Where will you be in five years?

I’ve been on holiday for the past ten days or so and while I haven’t been particularly active working online during that time, I have taken the opportunity to do a lot of reading of various newsletters that I’m subscribed to.

While I was reading them, some constant themes began to emerge. They haven’t changed much in the past twenty years. We are always faced with choices and experience is the best of teachers. What I know for certain now, is what I was told many years ago, but I had to learn it the hard way.

The choices that we’re always faced with are

• Balancing cash flow against long term returns
• “hot products” v evergreen residual income earners
• grappling with the value of time
• Finding the right balance between persistence and pig headedness
• How to market yourself as different without compromising your core values
• Maintaining work life balance.
• Positioning yourself in the marketplace

There’s probably a book waiting to be written on most of those topics and I’m not going to try and cover them all now

What I will say is that we really aren’t in a position to make an informed choice about any of these questions unless we have a clear vision of where we want to be in 1,2, 5 and maybe even 10 years.

If you aim at nothing, you’re certain to hit it.

I’m sure you’ve heard that cliche before, but as with most cliches, there’s more than a little truth in it.

Where do you want to be in five years?

I’m doing OK right now. I have regular income coming in for work I perform daily. It’s comfortable, but I don’t want to be doing the exact same thing that I’m doing now in five years’ time. I want enough financial freedom in my Autumn years to pursue my interests and to write that novel that keeps threatening to be written.

I don’t intend ever to leave Hive or the CTP community, and if I’m totally honest, I’m not thoroughly embedded in either yet. I intend to keep writing and contributing for as long as my brain continues to command my fingers to type.

There’s a synergy there that isn’t lost on me.

I look at Hive like a long term investment plan. I’ll keep contributing and building my overall Hive portfolio. Its price will rise and fall as the market dictates, but I’m not concerned about that now. I’m looking long term, Hive right now is worth about $1 (it’s been fluctuating a fair bit in recent days, but so has everything else.) I don’t know where the Hive price will go. I do know that it is a remarkable blockchain technology that remains largely undiscovered by the market. If I keep contributing, earning and staking my portfolio balance will grow. What the price does in the short term is neither here nor there to me. There will be bull and bear runs. I’m comfortable with that.

In five years’ time, I aim to have a substantial Hive portfolio. I’m betting that that portfolio will give me the freedom that I desire. I can’t say that it will, but I’m betting that the effort I’m putting in now will pay off in that five year period. There are no guarantees. There never are.

But what about today?

I’m fortunate to be able to work full time from home. Most of my income is generated as a freelance writer and I supplement this with various affiliate commissions. Some of my energies will continue to go into building my affiliate business – mainly via recommending the virtues of evergreen products – CTP, List Nerds, Leads Leap and a few other select advertising programs. There is no clash between the now and the future. I can do both.

This post will appear on my personal blog, Hive, CTPTalk, Medium and a few other outliers. It will generate more crypto for my long term portfolio and (hopefully) strengthen my relationship with my subscribers who will be informed of this post through the Leads Leap broadcast system. Then when all that’s done, I’ll broadcast it on LIst Nerds and earn a little more. This post isn’t for what it makes today, it’s an investment in my relationship with my subscriber base and in my Hive portfolio. That’s where I’m going.

What are your plans?