 Now that I'm back from a lengthy vacation with my family where I spent a bunch of money and got zero sleep and very little to show for it, the best kind of vacation, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to look ahead on 2024, what I want to do with the channel, the goals, and the pros and cons of 2023, what I've learned and what I will never learn. So join me as we spend the next few minutes really diving in to Adam Does Movies and where the future takes it. Let's start on a great note. 2023 was fantastic for the channel, and by fantastic I mean it wasn't a complete dumpster fire like previous years. I was dedicated to getting content out every single week, putting out shorts, putting out stupid TikToks and Instagrams, pumping all those things up, and getting them to a place where I could say, you know what, I'm consistently getting shit done. And it's good. People heard from me. They saw me. And on social media in 2023, you have to do that. There's so much content. There's so much noise that if you aren't putting yourself out there, you're getting left behind. So I'm very happy with the amount of work I was doing. I think it's no secret, if you've been following me for a while, that you know I have a full-time job. I'm a UX, UI designer, developer for a web firm for many years. I love the job to an extent that you can love your job. And I love the people even more. And I have the flexibility since I work from home, like a lot of people do, to also chase after this hobby of mine, which is YouTube. And it also pays a little bit of the bills that we lost when my wife stopped working due to illness. It's just not possible. We also have two kids that are homeschooled, not because of religion or some sort of other social or economical standing. It's just because we moved to a state, South Carolina, where a lot of people moved in the last year, had over a million new visitors, new inhabitants. It's insane. And so because of that, the schools are overrun, they're overpopulated, and they're uneducated. It's one of the worst educated states in America. And it also has the worst healthcare in America, top 10 worst. So we really wanted to move to a state where everything was bad, but it's got good weather. Or it did. It's actually really cold right now, so everything's kind of shit. Regardless, we're making the best of a bad situation. The kids are home, they're thriving, they're excelling, and that's really, and they're healthy. And that's all that I can ask as a father of two. That said, I'm working my ass off, and I want to keep the channel going and I want to keep it healthy and thriving as well, like my kids. And so with that, I look back and I say, all right, we saw exponential growth over the year. I noticed the live streams really started to take off after a few months. People have been tuning in, there's regulars that show up, super chats were pretty solid. And so that tells me people like the live streams. And then I look at the live streams that were more successful than others. And that gives me a bit of a roadmap as to what to do. So for the new year, Tuesday night live streams will continue. Friday night live streams will continue. Fridays are a little less popular, but they're a little bit more chill. It's a different feel. Either way, I have plans to keep those going at the 9 30pm Eastern time slot. So if you haven't checked one out, that's when they are Tuesdays and Fridays, be there or be square, as they said in the 70s, 60s. I'm not really sure when that came about when it left is even less known. But yeah, that's going to continue. What I found less success with, which also kind of is a bummer, are the movie roasts. Now these movie rows take a toll. They're a lot of work. I have to watch these shitty movies. And then I have to write scripts for them from beginning to end. And then I have to edit the crap out of them after filming. It's like a 12 hour project. For one video. And when that video doesn't even hit 10,000 views, that's disheartening. Because these are longer 20, 30 minute videos. And it's a perk on Patreon at patreon.com slash adam does movies and for YouTube join members at that mithril membership, which is 30 bucks a month. You get to request a movie roast on occasion when I can get to it. It's flexible. It's in flux. It's in flux. But I do my best to get them done. And I was having a good time doing them. But when you're not pulling in new subscribers and those numbers aren't there, it makes me look back and go, okay, I like them. I think they're great. And the people that watch them seem to have a good time, but YouTube's not pushing them. They're not getting shared enough. And so I will continue with the roast because that's the pledge, but they'll probably change a bit. Maybe they'll be shorter, tighter editing, tighter script. It's got something's got to change to make them pop more. Something's got to change to make them get out there more and to get shared around and for people to laugh their ass off and say, yep, watch these roast. They're great. So those will continue in 2024, albeit with maybe a twist and a kiss. We'll see. I got my notes in front of me at goals. 100,000 subscribers has to happen this year. It was very laissez-faire. Last year I said, yeah, maybe we could get to 80,000. We didn't get to 80,000, let alone 100. I said that wrong. We didn't get to 100,000, let alone 80. I think is how you say it. This year I have to get to 100,000. I need that stupid, silver YouTube button on my wall, on my mantle somewhere in the background. It has to be there. We are over, we're like 11 years into this channel off and on. It's embarrassing at this point not to have 100,000 subscribers with the amount of work I'm putting into this thing has to happen and ways to get to it are simple. They're kind of simple. Number one, which is happening in under two weeks is attending cons, comic cons, mega cons, super cons, electric cons, they're decepticons really. It's happening. I am going to my first ever mega con, my first ever con really as a whatever you call this influencer, creator, critic, YouTuber, whatever you want to label a person, a guy, a schlub. I will be going to mega con on February 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Mega con starts on the 1st. It's a four day event. You can get tickets for the whole thing for daily things. I don't know how it works exactly because I've never been to one. But I was invited to join a panel with Sean Chandler, Cody Leach and two or three other individuals depending on the panels. One of them is going to be on comic book movies and the shape of things. Is there burnout? What's the future predictions looking like? Another one's going to be on horror films. So there's going to be a lot of good stuff there. I will have the full agenda like a JPEG for you on my community tab. I'll throw that out there. So look for that and you can see when I'm going to be on and again, I don't like I have no information. I'm staying at a hotel there with Chandler and that's about all I know. I'm just showing up. I don't really know how any of it works, how you get tickets for the panels if they're free. I imagine they are. But we'll see. You can maybe figure it out from there. I really like doing these well I should say I'm excited to do this because not only does it give me a chance to network with other critics who I've met almost none of them in real life. Even my good buddy Tony that I've met online, I've only talked to him online and on the phone. I've never met him in person. That's another goal this year is to get to Tony and do a physical meet and greet and maybe go to a con with him or do a collab where I'm in his little studio. Vice versa. That's the goal, doing a couple more cons this year, getting myself out there and also collabing just in general. But another reason I want to do the cons outside of the collaboration with other movie critics is to actually meet some of the people that watch my channel, talk to me online and put a face to the name. Put a face to the individual behind the screen. When I was on vacation with my family at Universal, I actually met one of the fans, one of the friends of the channel, her and her husband. They met me at the three broomsticks. We had dinner together at Hogwarts. It was awesome. Chatted with them for an hour or two. Time went by instantly just talking. We didn't really get into movies that much. There was just too much to share. So I really am looking forward to mega con and hopefully seeing a couple of the people that like my content and maybe we can get a bite to eat or go to a movie or whatever. I'm open. I'm open, baby. I'm going by myself. I'm Han Solo to this event and I'm very much looking forward to it. We'll see how I do speaking in public settings. Usually I'm behind a camera, but I think I'll be okay. I think I'll be. I think I'll be all right once I get going. What else? My computer just went into sleep mode, so I have to re, re, uh, you know, kick it into gear. Okay. The podcast in 2023 did a podcast. It's having decent success on Spotify and Apple podcasts and Google and Amazon, all that stuff. It's not, it's not setting the world ablaze by any means. And I don't think it should be because the podcast is all over the place. On Mondays I was putting one out. It was typically 15 to 25 minutes and it was a topic about my movie experiences or it was a top five ranking or it was kind of the same thing as the live streams were. There really was nothing differentiating it outside of the fact that I wasn't stopping once in a while to read up, read up a super chat or get as in the weeds with things. It was a bit more focused, but it wasn't different enough to be separate from the live stream. So I just started putting the live streams on podcasts along with most of my other movie review content. And so really it's just another way to digest this material. But in 2024 here, I am going to find a way to separate that and I will most likely make it exclusive to the audio version. And I'm doing that because you need to, here's a tip for people, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Tomorrow YouTube could say, hey, we're changing the way that we do monetization and you have to have 100,000 subscribers. Then I'm dead in the water instantly. So you need to vary your outputs and you need to give exclusive content to those outputs to make your viewers here convert over there. Because why would you subscribe to me on Spotify if you're listening to me on YouTube? If the videos are here, why go to different locations? Some people do. Some people like doing that. And that's, that's cool. That's fine. It's there for you. But in 2024, I have to have something that gets people to jump to the podcast version. I have to give people a reason to jump over there. And the same is going to be for Instagram and stupid TikTok and YouTube shorts, they will have exclusive content. How that is, I'm not sure yet. When I looked back at what really worked on TikTok, which wasn't a whole lot, those poster breakdown videos do pretty well. When I looked back, some of them have a decent amount of views, a couple hundred thousand. So maybe TikTok becomes the place where I do poster breakdowns, just quick 30 second one minute videos on, you know, the new Spider-Man poster or the new Madame Web poster, which is just atrocious by the way. And that would be a way to get people to jump to TikTok if they're interested in that kind of content. Instagram would be the same thing. It would be more live reactions leaving the theater. I'll keep those on YouTube as well. But you might get something a bit more, a bit more personal. Maybe I'm waking up in the morning and I'm going to edit something. And so I just say, Hey, I'm editing today. Isn't that fun? Subscribe. I don't know. I don't know what people want. They want everything. And so I'm going to try to do my best to be a little bit more varied depending on the platform, be a little bit more specific to that social media app instead of trying to do a one size fits all sort of a thing. And not everything fits inside of a happy meal, unfortunately. Lastly, movie reviews are obviously going to continue. Movie reviews are the lifeblood of the channel. It's always been that way. I love going to movies even in the new year, even when a lot of them are trash. There's always still movies that hit me in the feels or they just get it right in my book. And I'm going to be honest. I'm going to share those opinions and nothing's changing in that aspect. From a personal standpoint, I got my script finished first draft. It's 87 pages. I want to get to 90 because that's a 90 minute film. Even though I think at 87 pages, my movie will easily hit an hour and a half. There's a lot of action that you don't really script out. That's more of a storyboard thing. You know, I was looking at some of the other scripts out there, Thor Ragnarok, that entire intro scene where he's fighting all the dudes down below and he rides on a dragon. That's two or three sentences in the script. What I see happening is I get another round of script revisions done. I'm pretty happy with it. I get a pitch board done and then I spend February, March, probably March and on trying to get this in front of eyeballs, trying to get someone to pick up the script and see what we can do with it. The dream would be for me to direct the thing, but obviously I have no background in directing outside of the stuff I've done on an indie level. And so maybe there's some sort of wiggle room where I can job shadow or co-produce or something. I don't know. This is all new uncharted territory for me, but I am confident in my script and I'm very happy with it and excited about it. So I'm going to push as hard as I can to make it work. Outside of that, I don't know. I'm excited about this year. I think this is going to be a huge year for Adam Doe's movies and for me and my family personally. I've never really said that in the past. I've said like, oh, I'm excited about this year and this is going to be good, but I've never felt the way then that I do now. The confidence level I have and the goals and the drive I have is at an all-time high. And so I'm very happy. I'm very excited to share new things with you guys and to keep the live streams going and to keep kicking ass as best as I can. And I thank you if you're a Patreon supporter or YouTube join member or you've given anything on a live stream. I mean, there's so many people that reach out to me on Instagram and a private message or on the Discord at Adam Does Movies or just a random email or they send me like 20 bucks. Someone sent me 20 bucks for finishing my script and they said, great job. That's it. That's amazing to me that people are willing to just like throw you money because you're putting yourself out there and you're trying. It's awesome and it's inspiring and it's appreciated. And so I thank all of you guys. I don't know what I'll say. I'm humbled by it and I'm pumped to keep going. So let's make Adam Does Movies 2024 the year where we get to the big dogs, where we get to the Chris Stockman level, the Jeremy Johns level. Well, maybe we won't get the millions, but we can get that damn plaque. And from there, there's nowhere to go but up. All right. Thanks for watching this video, the channel update 2024. It's making a great year. If you haven't, if you somehow stumbled on this video, I don't think that's even possible, but if you did, please subscribe to the channel Adam Does Movies. I post movie content every single week. Would love to have you stick around. It's a great time. Sometimes it's not. If I hate a movie that you loved, but my community is strong. They know that I can be kind of a little bitch sometimes. And they just need to, they need to move past that video. And I will as well. All right. Thank you guys very much. Like the video, share the video, do all that crap. And I will see you next time. Take care.