P1 ~ The First 12 Months & What's Next
One Year In: What I Learned After Quitting My Job to Build an Online Business
Nolan Butler
I left my job one year ago, on August 9th, 2024, and started an online business with my fiancée. I wasn’t really sure what direction I was headed in, but I could feel it was time for a change.
At the time, I was working for a large logistics company as a business development representative and marketing specialist. The company was based in Texas, but I worked remotely with another guy from a small office in Upstate NY.
I never wanted to work in a corporate job, and it really wasn’t the ideal environment for me. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was a kid, and although I’ve been able to do pretty well in life without medicine or any other interventions, I certainly can’t sit still for very long. I also have a lot of energy and am constantly amped up. I realized I needed more excitement and challenge in my life, something with a bit of risk that could keep me feeling alive and engaged.
Here’s how I ended up in this job in the first place: I was fresh out of college in the summer of 2023. I went to Ithaca College and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, with a double concentration in marketing and wealth management. And I did it in 3 years.
However, this was largely a waste of my time. Ninety-nine percent of it was either common sense or stuff I will never use again.
Side note on college: If you want to go into business, please do not study business in college. Either skip college and go directly into the business world (preferably starting with a sales job), or study something completely different that you’re also interested in. You can learn business through books and YouTube videos later. So go study neuroscience, for example, and then create a mental health app, brain health supplement company, neuro-AI startup, productivity app, or something else in that field. You’ll now have the experience, education, and authority to talk openly about neuroscience, and the business side can come through books, YouTube, and hands-on experience, like I said.
Back to the story: Fresh out of college, I got picked up as an inside sales associate for a marketing and sales company (only later did I learn what this actually meant). I was referred to this company by a family friend and thought it might be a good opportunity. It was 100% remote but only paid around $35,000 per year. I worked 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and every second of my day was tracked by my managers. I rarely ever saw sunlight, lol.
This company essentially contracted you out as a sales rep to other companies (which were their clients). They worked with huge national companies, and specifically, I was placed with a company that sold electrical supplies to contractors and other professional service businesses. I was tasked with making 80 to 100 calls per day to these contractors and service providers and acting as an “Account Manager” who was there to help if they needed anything. In reality, I was calling to let them know about current promos and push them to create website accounts.
Honestly, this entire thing was a mess. I was not the best salesperson ever, and I’ll be the first to admit that, but I really didn’t feel like I was making a positive impact on anybody’s life—except the owner of the marketing and sales company I was working for. The service we were providing was likely hurting business more than it was helping. The number of angry people we would get on the phone was crazy, and most of the time you couldn’t even reach the right person (especially at a big company). I don’t blame them for being angry, since my job had such a high turnover rate that they were getting new account managers calling them every quarter (lol).
I never want to discredit the hard work that my coworkers did at this company, though. They were true professionals who worked hard for a company that treated them like robots on an assembly line. I had great conversations with these people. They were there to support their families or themselves, and they did it with grit.
I was never good at this job, and it likely comes down to my personality type or something like that. But I found that the people who had the most fun with it—and didn’t take it as seriously as I did—had the most success. There’s something to be said for not hating every second of your life (lol).
I left this job within two and a half months because I was hired at the BDR/marketing job that I started this post with. I lasted about 11 months in that role.
The business world I entered at first was not a world I wanted to live in for long. I remember being unfulfilled with my life at the time. (However, the worst was yet to come.)
I have never really been the type of person to sit down, reflect on something, and plan for the future. However, I feel that if I don’t take real time to do this, I’ll end up in situations where I don’t even know how I got into them—or essentially, my fate will be in the hands of the world.
So, I’m taking the time today to publicly share a bit of my life story from the past couple of years and announce my plans for the next few months and years of my life.
My goal with this is to take control of my own life, set out to achieve my biggest goals, and live my dream life sooner rather than later.
I’m actually pretty angry writing this post, because I really feel that most of my life has been lived for other people—and based on what others told me to do or what was considered “right.” However, I understand that I need to confront it first in order to get ahead of it later.
Flashback to August 9th, 2024—I had just finished my last day on the job. My boss actually let me go a little early that day because there was nothing else to do (what a great guy). It was such a freeing feeling, and I finally felt a glimmer of hope again for a life that I wanted to live on my own terms.
I had been working on a side project for a couple of months with my girlfriend at the time (now my fiancée)—which was the idea of starting an email marketing agency for SaaS companies. At the time, I noticed a gap in the market for this specific type of agency and thought I could fill it in a unique and creative way.
We worked on this project for a couple of months and realized that we weren’t technically proficient enough to jump right into helping SaaS companies with their email marketing yet. So, we decided to shift our focus to eCommerce companies.
We started doing cold emails to all sorts of companies and people during August and September of 2024. I remember we were writing such good and personalized cold emails that we were getting positive feedback even if the companies weren’t interested in our services. I went into the archives and found this email from Steve O’Dell (the co-founder of Tenzo Tea).
This was a fun and very optimistic time—but we had no clue what we were getting ourselves into. The chart below, from InFocus Leadership Solutions, is a perfect example of where we started: Stage 1 – Uninformed Optimism.
Essentially, this chart shows your emotional stage over time when going through a new cycle of change. The emotional cycle of change is a psychological pattern that entrepreneurs (and teams) often go through when starting a new business, project, or goal. In our case, this change was starting a new business, and we were fresh in Stage 1 😅
This is a great video from Alex Hormozi talking about the five stages that every entrepreneur goes through.
We were beyond ecstatic when we received our first sales opportunity from one of our cold emails. It was one of the craziest feelings in the world, and I remember literally jumping with joy. Even though we hadn’t yet been on a call or closed this client, we had emailed someone and gotten a sales call set up. It was the biggest win ever in our minds. This was in September 2024, and my fiancée and I had only been doing this for 2 to 3 weeks full time. We thought, “Wow, this is going to be easier than we thought!!!!”
It has since been the most challenging project I’ve ever done and the fastest I’ve ever had to learn new things in my life.
We ended up working for free for this client for 45 days, and once that was up, we signed them on a full-time monthly contract. There were so many things that I had to learn during this time, and it was one of the most chaotic times of my life. I remember dedicating the first 2 and a half hours of my day every day to learning new things because I felt like I had to in order to catch up.
Looking back, these insights ring truer than ever:
“The first year of building a business is mostly just figuring out what you should have been working on.”
“You spend the first year building the wrong thing so you can spend the second year building the right thing.”
“Most of your first year in business is just paying tuition to learn what actually matters.”
I’m not sure who said them or I would give them credit here—if you know who said this, let me know!
Here’s what that means to me:
You start with ideas, assumptions, and plans.
But you only learn what actually drives growth—what customers care about, what problems matter—through action and failure.
It’s not wasted time. It’s the price of clarity.
As Mike Tyson says: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
I can say with certainty that I’ve been punched in the face a few times over the past year.
Screenshot of my calendar from October 2024
Learning Lesson #1: Setting Up Your Work Environment
I used to like working in 2 to 2½ hour blocks because I remembered Tim Ferriss’s idea that anything less isn’t worth it—the cognitive switching cost is too high. He said it takes too long to get into a focused state, so if you only give yourself 30 to 60 minutes, you waste most of it ramping up or context switching. But when you carve out real time—2+ hours—you actually go deep, make progress, and leave with something meaningful. Otherwise, you're just skimming the surface all day and calling it productivity.
This was great, but I would burn out really fast in the day (usually by 2:00 p.m.). The more effective approach for working long focused hours has been the Pomodoro technique, which says you should work for 25 minutes, followed by a 5-minute break. I’ve slightly amended this to work 50 minutes and take a 10-minute break. I currently use a kitchen timer, put my phone in another room and on Do Not Disturb mode, and attempt to focus for the entire 50 minutes. Once the 50 minutes is up, I fill out a Google Form to hold myself accountable.
Here's my morning calendar blocks as of August 2025 (this is a bit extreme, but its working for me right now. I'll Likely have to change it up here again soon)
I’ll include a screenshot here of my work form (I try to fill this out 8 to 12 times per day, which would mean 400 to 600 minutes of deep focus per day—or 6.66 to 10 hours per day).
I first learned about this from Matthew Larsen and his program: $10k/mo Skool Group. Matthew Larsen helps agencies and B2B businesses generate more leads and scale their operations. I believe he works for 60 minutes with a 15-minute break. He calls this protocol “Natural Adderall”—and I would agree.
You can make this protocol even more powerful by setting up a Zapier email notification that goes to an accountability partner (or even more powerful: an accountability group) every time you fill out the form. So if you’re slacking, your accountability partner can tune you up a bit. You could go a step further by adding a “commitment device” or adding a consequence to your habits. This is something I learned from James Clear in Atomic Habits.
A commitment device is a choice you make now that locks in your future behavior.
It’s a way to add friction to bad habits or add consequences if you don’t follow through.
Because motivation fades. Willpower slips. But pain? Pain sticks.
When the stakes are real—money, reputation, embarrassment—you’re far more likely to follow through.
In this instance, maybe you have to pay your accountability partner $50 if you don’t fill out at least three work forms before noon. Or, even worse, maybe your accountability partner has access to your LinkedIn or Twitter accounts and will post an embarrassing story or picture of you if you don’t fill out at least five work forms in one day. Haha, these are just some ideas—I’m sure you could think of better ones.
Other Real-World Ways to Apply This:
Use a “Habit Contract”
Write out a rule like: “If I don’t wake up at 6:00 a.m. and run, I owe $20 to [person or cause I hate].”Add Public Accountability
Tell a friend or post it online: “If I don’t finish my weekly blog post, I’ll Venmo $50 to a stranger.”
Setting up your work environment is one of the most important things you can do. You need to learn how you like to work, what’s most important to you, and how your mind and body work.
This has been one of my single biggest learning experiences, and I’m still adapting it to ensure alignment with my mind, body, and how I want to live my life.
Learning Lesson #2: Email Marketing
Once we signed the contract with our very first client, I immediately started learning everything I possibly could about email marketing and eCommerce in general. I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning and still make mistakes every day. I just try my best to learn from each mistake and never make the same one again.
Over the past year, I’ve learned enough about email marketing to now have my own philosophy, strategy, and way of going about it. It’s not perfect, but nothing will ever be perfect. I still have more ideas about what I could be doing with my clients, but it’s a game of balance between how much they pay us and how much we provide. I’ve been a little too unbalanced in terms of how much we provide over the last year, and it has caused some major headaches. This is something I’m actively working on fixing right now.
I could sit here and describe in detail everything I’ve learned about email marketing, but we’d be here for another 100 pages. If you’re really interested in learning more, check out some of my YouTube videos where I go in-depth on that.
Essentially, eCommerce email marketing consists of three major facets:
List growth
Automated flows
Campaigns
It’s a system that works together. If one piece is missing, the whole thing is out of alignment. This is a common theme I’ve experienced across multiple disciplines in the business world. You can do things that get results—but sometimes those things don’t matter if another piece is missing.
Obviously, there are a ton of other things that go into email marketing like deliverability, segmentation, planning, and all the other technical details. But that will have to be saved for another post.
I’m at a point now where I feel very confident and comfortable with email marketing. I could talk for hours about it—without interruption or error. I now want to lean more into sharing this knowledge and becoming more of a knowledge transfer specialist. That is another skill I must learn.
Learning Lesson #3: Project Management & SOPs
Now that I understand how project management systems work—and now that we have a robust system in place for all operations—I really sit back and wonder how I ever remembered to do everything, or how I even did things to begin with.
We spent a majority of the beginning of this year (2025) figuring out project management and SOPs. At first, we hired an operations consultant thinking we could outsource this and get it done fast. Boy, we were wrong about that. Our consultant quickly told us that we needed to be the ones who developed everything, and that it would likely be a six-month project. I was quick to brush that off and forget he said that (as I tried to do everything in one week)—but I learned very fast that he was right.
He helped us transition from using the project management tool Basecamp to ClickUp. He also helped us develop our first-ever SOP for creating email campaigns (which has now been scrapped, rewritten, and revised a hundred times, lol). I’m super grateful for him because he would hop on calls and just answer my questions for hours—and never got sick of it.
Since then, ClickUp has saved us so much time, money, and headaches—it’s unbelievable. I recommend ClickUp to any service-based business owner. It makes delegating so much easier.
Once again, there are thousands of small details I could go into for project management and SOPs, but I’ll have to save that for another blog post. I’m simply thankful that I now understand project management and operations as well as I do.
We haven’t finished completing all of our SOPs for every operation yet, but we’re close. This will be a huge step to check off, and I’m really excited to have it done. The next challenge I’ll face with this is hiring employees to fill roles. That’s a skill I’ll need to master in the next chapter of my life.
Learning Lesson #4: Email Design
Email design has become one of my favorite things to do—probably because I’ve been through so many ups and downs with it. We started designing emails inside of Klaviyo itself, then moved to Canva, and now we’re using Figma.
I faced so many challenges in the beginning with email design. I thought I should be learning how to code emails—only to figure out that was a waste of time, as most email providers nowadays are just drag-and-drop builders. I was trying to build emails the old-fashioned way with HTML and CSS.
Once I learned to do things a little more easily with Klaviyo’s drag-and-drop email builder, I faced new challenges. My emails would look different on desktop vs. mobile, dark mode vs. light mode, and across different email clients (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc.).
I quickly realized that I needed to learn how to make all-image emails, as that was the only way to truly control all the variables when it came to design. So I started using Canva—because that’s all I really knew at the time. The emails were pieced together so horribly, haha.
Eventually, I learned Figma—and I’m so thankful for that. Figma made my life 1000x easier when it came to email design, almost instantly. It’s essentially a UX and UI tool made for web developers, but we use it to design emails.
I started building up a repository of drag-and-drop email sections that we could reuse. It’s incredible to see the time savings, but also the drastic improvement in quality.
Another thing I’ve noticed by making these drag-and-drop sections is the exponential increase in quality. Each section has gotten 1% better every time I’ve built it, and it shows. I’m excited to continue building this repository and eventually hand it off to my email designers.
That reminds me of a story from an article I read a while back called “Quantity vs. Quality – Chasing perfection seems well-intentioned, but it can also bring unnecessary pressure and restrict freedom,” by The Daily Coach
The Photography Class Story:
A University of Florida photography teacher splits the class into two groups:
Group A ("Quantity Group"): Will be graded on the number of photos they take. 100 photos = A, 90 photos = B, etc.
Group B ("Quality Group"): Will be graded on just one photo—but it has to be perfect.
The Result?
At the end of the term, the best photos all came from the Quantity Group.
Why? Because they were shooting constantly, experimenting, making mistakes, iterating, improving.
The Quality Group spent more time theorizing, planning, and worrying—but didn’t practice enough to improve.
The Lesson:
You learn by doing, not by waiting to be perfect.
Whether it’s photography, writing, building a business, or designing emails—volume breeds skill.
Make more. Test more. Publish more.
You’ll get better faster than the perfectionist ever will.
And don’t worry—this is still something I struggle with daily (being a perfectionist). It takes practice and constant reminders to break that loop. This is a reminder to myself not to be a perfectionist.
Email design has become one of my favorite parts of the day—but it was once my biggest bottleneck and challenge.
Learning Lesson #5: Work = Gift, Work ≠ Burden
One thing I’ve learned over the past year is that founders have to wear many different hats at once in order to grow a business. I recently heard Alex Hormozi say that entrepreneurs must do both today’s job and tomorrow’s job in the same day to get ahead—and it never really stops.
To me, this means doing all the tasks that need to be done today (whether that’s for internal growth or client success, in the case of an agency), and once you finish those, you must also work on the things that will pull you from where you are now to where you want to be.
This is such a hard thing to do, and it’s no wonder that entrepreneurs quit in the Valley of Despair (from the emotional cycle of change chart above). Because when you’re in the thick of it, you're now in the Informed Pessimism stage, and you can see exactly what you must do to get out of your misery—but it will require thousands of hours of hard work before you see any sign of light. It's an extreme situation to be in.
Depending on your background, skillset, and beliefs, you may be in this valley for a while—with no telling when you’ll get out of it. This seems to be the phase I’m in right now. I’ve experienced some really challenging times recently with the business and have had many sleepless nights over the past three months. It has even affected relationships in my life in a negative way.
I hope that I’m on the outer edge of the Valley of Despair and will reach Stage 4: Informed Optimism soon—but I know it could last longer.
Here are a few things holding me up right now:
I will never quit something just because it is hard.
I know I must pay my debts to the world before I can reap the rewards I seek.
I try my best to judge each day by the seeds I plant, not the harvest I reap.
I never stop believing that my dream life is possible.
I never listen to people who tell me what I want to achieve is impossible.
I’m extremely grateful for the position I’m already in (even though I struggle with self-fulfillment and keeping a positive mood).
I’m doing this for more than myself and my own personal desires (those are fleeting—something like “I must make money for my family to survive” is stronger, especially for men who are inherently wired to protect and provide).
I view work as a gift, not a burden.
I have an extremely strong support system in my fiancée and family.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is this:
Work is not punishment—it’s power.
Done with full effort, any work becomes meaningful, no matter how small or who it’s for.
When you give your best, the biggest reward isn’t the result—it’s who you become.
So whatever the task:
Work hard.
Work well.
Enjoy it.
Because excellence in effort always pays the man who delivers it.
Learning Lesson #6: Lead Generation
I’ve come to learn more about lead generation than almost anything else. Looking back a year ago, I really had no clue what it even meant to generate leads—or even what a lead truly was.
I now know that online lead generation is a system—and that system must have all of its components working together to function at all.
Here are the components I’ve identified:
Top of Funnel:
Content
Paid Ads
Cold Outreach
Warm Outreach
Partnerships
Etc...
Middle of Funnel:
Lead Magnets
Thank You Page
Email Newsletter
Email Automations
Webinars / VSL
Live Workshops
Community
Appointment Setters
More Content
Low-Ticket Products
Referrals / Affiliates
Bottom of Funnel:
Website
Lead Qualification
Case Studies
Reviews / Testimonials
Calendar to Schedule Meetings
Pre-Call Email / SMS Flows
Intro Offers
Recurring Services
Paid Programs
When a component in this system is missing, it causes severe inefficiencies—and you’re losing sales. This is a system we’re actively working on building right now.
Learning Lesson #7: Not Everyone Is a Good Person
I do my best every day to be what I believe is a good person. Whether that’s asking how someone is doing or holding the door for someone, it makes me feel amazing if I can have even the smallest impact on someone’s day.
Unfortunately, I’ve learned over the past year that not everyone thinks like me. There are people in this world I don’t understand—people who will do whatever it takes to make money. I experienced this firsthand at the beginning of this year.
I came across a man on YouTube who promised to help people build a $30k MRR email marketing agency using his proprietary system. The program cost me around $6,000 and ended up being a bunch of fluff.
I’ve heard the term Signal vs. Noise used to describe people. For example, people will say, “Elon Musk is all signal,” which basically means he’s only doing valuable things and focusing on ultra high-leverage tasks. He’s not out here making a bunch of noise. The guy I bought this program from, though, was all noise. Very good at selling, very poor at delivery.
Fortunately, $6,000 wasn’t the biggest hit to me—we’ve done alright so far, and I had saved up to start the business—but I felt bad for some of the other people in the program.
For example, I was reading through the Skool group recently, and there was a guy who had invested in the program and genuinely tried hard. He was active almost daily—if not weekly—with questions and posts. He had essentially gone to market with the proprietary system we were sold, and the market came back to him and said: “We don’t actually want this,” multiple times.
He recently posted that he had to go and find another job to support himself after the program didn’t work. Sadly, this seems to be the norm in that group.
My goal is to never deliver a bad product or a bad experience like the one I had with this group—or like that other gentleman had as well.
Learning Lesson #8: Authenticity + Mojo
In the past, I’ve tried to be someone I’m not. I’ve tried to fake personas, and every time, it drained my energy almost completely. It never works when you’re pretending to be something you’re not. When you’re pretending, you’re likely copying someone else’s style—and there’s a reason that style works for them. It’s because they’re being themselves. You can’t steal someone else’s mojo. You already have your own—you just haven’t tapped into it yet.
I think sometimes I’m afraid of being myself because of how I think people will perceive me. That’s been a limiting factor for me over the years, and it’s something I want to work on in the coming months and years.
I believe the more authentic you are, the more fun you have in life—and the more you can lean into things without becoming depressed or burnt out. I also believe the more fun you have with your business, the more successful it typically becomes.
I’ve had this limiting belief that all work must suck and be painful. I want to remove that belief and truly enjoy my day-to-day. There will always be challenges, but I can learn to like more of what I do.
Being my true self will be a top goal going forward.
Honorable Mention Learning Lessons:
HM1: Long Form Content > Short Form Content
Nick Sareav built a $300,000/month Skool community by leveraging long-form YouTube content. He runs a main channel where he posts more edited, high-value videos, but also has a Daily Updates channel where he uploads 30 to 45-minute videos every day—answering questions and providing value with little to no CTAs. It’s just pure content.
Alex Hormozi is also a strong advocate for long-form content. His philosophy is that short-form should serve as a gateway, leading viewers to longer videos—because long-form has higher conversion potential.
I once heard that it takes around 10 hours of watch time before someone trusts you enough to buy from you. That’s a lot easier to achieve with long-form content than with 30-second clips.
Long-form content is something I plan to lean into heavily in the coming months.
HM2: Consistency Wins
Once again, bringing up Nick Sareav—he built the #1 paid Skool community by posting long-form content on YouTube every single day for 15 to 16 months straight. He was able to achieve distribution and build a following largely by just being consistent. I’m sure it wasn’t easy.
There really is no such thing as overnight success—only flukes. The real success I’ve seen, over and over again, comes from consistent effort in one direction for a long period of time.
HM3: Inbound is harder than I thought + I've been ignoring what worked initially
We got our very first client through outbound (cold email), but ever since then, I’ve been focused on building an inbound funnel. Honestly, that was a mistake. I ignored what worked in the first place in favor of chasing “leverage” and “scale,” but all I really did was cost myself a lot of money in the process.
That said, I’ve learned a ton about inbound marketing and lead generation—and I believe that knowledge is invaluable. Now, the challenge is figuring out how to get large-scale distribution and more eyeballs on my content.
It’s probably time I start layering outbound back into the mix.
HM4: Create > Consume
In the next chapter of my life, the goal is simple: create more than I consume—whether that’s content, thought leadership, resources, guides, lead magnets, SOPs, or internal trainings
It’s easy to fall into the trap of “I just need to learn one more thing before I take action.” But the truth is, I might already know more than the people actually doing it—and yet they’re the ones getting results.
I’m at a point now where creating consistently, especially online, is essential. I need to build a deep repository of digital assets if I want to establish myself and reach real distribution. Creation is now the priority.
HM5: Complexity Almost Never Wins
I’ve seen time and time again—across verticals and disciplines—where simplicity outperforms complexity.
A great example is the online community platform Skool. Skool practices what I’ve heard referred to as radical simplicity, where they’ll say no 9 times out of 10 to adding a new feature or changing the platform. The result is a product that’s clean, intuitive, and easy to use.
On the other hand, there’s another community platform called Whop, which seems to have taken the opposite approach. It’s been widely criticized for being overly complex and difficult to navigate. I consider myself fairly tech-savvy, and even I found it frustrating to use.
It seems like a good book on this topic is Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity by John Gibbon. Adding that to the reading list.
HM6: Always be a 7
I first heard this from Tai Lopez: He said that on a scale of 1 to 10 for happiness, being at a 10 isn’t actually ideal—because the only direction you can go from there is down.
But you also don’t want to be at a 4, because when you get overly depressed, you become paralyzed and things tend to spiral even further.
His advice? Always stay at a 7. Not too high. Not too low. Just steady—calm, productive, and in control.
This is something I need to focus on more. I tend to fluctuate between a 3 or 4 all the way up to a 9 or 10—sometimes within the same day. I need to regulate this better. If I can find a more consistent baseline, I truly believe I’ll be more productive, more effective, and more ready to show up each day with focus and energy.
My Current Situation
I am 23 years old.
I am currently unfulfilled with my income (under $10k MRR right now).
I am currently unfulfilled with DFY work (very taxing on me and my fiancée).
I am still working for free for companies.
I am not solely focused on email marketing (we currently help a car dealership with marketing as well).
I am unfulfilled with my living arrangements at the moment.
I am hypercritical of myself. (Although I believe this is a good thing, negative self-talk has crept in.)
I have zero employees at the moment. (We had one email designer, but she was overwhelmed with college, so quality went down.)
We are currently offering more services to our clients than we can afford to keep doing—both in terms of time and money.
My health and fitness are at an all-time low because I’ve been working a lot on the business and not working out as much. I’m 6’2” and ~212 pounds, which is probably a little heavier than ideal. I can still run a ~6-minute mile, so I’m not that upset about it.
I have been fortunate enough to meet the love of my life, and we are engaged.
What’s Next for Me?
I’ve gone over the past year of my life and the lessons I’ve learned. Now I want to take a couple of minutes to go through what my plan looks like for this next chapter.
What Would My Ideal Life Look Like?
Enough income to live where I want with who I want.
Enough income to not worry about how much something costs at dinner—or how often I go out to eat. (Eating good food with friends and family is one of my favorite things.)
Enough income to purchase cool experiences for my family and me.
Enough income to plan thoroughly for the future (retirement, generational wealth, etc.).
A full-service email marketing agency that helps a select group of people who are willing to pay for premium service—and want premium service.
A full-service email marketing agency with multiple employees that runs based on SOPs, training, and procedures—and builds a strong employee culture. (As mentioned earlier, I’ve seen firsthand what bad culture looks like.)
A full-service agency that operates at 50% margins and has healthy owner compensation levels.
A company that invests in its employees’ health, wealth, and skill set.
An online community that runs at 90% margins with limited employees—helping people make money faster and easier with email marketing.
A lead generation funnel that works even if I take a day or a week off.
I don’t have a specific income number I want to hit. Maybe someone smarter than me would say I should set a more specific goal. But I’m not that interested in chasing a number.
Because I could generate $10,000,000 MRR and still lose money, work 75 hours a week, and hate my life.
Or I could make $30,000 MRR, with 50% margins, work 20 hours a week, and enjoy my life much more.
What I want is leverage, systems, and freedom—for me and for my fiancée.
Here’s What I’ll Focus on From Now Until the End of the Year
Remove services that don’t align with email/SMS marketing (e.g., loyalty programs, giveaways, social media, ads). They’re costing me resources and sleep.
Surrender control of internal marketing and lead generation tasks. I’ve slowed things down by holding on too tightly. I trust the people I’d delegate to.
Create more consistent days. Too many days have been chaotic or reactive. I want rhythm over randomness.
Focus on a few core tasks daily—likely no more than three. They’ll need to be high-leverage or true needle-movers.
Say “no” more often to clients. Set boundaries. Overpromising has led to sleepless nights and burnout.
Post more on social media. It’s just leverage. We need eyeballs to generate revenue.
Be myself—in work and in life.
Redirect negative self-talk quickly. I must retrain my brain to think in alignment with informed optimism.
Take massive action—especially on high-leverage tasks. Do fewer things better, and do them often.
Relinquish control of client deliverables. I must hire, train, and empower others.
Improve every lead touchpoint. Make them ultra professional and high value.
Build a paid Skool community that provides extreme value, guarantees, and a day-by-day plan for success.
Be less of a perfectionist, more of a pragmatist. Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis.
Make decisions faster.
Say “no” more in my personal life—especially when it interrupts my rhythm.
Surround myself with positive, goal-oriented people. Remove anyone who coasts or promotes bad habits.
Be less hypercritical. When I make a mistake, move on quickly.
Enjoy the work more. If I hate it, outsource it or stop doing it.
Work out once a day for at least 30 minutes.
Focus on subtraction more than addition. Cut what's not working before adding more.
Moving forward, we’re going to focus on building one personal brand account—either mine or my fiancée’s. Instead of splitting attention between two profiles, we’ll channel all our content, energy, and growth efforts into a single identity. This gives us better momentum, a clearer voice, and a more scalable platform for distribution.
Create more than I consume in the next chapter of my life.
Practice simplicity in multiple areas of my life
Practice being a 7 out of 10 on the happiness scale—most of the time, on most days.
Overall, I’m happy with my results over the past year—but I’m not content or fulfilled yet in a few key areas of life. That said, I believe that if I continue to work hard, stay focused, and believe in myself, my dream life will fall into place.
Thanks for reading. I hope you found value in this post. I’ll write another update in 6 to 12 months to share how I’m doing with this plan and where I’m at.
