26 and going for first £3000/month

[The Racing Driver]

Mid-Q4 2023 Update

In early October I did some flight training and then from mid-October to early November I finished a 3-week Multi Crew Cooperation Course. 40 hours of A320 simulator training and a lot of study later, I passed with good grades.

Business wise:

My clients still need my help every now and then. I'm still doing some work for them, but I'm not making a lot at all. Flight training is mentally demanding and I find it impossible to really give it my best with freelancing. I’m putting off finding new clients and pitching my existing clients on new services that I can offer them.

Brain Dump:

• I can’t wait to get done with flight training and get my commercial pilot’s license. I’ve gone through so many setbacks that have cost me a lot of time and money over 2023. Hopefully I should be done with everything in the next few months.
• Getting hired as a pilot in 2024, should help me get to £3000/month, achieving my goal in the title of this thread.
• I’m far more interested in proving value within the aviation industry as an entrepreneur. There’s so much study, training and money needed to become a pilot, which means barrier to entry is really high, and that’s a good thing.

 

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[The Racing Driver]

November 2023 Update

I landed a new client!

About two weeks ago, I got a message out of the blue on Upwork from someone in the UK saying that they needed help with their automotive business website.

I set up a call the next day, asked him what he needed then I sent a proposal for 3 pages SEO copywriting for $310, which he accepted immediately.

I could’ve charged more, but I wanted to get results for someone first. I haven’t done much website copywriting for a while, and I just wanted a little project to overdeliver. If things go well it should hopefully lead to more work.


December 2023 Plan

Started my CPL course yesterday. This is the final module to get my commercial pilot’s license, I should be ready to start applying to pilot jobs in 1 or 2 months. At the moment there seems to be some opportunities for low-hour pilots in the UK.

My main goal with getting a pilot job is to start helping my parents, by paying them back what they have invested, and to accumulate flight experience.

I'll admit I want to be an entrepreneur far more, but not all my actions at the moment are very entrepreneurial.

Technically, I am "in business" at the moment, but I also feel like I'm scattered between jobs without a boss. For my 3 clients I'm currently doing:

Client 1: WordPress Site management (Monthly retainer)
Client 2: WordPress Site management + Plus random tasks like content writing (Every now and then)
Client 3: SEO copywriting (My latest client. One-off)

I haven't had much focus and have not been actively searching for more clients, as I don't believe I can take on more projects. There are entire days I'm occupied with flight training and studying, where I hardly have any extra time or energy at the end of the day.

Alongside my flight training, my focus from now on will be working on creating a CENTS business, something that can satisfying the commandment of Time. Because right now, it's hard for me to grow with the way I'm currently working.

 

[The Racing Driver]

December 2023 Update

I travelled from the UK to Spain with the hopes of finishing my final commercial pilot's license module this month. I made some progress and only have a few hours left to go.

I continued with the little client work I had, but alongside travelling and flight training, and helping my family out over Christmas with hundreds of tasks, I didn't make much progress business-wise.


2023 Review

I need to get more organised in life, and stop consuming so damn much.

This year needed me to consume a lot of information through books, articles and videos for my aviation exams and pilot training, but I admit, I have not worked on the Production side of the equation enough. I wasted so much time in many low-impact areas like cooking, YouTube and doing chores that I could delegate.

Above all I need to Stop Assuming and Start Acting. I have too many limiting beliefs and many of them are around money.


Q1 2024 Plan

As I'm so close to finishing my pilot training, it's very hard to foresee what I'll be doing by the end of 2024. That's why I'm planning a quarter at a time, instead of setting a New Year's resolution.

In the next 3 months, I'll be working on helping my existing clients grow, and I plan to keep talking to people in my areas of expertise to figure out what pressing problems I can solve.

 

[The Racing Driver]

1st -14th January 2024 Review

1st - 7th Jan

I started off New Year's day with a cold which sapped some of my energy for several days. At the end of the week I travelled from the UK to my flight school in Spain to complete the last part of my CPL training.

8th - 14th Jan

I flew everyday for 6 days straight. I did both time building and flight training, and achieved 100 hours as Pilot-in-Command and finished the last bit of my CPL training! I've been studying a lot to make sure I'm familiar with all aviation regulations, procedures and technical aspects of the aircraft that I've been flying. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!


Business Wise:

The first two weeks of the year went by super fast, and I'm quite happy which what I've achieved in terms of my pilot training. However, in terms of business I have hardly managed to make any progress as most of my time and energy went towards flying.

I'm now beginning on a new project. It'll start off as a website that I wished existed years ago within an industry I'm very familiar with. I feel the timing is right, and since my flight training will not be so intense anymore, I plan to dedicate time to working on this on a daily basis. I already own the domain name and will share more about the project in the weeks to come.

Jan 15th - 21st Plan

Aviation: Two CPL Skills Test (as I hold both UK and European licenses)
Business: Start Writing website Content for my new project
Health: Sleep by 10:30pm every night. Get into a consistent habit of sleeping and waking up early again.

 

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[The Racing Driver]

15th - 28th January 2024 Review

Aviation: Two CPL Skills Test (Done!)
Business: Start Writing website Content for my new project (Started)

My two Commercial Pilot's License skills tests took a week to get done due to bad weather. But in this time I was studying like hell to be prepared for any question the examiner could ask me, and any situation that would come up in flight. I admit the skills test were freaking tough, and I really needed to prepare well.

After I got done with my last skills test, I have to admit.....I only felt a sense of relief. I didn't feel any sense of satisfaction. I admit my flying school was a pretty negative place to be, and I couldn't wait to get done and leave. But above all, I know I desire so much more. I feel I'm only using aviation as a stepping stone onto the slowlane.

After all the flying was done, I spent a day driving from Spain to my family's house in Portugal which we're going to rent out at the beginning of February. None of my family is here and I'm tasked with packing up and preparing the house to be handed over.


Jan 29th - Feb 4th Plan

I'm currently packing up and getting ready to leave. I'll be travelling from Portugal to the UK by car which will take around three days.

Upon arriving in the UK, I'll be starting a Multi-Engine IR (MEIR) conversion course the following week for my UK license, which I'll need to study for.

Business wise, a client wants me to start revamping his website, and I'm discussing the details with him. I'm also going to spend this following week researching which framework or CMS I'll be using for my new website project.

To summarise for the week ahead I'll be doing the following:

Personal: Pack up home and drive from Portugal to UK
Aviation: Start studying for MEIR course
Business: Research CMS and web frameworks. Start building first version of website.

 

[The Racing Driver]

Jan 29th - Feb 4th Review

Two weeks ago I said I will

Personal: Pack up home and drive from Portugal to UK (Done!)
Aviation: Start studying for MEIR course (Done! Started training already)
Business: Research CMS and web frameworks. Start building first version of website. (Not much progress. Looking into React)

After arriving in the UK last week, I got right into things and did 5 days of sim training.This last week I've only been waking up, working out (the days I have time), driving close to 3 hours a day in traffic, studying and training the simulator. My mind is so tired at the end of each day, I barely have any mental capacity to do any intellectual thinking.

Each sim session is very demanding and costs around £480 ($600). So underperforming and repeating a session is not cheap. Hence I've had to study a lot to learn the DA42 aircraft with a glass-cockpit and complicated avionics.

Once I’ve reached a good standard in the simulator I’ll move on to flying the aircraft and from there I should need a few flights to get ready for the UK Multi-Engine IR skills test. I'm ideally looking to be done with everything by the end of this month.

Feb 12th - 25th Plan

Aviation: Finish all my MEIR conversion training.
Business: Document my progress. Track my time.

I've been only posting bi-weekly, and most of it has recently been Aviation and Personal Life focused. Business has not been getting much of my time and attention recently. I've been saying I'll do X and Y, to only have achieved 1/10th of what I said I'll do.

This has to stop. So now, I'll going to update this thread weekly with what I've done in business, instead of making plans followed by excuses.

 

[JordanK]

No clue about the aviation industry but with a background of racing cars and now trying to get into commercial flying. Are there opportunities with the RAF/military. Seems like it would fit your personality type and be quite exciting?

 

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[The Racing Driver]

No clue about the aviation industry but with a background of racing cars and now trying to get into commercial flying. Are there opportunities with the RAF/military. Seems like it would fit your personality type and be quite exciting?

I do find military jets exciting, but I'm not really considering that route as I've been self-funding my flight training. So in terms of ROI now, flying commercially is going to be my best bet to achieving my financial goals.

Racing cars is by far my biggest passion, but that, like aviation ain't cheap.

 

[The Racing Driver]

Feb 12th - 25 Review

Over the last two weeks I've made the following progress.

Aviation: Did more simulator sessions and finally did my first flight in the aircraft
Business: Did more client work and started working on value proposition for business idea

Some thoughts:

Tracking my time has been very insightful on the days I did it, I'm going to keep continuing to do this. Also using GoalSumo.com on a daily basis keeps me much more focused.

For my new website project, I've been brainstorming ways I can add the most value to my target market and have been looking at no-code solutions to build webapps. Some tools I'm looking at / using to build something quick include Relume.io (AI website mockup designer), and Bubble.io (No-code Full-stack development platform).


Feb 26th - March 3rd Plan

Aviation: Make progress on my Instrument Rating Training
Business: Increase time spent per day working on business. Report here at the end of the week average daily time spent and what I've achieved.

 

[The Racing Driver]

Feb 26th - March 3rd Plan

Aviation: Make progress on my Instrument Rating Training
Business: Increase time spent per day working on business. Report here at the end of the week average daily time spent and what I've achieved.

Aviation: Bad weather cancelled 3 days of flying. Didn't make any progress towards my IR, only studied and spent time a little time working on job applications.

Business:

I tracked my time diligently on the days I worked. Spent around 1.5-2 hours a day of focused time working on my web app which will start off as a directory site. I'm making progress with a no-code editor called Bubble and can feel my idea coming to life! Other than the my clients came to me with a few requests which didn't take up too much time.

March 4th - 10th Plan

Hopefully there will be better weather in the UK this week. So I should be a flying a bit more. All the time that goes into travelling back and forth to the airport, preparing for flights and flying will take up a lot of time. So on the days I fly, I don't anticipate I'll have too much free time. However, I'll continue as I have spending whatever time I can on developing my web app.

Aviation: Make progress on instrument rating training
Business: Keep tracking time and aim to increase average time spent on developing web app.

 

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[The Racing Driver]

March 4th - 10th Review

Business:
- One client went quite viral and received a lot of subscribers to his website. I had to help him a bit with the website.
- Time spent on business building activities reduced due to lots of studying.

Aviation: Two flights with lots of studying and preparation done. The aircraft has a problem, so my flight training is on hold for now.


March 11th - 17th Plan

Because of how occupied I've been with flight training, I have not been trying to land more clients as a freelancer. Hence I've started building a directory website as it can satisfy the Time commandment in CENTS.

I am looking at monetizing with advertising and a fee-based model (think AirBnb).

Business:

- Help my two clients and send proposals for more valuable packages.
- Keep building directory site and start creating all the written content for the main pages (e.g Home / Landing page, About page, etc.)

 

[The Racing Driver]

Happy Easter Everyone!

I failed do my weekly updates as I was very busy executing and studying over the last 3 weeks. Anyhow, 3 weeks ago I said I'll do the following.

Business:

- Help my two clients and send proposals for more valuable packages. (Result: Done with 1/2)
- Keep building directory site and start creating all the written content for the main pages (e.g Home / Landing page, About page, etc.). (Result: Made good progress)

March 2024 Review:

- New Habit of Time Blocking developed. Nearly every day first thing in the morning, I committed 2 hours of focused deep work to develop my web app.

- Upgraded one client's monthly retainer. Two old clients came back with some work for me.

- I had two weeks without flying and needed to move to a new school. Finished the month with two good flights in a new aircraft yet again. I'm almost ready to take my instrument rating check ride.

First Quarter of 2024 Review:

Biggest Wins:

- Got my UK and European Commercial Pilots Licenses
- Learned how to use Bubble.io and built +90% of v1.0 of my web app.
- Clients value my work with web dev and content writing. They keep coming back to me.

What didn't go so well:

- My UK Instrument Rating. I had to move schools twice due to various external factors! Planned to finish in February but I'm still not done.
- Didn't launch my web app. I admit I've consumed too much content in the last quarter, and need to focus on producing more. I could've launched by now had I focused better.

 

[The Racing Driver]

My North Star is still £3000/month.

My flight training has been taking so much time, money and energy. To some extent I feel it's been holding me back from having achieved my goal. However, I'm very certain I'll be done in the next week or two, and from then on I'll be all in on making sales and growing my business.

2nd Quarter 2024 Plan

1. Web app is making +£3000/month profit
2. Hired as a professional pilot

April 2024 Plan

1. Finish Multi-Engine Instrument Rating
2. Get paying customers for my web app
3. Build portfolio of successful results for my freelance clients.

April 1st - 7th Plan

1. Instrument Rating Check Ride Booked. Be 100% ready.
2. Web App Launched

Finishing priority #1 on the list will make everything else easier for me. So that's my ONE thing for now.

Have an Awesome Week, Month of April, and 2nd quarter of 2024 Everyone!

 

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[kekoamac]

Hi Everyone,

I've joined this forum a long time ago and it's time to break the silence on where I've been and where I'm going:

- For the last 10 years I've worked really hard to become a pro racing driver. Due to many personal and outside factors, namely funding, involving myself with the wrong people, and the worldwide Corona debacle, my racing career lost momentum.

- I've done many different types freelance gigs in the past, from web development to copywriting. Never brought big money, usually 3-figures and sometimes low 4-figures per month. I've failed quite a bit to achieve any significant traction in my business ventures.

- Begun a Commercial Pilot's License course in 2021 and should be getting an EASA (European) Commercial Pilot's License in the second half of this year. I just got done with my 13th and last theory exam. The commercial pilot exams were one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.

Target: £3000 ($3725)/month. Why this? This is a stepping-stone goal that I can see myself achieving in 2023 along with my course commitments. Of course this is peanuts compared to what others are making on this forum, however this is a goal that motivates me, and I believe you can be financially independent almost anywhere in the world with this money.

My strengths:

- Relatively intelligent. Achieved ~85% average across commercial pilot's license exams through self-study.
- Hard-working. When I desire something, I don't give up.

My weaknesses:

- Complacency. My parents are relatively well off and are footing the bill for my commercial pilot's course. They want nothing more than for me to get an airline pilot job. At the moment, I don't really have to do much more than study hard and be a good son, but I desire so much more.
- I've been very flaky in the past. I say I'll do a lot, but haven't lived up to my promises so many times.
- I've been slow to put things into action and I'm working on changing that by posting regularly here for accountability.

TLDR: 26M, former racing driver and current student pilot close to getting a commercial pilot's license. Going for my first £3000/month.

I will be posting my plans, actions and the new habits I'm building to achieve my goal starting today. I will be spending more time on this forum, because I am desperate to improve my mindset and be around strivers who can give me constructive feedback.

Welcome! Stay the course and put things into action. Continue building those valuable habits and it will take you far!

 

[The Racing Driver]

Welcome! Stay the course and put things into action. Continue building those valuable habits and it will take you far!

Thanks a lot! It's been tough having so little results to show for. But I'm confident things are going to turn out well!

 

[The Racing Driver]

Two week ago at the beginning of April I said I will do

April 1st - 7th Plan

1. Instrument Rating Check Ride Booked. Be 100% ready.
2. Web App Launched

How has my progress been:

1. My check ride is booked for tomorrow! I had a couple of instrument training flights in these last two weeks and they didn't all go too great. I was giving it everything in terms of studying and preparation and I was still falling short, making mistakes, however my last training flight yesterday all came together great!

2. I have fixed and put a lot of finishing touches on my web app, but frankly didn't have time to do a real launch.

I have been continuously doing little work here and there for my clients, and revenue is slowly growing.

April 15th - 21st Plan

1. Finish my Instrument Checkride. Which is the last module to have ALL the requirements to apply to pilot jobs here in the UK.
2. Launch first version of my web app.

 

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[The Racing Driver]

April 15th - 21st Review

1. Finish my Instrument Checkride (Done!)
2. Launch first version of my web app. (No progress)

I gave it everything I had this week, and I'm finally FINISHED with all the necessary training for my UK frozen ATPL. Flying this Piper Seneca twin under instruments and to get my skills up to test standards was one of the biggest challenges I've faced. I've experienced so much setbacks, difficulty, and expense in my pilot training, but now I have everything I need to apply for first-officer level jobs.

A major airline just closed a job posting I would have been eligible for, but instead of getting upset, I'm going to use this time while I wait for an opening to focus on my business endeavours that I've been documenting in this thread.





April 22nd - 28th Plan

In the coming weeks I'll be directing almost all of my focus to business. This week I plan to

1. Launch my web app
2. Continue delivering exceptional value to my clients

 

[The Racing Driver]

April 22nd - 28th Review

This week has been pretty awesome. My two tasks were as follows:

1. Launch my website/webapp (Done. on 25th of April)
2. Continue delivering exceptional value to my clients (Done)

I launched my new directory two days ago on 25th April, and since then kept fixing bugs and adding more content. So what is my website exactly?

At the moment, it's just a directory site for a certain type of venue.

Problem I'm solving? Typical clients are unaware of events happening at these venues and don't know how to get involved. Businesses involved in this area aren't very effective at marketing to their ideal clients.

How am I adding value?

Use content marketing to drive traffic to my site, and get these venue providers leads. A lot of these venues already have websites, however many of them are terrible and don't include some important information and latest news.
I want to make it easy for people to get the information and help they need to become customers.

How will I monetise?

At the moment, I have a couple of ideas listed below in my order of preference.

1. Charge venue owners a monthly/yearly fee to manage their listing. Or charge a fee-based on bookings (e.g AirBnb)
2. Sell advertisement space at their venues, act as an advertisement broker.
3. Create hotel booking deals, manage travel arrangements for participants.
4. Handle these venues marketing and PR

Next Steps?

Work on creating the best content, keep adding more listings and speak to these venues and service-providers involved in this industry. I've been so focused on the development side of things, but now I need to start providing solutions and selling my idea, and get traffic coming to my site.

April 29th - May 5th Plan

1. Contacting at least 50 venues and try to have conversations with them.
2. Add a map and blog feature to the site and more venue listings.