record. Spending sentiment has shifted with coaching and people development starting to take a front seat to foster a supported, happier and engaged workforce.

Our team pulled out all the stops to onboard new clients such as IAG, BankVic, RACV, Judo Bank, nib, uBank and many others, ensuring the experience from engagement through to embedding was seamless, timely and cost effective. We are super lucky to have such an amazing team and YakTrak wouldn’t be here today if not for them.

We built some new stuff

In addition to ongoing tweaks and improvements, we built some big new features such as:

• YakSafe – our data leakage protection feature that prevents any PII information being entered into YakTrak.
• Digital whiteboards – allowing clients to replicate their sales and service whiteboards from the back office directly to their dashboards.
• New form builders – we are 90% to completion of our brand-new form builders, opening a world of new features for users to explore.

It’s also important to acknowledge that everything hasn’t always been rosy. We haven’t always got it right, but we have learned from it and actively work towards preventing the same things happening again.

We explored new markets

Our typical offering up until this point has been in the banking, energy, insurance and superannuation sectors. YakTrak’s now set to grow in the health, telco and aged care sectors.

We continued to listen and learn

We continued to ask for feedback. We received feedback from users offering suggestions on how to improve YakTrak and its key features, most of which have found their way into our development roadmap for 2024.

One of the things I love about YakTrak is that all clients receive the benefit of all feedback received, creating a cross-industry best practice software.

We also spent time developing ourselves and learning about each other, those we work with every day to make sure we are as productive as possible.

We had some holidays

This year the team spent time all over the world for some much-needed relaxation, honeymoons, and attending to family matters. Some of those places included India, France, Italy, Hong Kong and lots of weekend trips around regional Victoria.

I worked on myself

For me personally, it has been a much more balanced year than previous years:

• I joined a gym for the first time in 20 years, and then remembered why I quit 20 years ago.
• I started training for a marathon, and although I didn’t quite make the run (tore my MCL), I did manage to significantly improve my fitness and mental health.
• I took up guitar lessons. Even though I have been playing guitar for many years I needed an excuse to buy more guitars and have now added another two (Gibson ES335 and Fender Tele) to my collection.

It’s important to take time out for yourself. I feel better, happier, wiser and fitter. I’m feeling in a much better place to building better relationships with my partner, kids and friends as we move into 2024.

Speaking of 2024…

With 2023 almost behind us, we are planning for our next new client onboarding round with some very familiar brands in early 2024. We have forecast for another record year of growth and will be sure to keep those who are interested informed as we grow.

A final thankyou as always to those who have supported us this year and for your continued support next year.

From all here at the Yak-Quarters, have a happy and safe Christmas and New Year! We look forward to helping you build your coaching and employee development cultures in 2024.