With the year coming to an end, I think it is very appropriate to take a look back at what was most defiantly the best year I’ve ever had.
This year was the start of many great things, and it all really started when I walked across the stage in a local convention center and in one swift motion went from a high school student who was running a business to a full-time business owner and entrepreneur carving his own path to success through life. This was a major day for me for the simple reason I was finally independent. No longer did I have to show up somewhere everyday. No longer did I have to take orders from someone else that didn’t really know anything about me and how what they were telling me to do didn’t move me forward, closer to my goals. As soon as I got that high school diploma in my hand, that all changed. I was now my own man living my own life.
The change was very noticeable and apparent almost instantly having an impact on the way I thought about things, the way I did things in regards to my businesses, and how I did things in my personal life. Everything was switched, and nothing was holding me back. Because of this, I thought up the idea for a YouTube network that would change the industry. A network that everyone wanted, but no company was doing. That network was DropbackTV, and the best part was that we could bootstrap it off of MCN Freedom!’s dashboard and technology allowing us to get the network from idea to launch in just 45 days with a trip to New York City for the 4th of July thrown into the middle of it for good measure.
DropbackTV’s launch month was one of the craziest months of 2014. Things were moving so fast that Patrick and I could barely keep up, and after one month, we had almost 1,000 partners under DropbackTV. Little did we know that by the end of the year we would be in the top 5 Freedom! networks in terms of total partners, but that is where we are. DropbackTV’s success in 2014 has been simply incredible. I see know indication that it will slow down in 2015, and truth be told I believe it will speed up. We did something different than everyone else in the YouTube industry, and we plan to keep up that trend up moving into 2015.
In addition to DropbackTV, this year has been an incredible one for my own personal YouTube channel. At the beginning of 2014, my YouTube channel had 6,420 subscribers and 601,370 total video views. Compare that to my current stats, and that is just 1/8th of my total subscribers and only 1/10th of my total video views. At the time of writing this, on the last day in 2014, My personal YouTube channel has grown to 49,267 total subscribers and 5,903,838 total video views. Those numbers literally blow be away, and I can’t even comprehend them. By the end of the first week over 2015, I will have over 50,000 subscribers and more than 6,000,000 total video views. Numbers I never even imaged getting to when I first started YouTube. I know every successful YouTuber says that, but they only say because it’s true. No one starts off on YouTube knowing that they are going to get 1,000 subscribers let alone 50,000.
One more thing I wanted to mention in this post, although a minor thing in the retrospect of all that has happened this year, is the launch of the NicAndPatrick blog. Starting in the middle of November Patrick and I decided that we wanted to start blogging again. We had the time to do; we just needed to get it done. I’m proud to say that we have consistently posting at least, if not more than, 2 posts/week since the middle of November. Blogging is a very therapeutic process for me as I don’t write as much as I would like to in my day to day life. Blogging allows me to express myself in a written format that isn’t constrained by any limits.
Lastly, because of the success of DropbackTV and my personal YouTube channel, I can now call running online businesses, making YouTube videos, helping others, and doing what I love to wake up and do in the morning my full time job. I’ve always called it that – my full-time job – because I believe in be living what you want. As stated in the Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort, “Live like a wealthy man and you will surely become wealthy.” I lived like a full time online entrepreneur, and thus, I became a full time online entrepreneur. I encourage you to live like what you want to become because it makes becoming it a hell of a lot easier.
This year, 2014, was incredible. I’ve never looked back at year and been so proud of was accomplished and what was done in it. I plan on keeping this trend up in 2015, and next week, I will have a post going up right here on this blog about what my three goals for next year are. Those goals will help 2015 become 1000 times better than 2014 could ever have dreamed of being.
Thank you for reading! Please feel free to share one major “win”/success you had this year in the comment section below. I would love to look at them.