It’s the day after Christmas and I hope everyone had a nice holiday. If you celebrate a different holiday I also hope your holiday was nice. I really don’t celebrate any holidays anymore but Mom does, so there you go. 🙂
I thought it was a good time to review last year’s goals, see what goals I have for this year, and highlight what I think were my top 10 posts for the year. They might not have been the most popular, might not even have a comment; I’m not saying one way or the other. But it was a strange year for me so I’ll just go with “it is what it is.”
Last year I put my 2014 goals into a video, which some folks went over to check out; thanks for that. For those that didn’t, and for those of you who either weren’t paying attention or forgot, these were them:
* Generate more passive income
* Take better care of myself
* Create 75-100 videos
* Finish editing my book & writing 2 other books
* Double my income
* Better social media balance between business and pleasure
* Focus!
In the video I went into greater detail but this will do for now, unless you watch the video at the link above. Let’s see how I did.
I actually ended up taking better care of myself; how about that? After a bad run of health issues related to my diabetes I finally downloaded Myfitnesspal and that brought some immediate results. I added a Fitbit Flex to the mix and the next thing you know I started walking more because it not only tracked my steps, but added calories back to my daily menu.
What that resulted in is an A1c of 5.9, which is below diabetic standards, reducing my daily average glucose reading from 230 to 123, and I lost 5 pounds also. That’s not bad; actually it’s great! The only problem I’ve had is now I have to try to make sure I eat enough because I’ve had some lows rather than highs, and that immediately affects you in a negative way, whereas highs affect you long term. Still, I’m healthier; yay!
I said I wanted to create 75-100 videos. On my regular YouTube channel I’ll probably end the year with 58 videos, which included 4 interviews. On my business channel I created 38 videos, which included a video 30 straight days in June and one interview. So I hit my target number with 96 videos, but I didn’t hit the number of interviews, which was 10. I don’t know what it is with folks and being interviewed but that’s still going to be a goal for this upcoming year.
I finally finished editing my second book on leadership and I have about 8 people reading through it. I hope to get them all back within a few days so I can get the final edit completed and then figure out what I’m going to do. My last “real” book from 12 years ago I took to a printer and published it that way but now there are tons of other options I could select that I’m going to have to research it. I didn’t get to any other books because I was traveling a lot but I have a couple in production; we’ll leave it at that.
I didn’t quite double my income but I got close. I got stiffed on a payment by a company called Serene Corporation (happens sometimes, but since they’re ignoring me they deserve to be called out) but that wouldn’t have greatly affected my income. The thing is I had a pretty successful year but I have to start 2015 hard if I even hope to equal last year, let alone surpass it.
I can’t say I succeeded in my balance wishes, but I also didn’t think I’d be traveling as much as I did. However, in the year when I was going back to Memphis from home all the time I also visited Louisville, Orlando, Washington DC, Tunica MS, and San Diego, my first trip to California where I actually left either an airport or train station. lol Tunica was where the casinos were, and Orlando was for a wedding and a visit to Harry Potter World at Universal Studios, which I’ll talk about soon in a different blog post. Meanwhile, I did have an interesting adventure this one day in Memphis that I never shared here, which I’m sharing now in a video lol:
That last one; I’m not even mentioning it because it’s going to be a part of 2015 also.
That’s it for last year’s goals. What are this year’s goals? The first two you’ll know because I’ve already mentioned them:
* 10 video interviews combined for both video channels
* Focus!
* Publishing 2nd “real” book (I don’t count my Website book as a real book since it’s short, but I might not be all that fair to myself)
* Completing 3rd book
* Get 3 speaking engagements
* Get as many subscribers to my videos as videos created
* Work on an idea to take my business and career to bigger heights
That last one is really the most important of all. I hate admitting it all the time but I am 55 now, which means it’s time to really figure out what I want to do when I grow up. I do know that I have an ultimate goal of having $10 million in the bank, and doing it based on what my career is now isn’t going to happen unless I figure out how to be “the” one and only person hospitals look for help from. Yeah, I don’t see that happening either.
Still, at least I have that down because I need to get it done in 10 years time, which means I need to figure out how to make $1.5 million a year for the next 10 years (taxes you know). I always offer the opportunity for others to share their particular goals with me; it’s still there, and I won’t steal your ideas (unless they really were mine first lol).
Enough of that. Time for my favorite 10 posts of the years. Actually, one of them was already linked above, the one for my 55th birthday, so it’ll be 11 overall. Here we go:
15 Lessons From 1,500 Blog Posts
We Are What We Consume; Not Talking About Food…
Your Speech Is Free, But Consequences Aren’t
5 Lessons On How Not To Let Others Try To Run Or Ruin Your Life
7 Blogging Beliefs You Interpreted Wrongly
First Seven Steps To Small Business Blogging
By the way, I guess I should add one more goal, though I may need some help with it. I’m tired of seeing all these lists talking about top 50 or top 100 bloggers and I’m nowhere to be seen. I’m thinking that 7 years with this blog, 6 with my finance blog, and, come February, 10 with my business blog should count for something. So if you believe that I know a little something about blogging, I’d appreciate a good word here and there; thanks in advance.
That’s all I have except the many thanks for you veterans and you new visitors who indulge me every once in a while by visiting this blog. I hope to continue producing even more content with opinions, tutorials and some personal stuff in 2015. Not sure if this is the last post of this year or not but if it is, have a safe New Years holiday and be safe; you don’t want to miss what’s coming in 2015! 😀