Episode #19 - Goals For 2026
Three times in business that Dale and Coby nearly gave up — and what kept them going. From Dale being offered $125,000 salary on day three of business, to losing $80,000 to a dodgy developer, to the emotional grind of trying something new that just doesn't work. Raw, honest and deeply relatable.
Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Sequoia Project Podcast in 2026. I hope we're all doing well. My name is Koby and I'm joined here by my co-host Dale.
Dale: Today, what we're gonna do, we're gonna break down 2026 for both of us personally — our personal and business goals. And then we would just touch on how we both set goals. And it's just what works for us. But if someone out there is running a business and they're like, shit, like how do I break my year down or how do I factor in certain things? Maybe you get a little bit of inspiration from that.
Coby: 2026 is definitely looking like it's on the road to be one of the biggest years for CE Media, which is crazy. Coming into 2026, I think the big goals I've set for the business itself — I'm a photographer, I run a complete media business, mostly focusing on weddings. So the goal is pretty much to book out a minimum of 40 weddings a year. That's literally our minimum. And also to be able to not just shoot them sort of in the Melbourne kind of area, but around Australia as well, which would be an unreal experience.
Dale: For 2026, I want to get the Sequoia project from a thousand businesses to near enough 2,000. I would love 2,000. That's a lot of work to get onto a whole other thousand businesses. To get it to 2000 in half that time will be a push, but I'm going to aim for 2000. The second goal — up until now I've been extremely private in how I do things. I like just to be left alone. I like to do my own thing. I don't allow a whole lot of exterior noise into that. So my goal for 2026 is to be a lot more active on social media, share a lot of my story.
Dale: If I was going to break this down, if you're looking at your year and you're going, shit, you know, I'd like to have a better January — divide that goal by 12, divide that by 30. This is what I need to be doing per day to get to that goal and then just commit to the process. Then put a review period in as well. I like to do a review period on how attractive the goal is to me. And I like to go, cool, I've done this for a month. I've done this for two weeks. I've got the data that I need. Is it on the trend that I thought it was or no? If it's something I'm super focused on, I'll do it fortnightly.
Coby: Set goals for the end of the year, break them down to smaller parts that are more achievable. If I said for me personally if I'm like well I want to earn $200,000 just personally for that year, then it's like, okay, well how many weddings do I have to shoot per week for that? How much do I have to charge based on how many I want to shoot that week? Set goals for the end of the year, break them down to smaller parts that are more achievable, I think is the way to go.