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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, my kids and I are already counting down the days to the annual SyFy channel New Years Day Twilight Zone Marathon, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I begin a short series on goal setting by looking back at my 2014 goals.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
Today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday is a bit different. In fact, my episodes over the next few weeks will be a bit different. They won’t be as story driven as they usually are. However, they still fall in line with the vision of this podcast. This podcast has always been about reflecting on life, pulling out lessons, and sharing those lessons in a way that will benefit others. I believe that goal is most often achieved through storytelling, but that’s not an absolute structure for this podcast.
So here we are at the end of 2014. Your Facebook timeline has been filling up with those automated Year-in-Review slideshows, websites are taking a look back at the the best and worst of 2014, entertainment media is looking back at those who passed away in 2014, and I’m sure we can all name several other things that are designed to offer a look back at the year we’ve all just experienced.
I’ve been doing this podcast for just over 9 months now and I’ve done a few milestone types of episodes along the way. So it should come as no surprise that I like looking back at things. Today I’m going to take a look back at 2014, tell you why I find value in looking back, and use the information I gather to chart my course for 2015.
Let me begin by telling you why I find value in looking back. Like many of you, quite a bit of my time during Christmas week was spent with family and friends. Some of the people I saw don’t get to see my kids very often so when they do see my kids they comment on how much my kids have grown or changed since the last time we were together. This, of course, is something that all of us have experienced.
Have we noticed the same change in our kids that our relatives have? No. Why? Because we are around our kids every day and the change is so gradual that it’s imperceptible. On the other hand, our relatives may only see our kids a few times a year and therefore are more clearly able to see the changes that have occurred.
This is the same principle that I keep in mind when I look back at my life. While life is happening, it’s hard to see change, growth, or progress. It’s also hard to see where we’ve veered off course. By taking time at regular intervals to take stock of where we’re at, we can compare that to where we started and see how far we’ve come. We can see if we’re on the right path or if we need to make some course corrections. There is value in looking back.
It’s also worth noting that looking back to see how far we’ve come is not really all that valuable if we don’t know where we’re going. It’s been said that if you don’t know where you’re going, any path will take you there. If you have a dream, goal, ambition, or destination in mind, then you need to know the path that will take you to that end and check your path regularly.
When I look back at 2014, it’s clear that I had no earthly idea what would actually happen when I charted my course and took off. That is, I am simply amazed at what all happened in my life during 2014. There were some things that exceeded my expectations and some things that fell short of my expectations.
I set 6 goals for 2014.
- Add 3 new clients by the 1 year anniversary of when I quit my job
- Add 3 new podcasts to Golden Spiral Media
- Earn $10k per month
- Create 3 Digital Products (free or paid) that share my knowledge with others
- Read one book per month
- Participate in at least 6 speaking engagements
For goal number 1, add 3 new clients by the 1 year anniversary of when I quit my job, I intended that to be regular recurring clients, not clients that were a single project or single consult. My anniversary date is May 3 and I achieved this goal on May 2.
Goal number 2, add 3 new podcasts to Golden Spiral Media, is one that shows I had no idea how 2014 would transpire. I had no idea that Golden Spiral Media would become as big of a network as it is now. We launched not, 3 new podcasts, but 16 new podcasts, including this one. We went from 5 hosts on our network, to 28 hosts on our network. It was truly an exciting year for Golden Spiral Media.
Goal 3, earn $10k per month, was also a clear indicator that I had no idea how 2014 would transpire. I never came close to achieving this goal. When my biggest client shut down early in the year, achieving this goal was honestly a long shot. In fact, I didn’t even achieve half of this goal most months, but I’m not done with this goal yet.
Goal 4, create 3 Digital Products (free or paid) that share my knowledge with others, was a goal that I felt was completely up to me to either achieve, or not. I have a strong desire to create and give things of value to podcasters and wanted to do some videos in 2014 to reflect that. Instead of creating 3 digital products, I created 9 of them. One of them is a paid product called Audacity Mastery. It’s a video training series on how to edit audio with the audio editing software, Audacity. The other videos are all product demonstrations, reviews, and podcast training resources that are available for free on the Golden Spiral Media YouTube channel.
Goal 5, read one book per month, was another goal that I felt was completely within my control. I did great with this goal in January and February, but allowed it to fizzle after that. I made a few attempts along the way to get back on track, but I again allowed those efforts to fizzle out. This is another goal I’ll be revisiting in another episode.
Goal 6, participate in at least 6 speaking engagements. My goal here was twofold. First, I wanted to help get my name out there, and second, I wanted to look for opportunities to improve my speaking skills in an interview format and in a public speaking format. I achieved this goal when I spoke at Podcast Movement in August, and added in a 7th occurrence when I was interviewed on Profitcast in September.
So there you have it. I achieved 4 of my 6 goals. How do you think I did? My son came into my studio earlier when I was reviewing all these goals and we went through them together. When we got done he said, “4 out of 6, that’s really good!” Do you agree?
I’m going to hold off telling you how I feel about achieving 4 of 6. I’ll share that with you when I share my goals for 2015 in an episode next week.
Here’s what I learned.
Looking back on it now, my goals for 2014 seem like they were made by blindly throwing darts at a chart of goals. The truth is, I thought they were all real challenges at the time that I made them. I also learned that life is simply unpredictable. I had no idea that I would be where I am today when I started this journey. Quitting my job and becoming an entrepreneur has been harder than I imagined, and I imagined it would be hard. It’s also been more rewarding than I imagined, and I imagined it would be very rewarding.
This year has been a struggle in many ways, financially being the biggest one. Yes, we did take a Hawaiian vacation this year, but we paid for that with income from 2013 when I was working 2 jobs and had a massive client that was sending me tons of business. Even though losing that client was extremely difficult for me and my family, I’m glad that it gave me the opportunity to learn things that I would not have had the chance to learn otherwise. It has made me a better businessman and better equipped for the future.
I’ve also learned that if I had not set these goals, I wouldn’t be able to gauge my success or failures as clearly as I am today. Even though things didn’t work out like I thought they would, these goals still provide me with valuable measuring points that I can use now and in the future.
So that’s it for today. 2014 was incredibly challenging and rewarding and I can’t wait for 2015. All in all, I consider 2014 a success and I’m glad that I got to meet many of you in person or online. This podcast is truly one of my greatest successes of 2014 and I’m looking forward to what we’ll learn together in 2015. Tomorrow we’ll talk about how to set goals and why I think everyone should do it.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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