October 2019 Progress Report – Passive Income, Net Worth, and Thoughts

Hey guys! I want to start doing my progress reports again. It’s honestly been almost a year since my last update around December 2018…YIKES. It’s been way too long!

I’m going to treat this as more of a journal for myself so that I can recap on my progress, whether it be around my thoughts, self improvement, passive income businesses, wins, etc. This will be for anyone who’s interested in more of my personal life.

October 2019 Progress Report

Personal

I turned another year older this month. I’m kinda bummed LOL. But it’s okay. I’ve gotten some perspective from older folks about how aging is awesome because you learn so much. All these experiences we gain make us more self actualized and enlightened.

I also had a wonderful time with my loved ones:

I realize everything I had hoped for since maybe March of last year has essentially come true. I felt like that period in my life was one of my all-time lows. I was suffering heavily from anxiety, and I had just come back from travels, ended a relationship, felt like a bum with no job, no car, and I was living at my parents’ place just feeling lost overall.  I quickly turned most of that situation around within a month. Fast forward a year later, I feel like my life is really in order – I have a wonderful job, my side hustles and passions still in place, a great relationship, and I have my close friends and family near me.

But most importantly, my relationship with MYSELF has flourished. That’s probably the biggest change since last year. I made self improvement, mental health, and spirituality a huge priority. I decided to challenge my fears and do things that scared me. I’m still on my way but I feel like I’ve grown so much and learned to let go of more things I have no control over. The less my expectations are on myself and others, the happier I am.

My anxiety has not totally gone away and I still get chest pains sometimes, but it’s improved so much. I don’t feel like it is a huge hindrance to my life anymore. And instead of viewing anxiety like this demon that I need to force out of my life, I’ve learned to understand it as something I can quickly react to and calm myself down.

I’m quite happy and really have nothing to complain about. I try to practice gratitude as much as I can, and I’ve really come a long way.

Conferences

In the beginning of the month, I attended the Raising Money Summit in Denver, Colorado. To be honest, I didn’t come into it thinking I would learn a lot. I was not going because I had a goal to create real estate syndications, rather, I was mainly accompanying my boyfriend. Because I’m not completely immersing myself in the real estate space yet as I’m more into online businesses, I wasn’t as excited about the information presented. They did have talks around marketing techniques, however, the information covered was material I already knew.

I still think FinCon has been my favorite conference so far. I’m totally looking to go to more conferences especially in the blogging and marketing space. If you guys know of any good ones, holla at me :).

 

Digital Nomad Quest

Interviews

I’ve started breaking out of my shell and doing more interviews, whether it’s me asking the questions or answering them. I’ve gotten to interview awesome people like Jess Catorc, Pat Flynn, and Gillian Perkins. I’ve also interviewed some others that I haven’t released yet, but I’m excited to get those going.

Here were some interviews that featured myself:

• Interview with Jill Fox – How to Make Money While Traveling the World
• Interview with PrepAgent – Sharon Passed Her California Real Estate Exam! Tips on studying & what it’s like being a new agent
  • Oh yeah I passed the real estate agent exam in September! This is something my boyfriend and I may be pursuing part-time.
• Interview with Late Night Internet Marketing – Etsy Seller Tips – Sell More On Etsy With Sharon Tseung

I actually believe wholeheartedly that the more podcasts you get on, the more listens you’ll get on your own podcast. The more I posted and the more I got featured on, the larger my listener count:

So if you’re looking to grow your following, consistency and guest collaborations are key! Check out this post on podcasting best practices to increase your downloads count.

Revamping My Website to Get More Subscribers, Traffic, and Retention

This part has been HUGE in October (and September). I actually made huge changes on my website! Let’s compare:

versus…

This design change is just one of the many changes I made. As you can see – it also includes more email opt-ins created, a new navigation bar, a revamped “start here”, and more.

My goal with these changes was to give my users a stronger call to action. I want to make sure they get what they want from my website and understand what I’m about. The problem with my website is isn’t niched completely down. I want to guide people from start to finish with managing your finances, to building passive income, to escaping the 9-5. I’m mostly advocating a dream, I suppose. It is a blessing and a curse because I enjoy talking about all these topics, but people tend to like to go to experts specializing around ONE specific topic. In a way, I feel I’ve kind of niched down with the intersection between passive income and digital nomading, but as you can see I’m still a bit of a generalist. This path requires probably thousands of articles to show I’m an expert in the “design your life” arena, and hopefully that will make sense for people.

I’ll talk more about my path to gaining more email subscribers in future posts:

These gains definitely required the switch from Mailchimp to ConvertKit.

I’m still working on optimizing and getting more guest collaborations to increase my traffic and email sign ups. I also want to create more opt-ins for people.

Anyway, if you want to increase your email subscriber count, check out this post from Coach Carson about email list building, and sign up for ConvertKit on a free trial here.

ConvertKit has changed the game for me because it has so many more capabilities to add opt-ins, landing pages, forms, and sequences. I’m a huge advocate now and want to make more articles around it.

Hiring Writers

Maybe you’ve noticed, or maybe you haven’t – but I’ve been hiring more writers for Digital Nomad Quest. The reason is that I want the site to be a solid repository of information for financial freedom seekers, entrepreneurs, and digital nomads. I also think it can help with building traffic. It is hard for me to scale up if it’s just me writing all the articles. So I’ve been finding other finance writers and digital nomads to help me get some solid articles for the website. But I am still going to write my own articles, especially in the realm of passive income. Finding writers who have built passive income businesses is a bit harder so I’m going to try to handle that myself. I’m also still going to be creating YouTube and Podcast episodes for everyone, which will be included in my blog as well.

Finances

Passive Income

Now that I started working a full-time job and mainly work on the side when it comes to building up my brand, my passive income numbers have gone down a little bit. I’ve also been investing most of my income on myself and my businesses, so I’ve been spending what I earn from passive income. My profits have gone up a bit from this blog through course sales and affiliate marketing, but it has dropped a bit on my passive income streams that are dependent on marketplaces. I find building up my content and teaching others around stuff I know is actually way more fulfilling. I also believe this can be lucrative in the long term as well.

At the same time, my boyfriend and I are actually going to work on Amazon FBA again. I had a solid strategy and niche before, and now that we have both of us I think we can do great things. The holidays are coming up as well, so it’ll be crucial to get our numbers up around this time.

Net Worth / Nest Egg

Because I’ve taken a full-time job on top of my passive income streams I’ve been able to save A LOT of money. My net worth has gone up significantly, and because I have multiple income streams I was able to save around 88% of my full-time income take home paycheck while living well. I calculated a one year time frame after I started working to get this estimated number. My rental property has gone down a tiny bit in value, unfortunately, but I believe it will increase in the future. Regardless, I’m still happy about my improved net worth.

The crazy thing is I achieved this while investing in workshops, conferences, and educational material. I’ve gone to 4-6 conferences within the year…and this requires accommodations and flights on top of the event tickets. I’ve also been investing in writers and editors for my videos for many months now, which require an extra few hundred per month. On top of that, I auto pay my parents a few hundred a month as a gift/to show my appreciation. I also eat out every day (I still have that bad habit) – and meals in the Bay Area are reaching $15+ per meal now. Aside from all these expenditures, I don’t really shop much so I still believe I practice frugality. I’m just a believer in investing in myself and my businesses, as well as investing in the things that bring joy to my life. But mostly, my large savings amount was achievable through building passive income businesses. Having more income coming in means more I can save.

I don’t say all this to brag. I mean, I definitely don’t feel like I have the right to brag anyway. I just want to show you guys what’s possible when you manage your finances and build multiple income streams.

If you’re interested improving your finances check out this Managing Your Finances Bootcamp I created.
And if you’re interested in getting started with passive income, check out my Passive Income Starter Toolkit.

Conclusion

Yay! I’m happy I created this hefty post about my October 2019 progress report, and I’m excited to do more of these monthly recaps. It’s always nice to look back on my progress and feel proud of myself for my personal improvements as well as my accomplishments. If you have any feedback, let me know in the comments below!