2014: Year In Review

My goals for 2014, and a reflection on each:

1) Increase overall revenue 50% over 2013

Made it! In 2014 my business revenue increased 64%.

2) Increase speaking revenue percentage from 5% to 15% of overall revenue

I didn’t make this goal—it only bumped from 5% to 8%. Though I will say (as I also mentioned last year), a big increase in consulting revenue impacts this pretty dramatically; meaning, even though the percentage increase isn’t large, the speaking revenue itself actually doubled from 2013. I feel pretty good about this, AND I will be putting a lot more energy behind building this side of my business over the next couple years. I find speaking to be quite enjoyable!

3) Clarify and integrate the consulting side of my business brand

I made huge strides on this goal in 2014—in fact, I’d say all the work I did here is what took the requisite energy away from meeting other goals where I missed the mark.

In a nutshell, I’ve decided to merge my solo consulting practice with another small consulting group owned by a good friend of mine, consolidating all my consulting work under the new brand we’ll be launching together. I’m going to write a whole post about this soon…!

4) Post one new blog entry every week (some of these will probably be links to new articles of mine in other publications)

I definitely failed here. I finished the year with 23 posts — which may not sound terrible, until you realize this means I made it only 44% of the way to my goal. Hardly a passing grade!

To celebrate my spectacular failure, here are my 4 favorite posts of 2014! ;-)

• How To Be A Better Person
• Advice For My Daughter: How To See People
• Quarterly Returns Must Die
• How To Work With Gen Y

5) Record and release audiobook version of Igniting the Invisible Tribe

Not even close. Maybe crossed my mind once. Still something I’d love to get done, though!

6) Sell 1000 books (i.e. roughly double 2013 sales)

Looks like I moved about 750 print copies and another 50 digital in 2014. Not too far off!

7) Grow the Work Revolution movement via (at least) one large event, through doubling our tribe size, and by doubling our Revolutionary interview database

It’s a little hard to measure this one, as I (stupidly) forgot to note what the tribe size was when I wrote the goal. (So I don’t repeat that mistake, here’s our current numbers: 540 Mailchimp / 450 Twitter / 300 Facebook.) Overall, I’d say we “kinda sorta” achieved the goal. While we didn’t have an official Work Revolution event, we did co-host a pretty cool partnership event with a large HR group in California, which will likely inform a new series we’ll be sponsoring in the future. We published 13 new Feature Interviews in 2014, which is more than 1x/month, but we should have published 2x that many to meet our goal of doubling the database. I’m pretty sure our social media tribe at least doubled.

Accomplishments & fun things from 2014:

• Spent 6 days at Disneyland — 2 of those days were with my parents, my sister and nephew, and of course my own little family. That trip in particular provided some pretty special memories!
• Traveled to San Diego (7x), San Francisco/Sonoma (5x), Kansas City (4x), Seattle (4x), Denver (2x), Coeur d’Alene (2x), Detroit (2x), Tulsa, Monterrey, Ann Arbor, Omaha, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a deliciously unplugged vacation
• Helped start the Conscious Capitalism LA chapter
• Published my first piece in The Huffington Post
• Attended the Conscious Capitalism Conference in San Diego
• Attended the Positive Business Conference
• Visited the Downtown Project — and left Vegas incredibly inspired (which is not the feeling I expect to have when leaving Vegas)
• Piloted the Future Of Work: Unplugged idea in Orange County
• Got summer vacations with both my family and my wife’s family
• Had 3 first birthday parties for my (then) 1-year-old… because one party just isn’t enough when your family is spread across 3 states!
• Saw John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl
• Attended a private Into The Woods screening on the Disney Studio Lot (which I’ve been wanting to visit)

Goals For 2015:

1. Maintain my take-home income from 2014
2. Sell 1500 books (doubling 2014)
3. Have at least one baby-free date with my wife every month (harder than it sounds when there’s no family nearby!)
4. Develop consulting methodology and clear product lines for the new brand
5. Increase speaking revenues 4x over 2014
6. Read at least 2 nonfiction and 2 fiction books (seems like such a sad goal, but I think it’s realistic for what’s on my plate this year)
7. Blog 1x/month here and 1x/month on the new company website
8. Host Work Revolution Summit 2 and double the tribe size
9. Create the outline for Book 2 — follow-up to Igniting the Invisible Tribe

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