These are my Momentos, short personal diary entries I write daily – since 2013 – and publish monthly. Some links are affiliate links.
1
Mentioned before how you get used to living with all kinds of bugs and lizards in Bali, hard to keep them out. Up before sunrise this morning, turned on the light in the kitchen, and got hit with a massive swarm of termites. Our house geckos were loving it. Me, not so much.
2
Putting together my finance report for June. I earned just over a grand, but spent 3x that. It was my lowest earning month in 3.5 years. I knew I’d have a few such months this year with the transition and all, but it gets me a bit anxious nonetheless. Will try use it as motivation to keep pushing.
3
Chet Holmes used to tell the audience at the beginning of his seminars:
“You’re going to understand all the principles I share with you here today, as there’s nothing but logical information here. You’re going to agree with them. You’re going to know that I am right and that these principles will work in your business…. And then you will still not do them.”
The most important thing, he’d go on to tell everyone, is not the principles themselves, but a “pigheaded discipline and determination” in applying them.
4
Holmes’ book has inspired me to step up my productivity game. I’m now listing out my most important tasks for each day, and estimating how much time each will take. Estimated four hours today to run through a certain batch of tasks. Almost six hours deep and I’m still not finished. Oops.
5
Things I saw today riding 2+ hours on a scooter along busy roads in Bali:
- A completely naked 5-year-old on the back of another scooter.
- A one-street town where everyone apparently makes statues for a living.
- A mall with a rollercoaster coming out the roof.
- A horse and cart.
- One fender bender.
- Constant disregard for red lights.
- A herd of cows.
6
Bali reminds me a bit of India. Travelers come back all starry-eyed from both places, talking about the food and the beauty and it’s oh-so-spiritual! Sure, there’s that, but there’s also mad pollution, crazy roads, and enough poverty to make you feel like a heartless asshole sitting there with your fancy latte and your MacBook Pro.
7
We’re at this plush club hanging off a cliff, all open air. There are infinity pools and private beds and small bottles of water that’ll cost you $5 a pop. The DJ is a dude from San Francisco with a quirky mustache. He plays us nicely into the night, beneath clear stars and a yellow-bellied moon.
8
I love the idea of self-driving cars. They’d eliminate parking problems and free up tons of space in cities. Less accidents, more leisure time, just all around better for everyone. But spend an hour driving in Bali and it’s hard to imagine an AI smart enough to handle the swarms of scooters buzzing everywhere.
9
On a call with an old friend. He’s starting a coaching biz, wanted to hear my experience investing $17,000 in coaching last year. Did I get my money’s worth? I still don’t know. I’d consider hiring a coach again some time, but no way would I spend such a big % of my savings on it.
10
Training a new assistant, she’ll be helping me out with case studies, aiming to publish one per week before too long. Creating SOPs to go with the training, which makes it clear how messy much of my business is. Hard to build an effective team when you haven’t got your shop in order.
11
Erich Remarque was a German novelist who fought until wounded in WWI. He became famous in 1929 with the publication of All Quiet On The Western Front, a novel the Nazis later declared unpatriotic. They burned the book, revoked his citizenship, and beheaded his sister. In 1936, Remarque wrote:
“To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There’s much too little forgetting.”
12
Sad day. Heard that Brendan Grace passed. Saw the old woman who lives next door, sitting on the step with tears in her eyes. Found a little crippled bird on the balcony. Passed a mother breastfeeding on the street as she begged for change. Listened to a man on YouTube who still thinks the earth is flat.
13
Problems with my newsletter recently, have more than a 0.5% complaint rate, which gets me flagged by my mailing list provider. Saw one subscriber mark me as spam today. They’ve been on my list since 2011. We’ve exchanged niceties. Messaged them asking for feedback, see if I can figure out what’s going on.
14
Twice now I’ve seen cops in Ubud leaving the air out of the tyres of illegally parked cars. Maybe they don’t have a ticketing system, so that’s the best they can do. I remember in Kathmandu they would punish jaywalkers at a busy intersection by making them stand on a traffic island for a stretch.
15
Been reading a book a week for several years now. Thinking I should slow down. Too focused on keeping the pace, rather than truly absorbing and enjoying. At the point with business books where I’d probably be better off reading 3-5 classics over and over again rather than constantly consuming the new.
16
I’m 37 years old and have visited 53 countries to date, but today was the first time I ever felt an earthquake. The center was some 120km southwest in the Indian ocean. 6.2 magnitude apparently. No damage here, no injuries. But a good reminder that we’re all just fleas on the back of this big dog.
17
Came across a certain website a few months back, saw that we’re competing for some of the same keywords. It’s a decent site, content okay but nothing unbeatable. Found out today that they’re crushing it with ad revenue. Probably six figures each month. I love hearing that. Shows the potential.
18
Loving the gym these days, go pretty much every morning now. I keep the workouts short, ~45 minutes. Run and stretch and lift while listening to a good podcast. The body’s looking better, feeling better, and I seem to have more energy. I’ll have to prioritize joining a gym whenever I move some place new.
19
Childhood was a blur for me. Fond memories, but fuzzy. My adolescent years are much clearer. Perhaps that’s true for everyone. You don’t start getting to know yourself properly until puberty hits. I’m 37 years old now, so it’s a quarter century since I crossed that threshold. Long time.
20
Running a small business is never boring, such a variety of tasks and roles. Today I’ve been coding, designing, doing strategy, content, customer service, social media management, finances, admin… Not ideal to be so scattered, but the occasional day like this makes me feel like a digital Renaissance man.
21
Sunday evening, quick check of my RescueTime dasboard. More than sixty hours clocked on the laptop this week, and that’s after subtracting time spent on entertainment (YouTube, etc). My work/life balance is terrible right now, but I don’t care. Really feel like I’m building something special.
22
I quit my job and started my own business nine years ago. If I could go back and start again, I’d find a successful online entrepreneur and offer to work for $1,000/month, do whatever needs doing, learn as much as possible from them. Because I realize now that I wasted a lot of time figuring shit out on my own.
23
Right now the streets of Ubud are lined with bamboo poles, one outside every compound. They stand taller than any rooftop, decorated with colored ribbons and coconut leaves. Galungan has begun, one of the most important festivals on the Balinese calendar, celebrating the triumph of good over evil.
24
Can’t sleep, termites are swarming downstairs, so I head out to meet the sunrise. Ubud is at its most beautiful right now, especially at this hour. I wander down little side streets and alleyways, wafting incense, towering penjor, thatch-roofed temples, bright fabrics, elegant shrines, beautiful people.
25
Scott Young writes:
“Seeing peers eclipse you professionally can be tough, especially when you’re grinding away every day.”
Yup. I’m still grinding, have been eclipsed by many peers. eBiz Facts feels like a winner though. Gotta stay focused and make that what I know it can be.
26
Been enjoying putting together the eBiz Weekly newsletter. Takes several hours each week, but that’s several hours learning evermore about online business and sharing the best stuff with subscribers. Kinda like what I used to do ten years ago, but with basketball content back then. Maybe curation’s my thing.
27
There are some sharks out there in the business world. Sometimes I wish I was more like them, honestly. But it takes a toll on me to be a dick, to screw someone over, even someone I don’t know. Not that I’m morally superior to the sharks. I’m just not wired that way. For better and for worse.
28
Heard Zuckerberg say on a podcast today that you should look to hire people who, if the roles were reversed, you’d be happy to work for them. That’s how you end up with a team of superstars.
29
Easy get overwhelmed by all the opportunities out there. Read an article today that gave me another flood of ideas for great content I could create on eBiz Facts. No shortage of ideas, only a shortage of time/resources to execute. Then again, as Tim Ferriss once said, “a lack of time is a lack of priorities.”
30
You read a book like All Quiet – a book written almost 100 years ago – and you wonder how the hell war is still a thing.
I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.
31
Putting a lot of time into these case studies. Hired a VA to help, been training her, putting processes in place. Case studies are unlikely to reward us much financially, but I really want them to exist, haven’t seen them done the way we’re doing them. Must get back to writing reviews next month though.