I’m writing this late on Friday evening, feeling incredibly relaxed.

But it wasn’t always this way.

I used to be riddled with anxiety just over a year ago as the weekends approached. I could not help but jump back on the computer “for a few minutes”, before becoming immersed inside the mental prison I had built for myself at my agency.

What changed?

A couple of things.

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1. I reverse-engineered my goals to focus on the type of life I wanted to live from my business, not to be focused on an arbitrary amount of money (which would just change once I arrived at that destination, anyway)
2. I started focusing on what I could control rather than what I could not. Example: I can control showing up each day and speaking to clients, doing marketing and being kind to my team to motivate them. I cannot control Gmail changing its algorithm, Apple’s new privacy updates or AI developments. I think about them, but they’re all out of my control so I don’t stress about them too much as others have to deal with the same challenges.

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As an example of how I think and approach both of these:

1: What I want from my business

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• To go to the gym when I want to
• To not compromise any special moments I want to spend with Max for monetary gains which do not increase my family life quality proportional to the sacrifice
• Enable me the financial freedom to travel several times per year, eat great food and live in an amazing home connected to nature – all within reason.

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2: To achieve, this, I need to:

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• Be a true expert at solving one specific problem
• Provide a great service around this
• Consistently market myself to attract customers I can help each day

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That’s honestly it.

And to be fair, this is quite an expensive list of ‘wants’ given the general cost of living in the UK these days.

But I’m already living all of these to a relatively good level, and doubling my income would not double my happiness, I’m certain of that. So I’m trying to spend time being content and at peace with my life, and achieving multi-dimensional success with my health and relationships.

This starts and ends with learning to fall in love with the journey each day and gratitude. It’s one of the most cliche things you hear and hardest to follow in practice when you have an active mind, but it’s the state we all must move towards to find fulfilment.

My first-ever boss and mentor once said to me: “Adam, life is a game of points. Each time you’re happy, you gain a point; when you’re unhappy, you lose one. At the end of your time, whoever has accumulated the most points wins.”

It’s so simple but true. Why live in a state of misery for months, even years on end, only to reach a goal and then set a new one and repeat the process? Fall in love with the process itself, and then you’re winning.

It’s all easier said than done, of course. But the best way to do this? I’ve found it’s being very clear over your inputs each day. This week, I’ve been focusing on:

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• Waking up before my family, enjoying a morning coffee in silence (with the cat!) whilst reading 10 pages of a book
• Hitting the gym (or work) before everybody wakes up
• Getting 3 core tasks done each day
• Spending quality time with Max (no phones/T.V) after work OR if I want to, during the day

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I want to tweak this routine slightly to include a couple of other important things (relationship building + more time spent cooking) but overall, this routine would make me content living it 90% of the year.

This week, I had two 1-hour calls with long-term friends. Both are incredible people and the conversations were deep. One of them (also a fellow entrepreneur) seemed riddled with residual stress and anxiety about his frustrations with his business not being at the level he wanted it to be. When we spoke about zoning out, he talked about how looking back just a few years ago, he could not be happier about where he currently was and how he had achieved his goals.

“Why aren’t you content then?” I asked him.

His answer was the typical entrepreneur's curse: the goalposts had changed and he was frustrated he wasn’t moving fast enough to move to the next level.

I’ve noticed this pattern in my fellow men (especially those of us in our 30s) who feel as though the walls are closing in on their opportunity to achieve a level of success (financially) that only the top 0.001% probably achieve. We want to be young enough to enjoy what is quite frankly, an unrealistic goal.

There’s nothing wrong with aiming for the absolute pinnacle of the top 0.001% of achievers. But mathematically speaking, we all can’t get there. But most of us have the ability to be in the top 1% of life’s “achievers”, and I think that’s a phenomenal outcome that will enable most of us to look after our health, our immediate families and experience lots of great times with people we love. Will exponential financial growth at this point correlate with a proportional increase in happiness? I’m unconvinced. But what do I know? I’m nowhere near there (yet) 🙂

Changes to the Creator Journeys Podcast

Last year, I started a new podcast called Creator Journeys.

The focus was to interview world-leading creators and to go deep on the strategy behind their approach to content creation and monetisation.

I was fortunate enough to interview some incredible entrepreneurs who really dropped some amazing insights.

But after getting through 7 episodes, I’ve realised that I just don’t want to spend my spare time focused on talking more about Content.

My questioning started to become repetitive, and the answers coming back across from the guests was equally as predictable.

It turns out that the formula to go ‘viral’ or achieve success is relatively simple:

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• Be a genuine expert in your field and successfully anchor your content to
• Be consistent with posting
• Be somewhat controversial

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That’s about it, and if you’re lucky enough, you’ll get picked up by the algorithm and achieve exponential growth.

OK, it’s not that simple, but that’s primarily the ingredients for success.

That's it for this week!

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