How to transform your life in 2026 (as a creative)

Transcript

This video is the creative's guide to rebranding yourself, putting together a plan you can actually act on in 2026. If you've tried to have that major year, rebrand yourself, or do the things to take you to the next level but have failed, this video is going to break down some of the reasons why. It's going to call out five distinct paths you can take. I'm going to break down each one, who they're for, and the steps to actually do it. You have an actionable guide. What I like about these years, broken down into little brands, is it may not be for you this year, but it's a framework to think about for the rest of your life, of how to actually deploy change. I've been in the middle of this as a creative. I started making content when I was 37. I've been through the ups and downs. I've owned an agency. I've been freelance. I've worked at big jobs. I've made major moves across the country for work. I've had to grapple with all the things around money and expertise that many of you are now. I'm just going to try and share as much as I can to make it really actionable. I'm excited to do this video, and hopefully help some of you get to your goals in 26. Let's lock in. First, let's talk about the five different years and why we have five. Everyone tries to accomplish everything. Oh, I'm going to become a millionaire this year, kick off my brand, and make it huge. The reason why we fail so much is you can only do so much at some time. I talk to younger people all the time who are like, 23, why am I not rich yet? 30, how have I not gotten to here? Life doesn't work like that. It's not linear. It's different for everyone. So you have to pick a scenario that's good for you, where you're at. There's five big years. I think almost everyone could benefit from having one of these to actually get to a tactical year they have. The first is the money year, where you really focus on how you spend money and why, and make some decisions and changes that allow you to save up and make more of where you're at. This was an important year for me when I had it. My son had just been born. I was making 150 or 180, and it was always disappearing. I had to really be like, how do I have no money when I'm making what's a decent amount, and how do I grapple with this new life? In a year, my wife and I readjusted how we think about money, and I'll share some of the tactics to get to that. Then we have the system year. This is the year if you're too chaotic, if you don't keep track of anything, you have a hard time pulling everything together, or you feel like you're not making use of your time. There has to be a point in time where you turn a corner, and it takes a while. That is the system year. Then we have the rebrand. If you really want to rebrand yourself, change yourself, change the perception of how people think and view you, both in person and online, that is a rebrand year. It doesn't happen. It's not a month. It's not a week. It is a work of constant progress, and we go through the actual steps to get there. Then we have the master year. You may look around you at all these people who are crushing it online or who do such interesting things, and they knit, or they're fashion designers, or whatever, make amazing content. And you go, how do I get there? I could never learn a skill like that. With a dedicated year, you can get significantly toward where your goals are. We'll talk about that. Then last is the obsession year, the one that everyone thinks about, the one that's the hot topic now. It's like, how do you lock in, full monk mode, for lack of a better term, and push all the chips into making your dream a reality? This is an important one to think about, but it's not for everyone. You need to already know what you want. I had this with a lot of friends in my life who were like, I want to be going after things, I want to be all in, but they don't have their idea, their concept, their business yet. This is the perfect year if you're already in something. You started your business, you became a creator, but you're at a point where you know you have what you want, and you need to go all in to take it there. You can weigh the sacrifice of a year dedicated entirely to that versus anything else. From those five years, think about where you're at, because you can't do it all. You have to pick one thing. This is where everyone goes wrong, trying to achieve too much at one time. If you're trying to radically change the way you look next year and focus on fitness, it's probably going to be a bad time to also try to master a skill. I would say, find one of these years, pick the one thing, and dedicate that actual year to it. We act like a year is a super long time because of how transient things are now. It is a long time compared to watching TikTok. It is not a long time in your life to set yourself up for success. Kicking off, let's start with the master year. If you want to add a skill to your toolkit, this is an amazing time to think about short-form content, up-leveling in your career, learning something that will engage your career path or artistry. If you want to lean all in and be like, I'm going to really nail illustration or 3D work, become a master of these new AI tools, singing, fashion design, whatever it is, dedicate the year to it. Where it starts is acknowledging where that skill is going to be, building a daily practice, and then building some sort of public routine. Let's break those down. I had this year when I decided to become a creator about three and a half years ago. I said, I'm going to learn how to make short-form videos. It took about two months for me to even get mediocre at it, but I made one every day. I was working full time. I would do it after my son went to sleep, before I went to sleep. I had from 8:30 until whenever I went to bed to figure out making a short-form video and whatever else I had to do that night. It was painful. It sucked, but I have made a video every single day since then. For all intents and purposes, it changed my life. But even if I had done it just for that year, it would have significantly helped my career to just understand how that works as someone who worked in marketing. But that time where I was going to publish one thing every day is crucial, because whether you are illustrating or learning how to do logo design, the daily practice of needing to take something from one to zero every single day is a really important way to think about things. It can really help you master something by having to do that repetition. A lot of people who say, oh, I do something more involved. It's going to take me X amount of time. There's a huge thing to be said, especially in today's era, for learning it with that time constraint. What was that logo I got done today? The design I got done today? And if you are doing something more intricate, what is the phase? Okay, I shot two scenes of this 10-scene video that takes me to X or Y. But busting one out every day is the way to mastery. And so is the daily habit. If you dedicate to doing it in this year, no days off. Christmas, Thanksgiving, with the family, whatever. Make the time to prioritize the thing. The first way to do it is actually pick the time you're going to do it. Look at your time of day. Is it going to be in the morning? Is it going to be in your lunch break? Is it going to be at night? When are you doing it? Schedule it. Then start looking ahead. When you have weird weeks or a vacation or whatever, how are you going to work that in there? That planning is what's going to help you get there. And every day that you do it, you begin to ask yourself that key question: how am I doing this better than yesterday? I highly recommend some level of public practice as part of this. Whether you're posting that every week, every month, or every day, you're actually sharing that journey. Whether that's just on an Instagram account no one cares about or on LinkedIn, how are you putting out there that this is a thing that you are mastering? Again, it doesn't have to be daily. Having that accountability that I'm mastering this thing, I'm doing one a month, whatever, is a huge benefit to basically keeping you going and to begin to see the rewards. Where people get this wrong is they think, I'm going to start doing this and I'm going to get a bunch of money from it after 90 days. No. Put in the year. When a year comes, you can start to think about where the money comes from. But you've now set your foundation. And if it happens before then, awesome. better than yesterday? And I highly recommend some level of public practice as part of this. Whether you're posting that every week, every month, or every day, we're actually sharing that journey. Whether that's just on an Instagram account no one cares about or on a LinkedIn, how are you putting out there that this is a thing that you are mastering? Again, it doesn't have to be daily. Having that accountability that I'm mastering this thing, I'm doing one a month, whatever, is a huge benefit to keeping you going and to begin to see the rewards. And where people get this wrong is they think, I'm gonna start doing this and I'm gonna get a bunch of money from it after 90 days. No, put in the year. When a year comes, you can start to think about where the money comes from. But you've now set your foundation. And if it happens before then, awesome, but don't even worry about it until you've hit that year mark, until you've gotten 365 days of work on it. That is the mastery year. And now zooming over to the money year. So, like I mentioned, I had this year adopted some of these strategies when my son was first born. Our money was disappearing, and it started with us breaking down why. This is what I would start with if you're trying to understand where money's at in your life. There's a couple key buckets you're going to get into. First is your consumption of casual things: clothing, stuff for home goods, et cetera. We all spend a lot more money on that because we're marketed to constantly in everything we do. There's Klarna and Affirm, and it's a nonstop flow of influence, but none of it is stuff we need. But you have to actually mentally wrap your head around that to do something about it. Then we have subscriptions. What software are you using? You'll find people, oh, I have Netflix and Hulu and Disney and that. They're only $20, $40, $10, but it adds up and you don't need everything. What if you just had one for three months and then switched to the next one? Going out and vice, drinking and related, is a huge one. But we want you to tally up where those expenses come from that are in your life because this is about making the most of the money you have, not trying to make more, because for a lot of people, the answer to their issues is in this. So I get a lot of questions. How can I do campaigns like this with my brand? You need to make way more money. Or, hey, I don't have the money to start a brand or become this or become that. It's mostly lying inside what you already consume. Now, it's not for everybody, but if you are in that 70K-plus bucket, a lot of it comes down to decisions, and you can begin to change that by understanding it. So the exercise that I would lean into for one full year is, in your consumables, your clothing, your home goods, can you buy nothing new? Can you survive just off what you have? Maybe your essentials, your socks, whatever, totally fine. But in terms of new things, jackets, shirts, shoes, bags, you likely have enough to not consume a single thing. Same thing with whatever is in your home. If you got every one of those dollars back in your life and never spent on it, where would it take you? Now, an exercise I really enjoyed doing was we didn't buy anything new for an entire year. We made it, to be fully honest, we made it to Black Friday. I bought something on sale there. But in the meantime, I said, hey, I can buy secondhand anything if I sell something to get it. So I sold stuff on Grailed and Depop and local secondhand, and I could buy, using those funds, anything that was also secondhand, basically consuming nothing new. And it really changed my relationship with the dopamine of purchasing something when that was no longer an option for me, or I had to actually sell something to get there, and the value of what I was reselling, and what do I really use, and what do I have to make an outfit. And it was a wonderful thing that honestly bought us back close to $10,000 a year. Because you don't think about it, but those little things add up, and $600 a month, all of a sudden, that's $7,200 a year. Then an even bigger one was the alcohol and going out. Now, I was at a point in my life where I could really think about it, where all of a sudden I was like, I'm still doing this. We're still buying beer and wine and all this stuff. We just had a kid. Going out and buying any of that in my house was money. It really wasn't achieving anything for me. It wasn't making me happier, and it was just a suck. Now really think about how can you remove that from your life, again, for a year, and look at the fiscal benefit of it. Same thing with those subscriptions. Like I mentioned, you'll find a lot of, I have this $10 thing, this $40 thing. Do I really need it? Can I have just one of these and alternate? And you begin to look at how much money you can get back and think about the power of what you have to do with it. Can you save that for your retirement? Can you save that toward your house? Can you save it toward starting a brand or investing in yourself? But concentrating that for a year, for a year being like, I'm not buying anything new, I'm not spending on alcohol or vice, I'm certainly not touching gambling, crypto, stocks. If you're investing money, put it in the S&P and you don't think about it. And you're looking at how I constructively use every one of these dollars and accumulate it in my accounts with the resources I have. And you can pretty realistically, after a month or so, make a plan of what your change looks like, what that's going to allow you to save, and then what you're going to be able to do with it, and think about what that accomplishes for your goals. If you've never had a money year, you have an awkward relationship with money, you spend money to feel better, tackling that year is a huge thing, which brings us to the systems year. Every creative is like this, where even if you have a schedule at work, you don't keep a schedule in the rest of your life. Or you're forgetting things, or things are slipping through the cracks, you have an idea and don't know how to do it. So putting a system into your life is a crucial thing to think about. And a system is simple enough. It is using a calendar, it is using some sort of system to track things, and it is having some level of communication and accountability around it. Let's break those down one by one. So the first thing you want to do is start using a calendar. Even if you have a job where you don't use one, or a job where you do and it's overwhelming, what are you doing with your time blocks? So pick a day each week, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, whatever it looks like. Say, I'm going to plan my next week. And you do that and you go, here's all the things I have to do, my mandatory things. I need to make sure I've done laundry, done this at my work, gone to whatever appointment. Here's the things I want to do with my time. And then put it in the blocks. How long does it take? Putting it in your Google Calendar, your Apple Calendar, and blocking it off. And then really realistically looking at what time do I have and what's my extra time, and can I accomplish all these things? Where are my trade-offs? But when you start doing that every week and you actually mark it down, this is when I'm supposed to do it, and you stick to it because it's your systems year and you're acting on improving yourself and improving your life, you start to see a major shift in where you spend your time and how and if you do it or not. And then you add on some sort of tracking system for the things you have to do in your life. Apple Notes or Evernote or whatever it ends up being. Whatever is easy for you. You have to pick one thing, ideally with checkboxes. There's something satisfying and dopamine-providing about checking that box, whether it's on an app or you have a written thing in your house that says it's done, that helps you turn into the kind of person who loves the system. And the third thing is communication. So, for instance, if you are at work, you start tracking what you're working on, what you've got done that week, and sending that to your boss. If you have a partner in an entrepreneurial venture, you start to track that every week. Here's what we're working on. Here's what's coming next. Or even just for you, journaling. Here's what I got done this week. Here's my plan for next week. Those three things together, when acted on for 52 weeks straight, turn you from a chaotic person to an action person. And this is important for a lot of people who wonder, there's other people my age who are more successful than me. For some people, this is innate. and dopamine-providing about checking that box, whether it's on an app or you have a written thing in your house that says it's done, that helps you turn to the kind of person who loves the system. And the third thing is communication. So for instance, if you are at work, you start tracking what you're working on, what you've got done that week, and sending that to your boss. If you have a partner in an entrepreneurial venture, you start to track that every week. Here's what we're working on. Here's what's coming next. Or even just for you, journaling. Here's what I got done this week. Here's my plan for next week. Those three things together, when acted on for 52 weeks straight, turn you from a chaotic person to an action person. And this is important for a lot of people who wonder, there's other people my age who are more successful than me. For some people, this is innate. They're just built like that. They just run through things. They have systems. They grew up in a way that made them that way. But for most of us, it is absolutely not. So it's really important to go learn it and cross that off, and it will get you towards whenever you have something to get excited about or apply yourself to. Now you're going to have the kind of system in your life to help get it done. We're going to talk about the rebrand, and then we're going to end with the obsession here. So rebranding yourself is an interesting thing. It's looked at obvious. There's a bunch of videos that will come out around this time of year about it all the time. But it's this idea that you want to improve how others perceive you because branding is about how others think of you. And it's important. People will act, oh, it's fake, or you're going to turn into someone you're not. We change in life. I am so different from the person I was at 23 or 27. And to give you an example, I'm an intense person now. I get comments about my intensity in the videos and how fast I talk, things like that. If you knew me, shout out to the ones who did in 23 to 27, I was a bro. I loved to party. I was the center of my friend group. We were out all the time. I was super chill. And one day I decided that that is not the person, as fun as that life is, that's going to accomplish the goals that they need to. And over time, I became this person. This person isn't fun. It's not chill. I'm not an amazing hang unless we're fucking building something, in which case we will drive it and take it as far as we can humanly go. And it will be amazing. But that took concerted effort. And so your rebrand breaks down into a few things. It starts with an exercise: the archetype of who you want to be. How do they dress? What do they say in different scenarios? When they're talking to someone of the opposite sex? When they're negotiating a deal? When they're in a scenario at work? When they're hanging out with others? What do they read? What do they consume? Build that list. Start with that exercise. List those things out. And actually write out what those actions look like. And then it takes planning. And this is why I think this is a year. People think they can just change their outfit and they're going to be a different person next month. That's not the case. It takes intention. At the end of every day, going into the next day, or in the morning, thinking about what would this person do in the scenarios I'm going to see, in this meeting tomorrow at work, this hang with my friends in my free time? How would this person that I want to be present themselves? And then planning for it. Planning the outfit. Planning the conversation. Walking through that conversation in your head. Having the argument in the shower in the other tone of voice. You need the repetition of being this new person to actually become it. And that time, that year, needs complete dedication to what is this like until you are it. And in a year, you can do it. And in a month, it is extremely unlikely. And trying to focus on anything else while you're doing this, besides achieving that goal of how you look and how you want to act, is going to be really hard. So I would just zone in on this is the year I become who I plan to be. I embody their characteristics. I look and act like them. And don't feel bad about it. People will be weird about it for whatever amount of time. You have to pursue what you want and what you are going to do. And one of the biggest recommendations I have is that one of the hardest things for people is to change how they react to things, to change how they talk in scenarios. And the biggest tool you have is pausing. If someone asks you a question, if you have a scenario come up, taking a moment to think. Because we overthink it. We don't want to pause. We want to just rush into things. Other people won't even notice. You take a breath. You think. If you consider what you're going to say before you say it, it's almost good, almost respectable. But you should need to have that split-second moment of am I immediately reacting, or what would I actually want to say? Have that inner narrative. Have that moment. Adjust, and then act. And just by noticing that and beginning to incorporate that into your life when you're at some of those scenarios where you want to control how you react, just taking that breath is absolutely crucial. If you want to sharpen a new skill this year, learning the basics of all the different AI models and what they can do is a great one to lead with. I partnered with Leonardo to walk you through actual exercises that are going to teach you how to use these platforms in a way that actually makes sense for your creative work. So first off, people often get overwhelmed by all the names and models that come up when you are creating something. And this is one of the reasons that I love Leonardo, is that they have all of these models in one place and they keep them super up to date. As soon as something is out, it is in here. So when you go to generate something, you are able to select from this drop-down menu what models you want to try. So the first exercise that I would get into if I was learning this is to determine what models are good for what things. And here's your quick cheat guide for that. So Nano Banana and Nano Banana Pro are ultra-accurate models. Ever wondered how people actually place their products into content like you see here with what I did with this muscle goo bottle? These are done in Nano Banana, where you take a reference image of a product, you give an accurate description of what you want it to look like. Like I said, this product, Massive, in between two modern gyms in New York, and it will very accurately put that together. And then it's the same thing for video. For instance, I found the Veo 3.1 is the most accurate to make videos from Nano Banana content. So for instance, I generated this eight pool ball inside of a city, Massive, and I was able to use Veo to do this pullout shot from that. And it looks great for the needs that I have to use this for an AI hook and an app. If you're doing video and you want great sound and language, there's Kling 2.6. And then one of my favorites for accuracy, especially accuracy with shots, is this Kling 01. For instance, we did a logo animation for this. This is a Polo Player logo. We made it into gold in Nano Banana, brought that reference image here into Kling. And then my prompt was the horse slowly turning in the air with cinematic lighting glinting off of it. If you've ever built a logo animation in 3D software, you know how painful this is to do, and this is something you can do quickly here now. And it's an awesome skill for you to try to learn and piece together and add to your creative toolkit. And it is definitely worth checking out some of the more obscure models as well. Like this one, Hailuo, is great because there's a logo setting that they have in here inside the style guide. And I use this to bring 2D images to life when we need to. So for instance, this riding horse player, this riding polo player from the logo image that we had, that was 2D. So Leonardo has all of those models, plus an upscaler to upres things, the blueprints I've shown before in a previous video, where you can basically do one- to two-click versions of placing a person in a scene or doing custom relighting, product spins, and they're adding more to those all the time. If you want to learn more about using Leonardo as a home base for generation, the link in my description will tell you all about it. A big thank you to them for sponsoring this video. So now, bumping over to probably the one I think most are interested in hearing about, and that's the obsession year. This is almost a controversial topic. This is my year last year, by the way. We'll get into that. With the idea that you're going to sacrifice things that are in your life So for instance, this riding horse player, this riding polo player from the logo image that we had, that was 2D. So Leonardo has all of those models plus an upscaler to upres things. The blueprints I've shown before in a previous video where you can do 1 to 2 click versions of placing a person in a scene or doing custom relighting, product spins, and they're adding more to those all the time. If you want to learn more about using Leonardo as a home base for generation, the link in my description will tell you all about it. A big thank you to them for sponsoring this video. So now bumping over to probably the one I think most are interested in hearing about, and that's the obsession year. This is almost a controversial topic. This is my year last year, by the way. We'll get into that. With the idea that you're going to sacrifice things that are in your life to achieve a goal. This comes up a lot because I think there's a generation of people who believe you can have it all, who believe that you can be massively successful with work-life balance, that you don't have to sacrifice a lot to get a lot. And it's important to note that for 99.9% of cases, that is just absolutely not true. So you need to really think, is this my time to do this? And again, if you have a brand or you started something or kicked something off or you're a creator and you're starting to see some traction, this is the time to think about it. When you have some momentum, if you don't have momentum, you don't know what you want to do, you got to figure out yourself first. You got to do your rebrand. You got to build your systems. You got to save for wherever you want to go. This is not the year for you. But if you have that idea, you need to go. And so last year for me was the year where I was like, hey, I'm becoming a pretty big creator. I made far more as a creator than I did at my job, and I'd left my job mid-year last year. I want to say yes to all the opportunities I like, that I'm into. I want to see how far I can push it, how much I can do. I'm not going to have the same friendships and relationships and casual stuff I did. I'm not going to be able to take care of myself the same way. I have to really think about the time and relationships with my family and how we spend time. It doesn't mean cutting anything off, but it means understanding what my responsibilities are, what everyone's dynamics are, really planning for it. It's important. And then putting my priority as it's the work over everything. Part of where you're at, not hanging out with the same people you did, don't have the same goals, not texting back to people you feel bad about. Always, every time for this year, you are choosing the work, you are choosing your goal over everything. And if you really do that, do not feel bad about it. It is your time. Every person you've seen get to mass success has likely had to do this at some point as they do it. That is a huge thing that is highly worth thinking about. If you're ready for it, absolutely go. And I will say some of the ups and downs of this: it's going to be a long year. It's going to be a hard year. It's probably going to be bad for your health. That is what it is. You don't have to choose this year. If you have some momentum and you want to go all in, sometimes that's all right. And we're in a culture that has this almost feel-bad about it. Don't. And also think about how you can embrace it with people. One of the big changes for me in my life was with my wife and I being like, hey, we're not going to be watching Netflix at night. We're not going to be having movies. We're not going to do the same kind of hang stuff we did. And that actually went better than expected because my wife was like, hey, I want to help. I want to be involved. And now we have the status symbols newsletter we do together, and we work on it at night. At the end of the year, it's the key thing about the obsession year. You get to ask yourself, do I want this to keep going or am I done? This is an important time. Give yourself that year. Give yourself going all in for that amount of time. But then if you're over it, if you're like, this wasn't worth it or I don't want to continue, you did it. You had that year. You locked in. It's done. You get to really be like, all right, maybe I can relax a bit now. That's fine. You did it. Also, you can look at it and be like, what if I did another one? Where would that take me? And that's fine too. But give yourself that year because it's not forever. And that's the conversation I have on the family side. It's like, I'm going to travel more than usual. Here's what that's going to look like. Here's how I'm going to make sure I prioritize it on the other end. And you can look at the end of this year coming up into these days being like, what do we want to do for next year? And it's something we're really thinking about. And if you do, there's only one guiding light in that year. And that light is the most important thing is the goal. Every single action you take, is it supporting the goal? And if it's not, don't do it. And I put a lot of absolutes into these years because if you have a real goal for you, whether that's systems or mastery or obsession, you need to do it. You can't make an exception. You make an exception, you don't lock in on it. And that's why I like to pick these individual things. If you try to do it all, there's going to have to be exceptions. And all of a sudden, you're faltering. If you become the kind of person who is honest with yourself and achieves things for yourself, it's going to go a massively long way. If you haven't noticed in the prior videos, I am going on tour next year. We are doing workshops live and in person. To put some of the dates down here, we've got Toronto, New York, New York, and Miami coming up. I'd love to see some of y'all live. And I'm doing a webinar because I know not everyone can get in the middle of that. We are doing a creative strategy webinar here in the second week of January, third week of January. The info on that is down below as well. But I would love to see everyone who's watching this get to all of your goals. And it's going to take time. I want to share as much as I can to help in that process. If I get to meet some of y'all along the way, that'd be awesome. And I hope y'all get everything you ever wanted out of this year. And I appreciate you so much for watching. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Do I really need it? Can I have just one of these and alternate? And you begin to look at how much money you can get back and think about the power of what you have to do with it. Can you save that for your retirement? Can you save that towards your house? Can you save it towards starting a brand or investing in yourself? But concentrating that for a year, for a year being like, I'm not buying anything new. I'm not spending on alcohol or vice. I'm certainly not touching gambling, crypto, stocks. If you're investing money, put it in the S&P and you don't think about it. And you're looking at how I constructively using every one of these dollars and accumulating it in my accounts with the resources I have. And you can pretty realistically after a month or so, make a plan of what your change looks like, what that's going to allow you to save, and then what you're going to be able to do with it and think about what that accomplishes for your goals. If you've never had a money year, you have an awkward relationship with money, you spend money to feel better. Tackling that year is a huge thing, which brings us to the systems year. Every creative is like this, where even if you have a schedule at work, you don't keep a schedule in the rest of your life. Or you're forgetting things or things are slipping through the cracks, you have an idea and don't know how to do it. So putting a system into your life is a crucial thing to think about. And a system is simple enough. It is using a calendar, it is using some sort of system to track things, and it is having some level of communication and accountability around it. Let's break those down one by one. So the first thing you want to do is start using a calendar. Even if you have a job where you don't use one or a job where you do and it's overwhelming, what are you doing with your time blocks? So pick a day each week, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, whatever it looks like. Say, I'm going to plan my next week. And you do that and you go, here's all the things I have to do, my mandatory things. I need to make sure I've done laundry, done this at my work, gone to whatever appointment. Here's the things I want to do with my time. And then put it in the blocks. How long does it take? I'm putting it in your Google calendar, your Apple calendar, and blocking it off. And then really realistically looking at what time do I have and what's my extra time? And can I accomplish all these things? Where are my trade-offs? But when you start doing that every week and you actually mark it down, this is what I'm supposed to do it, and you stick to it because it's your systems here and you're acting on improving yourself and improving your life, you start to see a major shift in where you spend your time and how and if you do it or not. And then you add on some sort of tracking system for the things you have to do in your life. Apple Notes or Evernote or whatever it ends up being. Ever is easy for you. You have to pick one thing, ideally with checkboxes. There's something satisfying and dopamine-providing about checking that box, whether it's on an app or you have a written thing in your house that says it's done that helps you turn to the kind of person who loves the system. And the third thing is communication. So for instance, if you are at work, you start tracking what you're working on, what you've got done that week and sending that to your boss. If you have a partner in an entrepreneurial venture, you start to track that every week. Here's what we're working on. Here's what's coming next. Or even just for you, journaling. Here's what I got done this week. Here's my plan for next week. Those three things together when acted on for 52 weeks straight turn you from a chaotic person to an action person. And this is important for a lot of people who wonder, there's other people my age who are more successful than me. For some people, this is innate. They're just built like that. They just run through things. They have systems. They grew up in a way that made them that way. But for most of us, it is absolutely not. So it's really important to go learn it and cross that off and it will get you towards whenever you have something to get excited about or apply yourself to. Now you're going to have the kind of system in your life to help get it done. We're going to talk about the rebrand and then we're going to end with the obsession here. So rebranding yourself is an interesting thing. It's looked at obvious. There's a bunch of videos that will come out around this time of year about it all the time. But it's this idea that you want to improve how others perceive you because branding is about how others think of you. And it's important. People will act, oh, it's fake or you're going to turn into someone you're not. We change in life. I am so different from the person I was at 23 or 27. And to give you an example, like I'm an intense person now. I get comments about my intensity in the videos and how fast I talk, things like that. If you knew me, shout out to the ones who did in like 23 to 27. I was a bro. I love to party. I was the center of my friend group. We were out all the time. I was super chill. And one day I decided that that is not the person, as fun as that life is, that's going to accomplish the goals that they need to. And over time, I became this person. This person isn't fun. It's not chill. I'm not an amazing hang unless we're fucking building something, in which case we will drive it and take it to as far as we can humanly go. And it will be amazing. But that took concerted effort. And so your rebrand breaks down into a few things. Starts with an exercise. The archetype of who you want to be. How do they dress? What do they say in different scenarios? When they're talking to someone of the opposite sex? When they're negotiating a deal? When they're in a scenario at work? When they're hanging out with others? What do they read? What do they consume? Build that list. Start with that exercise. List those things out. And actually write out what those actions look like. And then it takes planning. And this is why I think this is a year. People think they can just change their outfit and they're going to be a different person next month. That's not the case. It takes intention. The end of every day going into the next day or in the morning, thinking about what would this person do in the scenarios I'm going to see in this meeting tomorrow at work? Let this hang with my friends in my free time. How would this person that I want to be present themselves? And then planning for it. Planning the outfit. Planning the conversation. Walking through that conversation in your head. Having the argument in the shower in the other tone of voice. You need the repetition of being this new person to actually become it. And that time, that year, needs complete dedication to what is this like until you are it. And in a year, you can do it. And in a month, it is extremely unlikely. And trying to focus on anything else while you're doing this besides achieving that goal of how you look and how you want to act is going to be really hard. So I would just zone in on this is the year I become who I plan to be. I embody their characteristics. I look and act like them. And don't feel bad about it. People will be weird about it for whatever amount of time. You have to pursue what you want and what you are going to do. And one of the biggest recommendations I have is that one of the hardest things for people is to change how they react to things, to change how they talk and in scenarios. And the biggest tool you have is pausing. If someone asks you a question, if you have a scenario come up, taking a moment to think. Because we overthink it. We don't want to pause. We want to just rush into things. Other people won't even notice. You take a breath. You think. If you consider what you're going to say before you say it, it's almost good, almost respectable. But you should need to have that split second moment of am I immediately reacting or what would I actually want to say? Have that inner narrative. Have that moment. Adjust and then act. And just by noticing that and begin to incorporate that into your life when you're at some of those scenarios where you want to control how you react, just taking that breath is absolutely crucial. If you want to sharpen a new skill this year, learning the basics of all the different AI models and what they can do is a great one to lead with. I partnered with Leonardo to walk you through actual exercises that are going to teach you how to use these platforms in a way that actually makes sense for your creative work. So first off, people often get overwhelmed by all the names and models that come up when you are creating something. And this is one of the reasons that I love Leonardo is that they have all of these models in one place and they keep them super up to date. As soon as something is out, it is in here. So when you go to generate something, you are able to select from this drop down menu what models you want to try. So the first exercise that I would get into if I was learning this is to determine what models are good for what things. And here's your quick cheat guide for that. So Nano Banana and Nano Banana Pro are ultra accurate models. Ever wondered how people actually place their products into content like you see here with what I did with this muscle goo bottle. These are done in Nano Banana where you take a reference image of a product, you give an accurate description of what you want it to look like. Like I said, this product, Massive, in between two modern gyms in New York, and it will very accurately put that together. And then it's the same thing for video. For instance, I found the Veo 3.1 is the most accurate to make videos from Nano Banana content. So for instance, I generated this eight pool ball inside of a city, Massive, and I was able to use Veo to do this pullout shot from that. And it looks great for the needs that I have to use this for an AI hook and an app. If you're doing video and you want great sound and language, there's Kling 2.6. And then one of my favorites for accuracy, especially accuracy with shots, is this Kling 01. For instance, we did a logo animation for this. This is a Polo Player logo. We made it into gold and Nano Banana, brought that reference image here into Kling. And then my prompt was the horse slowly turning in the air with cinematic lighting glinting off of it. If you've ever built a logo animation in 3D software, you know how painful this is to do and this is something you can do quickly here now. And it's an awesome skill for you to try to learn and piece together and add to your creative toolkit. And it is definitely worth checking out some of the more obscure models as well. Like this one, Hailuo, is great because there's a logo setting that they have in here inside the style guide. And I use this to bring 2D images to life when we need to. So for instance, this riding horse player, this riding polo player from the logo image that we had that was 2D. So Leonardo has all of those models plus an upscaler to upres things. The blueprints I've shown before in a previous video where you can basically do 1 to 2 click versions of placing a person in a scene or doing custom relighting, product spins, and they're adding more to those all the time. If you want to learn more about using Leonardo as a home base for generation, the link in my description will tell you all about it. A big thank you to them for sponsoring this video. So now bumping over to probably the one I think most are interested in hearing about and that's the obsession year. This is almost a controversial topic. This is my year last year by the way. We'll get into that. With the idea that you're going to sacrifice things that are in your life to achieve a goal. This comes up a lot because I think there's a generation of people who believe you can have it all, who believe that you can be massively successful with work-life balance, that you don't have to sacrifice a lot to get a lot. And it's important to note that for 99.9% of cases, that is just absolutely not true. So you need to really think, is this my time to do this? And again, if you have a brand or you started something or kicked something off or you're a creator and you're starting to see some traction, this is the time to think about it. When you have some momentum, if you don't have momentum, you don't know what you want to do, you got to figure out yourself first. You got to do your rebrand. You got to build your systems. You got to save for wherever you want to go. This is not the year for you. But if you have that idea, you need to go. And so last year for me was the year where I was like, hey, I'm becoming a pretty big creator. I made far more as a creator than I did at my job and I'd left my job mid-year last year. I want to say yes to all the opportunities I like that I'm into. I want to see how far I can push it, how much I can do. I'm not going to have the same friendships and relationships and casual stuff I did. I'm not going to be able to take care of myself the same way. I have to really think about the time and relationships with my family and how we spend time. It doesn't mean cutting anything off, but it means like understanding what my responsibilities are, what everyone's dynamics are, really planning for it. It's important. And then putting my priority as it's the work over everything. Part of where you're at, not hanging out with the same people you did, don't have the same goals, not texting back for people you feel bad about. Always, every time for this year, you are choosing the work, you are choosing your goal over everything. And if you really do that, do not feel bad about it. It is your time. Every person you've seen get to mass success has likely had to do this at some point as they do it. That is a huge thing that is highly worth thinking about. If you're ready for it, absolutely go. And I will say some of the ups and downs of this, it's going to be a long year. It's going to be a hard year. It's probably going to be bad for your health. That is what it is. You don't have to choose this year. If you have some momentum and you want to go all in, sometimes that's all right. And we're in a culture that has this almost feel bad about it. Don't. And also think about how you can embrace it with people. One of the big changes for me in my life was with my wife and I, being like, hey, we're not going to be watching Netflix at night. We're not going to be having movies. We're not going to do the same kind of hang stuff we did. And that actually went better than expected because my wife was like, hey, I want to help. I want to be involved. And now we have the status symbols newsletter we do together and we work on it at night. At the end of the year, it's the key thing about the obsession year. You get to ask yourself, do I want this to keep going or am I done? This is an important time. Give yourself that year. Give yourself going all in for that amount of time. But then if you're over it, if you're like, you know what? This wasn't worth it or I don't want to continue. You did it. You had that year. You locked in. It's done. You get to really be like, all right, you know what? Maybe I can relax a bit now. That's fine. You did it. Also, you can look at it and be like, what if I did another one? You know, where would that take me? And that's fine too. But give yourself that year because it's not forever. And that's the conversation I have on the family side. It's like, I'm going to travel more than usual. Here's what that's going to look like. Here's how I'm going to make sure I prioritize it on the other end. And you can look at the end of this year coming up into these days being like, what do we want to do for next year? And it's something we're really thinking about. And if you do, there's only one guiding light in that year. And that light is the most important thing is the goal. Every single action you take is it supporting the goal. And if it's not, don't do it. And I put a lot of absolutes into these years because if you have a real goal for you, whether that's systems or mastery or obsession, you need to do it. You can't make an exception. You make an exception, you don't lock in on it. And that's why I like to pick these individual things. If you try to do it all, there's going to have to be exceptions. And all of a sudden, you're faltering. If you become the kind of person who is honest with yourself and achieves things for yourself, it's going to go a massively long way. If you haven't noticed in the prior videos, I am going on tour next year. We are doing workshops live and in person to put some of the dates down here. We've got Toronto, New York, New York in Miami coming up. I'd love to see some of y'all live. And I'm doing a webinar because I know not everyone can get in the middle of that. We are doing a creative strategy webinar here in the second week of January, third week of January. The info on that is down below as well. But I would love to see everyone who's watching this get to all of your goals. And it's going to take time. I want to share as much as I can to help in that process. If I get to meet some of y'all along the way, that'd be awesome. And I hope y'all get everything you ever wanted out of this year. And I appreciate you so much for watching. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.