I’m mainly writing this article for my future self. I think it could be interesting to follow along while I work to achieve my various goals and improve my lifestyle. Of course, it’s not all about achievement. It’s also about happiness and enjoyment.

At the beginning of 2016, I made the new years resolution or goal to focus 100% on emotional intelligence this year. I wanted to gain a greater understanding of the emotions that I feel and those of the people around me. I also wanted to improve my social skills.

I’ve known for a while that this is an area of my life that needs work. I’ve accomplished a lot in the business/career area of my life, but my relationships have always been lacking. Even if I’ve had great friends or a great significant other, I’ve always struggled to understand them and have often times ended up hurting them in some way.

In order to improve my emotional intelligence, I started by reading books on the subject, listening to podcasts, and watching YouTube videos. This is the same way I’ve learned about business, fitness, and other skills that I’ve picked up.

The Books I Read in 2016

I’ll list out the books that I read in order, and link to my various reviews of them. There are also a few reviews that I have yet to write.

1. Jan: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
2. March: Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
3. March: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
4. April: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
5. May: How I Lost 170 Million Dollars: My Time as #30 at Facebook
6. May: Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products
7. July: Mindwise By Nicholas Epley
8. August: Trust Me I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday
9. November: Invisible Influence by Jonah Berger
10. December: 10% Percent Happier by Dan Harris
11. December: Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky
12. Need to Review: Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade
13. Need to Review: The Way of the Superior Man
14. Need to Review: The Social Skills Guidebook
15. Need to Review: Subliminal 
16. Audible book: The Game by Neil Strauss
17. Audible book: The Truth by Neil Strauss

You can see a bit of a theme with the books that I read this year. Of all of these, the ones that changed me the most were #1 Power of Habit, #2 Emotional Intelligence, #4 Influence, #13 Way of the Superior Man. Of course, they all improved me and changed me in various ways.

I’ve actually never read a book before talking about the relationship between men/women, but I found it to be fascinating. I want to incorporate more of these types of books into my list for 2017. This upcoming year, I’m going to aim to read 12 books around the core things I’m trying to get better at. I have a wish list on Amazon that I add to every time I hear a book that I think could be interesting.

In case you’re wondering how I find the time to read all of these books, basically I’ll read on the weekends or for 30 minutes in the morning.

Podcasts and YouTube Channels I Learned From

To continue my learning, I listen to podcasts at the gym. I’ll also watch YouTube videos. Here are some of the things that I learned from this year.

1. The Tim Ferriss Show Podcast
2. The Smart Passive Income Podcast
3. The School of Greatness Podcast
4. The Art of Charm Podcast
5. Gary Vaynerchuk YouTube Channel
6. RSD YouTube (self development)

While some of these books were instructional, others quite simply change my mindset and mental model of the world. I’m now going to go into some of the results I’ve experienced this year.

My YouTube Channel

This year, I launched a YouTube channel to continue to push myself into new areas. I also wanted to get better at creating videos, as I knew this would have a direct impact on my success in the future. The YouTube channel experienced very healthy growth in terms of views and subscribers, which I’ll show below.

I’m very happy with this progress. I’ve definitely confirmed a lot of my beliefs about YouTube and discovered some unique ways to promote my channel.

If you’d like to learn more about growing a YouTube channel, check out my article, which breaks down how I got my first 500 subscribers. I’ll also include a video below.

My Podcast

I’ve learned A LOT about podcasting since starting in 2015. My speaking voice has gotten so much better. I now know how to market a podcast and get downloads. I also understand the place of podcasting in your business.

I haven’t focused too much on aggressively growing my podcast this year. I got a system down to put out regular high quality episodes. If anything, I’ve been working on the core product (me and my voice) more than actually marketing the podcast. You can see my results below.

The podcast now has over 100 reviews in iTunes and I’ve had on some pretty substantial guests for my niche. If you want to learn how to speak better on a podcast, I put together a video on this topic, which I’ll show you below.

My Blog(s)

Around 2015, I launched a bunch of blogs to try to diversify my online assets. It didn’t work. It’s very hard to maintain multiple blogs at the same time, unless they are static sites. I think it makes more sense to create multiple products. This year, I mainly focused on my primary blog and *this* blog, where I experiment with content and talk about the things I find interesting.

Overall, my primary blog had similar traffic to last year. It wasn’t as much of a priority for me, since I was working on a lot of internal things, which I’ll get into later. I’m going to be focusing on growing it much more in 2017.

My secondary blog, or this blog, continued to grow. I haven’t really been taking this blog seriously, as evidenced by the fact that I realized I have to re-install google analytics on it, but I can show you the WordPress stats. I’ll share the stats for this blog below.

Views in 2014: 2,105

Views in 2015: 30,633

Views in 2016: 53,517

Basically, this blog grew by 74% in 2016 in terms of page views. In terms of my main blog, I got cited by many media publications this year, including Aol Money, Forbes, Foundrmag, Goodmenproject and more.

Products I’ve Created

I spent a lot of time writing Kindle ebooks this year. I ended up writing 4 books that I’m proud of. I also improved my existing online course.

Compared to the beginning of the year, I grew this revenue section of my business by a factor of five. I’m going to continue to put out products in the Amazon marketplace, but I’m going to experiment with ghostwriting for my next book.

Side Projects

As a heads up, most of my side projects will fail from year to year, but every once in a while, I’ll get a hit. I also learn a lot more about my target audience. This year, I launched LoFreedom, which is supposed to stand for Life of Freedom. I started a SquareSpace website, a podcast, and a YouTube channel.

The idea was to live a life of freedom and document my life, along with how other people can also make a living doing what they love. One thing that I’ve learned about new ventures is that you MUST be passioante about them. While I put in a decent amount of work, particularly with the podcast, I wasn’t passionate enough to keep it going, given all the other things on my plate.

I decided to close down the website and podcast. I’m going to keep the YouTube channel active. Honestly, I don’t care how many subscribers I get. It’s going to function like this blog, which is a testing ground.

My Business Growth and What I’ve Learned

I wrote out a lot of my thoughts regarding emotional intelligence in my articles, Life Secrets I’ve Discovered At 25! and The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship.

I think that I’ve finally realized and accepted the TYPE of entrepreneur that I am. I’ve also come to understand my strengths and weaknesses much more this year.

I used to seek the fulfillment of all my wants or needs from business. Now, I see business as a small part of a much larger life. I actually don’t think that I am inherently a “businessman,” nor do I want to be. If I flash forward 30 years and imagine myself with just a lot of money, a busy work life, and employees, that kind of existence would not make me happy. I’d just be another rich guy.

I think that I crave fame or an audience more than money. I want to grow my personal brand. I have much more of a desire to share my voice with the world. That also comes from the fact that I realized in these last few years that money doesn’t get you what you want in all areas of your life, particularly in regards to your relationship with the opposite sex (or the same sex). That realization also came from tracking my emotions and what actually makes me happy/unhappy.

This year, I grew my passive income revenue streams. At the time writing, passive income makes up 63.31% of my total revenue. The rest of the revenue is relatively passive, but it still takes some work each day to maintain.

I completed one of the Will it Fly exercises that I wanted to replicate here. The question was to imagine what it’s like in five years. Someone comes up to you and asks how you are. You say, “Amazing! Life couldn’t get any better.” What’s happening in five years that makes you respond like this? This was my answer. 

While initially, I’d probably say that “amazing!” answer because of my career, I’m slowly realizing there is more to life, so I think my answer would reflect that.

• Handle on emotions and happy/confident/positive/alive
• Clear understanding of social dynamics, so I understand every human-related thing to a high degree.
• A feeling like everything is coming together, though I don’t need it to, and that I’m being stretched past my comfort zone.
• There is a sense of humor and funniness in my life. I joke with friends and strangers.
• There are also times of extreme competition or energy like the gym, which brings me back to my fighting survival roots.
• I feel happy and confident when it comes to the female or females in my life, who is/are beautiful beyond what I ever thought possible.
• I have a thriving social circle in many different areas.
• I have conquered my own feeling of inadequacy. I feel entitled to everything I want in life.
• I have no need for a greater lifestyle, though I want one. I ideally would be making $500,000 per year. As I write that, I don’t feel like I could make more than $250,000 per year, but I am going to set a goal that stretches me.
• Don’t feel desire for kids, though good relations with existing family. Maybe kids closer to 35.
• I’m out of my head and traveling/having dope experiences.
• Breaking out in the mainstream w/book, speaking, video, and just me as a person.
• I am influencing people to a high degree via speeches or my content. I have a small tribe or feel as though I have clout.
• I’m sharing my lessons and learnings so that other people can benefit, and I feel like I’ve connected with others who are walking the same path
• I am a mature man in every sense of the word. I know who I am and feel a certain degree of confidence in any situation.
• I am healthy/athletic and doing things I’ve always wanted to try, like boxing or other arts. I also like the state of my body and am eating healthy foods.
• I am getting paid to speak and being paid on a level I deserve.
• I have 100k+ in disposable savings. By this, I mean 100k that I can “waste” on my own investing ideas. I want my primary investments to be under assets that I control that produce cash flow.

What type of core business do I want?

• 250k – 500k per year in passive income.
• I don’t want to deal with customer service.
• I want to use my skills of speaking, writing, thinking and self-education.
• I want to connect with customers on an emotional level and feel like I have a good product.
• I want to do speeches and get paid or lead gen to a product.
• I want to feel confident in my skills and what I’m teaching.
• I want to focus on results for my students and transformations.

What else do I want?

• Transform social skills and female relations and emotional intelligence.
• Continue personal development
• A spotlight on me or personal fame.
• Be able to discus and write or talk about topics that are important to me.
• Feel like I’ve “won the game.”
• Be a part of the engine of innovation.

My Emotional and Social Growth

To record my progress in this area of my life, I kept a journal. I also wrote reports surrounding key events in my life. These reports were mini-postmortems that either recorded the results of a particular social experiment or shared my emotions around some event.

A lot of these realizations are a bit too personal to share on this blog, but I will share a few general findings.

1. I tend to engage in bad habits when I feel bored, stressed, lonely, sad, or angry.
2. All negative emotions are under my control and have to do with me and my thoughts, not external factors.
3. I will sometimes “think” I am a certain way, but take actions that are consistent with another type of person.
4. I need to continue with the self development path. I get big emotional benefits out of meditation, reading, the gym, public speaking, and being silly with friends.

Tim Ferriss recommends doing an 80/20 analysis for the positive/negative emotions that you felt throughout the year. I felt most positive this year in the following situations:

• Right after I finished at the gym. I felt alive, accomplished, happy, and upbeat.
• After engaging a stranger in conversation and making them smile or laugh or forming that connection. It redefined how I viewed myself and made the world seem a tad less lonely.
• Speaking on camera, during a podcast, or even to myself (affirmations)
• Doing a wild experience that I have never done before, like Jet Skiing.
• Stretching the concept of “who I think I am.” For example, if I do something that I never thought I’d do, I get out of the concept that “oh, I’m this type of person, or that type of person.”
• Dancing and listening to music I like.
• When I got out of my head/thoughts and into my body and the present moment.
• Reading, listening to podcasts.
• Ice skating. Exercising my physical skills.

I felt the most negative this year in the following situations:

• Whenever I compare my progress to someone else in a negative way.
• When I think too much, or imagine scenarios in my head rather than just living in the present moment.
• The morning after drinking.
• When I am not productive.

There are a lot more, haha, but I’m saving those for myself. I will say that as I began to track emotions, some of the findings surprised me. For example, I tend to be happier when my phone is off and I’m not checking up on the social universe. In addition, I tend to be much happier when I wake up early and during the day time than at night. I also was surprised that I’m happier throughout the week when I have something to look forward to. As Tim Ferriss says, “90 percent of gift is anticipation of experience. Schedule and it block out ahead of time.”

My Life Going Forward

I’m going to be focusing on a lot of new changes this year. I can’t share all of them with you. In terms of my business life, I’ve changed my perspective a lot on what I’m building. I’m now working on building an educational company, not just a blog/youtube/podcast. This means more digital products and tracking the performance of my students.

I invite you to follow me on this journey by subscribing to the YouTube channel that accompanies this blog, or by subscribing to the blog below.