Does anyone else get super excited at the start of a new month? Ever since I started creating small goals to reach for each month I have been feeling so much more fulfilled in my life and have seen so much more success! Because of this I decided to start sharing my monthly goals here in my diary at the start of each month to keep track of my accomplishments and to hopefully motivate others to do the same!
Reflection: Last Month’s Goals (April 2019)
- Launch new merchandise
I was able to launch the new merchandise for my channel at the beginning of the month and I made 2 sales. I do consider this to be a successful completion of this goal but now it leads me to another goal in May which will be to work harder on promotion of the new merch design. The new design does not have to be worn by someone who is a fan of my channel since the design is Vietnamese coffee themed so I plan to promote on my channel, Instagram and Facebook more, and will also buy an ad to run for a few days and see if it boosts the sales. If you’re reading this and want to check out the merch, click here.
- Launch the blog
Welp, since you’re reading this post ON the blog then it’s clear that I have also successfully completed this goal! In the beginning I was so nervous to launch this blog for two reasons: it costs money and I wasn’t sure if anyone would even read it. So far I have been able to reach about 800 unique visitors and that’s amazing! It’s also been a great way for me to get back into writing which I am so grateful for because this is something I’ve wanted to do for so long! I hope you find my articles entertaining and useful!
- Make 4 “viral” videos
When I made this goal, I should have known it wasn’t a good one. My philosophy in YouTube has always been to create goals that I can control, such as how many times a week I am going to post. So I think when I made this goal the idea wasn’t that I would have 4 viral videos, but I wanted 4 videos that passed 10k views, since most of my videos only see about 2k-6k views on average. Was I successful? These were the top 4 videos in the month of April:
1. Why I Got Married So Young | Married at 20 | AMWF – 21,082 views (published 3/31)
2. Learning the Vietnamese Culture as an American Daughter-In-Law | AMWF – 12,072 views
3. Cooking Fried Chicken (& Other Things) Together – 11,674 views
4. My Heart Feels Whole ♥ – 7,464 views
So I kind of reached the goal but I think the better goal to have for the next month is not going to focus on views (shame on me!) but to focus on the type of video. In other words, define which videos do the best on my channel and then create and post those videos. Also on a related note, one of the videos I uploaded at the end of March (Goi Cuon video) ended up going viral during the month of April, getting 71,964 views. Now THAT’S viral!! This video helped my channel to also pass the 50k subscribers threshold which was a huge WIN this month that I wasn’t even planning on!
- Get that interview
This one is vague because I post my goals on social media and I don’t like to get too specific and sound cocky about it. What I was referring to here is that I actually applied for a promotion at work and I was hoping that by writing this as my final goal in April 2019 that I would be able to manifest it to happen. Around 4/20 I started to feel like it was a dumb goal to make because again, I can’t control this, but then right after I found out that the reason I did not “get that interview” is because my employer is actually in the process of starting an internal promotion — no interview required!! So yes, this was also a success and I am sooooo excited!
APRIL BONUS: My favorite YouTuber (Khoa Nguyen of KKandbabyJ) watched and commented on my video! This wasn’t a goal but gave me a huge boost in motivation and confidence on my channel! The video was Learning the Vietnamese Culture as an American Daughter-In-Law | AMWF and his comment said, “Your pronunciation is amazing! I loved the stories”. This was sooooo crazy because the night before I was thinking about Keren and Khoa and wondering if they ever saw one of my videos before since I make content about Vietnamese culture and then BAM!! I died!
Planning: This Month’s Goals (May 2019)
- Film content for 20 videos during my Vietnam trip
This means I’m going to be vlogging daily for all 16 days and also hope to make some bonus videos outside of the vlog so I am super excited for this!!
- Journal every night while in Vietnam to collect ideas for future blog posts
I’ll probably be doing this on my phone before bed each night because I don’t want to forget the details of the things I do, feel and experience while I’m there.
- Take lots of pictures in Vietnam for the blog (related to #2)
Seriously, I’m ready to step it up with the photos!! I will make a plan of some of the upcoming blog posts that I want to do related to Vietnam and make it a priority to take photos of things for my posts while I’m actually there. Plus my IG gotta be on fleek so I will also be sharing more photos on IG this time than my last 3 trips!
- Promote the new merch design on my YouTube channel, Facebook page and on both FB and IG through an ad
I was able to launch my merch in April but it was more of a soft launch. I promoted on my Instagram story and on the merch shelf on my channel but that’s all. I paid $30 for the graphic design so I’m hoping to make at least that much in sales this month to cover those costs and start making a small profit. Again, if you want to check out the merch, click here.
- Practice speaking Vietnamese more this month so I can create more content in Vietnamese!
I will be surrounded by the language all day every day for 2 weeks so I’m planning to take advantage of it and SPEAK as much as possible while I’m there. I also will keep a list of new words that I learn on this trip so I can incorporate them into my speaking in the future. I’ll share my word list next month as a way to keep myself accountable for this one. 🙂
This month is going to be SOOOOOO busy with prepping for the trip (we leave in two weeks!) and then actually traveling! But I am so excited because I have a great feeling about this month. I know that this May 2019 is going to really help me to set the tone for the second half of the year when it comes to my business and I can’t wait to see how things play out.
What are 3 goals you want to start focusing on TODAY? Leave a comment and let me know!