If you’re a trusty follower of this blog, you are not only one of my favourite visitors, but you’ve probably also noticed that I haven’t blogged for a while.
This is due to a number of things happening and me needing a bit of a timeout to figure out what I want on this blog.
Confessions of a Rusty Blogger
The truth is that I’m struggling a bit with finding the right topics. The blog post I end up liking the most focus on mindset, something I feel is the most important aspect of getting success in any area (lifestyle entrepreneur or not), but these are typical more abstract in nature and not so “hands on” and operational like a “how to something” post.
Also I’ve had a bit of trouble finding my own voice, always thinking that other people would cover a certain aspect better than I ever could. So you could call it a kind of insecurity about my blogging abilities. Not only because English is my second language but also because I never wanted to be a full time blogger (or anything close to that).
So I’ve ended up only blogging whenever I felt I had something to share instead of my original intent on blogging at least every week.
But what does this have to do with looking back at 2013 and into 2014?
Well let me get back to that. First let me try and recap 2013 for you.
What was up with 2013?
I’m probably my own worst critic because I didn’t really think I’d gotten the results I wanted in 2013. But as I started listing the things I’ve actually done this year, I felt a bit better.
Thailand
My family and I started the year with two months in our house in Hua Hin, Thailand, and as I’m writing we will fly to Thailand again in a week’s time. It’s great to be able to just rip a couple of months out of the calendar and just be together with my family a place many times more exotic than Denmark in the winter time.
Lifestyle Business Mastermind
In the beginning of the year I finally launched my online mastermind program. It includes hours and hours of me on camera teaching you the models and strategies that I’ve used to build my businesses. It was a big thing to create and it felt great to finally being able to launch it.
I’m currently having a $1 trial signup if you want to check out this massive program (what kind of an entrepreneur would I be if I failed to mention this :)).
The Lifestyle Business Rockstar
In the spring I finally self published my first book on the Amazon CreateSpace platform. This is something that I worked on most of 2012 and finally getting it out was just fantastic.
And since I’m not looking into making my money as an author, I’m still giving a few copies away if you just pay the shipping and handling. Yes you got that right. I will give you a copy of my physical book that retails at $14.95 for FREE!
Corporate Exit Formula – Coaching program
While my Lifestyle Business Mastermind program teaches you the robes of creating your own lifestyle business (and then some…), I really enjoy working more direct with people. Because of this I’ve taken on a few coaching clients. Some more formal than others.
So late this year I launched the Corporate Exit Formula coaching program for those who wants to work closer with me. It’s an 8 week intensive program where we will build a money making lifestyle business that you can run anywhere in the world.
If this sounds like something you would be interested in, I will give you a 30 minute free strategy session over Skype where we dive into your goals and dreams and find out if we’re a match for each other.
Get your free strategy session by applying here
These are the actual products I’ve launched over the year, besides this I’ve also invested time and money in building more relationships. So besides attending different meetups (like the Dynamite Circle Berlin meetup) I have also started my own small mastermind group here in Denmark where we’ve met regular over the year focusing on helping each other and growing together.
But what has been working and what hasn’t been working for me in 2013?
Working
- Creating content for products
- Getting the products launched
What’s not working
- Marketing the products after actually creating them
- Blogging was too inconsistent
Yes it’s true. Apparently I suck at actually doing the actual product launch. I think it’s because I hate the planning 
It’s not like I haven’t done anything, but I probably thought that I could just throw some money after it instead of doing any hard work myself.
Since I have some cashflow in my business, I can afford to use paid marketing. But the problem with paid marketing is that it’s not really that personal and a bit of a lazy approach.
So for instance I had a company do marketing for my book. This mainly involved them booking various interviews for me. Both podcasts, written interviews and even a live radio interview with a US radio station.
While all this was fun to do, it resulted in almost no sales of my book.
With my new coaching program The Corporate Exit Formula I’ve also tried both Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads (because of my target audience with this program), but while I was able to get leads this way, the customer acquisition price was simply to high (and it was mainly price per lead since I don’t have enough numbers to actually have a precise acquisition price).
So what have I learned from this?
- I have to do the marketing myself and only outsource administration stuff (at least until I’ve found a model that works for my specific products and services) and
- I will have to do this by providing value to people mainly through this blog
So don’t be surprised if I at some point will re-launch one or more of these products
So what will 2014 bring?
First up I need to have some kind of blogging plan. If I want grow my audience (and in the end people who want me to help them build their business) I need to be much more strategic about my blog.
I don’t just want to commit to yet another “blog post per week”, but the new thing is that the blog is prioritised higher than usual because I won’t be building new big online products.
Another thing I really want to do, is to create an e-commerce site that I can run together with my girlfriend. The idea is that I help her create it, but she takes the daily tasks. It will most likely be targeted the Danish market because I’m not quite sure how to penetrate the US e-commerce market as a European based company.
I also have another membership site in a totally other market that will be re-launched this year. The membership site is built and run together with a partner and has seen some growth even though we haven’t touched it. It’s in an awesome market and we’re in a good position, so this is actually my main project I will be working on while in Thailand.
I’m still not sure I want this site to be associated with the Retire My Ass brand, so I can’t promise you that I will post a link to the site from this blog.
And lastly in an effort to get out to a wider audience, I also need to leverage social media better in 2014. So remember to follow the blog on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter.
In this post I’ve tried to be completely honest and as transparent as I can be. Hopefully this will also show you that even though I have a (low) six figure business and I’m able to travel for months at a time with my family, I’m still learning – and just because you don’t score a million on your first idea, you should continue push for your goals and dreams.
What do you have planned for 2014?
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