I want to accomplish a lot this year. 2018…I’m back in the US after spending 3.5 years overseas with my wife who is teaching there. I’m in the last leg of my master’s degree, which is starting to heat up because of all the requirements I have to complete. My main goal is to make money…actually making money and cracking the 6-figure barrier. Not that I have ever been close to it. The closest I’ve gotten is 53k at a job I hated and eventually left (man that felt good). I’ve tried (sorry Yoda) my hand at a few businesses including real estate and have lost just about everything I had.

I wasn’t ready for what it takes to make money outside a traditional job. I fell into the romance of being an entrepreneur and it turned out to be much different than what I thought.

The biggest thing I learned was you have to be mentally prepared for any and everything that can happen…good or bad. A person has to have a certain amount of mental strength that can carry them over what could be a few years of hard work and little to no compensation. Yes I’ve head and read all these stories of people becoming successful and it not taking long for them to have success. Another thing I learned was some of those overnight success stories took a few years. For those that did have great success in a short amount of time…they were an anomaly. For most of us, it will not work out that way.

I’ve begun (well I started months ago) to train my mind to be mentally tough. It’s something I have to do everyday, to ingrain it and to keep focus. I’m doing visualizations the way jack Canfield as instructed, I’m reading one specific chapter a day from, “You Were Born Rich” by Bob proctor and I’m reading my goals everyday to guide me in what I need to do.

I’m scared. I’m scared I will not reach my goals. I am scared I will find out I do not have what it takes to accomplish the great things I want. Do you ever feel that way? I can be objective in why I have not accomplished my goals. I didn’t believe myself, I didn’t believe in my abilities, and I was a quitter. The last one really hurt me the most when I did a self-analysis of why I’m where I’m at. It sucks donkey balls to say the least.

Also, I found out I’m not one of the people who functions well when there is little money around. This is one of the reasons I decided to go back for my master’s degree. I wanted to do something I at least enjoyed and would pay me decent money so can I build a cushion while doing things on the side to put myself in a better financial position.

I signed on to do marketing with a consulting company. They focus on attitude, sales and leadership training for Fortune 500 companies. My role is to generate interest in what the consulting company does and get referred into a Fortune 500 company. Once there I pass the referral to the consulting firm’s sales team to close. This gives me the chance to network and build sales skills. I haven’t gotten any referrals yet, but I making strives. Just one referral could turn into an ongoing 5 to 6-figure payday. Its not easy to do referral marketing as I get a lot of “no’ and no callbacks.

But I write all this to say I have a big financial goal this year and I hope you have a big goal as well. It doesn’t have to be a financial one, but I hope whatever it is you are going after, I hope you are going after it with everything you got. One of the things I did not do in the past was chip away everyday at my goal. I am committed to doing this, no matter how slow things seem to be going and no matter how much pain I might feel from seeing nothing happen.

Good luck in our goals in 2018.

Thavius