Someone once made the following comment to me:

If I can’t measure it, I’m not going to do it.

That statement has stuck with me all these years.

A year ago, I decided to make a dramatic transition in my business life.

I built a successful, profitable solopreneur business where I was making all the money I wanted.

I was working as much as I wanted, and I had plenty of time to enjoy with my family.

I was socking away a lot of money into retirement, which was a big win for me.

I had, however, become a bit stagnant.

I wasn’t growing anymore.

Additionally, I wasn’t enjoying some of the work I was doing.

I started thinking back to the early days of my business, some ten years earlier.

I took great satisfaction in the fight I went through to build a business up from nothing.

Even though I struggled at the time, it was one of the funniest times of my life.

I had a huge objective back then to make ends meet.

I was in the fight of my life.

It was a thrill.

Every day I was putting myself out on the line and falling flat on my face.

I would go to sleep each night and then wake up and put myself back in the ring again.

It was beautiful.

I missed those days.

I missed growing.

I missed the thrill of a challenge.

The financial and business success I had been enjoying over the last four years, somehow seemed hollow compared to the days when I had to fight every day.

Finally in March of this year, my ponderings about the good old days boiled over.

Enough was enough.

I’m too young to be bored with my life.

I’m not going to let the song within in me die.

I’ve got much more to accomplish in my life.

I drew a line in the sand and began to chart out a new direction.

For the last five months, I’ve been building the foundation for my next great adventure.

A month and a half ago, I launched my podcast.

I’m still building the audience for the podcast.

If I promoted the podcast more, I would have a larger audience than I currently do.

However, the podcast is not designed to make money.

The purpose of the podcast is to share my journey of building my business Ideal Money Life from Zero to A Million in Twelve Months.

At present, I’ve published around forty episodes of the podcast since I launched it 45 days ago.

I’m publishing five episodes a week.

The format of the podcast is me sharing my thoughts about the business I’m growing.

At the beginning of the day, I share my thoughts on what I plan to work on that day.

Then on my way home from work, I share the things that happened during my day and some lessons I learned from my actions.

Each day I review the podcast that I’m going to publish that day.

Over the past few weeks, what I’ve experienced is I’m listening to the recordings I made from a month ago.

It’s been fascinating for me to hear what was important to me a month ago.

It’s been fascinating for me to hear the things I was struggling a month ago.

It’s been fascinating for me to hear the wins I had a month ago.

Listening to the podcast is making more aware of how I think.

Listening to the podcast is helping me understand what’s important to me.

I plan on recording my podcast for the rest of my life.

If I publish five podcasts a week, that means I will publish 260 podcasts a year.

In 38.5 years, I will publish my 10,000^th episode.

That will be cause for a grand celebration.

I’m playing the long game.

Here is the biggest reason why I will continue to publish my podcast.

If my audience never grows beyond the current levels, there will be one person that will benefit from the podcast.

I will be the biggest benefactor of the podcast.

The podcast is a tremendous tool for me to understand me and what is working and what is not working.

Recording the podcast has helped me talk through my fears and come up with solutions to my challenges.

Recording the podcast helps me hone my message.

Recoding the podcast helps me become a better person.

There’s no way I could have predicted the impact of recording the podcast would have for me when I launched the podcast on August 1, 2019.

It has been a tremendous experience for me.

As I’ve been facing challenges during the last few weeks, I’ve started to look inwards.

One of the questions, I’ve been asking myself lately is…

What have I done in the past that has been successful?

I’ve been coming up with an excellent list.

It’s helped reinforce that I have the ability to be successful which has been important as I’ve been facing a lot of fears the last fear weeks.

Part of what has helped me move past my fears is thinking back to successful moments in my life.

I’ve also reflected on moments where I was scared to act.  Despite my fears, I acted anyway, and the things I feared ended up not being that bad.

Reflecting on the past has helped me make progress in the present.

I’ve been reviewing issues from my first newsletter, and it has been interesting to note that the things that were important to me almost ten years ago are still important to me.

For my December 2010 Newsletter, I wrote an article about the eight lessons I learned that year.

I thought it would be appropriate to share that article with you for this article.

Here are eight lessons I learned during 2010:

1. Going it alone is a fool’s game. Trying to do everything myself is a sure way to burning out.

2. It’s important to put boundaries around work. As a small business owner, work can become an all-consuming endeavor.

3. The beauty of life is that today is a new beginning. I can always shape my tomorrow by what I do today.

4. Take time to be interested in others. You can learn a lot by being curious and listening.

5. There is a lot of power in consistency. By being consistent one becomes dependable.

6. If you work hard the opportunities are endless. That’s the American dream.

7. People are the best investment.

8. Sometimes the difference between achievement and disappointment is a small change.

Reflection is a tremendous tool to make improvements.  Take a moment today to reflect on one thing that affected you today.