2005 Review... How would you grade yourself in 2005 (Biz Thread with Hot Pics)
 

Earlier this year Lars made a comment that stuck with me.
The Legendary one Said, "after 10 years of doing this biz, I feel am on top of my game like never before."
Those words were the single most motivating words I read on GFY this year.

I've been in this industry since 1997 and I've enjoyed more success than I ever imagined. The problem is I was working hard but didn't have the fire I once had. After I read that comment I thought back to all the 18+ hour work days and all nighters I used to pull. Reading that one post lit the fire under my ass and got me focused again. For that I have to thank Lars. Thanks My Man!

So with all that said I've been thinking about 2005 and was thinking about how I'd grade my performance. Here's my personal 2005 Report Card.

Positives of 2005
- We grew our revenues and profits by over 150%.
- We opened an office and expanded our work force from 4 to 18 people.
- We've had 7 consecutive record sales months ending off the year on a bang.
- Worked some key business deals in December that will surface in early 2006.
- Hired the right people and in just a few months managed to assemble a work force more talented than I could have imagined (Note Mrs Shap and Jassie made all the key hirings).

Negatives of 2005
- Too concerned with perfection and small details.
- Failed to launch new projects.
- Failed to optimize our earnings, I'm still leaving way too much $$$ on the table.
- And my single Biggest problem in 2005 was that I micro-managed way too much. I improved in the second half but nowhere near where I want to be. I read a great post by SweetT from NationalNet describing his success. He said
There are only two things that I do well....
1.) I hire the right people based on gut feelings that I have about someone
2.) I get the fuck out of their way and let them do their job.
I'm good at 1 and absolutely HORRIBLE at 2. I'm working on improving.

Conclusion:
We had a successful year however I have to say a large part of that is Mrs Shap and Jassie. Mrs Shap for being Mrs Shap, she rocks! And Jassie (who runs our office) has been so amazing I'm in shock. Jassie was put into a situation with no managing experience and has turned around and is running the office like a pro. I don't even dare think where we'd be without Jassie. In fact our whole team from programmer to support staff is amazing.
My Personal Grade for 2005 of C+

I don't feel I'm at top of my game yet, but I'm getting there. I plan to kick more ass than ever before in 2006 and get to the Top of my Game :thumbsup

So how about you? What would you grade yourself for 2005?

With the topic being 2005 Review here are some Twistys pics from 2005 taken by Mr Dean Capture. I give these an A+ :thumbsup

http://www.glamourshoots.com/pics/amy/002.jpg

http://www.twistyspreviews.com/dcjelena2_029.jpg

http://www.glamourshoots.com/pics/valentina/002.jpg

http://glamourshoots.com/pics/lux/003.jpg

http://www.twistyspreviews.com/12.jpg

150% profit growth? That deserves an A or at least a B :thumbsup

I'm my own worst critic. If we can do 150% to 200% profit growth again in 2006 then I'll be in the B to A Range :thumbsup

ugh ? Make that an A+...

Shap, you aren't on top of YOUR game, but you are on top of THE game right now... at least in the top ladders.

its easy to be ontop of your game when you work for someone else but quite honestly 2005 sucked for me. got ripped multiple times and just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. 2004 rocked but 2005 sucked. heres hoping 2006 is much better.

I would give myself 4/10

How would you rate your year Dre?

Ouch. I know how that can be. If you keep working hard and making smart moves you'll bounce back better than ever in 2006.

If nothing else, you got this photo ...

Oh my God, that is HOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
My goal in '06 is to marry her ;)

Seriously, Good luck in '06!! With babes like this, I think your future is very bright
:thumbsup

I was expecting an 8 from you :winkwink:

2005 was 10 times better than 2004 in some ways. But we had some major setbacks this year.

The shining thing for us was the birth of our son.

I hope that 2006 picks back up, and moves along. We have some plans, the we hope will help with it.

Good Luck to you too Kevin. Hope things are kicking ass for you!

NOTE: My marriage prevents me from making public comments on this pic (or any verbal comments for that matter). :1orglaugh

At the level of learning, A+

but i've made a couple major mistakes ... wasted a lot of time on projects that never saw the light.

Luckily I had enough money aside to live through this hard year ;)

Last 2-3 months have been great thought. Lots of improvement.

How do I feel when I look back at 2005?

I guess I feel proud and happy ;)

2004 was my setup year... gave myself goals which I met...

2005 was meant to be my year where I'd work hard and get things in place for expansion...


We moved out into our new office. Granted small , but effective for what we need done... that was step 1 in january.

throughout this year, I also managed to hire new programmers to straighten up all the admin and maintenance tools required for the feeds which I had developped myself... The goal was to get them redone so that anyone could run it , not just me. This has been completed for the most part, focusing on stats/billing/tools next.


I've also brought our encoding biz from a capacity to encode a few dvds/mini dv tapes in a week to being able to, through tools and setups I created, bring the workload to be able to handle several hundreds of dvds or tapes a month, all of which can be handled through 1 single person. Lots of time, efforts and materials invested in there, but it sure pays off when I hear the good comments from past clients and am able to encode what I need for the feeds ASAP at an awesome quality.


I've also been able these last few months to establish content deals with a few companies to launch new feeds through our brand new infrastructure which was built to allow an easy integration of new feeds in a matter of a few hours. Adding this to our encoding structures, we are able to create a great amount of new sites to offer our clients.


Finally, I am pleased to see Ron Stewart Join our forces to provide an excellent support to clients and an amazing help at recruiting new ones. We are waiting a few more days to complete the annoucement, but this is one of the things I am looking forward to the most.

Oh and this year again, we have exceeded our goals as far as growth goes, at least having doubled or trippled our revenues.

Off course, Shap and others that know me will know that I constantly need new projects to keep me on par, so for this reason I know that I can't give myself an A or B+ as I know I could have done more... but looking back, I know I have brought this up exactly where I wanted in preparation for next year... next year everything should be booming and I have never looked forward to the next year as eagerly as this time around ;)

It's definately good to see us both growing and going through similar paths my friend... granted you take bigger steps than I :P

Congrats on the addition to the family :winkwink:

If I'd rate personal life in 2005 or my role as husband i'd give myself an F. We put everything we had into the company this year. No vacation. No family planning. Just Work work work. Shit, I think i was out on my boat less than 5 times in 2005 and I didn't manage to golf once. It's all paying off though.

Overall, 2005 was a great year. Made the full transition to mainstream. Finetuned certain areas of my business. 2006 stands to be a year of new ground and consolidation on past gains as well.

Hey Phil. I've got to say from where I stand you get an A. You've put everything you have into your business and you've come a long way. You came back from SD with nothing going on. You did have one thing in your favour you had the fire and that has taken you to where you are today. Your encoding is second to none. You are surpassing your goals. You are doing everything you set out to do. As a good friend and someone that has known you for a long time I'm proud of all the success you are enjoying you deserve it. You are an great example of how if you work hard and put your heart into a project you believe in and make smart decisions you'll do well. Great Job Bro!

Here is to 2006 being your best year ever :drinkup

coming from you buddy, it means a lot to me

Now I'll tell you this much... I'll accept the flowers from you this one time... but the next time you give me some flowers like that, it better be when I am sitting on your boat and we're drinking some bottles of dom...

5 years ago I told you we'd be drinking the dom we won from some sales a WHILE back when I'd be running a tight ship... and we did that ;) we drank em last year...

Now, I will go and buy 5 new bottles... I'll keep those in here until I hit the 7 figures a month... then when I do, I'll take a little trip down south to your little paradise island and get drunk with you and the Mrs on your boat ... DEAL?



btw, dunno if you realize, but people take usually more than a few months to open an 18 employee office... and people usually don't buy the sites you buy if they're doing 70% (C+)... so don't make me laugh with your C+ fucker LOL

That's a deal. You keep the Bottles on ice in Montreal and I'll keep some on ice here. I'll have the boat ready to go with Dom, Beer and some Mojitos. By the end of your stay I'll have you looking for a place to rent and preparing for your move here :winkwink:

Congrats on a great year - here's to your future! And if yer still hiring hit me up :)

damn shap. you were right on the hot pics. nice shit. erica looks amazing.


i give my self a A+++++

nothing wrong with a little confidence in ones work, not to be confused with ego. Rage has exceeded my projections. I live by the mantra - Work Hard - Play Hard - Live Large.

Nice meetin you at PB Mansion with Extreme John.

I deserve a C+
I was lazy at the beginning of the year
too many ideas that I did not convert into projects, or too late
i hired not enough
i fired too late
I can do better :)

I think I did pretty damn good for 2005 - had 300% growth in sales and traffic to webmasterparadise and changed many things around in the company for the better including upgrading to a new movie each day and new formats and will soon add broadband to the mix - not bad for a little over a years work.

I do give myself A+ for the Thumbzilla deal. That was the best deal to date. :thumbsup It happened Dec 24, 2004 so I can't count that in my 2005 evaluation :winkwink:

Great Meeting you too! You are in good hands with John. Tell him we need to get together in Vegas :thumbsup

Our report card on 2005:

For us 2005 was mostly an exercise of 'if it can go wrong...it will go wrong'. Despite all efforts and the long hours we put it, things continued to slide for us in the business department. The U.S./Canada currency exchange continued its downward spiral, resulting in less and less revenues as each month passed. In addition to that, we did a lot of bouncing around from one merchant account to another...resulting in a lot of lost momentum with recur billing. Unpaid revenues from former transaction processors continued to be a financial hardship that we had to absorb.

All this led to my taking on a second fulltime job for the first time since we started our company back in 1999. After eight hours working for another company, I'd come home and spend another 8 hours on our own production. Meals were often eaten in the office at the workstation, and I lost track of how many nights I crashed out on the office sofa at 4am to catch a few hours sleep before getting up at sunrise to head back off to work.

So I definitely got an 'F' in the quality time with the family category. It was almost necessary to email the wife and kids with pics of myself to remind them what I looked like.

Oddly enough, despite the dismal performance of the company...I somehow kept in good spirits throughout the year, taking the occasional time to do some personal photography (mainstream/non-adult) which cathartically helped clear the cobwebs and put a few things in to perspective. I managed to extricate myself from a few time-consuming endeavors as well that I was finding increasingly non-productive.

But after all was said and done, after ten years in the biz...I refused to let the year drag me down. I tend to think of it as nothing more than a temporary downward spike in the overall grand scheme of things. Sometimes you need to spend time in the valley to truly appreciate the mountain peaks. Its a reality check. I think of it in terms of Rocky Balboa revisiting the old gym (old school) long after his big successes, to find renewed inspiration and determination. We've lost a few battles, but the war is far from over...and we're gnarly veterans of the game with stories to tell about the battlescars.

I won't say I regret seeing the end of 2005. It certainly won't be a year I'd eagerly revisit in the time-hopping DeLorean.

But I'm thankful for my continued health, the love of my soulmate/wife...and two daughters who continue to make me a proud papa. I watch the daily news and read the stories in the newspaper of the unfortunate tragedies that overwhelmed so many others around the world in 2005 - tsunamis, hurricanes, terrorism and war...and remain thankful to live in relative peace and stability here in Canada - still one of the greatest nations on the planet for any number of reasons.

2006 promises to bode well for us and Kastle Archives Productions - with several new projects and plans on the drawing board. With a little luck and a helping of good 'ole ingenuinty, we're confident that we'll turn around the downward spike and revisit a few mountain tops again soon to enjoy the view.

http://www.fetishopolis.com/kap-images/kamtm93.jpg

http://www.fetishopolis.com/kap-images/ka-cb007.jpg

http://www.fetishopolis.com/kap-images/ka-cb013.jpg

http://www.fetishopolis.com/kap-images/ka-cb041.jpg

Hi SK. Great Post. I hope 2006 kicks some ass for you.

i'm gonna give the company an A-

we experienced exponential growth- growing from 1 store to more than 10 and from 30 titles to ~250 currently, and revenue growth was similar.

hell, just being able to handle that type of growth means a lot to me and is a good sign that we are prepared for all the good things we have set-up for 2006!

You get my vote for the nicest thread. Very well said and put.
I have been doing this for over a decade too and you think you are on top of your game but there is always something new that comes up. So in my case is that we are always learning. Just need to keep the fire burning and stay motivated and enjoy what comes to you. Remember, you make the best of what you do and nobody can do it like you can. (if this makes any sense)

I wish more people read the business threads then just the would you hit it threads.
Great thread, Happy New Years.

Talk about hot women... I need to promote twistys

2005 was good, first full year of NDC and the growth was amazing. And I did everything with not much advertising. But I made so many plans for 2006 in the past few days, that I cant think about 2005 anymore. I will launch some great new exclusive sites and some other stuff, too.

http://www.nextdoorcash.com/welcome.jpg

Yunno Dave, I would definitely hit it. All of em.


Oh wait, those Twisty's pics kinda confused me. ;)

2005 would be a qualified 6 for me. Spent a lot of money on a non web project that didn't pan out. My web stuff stayed on par, no amazing growth but a steady rise. On the plus side a few non web projects were started that were profitable and very popular from day 1. Also entered into a major web deal that should turn into one of the biggest deals for 2006/2007. If it weren't for the wasted time and money on the stinker 2005 would have been a great setup year.

Have a happy and prosperous 2006 everyone!

We aren't hiring right now. But let's get together next time I'm in Toronto :thumbsup

Wow! Great Post. Huge bump for honesty and biz. Congrats to all those who had a great year and chins up to those that didn?t

Aside from our core group here (Vegas, Brandi, Angel and Scooba) I would have to say my greatest source of inspiration has come from Tucker, SEGuru and 3xTom.

Gu and his beautiful wife (who he wont share... damnit!) have been an enormous support, a wealth of information and have taught me more about SEO than I ever thought I could understand. ( I still don't understand half of what he says)

Tucker has been like a brother, staying up all hours of the night chatting about life and business. He has taught me quite a bit about the politics in the industry and mainstream marketing.

3xTom ? although he doesn?t seem to get the notoriety he deserves, he knows his shit... period and is the workhorse behind their program. He and I bounce valuable information off each other almost every week which has helped both our programs. Super honest dude!


So with the accolades aside... Here's my personal 2005 Report Card.

Positives of 2005
- We grew our revenues 30% each month, every month for the entire year
- We finished the build-out of our 3000 sqft office and hired 3 new people from outside the industry who have not only learned it but excel in it.
- Worked hard to build a mainstream presence resulting in Brandi?s appearances on Stern, E!, The Larry Elder, The Tyra Banks Show and iN Demand.
- Worked hard to build a solid, productive group of webmasters while maintaining a ?closed program? ? They excelled.
- We acquired DirtyDaisy.com and launched SinamonLane.com
- We developed Parents in Adult
- We reinvested virtually all of the companies profits allowing us to build the 9 new sites set to launch in 2006

Negatives of 2005
- Lack of automation ? our first three sites are all manually updated
- We were too lenient with some of the contracted models
- Failed to effectively manage our traffic.
- Miscalculated the launch date and cost of our biggest project originally scheduled for Dec 2005
- Lastly...our work load far exceeds the human resources we have leading to average work weeks of 90+ hours

Conclusion:
We too had a successful year entirely due to the unbelievable dedication and work ethic of Vegas, Brandi, Angel and Scooba along with our incredible affiliates.

My Personal Grade for 2005 = ?B?

Running a successful program takes a lot of work. I have learned a great deal over this year and intend on making 2006 one for the record books.

Inspiring review of the year and amazing pictures!

Thanks for sharing

2005 was crazy year for me, even now it's hard to perceive it. Received several hard kicks of various types and remained standing.

Business wise till Feb it was me and my partner, right now it's me and soon to be over 30 people counting on me and my decisions and that's great responsibility that I try not to get me anxious. I'm very thankful to all those that trust me and I'm not planning to dissappoint them. I love my work and honestly for me it's about everything except money: it's about achieving goals, setting new ones and eventually helping others.

I made some great friends this year that due to my "strange" character is miracle if you ask me. I wish 2006 to be full of health, positive energy and the rest can be arragned :)

I was feeling kind of neutral about 2005 as I read this thread - my net income ends up being only about 10-15% higher than 2004. But then I realised there were other factors that came into play: I have probably worked less hours this year (now a family man), and the exchange rate means that I had to make more USD in 2005 to have the same amount of AUD in my pocket that I did in 2004.

So after that double whammy - less hours worked and higher currency conversion losses - I'm still ahead... so I'm feeling more positive. :thumbsup

I have my fingers stuck in so many micro projects that it's hard to evaluate my personal performance, I just go by the cheques coming in. :winkwink:

I got back into adult only halfway thru 2005 but traffic and profits have been growing every month and just broke 1 mil hits a day over the network and still expanding i give myself a B for the year wasted some time on a few projects outside of what i do best that did not work out.

this year compared to 2004 was very good, especially the last couple of months.. learned a lot.

he isnt goin. i am gonna try to pop in on friday afternoon/evening for the night. you got a booth?