I want to keep an account of my 2013 New Year’s Resolutions and a bit of public accountability should help me along by posting them up to a blog.

Professional

1. Launch a profitable web based product.
   This would at least pay the mortgage. Current income from products: £0

2. Complete* a project every 3 months.
   I am terrible at focusing on things. I have many half finished projects and ideas in the pipeline. A project could be an open source project, a web app, research and customer development into an idea. Projects started but not finished: 5

Personal

1. Loose 1 stone of weight.
   Current Weight: 13 stone (ish)

2. Run a marathon.
   I would ideally aim for under 4 hours but that may be too ambitious, having said that, I have done a couple of half marathons before. not run in about 4 months

3. Complete 25 pull-ups in a row.
   I am going to use the P90x program to get in shape for this goal and I will periodically test how many consecutive pull-ups I can do. Pull-up count: 0

4. Consistently spend more quality time with my family.

5. Learn to bake bread.
   Bake a loaf a week for 3-6 months.

6. Eat only ethical meat for 1 year.
   This means no more KFC and questioning where meat is sourced in restaurants. Ideally the meat should also be organic. I’ve given it a target of one year but I really want this to be a change in lifestyle.

7. learn to drive.

8. create a new habit every month.
   The last resolution, but probably the most powerful. Remember when you were a child in the playground and the other children asked “If you were granted one wish what would you wish for”. If you were clever you would ask for unlimited wishes, this is kind of like that.
   
   I read Leo Babauta’s The power of Less ages ago. It’s a good book that I would highly recommend about forming habits. This year I have decided to use the ideas in the book to develop a habit every month.
   
   I have a few habits lined up: drink more water, create a mourning and evening routine, watch less tv, blog more consistently.

Here is some evidence that my resolutions are underway.

A white loaf proving on the window ledge.

The bootstrap report is a month by month account of my efforts as a bootstrapping entrepreneur. It will include insights and lessons from the beginning of a bootstrapper’s adventure. My aim is to give up freelance or consultancy work to be my own boss and create a lifestyle business.

It has already been a month since my declaration about the start of my year of hustle and its been very busy. Unfortunately there has not been much bootstrapping going on.

I got back from travelling and spent most of the month finding a place to live and looking for work, as a bootstrapping entrepreneur I will initially need to freelance for a bit to fund my efforts.

All is not lost though.

I am currently writing this post from a hotel room in Rio. In two days I will be back home in Manchester, but this time I want things to be different.

This year things really started to change for me, I got married at the start of the year to the love of my life and we embarked on a 7 month honeymoon around South America, a trip I had always dreamed of doing.

This is the year I stopped talking or planning and started doing!

As my wife can tell you, I talk a lot about starting a business and the various new ideas I come up with, but I never actually do anything.

I actually got married this year and went on a 7 month trip round South America. (note highlighted verbs, I am doing stuff!) I am going to use this momentum to pursue and do things I just talk about.

Actions speak louder than words.

Such a classic quote!

Rewind..

A few years ago my thinking shifted quite radically after reading the book The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. Some of his ideas really struck a cord with me. Particularly creating muse businesses to fund you lifestyle then taking mini-retirements throughout your life.

I wanted the freedom to live my life as I wanted and create a lifestyle business. But I never acted on the books inspiration and advice.

Why? Because I am afraid.

I know I can build a great product with an amazing user experience, that is what I am good at. Marketing is my problem, I don’t know how! I am afraid that I will devote all my time to creating a product and no one will view it, let alone pay for it.

This year it changed. Fear of failure to launch a product has been superseded by another greater fear. I now fear doing nothing and being average. I don’t want to be a 9-5er like everyone else.

Life is too short, it needs to be lived. I want to continue to travel and when my children are growing up I want to be there. I have too many things I want to do in life to have a 9-5 job so I need to make my own money in my own way.

As I hinted above, the main driver for me to do this is my future family. When I got married it really pushed me to think about my future. I calculate roughly that I have about one and a half years before my first child is born. By then I need to:

1. Be free from the 9-5 rat race, so I can spend time with my wife and family.

2. I also need to be financially stable, ideally up to my current level of income or more, to provide for a new family. This should all be generated from passive income steams, so not to effect my time freedom.

Time to start hustling, wish me luck!

Recently I discovered Instagram. I love how you can take pictures, apply filters and share them really easily. It’s a service I will be using a lot more of.

I want to be able to show my lovely, arty, filtered pictures on my blog. A quick Google round and I couldn’t find a Javascript widget or badge to stick in my tumblr template so I decided to make my own.