When you make huge leaps forward in your life, you feel exhilarated.

But if you end up looking back on those achievements and compare them to your present reality, you could feel discouraged depending on the amount of progress you feel you’ve made.

So, it’s important to celebrate every victory, no matter how big or small we feel it was.

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I share what I feel I accomplished in 2017.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Reflecting on 2016 and what I accomplished

00:56 – Reflecting on 2017 and what I accomplished

01:28 – How I enjoyed freedom in 2017

04:16 – How I achieved greater clarity last year

05:52 – How I became healthier last year

07:12 – Final thoughts on 2017 and why it was different for me

Transcription:

As I think back on 2016, I recognize that one of my biggest achievements was going from working several jobs at several locations to becoming a full-time work-from-home freelancer and entrepreneur.

Prior to that, I had been working as a guitar instructor, theatre technician, and freelance writer. By summer 2016, my ghostwriting and freelance writing work had taken off to the point where I didn’t feel I needed the other off-site work anymore.

As exciting as these changes were, it was a bit scary going from working in several capacities to narrowing my focus to one thing. But if that hadn’t worked out, I may not be sitting here sharing these insights with you on the podcast today.

So, recently I gave some thought as to what I had accomplished in 2017. At first, I didn’t feel like it was quite the standout year 2016 was. I encountered many challenges and went through a great deal of growth in 2017, especially in my personal life, but because of that, my revenue numbers suffered compared to 2016.

As I reflected, however, I realized that revenue figures aren’t everything. I still accomplished a great deal that I’m proud of last year.

Revenue figures aren't everything.Share on X

So, here are three things I accomplished in 2017.

1. Freedom

Many of us get into business because of the freedom it offers.

I love what Christopher Sutton of Musical U said in episode 68 of the podcast:

…as an entrepreneur, you have incredible freedom from day one and you can increase that over time as your business grows and becomes more successful.

When you think “freedom” as an entrepreneur, what comes to mind is probably the laptop lifestyle. The ability to go anywhere you want, and work from any beach you want across the world.

I’ve probably been able to live that type of lifestyle since 2016, since my work was no longer tied to a physical location. I probably had enough freelancing income to do it even a year prior to that.

There are reasons why I didn’t do that. For one, I had – and still have – several collaborative projects I work on with people I respect and admire in Calgary. For another, I had lost sight of anything outside of work between 2014 and the first half of 2017. My life was work, as I’ve shared in earlier podcast episodes. That meant it didn’t matter a whole lot where I was in the world, because I hardly interacted with anyone.

I had some vague notion of visiting Japan in 2017, and I knew I couldn’t delay that trip any longer because I had been thinking about it for a couple of years, but I had no idea just how vital that experience would be for me. Most of the year appeared to be going along smoothly, at least until June. More on that in a second.

Prior to leaving for Japan, I was sick and burnt out, and barely able to function. I was beat up in virtually every capacity – physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I’ll talk more about burnout in a future podcast episode.

So, going back to what I was saying about June. I was already nearing burnout at that stage. I would catch myself working straight through the day, getting up only to go to the washroom, make meals,