It’s been a really interesting past 24 hours in my brain. I’m trying to reconcile a few things here.
I saw some news that I saw on Linkedin today. A guy I knew in college started a company and he just raised a hugely impressive round that was led by Andreessen Horowitz (AKA, arguably the most impressive VC firm in the game), that also included money from Bezos’s investment vehicle.
Another guy I knew in college was just named to Forbes 30 under 30.
I’ve been struggling with this for a couple of reasons.
- First, both are very “average” amongst high performers. Back at Wharton, neither would be people I would expect to have done crazy impressive things
- I believe, to my core, that I could easily do the same stuff they do but better. That was the case in college, and I’m sure it is now. That’s especially true over the 30 under 30 guy. Then again, everyone I’ve ever met who was on 30 under 30 is actually highly unimpressive
Then, I saw this tweet by a guy who actually is very impressive and has actually built and sold a company.
Yehh, no shit I’d prefer the $30M under 30 instead of being on a 30 under 30 list.
The az16 founder probably has a 10% chance of making it to $30M revenue status. The guy on the Forbes list probably has a 5% chance.
Yet, I firmly believe my strategy will get me to $30M. Call it an 85% chance.
I’ll take my strategy over the name recognition and sexy fundraise.
It’s just really hard, as a competitive son of a bitch, to not get amped up when I see these things.
Yesterday there were 1,425 days until I turn 30 and need to make $10K a day passively. Here’s how I spent it in pursuit of that goal
The current phase of the plan
This will be fixed ASAP. The phases are totally different now.
Wake up & sleep:
I’ve been averaging not a lot of sleep recently. You could probably guess that based on soapbox speech up there regarding hard work.
My Whoop has shown sleep has hovered in the roughly 5 hour range per night. However, it feels like a lot less because I’m getting up a few times a night for the 5-month-old baby, making the 5 hours of sleep not very restful.
Exercise
This is embarrassing because it’s been crap. I’m a big believer in the concept that you need to do everything right to succeed, and I haven’t been doing this section right. I haven’t exercised in months.
So, I will slowly start getting back on the exercise bike. I will also block out time on my calendar (just five-minute breaks here and there) where I will sit down and do some actual pushups and sit-ups.
Stress levels
Stress was probably 1/5, with 1 being the highest. This has been constant now for a few months.
I’ve been feeling not great, and have broken down and cried at least once. This isn’t easy. I chose it, and I want it, but it’s not easy.
Diet
This has been about average. Nothing crazy, nothing bad.
Investment real estate
So we backed out of the big deal we wanted to do. In the interim, we found another property and negotiated on it, but couldn’t come to terms on it.
Right now, we’re going to hold until we find something we like.
CCIO: My business
I’ve done a little prep work here, but again, not much. I’m mostly getting ready for a big push in 2021!
I need to get this business to ~$50K a month by the end of 2021. I think that’s super doable.
Content website business
This has been a fun project.
I have a full-time team of 12 right now that are working with me to get words written, edited, and published onto websites. I’ll write more about it eventually, but the strategy is to build up ~50 websites that just have a fuck ton of content in order to drive traffic. That traffic would then be monetized with ads.
The rule of thumb, if a website is more than a year old, is that a site with one million published words will receive roughly 100,000 monthly organic visitors.
We have ~800,000 words published thus far in the first two months of getting the team together. Now that we are up and running, our run-rate is ~800,000 words a month. If we hold true to benchmarks, about a year from now, we’ll have ~9M published words online, or roughly 9 sites that each receive 100K visitors a month.
1,000 visitors are worth $12. So, if we’re getting 900K visitors, the sites are making $10,800 and are worth ~30X that, or $324K.
This is a long play, and as you can see, is a very expensive play.
Worth it, if it pays off.
Acquisition Entrepreneurship
Nothing. Years down the road.
Side Consulting
This is where the majority of my work has been. As you’ll see down below in the numbers, I’ve been fortunate to make ~$120K the past two months on consulting work.
It’s my best two months to date.
Data Project
This has been the “worst” project. I’m working for another consultant and consultants are horrible people to work with. I’m losing track of just the overall shittiness here regarding how things are coming along.
Fortunately, this project is just about done.
Market Analysis
This was/is fun. I have a little more to go, but this involves doing market analysis to see if it makes sense for one company to buy other companies.
This work is exciting, and it’s also very fulfilling. There is always a tangible answer “yes buy the company” or “no, don’t buy the company.”
Project Support
Another good protection. I’ve been helping the leadership of a well-known company rethink its entire strategy. The output of this work should come public over the next year or so.
Sourcing new work
I haven’t really been sourcing new work since I cannot manage more work right now!
$10K/day website
Literally nothing. I’m sorry
Family
My beautiful fiancee and I got married and I wouldn’t want it any other way! She’s the love of my life and the most amazing thing in the world.
Miscellaneous
Nothing
Rescue Time Daily Screenshot
What I made today
Unlike normal, I’ll try to have this section encompass everything for the past two or so months.
Current Income Streams
- Consulting work: $116,608
Total: $116,608
Planned income streams
- My Business (CCIO)
- Ads on $10K
- Acquired businesses
- Coaching
- Acquired hotels
- Dividend stocks (especially muni bonds)
Today’s pro-rated amount of monthly & yearly expenses
Life Expenses: $100
- Rent, utilities, Internet: $63.33
- Phone Bill: $1.57
- Health Insurance (COBRA): $19
- Ladder Life Insurance: $0.83
- TrueBill for Budget tracking: $0.10
- Car: $15
My Startup’s Expenses: $0.16
- Bluehost Domain name: $0.16
Health Expenses: $4.20
- Peloton: $3.20
- Whoop fitness tracker: $1.00
Productivity Expenses: $2.25
- SuperHuman to save time on email: $1.00
- Rescue Time to keep me honest on my productivity: $0.20
- Fantastical as my main calendar: $0.20
- Evernote to track everything: $0.27
- Grammarly to keep my emails looking okay: $0.38
- BackBlaze to keep my files backed up: $0.20
Consulting Business Expenses: $4.80
- Quickbooks to track expenses: $0.40
- Google Business Email Account: $0.40
- Fiverr for virtual support: $0
- Hiscox business insurance: $4
Content Business: $119
- Bluehost for hosting (9 domains): $0.89
- Bluehost for domain names(9 domains): $0.27
- Ahrefs for keyword research: $3.00
- Surfer SEO for content: $6.63
- Full-time employees (seven writers, one VA to post articles): $109
$10K a day: $1.59
- Kinsta for hosting: $1.00
- Bluehost for domain names: $0.03
- WP Rocket for speed: $0.14
- Link Whisper for SEO: $0.14
- Elementor for site design: $0.14
- Astra for theme: $0.14
Real Estate Investing: $0.52
- Legal Zoom Registered Agent (all LLC’s): $0.52
Today’s Income (pre-tax)
This section is a bit weird since I’m sharing the topline of the last two months. I’ll get this back to normal shortly.
My plan for tomorrow
Tomorrow is Monday and I have some time back since things are lighter
1,427 days until I turn $30. I’m making $10K a day passively by then
