Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful festive season and are already enjoying 2020.
At the end of a year I always like to reflect back on how things have gone, before I look to the future and set myself new goals.
If you haven’t seen it already, I wrote about the goals I wanted to accomplish in 2019 back in January last year. I did one video goals update in January, and then didn’t update you again with my progress all year - whoops! Sorry about that.
This year I’m planning to create more YouTube content and I will often create a blog post around the videos I put out. If you prefer written format, or are in an environment where you can’t have the sound on, it’s possible to watch my videos with the sound off and enabling the CC captions. That way you can read the subtitles to find out my updates, plus I can show you things I’m talking about more easily in videos.
For today’s post, I’ve written a summarised overview of what I cover in my 2019 goals review video:
1. Achieve a weight and size that feels healthy for me, ultimately to fit into size 12 clothes
At the start of 2019 I tried a couple of different eating patterns such as intermittent fasting and a keto based diet. Neither of them proved particularly effective for me, and as the year went on I tired of having to be restricted. So I decided to simply eat food that was as healthy as possible each day, mixing this with some exercise.
I could definitely have been more consistent on the exercise front, having tried home exercising to YouTube videos, free weight exercises, walking and badminton at different times throughout the year.
At the end of the year I definitely had not reached a size 12 in clothes, but despite being overweight I do feel very healthy otherwise. This is probably helped by the fact that I take vitamins and supplements and stick mostly to organic food.
OVERALL RESULT: NOT ACHIEVED
2. Have my first £7K profit month from my income hustles, by the end of the year
At the start of 2019 my focus was firmly fixed on maximising profits from my self book publishing endeavours. I was optimistic about the possibilities for audible audio books. I made good progress initially, getting another 2 books produced for audible. However, it was taking a lot of advertising spend and effort to see results with book profits.
In April an opportunity presented itself which saw me embark on my first affiliate partnership. This was for an incredible product that was 100% aligned with my passion and values. I helped to promote the Knowledge Broker Blueprint (KBB) course by Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi. I supported anyone who had questions about the course or the software and I offered some incredible bonuses to anyone who made their purchase through me.
This proved very successful and I made 14 sales. Not only was this a great income stream, it has opened up so many opportunities for me. I was invited to an appreciation party in Las Vegas where I met Tony, Dean, Russell Brunson and many other amazing role models in the online entrepreneurial world. I had the great pleasure of helping my KBB group work through the course, sharing progress in a fortnightly mastermind call and mentoring them 1 on 1. And of course I completed the KBB course myself which taught me so much about online business and about how to find my passions.
As the affiliate launch ended in May I decided to change my business focus, switching to my Inspiring Life Design brand and products that I could create to help people get ahead with creating their own income streams.
After the course launch my commissions were paid out a couple of months later, stretched over several months because some people had chosen the pay-monthly option to buy the course. June was by far my best month, achieving a profit of £7,169.75.
What this proved to me is that it is entirely possible for me to achieve a profit of £7,000 in a month via my various online income streams. Which is incredible. However, I don’t have an amazing launch to support every month of the year. This is not a consistent income stream. So although I have managed to prove that I can achieve this goal, because I was not consistently making £7K by year end (far from it!) I feel that I have to mark this goal as partly achieved.
OVERALL RESULT: PARTLY ACHIEVED
3. Grow my Inspiring Life Design brand
At the start of the year I’d made the definition of this goal purposefully ambiguous. The goal expressed my underlying desire to grow the reach and help I could offer to others through the brand.
However, with the about-turn that I made half-way through the year, Inspiring Life Design became much more of a focus for me. I spent more time than I’d originally anticipated on refining the brand, marketing and creating products that I felt would serve my community.
I am really pleased with the direciton that I’m taking Inspiring Life Design in, and I would like to become more consistent with my message, posts and help that I can offer in 2020.
Here’s a look at how my stats stacked up between the start and end of 2019:
| Start Of January | End Of December | + / - | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspiring Life Design Email Subscribers | 15 | 47 | +32 |
| Inspiring Life Design Domain Authority | 18 | 25 | +7 |
| 1,788 | 2,331 | +543 | |
| YouTube | 17 | 351 | +334 |
| 1,157 | 1,433 | +276 | |
| 69 | 129 | +60 | |
| Facebook Page | 30 | 66 | +36 |
| Facebook Group (for email subscribers) | 7 | 8 | +1 |
I’m happy with the growth that I saw last year, therefore I feel that I achieved this goal.
OVERALL RESULT: ACHIEVED
4. Plan and take at least 2 holidays this year
I did a lot more trips in 2019 than in 2018…
- Center Parcs with my boyfriend and my parents in May (7 nights)
- Camping with family and friends in July (2 nights)
- Las Vegas business trip by myself in August (10 nights)
- Paris with my boyfriend in October (2 nights)
- Cornwall with family in October (7 nights)
OVERALL RESULT: ACHIEVED
5. Learn a new skill
I specifically set myself a learning goal last year because I understood the importance of Constant And Never-ending Improvement (or CANI as Tony Robbins calls it).
I enjoyed lots of learning experiences including:
- Serving on the crew for Tony Robbins’ Unleash The Power Within event
- Taking several of the Birmingham Apple Store’s free training classes
- Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery in Las Vegas
- Finishing the Knowledge Broker Blueprint online course and completing all the accompanying exercises
- Completing Tony Robbins’ Time Of Your Life Audio program
OVERALL RESULT: ACHIEVED
6. Invest £30K into ISA’s toward my longterm Financial Independence goal
I’ve previously written about my big life goal to become financially independent, and managed 1 update on progress last year!
The intent behind this 2019 goal was to continue my progress toward financial independence by further investing in stocks and shares ISA’s. Each year the maximum amount that can be invested into an ISA is £20,000. I have been trying to max out an ISA a year because I love the fact that when I eventually need to withdraw from them I won’t have to pay any tax. It’s future proofing at its best.
In March 2019 I invested £20K into my ISA which covered me for the 2018-2019 tax year. However, I have still not invested the remaining £10K that I intended to put in toward this year’s ISA. The reason I haven’t done that is because I want to open a new ISA account this year.
In the UK, under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, savings and investments are protected up to the value of £85,000 per person, per financial institution, should your bank go bust. Seeing as I have now paid into my ISA for 3 years and I’d like to leave plenty of growth room, I feel that it’s time to open a new ISA with a completely separate banking institution.
The trouble is, it takes time to research which ISA will suit my needs the best. I’ll be looking out for the lowest annual fees because I only invest once or twice a year, which means I can take a larger hit on trading fees because I don’t trade all the time. Plus whichever ISA provider I find, I need to make sure that they’re not actually part of the same parent banking company as my existing provider!
In short, I didn’t quite achieve this goal last year, but I do have the £10K set aside ready to invest this year - as soon as I get my act together!
OVERALL RESULT: NOT ACHIEVED
7. Donate £600 to charities
I totted up my total donations to my regular charities and sponsorships through 2019 and the total came to £296.95. Which means I didn’t achieve this goal, I was at the 50% mark. It’s been over 1.5 years now since I last had a consistent income from full time working. While I have been working for myself from home my income has taken a huge hit as I build up my online income streams. As a result of this, it has been necessary for me to cut back on lots of spending, including my charity giving.
I still have a couple of charity direct debits set-up which equate to about £10 a month, but I can’t commit to any more than that until I know that I have enough consistent monthly income to cover my basic expenses like mortgage, bills and food etc.
So although I didn’t hit my £600 goal, I’m happy that I did still manage to donate nearly £300 last year. The charities I supported include Myton Hospice, Cancer Research UK, an african school Aquinoe, the Starlight Foundation and Pet Care.
RESULT: NOT ACHIEVED
8. Make a plan for how/when I can attend Tony Robbins’ Mastery University
At the start of 2019 I had no intention of attending a new Tony Robbins event, because I knew that until my income increased I could not justify the funds to go.
However, life works in mysterious ways. When I became a partner in the KBB program last year, and then got invited to the appreciation party in Las Vegas, it seemed like fate to me that Tony would be running Business Mastery 2 days later. So I went with my gut instinct and booked myself a ticket. Sometimes I think we have to change our plans, if it feels right. Business Mastery was an amazing experience, one that I will need to write another post about to do it justice.
So in the end I didn’t create a plan for attending Mastery University (Tony’s other big program which combines several of his events into a bundle package). I will need to wait now to get more certainty over my short-term financial future before I can realistically work on a plan for when I can go to more events.
RESULT: NOT ACHIEVED
So that’s my 2019 review! I will be posting a new video sharing my 2020 goals within the next week or two, so if you like content on goals, keep an eye out for that!
I love to hear from you and have a good old chat in the comments! Let me know how your 2019 went. Do you feel happy about how the year went? Have you done your own review? Are there any areas you identified where you can improve in 2020?
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My PREVIOUS post shared an opportunity for a festive prize giveaway (now closed).
In my NEXT post you can discover my new goals for 2020.
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