 Hello and welcome to 2020 where I have even updated my intro pictures. In this video I'm going to be sharing three of the things I learned in the last year as well as my plans for 2020 and a little bit of artwork along the way because that's much more interesting to look at than this face. 2019 was a challenging year for a lot of people personally, business-wise, as well as artistically. I watched some good friends get out of the industry and close their businesses and it's really been rough. But rather than pondering on the hard parts I choose to find the things that I can learn from. Number one is that I love a big old blank piece of paper! Not just a four by five inch piece for a card but in 2019 I discovered I'm no longer afraid of a blank sheet of paper. It excites me. So many possibilities can happen whether it's the choice of subject matter, the medium, the technique. When the page is empty it has the most options out there in front of it. In December during my YouTube sabbatical I worked on a huge project for my church creating 40 meditative art videos with prayer prompts mixed in with brush strokes and pencil marks. Yes I did say 40 for zero. I worked harder on that project than I've worked on many other things but with more satisfaction than I could have imagined. I used a different style of filming and production as well. The art you're watching right now was one of these pieces. I love creating these artworks for my church with no thoughts of tutorials just being able to create for the sake of creating is totally freeing and I plan to work in more pieces like these into my regular creative life to keep things exciting and keep my heart learning. My number two learning is that my work doesn't stink. I was getting seriously depressed over the last two or three years as my YouTube views have tanked. Last year was the worst yet. I am totally grateful to you for watching consistently but I am not grateful that YouTube follows the billy holiday model. Then that's God shall get then that's not shall lose but God bless the child who's got his own who's got his own. YouTube shares the channels that are already getting lots of views and comments and those of us who aren't getting that well we get less and less over time. Yes I have crawled slowly toward the 100,000 subscriber mark but not with large numbers of video views. However a few months back I started posting hyperspeed videos on Instagram and I have to say I am edified by the results. I'm getting thousands more views on those like 10,000 in two days instead of 2,000 here with hundreds of comments on them and that's with having less than a third of the followers there as I have here on YouTube. It's crazy. I can't even reach 3% viewership on YouTube but I get 30% on Instagram. So the YouTube problem may say a lot more about YouTube than about my art which is a huge relief. I'm even getting folks telling me that even though those short high-speed videos are not tutorials with instructions and color lists they're trying it anyway and as a teacher I love hearing that folks are learning enough to dive in and try something without me holding their hand. I love getting tagged and seeing your versions of what I created done in your own style. Number three I learned that consultants have both good and bad advice. In trying to assess what's gone awry with my YouTube video views in the last few years I sought professional assistance. One of them told me that I needed to do projects that had more stuff on them, more new tools, more new supplies, more embellishments, more more more more and that I should get a hold of these new supplies before everyone else gets them so I can be first out of the gate when they're released since that's what others in this industry try to do. Well I thanked her and I paid her and then I tossed her advice out the window because that's just not me. It's not who I am. I'm not about getting you to buy all the shiny new things. Even though I know that's what a lot of people are looking for I prefer to buy my own stuff which means I'm not going to get it first and I also prefer to get you to make rather than to get you to shop so don't worry I am not going to get on that train and make my life even harder. Another consultant advised me to do exactly the opposite to post less. She said that some of my biggest competitors do lots less than I do and perhaps absence would make the heart grow fonder. She recommended get this one video a week plus posting a lot less often on social media too. One to two posts per day rather than three or four. Oh my gosh I am such an over sharer that freaked me out. I'm not going to take all of her advice but I do like some of it and I some of it resonates with me. As I'm getting exhausted by the hamster wheel I have come up with a plan with five points on it to get me off of the inefficient content hamster wheel. So here's the plan for 2020. Number one is posting a little different content here on YouTube since that's where I'm struggling the most. They're going to be shorter videos potentially with more of a specific tip in them closer to real time which will mean better content or if it's a topic that's really big I'm going to really dive into it more deeply and you'll hear more about one of those projects next week. So the content will hopefully be getting better. Number two on guest video days I had been doing something rather silly. I had been posting an unrelated tutorial here on this channel. Doing that has been hiding my guest videos under the rug so those get even less views than this channel. So what I'm going to do instead is post a video with a teaser to get to that one so you know where it's at instead of posting something that's going to hide that one. Number three if I join a blog hop that video is going to replace one of the videos that week instead of add to it. I had planned to do that in 2019 and I still ended up somehow adding things until I had four to five videos a week sometimes and that's just craziness so I'm going to try to stick to that rule a little bit better this year. Number four I plan to post more of the hyperspeed videos that I've been doing on Instagram TV and Facebook. Those will be about two times a week because they're easier for me to produce they're faster to make there's no voiceover or tutorials to worry about so I can just tape whatever it is that I'm playing with. You can watch them without having an account even just go to my Instagram TV tab on my Instagram page or you can go to the videos tab on Facebook and watch all of those. Number five is to continue to post new classes. I'm getting asked for more intermediate and advanced lessons in different mediums and that means pushing myself and it also means having the time to work on those so stay tuned for lots more new classes to come. The last area I am trying to wrangle though in the hamster wheel I've already begun and that is social media. I started cutting back a little bit in December on that one consultant's advice and I'm finding that limiting my posts means I'm actually thinking more about what I'm posting and probably sharing more valuable content because of it so that's good. I have four Instagram accounts that I divide my content between now. There's my Sandy Olnok account which has my card making all of the Instagram TV videos and a little bit of randomness because I got to have that in my life. There's the Sandy Olnok fine art page and that one of course contains paintings and drawings as well as the challenges that I'm going to be doing this year including a hundred days challenge that begins today. My Bible journey made simple page has all of my faith related art and if you'd like to see the 40 pieces that I did for my church those will be shared starting on Saturday and Giallo and Vienna have their own page and they just need to start posting their own pictures over there and not taking over my account. For those who are my Facebook peeps you can follow my card making on Sandy Olnok LLC. For those who follow my Bible journaling there's a group on Facebook for that and I will be sharing the still pictures of my church project there each day. My fine art is shared in a bunch of different places on Facebook and I am working on a plan to fix that but right now you can see me in the world watercolor group in various sketch groups and I post a little bit on my personal page as well. Thanks so much for watching this video. Leave a comment in the doobly-doo and tell me what you have learned about yourself or your art in the past year that's going to make you a healthier happier more creative person and I'll see you again very very soon. Bye-bye.