The Million Dollar Mission (and why...)

Probably one of my greatest strengths is my ability to be self critical and self aware. I'm able to be pretty honest with myself when I self audit. I like improving myself and I believe that most weaknesses, can be overcome with determination and hard work.

That said, I would say the biggest challenges I've faced in my life have come from things I really should have been more self aware about, sooner. Like money for example.

I have a PhD in Doing It Wrong when it comes to money.

I've always earned a decent wage, and my bank were always happy to give me more credit. In fact once upon a time those incredibly helpful people over at my bank used to just raise my limit without me asking. They used to like to take care of me like that! On multiple occasions I failed the phone banking security process because they would ask me what my limit was and when I'd tell them, I'd discover that in fact I had an extra one or two thousand euro limit that I didn't know about.

At 21 years of age, life was good! I could buy the things I wanted with this free money and anytime a sun holiday or snowboarding trip came up I could just save for a month or two and pay for the trip, no problem.

I ate out, dated girls, drank lots of beer and cocktails in expensive bars and ultimately had a pretty good time for my twenties. Money was never really anything more for me than something that allowed me to do the things I wanted to do and I never understood how some people wanted to accumulate massive amounts of it. I wrote their behavior off as being greedy.

So I only really ever saved money when I had something I wanted to buy that I couldn't afford from one paycheck, or from that wonderful "free money" those lovely folks at my bank would give out all the time.

Which worked okay when I was in my 20's. I'm moderately smart, very ambitious and have a great work ethic, so I was always willing to work my butt off. Besides every year I was also getting a raise or earning more commission so what could possibly go wrong? Right? Well the world could have a global financial melt down, I could lose my job and not be able to find a new one I guess....naaaa that would never happen...oh wait, well yeah, okay, there was Jan 2010...

Fast forward to today, 01 January 2018, and all these years later the financial side of my life is no better off than it was in 2010. Don't get me wrong, I've still had an amazing life during those years. I've traveling the world as a digital nomad, I've lived in maybe a dozen countries, set up a bunch of different companies and had a decent degree of success in what I've applied myself to.

However my relationship with money hasn't changed at all.

I don't own any property and my savings account currently has a balance of zero. I'm living abroad in a situation where I work or I starve. It's a good thing I have a high risk tolerance and plenty of fat stores.

Each year for the last 8 years I've taken time in December to mull over the year that's been and to create a list of goals for the coming year based on how I'm feeling about everything the previous year has held. Every year I've crushed an average of 3 of the items on my goals list for the year. I have no idea why 3 is the magic number and yet, time and again it seems to be the max ceiling for one years worth of goal crushing for me. It doesn't matter how many items were on the list. Some years its been 4 and one year I had 10 different things. The outcome was always the same. 3 items could be considered completely crushed.

So this year, I've decided to do something different. I've decided to go super macro with my goal setting and just create a list with one goal on it:

Make 1 million USD in one year.

That's it. Simple. Right?

Okay, I'm willing to concede that this is easier to write down than to accomplish.

However as everyone who has ever worked with a coach of any kind knows, in order for a goal to be a good one, and for you to crush it, the goal needs to be S.M.A.R.T.

So lets look at how SMART my goal is:

Specific: I think its very specific. There will be no doubt at the end of the year if I have achieved this goal or not.
Measurable: Check!
Achievable: We have dipped our toes into the waters of grey area now. Is it possible to make 1 million dollars in one year? Or a better question: is it possible for ME to make a million dollars in 1 year? Another post on the how of this is in the works right now.
Relevant: I think in relation to my life this is remarkably relevant.
Time Limted: Yes. I have one year.

So, essentially there's really only 1 point in 5 above that has a cloud of ambiguity hanging over it for this to be a super SMART and crushable goal. You might also take the maths view here and say that means I have an 80% chance of totally crushing it. And in fact it's probably closer to 90% because the A is a sort of middle of the road value, rather than a hard no. So mathematically it's a sure thing. I mean, if someone told you that you had a 90% chance of dying in a car crash if you drove somewhere on Tuesday, I'm going to go ahead and guess you'd do your shopping on the Monday if you even remotely believed what they were saying. It'd be the SMART thing to do!!

Ok, so I hope its obviously I'm just having a little bit of fun with this.

What is this all about and why do I really want to do it?

It can't JUST be about making money. Right? Correct. This is an experiment of sorts.

I want to answer the question: Is it possible to make 1 million USD from basically nothing except for brain power and determination?

But on both a personal level and a practical one, this is bigger than that. I don't just want to sell a million dollars worth of products or services. I intend to learn about wealth, what is required to create the kind of wealth that will allow me to retire young and free me from ever needing to borrow money again. I want to speak to people who are much smarter than I am about how they think I should make the money and what I should do with it after it's made.

Honestly, I have no idea if I can achieve this, and that's a little scary, but if I can, then definitely you can.

It has been proven to me time and time and time again, that what I focus my time, brain power and energy on is what manifests itself in my life. This challenge will give me the platform to keep me focused on making progress, and I hope give you a roadmap to start your own challenge.

Most importantly, the expression about happiness being a journey and not a destination I think is transferable here.

I may not achieve my goal in one year. However measuring this challenge as being successful based solely on me answering the questions above, would be missing the point slightly.

By going through this journey and by talking to smarter people* than myself about investments and the mindset required to make this kind of money, I am certain that my intelligence around money and how I might grow my net worth, will dramatically improve in a way that I'm embarrassed to say is long overdue.

So the only question for you is, do you want to join me on this journey and in doing so learn how you might answer this question for yourself in your own life? Any thoughts on who I should speak to for wealth creation advice?