These are my Momentos, short personal diary entries I write daily – since 2013 – and publish monthly. Some links are affiliate links.
1
What’s better for making money: great product + mediocre marketing, or mediocre product + great marketing. I wish it was the first but it’s got to be the second. How else do you explain people the success of people like Tai Lopez and Donald Trump? The one thing they know how to do best is get attention. And where attention goes, money often flows.
2
Published all that Tai Lopez stuff yesterday and woke up this morning to find an affiliate credit for a sale of one of his programs. Not big money – they’ll send me only $14.50 for that – but gave me a good buzz nonetheless. Because, given that my content is the best out there for specific keywords, the traffic should only increase. And the referrals along with it.
3
The expat community here in Gran Canaria is hard to beat. Group lunch today and was sat next to one dude killing it with a software business, and another doing sold-out events every month in London. Smart, experienced entrepreneurs running real, value-adding businesses. Chiang Mai has its charms, but you don’t meet as many people like that there.
4
Paid €40 for a year of city bike use here in Las Palmas. But every now and then I’d dock the bike and the timer on the app would keep going and I’d be charged for overuse. I was annoyed. Sent some angry messages to support via the app. Turns out I hadn’t read the instructions properly, was docking the bike wrong. How many other things do I blame others for when it’s actually my fault?
5
I often see men around 30 years old working at supermarket checkouts. They’re well dressed, well groomed, well spoken, often look like they hit the gym regularly. In short, they seem to have their shit together… except they’re working at supermarket checkouts. Wouldn’t think much of it but I see them regularly. All that potential, and they’re stuck scanning barcodes all day.
6
A bit torn on social media. Can see the benefits, definitely helps business-wise. But it also distracts massively. Tiptoed back in today, and quickly realized that tiptoeing won’t cut it. Might have to hire someone to manage it for me. Just send along the content, let them post it so I don’t have to fight through all the notification alerts and news feed updates.
7
Doing a bunch of outreach, trying to let people know about the Tai Lopez stuff. This is the tedious, unsexy grunt work you never see in the montage or highlight reel. Has me feeling a bit like a door-to-door salesman, ringing doorbells and saying, “Oh hi, sorry to bother you, lovely home you have here, would be interested in any of these wonderful items by any chance?”
8
Have a deal with my Mastermind buddy that I’ll do at least 10 minutes of stretching every day this month. $1000 penalty for each day I miss. Been doing this kind of accountability since 2014. Never once have I had to pay the price. When you make failure way more painful than doing what it takes to succeed, you tend to succeed.
9
Brain can’t stop thinking about business. In the middle of Carnaval and I’m contemplating the profitability of these parade floats — 100 people on the big ones, €70 a head — and appreciating how Captain Morgan passed out free pirate hats and now have several hundred mini billboards walking around town promoting their product.
10
Helen Keller writes in her autobiography about learning to speak. She was almost 10 years old at the time, had lost her sight and hearing eight years before. She was overjoyed when she could summon someone from another room with her voice. Isn’t that mad? So many simple things I take for granted every day, this woman is reminding me to appreciate.
11
Tried the Miracle Morning for several months last year. 10 minutes of six things each morning: reading, writing, meditation, exercise, visualization, affirmations. The last two didn’t do much for me, can easily do without them. Not so with the rest. I haven’t meditated much the last few months and really missing it. Scattered mind, chewed fingernails, anxiety getting the better of me.
12
A few days ago I had two entries on page one of Google for “tai lopez scam.” Then I dropped off the page altogether. Now I’m back at #6. It’s a rollercoaster, and I need to stop checking. Does nothing for my mental health, or my bank balance. Have to trust that I have the best content on the topic, and that Google will figure it out eventually.
13
Up before 4am this morning. Not because I’m awesome and rah rah rah let’s get this day started. No. There was a little shitty mosquito in my room that wouldn’t leave me be. So I got up and started coding some star ratings for this here website, popping them on my reviews with all the schema jazz, see if that shows up in Google and gets me more clicks.
14
Published the first case study on eBiz Facts today, about a travel blogging couple earning about $15,000 per month. Planning to publish a lot more case studies going forward. Took me a while to come up with the structure for them. The grand vision is to make it easy for readers to compare even very different online businesses to each other.
15
Turning 37 tomorrow. I did have a streak going of eight straight birthdays in different countries, but this is the second consecutive year I’ll have it in Spain. Which is fine. I don’t need to do anything special to celebrate. I do what I want most days anyway. Good time to reflect and give thanks though. I’m still living a charmed life.
16
Turned 37 today. In a sense, I had me a good 20 years of adolescence. Went off traveling the world, jumping from job to job, project to project. Never really committed to any relationship, always did my own thing, went my own way. That’s a luxury, a privilege. Only the last couple of years have I started thinking more about family, having a place to call home, adult-type stuff.
17
Reckon I used to be more courageous than I am now. At least when it comes to speaking up about things that bother me about other people. Don’t like myself much when I talk ill of someone behind their back but not to their face. That’s just cowardly. Must be some reward in it though. Maybe I don’t want to give them the opportunity to change, maybe I want to avoid potential conflict.
18
Reading a book that mentions that Jim Carrey story. He was a struggling actor when he wrote himself a check for $10 million, dated three years in the future. Three years later, he got paid $10 mil for Dumb and Dumber. And the books says, See! Manifestation law of attraction universal intelligence blah blah blah. But what about the thousands of other struggling actors who wrote themselves big checks and never manifested shit?
19
That book isn’t all woo though. Some good stuff in there. Like how, to achieve huge success, “the real secret is [that] you have to take huge, uncomfy risks.” Agreed. Successful people, more often than not, simply do things others aren’t willing to do. They put in the hours, make the sacrifices, face the fears, take the risks and overcome the challenges that regular people will not.
20
Reaching out to people for case studies today. There’s a lady who creates courses on Udemy about mental health, seems to be doing well. Another lady who has helped a bunch of people find remote jobs. A guy in Chiang Mai who earns more than $1000/month from dividend income. Another guy who earns $800/month passively through a an Amazon merch store.
21
You ever meet someone who seems genuinely curious and interested in what you have to say, and you find yourself talking talking talking, and then you think shit, I’m talking too much, so you ask them something and they give a quick answer and then they ask you another question and eventually you think fuck it, I guess I’ll just keep talking then.
No, just me?
22
Friday is my social day online, have a big list of things to run through. Check for comments/notifications on different platforms, browse for content worth sharing, send out an email to my list, etc. It’s scattered work, and I have a love/hate relationship with it. Trying to keep track of all my efforts so I can figure out what to drop, and what to double down on.
23
Watched a Sam Ovens video today, about online business, more than an hour long, really powerful stuff. As someone said in the comments, “This is not a video to watch, this is a video to study.” Sam promotes his program at the end of it, and I’m sure it’s the real deal, but no way I’m signing up. Too busy implementing all the stuff I’ve learned from Authority Hacker, gotta give that a fair shake first.
24
Anne Sullivan must be one of the greatest teachers who has ever lived, turning a blind, deaf and entirely uneducated 7-year-old child into a college graduate some 120 years ago. I’ve been reading her letters at the back of Helen Keller’s autobiography, where she gives some insight into how she made it happen. In short: shitloads of tough love, patience and determination.
25
Occurred to me today that I’ve developed the complete opposite of an employee mentality. A big appeal of having a job is that there’s less risk, less responsibility. You do the work your employer wants you to do and report back. Freelancing is similar in that sense. But nowadays all I want to do is my own thing, 100%. Give me all the risk, all the responsibility. Let me be self-directed, nobody to report back to.
26
Read a long criticism today of a digital nomad “guru” of sorts, one of the more famous guys in the community. Had heard whispers of such things before, and my own brief interactions with him over the years never left me with a great impression either. Like Tai Lopez though, he does add some legit value. I sometimes wish these guys were 100% villain so I could write them off completely.
27
Imagine you 10-xed your income overnight – how would your lifestyle change? Mine wouldn’t change much. The extra stuff I’d be buying would all relate to convenience rather than material things. I’d have all my groceries bought and meals prepared for me, splurge on airline tickets that let me shortcut the security line, hire expert coaches and instructors to teach me stuff I want to learn, one-on-one.
28
Days like this remind me to appreciate one of the massive benefits of working online and controlling your schedule: I can be there for people when they need me. I remember reading years ago about an online entrepreneur who was able to move halfway across the country when her mother got cancer. No need to request time off, no pay cut. Just pack the laptop and be where you need to be.
29
Ever have a mild case of food poisoning? It’s actually worse than a bad case of food poisoning. Because with the mild case, you sit there with an upset stomach, trying not to move much, telling yourself it will all be fine if you just take it easy, wait it out. But actually, to feel better, what you really need to do is stick two fingers down your throat and force that shit up.
30
The occasional Netflix binge day is nice, but do you ever wonder what people did before tech provided an escape from the world? If you didn’t resort to drugs, the only “escape” available really was a good book. But what about before books? People must have just sat around with their own thoughts, waiting for the time to pass. Maybe they knew themselves better for it.
31
There’s a great soundbite from Neil Gaiman in his interview with Tim Ferriss:
“The biggest problem we run into is going, ‘This is who I am, this is what I’m like, this is how I function’ while failing to notice that you don’t do that anymore.”
In other words, never get so busy being who you are that you lose sight of who you could be.