HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2020 IS OVER! With it being the beginning of 2021, I thought I’d discuss something slightly different. To that end, today’s topic is No New Year’s Resolutions! If you’ve already made a New Year’s resolution, cancel it and start anew. Why? According to an article in Forbes, 80% of resolutions fail.

Why do they fail? They fail because they’re a wish, a dream, or a hope without an associated plan to achieve them. If you want to achieve something specific in the new year, let’s find another way to approach it.

In my experience, if you want to accomplish something new, you need two things, sometimes three:

• The knowledge – the know-how, the plan, the blueprint
• The self-discipline – the ability to follow the initial plan and the follow-up, if follow up is required
• Money – sometimes is takes some money

Hypothetical Example – Unicycle
Let’s look at a hypothetical example. It’s only kind of a hypothetical because I’ve always wanted to learn to ride a unicycle. Maybe writing this blog will inspire me to do it.

The Knowledge
The first problem with me learning how to do this is I don’t have the knowledge. Where do I start? Is there such a thing as a unicycle with training wheels? I don’t know.

Since I’m lucky enough to be alive in the best time on earth to be alive (TODAY), I go to YouTube and find a guy who has videos on how to learn to ride a unicycle, or I get on the internet and find a woman who gives unicycle lessons.

In review, I didn’t initially have the knowledge to accomplish this new task, but I was able to secure it from a third party fairly quickly.

The Self-Discipline
To get proficient at anything, I have to practice; I need the self-discipline to do it regularly. Let’s say I don’t have a ton of self-discipline. I’m taking the lessons but not practicing. What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I do the work? Because I will let myself down. I won’t hold myself accountable for the goals I set for myself. Why? It’s what Jim Rohn called mysteries of the mind.

This is where a coach or an accountability partner comes in. I could hire a coach to check in with me every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. to see if I did my weekly unicycle practice. Or I could find another unicycle enthusiast, relative, or friend who will do this for free. For some reason, call it human nature, I am way more likely to practice riding the damn unicycle every week when I know that every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m., my coach will ask me if I practiced, and she’s going to chastise me if I didn’t. And the coach or accountability partner doesn’t have to know anything about unicycling. They just need to put that peer pressure on me.

In review, I didn’t initially have the self-discipline and still don’t, but I supplemented my deficiency by getting the help I needed. I kind of outsourced the self-discipline piece.

Money
Doing all this will cost me some money, the money for the unicycle and gear, the money for the lessons, and the money for the coaching. The cold, hard truth is that I always find the money for the things that are important to me. If my car required a new transmission tomorrow or needed to be replaced altogether, I would find the money. If I had young children who needed braces, I would find a way to pay for them.

In review, there’s no magic answer here. If I want to know what’s important to me, all I have to do is look at where I’m spending my money. I may just find that I’m spending money on things that are less important to me than learning to ride a unicycle, and I may need to adjust some things.

The Real Thing – Growing A Blog
Why is The Prolific Investor doing an article about New Year’s resolutions and goal setting? One, because it’s the beginning of the new year; it’s what people do and think about at the beginning of a new year. Two, big surprise here, I have some personal experience to share with you related to this topic.

My mission at The Prolific Investor is to improve Americans’ financial lives. I do this by challenging the Conventional Wisdom when it comes to money, personal finance, and investing and by educating people on the incredible advantages of Alternative Investments over Conventional Investments.

To achieve this mission, I have to produce quality and valuable content and get it in front of LOTS of people to have an impact. Let’s go back to the three things I need to accomplish this mission: knowledge, self-discipline, and money.

The Knowledge
I have the knowledge when it comes to investing and Alternative Investments. Over the last twelve years, I acquired it by aggressively increasing my financial education and taking action on that knowledge.

What I don’t have is the marketing knowledge to grow a blog like The Prolific Investor. I naively thought when I started this blog in November of 2018 that if I published it, they would come. I WAS WRONG! I know this approach has worked for some people, but it hasn’t worked for me. To that end, I have been searching for about a year for the right person or company to help me with this marketing piece. In October of 2020, I stumbled across a company that I believed could do the job.

If you’ve been following my site, you might have noticed that it has been completely overhauled over the past few months. I now have a professional website, a marketing plan, and a coach, Alana. She calls me every Tuesday at noon, and we go over the progress I made on last week’s action items and assign new ones according to my Tower of Power Business Plan.

The Self-Discipline
I happen to think I’m a guy with quite a bit of self-discipline. While that may be true, my coach is getting way more out of me than I typically get out of myself! She has a charming and non-offensive way of telling me, Chris, you’re not working hard enough. Alana refers to it as a Jedi mind trick. When I hired Alana’s company, I hired them for the knowledge, not the self-discipline piece. The focus and work-management tools I’m gaining along the way are a HUGE BONUS and are benefiting me in all areas of my life.

Money
As I said before, I have no magic answer here. My blog and mission to improve the financial lives of Americans are important to me, so I found the money.

Wrapping It Up
To wrap this up, goal setting and achievement are a whole science unto themselves. This is just my straightforward approach to what it takes to accomplish something new, whether it be riding a unicycle, growing a blog, getting in shape, losing weight, or retiring early. There you go; you knew I had to mention something related to finances.

If you made a New Year’s resolution, ditch it and instead make a goal and start identifying the sources of the knowledge, the self-discipline, and money it will take to reach that goal. Maybe you don’t need all three. Perhaps you have the money and the knowledge; you just need a taskmaster to keep you on track. Maybe you have the money and incredible self-discipline; all you need is knowledge. Whatever the case may be, just get started and make 2021 your best year ever.

If you liked this article, please subscribe and comment.  If you didn’t like it, let me know that as well. I’m always learning and need to know when I’m off the mark.

Remember, when you make better financial decisions, someday you can make work a choice instead of a necessity.