OMDA's Progress Reboot

[OMDA]

Hi all,

I came to this forum right about a year ago after reading Unscripted . Last year, I fell short of many goals due to a lack of drive, lack of execution, and a lot of shiny object syndrome.
That, mixed with a lack of firm commitment to my goals with entrepreneurship, and I coasted most of the last half of the year. It has felt embarrassing to admit this, even on an online forum where I don't show my face.

I did make a very small pittance with affiliate sales on blogging, but I let other events in my life kill my momentum there.

My current plan is to get down with serious commitment and keep the momentum going.

My current execution project is to sell an information product. I am an expert in mechanical engineering, and have run into a particular problem across industries and I see the value in a set of guides, spreadsheets, and other material for that problem. It's just one idea for now.

Over the past few days I've been piecing together a sales letter and am also reading Dan Kennedy's Sales Letter book to polish it some. I already have a website, but the small bit of traffic I have going to it is not the target market, so I will just make an area dedicated to the sales letter and drive traffic to it via ads.

This will be a pre-sale. In the past, I have toyed with this idea too much but was afraid to execute it for some reason. I kept fiddling around with book cover design, a logo, titles, and all kinds of things that didn't really matter. I'm already much happier by simply just making the sales letter in an industry that I am already familiar with. It's a much smaller step than going hard on writing sales letters for something I am much less familiar with.

I know that I can develop the product within a couple of months (hppefully quicker than that when I start seeing interest and get a fire under my a$$), but I am going to wait for the traffic to justify that.

I have other ideas, but I need to focus on the execution of this one and drive it to either: sales with product development delivery or moving on to a different product.

I'm also thinking about using this product, if successful, to drive consulting sales, or bundling with consulting offers on the back end. I have a very small email list that I developed last year, which likely could be expanded further with more effort. This one was developed by free guides related to my industry. I've had a small amount of feedback, which was positive, but I honestly don't have enough subscribers yet to read into any of that yet. My audience is not big enough yet.

 

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[OMDA]

An update

I was driving myself crazy working my normal job and trying to produce things afterward. I got severely depressed when a hard winter hit here and I couldn't get out when I needed to.
This led to me taking a lot of vacation time this year, including visiting a foreign country and having an absolute blast, going to another country, and not wanting to go back home.

I am now in the process of selling almost everything. I have a one way ticket, am arranging a long stay visa in the foreign country, and am going to do what I can to actually make a living on my own without a normal job.

My savings is large enough that I can fail, get kicked out of the country if I don't satisfy the Visa requirements, and keep going somewhere else.

Just staring at a computer screen for even more time after work was killing my drive to do anything. Quitting and moving to a cheaper locale in the states didn't bring out any desire for me. However, being in a different part of the world that is lower cost and has a walkable life that doesn't require a vehicle put enough drive in me to execute and make things happen. I've been timing it such that I get a bonus from work and then bounce. I bought the ticket 2 months back, almost immediately after the trip.

The hardest part was actually telling my parents because even though they have lived across the country from me for over a decade, I knew it would upset at least one of them. I was right, and they tried to convince me not to do it. I dreaded that conversation but once it was over things have been moving well.

So I'm not making money right now outside of work. I have been cold calling some people for freelance over there but legally I have to wait for paperwork, etc. I will essentially have a 2-3 month hard vacation where I cannot legally work, but, I can do lots of other things to relax and build products without worrying about the lawyers at my job claiming that they own what I have done. This was a huge concern for me. My father actually went through that and the company claimed that they owned his work after months and months of effort on his part.

My savings is measured in years at the expected burn rate which I added a lot of extra fluff for things. I'm in no danger of going broke for years. And that is without touching my 401k and other emergency funds which are not liquid. Lots of reserve.

 

[OMDA]

Update:

1 day of work left. I have got rid of a lot of material possessions and fly out to Europe in 2 weeks. I'm happy with my budget and I have some short term plans to develop some products based on my specialist knowledge to immediately try selling. They should only require 1-2 days of development time to be useful/sellable.

I'll try several of those and see if I get any bites.

Other than that, I'm feeling very free. I can afford to screw up a few times and not go broke.

It won't be fastlane until I'm making money without actively seeking clients, but I can already feel the shackles coming off.