Here we are…holiday season of 2013 upon us!
2012 was a wild year. A rough year. By the end of the summer (of 2012) I was drained and beat up emotionally and financially. I’d lost several businesses (start ups) in a row after pouring my heart and soul into them endlessly for years.
By September of last year, I’d started seriously looking for whatever was next for me career-wise. I was frustrated, nearly broke, and had a family of 4 to take care of. I carried a long history of doing all kinds of sales and marketing related stuff, but had yet to build and accumulate any real assets, and was fortunate to come across a sales video pitching a “monetizeable blogging platform” …complete with training.
Long story short, I bit…hard.
I dove in and learned a lot, fast.
I got started on September 25th, 2012…
…and by early November 2012 I had just crossed the milestone of having built my email list to over 1000 subscribers. I’d made a little money in the process, but more importantly I’d gotten a grasp on the basics, and knew that diligent, daily execution of a few simple things would continue my list growth, and expand my monetization of such. (Wow, that sounded so fancy!)
The training course that I bought back on Sept 25th made getting started pretty simple, even though I had no experience. I was able to plug into the resources provided, quickly gaining confidence and making my first sale online in my first week!
As you can see, on 10/24/12, I had 158 people on my list. I hadn’t made any real money yet, but was learning a TON.
One really critical thing I picked up early was that this can be done on a big scale, part time. REALLY part time. My average “work day” in these early months was around 2 hours per day. As I progressed, I naturally got faster and better…and that had a wild effect on my income “per hour”. Fun stuff!
Fast forward several months and mix in the beginning of me being willing to start sending out video content (me…on camera…yappin). Continued effort on marketing and list building rocketed our list up to near 5000 by early February:
It was about this time we started seeing 5 figure monthly income results with our business. No big deal. (JOKES…it was…beyond words, and still feels surreal half the time!!)
Since I’m starting to talk about income, let me share our Income Disclosure statement with you here. This is a page we’re proud of, and because I’m talking about earnings, I’m legally obligated to share it with you here (see, I’ve learned all kinds of stuff!)
By the middle of March, I started feeling like (and seeing evidence) I had mastered the basics, and had even developed a couple of my own quick little strategies to engage my audience better…check out some of the evidence of this growth on my part:
As you can see, by the end of March, we’d experienced our first few $2000+ days online. Very exciting. Surreal, given the small amount of time required to see such amazing returns.
I continued to work on myself, attending live events, plowing through book after book…all the while, relaying my experiences (via pics, vids, etc) to my growing list.
By the last week of May 2013, I was set to participate in my first ever Google Hangout. I was really nervous…really excited…really eager to share, and as the start time grew close, I started sweating (literally) …a lot! Check this out lol:
….and whaddayaknow…I was well received! (It helped that the unflappable Jessica Rush and “Every Day is Saturday” Sam Crowley were on there with me!)
Then…a big turning point for us.
Really big.
For about 14 years, I’d wanted to visit Panama (the country). As the money stacked up in our checking account (like I’d never seen before), on the morning of June 11th, I casually suggested to my wife that we should go to Panama for a month.
……………………..right?
Long story short, she said YES!
…and within about 45 minutes, I’d spent $3710 on rountrip airfare for the 4 of us (family trip!), figured out that Passports would cost us $1640 (rush job), and started making a list of things we’d need asap.
We went on a wild Amazon shopping spree the next couple days, buying dozens of things we thought we’d need for the trip and spending well over $1000.
Part 2 here!
-Kristian
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