How I Failed ALL Of My Goals But Still Grew.

So last year I tried something new when it came to my goal setting. And when you actually look at those goals, you realize that not only did I blow it, but I blew it pretty hard. That's probably the wrong thing to say. I'm gonna go with it. Anyway.

We'Ve hit that time of year where we start to think about what we want to accomplish in the next 365 days of our life. Whether that be, you know, reaching more people and making more money from our creativity, getting more fans for our art, or how can I avoid having this dad bod for the rest of my life? So does the fact that I missed all of my tangible goals make me a complete failure? I actually don't think so. As a matter of fact, I would argue that I've grown immensely as a person. So if you're like me and you're ready to beat yourself up over this whole thing, let's take a look at one way that that you can be sure that you see growth next year, as well as a way for people like you and I to feel okay going to sleep tonight. So check these goals out. 100,000 subscribers? Absolutely not. I have 6,000 subscribers and I've posted less videos than I did the year before. One free course, two free courses, plus a mentorship group offering one on one mixing, mastering and production release one piece of music per month. No, no, no and no. With full disclosure, I actually wanted to make $80,000 this year. And while I will make more than I ever have as a creative, I still will not hit that mark. So I'm officially a waste of space. Or am I? So while I didn't hit 100,000 subscribers this year, I did grow by over a thousand percent. At this time last year, I was somewhere around 600 subscribers, so that's still some really dramatic increase. I didn't release any free courses, but I did start a mentorship group, which I'm now realizing just isn't the right fit for this community yet. But I did try it and I learned something from it. I also released a free download called the Connection Blueprint, which you can actually get in the description below. But it's a foolproof guide to writing content and captions that engage with your audience. I did write less music than I did the previous year, but I also got to play a lot more live gigs this year, which was super fun. I did a number of one on one consultations with people like you, and I got to just make the most money I've ever made from doing creative Things which was really, really, really rewarding. I learned a lot about myself this year. I actually came to a pretty sobering realization that I want to help all kinds of artists be able to build a reputation and a brand that brings work to their life and life to their work. So those of you that have been here for a while see that I've pivoted and opened this up to all kinds of creatives, and that's really exciting for me after the work that I've put in. I also know that you can't scale something like this without a real plan. So that's why I've been absent on the channel as of late, because I've just been spending a lot of time knowing that as I'm opening up my audience, I want to make sure all my ducks are in a row and I have everything in place to make sure that I'm doing the right things first. So when it comes to tangible goals, I might have failed. But if you've grown to know me at all, or you're getting to know me, you'll learn that, you know, I think failure only happens when you give up. So aside from these tangible goals, let's take a look at the one thing that I did right, which is thinking about who I want to be. So when I started out last year, and if you go back and watch my goal setting video, if that's still up, the first thing I thought about was, who do I want to be? Now, this is something I would totally encourage you to do this year because starting with the who really helps you understand where you should take the stuff that you're making. It helps you to understand how what's sort of leading the way. And I think it also provides a lot of inspiration as you move forward in your creation. So while these are very personal to me, I will share a few of these with you. And I'm not trying to impose any of my beliefs on you. This is just my personal one, so you can get an idea of what these actually were. I want to be a man of faith. I want to be a great husband and father that puts his family only below God. I want to be a leader who inspires people to be the best version of themselves. I want to be a sought after mentor, a thought leader in the world of creativity and the business of creativity. I want to be someone who changes the landscape of the online arts industry. I want to be the owner of a business that employs people with the potential to do amazing things. And I want to be a giver And a good steward of my time and talents. So these are very, very personal to me. But you can see how having such personal ideas lays kind of a heavy hand on. Okay, this is what I'm really striving for. If I fail in other places, as long as I've made steps toward progress in these areas, it's still full on a win. So what I love about these is that there's not actually a number attached to them. Now, did I slay all of these? Absolutely not. There were nights that I had one too many drinks. You know, I had fights with my wife, this, that, and the other. And while these may not inherently be bad things, what I know they are are things that if I do often take me down a path of being a person that I do not want to be. And so having these, who I want to be in place allows me to make sure that I'm keeping those things that are taking me off that path in line. Now, what I'm not doing here is trying to beat myself up all the time if I drop the ball once in a while. Instead, I try to look at the bigger picture and say, you know, if I missed four days of going to the gym, but I still pick up this day right here and go back to where I left off, that's still putting me steps in the right direction over just saying, well, I missed four days. What's the point in even going for the next four? Right? So with that mindset, I end up wanting to do more because I see the progress and don't focus so much on the misstep. It's a lot more about just being better as opposed to being perfect. And then another thing I would encourage you to do this coming year when it comes to setting those tangible goals, is make sure that you're revisiting them often and try to have somebody that's there to help you with them. So what you might find is that if you look at them every three months or four times a year, some of those goals may not be relevant to you anymore. So if you're willing and ready to change those goals. Goals, then you're going to end up hitting more goals, and you're going to also start to see patterns in where you maybe don't really want to go. You just thought you did, right? And what I said about having somebody that you're kind of working on this with is really important. We shouldn't be expected to do this alone. I don't think we're intended to do any of this alone. So start building a community of people that are like minded. Remember, you are a byproduct of the five people that you spend the most time with. So if those people aren't moving forward, lifting you up, making you feel like you're making good progress, you probably need to find some new friends. So while I may have missed.

All of my tangible goals, what I did realize this year is that when I have who I want to be first, it really does help me to make change and make change for the better. So as a creative that is trying to take their work and and figure out how to either get more work from it or make some money from it, whatever that may be, I think it is important that we look at how creativity and the work that we're making is actually giving us more opportunity if we're putting it out there for people to see. So I want you to go check this video out right here. I think it's super important for all of us to look at and I'll see you over there in that video.