I’ve been on complete mute since my latest income report two weeks ago. Since I started working full-time on my sites in July of this year, things are moving quite fast… sometimes too fast. Since the beginning of September, I worked on two major projects. The first one was my first speech at the Canadian Financial Summit. The second one was an important promotion for my membership site. For the very first time, I had a webinar prepared to launch this promotion. I’ve done tons of presentations in my life as it was part of my previous job. However, talking to a red light on top of my computer screen was a lot more intimidating! The whole thing went well and I’ll share more about webinars in the upcoming articles. But today, I wanted to share with you a piece of my entrepreneur’s life. It’s a piece about hard work, frustration and patience. This is another lesson of life that I’ve learned.

I did the webinar on Wednesday September 20^th. The promotion kicked-off during the webinar where 103 people attended (a maximum of 200 participant registered, but only 103 made it on time). I didn’t generate the amount of sales I thought I would at first. In fact, the first thought that crossed my mind after my morning run on Thursday was: man I suck at this. I want to share what I wrote my team on Friday afternoon after the dust settled. Here we go:

First off, I have to tell you, I was a bit upset after the webinar. It went well, but well isn’t enough. I think I was good, but good isn’t enough. I’m used to being the alpha dog. This time, I was just as good as any other member of the pack. Still, no major bad lucks, I got 15 questions for a 25 minute talk after my presentation. This was very good. Still, 4-5 sales after the webinar weren’t incredible either.

I woke-up the next morning, seeing a few sales. I smiled at first and then realised there were all affiliates. Then, I went for my morning run. When I check my phone afterward: nothing (maybe I should have run more than 6 km?). Then, the morning passes and we get 4 sales by noon. FOUR. During that time, our affiliate sales were running fast. Then I was really upset.

I spent about 2 weeks working on the webinar between creating content, writing down emails for our newsletter and our affiliates, learning how Webinar Ninja works, creating the subscription page, doing 101 tests, building my webinar, modifying many things and practicing. During that time, I couldn’t work on writing for other sites or our own blogs.

Then, as yesterday went by, we started making more and more sales. As I’m writing this (Friday 3pm), we have 6 sales coming from the Financial Summit, 30 sales coming from other affiliates and 24 sales from us for a total of roughly $3,234 in sales.

Out of our 24 sales, 12 (so, half) are coming from people who attended the live webinar or the replay. I had a total of 103 attendees + 84 for the replay (187 total). That’s a 6.4% conversion rate. I wanted to have 10 sales coming out of the webinar in order to be “happy”. Well it finally happened; I just had to be more patient! (not my first or second quality, I admit!)

A few months ago, when I was on the beach and wrote my “game plan” for my return, I expected to make a big sale in September. The plan back then was to sell the 1 year at $50. I expected to make $4,000 out of the campaign (60 new DSR members from us and 50 affiliate sales (@$20 each)). Instead, we ran a different plan, but after the first email, I showed 55% of my sales objective (60 on 110) and 80% of my cash objective. I already know that tomorrow, while I’m picking up grapes (helping in a vineyard, what a perfect day!) I will reach my goals in term of $.

My takes from this campaign:

–    People love webinars, I need to find a way to streamline the process and do it once a month

–    Q&A’s are highly appreciated by attendees, and this is something I really enjoy doing

–    I need to write more articles that are selling softly DSR

–    DSR growth will pass by our blogs’ growth. More focus needs to be put on those two

–    Be patient, sales are not coming instantly!

 

Then the weekend passed, 2 more emails were scheduled before the campaign ends on Monday at midnight. By the end of this campaign, I’ve done a lot more than any of my expectations. In fact, the campaign brought in 228 sales total (affiliate + our sales). I thought I was going to make about $4,000 out of this promotion and I will end-up making over $14,000. September will be the best month I ever had in my online history. I just had to be more patient and let my plan works its way.

 

I’m Strong like a Wave

I’m Passionate like a Wildfire

I’m Fast like a Cyclone

But I gotta stay down to earth!

Starting your own business comes with a lot of dilemmas. Among them, I’d say the most challenging one is making the choice between making money now or tomorrow. If you are like me and decided to quit everything to build your own dream, this is probably because you were quite good at what you were doing in the first place. This talent comes with a counterpart; the temptation of reproducing what you were good at. After a few weeks, I start feeling the pressure of making money again. At first, I told myself; “oh, it’s along adventure, I have plenty of time in front of me”. But that the honeymoon fades away, the reality (like having to pay bills with my line of credit!) hits me harder. So far, I can’t complaint about the success I’m having with my online business. However, I’m already thinking about what I am currently doing vs what should I do.

Making Money Now

One thing I’m good at is writing. I could easily write over 4,000 words each day for 5-6 days in a row. For the record, as I am writing this line, it’s noon and I’ve already wrote my 4,000^th word of the day. The other thing I’m good at is financial analysis. I love the stock market and I enjoy sharing my passion for it with others. This is probably why I was also good in the financial industry as a private banker; my clients felt that passion and trusted me.

As per my original plan, my goal is to write 35 articles per month outside of my blogs. Most of them are paid articles where I can make anything between $50 and $100 per post. This is not an incredibly high ticker, but it helps me building my audience and testing my ideas at the same time. Therefore, if I write 30 articles in month, I should make around $1,600-$1,700. This would represent about 20% of my last month income. Between sponsored articles, my membership website and this side gig, I can almost break even each month.

But writing 1 paid article per day is a lot of work. Those kinds of articles are not always “fun” to write. I mean, they are when you write one or two a week, but when you have to pull out your brain and analyze a different company each day, this becomes more like a job than a business project. This is what happens when you focus on the “make money now” part of the business.

Making Money Later

While the short-term standings of my business looks good so far, I’m well aware I’m burning a lot of energy in making money now instead of making money later. The beauty of a business is how it grows and snowballs into something bigger and bigger. At one point, it just goes by itself and minimum efforts result into maximum outcomes.

But in order to reach this point, one must work to make money later. I also call this part my job; “working in the soft”. For example, when I worked a whole week on the new design and features of my membership websites; I didn’t generate any immediate sales. However, while I was making “nothing”, I also created a much better investment service:

This new design enables me to convert more visitors into members and I will be making a lot more money in the future. However, doing these kinds of upgrades requires time and energy and while you are at it, you are not making money now. Still… I’m convinced this is the way to go.

Finding a balance

I’m half-way in the month of August and I’m currently meeting my article writing pace objective so far. However, I intend to find a better balance and liberate more time this week to work on “making money later”. After some thought over the past weekend, I realized that working on larger projects motivates me to the highest point possible. Last night, I worked until 10pm, woke up this morning at 5am and ran my 10^th best 6K (out of 150 activities). All this because yesterday night, I was studying components for one of my bigger project. This morning, I’m all about writing stuff and working in the “NOW”. But in the next few days, I’ll concentrate my week on the “LATER” part. This way, I should be able to almost break-even for a few months in a row and then, I should break a lot more then “even” if you know what I mean ;-).

 

As I write this, I’m ending my third week as an achiever. Nope, I don’t call myself “self-employed” or an “entrepreneur”. I’m not a business owner either, I’m an achiever. I like this “title” more than the others as it covers all aspects of my life instead of just focusing on my job. In my life, I want to achieve my goals, my dreams. One of those dreams was to quit my job and start my own business.

The first reason I write on this blog is to keep a written record of my journey. I didn’t want to wait until I became successful before telling you about my adventures. Since day one, I’ve been here with you and shared everything. When I officially quit my job and started working full-time on my online business, the money wasn’t enough to support my lifestyle. On the first day in my home office, I kind of felt the coldness of the metal barrel pushing gently on my temple and the gun clicking as I opened my computer.

Fortunately, my first three weeks have been filled with small wins… and a few struggles

Small wins!

I’ve been making money online since 2007. Sometime in 2006, I started blogging and I cashed my first $100 paycheck at the beginning of 2007. It took me two years before my partner and I made $124,000 online. As   is often the case with a “real” business, instant success is very rare. I’m in it for the long game, but still, a few small wins here and there are always welcomed!

My car is paid for by my company!

Before I even started working, I started spending! When we came back home, we didn’t have a car and the idea of driving my 25ft RV all over my city wasn’t exactly appealing. One of the first stops I made when I arrived in Quebec was at an automobile dealership. I decided to lease a Jeep Wrangler and put it in my company’s name. I will obviously also use the car for personal purposes. Therefore, the car is on the company, but I will also have to add a taxable benefit into my personal taxes at the end of the year. Still, I’m able to get the consumer taxes back on it, which is a pretty cool win!

Besides my car, I have also a good-sized list of other expenses that I don’t have to pay out of my own pocket anymore, such as my internet connection and my mobile phone. I like using my company card instead of my personal one. 😉

Who works in pajamas?

Working from home has several advantages. Among them is the classic “pajama day”. You know how sometimes when it’s raining, you wake up and you feel like sleeping in? Although I still can’t afford that, I found a nice compromise by keeping my favorite pajamas on the whole morning.

I also like working with music on in the background. Now I don’t have to be careful with my musical choices or the sound level. The other morning, Breed of Nirvana (some old school grunge music from the 90’s) was playing super loud. I was pumped and it helped me to start working longer hours.

Money is coming in

To be honest, this aspect of the business should not really be considered a “small win” but rather a “BIG WIN”. I was expecting a slow start and I had given myself until Christmas to break even. After all, I still had to set up my office properly, get used to working on my own, work out a schedule and let some time go to capitalize on my efforts. While all of this is still true, I’ve seen an impact the very first week. The month is not over yet, but I can tell you that I expect to see a 55% revenue jump from what I made in June. In fact, if all goes well, I might even break even, or at least be very close. The following graph shows you my membership sales per week. Note the difference after July 4^th… my official first day at work!

Struggles…

While I’m very proud and motivated by the outcome of my first weeks, I’ve also run into a few struggles as well. Since it’s not my style to just paint pretty pictures and tell unicorn tales, here are the few things that haven’t gone so well…

Do you take time off? Yeah, when I work

My first struggle is finding a balance between work and the rest of my life. Before getting going our home, I had several discussions with my wife about the number of hours required to lift my business. She knows and she agrees that I have to work 50-60 hours per week. However, I now feel a little bit alone because I have the impression that I work all the time. It’s fun, I’m motivated, but I’m lost sometimes because I don’t know when to start and when to stop my work. Therefore, I work all the time until that suddenly hits me and I stop working for half a day. I have a hectic schedule at the moment mainly because I don’t have a schedule. This problem should be resolved once my children start school and I have made enough money to feel comfortable.

What is more important? Making money or building a long-term business?

Another of my struggles in this new adventure is making the choice between short-term and long-term gains. While I want to build a real business, I’m also pressured by making money to pay my bills at the end of this month. I’m writing a lot of content to fill the income gap. This provides me with instant money, but this is not how I will build a 7-figure business either. In the upcoming months, I will have to make important decisions about whether I should use my time to make money now, or to build something bigger that will eventually pay off. The choice will be easier once I reach the breakeven point though!

Finally, I miss my old life…

Oh… don’t worry, I’m not talking about my day job! If there is one thing I realised, it’s that I could have never come back to work for someone else. However, returning from a year-long, nomadic trek through Central America has been huge shock for everybody in my family. I’m the one who survived this adaptation best because I simply ignored the fact that I was back and plunged full-time in my new adventure. However, from time to time, I have these “blues” where my traveler life haunts me. I miss the liberty, I miss the people, and I miss the adrenaline rush. At least I’ve found a solution to combat this melancholy; make sure I make money fast so I can leave for another trip as soon as possible! I think that once you fall in love with traveling, there is nothing you can do besides traveling more!

Quitting your job. For some it’s about retirement, for others it’s about reaching Financial Independence and Retire Early (famous buzzword FIRE). But for me, it was about finally achieving my childhood #1 dream: having my own business. When I was in college, I quickly started my first business with a Dungeon & Dragon friend of mine: we were going to sell and repair computers (how geek is that, huh?). It wasn’t a real business per se, but it was keeping us busy and we were making a few bucks on the side at the same time. However, it was quite obvious we couldn’t compete with Best Buy for a very long time and we stopped our little side gig a few years later.

Then, I met who was going to become my best friend for life and my partner in this real adventure. For 10 years, we had fun making money from personal finance blogs. We had very good years (we make over 100K in a year a few times), but we always treated this income as “fun money” and the business as a side gig. The thing is that we were making more money with our day job to even consider quitting our job. Because I was never able to make as much money as my main job, I always feared quitting for my business. But after more thoughts about FIRE, I decided to finally make the big decision. Then again, when you jump without a safety net, it doesn’t mean you have to jump without being prepared. This is the 6 steps I followed to achieve my goal.

#1 Identifying my fears and make peace with them

I guess the main reason why people don’t quit their job to start their own business is because they are afraid to do so. You might be afraid of a thousand things when you think of quitting your job. Things like:

• Losing your benefits
• Not making enough money
• Downsizing your lifestyle
• Losing your house
• Going bankrupt
• Not being able to pay for your children activities
• The look of others
• Not being motivated enough
• Not being good at what you want to do
• Losing the trust of your spouse/family/children/friends
• Never going on vacation
• Working 60 hours per week for the rest of your life
• Being more miserable that you are at work
• Being ashamed of not succeeding
• Being paralyzed by the mountain of tasks you have to do
• Not getting financing
• Etc

I can tell you that I had all those fears plus many others. Because quitting your job and going full speed on the road of the unknown is God darn scary. But fear is only a concept that exists in our mind. Once you have identified your fears and wrote down on a piece of paper, they already become smaller. I looked at my own list and thought: “I can manage all of them as none are life threatening”. I’m not going to die or hurt anybody in my family because I start my own business. I’m only giving myself a shoot at being happy all the time. This is what is going to really happen. Now that I know my fears, I’m ready to accept and make peace with them.

#2 Identify the worst case scenario

Another trick to embrace your fears is to define the worst case scenario. If you decide to go off the path everyone follows, what is are worst things that could happen to you? Here’s my worst case scenario.

As I have about $70K in my retirement account, I can live on this money for about 1 year or so. This gives me roughly 12 months to generate enough to support my lifestyle. If the first months don’t go as planned, I can always use my CFP title and write financial plans for financial advisor. I have received a few offers for this kind of service. Then, in the event my online business doesn’t take off after a year, I would be left with $0 in my retirement account and forced to find another solution. At this stage, I could sell my house and go in an apartment. This would give me another $75K to live on for another year (this is the amount of equity I have on my house). If I want to keep my house, I could also go back to my previous job as a private banker. I was really good at what it and I left in good term. Finding a job in this industry would be relatively easy considering my experience and work background. In the worst case scenario ever, it would take me too much time to find a job or sell my house and I would go bankrupt. In this scenario, I would have nothing left and no credit. This would require me to work very hard, probably 2 jobs to get back on track.

Considering this scenario, I know now what I’m facing. Basically, the worst that could happen to me is to lose my house and retirement investment account. 10 years ago, I was exactly in this position: no house and no savings. Then, I would simply “lose” 10 years of my financial life. I could probably get it back within 5 years as I know the path to make it happen this time.

After defining the worst that could happen to me, I realise it wasn’t that bad. The only thing I don’t have control over with is insurance. Since I live in Canada, health insurances are pretty much covered. I already had life insurance covered before besides what my employer was paying. What’s left to be covered is disability income insurance which will be taken care of shortly.

#3 Review my budget

The third step I achieved before quitting my job was to review my budget and cut it down to a bare minimum. No vacation, $100 per month in restaurant and I even cut down on my “wine budget”. I was able to reduce my expenses by about $1,000 per month and drop it down to roughly $6,000/month. I know, this is far from being a small lifestyle. The decision I make was to keep my house and my children activities. Honestly, with 3 kids, food is about the biggest expense we have besides our house. We made the decision to keep one car only, but we have to keep the RV (purchase for our previous trip) since we owe about $8,000 more than we could sell it for.

#4 Review my income potential

Once I cut my expenses to a minimum, I then looked at the bright side: how much money I could make with my websites. I realise that by working 50-60 hours per week I had plenty of firepower to make my dream comes true. The idea was to focus on specific added value activities that would generate money. My partner and I agreed to meet on a monthly basis and identify a short list of 3-4 priorities to achieve in the next 30 days. This way, we can rapidly identify what works and what not and proceed with changes.

Rather than saying “income potential is limitless” (which is true, but unrealistic), I decided to identify how I would go from an average of $4,000/month to $10,000/month which is a point where I will break even. Then, I identified growth vectors that will bring me to an income where I will live a great life (like making $20,000/month). Looking at these numbers keep me motivated and gives me the extra push I need to work harder and harder every day.

#5 Setup a plan to break even – don’t wait you do before jumping

I guess the most important piece of advice of this article is the following: do not wait until you break even to make the jump, because you will never make it. For 10 years, I hoped to reach a sufficient level of income to quit. It never happened because you can’t build a successful business with partial effort. Each hour spent at a day job was taking away precious time and energy to build my dream.

The plan I’ve written down to make over $10,000 per month could have never been a possibility without being full time to make it happen. If having my business is the dream of my life, I should dedicate my life to it. Not some part time effort between 9pm and midnights. This is a plan to burn out, not to get rich.

So I jumped without making enough money to support my lifestyle, but with a good roadmap to make it happen before I hit the ground. The adrenaline it gives me is another motivating factor. I don’t have time to take it easy or to relax, I’m on a mission. Each day of solid work is a day where I smile and I’m proud of. Each day of solid work brings me closer to my dream.

#6 Jump and never look back

When you jump off a cliff, don’t make a half attempt. The very first thing that happened to me when the word got out I quit was that I receive full-time and part-time job offers. Many people wanted to use my knowledge and go on a partnership or contractual work agreement with me. A “sane and popular” decision would have to cover my basic expenses with some side gig work like this. After all, I could have written financial plans a easily make $1,000-$2,000 per week with that. But this would have been a very big mistake. Keeping part of my time and energy away from my business is slowing things down. When you think of a company, think of an exponential money making machine. You want to get rid of the slow curve and hit the “log phase” where numbers rise full speed ahead.

I’ve been working full-time for almost 3 full weeks so far and I can already feel the difference. Being 100% dedicated to a goal makes things so easier and you get rewarded with almost immediate small wins. I’ll share those with you next week!

 

Today is the first day of my new life; I officially quit my job a few weeks ago, but I’m starting working full-time today. We arrived in our house 2 days ago and I only had 12 hours to set my office. I guess travelling for a year in Central America thought me a thing or two; like working hard and never take breaks! Within 12 hours, we were able to repair the walls, paint the whole room, assemble our offices, put everything in place and clean to get it ready to work the next day. I hope I will be as productive in the next few months that I was yesterday!

The race against time

When I mean “full-time”, I mean working 50 hours per week until December. I expect I’ll need about 1,200 hours of hard work to bring a $4,000/month business to $10,000 (for more details, you can read my income reports here). Growing a business by 250% within six months seems unrealistic for most, I take it as a challenge.

The thing is that until I reach $8,000/month in revenue (the bulk of my revenues are in USD), the company is digging a hole of debts. While I’m confident I will succeed, I will not hide from you that I’m a bit nervous. This is usually the kind of pressure that gets me going; this is the incentive I need. Then, once I reach the $10K/month level, I will be able to breath and think about growing the business instead of surviving.

Having the greatest intention and lots of time and energy in hand isn’t sufficient. I also need to make sure I start running toward the right direction. If not, I’ll simply be wasting my time. Here another thing I learned from my trip; taking your time to start gives you perspective. Therefore, before starting to run against time, I made sure I was ready.

Start by a place I enjoy

Here’s what my office looked like not too long ago:

12 hours later, here’s what it looks like:

All right, I admit, all the kids stuff wasn’t there when we started working, hahaha! We worked hard and we invested about $1,000 in our office because this is the place I am going to spend the most of life in the next 6 months. It was important to make a wide space with limited items in the room. I want to be able to think freely. My wife will work besides me (she the one with the hot white desk and the Macbook!). While we will not work on common project, we will share our working spare. After sharing a small space 24 hours per day for 359 days in a row, we both know we can do it here!

I decided to keep my old office desk that was in my basement before I left for a year. For all those years that my online business was a sideline, I worked in my basement. I used to like the quiet environment and the feeling I was isolated from the rest of the world. Today, I rather enjoy the sun ligth going through my three windows and I made sure I will keep my office quiet as this room is at the end of my house with a door and a private entry (it used to be a daycare as you can imagine from the picture).

We also have a large “creativity table” where we can have a maximum space to work.  I’ve already tested this room yesterday as my Tech Ninja and my Core Business Guardian came over for a brainstorming. We had the chance to spend the whole day in my office, pitching ideas and defining our strategies for the upcoming 2 months. It was motivating to work together for the first time. I mean, ew have been working on those sites together for a while, but it was the very first time were all reunited together. The purpose of this meeting was to make sure we were going full-speed… but in the right direction! This is where the magic took place…

Then create a plan

It was nice to see my Tech Ninja getting excited about this plan. He is usually a pretty down to earth guy. As for my Core Business Guardian, she is pretty much like me; always hyped about participating in a project!

Funny thing; I hate meetings and I think most of them are a waste of time… so I made sure mine wasn’t going to be put on the boring list. I had an agenda with 3 bullet points:

1. Business vision explained
2. Growth vectors
3. Wrap-up and actions to be taken

I will detail this plan in another post, but I wanted to give you an idea of how I elaborated my meeting. The first point was about making sure everybody knows our top 3 priorities and what needs to be done without delays. The second point was the meeting core: the goal was to identify which growth vectors we will work on in the upcoming months. At first, we need a short term vision to make sure the company breaks even ASAP. The short term vision is 3 to 6 months. In January, the company should generate more than enough to pay everything and we will then think about growing faster and paying down our debts. The last point was probably the most important. We took 45 minutes to determine which tasks need to be done by the end of August and how we will prioritize everything. Once we all got out of this meeting, everybody knew what to do for the next two months. We also have measurable goals to make sure we know we will achieve our goals.

Execute – days/weeks/months

The very first thing I did after my meeting was to cool down. It was around 3:30pm, I took the rest of the afternoon off and I went for a swim with my kids. After supper, it was the real deal; time to effectively distribute my tasks throughout the next month.

I’m not a big fan of fancy techniques with calendars, agendas and reminders everywhere. I think work planning should be as lean as possible. The point is not to report and track everything but to aim at achieving the right tasks, those with added value. For this reason, I’ve opened a Word document and split it in three sections:

1. Tomorrow
2. This Week
3. This Month

The idea is to make sure that tomorrow morning, I know exactly what my critical tasks are, those that need to be done on that day. For example, here are the things that must be done tomorrow in no particular order:

• Write three articles
• Update my membership site with a new design and upgraded features (the work is done, I just to put everything online)
• Comments on other blog

I must work until those tasks are done. This is not negotiable. However, if I have a productive day and everything goes as planned, chances are I will have more time on hand. If this is the case, I will pick-up something from my “This Week” task lists. Here’s what’s on the list for this week:

• Listen to a “how to” webinar podcast by Pat Flynn at Smart Passive Income
• Identify a good calendar where clients will be able to book appointments with me
• Spend more time on Converkit to master it
• Create a marketing plan for September (we will have a big promotion)
• Contact other bloggers
• Define a new DSR feature to be developed called the “investing plan”

At the end of each day, I will update my “Tomorrow” task list according to what is left on the “This Week” list. Then, I have a “This Month” list to make sure I don’t drop the ball on any of the things I want to achieve this month. Here’s what I need to do this month:

• Review my newsletter funnels and make sure everything is setup properly
• Finish a report that will be used as a bait to get more subscribers
• Write a contract for our company
• Build a 100% Canadian portfolio (DSR offers both US and CDN portfolios)
• Create different sales ID to be able to track where sales are coming from
• Optimize two of my sites to improve newsletter conversion
• Work on Chaos 1981 design

As you can see, my writing schedule is not part of this plan. This is because I will have to write 2 to 3 articles each day. Therefore, it will always be part of my “Tomorrow” list as a daily task. I don’t need to shuffle this tasks from one list to another, it will stay there as my “top priority” of everyday. After all, I’m in the business of creating content!

Looking forward with a smile

This morning was the most inspiring work morning I had in my life. I woke up at 5:30am, had my orange juice by looking outside and went for my 6km morning run. When I came back, I was all pumped about the day I was going to have. I put on my iPad and played “Just Like Fire” by P!nk. When I got out of my shower, I heard 2 of my kids waking up by singing along with me. They had a smile in their face and I felt they were as happy as I was. The whole family had a breakfast full of laugher. By 8am, I was in my office, working on my meeting. If this is a preview of the rest of my life, man, I’m signing-up for eternity!