December has been one of the best months of my life.
Rather:
I’ve been around my all-time best this month.
Experientially, nothing beats the days with my boys.
But I am turning myself into a monster. It really showed this month. Much of the pay off will come later. But the checks I will cash on life with be huge.
See for yourself how December stacked up:
Since turning 30, I’ve been on fire in all areas of life.
I think part of it is because I started keeping score.
1. Wins and Losses
I track my life non stop.
I record:
- When I wake up
- When I go to sleep
- How many hours I work
- Whether I eat a salad
- Whether I eat gluten
- Whether I sang or danced
- Whether I watched TV
- A whole lot more.
For the majority of this 2018 I tracked every hour of my day and categorized activity by four different codes. I also track 35 different habits everyday, spread across 5 areas of my day.
I also have different trackers for my self-education, finances, and more.
I do it all by hand—in my handy dandy bullet journal.
I’ve also used these monthly personal growth updates to keep track of a few other things. Now, much of that is moving to ZachBradshaw.com at large. And I’ll surely end up using this site to track even more things over time.
However, I made an important addition a little less than two months ago:
I’m counting results!
I mean wins and losses but I say results specifically because I’m also including draws.
I’m a big Chelsea FC fan and I think of it like the Premiere League.
Some days you come out and give away two penalties and you’ll be happy to come away with a draw. Other times you get lax and give away an equalizer.
The intention is to win every day, dominate every week, and take home championships every month.
That won’t always happen.
But I sure it will happen more often now because I track it.
2. The Last Year and the Last 30
Speaking of measuring yourself against a plan…
I’m been working on my life goals since mid November. From that, I’ve slowly been putting together all of my action plans for 2019 as well.
I did a fairly good job with the same task last year.
Last year I wrote out goals across a variety of different domains and turned them into affirmations. I wrote all 40 or some of them every morning for the first half of the year. At least that was the goal. I was fairly consistent but not as consistent as I was with free form affirmations the last half of 2018.
Still, many of them came to fruition.
Thanks in large part to the daily reminders..
I am now a:
- “Morning person”
- “More sophisticated investor”
- “Legitimate business owner”
And plenty more that I am proud of.
Not surprisingly, the areas I fell down most were in my goals that have to do with relationships. I’ve struggled with people since middle school. I don’t beat myself up for lagging behind here. I definitely made improvements.
It did help show an obvious flaw in the system.
Last year’s goal planning favored my goals that sounded best. The sexy goals aren’t always the most important ones to tackle.
This year, I’m looking to rectify that with separate yearly and longer-term goals.
I expect a major improvement. Last year, I fielded the best version of Zach Bradshaw to date. I think my 2019 will 10x my 2018.
That’s the nature of going the first 25 years of your life living under your potential. I set myself back, not really in terms of career. But I set myself back in terms of habits. I have had to rid myself of so many self sabotaging habits. I’ve been working away for the last five and just now feel like I’m getting ahold of myself.
It’s been both a painful and glorious rebirth.
3. It All Finally Clicks
Now the pendulum swings back in my favor.
My brain and body work for me. I crave the habits that lead to my best days.
I hop out of bed excited to chip away at my goals.
It’s really easy to wake up with a case of the “dull greys” when work online. Being your own boss is harder than you’d think—at least it’s harder than I originally thought. More accurately, I didn’t even know what it meant to be a boss when I started this work from home journey.
So I’ve had to teach myself on the job.
Not just the skills of the job.
But also how to be ready, as a human being, to get the job done.
How to:
- Schedule
- Plan
- Manage
- Communicate
- Work
…and when to do it.
It can get intense, especially when these things mean food on the table. But that’s a blessing. It’s helped me force myself to get better at these things.
Now, I’m getting good.
I’m already like a 7-in-1 digital marketer.
On top of that, I’m getting really good at turning other people into freelance swiss army knives.
This puts me in a position of power for 2019.
That strength almost got me in trouble!
But I made a smart pivot last month.
And it’s already paying dividends.
4. Business Growth Log
I was getting anxious to get an office.
Once I have the opportunity to train a team of 5-10 in an office setting, I know I’m going to dominate.
Like explosion.
But there’s no need to rush. Offices are expensive. So are people.
And the economy has been going up for 10 straight years.
A recession will come.
😲📉😭
Why get an expensive office and expensive people when I could wait and have the chance to get the same office and people for cheap?
🤔📈😁
Thanks Gary Vee!
😅🙏💰
So.
Let’s talk about pivoting.
(Public) December Business Goals
- Plan “2nd Quarter” – Playing for 4 Quarters post. GSP Long Term Plan post. 2019 business plan created.
- Greensboro SEO Pro – Back to “Wowing” clients. Continue to expand site. Lay groundwork for YouTube channel.
- Personal Brand – Dominate content challenge. Complete network optimization. ZB.com backend optimized.
- Prepare for 2019 – Break down more PBD videos. Start recruiting. Explore partnerships. Continue office research.
- Ninja Project – Undertake first full-scale consulting project. It’s a trial run. I’m going to revolutionize their business.
Thanks to number one, our production matched our goals fairly well.
I made planning 2019 a priority.
Thank goodness I scheduled the time for it. It turned into the enormous task it deserves to be.\
And still, I was able to clean things up nicely.
(Public) December Business Production
- Plan “2nd Quarter” – 4 Quarters post and then some. 2019 plans on 💯. GSP Long Term Plan Post Coming.
- Greensboro SEO Pro – Received some amazing client compliments. Revolutionizing Greensboro SEO Pro.
- Personal Brand – Content challenge taking over. Heroes & Favorites going HAM. Medium profile started.
- Prepare for 2019 – Completed greatest goals ever. Slowed recruiting and offices but still building frameworks.
- Side Projects – My content challenge and developing partnerships have all sort of things getting produced.
The last two pieces are the only ones with any real changes on the surface.
There’s a lot going on below that.
If you’re actually reading this far, you’re likely to see it soon.
5. Growth Diary
This month I:
- listened to tons of David Goggins, Greg Plitt, and Conor McGregor Moticuts as I channeled the warrior mentality all month.
- spent most of my training time in markets, watching TheChartGuys, Tone Vays, Mike Maloney, and others.
- continued to hammering down some of my digital marketing training frameworks.
- started to plot on massive brand building frameworks for topics I’m an expert in.
- continued One Piece.
- continued with great affirmations and morning rituals, though struggling with some other habits.
- had the most epic month of Bullet Journal work to date.
Overall a really solid month.
Fortunately, the last time I’ll be recording it like this.
🙃
Thanks for reading the last of my my crappy posts.
Hopefully, I’ll never create rubbish this long again.
I’m not saying I won’t create rubbish or long content.
I’ll just be sure to keep the 💩 short and the long stuff worthwhile.
Thanks for bearing with me as I stumbled my way through my very first monthly content series.
I’m working on another post going over a few great lessons I’ve learned in my first year of blogging.
If you’re reading this, you’ll definitely want to stay tuned for that!
Until next time…
🙏 Thanks for reading. 🙏