Every year around this time, I like to go back and do a complete review of the previous year. Look at what I did, what I didn’t do, what I wish I did better, and basically see what was great and what wasn’t so great about the year that is coming to an end.
2015 was an interesting year. Honestly, I would call it the year of failure as Patrick and I started a business, JohnAndJaneBox, that failed miserably, I tried livestreaming everyday and building an audience on TwitchTV, that also failed quite spectacularly, and Patrick and I have had many, many ideas that just haven’t came to life. Thus, 2015 was a year of failing and non-starting. One of which, failing, is completely fine. The other, not starting/finishing projects and new ideas, is not good at all. This post isn’t about trying to improve on things in the future, a post about the year to come will accomplish that, so let’s move on.
Going into specifics on the two failures mentioned above, we’ll start with JohnAndJaneBox. JohnAndJaneBox is an idea that Patrick and I had over a year ago right when we got back from New York City. An idea to delivery condoms and sexual lubricant directly to the doors of anyone who wanted them in a discrete, professional, non-intrusive manner. We liked this idea so much that when we started to see what it would take to make it happen, we moved extremely quickly to launch spending a decent amount of money and time to get it to market. The only problem was we didn’t do proper research. After launching, we realized that no one wanted the service we were offering, and after trying every avenue of advertising possible, we shutdown JohnAndJaneBox after 45 crazy days. This was definitely my biggest failure ever, and it all comes down to being too confident a market exists and not doing enough research before hand to actually see that it doesn’t.
The other big failure in 2015 didn’t cost money. It cost something much, much more valuable – time. Time is the one limited resource that we have. We cannot get more of it. We have a limited amount of time on Earth, and for this reason, we must use that time as wisely as possible. When it comes to livestreaming, there is a HUGE time commitment with very little chance of success or reward. This is what I found out, and why I stopped livestreaming early 28 days before my streaming challenge ended. If there is one lesson I learned in 2015, it is that you must not invest large amounts of time into something if there is not clear path to how you will get success from it. That is the mistake I made with daily livestreaming.
Something else I would consider a failure in 2015 was my struggle with my health and weight loss. I have been trying to lose weight and get healthy for a VERY long time, and while 2015 did see some minor strives towards this, such as Patrick and I completely stoping our fast food intake, there weren’t enough small successes to outweigh all of the failures. Truly, there was not a conscious effort to lose weight at all. There was A LOT of talk, but no actually effort. Like I said, the year of not starting.
Now, with the failures of 2015 out of the way, there were a ton of successes and great moments too. DropbackTV has continued to grow bigger and bigger month after month now having over 12,800 partners, 430 million total views, 2 million total subscribers, and 28 million views/month. The crazy thing about DropbackTV is that we only work on it about 6 hours per week. It is truly a passive income business that allows Patrick and I to travel, take time off to spend with family, friends, etc. without having to worry about DropbackTV.
Another success in 2015, despite my lack of consistency on it, was my YouTube channel. 2015 saw INCREDIBLE growth for my YouTube channel having just passed 100,000 subscribers earlier today with total views over 14.5 million. What is really crazy to me about the growth of my YouTube channel in 2015 is that I didn’t put anywhere near the amount of work into it as I wish I had. I’ve been very inconsistent with uploading, I’ve not been posting enough new content, and I’ve by no means been working on it as much as I would like. This will change in 2016. I’m very sure of it.
Something that is very interesting about 2015 is the fact that I traveled more this year than I ever have previously with trips to Austin, Texas and Orlando, Florida. Both of these trips provided me new life experiences that had I had a 9 to 5 job or been in school I wouldn’t have been able to expirence at all. The trip to Austin showed me that it really is possible to have a town where all you can do is eat and drink (only kind of kidding…), and the trip to Orlando showed me an amazing city with a great energy, amazing, healthy, vegan food, and awesome weather that honestly made me never want to come home.
Something else interesting about the trip to Orlando is that Patrick and I got to meet three amazing people in Lewis Mocker, Amy Sangster, and Robyn Bretherton. These three people are a true inspiration and were amazing to meet, talk to, and interact with it. For more information on Lewis and Amy, check out this post. They even invited us to the IP Ball last minute when we previously couldn’t get tickets. The night of the ball turned out to be the most amazing night of the entire Orlando trip topping it off and making it something we truly will never forget. Thanks Lewis, Amy, and Robyn! You guys are awesome.
In addition to traveling, 2015 was a great year in regard to my personal relationships. I won’t get into much detail here, but I feel as if Patrick and I are better friends than we ever have been, at the end of this year I met an amazing woman who I am now luckily enough to call my girlfriend, and to top it all of, my relationship with my close family has never been better.
And there you have it. My 2015 in review. In all honesty, it wasn’t as bad as I originally thought. When I started this post, I expected it to be full of failures and bad things, but in truth there were a lot more good experiences than bad. That is what 2015 was really about – new expirences. I did so many things for the first time ever in 2015 whether it be driving for 18 hours straight to Texas, going to my first ball/true black tie event in Orlando, or buying 3,000 condoms and investing into a real ecommerce business. There were so many things in 2015 that were new for me, and this is something I hope to carry into 2016 just with more success along the way.
Thanks for reading, and I hope your 2015 was incredible and that your 2016 will be even better! You are all amazing. Thank you for being you.
