2016 Resolutions

It's February, I know. Happy New Year 2016 anyway! I hope you all formed resolutions and are working on them.

After only 19 posts in 2015 and 20 posts in 2014, SMG is getting approximately 5000 visits each month still, despite the lack of fresh posts. I have tons of material to write up and comment on, an incredible amount of material also resides in my head which I'd love to write and reflect on.

What have you got in store for yourself this year? I hope you formed some sort of resolution ranging from social, personal, professional and health to financial goals!

I'm starting a business (businesses!), finally. The past few years have been overwhelming in terms of work, personal life, personal finance, social commitments and trying to cram as much as I could in 24/7. I found myself a little behind in progressing some of my projects in 2015 because I was simply exhausted. After long days at work, social and personal commitments, I'd just fall into bed and sleep instead of going into the home office and sit at the laptop for more hours of work and even blogging.

I had ideas just bouncing off the walls and it was time to make the time and take the leap. What is the difference and why now? After spending many years learning, gaining experience and knowledge, saving up and all that jazz, I finally feel that we have the resources. That we have a substantial amount of assets and savings, that we have skills and experience that will see us through the challenges. That I have the knowledge and skills to take me through to a new level. I acknowledge that I don't know everything but I know that I can recruit and outsource intelligent and skilled people in areas where I'm deficient.

Work has been crushing in terms of how much it chewed up work and personal time. I have been working hard to implement and incorporate technology, applications and process changes to bring about efficiency and time savings. The personal and finance side of life has also been chewing up my time with respect to reviewing paperwork, correspondences, financial reports and also meetings with real estate agents, bankers and lenders. I have one more major project on the work front and once that is set up, it will be just maintenance, rather than having 1.5 years backlog of work to bring up to date.

The most difficult thing that I know is in store for me this year, will be finding the time to work on developing my side projects, which is developing two smartphone app ideas. I know very little about how to get an app off the ground and into the app stores. I only know that it will be an expensive gamble that could pay off or could burn money like the scene where Jesse is throwing money out the window in the last season of Breaking Bad. Saving $50,000 or $200,000 is no simple feat. I could be using the funds to pay off the mortgage etc. Burning through the funds on side projects that may or may not take off is something that I know that I have to do because it has been stuck in my head for so long. 

I do hope that you stay with me on this journey. I hope to illustrate the challenges, knowledge and experience that I gain through starting up my own business and also on working on app development.


2016 will be exceptionally busier than all the others of course! Thanks for reading and I hope you achieve all your goals and resolutions too =)