2019 Results and 2020 Goals

5 min readDec 27, 2019

I’ve been writing my annual goals in a blog post in one way or another since 2012. Here are some past versions that are still live:

So let’s do it.

2019 results vs my goals

Release my 5th book — Pass

This one was a win. I released This is The Answer my 5th book on Amazon in April this year and on Audible a few months later. The book got good reviews but didn’t sell as well as my other books. Still it was great to release the book, especially since it was the book I wanted to write all along and I was personally proud of the book. I don’t have much of an audience with my personal content anymore so it feels like writing these books has diminishing returns so maybe that was my last for a while. We’ll see.

Top 10 Hottest 100 Craft Beers — Fail

The annual vote for the best craft beers in Australia happens each year at this time (you can vote check out the link here!). This year I had the ambitious goal of having one of Black Hops’ beers coming in the top 10.

We were able to get 87th, 43rd and 14th which was a pretty awesome result. Not the top 10 result we hoped for but for a small brewery, mainly locally distributed we were still stoked with the result.

Win AIBA Champion Medium Brewery — Fail

Australia’s most prestigious beer awards happen every year in May, and this year we had the ambitious goal of following up our Champion Small Brewery Trophy with the Champion Medium Brewery Trophy. Unfortunately we didn’t come home with the trophy but we were very close, and were able to come home with a Trophy for our Mid Strength beer Mid Range, which was an awesome effort. That made it 2 straight years of trophies and 3 straight years of Gold Medals.

Distribution in NSW, VIC and SA — Pass

This one we get a tick for. We were able to launch Black Hops in NSW, VIC and SA and later in the year Tasmania and WA as well.

Hitting production targets at BHII — Pass

We set some pretty big targets for production at our new brewery, and we’ve been able to hit those. When I wrote the goals we still were yet to receive our equipment and we had to build a brewery and double our production in the 7 months since, which we were able to do. No small feat!

Beer Cartel survey top 5 — Pass

I set a target to make the top 5 of the Beer Cartel survey for Australia’s favourite breweries and this is one we achieved coming in 5th. For a small brewery like ours even being considered in the company in that list was pretty epic. It’s a good sign that we’re doing something right with our product and our marketing.

Our first Beeries Award — Pass

The final goal was to win our first Beeries award and I’m happy to say we were able to achieve this as well with AliCat taking out the best beer tender. It was so epic for her to win and one of my highlights for the year.

So overall 4 out of 6 isn’t too bad, probably a higher strike rate than I’ve ever had for my annual goals.

Other highlights

As years go on I realise more and more that these things aren’t that easy to predict. The highlights for the year are often things I hadn’t even possibly considered when I wrote the post. This year is no different, I’ve had an awesome year and there have been some epic highlights. Here are a few:

We became Australia’s first brewery to close a crowdfunding campaign, and Australia’s first company to hit their maximum target (doing it in 6 days).
We opened our second brewery, a $3m plus site, one of the biggest of its kind in our state.
We grew every part of the business, doubling most metrics including overall turnover.
We were involved in one of Australia’s most iconic sporting events the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, with our logo on a Spinnaker of the oldest and one of the smallest entrants, KatWinChar.
In my last year of qualifying for the Gold Coast Young Entrepreneurs awards we were able to win it in the category of Food and Beverage to follow up our win from last year in the category of Manufacturing.

2020 Goals

Here is what I’m aiming for in 2020

Successfully complete another crowdfunding round

We would like to complete another crowdfunding round in 2020, and become Australia’s first brewery to close 2 campaigns.

Release 1 major creative project

In past years it’s been a book but I’m not sure if it will be next year. But I don’t want the year to finish without me doing at least one personal creative project that I can be proud of.

Top 10 Hottest 100 Craft Beers

This elusive goal is still on my list. If you like Black Hops beers, please vote here!

Win AIBA Champion Medium Brewery

After narrowly missing out this year, this goal is still high up my list!

Win our first Indie Trophy

This year was our first year in the Independent Brewers Awards and while we were awarded some Gold Medals, we weren’t able to win any trophies. Next year it would be great to pick up our first one.

Win Champion Qld Brewery for the second year

This year the Royal Qld Beer Awards were revived and we won 4 Trophyies including Champion Brewer. Next year it would be great to back that up, with another win.

Make the list of Australia’s fastest growing companies

One thing that I would like to achieve but never have is to make the BRW list of Australia’s fastest growing companies. Next year will be the first year anything I’ve worked on will be eligible, and I like to think we could do well on that list.

Launch a new drink brand

Next year I’d like to launch something new, so I’ve got this on my goals list.

Better serve the community

This year marked the first year I’ve had any kind of active community program in any of my businesses. It’s only small but we were able to do a community-related activity each month and raise over $10,000 for charities around Australia. I would love to do at least twice as well on this front in 2020.

I wish you all the best for 2020, bring it on!