Today I wanted to write a little about some major changes I will be making in my business in 2019

 

Before I jump into the things I will be doing differently I want to talk about the state of my business as of the end of 2018. 2018 was a pretty good year. I made a net profit of around $440,000. Averaged out that’s just over $1,200 per day, every single day of 2018. Now this was not my best year since I went full time in my online business back in 2014, but it for sure was a good year. Nearly half a million dollars in profit is a lot of money after all.

I made this money primarily in two different ways. By selling software which I personally create and promoting other peoples software as an affiliate. Of the two, selling my own software is for sure the most profitable. I made $154,000 in affiliate commissions, and another $20,000 or so in performance bonuses for a total of around $174,000 as an affiliate marketer (that’s actually kind of a low year). This means that around $288,000 of my 2018 income came from selling my own software.

Since I write my own software, and do my own support, selling my own software, using the launch model takes up a lot of my time. I am constantly sitting at my desk, living a solitary and sedentary life style. In fact I remember when I got my new phone a couple of months ago, a week after I had it it rang a notification from the Samsung health app telling me that I had my most active day of the week that day. 18 minutes of activity, I walked a total of 1900 steps that day! Yikes! The fact that Im constantly coding, doing support, reviewing products, requires me to sit at home, at my desk all the time, and has been leading to physical and psychological problems.

For years I have been saying “I want out”. But thats not really what I want. I dont want out of the IM business. I want a change. I have been wanting a change for a while and every year, around the end of the year, I start talking about how “Next year Im going to do things differently”. But I never do. Every year I spend hour after hour each day writing new software, doing support, and testing hundreds of products that I might promote. Well this year its time to actually do it. Its time to change, my body says so.

In the last 6 years I gained quite a bit of weight, about 40 lbs in fact. I have also noticed that I get tired a lot more than I use to, I have less energy and I am a lot more easily irritated (though I have always been kind of an asshole). But this past month, in December things changed and I really have to look at if I want to continue the way I have been.

It all started the Saturday after Christmas. I was in the house, with the kids, it was about 10pm at night and I was feeling like crap. I had been feeling pretty bad all week actually. But that day I was feeling particularly bad. The kids where watching a movie and I, of course, was sitting at my desk coding. At first it felt like a bit of heart burn, then it got worse, quickly. Now Im no super tough guy but I had an .. err interesting youth, and honestly I am no stranger to pain, but after about 10 minutes it felt like someone stuck a kitchen knife into my chest and I was having trouble breathing. It felt like someone had their hand over my mouth and was just letting a little air in. At that point I called my ex-wife, asked her to come get the kids and take me to the hospital.

By the time I got there the pain had gone from a intense stabbing to a tolerable throbbing but of course when I described my symptoms their first thought was a heart attack. Fortunately I did not have one. But the doctor did suspect that I had a heart issue so he asked me to stay the night. I declined and said I would follow up with my regular doctor after the new year.

My family doctor, given my symptoms, state of health, and life style also suspects a heart issue, so he ordered several things. A bunch of blood tests, a heart stress test, and a chest monitor that I have to wear for 5 days. The last was because even though I have not gotten pain as bad as that one night, I am still getting near constant, sporadic chest pain. His thinking is a partial blockage in one of my arteries.

Today I got my blood test results back. Not so good. Triglycerides = very high, Cholesterol = high (up 38 points from a test done just 7 months ago), Blood glucose level = above acceptable range, but not high enough to be diabetic yet. I got the results from a nurse who called me and we spent about 30 minutes talking about the medication that I am getting prescribed and about some things I can personally do to help as well. What is interesting is that the underline cause of most of my issues is that I am not active enough, and a major action step in for correcting each issue is exercising more. Is IM killing me? No that’s excessive, but sitting at my computer all day every day coding, reading, writing, reviewing products, and doing support is for sure detrimental to my health.

Because of this its time to do things differently: and I am going to do this in two major ways.

The first way is doing less of what I have been doing. I’m always going to code, I love to code, but I am going to do it a lot less. What this means is I am going to be creating a lot less products, doing a lot less launches, and focusing on having a smaller number of ever green long term products that I not only sell in the IM / JVZoo launch space but also outside of that space as well. This is why, in case you where wondering, I will not be doing agency access anymore.

Beyond that I will be doing less reviews. Does this mean I will stop doing affiliate promotions? No. I will still be an affiliate, I will still do my best to help people find products that can be of value to their business, but I am going to be doing it a lot less. Specifically Im only going to be promoting products that offer a really super awesome value. Yep, I just upped the bar for getting “Brett Rutecky Approved”. This I hope will also have a side effect, at least for some people, of enticing them to only buy quality products that actually need in their business and not just things that looks shiny and have a great sales page.

Second I am going to spend more time focusing on coaching and helping people build up their own internet marketing business. Coaching is something I dabbled with a little in 2018 but its not something that I really focused on. In 2019 it will be a major focus in my business.

In the years I have worked in this space I have noticed that while most people want an easy push button way to make money (which does not exist) what they really need is some quality guidance from an experienced person in this space to help them. Well I got a bit of experience, and by doing coaching I can not only make some money (I do have to eat) but I can also help people build a profitable business by giving them what they actually need: guidance not another software sitting on their hard drive.

2019 should be an interesting year, its a year of change for me. It will probably be a less profitable year, but I really do not care about that, even if I make half as much in 2019 as I did in 2018 I will still have earned more than most people do in several years. With these changes my goals are not financial, they are instead:

1: Spend less time at my desk and have more time to be active, which is good for my health.
2: Provide a few long term, constantly updated, quality tools for people in both the MMO space, and outside of it as well.
3: Promote only the best of the best product launches as an affiliate
4: Spend some of my free time coaching students and helping them build up their own profitable business

… if I make less money trying to reach these goals, so be it, money is not everything.

 

 

 A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.