 So here we are at the end of a massive year. I've been absolutely exhausted. I haven't put up anything for about a week. I've just been so tired after just putting in such long hours. So tired. But I thought get the shirt on. Gotta had time to get a haircut finally and we'd go through and recap what an epic year it's been and we started off this year with a top 15 anti-vegan arguments video and this video took so long to do. Like I mean months. Me and my mate Dan, Epic Editor, we put all these arguments together to make an important resource for you so if you haven't seen that you should go back and check it out and share it and use it and you know all these arguments are being answered in interview forms so that took us a long time to do and released it for January but during the end of December and the start of January I was still going through some really bad depression and I don't talk about it much but I did get into a bit of a depression hole and I didn't really know how to get out of it and that sort of inspired me to want to leave the UK and go back home to my family. I mean COVID, I mean it put us all in lockdown and I don't know if it was a collective thing to do with COVID, the weather, you know, overworking myself, going through some stuff personally and I was just in this really bad depression spiral but I didn't have time to be depressed. Obviously I had some big projects I had to work on and before February I had to do some filming for a big project I've been working on that I can tell you more about later but what happened is I've been focusing on this other project so much that I forgot about February and February is a month where all the farmers come out and campaign for dairy so I thought why not make a documentary exposing the dairy industry. Now I didn't have much time but what we did have is a lot of research we'd compiled on the dairy industry so all I had to do really is get that research formulated into a script okay and then get some editors together I've got my mate Chris Hines and Rob Howehead who did the animations last minute Tarian come up with a name and she's helping me in the background doing all the research compiling it together we're getting all these clips together and Chris Hines is like trying to piece these together and make this epic turned out to be an epic documentary that we rushed through in about I think it was like between seven and ten days and I actually took and took all the segments out and shared it across social media over the month and we made informational artworks and just just exposing the dairy industry for the entire month of February the documentary is actually done really good on YouTube considering it's been restricted to 18 and over because of it's the graphic nature of the dairy industry amazing so that was February done dusted really successful and super happy with that documentary if you haven't seen it go check it out share it around because it's got some really good information in there and it's super super super powerful so following February we've been organizing to go back to Australia and you know it's a bit difficult during COVID had to do some a lot of paperwork and then go into quarantine hadn't seen my family in a long time and I just needed to go back home see my family and you know get back regenerate get some sunshine after being released from quarantine after two weeks in Sydney try to find an Australian little team to work with to go on a tour to expose the fishing industry in the wake of an amazing documentary called see spiracy I'm sure you're all familiar with that one by now but uh got a team Ben and Josh if you're watching Ben and Josh thank you so much two epic legends and they come with me on a filming journey you know up the coast of Sydney and Queensland and it was hectic I'm talking about these were big filming days I actually took a van and I was driving my my um my bro's uh van it was like thanks my to my brother for letting me borrow that van had a little fridge in there had a cooker in there had a bed in there we're driving up the coast and uh going to expose the fishing industry in various ways and actually generated some media a couple of articles from the Daily Mail Daily Mail actually brought out some objective articles I was actually quite impressed with the journalism there they were just really objective and you know so because I obviously don't have much hope in the Daily Mail but this one this journalist was really good bit of media there we've got some big controversy got a lot of reach and a lot of views across social media which is what my advocacy is it's magnifying the reach on social media and uh you know that was a success and it ran for a few months um you know pro sea animal rights campaign so I just felt like that you know the fish do get forgotten and I'm so glad Seaspiracy was there for us it was like this catalyst to create this little movement for fish because they are sentient conscious beings who feel pain and desire to live just like pigs and cows and dogs and other land animals so really get behind the sea animal campaigning when you can so during this time of releasing these sea campaign videos I set up another campaign to go to Melbourne and do a bunch of other things but what happened is Covid hit while I was driving there so I had to turn back which was crazy because they locked down all the borders while I was on the way there so on the way back driving past these big sheep fields and then we seen this sheep laid over on the field and she had a little baby lamb with her so crazy because we're out in the middle of nowhere there was no housing around it was just all farmland and we're in a super difficult position but I called some experts and they had to decide to rescue the lamb and we took the lamb to Freedom Hill Animal Sanctuary and you know Kim called the lamb Joey and I was going to cry so that was a bit of a highlight but it was a bit of sweet because all we could do for the mother is call the animal protection people and get them down there to try to help this sheep and there were other sheep that were injured in that field and had died in that field so that farmer animal abuser and really not good so that was a bit of a bit of sweet moment too this year so what I ended up having to do is film these stunts back in Adelaide South Australia so filmed a couple of stunts in the human meat stunt and then I also did the reverse psychology stunt in South Australia as well which I think were quite successful where there was a reverse psychology one particularly because you know I was going out there pretending to support gas chambers and people were just coming at me like vegan activists like what do you mean support gas chambers how about throw you in a gas chamber it was so it was a really cool way of getting people to defend animals you know without them going oh great here's a vegan telling me what to do you're like they were doing it themselves so but back to England okay back to England now had a bunch of other stuff to do remember I'm working on this big project in the background too that you'll find out more about soon and I had to do my speech at the vegan camp I was a really positive speech one of them my highlight speeches of my career really there was a lot of people there and I talked about my life story opened up and it was just really positive and got a really good response from the audience and yeah it was just a highlight but but during that time doing this speech I'd commenced filming for the Uncovered series so I was filming in farms in the background so while I was in Australia actually I got these places prepared and I got some investigators to prepare these places and look for places for me to go to so there was a lot of work being done in the background and if you anyone's watching who was working in the background thank you so much so I was filming in these farms and doing late nights going back to back farms and then had to go do the speech at the camp out and then from the camp out go back out and do more farms and then I had to kick off that campaign so basically take all that footage get it to the editors work out a way of presenting this the first episode did really well super stoked with a and it was highlighting a part of the chicken industry that not many people think about which is the parent breed of sheds with the little baby chicks that people eat come from and first episode did really look good second episode not so much and then I started to see it's really difficult to consistently upload content from inside farms there's a few things working against you one a lot of people might not want to engage with that type of footage they might not want to keep watching two social media do have AI technology that detect maybe some cruelty or what I'm saying as being graphic and people will report the videos so then they will get censored like that what ended up happening is I found that all of my platforms engagement went completely down and then I'd just be uploading outreach and all of those videos were doing a lot worse too so I don't regret doing the other uncovered campaign but it did put a lot of pressure on my platforms because you can't just go okay I'm just going to upload all of this graphic violence and it not and it not have some type of effect on your reach generally so yeah I saw a huge drop in my reach across my platforms and if I don't have reach on social media I can't reach people with the message so it was affecting my mental health a lot too because I was like putting on all this work not getting much response but it did start to pick up I started to be a little bit more strategic with it one of the months my Facebook reached 10 million people which was decent you know for my platform so my Facebook also kicked over to 200,000 followers this year Instagram hasn't moved but we still managed to break through this weird little censorship thing and get some big videos on Instagram which I'm really happy about looking back like even though I did have a bit of a dip it did pick up and it all evened out in the end but one of the cool things that happened with the Uncovered series is a i24 which is a I think it's an Israeli news network but it's a worldwide news network they played about a minute's worth of the footage from the parent breeder sheds on live TV and had me on to talk about World Vegan Day which was my vegan anniversary eight year vegan anniversary and what better way to spend your eight year vegan anniversary than talking to i24 with some investigation footage that you've gathered so that was pretty cool highlight of the year and super stoked that i24 gave me the opportunity and they showed their audience the truth without even censoring it so that was good also kicked off a cooking series with my man Derek Sano thank you so much Derek for getting involved with that we've got a couple more episodes to go so you can check that out as well and and another big milestone that happened this year is I kicked over the 20,000 challenge 22 sign-ups from my personal link so that was cool too so 20,000 sign-ups is a decent milestone considering that's not the only metric that I have to measure my effectiveness I mean you have to measure things like viewership and reach and also how how strong the messages so if I'm reaching you know millions of people not everyone's going to sign up to challenge 22 like small percentage of them do most people just get seeds planted they get stepped onto their journey and they make changes by themselves they might be eating less meat go vegetarian they might go full vegan they might turn into vegan activists who turn thousands of people vegan so challenge 22 is only one metric I use and 20,000 sign-ups is is decent considering getting people over the line to sign up and then do this challenge and complete this challenge but if you want to do challenge 22 sign-up down below the January is also another good one uh January is coming up tomorrow you can't really measure your effect it's just impossible to measure that butterfly effect the domino effect the ripple effect but uh you can have some metrics that give you a bit of an idea so thank you challenge 22 and whoever signed up to challenge 22 because of seeing my videos you're epic and I hope you stay vegan for life so then when Christmas was coming up I uh obviously campaign harder at Christmas time and this is when I really started to knuckle down I started to get a couple of videographers here in the UK me and Terry and started working over time working massive hours started really pumping it and I mean like working crazy hours and editors in Australia editors here try and I was editing as well a lot so I did a bunch of debates handing out Christmas turkeys we went to Tesco handed out big shopping um hall to all the meat eaters out the front of Tesco uh Terry and did her little Christmas starter pack which was like a Christmas guide to help people find all the vegan stuff at Christmas so basically I was going to go buy a bunch of the wicked kitchen no turkey roast so I called Derek and he's like you know what I'll donate them for the animals had some amazing conversations and gave people you know a little something to cook up at Christmas time instead of the turkeys even did a little sneaky uh support your local turkey farmer reverse psychology little video there too but one of the highlights of the Christmas campaigning was that earlier in December I went to a vigil with Darbyshire animal save and we went to a massive turkey slaughterhouse where they had the gas chambers there and they killed three million turkeys there a year and uh I was talking to the staff there about the welfare on their site and one of the security guards said oh the welfare here's the best I've ever seen the slaughterhouse manager was like you know we only slaughter at red tractor here like that's something to be proud of or something but what ended up happening is during Christmas I was looking around for turkey farms um me and some investigators were looking around for some turkey farms I went to four turkey farms that either could not gain access to or were empty for Christmas because this was like a few days before Christmas I started doing this because I was so busy but it turned out that one of the farms the fifth farm actually that we tried still had turkeys in there and went in there and it was some of the most horrible scenes I've seen the most filthiest place disgusting cruelty happening in there just negligence and neglect and you know suffering in this turkey farm and this place was an avara farm there was an avara food sign there made a big expose a video and everyone got behind it which I'm super happy for it was one of the best performing videos of the year so thank you so much to everyone who got behind that video and shared it you can still share it now because turkeys are eaten all year round in the UK but it was just a bizarre coincidence that I was at avara and four of these farms I tried to get into they all failed but the last one happened to be an avara farm and it was just horrible red tractor approved as well so but after that just completely exhausted so tired slept oh my god I was sleeping 10 11 hours a day because it's just doing like one of the one of the days what did a 24 hour day just working from the morning then driving at night going into the farm coming back didn't get back till 9 30 a.m I go to sleep wake up start editing I didn't have my editors to edit that video so I had to do all the editing which is fine I've been editing for years anyway I like editing but it was just coupled with all the other work I do I think I edited for it was over 20 20 hours I was doing editing for and you know on Christmas day getting the last edit up for the IGTV just before going out to have Christmas dinner you know vegan Christmas dinner but just a lot of work so completely exhausted shattered this is the first time in front of the camera since what a year what a year I just want to say thank you to everyone who's helped me this year to Tarion to the investigators to my editing team videographers to basically anyone who's worked with me researchers administrators been working on another massive project this year too and early next year hoping to release it so we'll let you know more about that but this here has been two years in the making it's big very big and I can't talk to you about it right now but you'll know soon enough and I'm very excited for that to be released too so a lot of work still to do thank you to everyone who supported me donors followers subscribers anyone who's commented shared my stuff eternally grateful for your support online now since 2015 all I ever wanted to do was to inspire people to change and to help the animals it's been amazing that I've gotten this far considering where I come from you know lived the life of crime and drugs and gangs and went to prison and come out and wanted to change my life and do something with my sobriety and my life that was positive and I chose the animals to help and that's why I've dedicated my life to this and a lot of my friends are in prison or still on drugs or you know they chose different lives and I'm just grateful I have this opportunity to make a difference and you know you guys have been with me for the journey and I'm grateful for that so thank you and here's to 2022 we won't be given up we won't be given up the name of this video is probably something like is this the end or is it time to hang it up or is it time to quit but no there won't be no quitting there will be only progressing trying to push the boundaries even further because I've still got a lot left in me it's a tough journey but you've got to go through those ups and those downs and just keep going all the activists out there all the vegans out there you know don't give up anyone who's thinking of going vegan sign up to veganuary or to challenge 2022 you won't regret it vegans only regret is not doing it sooner so please the animals need you to stop eating dead body stops paying for this horrible egregious violence and cruelty leave the dark side come over to the vegan side and you know live on the side of justice and fairness for animals I'll see you all in the new year with some new campaigns with some new videos with some new work for the animals and I really hope you all have a happy new year so let's set an intention for the new year to make an even bigger impact for the animals than we did in any year before this