The Recap of My 2019 Goals

Recap of my 2019 goalsI definitely need to listen to Jim Rohn and Brian Buffini more. Those folks are so satisfied with their goals. For me, goals are a source of unrelenting misery.

My 2019 goals went better than usual, but still, I want to pull my hair out in exasperation. OK, let’s go over them.

1. Communication in My Marriage

It quickly appeared that it takes two to have a conversation. My wife wasn’t willing at all to chat for an hour with me, especially about the deep topics I’m interested in. Superficial gossip about celebrities or relatives was OK, but those aren’t topics I want to discuss. Continue reading

The Amazing Results of Writing Down Your Goals

Make friends with pen and paper, it’s worth it

I get a feeling that writing is a universal key to our subconscious mind. My experience with journaling and goal setting suggests that despite the huge number of volumes about the power of the subconscious mind, we still hopelessly undervalue it.

And you can throw the rock at me first. I was very quick to read or listen to anything about the power of the subconscious and judge it as bollocks.

Well, it’s easy to dismiss stories that happened to others. It’s pretty hard to ignore things that happened in my own life.

The Power of Writing

I won’t talk much about the subconscious mind, I’ll let you read between the lines. Let’s focus on writing.

A joint research study done by scientists from Princeton University and UCLA concluded that writing by hand has an advantage over typing and it allows you to remember study material better.

Ponder it. There should be no difference. Writing information down should increase retention, no matter how we do it. Yet, there is a difference. You commit a lot more of your motor power into handwriting. A lot more muscles activate when you write with a pen. More of your senses are alerted.

Our memory is not a hard drive like we like to imagine. It’s a network of associations. Handwriting provides more associations, more input signals, and more data points than typing.

I’m an amateur on the subconscious, but you know what? I bet it is more association-like in its nature than a neatly organized data set with reference points.

Journaling

Writing Down Your Goals The author of “Writing Your Soul Down”, Janet Conner, described in her book how she activated her subconscious mind with daily journaling. Her breakthroughs and transformation were nothing short of amazing.

Among others, she tells a story about when she desperately needed $10,000 and wrote about this asking God for help. Sure enough, she got the money two days later.

Once she asked in her journal for two thousand dollars. “And I need it now,” she added. An hour later her sole remaining client called and said the strangest thing: “I don’t know why, but I just feel you should send us an invoice for two thousand dollars.”

Writing and My Goals

I’m writing this post at the end of December, and I’m fresh after the review of my 2018 goals. I’ pretty lame when it comes to achieving my yearly goals and in 2018, in particular, I made a colossal mistake: I wrote them down and never visited them again.

I typed my goals, so I didn’t have the additional associations provided by handwriting. A few things alerted me during the review of my goals.

For example, I totally forgot I intended to get on more podcasts as a guest. Yet, whenever an opportunity appeared, I gladly took it. Podcast hosts contacted me out of the blue a couple of times, another time my customer introduced me to a host thinking that we would be a good fit. Every time I followed the opportunity, which is not my default mode.

Often, when cold email offers arrive, I simply delete them. Guest posting, writing opportunities, joint-ventures — 80% of the time they land in a trash folder.

Other Goals

Writing Down Your GoalsI also forgot about my other goal which was getting more power over my schedule by going to bed at 10 pm and waking up at 5 am. I didn’t follow it up. I complied with this goal in less than 10% of days and it was never caused by the intention of the goal, but out of necessity or circumstances.

Yet, I had this nagging feeling, a yearning to stick to those hours. I felt great when I was in bed on time- without remembering the goal!

Despite the fact that I didn’t keep the assumed times, a huge improvement in my sleep patterns happened in 2018. I slept a full 7 hours a night more often than not. I hadn’t had such a good year since I started tracking my sleep in 2013. And that was the intent underlying that goal.

At the beginning of 2018, I wanted to publish a couple of books. I made some progress with one of them, but it is still a couple of months away from publishing.

However, I wrote and published a book that was not on my radar in January.

I tell you those stories because there are clues that there is more to writing down your goals than we think. It’s not about creating a conscious effort to achieve what we want. It’s also about activating our subconscious mind.

And I found writing was a very effective tool in this regard.

It Simply Works

There was research done about Harvard students. Supposedly, fellows who wrote down their goals were miles ahead of their peers who didn’t. I say ‘supposedly’ because despite the fact that it was all over the Internet, it was an urban myth.

Such research was never done. However, it articulates the feeling of all people who ever wrote down their goals: that it’s instrumental in reaching those goals. Business coaches, management experts, personal development gurus, really, people from all walks of life were preaching writing goals down since humanity mastered the art of writing.

Because it works. “Oh, but the research was fake,” you say. So what? I tell you, writing down your goals works. Will research that proves it makes writing goals down somehow more effective?

There was a time in our history not so long ago when we had no idea about germs. Do you think that washing hands by doctors wouldn’t decreased the number of infections in hospitals because there was no research for that? Of course, it would be effective!

Research is only the confirmation of reality, and we get such confirmations by observing reality.

So, the reality is that writing goals down works. Yes, many times it doesn’t work in the way we imagine it will work, but it works. Many people don’t reach their goals despite writing them down. But the act of writing them down ignites the powers we don’t yet comprehend.

Reaching My Past Goals

2018 wasn’t the first year when I set some goals and forgot about them for the rest of the year. Yet, when I go over my past goals I either achieved them or am on my way to achieving them, despite the fact that I wrote them down once, summarized the progress at the beginning of next year and shrug them off.

My first goal was to quit my day job. I almost achieved that. I work only 10 hours a week and it’s for benefits’ sake and to stay in touch with reality. I want to be around “normal” people regularly. I don’t want to get disconnected from the common folks’ reality because I can afford a “laptop lifestyle.”

In 2015 I set a goal of growing my list to 1,000 people. I didn’t. In 2016 I changed this goal into “figuring out how to grow my email list at a rapid pace.’ A few months into 2016 I had already forgotten this goal, but I reached it anyway. In July 2016 I opened an InstaFreebie account and I grew my list by several hundred people in a few short months.

Writing Down Your Goals

My Kindle royalties till November 2018

What is more, I achieved the goal of quitting my job mostly by selling my books, exactly as I stated back in 2014. I wrote then that I need to sell 130,000 copies a year.

Well, I based that calculation on 99-cent books. With Amazon royalties thresholds you need to sell six of those to earn as much as by selling one $2.99 Kindle copy. Nowadays I net about $2.5 per copy on average, I need only about 17,500 copies to earn the same income. I sold over 12,000 copies in 2018.

Back in 2014 I also wrote: “My only idea for the new source of income is selling my books on Amazon.”

I created new sources of income. Book advertising alone generated for me over $15,000 in 2018. I also coach and have a trickle of affiliate income. I exceeded my goals.

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action” ― Ian Fleming

Surely, there is someone’s action, even if it’s only the action of the laws of nature.

In the same fashion, I achieved or exceeded most of the goals I missed in previous years. Coincident? This is a poor explanation.

For 16 years before 2013, I had never written down any goals. And I accomplished very little. I got new jobs, salary raises, bought a flat for our family, graduated from the university or received my driving license at the age of 24. Sometimes I set some intentions or my wife set them for me. But I never wrote down anything. And all of those goals were pretty normal. It is a deal to graduate, but not such a big deal, isn’t it?

There was some progress, but it pale compared to the amazing growth of the last six years.

Hence, going over those numbers and goals, I have the weird feeling that despite the volumes written about the power of the subconscious mind we still don’t comprehend it even 1%. And we don’t comprehend how writing holds the key to the gates of the subconscious mind. Here comes a couple of examples that shook my narrow thinking in this regard.

A Newborn

My wife didn’t want another baby after we had two boys. She was satisfied with our “inventory.” I wanted more kids. I have five sisters, a big family is a normal environment for me.

My daughter

I couldn’t persuade my wife, so I prayed for another kid. But preparing for this post, I recalled one disturbing fact: I put my prayer in the form of a poem. I wrote down a plea to have “a hope for a gasp of life,” which really sounds better in Polish and makes a play of words.

Needless to say, we have three kids now.

A Home

Somewhere at the beginning of 2013, inspired by a story in “The Science of Getting Rich,” I wrote down a list of items I would like to possess for me and my family. They were simple things like bicycles for all of us or a portable USB hard drive for me. Those things I could comprehend that eventually we somehow could’ve afforded them despite the fact that we struggled to save a meager $100 a month.

I wrote down those items to get rid of them from my mind, not to look at the list or visualize having them one day.
The creepy thing is that my wife took my notepad and added jokingly ‘a home’ to the list. I discovered it several weeks later and had a good laugh from it. She had been dreaming about our own house for a few years already. We simply couldn’t afford a home. Period.

In the first months of 2015, I found that notepad with the list. We possessed every single item on the list, including a home.

Writing Down Your Goals

Our home


My mind was blown away. Well, I was shocked. I never derided writing goals down since then.

Shocked?

writing down your goalsI hope this post shocked you enough to write some goals down. Even if you have no idea how to achieve them. Even if they seem preposterous. Even if they are simply impossible for you.

When I started my transformation I was determined to quit my day job and provide for my family from my own entrepreneurship. I had no idea how to do that, I was a lifelong employee.

The goal of selling 130,000 copies of my books a year seemed ridiculous. Well, I already sold over 50,000 copies of them in the last 5.5 years. My books were translated into German, Spanish and Chinese. Another will be traditionally published in Korean.

None of this was possible 6 years ago when I had had no books published.

Writing Down Your Goals Is Not Magical

I also don’t want to leave an impression that it’s enough to write something down, trigger your subconscious and the magic will happen. I didn’t just write some lists or some goals. For the past few years, I have been wrestling with my subconscious every single day during my journaling sessions.

I also bombarded my mind with my mission, day in and day out since I created my personal mission statement in November 2012. I selected the content I consumed and people I interacted with. It all synergized and compounded.

Still, those amazing stories from my life opened my eyes to all which I don’t comprehend.

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”  — Jim Rohn

Writing down your goals will not magically provide the results you want. However, it may do just that. Not writing them down surely will do not much for you.

Move your butt. Take action. Write down your goals.

My Goals for 2019

My goals for 2019My yearly goals didn’t go as bad as usual in 2018. I’m a bit more hopeful about 2019. I still credit the meager success I got in 2018 to the fact that I’m more in control of my schedule. And maybe more in control of my mind.

In the past, not reaching a certain milestone was extremely frustrating for me. Maybe because it was happening all the time? It’s hard to live in a constant state of frustration. It was easier to give up on my plans.

 

I won’t articulate this as a specific point, but my prayer and relationship with God is still my overarching goal. If I lose this one, I’ll lose them all. I’ll just keep doing the things I’ve been doing that provided good results. And I’ll keep my ears open to the advice of those wiser than me. With God there is hardly ever a status quo to maintain.

 

Here go the four specific goals (and you will see they are not so specific after all) for 2019.

1. Communication in My Marriage.

I need two components to reach that goal: to actually spend time with my wife and communicate better. I worked on the first for the past two years with some success. Now I need to overcome my anxiety with communication. You see, our marriage was going so bad (at least for me!) that I withdrew. I hope I got strong enough to survive a few hot arguments.

As with most fears, I’m discovering that my concerns are empty. We talk more and more and it’s not like we get into fights every time.

Working from home, and with my new entrepreneurial flexible schedule, I have plenty opportunities to spend time with my wife. This year I also commit to have at least one hour of deep conversations with her a week.

2. Build A Business.

So far, I ran my business by the seat of my pants. Thus, it’s really not a business, but rather a nice job where I’m the boss (and my 20 customers too!). I need to build a business out of it – an entity which will exist separately from my person. Of course, I mean my Resurrecting Books service. It has all the necessary prerequisites to create a robust venture. I can see how I may take myself out of the center of the business spinning all the wheels.

I already have had some great business education, I went through the Business on Purpose program a couple of years ago. Now, I need to put it into use. The first quarter of 2019 will be dedicated to creating the vision, mission, values, processes, job roles and training procedures.

It’s the 9th of January when I’m writing these words and I’ve already hammered out the vision and worked on the next steps. I’ve always thought building a business wouldn’t excite me to the degree writing or coaching excites me. Well, I proved myself wrong. By hammering out the vision I can see how I can instill my business philosophy into my business. Since day #1 of my transformation, I always wanted to change the way business is done, all over the world. Now I have the chance to put some of my ideas into practice and actually change the way of doing business.

For this quarter, the goal is to work at least five hours a week on the business, instead in it. Once I put some systems in place the goal will probably evolve.

3. Implement 12-Week Year

I’m very good at following my daily priorities. I rarely miss any of my dozens of daily habits, and some of them are pretty robust, like writing for half an hour a day. But I suck at setting goals, even short-term ones.

On the other hand, one of the millionaires from my mastermind has a big problem with breaking down his lofty goals into daily actions. He is a big vision man, so he is generally satisfied when the vision is outlined. He doesn’t do daily actions. And his goals are always a work in progress.

12-Week Year is a concept from the book of the same title. The basic premise is to set goals for 12 weeks, not for an entire year. The short time horizon forces you to break down your goal into actionable steps. You need to plan week #1, #2 and all the others in order to reach your goal at week #12.

I joined a coaching group for the 12-week year at the beginning of the year. It’s the middle of the second week and I already see how it helped my focus. I’m still are unable to plan even one whole week ahead, but this weekly structure of my schedule forces me too look ahead for longer than today. I am more productive. I get more things done. What is more, I’m getting the right things done. Priorities, not just putting out the fires.

See the goals #1 and #2 above? They are done according to the 12-week year concept.

I want to stick to this framework for this year and make it a new habit. Once I’m able to plan my weeks, maybe I’ll learn to pursue even longer goals.

4. The Big Potential.

I wouldn’t have been myself if I didn’t set a vague yearly goal 😀

The Big Potential convinced me on the intellectual level, but I still don’t feel it in my guts. I resist. I’m an introvert.

I have no idea how to put this idea into use, but I know one thing: I have to. My mission is huge: change the world. I cannot achieve it with small potential only. I badly need the big one.

It won’t be a point of focus this quarter, I need first to put some systems and processes in place in my business. Choosing The Big Potential over that goal would be like trying to study books in the burning house. I need first to stop the fire of chaos in my business, which will quiet down the chaos in my life. Then I can ponder how to implement The Big Potential in my life.

However, it doesn’t mean I do nothing in this regard. In the first 10 days of January I already had two business propositions and two networking calls and more are scheduled down the road. I’m getting better at recognizing the right opportunities to connect. I’m just not proactive with that. Out of those several things only one was my initiative.


That’s it. Three overarching goals and a vague one. I won’t repeat my mistake from 2018 and will visit this post once a month to remind me what are my goals for this year, so hopefully, I’ll tackle implementation of The Big Potential sooner than later.

Recapitulation of My 2018 Goals

My 2018 goals
Here goes the summary of my goals from 2018. Apart from going over them, I’ll share a few profound lessons I learned from the analysis of my 2018 goals. First, the analysis of my performance in the order from my 2018 post:

#1 Prayer

I crushed this goal. A lot of it was just pure Lord’s grace. From what I studied, there is no other way to progress in the spiritual realm than with grace’s help.

But part of it was that it was my unwavering focus for the entire year. I habitualized it. Unlike a few of other goals from the 2018 list, prayer was ingrained in my daily life.

I didn’t track this activity very diligently. Should I? Probably yes. Yet, it seems numbers are not so important in the spiritual realm. I assess my compliance with this goal to over 80%. I really cannot recall failing on saying my prayers more than once in the last month.

The one “technique” that helped me immensely in 2018 with my prayers was giving an intention to every activity. I tried to intentionally do every single thing in my days from dawn till dusk. This is both mindfulness practice and incredible help to one’s focus.

When I revamped my life in 2012 the spiritual discipline I embraced was reading a book written by a saint for 10 minutes a day. I got the idea of intentions directly from this discipline. I read in blessed Jerzy Matulewicz’s journal that he gave intention to every hour of his work. In the “Manuscript on Purgatory” there is a fragment where a soul from purgatory explains several different methods to attain sanctity. One of them is “to live as constantly as possible in the Divine Presence.”

At the end of April I attended my mastermind’s retreat in the USA. I was only a few months into this discipline. However, my host noticed: “You are praying all the time, right?”

Right.

#2 Control over My Schedule

This goal was an utter disaster, at least in my eyes. I wanted to sleep between 10 pm and 5 am. I succeeded maybe 10%.

On the other hand, there was another goal implied – that I’ll sleep enough. This actually happened. I slept 7+ hours more than 50% of the time. I got sick only once, in January, when a combination of circumstances plus sleep deprivation knocked me out.

Well, this goal was supposed to be a base for my productivity and I cannot honestly state that it was. I achieved quite a lot in 2018, but I could’ve achieved so much more if I complied with this goal.

#3 Time with My Family

I did moderately well in that regard. Whenever I was going over my journals, I couldn’t help but notice how many times I went to a cinema with my wife or kids. I attended my daughter’s singing concerts a few times, I played card games with my sons on many weekends.

I could do better, but it was still progress compared to what it was in 2017.

#4 Business Automation

This is an interesting case. When I wrote this goal down I mostly had my coaching practice in mind. I did what I resolved to do, and limited the number of coaching goals to three. I revamped my profile on Coach.me. I got an influx of clients.

However, I also got a number of clients that I call ‘random.’ Those folks had unrealistic expectations. It took a lot of time to get them on board with my process, and then they didn’t do what we agreed to do. That was exasperating. Because of this, I closed my coaching for new clients in April or May.

Well, I did great work building my profile. Even though they had no obvious access to me, a few folks inquired about my services, usually via email. They demonstrated a level of determination that was encouraging, so I let them in.

I also briefly mentioned book advertising in the goal post from the beginning of 2018. Many positive things happened in this field.

The Marketing Coach, a buddy from my mastermind, helped me revamp my landing page, which allowed me to modify the process. Authors who wanted to work with me had to sign up for my email list first. Then, I could to have a look at their books before contacting them. Thus, I contacted only those I wanted to work with. And I wanted to work only with authors in whose books I saw the potential for making profits with my ads.

To all the rest, I offered a different deal, not based directly on profits, but still on performance. You can judge an author by his books. Not a single one of the authors who I deemed unfit took my offer.

I also built a team. It consists solely of my family members, but it doesn’t change the fact that I outsourced many tasks around my book advertising service.

My team downloads ad data from my customers’ accounts. They also create new ads and keep track of my customers’ results in Google sheets every day.

I created a few training videos for them, so I don’t have to train new team members on my own.

I started prospects and customers sheets, but I was hopeless in maintaining this documentation. There is still a lot to do in this area.

#5 Publishing

I haven’t published a single book I intended to publish. I did very little to move forward the next volume of Six Simple Steps to Success. Our joint-venture project with Jeannie Ingraham made a lot more progress, but we are still in the pre-production phase.

On the other hand, I released a new book that wasn’t even on my radar at the beginning of 2018. I got the idea of it at the beginning of February, played with the idea in March and April, and I wrote the book mostly in June and July. I published it on the 23rd of November, and “Power up Your Self-Talk” sold over 1,100 copies in the first month.

#6 Podcasts

I almost didn’t follow up with this goal. Yes, I was interviewed a few times in 2018, but it was my initiative only a couple of times and I never created a real system for contacting podcasts hosts. In one word: a catastrophe.

Lessons from my 2018 goals

If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m a poor role model when it comes to setting goals, and even worse with achieving them. It’s better to learn from someone else’s failures than from your own though. So, here are a few lessons from 2018 for you.

1. Keep your goals in front of you.

All the time. I think this is my biggest mistake with goal settings and surely the biggest one in 2018. I recalled I set some of those goals only when I visited the original 2018 goal setting post to write the report you read now.

Particularly podcast interviews fell off my radar altogether.

Out of your sight, out of your mind. I should’ve consulted my goals list at least once a week. I didn’t.

2. Prioritization works.

Do you know that the original Greek word for priority didn’t have a plural form? It was the most important thing. Period.

Hey, I could not remember my other goals, but I was intensely focused on my goal #1 on daily basis. This is why I crushed it.

Conversely, I added podcast interviews to 2018 goals list almost on a whim. It was an afterthought and I executed on it in the afterthought fashion.

3. Set goals anyway.

No matter if you prioritize them, no matter if you consult your goals list on regular basis. Setting goals gives you a huge advantage over not setting them.

Even a one-time exercise is better than nothing. It will leave some mark in your mind. I completely forgot my #6 goal, but when I got the opportunity to become a podcast guest, I accepted.

Similarly with my schedule goal. I completely forgot about setting this goal. I completely failed at it. Yet, I had this nagging awareness that there is something missing here; that I need to up my game in this regard. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have had this awareness without setting this goal at the beginning of 2018.

Goals set some subconscious intentions. I didn’t publish the books I intended to publish, but I published a book that wasn’t even in my mind when I set my goals for 2018. And it was quite a success. “Power up Your Self-Talk” had the best launch out of all of my 16 books.

When I set the #4 goal, I thought more about coaching. In reality, I highly automated my Resurrecting Books service (comparing to the previous state of things). My workload is a fraction of what it was.

I have team members who take care of various parts of the process. I need a fraction of the effort to onboard a new customer. And the results materialized. At the beginning of 2018, I had two ‘pillar customers’ generating over 50% of revenue. Now I have four such customers and about the same number of smaller customers who generate a higher percentage of revenue and higher revenue per advertised book than it was the case one year ago. The revenue upped to four figures and even crossed the $2,000 mark twice in 2018.

4. SMART goals are limiting.

I still believe that if you chase specific metrics with your goals you are capping your potential. That is, if your goals are attainable. You hit the number and you are done.

The other side of the coin is setting goals which stretch you significantly. However, with those goals you usually fail and the inevitable frustration creeps in. Usually, to the point when you perpetually postpone your goal.

This happened with the book I was going to write with Jeannie. When we finally set about preparing it, it appeared we need permission from the people whose stories we wanted to use. That was a big hurdle. I contacted dozens of folks on Quora. Only part of them responded. It was too much work. Both Jeannie and I had other things to attend to.

In the end, the book was still not in the first draft phase in the middle of December.
 

What is more, I achieved plenty of goals I didn’t set in a formal way. Some of them I only dreamed about. Some of them just happened.

I downsized my day job to 10 hours a week. You have no idea how liberating that was. That helped me immensely in spending more time with my family. I had a quick look at my calendar and tracking marks of this goal. Between April and September, my success ratio was about 56%. In the last quarter, it was over 81%.

By the way, it is also a lesson about the law of attraction. Maybe I downsized my day job to be able to spend more time with my family? Maybe it was just a manifestation of my subconscious desire?

I didn’t aim to get a publishing deal in Korea. But I got it. “Trickle Down Mindset” will be published in Korea, probably in 2020. The advance for that book came very timely at the end of November when I finally fixed my KDP account and created over 1,000 ads for my books. My ads cost tripled and I had the means to finance this cost.

Another case: I was contacted by the editors of “The Ladders.” I didn’t plan it at all. We exchanged a few emails and now my articles are featured on their website.

You simply cannot plan your whole life, you need to leave some space for the things outside of the scope of your goals to happen.


For the first time, I’m more satisfied than frustrated by my yearly goals. That’s progress. And I drew a few lessons for the future, so hopefully, my 2019 goals will bring me even more satisfaction.
My 2018 goals
What is your experience with goal setting? How did you do in regard to your goals in 2018? See you in the comments.

Goals for 2018

Goals for 2018It’s the beginning of the year, the time to set goals. My attitude toward goals is ambiguous at best.
Yet, I still set them year after year, so I set goals for 2018 too. I recognized that they are useful tools for focus in the long haul. Pondering them is a useful exercise on its own. I definitely consider the previous year to be the best in my life and not a small part of the reason was that I seriously pondered my goals for 2017. I drew conclusions from my past failures and prepared a better battle plan. If not that reflection, if not the change of the course, I might have gone insane already.

Hopefully, it will work the same way in 2018 (not going insane; having the best year of my life, that is). Like in 2017, my goals for 2018 are set by priority. Thus, the priority number one is:
Continue reading

Goals for 2017 Revisited

It’s the beginning of the New Year, a time for revisiting my goals for 2017. Let’s dive straight into it.

#1 Prayer

Goals for 2017I wanted to put prayer first in my life. I almost succeeded. I prayed more consistently. I even added one more prayer into my daily schedule.
I see the clear connection between my renewed focus on prayer and how many good things happened in 2017. For some of them, I’ve been praying for 15 years.

Verily, put God in first place and everything will fall into the right place. Continue reading

Goals for 2016

Goals 2016
My goals for 2016 will be a bit different than for a couple of years back. On 7th of December, I’ve got a coaching call with Scott Beebe, who usually coaches millionaires how to scale their businesses from 1-5 $m to 20-50 $m.

He gave me homework to set a deadline on my dream and outline a roadmap to get there.

Much of what you will read below is the effect of that call and the result of my homework.

1. Email list.

In the past years, I wanted a specific number of people on my email list. I won’t get into details of my failure to reach those numbers (you can check them here and here), but overall my approach didn’t work very well.
Continue reading

Goals 2015 Revisited

Goals 2015
Everything affects each other. I will slightly alter the order of goals for the purpose of this analysis, so it will be presented in more coherent way.
Let’s start from the goal #2, because its execution affected others.

#2 Quit my job.

To quit my job I need to increase my income from online ventures. First and foremost: sell more books. I decided that I need a subgoal for that – publishing a dozen books in 2015. It didn’t work out as planned…
Heck, I published only seven books, including one very short (and free, so it doesn’t bring income directly) and one co-authored (so it required less workload).
But I quit my job… Continue reading