I’m Going on a Journey

For the longest time now, two areas of my life have seemingly been at odds with each other:  health and finances. 

Whenever I focus my efforts and energy on my finances, my income starts to go up and my finances improve.  Whenever I focus my efforts and energy on my health, I begin to lose fat, gain muscle and generally improve my health.

However, whenever I focus on my finances, my health takes a back seat and begins to deteriorate and then when I focus on my health, my income takes a back seat and begins to deteriorate.

For example, in the latter part of last year I began to really push and focus my efforts on growing my affiliate marketing income because I knew that I would be leaving the corporate world behind as of Jan 1st of this year.  Things began to look up and take off for me in terms of income and by the end of January it felt like I was really hitting a good stride in my business growth. 

However, I wasn’t happy with my level of health.  I constantly found myself tired, lethargic and lacking in energy throughout the day.  So, with everything in my business seeming growing at a steady rate, on February 3rd I launched my new Blog – FitnessHealthAndHealing.com – which marked the beginning of my focus on health and fitness.

In the two month period following that I focused heavily on improving my health, working out daily using the P90X system from Beach Body.  I was starting to see some really good results and felt better and stronger than I have felt in years.  However, the challenge I ran into once again is that the minute I took my eyes off of building my business and diverted my energy towards improving my health, my business income stalled and I had virtually no growth in that area for the two months of February and March.  That really sucked, especially since my online business was no longer a hobby that just provided me with some extra spending money, it was now my main source of income from which I have to pay my bills.

Frustrated and disappointed, I had to put a temporary pause on my health improvement efforts because the stress from not seeing my business income grow to match my growing expenses was becoming too much.  What’s the point of eating healthy and exercising every day when you’re going to bed at night stressed out about how you’re going to pay your bills the next day.  I know the effects of stress, and they are just as bad if not worse than not eating healthy.  Reluctantly, I put FitnessHealthAndHealing.com temporarily on hold and focused back on making money.

As soon as I focused back on growing my online income, my income began to grow again.  No surprise there.  It took a concentrated effort of about six weeks, beginning in early April, and I began to see the results of my labor.  My income grew, my traffic increased, and things have been looking up in my business.

The challenge now has been that my health has slid back to where it was before I started on my health plan in February and that is very frustrating for me because I’m back to feeling tired, lethargic and lacking in energy.  Not to mention the fact that I have about 25lbs of excess fat around my belly that I’m carrying around everywhere I go.

Has anyone else found themselves in this frustrating situation?

Going on a Journey

A couple of days ago I began formulating a solution to this situation that has repeatedly played itself out in my life quite a few times now.  I’ve decided to go on a journey.  I’m going to attempt to build my income and improve my health at the same time, and I’m going to Blog about the whole process at the same time.

I feel blessed to have been inspired by the journeys of several Bloggers out there who documented their journey of building successful Blogs that now make them hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and also those that have documented their journeys of getting their health and fitness back in shape.  Now I’m going to attempt to do both at the same time.

This is going to be a unique challenge for me, as I’ve never really focused on two completely different areas of life at the same time.  When I typically focus on something, I put everything I’ve got into it for a period of time and attack the challenge with overwhelming force until I achieve the desired result.  However, that strategy leaves very little energy or time to pursue something else at the same time.  The best I can hope for is to just maintain the other areas of my life during such periods of time when I focus on something specifically.

I haven’t figured out all the details of everything yet, but so far what I’ve done is I’ve created my first target goal, which is to increase my monthly business income to $30,000/month and to lose 25lbs of fat at the same time.  It’s not going to be easy for me to go after both of these goals at the same time, and it will probably be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life but I think it will definitely be worth it.

To make things more achievable, what I’m going to do is to break down my goal into at least nine more believable and achievable milestones which I’ll go after one at a time.  The milestones encompass a combination of achieving a financial goal, as well as a health goal. 

My starting point in terms of my business income is somewhere around $7,000 in the last 30 days and my starting weight is roughly 210lbs.  I’ll have to do a bit of accounting work this weekend and also some measurements to get more accurate figures, but assuming these numbers are correct, I have identified these nine milestones for me to work towards my ultimate goal:

1. Income of $10,000 in 30 days, plus 5.0 lbs of Fat Loss ( or weigh 205.0 lbs )
2. Income of $12,500 in 30 days, plus 7.5 lbs of Fat Loss ( or weigh 202.5 lbs )
3. Income of $15,000 in 30 days, plus 10.0 lbs of Fat Loss ( or weigh 200.0 lbs )
4. Income of $17,500 in 30 days, plus 12.5 lbs of Fat Loss ( or weigh 197.5 lbs )
5. Income of $20,000 in 30 days, plus 15.0 lbs of Fat Loss ( or weigh 195.0 lbs )
6. Income of $22,500 in 30 days, plus 17.5 lbs of Fat Loss ( or weigh 192.5 lbs )
7. Income of $25,000 in 30 days, plus 20.5 lbs of Fat Loss ( or weigh 190.0 lbs )
8. Income of $27.500 in 30 days, plus 22.5 lbs of Fat Loss ( or weigh 187.5 lbs )
9. Income of $30,000 in 30 days, plus 25.0 lbs of Fat Loss ( or weigh 185.0 lbs )

Now, what I mean by “Income of $10,000 in 30 days” is that in order to achieve that milestone I have to do $10,000 in income in a 30 day period of time, as opposed to in a calendar month.  At first I set my goals on a monthly basis but then I realized that there is no need to limit myself in that way.  By doing a 30 day running total on a daily basis, I train my subconscious mind to make sure that every single day is important and I make it possible for me to actually potentially blast through multiple milestones in one month.

For example, it’s possible that I could grow my income to $10k and then to $12.5k all in the month of June.  I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to reach my goals as I’ve never done this kind of thing before, but at least this way I’m not limited to it taking nine months.  I could hit multiple milestones in one month, or go for months without hitting the next milestone.  It all depends on my efforts and the results I’m able to produce.

As far as the weight loss goals of 10 lbs of Fat Loss or weigh 200 lbs, all that means is that I either have to lose 10 lbs of fat, or reduce my body weight to 200lbs.  Why did I quantify it that way?  Well, if I set a goal of dropping my weight down to 200
lbs (losing 10lbs) without specifying that it’s fat I wanted to lose, then this would prevent me to from building any muscle.  This is where many people go wrong when they try to “lose weight”.  See, I don’t just want to lose weight – I want to lose FAT weight, not muscle weight.  It’s important to distinguish between the two.

For example, let’s say that I start exercising and improving what I eat and after a while I begin to feel stronger, more energized and lose a few inches around the waist.  But then I go on the scale and find out that I still weigh 210 lbs.  This is where most people get frustrated and give up, because they think that they are not seeing any results.  Now what may have happened is that they may have actually lost 5lbs of fat but at the same time they simultaneously also gained 5 lbs of muscle.  That would produce a net effect where they didn’t really lose any body weight, but their body composition definitely improved.

So, when I say that I want to lose 5 lbs or 10 lbs, what I’m referring to here is body fat, not body weight.  I have no desire to lose any muscle or to dehydrate myself in order to drop a few pounds on the scale.  That is why I’m setting the goals in this fashion.  For my first milestone, if I can show a loss of 5 lbs of fat by way of seeing a reduction in my body fat %, then I’ve hit the milestone even if my total body weight stayed the same or even went up due to any muscle I may have built during that time.

The only problem with body fat % tracking is that it’s not very easy to get an accurate, detailed, and consistent reading at home.  I have no desire to subject myself to an accurate “dunk-tank” test, so I’m just going to use the body composition readings on my scale at home and use that.  If my scale shows that my body fat % hasn’t dropped, by my weight drops by 5lbs I’m still going to count that as reaching my milestone.  The reason for this is that I know that the body fat % is  not as accurate as the weight measure function of the scale so I’ll have to do an “either or” goal for that.

I know this sounds really confusing if you haven’t really studied how the body works and how body composition works, but the only thing that matters is that I know that by the time I reach my final milestone of losing 25lbs of fat, I will have lost 25lbs of fat regardless of what my actual body weight is.  I’m sure it will be less than 210lbs, but it might not be exactly 185.0 lbs.  If I gain some muscle during that period of time (which I’m expecting I will), I might end up at a higher weight.

Building a Reward System

As part of this journey, I am going to be rewarding myself for reaching each one of the nine milestones.  So when I reach my first milestone of $10,000 in 30 days and 5lbs of Fat Loss, I’ll reward myself.  Then I’ll set my sights on the next milestone and work towards that, and when I reach it I’m going to reward myself again.  I’m hoping that this will help to keep me focused on reaching each milestone and ultimately my ultimate goal.

In order to “qualify” for each of the milestone levels I must hit both the financial and health goals.  Meaning, if my income grows to $15,000 in 30 days, but I haven’t lost any fat yet then I don’t even qualify for the first milestone.  This will encourage me to put energy and effort into both sides at the same time.  Of course if I lost 20 lbs of fat, but my income hasn’t even hit $10k then I don’t qualify for the first milestone either.  I have to hit both qualifications in order to reward myself.

I’m not 100% sure yet if I’m going to disclose how I’m going to reward myself for each of the milestones or if I’ll make it a surprise, but I will blog about it either way.

A Call to All Affiliate Networks, Bloggers and Businesses

As part of this journey, I’m also putting out a call to all affiliate networks, bloggers and even businesses that want to help to sponsor and support this journey.  What do I mean by this? 

Well, I’m not going to reach my target goal of $30,000/month in income by myself.  For example, if that income was generated solely form PPC affiliate marketing I would probably have to do about $75,000 – $100,000 in volume per month with a network in order to make that $30,000/m in profit.  That represents about $900,000 – $1,200,000 in annual volume that I’ll have to be doing to achieve that goal. 

That kind of volume may represent some great opportunities for whichever networks I work with, not to mention the exposure I can generate for them on this Blog.  The same thing applies to other Bloggers out there and businesses in general.

Here are some examples of how businesses can get involved:

• Reach out and offer help for me to earn income through your network, business, products or services etc.
• Sponsor prizes or giveaways for myself and/or my readers for when I reach each of the milestones.  You could sponsor or co-sponsor the milestone rewards themselves or simply offer other giveaways for my readers (t-shirts, hats, whatever).
• Become an official sponsor of my journey and get mentioned as such throughout the journey.  I may limit the amount of sponsors I accept in order to provide maximum exposure to only a few exclusive companies.
• Contact me about sending me review products related to making money online or losing weight.  If they help me to make money online or lose weight I will mention them on my Blog, giving you exposure.
• Work with me to come up with other ideas such as contests, competitions, or anything else that (1) helps me to make more money or lose weight, (2) provides a benefit to my readers and (3) provides exposure for you or your company.

I’m pretty much open to working with anyone to form win-win relationships during this time and I think this journey is going to create a fairly unique opportunity for businesses looking to get some more exposure.

I still have a lot of stuff to figure out, such as for example if I’m going to keep the two sides of this journey (making money online and losing weight) separated across my two Blogs, or if maybe I should just merge and document the complete journey here on this Blog.  What do you guys think?

Also, if you’re a reader of this Blog and you know of a business, affiliate network, or anyone else who might be interested in sponsoring prizes or giveaways or getting some exposure by offering something to my readers (that’s you), suggest the idea to them.  I’d love to celebrate hitting each milestone by also rewarding my readers for your support by giving away something to you as well.

Of course I will also be Blogging about what I’m doing to increase my income and to lose weight, which will be the most valuable part of the experience, but it would be fun to also get some prizes in the process.

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