Month 16: Decade Journey
Month 16, May 2025.
$1 million USD in 5 years, 60 months, but will keep going until 120 months.
If the math is correct, I should be making $16,666 per month to hit $1m in 5 years lol. Very unrealistic but let’s hope compound interest makes it happen.
Where I am
Here is May's financial overview, a tiny bit lower than last month ($1,7k vs $1,6k), but still pretty good money. I am ever more confident this is the cash flow part of the business that is necessary to keep the lights on and motivated to do the rest, but this will not be a game changer in terms of money making. It is time based and doesn’t scale.
Do I care? No. This is cash flow.
May earnings.
What is crazy for me is to think that just 2 months ago I was at 0. So it is pretty insane I can do that while being 100% independent. Fuck full time roles and employment.
A few things that I promised I would do in May and I actually did: announced that I am full time building Decade Journey and dropped all applications for full time roles. 100% in.
I have also started posting more on linkedin, I think I did in total 3 posts, which is still low but compared to 0 it is a lot better.
I feel that I am kind of losing the “fear” of posting, my assumption is that it will probably get better and better. The good thing is that this fear is valid for all other social profiles as well, since posting more and announcing on linkedin I have also published my first youtube video.
Check it out below:
Man, let me tell you, making videos is FUCKING HARD. I completely underestimate how much work goes into making a video. This single video took me a good part of 2 weeks.
But again, I feel like this is going to be one of those things that get easier and easier with time, let’s see.
Want to hear the best part of May? Here it is:
Total earnings from Course (1 month since release)
My students
My wife (<3) was my first paid user for my Udemy course, but THREE random people bought my course. I didn’t announce anywhere, just posted on Udemy and that is it. Can you believe that?
Some random dude in Spain, India and France bought a course from a guy (me) living in Brazil. $13,65 made while I was sleeping.
This blew my mind. Remember when I said I had no expectation of making any money on Udemy?
I said these words last month:
“I have no plans on monetizing this course any time soon. The purpose is basically to “show up and do the work”. This was good training for video content creation, since I am planning on doing more of it (youtube videos, tutorials, etc).”
I totally wasn’t expecting that and it was a great surprise. I will definitely invest more time in making more courses. I already have one underway, a course about Go To Market and Lead Generation using Clay.
On another note, I have made a ton of mistakes for clients this last month which I am not proud of. I created a slack channel called: stupid mistakes.
Stupid mistakes channel
This is mostly due to not having a clear SOP (Standard Operational Procedures), making guarantees I can’t fulfill and overall stupid mistakes (that is why I created the channel lol). I will work on getting that fixed (more on that below).
I have also completely overbooked myself in the last week of May. I am now working 11 hours a day and can’t get any more clients. I am not sure if this is 100% a good thing, it definitely feels good to make more money but I have to remember this is supposed to be cashflow, it is very hard to compound service revenue. I have to allocate time to do scalable things as well.
I also continue to make my weekly goals, they are a lot bigger now, but it is a good way to keep me accountable and continue to launch and release things.
Will probably work on getting my 1st testimonial video from a customer.
I definitely need to get better at fulfillment, I am suffering a lot with that. Need a clear SOP, deliverables. I will leverage AI to do that this month. Leveraging Ai with Agents and tools (descript).
Where I am going
I really need to work on making my customer journey easier, for me and for my customers. I will work very hard and leverage AI for that.
In fact, I have already purchased Gemini and started using it to build agents that will make fulfillment for my customers a lot easier. That way I will have more time to focus on high value activities (the ones that compound and will help the 5 years plan).
The first step is making a clear SOP that delivers value, it is a lot easier said than done. This SOP will need to be VERY detailed, so I will spend some time on that and in each step I plan on having an AI agent that will help me deliver those things.
Apart from that, I have to continue sharing my journey online. I have been thinking of making this Monthly update on youtube as well. Not sure what that will look like, but that is a plan. Let 's see.
My May plan and how it went:
FINALLY launch the course on Udemy. DONE ✅
Announce that I am going full time entrepreneur again. DONE ✅
Share my first content post on linkedin. DONE ✅
Get at least 2 more clients on Upwork. DONE ✅
1st Newsletter draft for Decade Journey (maybe publish it?). DONE, not published. I am thinking of revamping this newsletter strategy. ✔️
Create my first automation for my own business (Decade Journey). DONE ✅. Automated my inbound workflow and made a video of it.
June’s plan:
Fully built SOP for all my Upwork clients (Lead Generation and List Building)
Agentic organization: fully built AI agents that will work on each part of my SOP. At least 4.
AI Agents to help with the creative part and the Compounding part of my business (audience building)
Have 1 more video published on Youtube
Get 1 testimonial video from a customer.
Rethink Newsletter (or automate it).
Ongoing / Long term projects.
Set up initial lead generation for DJ
Improve landing page for DJ (necessary to have a good cold campaign)
Get into Clay creator program
Get more Affiliate programs to generate revenue (Apify, Clay, Smartlead/Instantly, Make)
I am super excited with what I have accomplished so far. Definitely feels like a ton of progress. Let 's fucking go.
Financials
Money made: $3962,12 USD
Money spent: $81.03/year (Squarespace) + $15/m (Google Workspace) +$29 (Cursorful) + $24 (Descript)
Savings: $11,134.00 (did not touch savings yet).