Where I look to go in 2023 and beyond...
The day is Sunday, February 5th, 2023. I currently lay here in my bed, typing, wondering what’s going to be next for me and the future. After a rough couple of years of indecisiveness, finding myself, whatever you want to call it, I’m just now recently reconnecting with the inner-spark that fueled my endeavors when I felt the most motivated. So here I am, utilizing this blog as a medium to connect with the outer world and hold myself accountable as I try to make the best of the limited time we have here on earth.
I don’t really have much of an agenda for this post, but if I were to give it some central theme, it would be revealing my life goals and dreams to the world. I’ve been holding these in for quite some while, with the main reason being: I fear what people will think of them. It’s not easy telling people about that thing you wish to achieve when it seems like such a pipe dream away. Yet, if I were to look back on some of the goals I’ve actually achieved, I’ll be the first to admit, those goals seem quite unobtainable in retrospect (gaining ~40lbs of muscle, making $1,500 a month off completely passive income are two good examples).
If anything, I’m now aware I have some experience achieving what I thought were very hard goals, I can only see these as sources of confidence and go for the other hard things I’ve been wanting in life.
Development and Business
One thing I definitely know is I want to make $10,000 a month from my side-hustles. About three years ago today, I launched a premium subscription feature to my course site, chriscourses.com. I had one video that was listed as “premium,” meaning you had to pay $15 a month to view it, and there was no doubt in my mind: not a single person in the world would pay $15 to watch this one video. I told myself, I’d grow this library as time went on, but nevertheless, the very next day after I launched this service, someone subscribed to support me anyways. This was my first experience receiving payment for some sort of digital product I put online, and like most indie hackers and entrepreneurs, I was hooked on getting this business rolling.
Today, chriscourses.com’s premium service brings in about $1,500 every month, while my other sources of income such as YouTube and Udemy bring in around $600 a month a piece. That brings the total combined revenue between educational products to $2,700 a month, a huge amount compared to what I was earning just three years ago. There’s so much more that happened in-between, but this gradual success absolutely made me feel like living off a side-business was possible. So that brings me to the end goal of making $10,000 a month (1/4th of the way there).
I’m trying to maintain a good balance between putting in good, solid days of work with the purpose of helping others, and keeping in mind that there are business decisions required to make profit. Typically in my experience what I’ve noticed is: if you work hard and help others, the business side of things will follow, so always remember that it's your goal is to make people’s lives more enjoyable, not just make X amount of money.
Music
Half of every day, I feel there are emotions desperately clawing their way out through my skin, unsuccessful in every attempt. Almost always, I feel like their only escape is through music.
Something I've been incredibly hesitant to do is put my performances on YouTube. Showing off your skill to hundreds of people willing to straight up shit on you just for the lolz is, well, unsettling. And believe me, as someone running a YouTube channel with millions of views already, no matter what you put out there, people WILL shit on you, and for absolutely anything, but it's something you have to suck up and accept.
It's about time that I got over this fear that's been holding me back by posting a simple guitar cover. I found an artist on YouTube, Fifi Bisnar, who does some awesome lofi loop covers of pretty popular songs:
I absolutely love the vibe from her videos and think mimicking a similar style is a great, low-stress way to get started with this goal.
So here's my declaration:
February 21, 2023, I'll have my own lofi cover released on YouTube for the world to see. I'll figure out the required effects to make this sound work, acquire the necessary equipment, and practice every day to make this a reality.
Check back here for the final result on that date. Let's make it happen.
The end for now
A sudden and abrupt ending, but I think this is a good stopping point as my creative writing tank is starting to run dry.
I know I want two things in 2023:
- $10k monthly recurring revenue (MRR) between my side-businesses
- A guitar cover posted on YouTube
Getting to $10k MRR will be shared between a few channels of revenue such as my premium courses and YouTube. I've thought about making my own video game as well, released on an app store like iOS. Somewhat related, I also want a nice progress tracking timeline somewhere on this website in a calendar-like format, but that's a whole nother story, maybe we can talk more about it in the next post.