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How To Be Successful in the New Year

January 2, 2018 by Lazy Man 87 Comments

Welcome to 2018!

It still feels like 2017 to me. The kids are still on their winter break from school. Tomorrow, I get focus on writing again. It feels like forever, and I’m so excited to get started. In the meantime, I’m going to continue a 9-year tradition… bumping up one of my most popular articles.

How To Be Successful In The New Year
How To Be Successful In The New Year

Start at the Beginning

I’m very biased here, but my more recent blog Be Better Now focuses more on success and self-improvement. It covers important topic from How to Make and Keep Your New Year’s Resolution to this Quick Guide to Success.

If you only read and followed through on those two general articles, I can almost guarantee you’d have the best year of your life (short of an unrelated tragedy).

However, let’s continue on:

Preparation and Planning

  • Make a List of Short, Medium, and Long Term Goals – Each night before I go to sleep, I try to write down 3-5 things that I want to accomplish the next day. I make sure that at least a couple are things that I can complete that day and purge from my to-do list. I also make sure to add a couple of small parts of medium or long-term projects.

    Here’s an example: Imagine that you want to write an eBook. The first day you create a rough outline of the book – just the chapters. The next day you might want to pick 3 or 4 things in a few chapters to cover in each chapter. Repeat this for 3 or 4 days and you’ll have a great plan for a whole 9-12 chapter book in less than a week. Then you simply need to spend a day expanding each chapter. In about 20 days you’ll have completed the first draft. Use the next 10 days (or more) to review, revise, and edit.

  • Catalog Your Progress – I started this blog to keep me accountable. I can’t go out and buy a Ferrari on credit. If I did, I’d have to write about it here. I have a strong streak of not buying a Ferrari on credit. See? Simple, right?

Fix Your Finances

This is important enough that I created a whole article focusing on it. Unfortunately, the article is quite out of date. Still the ideas are sound. Still there should be a half dozen easy ways for many people to save thousands of dollars.

Learn These Skills

  • Sales / Marketing – Even if you don’t think you have a product to sell, you do… yourself. I’ve learned that sales and marketing are not easy skills to learn. You can’t shout “look at me!” or people will think you are obnoxious. You have to find people who might be genuinely interested in what you have to offer. I always find it best to be open and honest with what I have to sell. If the product is of value, you price it accordingly, and have the right buyer, it should sell itself. I’ve found that if you have to “sell” too hard, it’s probably going to be a sale you regret making.
  • Public Speaking – I am most shy person on Earth. Talking to someone one-on-one often ties my stomach in knots. I’ve almost completely given up using the phone. Imagine how I feel about public speaking right now. There’s at least a 90% chance I’d faint.

    However, public speaking was a required class in high school. I started off horrible, but by the end, I had earned an A. The head cheerleader said that I was funny… which is the kind of thing that sticks with you 25 years later (Thanks Amy!) I have to remember that public speaking really is a skill where practice means everything. An organization such as Toastmasters, seems to be the best way to get that practice. Unfortunately, Toastmasters usually takes a back seat to the pile of other things that I’m currently focusing on.

  • Writing – Even if you are crafting a short e-mail, try to use proper grammar. You’d be surprised how many e-mails I receive where people make 6 mistakes in 6 sentences. Poor writing skills on the first impression impacts my view of the person’s intelligence and/or professionalism. Perhaps it shouldn’t be that way, but it is. A person who can write great commands my respect and my trust.

    I realize that my articles have more than their fair share of writing mistakes. This article probably has 3-5 in it. I feel that it is a balance. I’d rather spend my time writing another article than proofreading the previous one for a couple of typos.

  • Networking – Get out there and meet new people in your areas of interest. When you know a lot of people, opportunities multiply. [Editor’s Note, I’m going to date myself on this, but I wrote this about Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income who wasn’t widely known in January of 2009 when I wrote this article:

    “To go back to the eBook example above, I met one person who has had some success with an eBook. He’s in the process of getting it translated into an audio book now. He could definitely be a great resource for me to learn from. He’s newer to blogging and doesn’t have the number of readers that I have. I can probably give him a few tips and help him out. Now if I knew 100 people like this guy, I’d have a solution to almost every question I’d ever have at my fingertips.”

  • Read More and Faster – I have always been a very slow reader. I simply don’t scan text very well. Perhaps I’m afraid I’ll miss a critical word or something silly like that. This is one area that I’m going to work on in the new year. Much of my time is spent reading, you’d think I’d at least be good at it.

Take Action

  • Help Someone with Something Everyday – This may sound like some kind of “Pay It Forward” hype. In some ways it is. I estimate that I’ve given guidance to around 50 or 100 bloggers who are just getting going that were looking for advice. Some of them became successful bloggers and some stopped blogging. The successful ones have returned the favor 100 times over or more. They link to my articles, they comment on my site, and fill me in with opportunities that I would have otherwise missed. This isn’t limited to blogging. If you mentor someone, you’ll be seen as a natural leader. I’ve always seen a strong correlation between leadership and success.
  • Make Mistakes – When I just got out of college, I took a job with a top ten Internet company. It was a very high profile job as I managed the search engine myself. It was about 20% of this 2 billion dollar company’s traffic… and some of their most valuable real estate (look what Google did with search). The thought that I’d make a mistake scared me to death. I spent each day walking on eggshells until the day that I made a mistake. It was a terrible mistake that crashed the whole database. A strange thing happened. No one got upset with me, and we were able to recover pretty quickly. From that experience, I learned to always have a back-up plan. This allowed me to take some risks, experiment more, and eventually produce ideas that made the company tens of millions of dollars. Perhaps as importantly, I learned to tolerate other people’s mistakes.
  • Surround Yourself with Like-Minded Individuals – There are studies that show an individual’s income will be somewhere around the average of your closest five friends. That formula works for me and my closest friends – or it did until I decided to build my career from websites. There are also studies that show your weight will reflect those who you hang around with. It makes sense if you think about it. If your circle of friends likes to bounce business ideas off each other while playing a game of pickup basketball, you’ll probably put yourself closer to the path of prosperity than if you tell fart jokes while eating Bon-Bons.
  • Exercise – Whenever I work out, I am all pumped up with endorphins for hours. It feels like nothing can stop me – as if I could tackle a bear. Instead of tackling a bear, I focus that energy on my list of goals and churn through it like never before.
  • Start a Website or Blog – It’s easy to talk the talk, but what matters is if you can walk the walk. A website or blog not only makes you accountable for the goals that you set, but can also help you network and gather useful information. For more inspiration read how personal finance blogging helped me.

Be More Productive

  • Don’t Get Wrapped Up in Television – I love television. However, I try to watch shows that you don’t have to follow too closely. This way I can work while it’s on. You won’t see me watching a lot of Law and Order because it requires too much of my focus. However, having the Red Sox on the background doesn’t distract me from accomplishing what I’m trying to.
  • Commute with Books on Tape (or Podcasts) – Most of the people I know have a 30-60 minute commute to work each day. You can listen to some morning talk show or a shock-jock DJ or you can learn some of the skills that I mention above. I’m not saying that you should throw away all entertainment, but if you are looking to increase your productivity, utilizing this downtime is a great start.
  • Declutter and Organize Your Home and Work Area – I used to waste a lot of time looking for stuff. The problem? I had stuff everywhere. I couldn’t find the stuff that I needed from the old stuff that was piled around it. It’s amazed me the number of things that I had around the home that I didn’t use. Finally I simply said “Stuff It!” and got rid of most of the stuff that I didn’t use and put other special stuff in a closet that I’ll probably ignore for another years. Just like in What About Bob, “baby steps…” I tell myself.

Think Your Way To Success

  • Think Positively – I’m not going to get Stuart Smalley, Motivational Speaker on you, but making the conscious decision to focus on being financially successful is extremely helpful. Bringing finances to front of my mind, instead of the back has made a huge difference in my finances.
  • Don’t Hate Money – Lose the thinking that money is the root of all evil. Start thinking about it as a key to freedom to do whatever interests you. Think of it as a way to help friends, family, and charities important to you. Think about how you could use money to make the world a better place.
  • Appreciate What You Have – Schedule a day to just appreciate yourself. Appreciate the things that you do have. The fact that you are reading this likely means that you are much better off than others in the world.
  • Be In A Good Mood – One of my favorite lines from Say Anything is when Lloyd Dobler (played by John Cusack) says to his sister, “Why can’t you be in a good mood? How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood and be in a good mood once in a while?”

The Most Important Key to Success…

  • Do What You Love – You aren’t going to be successful at something you spend all day dreading. When I was excited about software engineering, I was good – perhaps even above average ;-). When I got stuck on a project that didn’t interest me, I was honestly a poor software engineer.

    However, be careful about blinding heeding the “follow your passion” advice. You must also recognize supply and demand and work within those constraints. There’s a large supply of people who want to become professional baseball or basketball players, and the demand is for only a few hundred. This means you have to be so much better than everyone else. There are few people looking to be morticians because it creeps a lot of people out, but there is a big demand, leading to a high-paying lucrative career.

    Mark Cuban has a great article on a related to this: Don’t Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort.

Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: business skills, Goals, Psychology, success

2008 Goals: A Look Back

December 31, 2008 by Lazy Man 9 Comments

Yesterday I got a little ahead of myself as I looked at my blogging goals for 2009. I should have realized that with the dwindle hours of 2008, I should be looking back at my goals for 2008, and adjusting from there. I haven’t looked at them in a little while – a really bad sign. If I had to guess, Clubber Lang would hit it on nose with his famous line of, “My prediction?… Pain!”

My 2008 goals were complex. I had just left my full-time job in October of 2007 and was unsure if I was going to take another one, or go all out with the idea of earning online income. As fate would have it, I ended up doing a little bit of both. I didn’t have a full-time job all year, but I did consult at an hourly wage. This consulting slowed down some of the gains I might have had if I went for all-out online income. At the same time, I definitely spent major hours on earning online income. I’m going to use my goals as if I was going all-out for online income – I had enough time even after my consulting to hit those goals.

Goals for 2008

Financial Goals
Net WorthAlternative Income
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
$250,000$143,176$5,000/mo.$2,235/mo.
Career Goals
Software DevelopmentBusiness Skills
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
500 hours0 hours2 books each category2 books total
Health
WeightBody Fat
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
175 lbs.176 lbs.17% body fat19.15% body fat
Websites
Lazy Man and MoneyLazy Man and Health
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
55,000 mo. visitors/4,000 subscribers~40,000/~310020,000/1,000~7,000/300

Reviewing the Goals

  • Net Worth – I have to give myself a D- on this one. Why not an F when I was so far off? It’s simply that my net worth is largely tied to real estate that I own and stocks that I have invested in for retirement. When 70% of your portfolio loses some 30% of it’s value – it’s going to be pain. I couldn’t have done too much differently other than moving out of stocks to something safer, but I don’t believe in timing the market. For the real estate, I could have sold, but I would have locked in big losses. I’ll continue to break even on a cash flow basis by renting it out and in a short 26 more years, own it outright ;-). A better goal would have been the income which brings us to…
  • Alternative Income – I thought I’d see a lot more growth the income growth my websites. I have to admit that I didn’t do the best to monetize my sites, which is something that I’ve mentioned in the past. The landscape of monetizing websites has changed dramatically in the last year – some things for the better and some for the worse. For that reason, I would probably give myself a D+. I missed my targets by a lot, but with consulting (which is not alternative income), I probably came close.
  • Software Development – I completely underestimated my lack of desire to ever write software programs again. I used to enjoy the challenge and felt great about solving problems, now I just want the problem solved, so that I can move on to the next thing/goal on my list.
  • Business Skills – I was going to personal MBA, but found that almost none of the books were in my local library. If they were carried at all, they were all checked out far in advance. I got a couple via Paperback Swap, but it took so long to get that I lost interest. Plus I had a pile of personal finance books that people sent me to read. I think I did well by reading a few Malcolm Gladwell books (of which I still need to write reviews for). On the flip side, doing the consulting gave me some hands-on business skill experience.
  • Health – My wife isn’t going to believe it, but I’m actually in a little better shape this year using my two metrics. The Wii Fit taunted me last night saying that my BMI was just barely in the “overweight” category. While I didn’t reach my health goals, I feel that I had a pretty good exercise regimen for much of the year. It feel apart with a long trip to Australia, but I’ve since joined a gym and I’ve seen progress over the last month.
  • Website traffic – I actually passed the 55,000 for Lazy Man and Money a few times. I also got to around the 18,000 for Lazy Man and Health a couple of times. I didn’t average those numbers, nor did I finish the year hitting those numbers. (I find December a tough month for Internet traffic with the holidays and people traveling.)

Conclusion: Jimmy Fallon may say that my progress over the last year had something in common with Derek Jeter… I “suck in three very specific ways: so hard, so bad, and wicked bad.” I can explain away a lot of the problems that I had, but it doesn’t make it better. Perhaps my goal setting was poor to begin with. Perhaps, I should have chosen shorter milestones such as a quarter. In that scenario, I would have at least realized that I wasn’t likely to do any software development. There would have also been times when I might have reached my health and website traffic goals. I may have also realized that setting a net worth is extremely difficult when your assets can fluctuate wildly on factors that you can’t control.

These are all lessons I have learned for when I make my 2009 goals

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: business skills, career goals, clubber lang, financial goals, software development business

A Look at 2008 Goal Progress

July 25, 2008 by Lazy Man 5 Comments

One of the best ways to accomplish something is to break it down into small, manageable parts. Complete these small parts and soon you’ll have your goal accomplished. For 2008, I thought I’d back on what my goals were and how I’ve done at accomplishing them. Please put on your seat belt, this could get ugly.

At the beginning of the year, I actually set 2 sets of goals, one if I worked full-time and one if I focused on blogging and other online businesses. Since I’ve been focusing on the other online businesses, I’ll ignore the full-time goals here.

  • Net Worth – My goal was to have $250,000 in net worth by the end of the year. At least count, I was at $212,000 – about no gain for the year. There are 3 things that contributed to my lack of growth in this area. My investment property is worth a couple of thousand less than it was at the beginning of the year. I was hoping it would be worth a little more. My stocks and mutual funds have been flat. Lastly, with reduced income, I’ve been unable to grow this area. It doesn’t look like I’ll accomplish this goal unless we see some drastic changes.
  • Alternative Income – My goal was to make $5000 in this area. It seemed like a reasonable goal since I would put my full focus on it. For much of the year, I’ve been unable to significantly grow my alternative income. This month is looking very good, though – and it seems to be somewhat sustainable. I might finish in with a pre-tax of $3000.
  • Software Development Skills – I have not learned any significant skills in this area. Tuning my online projects has required me to dig into a little code, but I haven’t picked up Ruby on Rails or CakePHP.
  • Business Skills – I tried to get a personal MBA this year. I got through the first book, Elements of Style, and quickly remembered how much I really dislike reading books vs. web pages. Sadly, I’m no danger of actually completing this goal.
  • Health – I weigh about 3 pounds less than I did at the beginning of the year. My goal was to go from 20% body fat to 17%. I’m at around 19% now. I should probably be in better shape, but I’ve been very good about eating better and exercising.
  • Websites – I wanted to have 50,000 monthly visitors of this website and 20,000 of Lazy Man and Health. This month, despite the summer slowdown in Internet traffic, looks like it will be just shy of 50,000. If I can keep it up, I should be able to surpass this by a good distance. My health site is starting to gain a little traction, but it’s got a tougher road to get 20,000. I’m looking at only 13,000 for this months pace.

Look back, it seems like I’m on track in only two of the six areas. That sounds pretty bad. One of the factors that I didn’t put in place is the stealth business I’ve started with a friend. It’s brought in enough cash to cover the start-ups costs, but it hasn’t done much more than that. I am learning some business skills along the way. In that sense, real world experience is better than reading the books I intended.

I’ll continue to update you along the way, but why not take a few minutes today and review your own goals for the year. Let me know in the comments how you are doing.

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: Blogging, business skills, software development skills

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