August 2018 Review

This is the first in a series of posts I’ll post every month summarizing my progress. We spend a lot of time in life moving forward without taking time to reflect on what we’ve done and what we’ve learned from it.

I’ll first mention the things I’ve done in the in the previous month, I’m going to cover what worked and what didn’t as it relates to personal development and understanding finances.

Next, I’ll plan what I need to do to make the upcoming month a success.

Lastly, I’ll conclude with what I learned in this past month and how I can use what I’ve learned to be better than I was before.

My August 2018

I want to start by saying this entire summer has been amazing! At the beginning of the summer, I made a podcast reviewing my 2018 goals I set for myself and where I was in relation to those goals.

At that point, I was running out of guests for the podcast and didn’t know if I wanted to continue it for the summer. Thankfully I was encouraged by Alicia, my girlfriend, to keep going. She said I should do more solo episodes (even though I hated recording solo episodes because of how long they took to record) about something my audience cares about. It made me realize that almost every young adult I ask about the most difficult part about being an adult answered that they had trouble managing their bills so I decided to cover something I wish I had learned about a long time ago: I learned the ins and outs of every bill I could think of and how to save money on them.

To go along with the free information I was giving I decided to pre-sell a book that held everything I had learned about saving money over the summer. I created a sales page and sold exactly zero copies of the Bill Management Booklet.

The good news is I didn’t waste time creating a booklet that nobody bought.

The bad news is I really felt like I’ve learned some really useful information that could help people save hundreds of dollars annually on their bills so I’ve decided to talk to my friends to see if I can prove that what I’ve learned works for someone besides myself.

The good news is my friends don’t need help with every bill, most people just need a plan to save money on 2 or 3 bills. I decided to start coaching them to save money on their bills.

Video

My biggest focus for the year includes learning how to script, shoot, and edit videos. For the first time ever I’ve had some success on YouTube creating a video about making your money grow by using a bank with a higher interest rate.

This was the first video that received engagement in the form of likes, comments, and subscribers in the first 48 hours of posting.

In my research, for YouTube, the first 48 hours often determines how a video ranks in search.

I shared the video on Snapchat, Facebook, and with my email list, maybe next time I’ll try Instagram.

What I Learned

If I’m going to coach people to reach their goals I wanted to learn how to effectively coach, that’s why I picked up the book “The coaching Habit”.

So far I’ve learned:

Decisions made with binary choices have a failure rate above 50%
Adding a 3rd option reduced chance of failure to around 30%
Inserting the words “for you” in a question makes it personal. When questions are personal people are more likely to come to the correct conclusions.

Organization

I planned on having the 10 Skills Every Adult Should Know Video Series completed by now. Recording video takes a ton of preparation. That’s why in addition to planning my weeks in advance I bought a wall calendar to make sure I accomplish the mission-critical things required to film and produce high-quality videos that will help you learn personal & financial skills.

To help get organized I bought a wall calendar to plan each week in advance. I put 2 or 3 tasks that I must get done that day that builds to a larger goal. Some tasks are directly related to this site and video creation and others such as planning to lift weights help me take care of my brain and body.

For videos specifically, it’s helped me to break videos down into 5 parts – the intro, 3 content sections, and a conclusion and film each part individually. By turning video creation into almost like a research paper it becomes more manageable for me.

What’s Next?

Helping others

I need to put myself in a position where I help more people reach their personal goals that’s why I’ve committed to helping people in select personal development and personal finance Facebook groups 2 days a week.

I hope to better understand the problems that other young adults are facing so I can create better solutions, create better videos, and interview podcast guests that better serve you.

Coaching

One of the reasons I feel like the bill Management Booklet flopped was because I had no testimonials other than my own that said what I was doing worked. That’s why I’ve selected 3 people to work with to help them save money on the bills that matter to them. Maybe I’ll turn their success stories into a podcast episode.

More Coaching

As I alluded to earlier I’ve been reading the book The Coaching Habit. The be completely honest: coaching scares me. To be a coach is almost like making a promise to get somebody from where they are to where they want to be. In a way, I feel like I can be uniquely qualified to successfully teach people what I’ve learned.

Next month I’m going to commit to giving coaching a shot. I’m not 100% sure what transformation I want to coach but it’s something I’d like to test with 1 or 2 people.

In conclusion the month of September I commit to:

Finishing at least half of the videos of the 10 Skills Series.
I’m going to help people just like you with their problems on Facebook and through coaching.
And putting more systems in place that will make me more organized and productive.