Reading Time – 8 minutes

I’ve mentioned several times in the past that my goal is to make 2024 the best year of my entire life. I’ve also analyzed how this is going to be difficult since I’ve had many fantastic years in my life.

We’re now past the first quarter of 2024 so this is my update on how things are going so far, what is working, what is not working, how I’m structuring everything, and what my plans are for the rest of the year.

As always, I focus on 12-week “years” rather than calendar years. These aren’t even “quarters” to me. They are actually years. Internally, I don’t even think of 2024 or 2025, since these are 52-week years and not my 12-week years. I even have my own naming system for my years. I take the 52-week name of the year (2024) and add a single digit corresponding to the quarter of that year (1-4). This way I don’t even need to think about quarters.

So to me, the year that just ended was called 20241 and I’ve just started my new year 20242. 20243 will start in about 11 weeks.

First, the good news. Here are the improvements I’ve made to my life in the last “year,” some of which I’ve reported in prior blog articles and some that I have not:

• 100% delegated all of my personal tasks to a personal assistant here in Dubai. He now follows an entire “Household SOP” that covers all of his to-do items. He’s usually over at my place about 3 times per month plus he runs errands for me. This instantly freed up several hours per week of my time and I can now focus on more important tasks.
• Delegated 50% or so of my remaining SW work to various people in my companies, which has freed up even more time. This includes my entire email. Before, my team would route emails, now they actually answer all of the emails with extremely rare exception. I’m trying to 100% remove myself completely from email. I’m almost there.
• Delegated about 70% of my coaching work to new and existing coaches.
• Made several changes in my personal life which has freed up both time and money for me and will free up even more in months to come. Those are more relevant for my other blog so I’ll discuss them over there at some point.
• Converted 85% of my business expenses and 95% of my personal expenses to high-end credit cards that give me tons of frequent flyer miles for purchases. Whenever I charge something to these cards, the funds from my active checking account (business or personal) are moved to a “holding” account where they are ignored (I pretend those funds are gone) and when the credit card bills come due every month I pay it in full from that account. I have quickly racked up almost half a million frequent flyer miles and will get much more. This makes almost all of my international travel “double free” meaning my international travel was already “free” in that the business services I sell pay for all of it, but now it’s “double” free because the frequent flyer miles pay for my travel. I should have done this a long time ago but I’ve always had an aversion to debt and credit cards which I’ve discussed in the past.
• Re-started my new weightlifting program that now accounts for the fact I’m over age 50 which requires a completely different way of lifting weights. This is to avoid the injuries I suffered last year. With this new program, I should never be injured lifting weights ever again.
• I have started saltwater fasting every week, something I’ve been trying to do for years but couldn’t because I got too hungry, usually never lasting past about 6 pm before I had to eat something. Last week I fasted for 55 hours; an amazing feat for me and a huge victory. As I type these words I’m going for an 80-hour (three-day) fast. If I pull that off I’m going to fast three days per week until I get down to my goal weight… which will happen very quickly. Very excited about this.
• Completely finished the updated version of my book, The Unchained Man, which is my opus and the most important book I will ever write.
• Joined two high-end coaching programs for people at my income level. I’m not going to say what they are because they may not work; I’ll talk more about them in a few months if/when I see results.
• Started running YouTube ads again which I had on temporary pause.
• Started a new Instagram marketing funnel (in addition to the one I’m already doing).
• Got a colonoscopy, something I have been foolishly putting off for several years, and they removed one polyp that was benign but would have become cancerous and would have likely killed me in 10 years or less. (This is exactly why my grandpa died in his early 60s.) This means this one procedure effectively added at least 25 years to my life. Win.
• Since I can’t go see movies anymore (because 99% of today’s Western movies are garbage), I’ve replaced that with going to the local planetarium (Dubai has a fantastic one, as you might imagine). I always loved these as a kid and the graphics and technology they have today for these things are far beyond what I saw as a kid in the 1980s. They’re way better than movies, far more educational, and far more thought-provoking. And, in Dubai at least, it’s way cheaper than seeing a movie. I go at least twice a month now and love it.
• 100% fixed the inflamed tendons in my arms from my weightlifting injury last year. I’m back to full mobility. (Now I just need to get back to full strength).
• Starting getting a massage once a week. Health benefits to this are enormous, especially anti-aging ones (increased blood flow, increased mobility, reduced odds of injuries, etc). And it feels good.

So, not a bad start. However, it could have been better. Here are the problems I’ve experienced in my last 12-week year:

• My main focus for last “year” and this “year” is to spend several hours a week optimizing all of my sales funnels which is one of the two most important uses of my time (other than creating content). I am still not doing this because I still haven’t delegated everything I need to delegate. This is really pissing me off.
• I failed to implement a daily 30-minute stretching routine that I very badly need to start. On any given day, I need to work out at the gym, meditate for 20 minutes, do my 30-minute stretching routine (which is not done at the same time you work out), and read. This is on top of getting my 8.5 hours of in-bed sleep time, plus my very active personal life, having time with my wife (on the phone or in person), putting in 10-11 hours of work plus taking breaks, plus doing human stuff (eat, go to the bathroom, shower, etc). I still don’t have time to do all of this every day, and at the moment, stretching and meditation are taking a back seat, which is unacceptable.
• I’ve only lost about 9 pounds from the weight I gained during my long trip to Mexico in 2023 while I was injured and couldn’t exercise. My weight should be much lower right now.
• I can’t get into specific details about my financial life but there are some banking structures I’m trying to get set up for my Five Flags that are critical to get done for my taxes. These should have been done by last December or January at the very latest, and they are still not done due to several reasons outside of my control, mostly because of the complexity of what I’m doing. Worse, finding help doing this stuff is difficult because of the complex nature of it all.
• The colonoscopy procedure made me catch some kind of weird cold that completely wiped me out for almost a week. Even as I type these words I have a mild pounding headache that requires focus to ignore.
• For the first time in my life, at age 52, I’ve started to notice that my skin doesn’t look as good as it should. It’s pretty good to get to age 52 before any skin problems become noticeable (most people I went to high school with, including those who are a few years younger than me, have such horrible skin they look like they are 15 years older than me), but this is just another new problem that’s going to take time, focus, and cash away from my other priorities to resolve. Grrrr. If you are confused as to why I care how my skin looks, refer to my other brand Alpha Male 2.0. (And if you think my skin looks good in YouTube videos, thank you, but the problems I’m talking about are not ones you can see on a video of me with the camera several feet away from my face.)
• I had some shake-ups with some of my team members in the last three months due to the big changes I made to some of my companies in 2023. This caused several delays in my other projects.

So with all of the above wins and failures, here’s what my plans are for 20242, my new current “year”:

• Completely delegate 100% of all admin, technical, most managerial, most financial, and other non-marketing, non-content tasks from my work. This is going to be very, very messy initially. Doesn’t matter; once it’s done it’s going to transform my entire work life for the better.
• Optimize all of my funnels and set up SOPs where I closely monitor and adjust/tweak these funnels at least twice a week.
• Continue with my weekly, fast for three days, eat correctly for four days (with one moderate cheat day which is okay when you’re fasting that much) system until I get down to my goal weight. Finally.
• Hit my income targets for all of my important income streams.
• Re-integrate regular meditation, stretching, and reading into my daily routine.

20241 was decent, but now that I have a better foundation 20242 will be even better. Then it’s off to Paraguay where I’ll spend all of 20243. Can’t wait!

To have your question featured here where I will write an entire article addressing it, click here. You will always remain anonymous.

Question of The Week

What If Consulting Clients Don’t Pay Me?

G.D. Writes:

How to deal with non-payment on consulting? In the cases where a client is supposed to pay monthly in exchange for continuous help, or he misses the last payment after the job is done.

What I usually do is ask twice after the payment is late, if in a week I don’t receive the payment, I block him on all platforms and his access to files regarding the consulting.

Those who don’t pay later remain blocked, but should I accept back those who pay after that? or should I follow another plan to get my payments?

Never, ever do “upon completion” consulting contracts. That’s your biggest problem. Never say to a client “Pay me X now and Y when I’m done.”

No, no. God no.

Instead, you must always do date-based billing for consulting projects. So you would say, “This project will be three months, from July to the end of September. So you’ll pay me 50% on July 1^st and then I start working. Then you’ll pay me the remaining 50% on August 25^th. The project will be complete on or before September 30^th.”

(I realize you can’t do that if you’re offering a tangible deliverable, like making a website for someone, but that’s not consulting.)

If it’s a monthly retainer, what you’re doing is fine; two clear warnings then the client is cut off after a week if you get zero communication.

Yes, always offer payment plans for late-paying clients if they report they’re having trouble paying (assuming everything else in the client relationship is okay). Getting some money is always, always better than getting zero money, so I always try to be nice about this when this happens. Do NOT agree to any NEW consulting contracts or agreements with this client though; this is not an ideal client.

HOWEVER, you need to track how often this is happening. I very rarely have consultant contracts where the client literally never pays me. It’s probably less than 3%. So if this is happening more than about 7-10% of the time, the problem is you. Maybe you are attracted to shitty clients, maybe you’re desperate and will take anyone with a pulse, maybe you’re doing something that rubs clients the wrong way. I don’t know what you’re doing but you’re doing something wrong if this is happening that often. Be aware of this, and remember that everything that happens to you in your life is your fault, especially if it’s a recurring problem.

Leave your comment below, but be sure to follow the Five Simple Rules.