Goals

Goals 1.6.2015:

I set these goals when I quit my full-time job in Germany.

Life purpose:

I always had an eye for inefficiencies and got most please out of helping people saving time at their daily work. When I started at my first job I fell in love with Excel and it’s abilities to automate and shorten time consuming tasks. The idea which set me free was to offer a done-for-you Excel service on a monthly retainer. I bought into that idea and saw it as a great solution to fix inefficiencies in many companies. Well reality didn’t agree and I had to pivot.

Lifetime goals:

When I set these goals I was still under the spell of society. Most of these goals weren’t really my goals, but implanted ones from society. These goals were also very unspecific ones. You always have to ask yourself: Are these truely goals of my own conclusion? Will achieving these goals make me happy? Delaying goals so far into the future, is like giving up on them. E.g. I want financial independence ASAP and travel while I am young, not when I am at retiring age.

10 year goals:

At that time AA (Approach Anxiety) was still part of my identity. In Nov 2015 I made it to Thailand / South East Asia. Oct. 2016 I finally set foot into South America! Should have done that much earlier! Made some kickass inspiring friends in Chiang Mai, some of them I met again in South America. These people made quitting my job and going to Chiang Mai already worth it. I recently found a quote I gave in my high school yearbook: “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” Now people start to approach me for advice on how to become more free. I am driven to increase my independence, freedom and control over my own life. I want to have full control about my time, where I want to be, how I want to spend my time, how much money I am making. I am taking full responsibility of my own life.

1 year goals:

Nov 2016 was the first month, that I made enough income to sustain myself without having to sell my time/life for it on a 1:1 basis. I guess I am location independent now and can spend the cold German winter, autumn and spring in warm countries. I don’t cook and clean and enjoy the warm weather of exotic countries. On 4th of October 2015 I finished the Cologne marathon under 2h. I am in the best shape of my life due to regular workout and meditation sessions, but I am still far away from a well established daily habit.

90 day action plan:

Due to the fact, that I don’t have to set an alarm clock, I can finally give my body the sleep it need. More sleep results in less stress and in a reduced desire to consume junk food or alcohol.

Goals 26.02.2017

I had to update my goals, because some already came true and many had to be erased from my list, due to increased self-knowledge.

Life purpose:

I got inspired to try out online teaching via Ecourse in Chiang Mai, by fellow nomads. I  made my first money online and got a taste of what it means to wake up to sales generated in your sleep and was hooked. I am grateful, that my first idea didn’t work out. I am pretty sure I would be very miserable with an online service business. With Ecourses I can transfer my knowledge to a much broader audience and have a much bigger impact. I am still using freeing up people’s time as a guiding principle to everything I do, just the approach changed a bit. Apart from training 500k people in Excel, which would mean increased efficiency, I would also like to help people leading a more effective life. That means helping people becoming more self-aware and therefore actualizing more of their potential. How can you choose the right subject, career, lifestyle without knowing yourself or any kind of guidance? Most people stay over 10 years in school and now even one psychological assessment is being done… a 20min multiple choice test could potentially save you decades and prevent a life full of misery… what a waste of human potential.

Lifetime goals:

More measurable goals. 26. Mar 2017: 1,405 of 500,000 reached. 133 of 1,000 book read (relevant books not BS books in school, university or novels).

5 year goals:

Changed 10 year to 5 year goals, to increase urgency and make the goals more appealing. With online products and utilizing multiplicators it should be much easier to scale up and reach more potential customers. Growth is not linear but exponential. Right now I reach my students via Udemy, but is to market my courses directly without a middle man, so I can control the pricing.

1 year goals:

26. Mar 2017 : 4 of 10 courses on Udemy. I want to expand my skill set into VBA/Excel Power Features and Power BI and offer courses on these topics.

90 day action plan:

I spent more than 3 months learning paid online advertising on FB and spending 4 figures on training and couple hundred bucks on budget to test. I also learned a bunch of cool tools, created my first webinar, FB live video, Instant Article etc. Still working on getting a working funnel to break even. Right now I focus on project work to be able to allocate more budget to figuring out paid advertising. I am still struggling to implement a daily workout and meditation routine. Currently doing swimming and stepper workouts. I believe one of the most powerful marketing tools are videos, have to create more and on a consistent basis.

General note:

I removed bla bla feel good goals and increased my focus. Life is so much easier when you decide and create a clear path for yourself, it helps to make decisions, because you can always ask yourself will this decision bring you closer to your goals.
As you might noticed I also removed relationship goals from that list. I find by increasing my self-awareness, changing my environment and by becoming the person I ment to be, that part is taking care of itself.

Update 30.12.2017

Notes:

I expanded my goals over the year from 500k to 5million and now to 1billion people I want to reach. On Udemy I already reached 4k people, so 500k as a life time goal seems way to small. The goals are more aggressive. My reasoning behind it: If I set my goals to small I am doing a disservice to the people who could benefit from my Excel courses. If I can help one person so learn Eycel and save countless hours over the course over his/her career, then why not try to reach all Excel users and try to turn them into Excelheros. Small goals seem selfish. Coca Cola is selling 1.9 billions units each day! So touching the lifes of 1 bil people over my lifetime doesn’t seem too crazy 😛 Anyways by trying to up my game I am forced to develop myself further, adopt a more effective mindset and operate on a higher level. I am so excited to update this page end of next year 🙂

 

On the way to 1000 books – A questionable goal

One of my goals is to read at least 1,000 books in my life time.

The following books I read completely or partially or consumed as audiobook:

Top Books:

Unscrippted
The Manual

Biographies/Motivation:

1 Total Recall
2 Like a Virgin
3 Trump: How to Get Rich
4 Sam Walton
5 Bloomberg

Business:

6 The Millionares Fastlane
7 Seeking Wisdom from Darwin to Munger
8 The 4hour Work Week
9 Poor Charlie’s Almanack
10 The 10X Rule
11 The 7 Day Startup
12 UX for Lean Startups
13 Lean UX
14 Remote
15 Running Lean
16 Choose Yourself!
17 Zero to One
18 The Millionare Next Door
19 A few Lessons for Investors and Managers
20 The Year Without Pants
21 The 100$ startup
22 The Lean Startup
23 The E-Myth Revisited
24 Good to Great
25 Never eat alone
26 Teach and grow rich
27 The Compound Effect
28 Managing Oneself
29 Working Together

Health:

30 The Ultra Mind Solution
31 The China Study

Marketing:

32 Dotcom Secrets
33 Crush it
34 Ask
35 Invisible Selling Machine
36 Made to Stick
37 The 12-Month Millionare
38 Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook
39 The Thank You Economy
40 Traction
41 Crossing the Casmn
42 Hooked
43 Swtich
44 Made to Stick
45 Pitch Anything

Mindset/Motivation/Growth:

46 Awaken the Giant within
47 Think and Grow Rich
48 7 Habits of highly effective people
49 The One Thing
50 The Magic of Thinking Big
51 Hunting the Shadow
52 Doing the Impossible: The 25 Laws for Doing the Impossible
53 Antifragile
54 Grinding it out
55 Stop saying you’re fine
56 Falling forward
57 Screw it let’s do it
58 The Flinch
59 Social
60 Rich Dad Poor Dad
61 Rich Dad Poor Dad – Cash Flow Quadrant
62 The War of Art
63 Mastery
64 The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level
65 The 6 Pillars of Self-esteem
66 Social
67 12 Weeks in Thailand
68 Re-Create Your Life
69 23 Anti-Procrastination Habits
70 The Willpower Instinct
71 The Power of Habit
72 Life Without Limits
73 Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
74 The War of Art
75 So Good They Can’t Ignore You
76 The Power of Broke
77 Where Good Ideas Come From
78 Coherence

Others:

79 The Lessons of History
80 The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time
81 Don’t Make Me Think
82 The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

Psychology/Typing:

83 Influence
84 How to win friends and influence people
85 Thinking Fast and Slow
86 Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence
87 The 16 Personality Types: Profiles, Theory, & Type Development
88 Pre-Suasion
89 The Paradox of Choice
90 The Small Big
91 The Female Brain
92 How to Get People to Do Stuff
93 Nudge
94 Methods of Persuasion
95 The Mind and the Brain
96 The Male Brain
97 Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery
98 My True Type: Clarifying Your Personality Type, Preferences & Functions
99 The INTP

Relationship:

100 The Art of Loving
101 The Game
102 The Way of the Superior Man
103 Attached
104 Sex at Dawn
105 The Physical Game
106 The rational male
107 The Honeymoon Effect
108 Dollars and Sex
109 The 5 Love Languages
110 Models

Spirituality/Conciousness/Philosophy:

111 Seneca shortness of life
112 Osho: Ego
113 The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
114 The Happiness Hypothesis
115 Focus
116 Emotional Intelligence
117 Social Intelligence
118 Happiness
119 Civilization and Its Discontents
120 Osho: Courage
121 To have or to be?
122 From having to being
123 A Guide to The Present Moment
124 Finding Your Element
125 Hardwiring Happiness
126 Flourish
127 The Silva Mind Control Method
128 Die Ebenen des Bewußtseins
129 Osho: Intuition
130 Osho: Meditation
131 The Power of Now
132 The Relaxation Response
133 The Holotropic Breath

System Thinking:

134 The Fifth Discipline
135 Thinking in Systems

New Books:

136 Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work
137 The 33 Strategies of War
138 Expert Secrets
139 Unscrippted
140 Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type
141 Sapien: A brief history of humankind
142 Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow
143 Connative Connection
144 Finite and Infinite Games
145 Power vs Force
146 Psycho-Cybernetics
147 Beyond E-Myth
148 The System Mindset
149 Work the system
150 F.U. Money
151 Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got
152 Rocket Fuel
153 Trump: Think Big
154 Trump: The Art Of The Deal
155 Scale
156 The Sticking Point Solution
157 Joint Ventures: From Mediocrity to Millions
158 Your First 100 Million
159 Who Moved My Cheese
160 It’s who you know
161 The Advertising Solution
162 The Introverted Entrepreneur

I have been cutting down on reading and focusing more on implementing and taking aciton.

163 The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
164 Hacking Growth
165 Outwitting the Devil
166 Skin in the Game
167 Buy then Build
168 The Sedona Method
169 What to say when you talk to yourself
170 Personal development for smart people
171 The consuming instinct
172 Speaking being
173 Die Furcht vor der Freiheit
174 Joy: The Surrender to the Body and to Life
175 The Way to Vibrant Health
176 Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
177 The Artist’s Way
178 Atomic Habits
179 How to be a stoic
180 The courage to be disliked
181 The courage to be happy
182 The Manual: What Women Want and How to Give It to Them

Good stuff on youtube:

Strategic Coach: Dan Sullivan
Academy of Ideas

Russel Ackoff (#1)
Russel Ackoff (#2)

Jim Rohn

Mindset

Things that impacted the way I see the world:

Stage 1) Realize that you are living the script handed to you by society. That mindless consumption and money alone won’t make you happy. Take the red pill.

Stage 2) Take control of what you let into your mind. Educate and re-brainwash yourself with books/YouTube.

Stage 3) Start your self-improvement journey. Health, wealth, happiness and connection.

Stage 4) Realize that people perceive reality in vastly different ways based on their personality type (MBTI) and levels of conciousness (spiral dynamics).

Stage 5) Create a life based on your own conclusions. Live-style design, adopt minimalismn. Start a business as the ultimate self-improvement vehicle and to support your choosen life-style. Realize that you can live a millionare life-style with 4-figure monthly cash flow.

Stage 6) Realize that „freedom from“ goals are nice but better set „freedom to goals“. Freedom is not doing nothing, but having freedom of time, location, money, relationship, choice to do what you are passionate about and what impacts the world in a positive way.

Totally wrong but common believes:

  • „Time is money“ -> „Value created for other people is money“
  • „You have to work hard“ -> „You have to work smart and with leverage“
  • „A job means security“ -> „Assets earning you 10k/month reagardless of your personal condition means security“
  • „You retire when you are 67“ -> „You retire when you can afford it“

General rules:

  • Don’t chain yourself to a house/car/student loan
  • Don’t exchange time for money
  • Don’t create a job for yourself, but instead a business working independently of you

Concepts:
Robert Kiyosaki – Cashflow Quadrant / a home is a liability not an asset
Jim Rohn – You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with
Michael E. Gerber – The entrepreneur, manager, technician. Client fulfillment, lead generation, lead conversion, management, leadership system.
MJ Demarco – CENTS (Control, Entry, Need, Time, Scale)
Russell Ackoff – System thinking / Data -> Information -> Knowledge -> Understanding -> Wisdom  /  Efficiency vs. Effectiveness
Tim Ferris – The 4hour work week
Jay Abraham – joint ventures / strategy of preeminence / leverage underuntilized assets

Cells -> Clusters -> Organs -> Humans -> Families -> Companies -> States -> Planetary System -> Solar System -> Galaxy -> Universe: The most important node of the system, which creates the most value gets the most resources allocated to it.

Myers Briggs Peronality Typing

MBTI – Profile

Digital Nomad Lifestyle: Ist Chiang Mai das Paradies?

Ich bin jetzt seit knapp 3 Wochen in Chiang Mai, der zweitgrößten Stadt im Norden von Thailand. Ursprünglich hatte ich vor nur bis Ende Januar zu bleiben aber schon noch einigen Tagen drehten sich meine Gedanken nur noch darum wie ich hier länger bleiben kann.

Chiang Mai besitzt und vereint viele Qualitäten wie es noch nirgendwo so erlebt habe. Auf der einen Seite hat man die Vorzüge einer Großstadt, jedoch gleichzeitig eine Art dörfisches Leben. Möglich wird das durch eine Menge digitalen Nomaden und einer Vielzahl von Ausländern die hier eine enge Gemeinschaft bilden. Neben den digitalen Nomaden, welche meist nur für einige Monate hierbleiben, gibt es auch ein Menge Menschen die hier längerfristig bleiben oder diese tolle Stadt als neue Heimat gewählt haben. Dazu gehören Englischlehrer/-innen, Rentner, Online-Business Owner und viele andere faszinierende Persönlichkeiten. Im Gegensatz zu Köln, kenne ich hier viele meiner Nachbarn. Sobald ich einen Schritt vor die Tür setzte treffe ich Leute die ich auf eine der täglich stattfindenden Meetups kennengelernt habe. Noch nie habe ich so schnell so viele interessante Menschen kennengerlernt und in mein Herz geschlossen! Die Leute hier haben Zeit, da Sie teilweise nur zum Urlaub hier sind oder weil viele auch nur ein paar Stunden am Tag arbeiten (4hour Work Week lässt grüßen). Dadurch ist es möglich auf dem Weg zum Kiosk, sich auch einfach mal zwei Stunden mit den Nachbarn zu verquatschen und Freundschaften zu vertiefen.

Typische Woche in Chiang Mai:
Montag: Bowling Meetup
Dienstag: Live Jazz Open Mic
Mitwoch: Business/Networking Meetup
Donnerstag: Gesponsorte Events der vielen Coworking Spaces
Freitag: Digital Nomad Coffee MeetupSamstag/Sonntag: Trips in der Umgebung (Bergdörfer, Seen, Berge)
Weitere: Yoga, Muai Thai, Meditation, Nightmarkets, Gespräche mit den Mönchen (Monkchat), Kochkurse, Hiking …

Wohnen in Chiang Mai:
Apartments bzw. serviced Apartments (inkl. Zimmerreinigung) ab 3500 Bath ca. 90 EUR, ich zahle z.Z. 9000 Bath ca. 230 EUR für ein super Studioapartment direkt in Nimman Area, dort wo die ganze Action ist.

Pros:

  • Günstige Apartments schon ab 100 EUR
  • Nie wieder kochen, da es klasse Mahlzeiten und Fruchtshakes schon ab 1 EUR gibt
  • Unmengen an stylischen Cafes, Restaurants und Bars. An jeder Ecke mobile Fressbuden.
  • Wäscheservice für 1 EUR/kg, also nie wieder Wäsche waschen 🙂
  • Jeden Tag super Wetter 30° und blauer Himmel
  • Jeden Tag Party, da hier ständig neue Touris und Backpacker ankommen
  • Super freundliche Thailänder, die sehr hilfsbereit und immer gut gelaunt sind
  • Viele Tempel und Menschen die Yoga/Meditation betreiben
  • Massagen ab 5 EUR/Stunde
  • Viel Natur und Freizeitaktivitäten in unmittelbarer Umgebung
  • Taxifahren für 50 Cent
  • Flughafen mit direkter Verbindung nach Bangkok, innerasiatische Billigfluglinien verbinden dich mit einem Großteil der Menschheit
  • Luxuseinkaufszentren bis hin zu unzähligen Nachtmärkten, hier ist man rundum versorgt
  • Fast überall gibt es Wifi umsonst und mit den lokalen Simkarten ist man so wie so überall online
  • Ein Menge super ausgestatte Coworking Spaces
  • Tolle Community bestehend aus freiheitsliebenden, bewussten und interessanten Menschen
  • Ein entspanntes und relaxtes Leben 🙂

Cons:

  • Man muss sich in regelmäßigen Abständen um eine Verlängerung des Visums kümmern
  • Kein Strand, aber für ca. 30 EUR kommt man mit dem Flieger schon auf eine der unzähligen Inseln

Fazit:

Chiang Mai ist wirklich eine traumhafte Stadt die man wenigstens einmal als Tourist gesehen haben sollte. Natürlich hat jeder eine andere Sichtweise und wird hier ganz individuelle Erfahrungen machen, aber Chiang Mai ist auf jeden Fall der richtige Ort für alle jene die ihre Zeit auf diesem Planeten mit unvergessliche Momente bereichern möchten.

The E-Myth revisited – Why Most Small Businesses Don’t work and What to Do About it

17.08.2014

This weekend I started working through this excellent book by Michael E. Gerber. I am thinking constantly about starting my own business and already took some steps towards it. I realized that I have to become more conscious about the start-up process and what it means to be an entrepreneur. So far this book transformed my view on my current job and the company I am working at.

Key concepts:

  • You have three rival bosses in your head: The Entrepreneur, the manager and the technician
  • The Entrepreneur is the visionary. He lives in the future, craves control, needs change and sees opportunities.
  • The Manager solidifies the base of operation. He lives in the past, craves order, clings to the status quo and runs after the entrepreneur to clean up his mess.
  • The Technician makes the product. He lives in the present and is happy working on one thing at a time.
  • Gerber delivers a mental framework for looking at a company from the entrepreneurial perspective. It is a top-down approach focusing on the company and how the business has to work, not on the actual products/services produced. First you invision the company in its final stage and then derive the different components. The business is viewed from the customer perspective, what are his problems and how can the business fix these problems. The business is the solution for these problems.
  • The business is a refelction of yourself and a bridge between you and the world. It is your own small world where you dreams can be turned into reality. It can also be seen as a dojo, where you go to train every day to enhance your skills.
  • The Business Develeopment Program, is a 7steps top-down approach to create a clear vision/plan of a company. It starts with the primary goal, asking yourself what you want to achieve for yourself with the company. Basically you ask yourself what your ideal life would look like. Then you form strategic goals (e.g. revenue) which your company has to fulfill in order for you to achieve your primary goal. Futher layers map out the organizational, management, people, marketing and systems strategy.

Cool quotes:

The typical small business owner is only 10% entrepreneur, 20% manager and 70% technician.

It’s easy to spot a business in Infancy – the owner and the business are one and the same thing.

If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business-you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!

Update: 30.12.2017

Life is good now 🙂 I had my entrepreneurial seizure in mid 2015, 1 year after reading this book for the first time and like Gerber talks about in his book, I first used my technical skills to generate money. One year later mid of 2016 I started creating online courses still being mainly in the technician mindset, but it seems that I could finally detach my ego from being the technician and start being more and more the entrepreneur that I am destined to be. I am feeling comfortable now to delegate and outsource work and not doing everything myself, but to rely on ofter experts. I love working on and not in the business. My next development step in 2018 is to successfully implement lead generation and lead conversion systems and to scale up.

Update: 05.03.2019

I haven’t been able to successfully implement leadgen on a big scale in 2018, but I am about to take another swing at in soon. Stay tuned 😉