Getting Patreon into the world was was it was impossible. It required everything I had to force it into existence. And sometimes building a plan is about that.
It's about the grit and tenacity to dream up the world that you want and pushing it into existence and making it come true. We're gonna get so good at paying craters within 10 years. Kids graduating high school and college are gonna think of being a crater is just being an option.
Could be a doctor. I could be a lawyer. I could be a podcast.
I could have a webcomic. Like, it's just going to be something you can do. Hi, everybody.
How's it going? Oh, everybody's muted. Oh, I was like, wow, that's a resounding reply.
I'm going to I'm going to zoom out today. One I'm going to talk about is generally how I approach problems with with my band's pomplamoose and and scary pockets and how we plan our year to solve whatever the fuck is thrown at us, no matter what the problem is. I love this annual planning process.
I do it every single year. It just makes me pumped. It's like it just gets me excited.
OK, let's jump straight in. This is how to build an annual plan. So why.
Let's start with why. Why build an annual plan? Three things.
First, focus. I've found it is so easy to lose focus. So many things come.
Email. Twitter. My tendency as a crater is to be.
Yes. Yes. Boo.
That's exciting. Let's do that. And guess what happens when you do that?
You go a little bit this way. Then you turn around. You go back a little bit this way.
Then that thing is shiny over there. So you go a little bit that way and you never kind of make progress in any one direction. An annual plan shows you the future so that you know exactly where to go and helps you focus on the future.
Number to know what you want. Oh, my gosh. This one has been one of the most important lessons in my life ever.
I think I know what I want. And then I spend a couple hours. It's not rocket science.
Just a couple hours clarifying what is it that I want? And I realized that what I want is not what I thought I wanted. An annual plan helps you clarify and specify what do I want as a creator?
Three. Living your dream. Oh my gosh.
It is so fun to know what you want and then to go for it and to track progress against that over 12 months. It's like one of the most rewarding things in the world. If you were to point me at Pomplamoose, populace's my band, by the way, this is that's me and my wife.
We're in the middle of dancing, which is why we look silly. Also, we're idiots, which is why we look silly. But if you were to show us what Pomplamoose has done over the last two years, if you were to tell us three or four years ago, here's where problems would be now.
Fuck you. Go home. No way.
No way could we accomplish that. No way are we going to be able to do that. And and we've done it.
And it's been it's been really great. So in the end last year, Paul, who's got 52 million views, we hit a million subscribers on YouTube about three weeks ago. Which I'm super excited about.
We have over six hundred thousand monthly listeners on Spotify. We're making like fourteen to sixteen thousand dollars a month. Streaming income from Spotify at this point.
We have over 3000 patrons in our membership and our patron and fifteen contractors that are part of the Pomplamoose organization that we pay out every single month. We paid those contractors over one hundred and forty thousand dollars last year. Graphic designers, video creators, audio engineers, audio producers.
It's it's awesome. And Publix is running a profitable business. So we've figured out how to do this and actually have net income that we can reinvest back into the business.
And Scary Pocket's is my other band, and we've done something very similar. Scary Pocket's last year got 54 million views. We had half a million subscribers.
We've got three hundred thousand Spotify monthly listeners. We've paid out a bunch of money to contractors last year. It's a profitable business.
If you were to show me these stats like two years ago, I'd say, no way. We'd like. No way.
Here's what an annual plan is. It's a vision statement. That's number one.
It's key results. Key results. Answer the question.
How will I know when I got there? How will I know when I succeeded? And last is areas of focus.
What are the things that we're gonna do? What are the work streams that we're gonna tackle in order to achieve those key results and hit that vision statement? Here's what an annual plan looks like for Pomplamoose.
That's a Google doc. It's one page. That first paragraph is a vision statement followed by some key results, followed by some areas of focus.
Here's a division statement is a paragraph that paints the future for you very clearly of what it's going to be like a year from now. And it's get pumped like it should make you get your blood pumping. This is the actual visit vision statement from Popl mousses plan.
I think a twenty nineteen, the rest of twenty nineteen we will release the best album we've ever made. By November, we'll continue innovating on the song per week format and play four to six shows West and East Coast. We'll get 24 million views over the course of the year and released three music videos of songs on our album.
The original album will get a million streams on Spotify over the course of 2020. We will sell out every show of our tour playing five thousand person rooms. It will be fucking awesome.
And our proudest year as Polynice. That plan. We didn't hit it exactly.
Things changed and things always change. And one thing I found in creators and people you know and patrie on in general is like people have a tendency to feel guilty if they don't hit their plan or if something changes, people feel like I'm a failure. That's why it's in my plan.
No. Yeah, that's not true. Like plans change.
P everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face and like feeling guilty about it is it doesn't help you get any closer to what you want. Plans are living, breathing documents. Pomplamoose changes our plans over time as we learn more.
Right in the middle of the year we'll do a reforecast, will adjust, will tweak zigging and zagging. Your way to figuring this out is is a big important part of it. OK.
The first step to figuring out this annual plants. Step one. Ask questions.
I have this Google doc. I look at it every single year. It's the questions that I ask myself to help me build an annual plan.
Here's what those questions are. What do you want? What matters to you?
What doesn't matter to you that you think matters? What are you best off as an individual? What are your strengths?
What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Why does it matter?
What is the purpose of the stuff that I am making and putting out onto the Internet? Why is it important to this world? What do you think attracts people to your work?
When you put something out and people resonate with it, why? What are your fans like? Who are the people that you're reaching with, with your work?
What do they get from your music and videos? What job does your art have in their lives? What is the impact that it has on them?
What do you want to be doing five years from now? If you zoom way out, you think about your life. What do you want to be doing?
I called a brain dump. I don't censor myself. I just like I don't worry about organizing.
I don't worry about, like, meticulous. I just blur step to do a retro retros. Are some of the most important things I have ever learned about in my seven year experience as an operator and as as CEO Bactrian and as a creator.
Great organizations do retros. Here's what it is. Three columns.
What worked? What didn't work? What improvements do you want to make for next time?
That's a retro. It's a brainstorm at the people who are involved in a particular project. Or you can do a retro on your year or you can do a retro on a video.
Here's an example of like a filled out retro. I'm kind of I'm opening a little deep here because some of this is is kind of sensitive shit, but whatever. But let's I think you kind of that's that's how you got to get into it.
So here's an example of what didn't work. We're getting sick of the content treadmill. It's a grind.
Feels like Nat is burning out. Just right there. So logit problem that we can solve in an annual plan.
Right. But again, I'm not even thinking about annual plans here. I'm just thinking about some of these problems.
And anything goes in there. Right. You just fill it with the stuff that isn't working for you.
And then check out improvements for for next time. Natalie could do less organizational management and more creative stuff like songwriting. Natalie found herself doing like logistics and project management.
And she looked up one day and was like, holy shit, I'm like a manager, not an artist. And like, she wanted to spend more of her time as an artist. Another logit problem that you can figure out how to solve anyway.
This is example of some of what a retro yields and how it's important in helping you understand what it is that you want and what you're going to work on over the next year. A retro also helps you learn after every swing creators take swings all the time. A lot of those swings don't work.
And it can be really disappointing. But here's the beauty of it. If you commit to learning after every swing state, every swing gets a little bit better.
Oh, my gosh. And five years from now, you're just unstoppable. So retro helps you learn what didn't work.
What did work. It really holds you accountable for improving after every single swing. Let's talk about problems, statements for a second, because problem statements are critical.
This middle column, what didn't work? It's important, I found, to frame those as problem statements and to think deeply about what the problem statement is and what a problem statement is not. Sometimes I hear people say things like this.
I just got just I need a manager. Really, what I need is I need a manager to help me with the business and run things. That's not a problem.
That's a solution that might or might not work. What's the problem? What's underneath this feeling that I need a manager?
Because I'll tell you something I learned as Pomplamoose. We worked with four different managers. None of them knew what to do with our weird frickin Internet business.
We know. And you know me better than anyone else in the world. How to run your business.
Your businesses are weird. You are Internet creators. No one has ever done what you're doing.
This is an unprecedented time. And you have so much detail and understanding and complexity in your brains about how to run your business. I need a manager.
Is not a problem statement. A need statement is not a problem statement. The format of our videos isn't changing and it's starting to feel predictable and stale.
That's a problem. Again, this can feel very negative, but it's important to understand what the problems are. And do you see the difference between that?
And we need a manager. So let's talk about what a problem statement is a problem. Satan gets behind the symptoms.
It finds the root of the problem. To find out policy, you've got to get curious. You've got to dig in.
You got to get specific. Got to ask a follow up question. Why do you need a manager?
What's not working right now that makes you feel like you need a manager? Be careful that you don't add solutions in your retro column. Focus on what's wrong, what isn't working.
When you really understand what the core problem is, it can actually set you on a very different course for the kinds of solutions that you that you do. OK, visualize the future. So after you've done a retro, after you've asked yourself some questions, after you've really clarified problem statements, visualize your future dream up the perfect year based on your questions and your retro and your answers.
Fast forward here. OK. It's June 1st, 2021, 2020 with perfectly.
You feel great and lucky to be where you are. But last year was a dream come true. Imagine it.
Dram it. Visualize it. Like if you fast forward a year and you're looking back and you're just feeling so energized and fired up.
Why? Tell me about year. Don't think too hard.
Just write. Organize your thoughts later. What happened?
What didn't happen. How many views. How many listens.
How many fans did you get? What did you create? How did you collaborate with anyone?
Did you collaborate with anyone? Who. What makes you feel proud of your work this year?
What's your team like? How much money did you pay out to your team? How much money did you make as a creator?
How much did you reinvest in your business? These are the kinds of questions I ask myself. And I'll just offer one thing about money here.
I've found that creators have a tendency to not want to talk about money, which I totally understand. I had that too, as a creator, but as a creator. You're the CEO of your own business and not thinking about money and not thinking about how much money you're gonna make and how much you're gonna spend.
It will hurt you more than it will help you pop loose. We barely have net income. Like, I'm really proud that it's a profitable business and we manage it as a profitable business.
But we're not amassing wealth like that's if we make music videos like we treat money as. As a tool to create art. And I think if your brain and if your intention is in that end state as like an enabler for your art, it can help you feel better about money, or at least it did for me.
Let's talk about organizing your answers into buckets. You go through your answers. Your word vomit.
And you find the themes. Once you have those themes together, they give you a sense of what are the what are the things, what are the directions? What are the key ideas that are most important?
The key is separate the organization from the brain dump and the word vomit, because you don't want to be editing yourself and censoring yourself while you're brainstorming. Right. You just want to get it out and then organize later.
Step five, write the vision statement. After you've organized these themes, you've listed your problems, statements. You've done your retro.
You've got some specificity. You're building clarity of thought in your mind. Nathalie's French teacher growing up told her thought happens through writing.
I've never forgotten that. I love that statement. Like, our brains are associative by nature.
And when you force yourself to write out your thoughts in a linear, sequential, logical fashion, it forces your intention to be clear. I love that about writing. And this process helps you find clarity in your thoughts.
Here's what a good vision statement does. A good vision statement gets you pumped. You'll know you'll have a vision statement that's rockin when you're like, Yes, I want to do that.
You're I'm ready to go. A vision statement should be specific and ambitious, but achievable. The way I like to think about this is sometimes I redivision statement.
I go home. Boy, I don't know how to. Okay.
Like, if I'm feeling a little bit like nervous. Not too nervous but a little bit nervous. Then it's like that's the level that I'm comfortable with.
Not all creators want that. Some creators want something that's super achievable. I totally understand that this is more of a personal thing for me.
I like to just have it be a little bit while it's like a little bit uncomfortable. A good mission statement should help you see the future. This is an important one.
You want clarity on what the future looks like. Paint the picture for yourself. Don't let yourself off the hook until you see the future.
See that year. June 1st, 2021. See that year.
Let yourself get excited about it. That's what a good vision statement does. This type of thing, a vision statement also works.
If you are hiring a new teammate and you want to, you want to help them understand what their job is. You can go through this process to create a vision for that person. Joe, who's watching this call?
Joe's helping me build out my YouTube channel. And this is the vision statement. I'm not saying, hey, Joe, here's what I want.
Every video to be like, here's what I want, this video. Here's what I'm saying. Hey, Joe, here's what I want.
And here's what success looks like. You got to have some clarity for new people that get hired. And I think the mistake that a lot of new managers make and creators make is not defining success for new employees.
Choose key results. Brainstorm and decide on binary key results that tell you whether or not you've accomplished your vision. A good key result is binary.
You hit it or you don't. Key results can be qualitative or quantitative. One of palp loses.
Keer is also as we're fucking proud of our album. Do I know what it's like to be fucking proud of something when I make it? Yeah.
Like, that's binary for me. Sort of, but it's close enough. Look through your brainstorm, really pick out the things that define success for you.
Those are your key results. A good key result makes you feel excited. Like the vision statement.
You look over your key results and you go, yeah, I want that. Feels really good. Good.
Key results for me are a little bit of a stretch. They make me sweat a little bit. They make me a little uncomfortable.
Here's pop mousses, key results for our annual plan. We're super fucking proud of our album, 24 Million Views in 2019. Two million views on the original songs from an album.
By November 12th, 2020. We wanted more attention on our original music as opposed to covers that was important to us. Sell out 46 shows at 500 to a thousand tickets per show and one hundred ten thousand dollars an annual membership revenue.
Looking at those we hit went to. Three, four of the six. Choose areas of focus.
How am I going to achieve these key results? You want a few areas of focus for yourself. It directs your day to day activities.
It pushes you closer to your vision and your goals. Imagine six months from now you get stuck. You're going to look at your areas of focus to help you figure out what do I do today?
Areas of focus should be enough work for a year. They can guide your actions in your day to day behaviors for a long, extended period of time. Good area of focus will unblock you from feeling stuck.
Here's populace's areas of focus, innovate and iterate on song per week format to build and execute on a comprehensive go to market strategy for album. This is terminology that I'm familiar with. Feel free to use terminology that you're familiar with.
This just means market our album. In retrospect, I actually don't like this area focus that much. It's it's like a plan for a plan.
In hindsight, I'm actually this area of focus feels a little bit too broad. I wish it were a bit more narrow and three plan and execute three membership pushes for me. That's like a special offer, something that we can do to staircase up our patriarch.
The future is not inevitable. Future is created by humans. I think a lot of us feel like the future is something that just happens.
We see this and we think this was meant to happen. This is going to happen. Creators make things.
Creators take dreams. And they make them the future. This is me the Morning Patrie on launched.
I'm on the floor of my dad's house because my Internet wasn't fast enough and I had to go to my dad's house to launch Patreon and I'd been up for 34 straight hours. That little plate right there that's leftover pizza from the night before getting patrie on into the world was was it was impossible. It required everything I had to force it into existence.
And it's sometimes building a plan is about that. It's about the grit and tenacity to dream up the world that you want and pushing it into existence and making it come true. And everyone can do that.
It's just about understanding very clearly what you want. Defining that very clearly and then having the guts and the grit to actually make it happen over the course of year.
