90 days can change the course of your whole life and I know this because this year I have hit milestones that once upon a time I could only dream of. Things like 100,000 subscribers, five-figure brand deals, landing my ideal remote six-figure tech job, not only that but traveling the world from Houston to Costa Rica to Mykonos, places that I've always wanted to visit or I've always wanted to do certain activities there but also being asked to speak at stages or on stage and in panels you know. being invited into these spaces to be an authority to speak on topics, building and launching my SRE course. And I say all this to say, whilst a lot of it is the work that you've been putting in for years, you know, in the background, the actual final push I noticed in all of these achievements happened in 90 days or less. The work required and the energy required to tip me over to actually achieving these things happened in a very condensed period, right?
A focused period of work. and as I recall this on my birthday sitting in the tallest building in London the Shard and thinking about things and where I've come and how far I've come I realised there were some key characteristics or some key frameworks that I was able to adopt in these 90 day windows in order to get me to where I wanted to be to achieve those goals in my ideal state and that's exactly what I want to dive deeper into because when you when you realise these things and you lock into them right like your ability to push forward is insane actually and having achieved so much but knowing there's so much more for all of us to do and achieve and grow into, I'm excited. I'm literally excited and you know let's just get into the video.
Now I'm going to start with one of the most important things I'm going to talk about on this list and it's audacity. Now the thing is if you are trying to achieve something in a 90-day window right, you are trying to take yourself to the next level in, we're talking actually about three months, you are going to have to be audacious because you are asking to be in rooms or you are trying to get into rooms into spaces perhaps into paid brackets perhaps in front of people in an audience where you've not been which means I don't like thinking about in terms of delusion it is more so that you have the self-belief that even though I haven't been here yet I know that I can be I know that I should be in those rooms and I'm willing to do the work I'm audacious enough to show up in these spaces and I just want to give a few examples and this is not even in 90 days this is in like a three week period I put speaker in my bio in LinkedIn I just put it there. I said, you know what? I'm a public speaker.
And even though I hadn't been on a live stage in a long time, right? I've been speaking in front of this camera for years. So I decided, yeah, I'm open to paid public speaking engagements, right? And something very interesting happened when I had the audacity to put speaker in my bio.
People started to approach me. I had three people ask me to speak at their events, whether it was to do a keynote or whether it was to be on a panel. right, or whether it was to actually host, like, the panel discussion, that was just three weeks, all because I had the audacity, right, to show up and be like, yes, yes, I am a speaker, yes, yes, this is me, but it applies to so many things, right, like, even in terms of my brand deals, and I spoke about getting at my first five-figure brand deal this year, the work that was required to actually tip me over into that point, or, you know, to get to that stage, wasn't years and years in the making, it was making a decision in that moment to be audacious. audacious enough to ask for a certain amount of money and decide that I am showing up, I know my value, I know what I bring to the table and so this is the price. Yesterday's price is not today's price and something interesting happened again.
I put that on the table and they said yes and it sounds outrageous right? It sounds like so silly but if you don't put it on the table, if you are not audacious enough to say that this is my price, this is my value, no one's going to pay they're going to pay you 500 pounds for your for your work whether you're a consultant whether you are a content creator whatever it is you do that's what they're going to pay you that's how they're going to see because that's how you see yourself you have not yet been audacious enough to step into this new arena and demand or command you know command your worth i won't speak too much more about audacity because i just definitely did a whole video on this and i would very much encourage you after this video to go you into that and dive a bit deeper, especially if audacity or being audacious is something you struggle with. But like 90 day periods, trying to achieve our goals, audacity, we're leading with that.
So the next thing I want to talk about, and I'm borrowing from the tech world here in my job as a site reliability engineer, but it's something called the blameless postmortem. Now, hear me out for a moment. If you, again, are trying to achieve something in a very condensed window, these 90 days, you don't have time to wallow and you don't have time to beat yourself up about things.
when they don't go to plan which is why we have to employ the blameless post-mortem what is this it is dissecting what went wrong without applying blame or without allocating blame to an individual individual so in work it's like in a group but here we're talking about the self we're talking about you i'm talking about me right because there is not a lot of value to be gained from being like well and i'm talking about that kind of blame that's like you were stupid to do this or oh my god how could you think you could post this video and it would do well because it didn't or you know how could you think that you could ask for this no No, we don't have time. We are trying to achieve things in 90 days, sweetie. So what we need to do is take a very logical approach when things don't go to plan, when they are not ideal, instead of getting stuck at the blame level.
Dissect it. So how do you actually do this? All right, well, the first thing you have to ask yourself is what's actually happened, right?
Like on an objective level, what has gone wrong? Did you not get the job you wanted? Did somebody reject you in terms of this opportunity?
What happened? Again, no blame here, stating what happened then we go a little bit deeper and understand why why did this happen what were the things that led up to this happening did you prep enough for that interview for example or did you do enough research before you launched that product or service like why was it that you got the outcome that you did and again we're not trying to assign blame and be like well it was because you were silly it was because you No, no. Because when you dive deeper and unpack it, you realise there are probably a series of steps that you didn't take. And then finally, and I'm condensing this, there are a few more stages and timelines and things that we do in tech.
But obviously, I just want to get to the crux of the blameless postmortem. The final thing in that is, what are we going to do to improve? What are we going to do to ensure that this doesn't happen again or to reduce the likelihood of this happening again? What changes are we going to make? What are we going to work on?
What are we going to implement in order to avoid this happening again? And you see how that process, you can very quickly understand what's happened, understand why it's happened and understand how you're going to move forward. in a timely matter instead of sitting there thinking i hate myself because i got four views on my video and leading on from that and staying with this topic is actually something called agile and it's a framework and again kind of tech but project management and as the name suggests it's basically your ability to pivot right some workspaces or some environments require that you are able to move and move quickly and get that feedback so like the blameless post-mortem Although it doesn't always have to be when things go wrong, right? Because you can have positive feedback and understand this went right.
Do more of this. But that agile mentality is going to be pivotal if you are trying to achieve things in a 90-day window. right you need to be able to get feedback objectively look at feedback and then move accordingly the next thing on this list is doubling down when there is momentum so one thing i notice is that sometimes when things start going well or like things start aligning we can suddenly start to shy away like sometimes it's because we're nervous that we're going to mess up or we just don't know what to do next or it's overwhelming or maybe sometimes we believe we just this shouldn't be for us and so we actually lose out on these points where we're things are moving in the direction that we need them to right and we shy away and then suddenly all of our progress is halted and i know this because as i said i got 100 000 subscribers right it actually happened in a 30-day window and i can show you guys that i got about 25 000 new subscribers right 25 000 new subscribers in about three months but i've been here before where i got momentum from one video right but instead of doubling down instead of you know looking at that being like there's something here I shied away. I got worried that the next video wasn't gonna do well enough.
And you know what happened? I didn't make it to 100,000 that time. And I didn't see that growth that I saw this time.
However, when I hit that with the video on multiple passions and interests, which was a very organic video, I was quite literally speaking from the heart, but I doubled down on it. I said, let's go. This is something here.
Let's go, let's keep going. And you saw that period of me, putting out a lot of videos and being in almost flow state. and you know priding on that momentum letting it carry me forward into this goal and like achieving this particular goal here so it is so important when you identify that that momentum that state of something is going well this direction that we're moving in um is the direction we want to be and we have speed we have velocity let's keep going please don't shy away because like i said we have 90 days to achieve what we want momentum is going to be so important it is going to be integral to getting where we need to get to.
Kind of linking a little bit to audacity, right? And some of the things that I've been thinking about a lot lately is embracing cringe. Look, if you are trying to do something new here, if you are trying to put yourself out there, things are going to feel cringey, they're going to feel uncomfortable, and if you are not ready for that, then perhaps the 90-day window of achieving things isn't for you, because it feels cringey and uncomfortable to say slap on the table 150k is the salary i'm looking for sometimes especially if you'll not come from that or you know what yeah it's going to be 15k for this brand deal well you know what i would like to speak at your particular event this is going to be how much it's going to cost and i would like my expenses paid or yes i'm going to build this course and this is how much i'm going to sell it for you right? You get the point. Those things feel cringey.
Even just putting out content and putting yourself out there as a consultant or as a creator, photographer, right? Whatever it is that you do feels cringey because you're doing something in front of other people or you are interacting with people and asking for something that you haven't answered before, which is why this links to the audacity thing. But you have to accept that sometimes things feel cringey, right?
They don't always feel super smooth, even when you are being audacious, but you have to do it anyway. Anyway, you have to decide that the goal is bigger, your path is bigger, your journey is bigger than being cringey. Again, if I had stopped at the cringe, I would never have been here on YouTube making videos and sitting with an amazing community of over 100,000 people. I wouldn't. I wouldn't have had the job I had if I had not posted on LinkedIn, right?
Actually, let me go back a little bit because cringe and LinkedIn is something that I'm also still working on, which is so interesting though because I've still seen how successful I can be when I let that go. This job that I have and a lot of, in fact, almost every job that I've ever had in terms of tech has come from people reaching out to me and LinkedIn, not me applying, including this ideal one here. And in that period, I had actually been posting for a couple of months, I think it was about two months, so let's say about eight weeks consistently on LinkedIn. And it was funny because I kept getting the worst traction. I kept getting loads and loads of recruiters coming in because they could see me showing up.
And I had to sometimes fight the cringe. I had to fight the cringe, you guys on LinkedIn, because it was doing something to me. Like YouTube now, I feel...
I'm comfortable here. I still have my moments, but I feel safe here. LinkedIn felt like a crazy place, a weird, scary, professional place. But once I got past that, once I got past the cringe and, you know, went deeper into sharing in public and allowing myself to share on this platform, again, things just move so quickly.
Things move so quickly. And I was able to access the opportunity that I wanted to, and I didn't even have to work for it in a sense that... go and apply for 50 jobs that meet my the job came to me so and it's the same thing with content it's the same thing with anything that you are trying to achieve even in a relationship sense right putting yourself out there feels cringe it feels yucky but what happens when you do exactly now next I want you to talk about something that's a little bit more practical and in this 90 day period when we're trying to achieve our goals and it's about structure and tracking now I always bang on about me using Notion because I love it and I love the way that I can build and customize it for my needs and what I want to achieve and you can use whatever tool that you want but structure and tracking when you are trying to achieve something very specific or a set of goals in a period is integral for you not falling you kind of off the track basically right and things getting confusing or you not being able to stay focused you require some level of structure some level of organization a way to track what you are doing a way to track your work your outputs And what's happening? This input led to this output, right?
Like if you have no visibility on these things, how are you able to know if you need to pivot or if you need to double down because something is going well? Right. If you are not structuring and you're not tracking things. It's actually interesting because, again, going back to tech, there are so many lessons in tech. I'm definitely I just want to do a video just going through that.
But anyway, we have a big focus on observability, the ability to see into your system. is the only way you can support your system. If you don't know what's going on, you are flying the plane blind, right? And structure and tracking and being able to see into your system, 90 days. This is your system.
You are your system. There are a series of goals that we are trying to achieve here within the system. We need structure, we need tracking, and we need to be able to visualize these things. I'm not going to go too deep into the different ways that you can structure.
I think we could probably have a whole video, you know, just on that. And I do have a video about how I structure my goals, my multiple passions and interests to actually get things done. And, you know, following projects, find what works for you, right? Find the structure that works and aligns with you. You can take from that video that I have other people, you have to use vision boards.
Vision boards are quite cool, but they're not always the best thing for me. I think my brain works in a slightly different way. And I know a lot of people are more aligned with me and some people like the outside, so that's fine. Just find what works for you and double down on it.
the last thing I want to talk about is really important actually and it's you have to make a yourself enough to do this and i'm not going to pretend that in 90 days you are going to master self-love or that you are going to you know you know unshackle yourself from all the demons that you have and the things that you struggle with however in order to do this you have to make a commitment to yourself like you would do any other thing right when you make a commitment to work when you make a commitment to someone else you have to commit to loving yourself enough even if it is for this 90-day period to do the things that you said you were going to do. And I'm saying this as somebody who at times has been so hard on myself that it's hard to understand, it's hard to recognise if it's coming from even a place of love. But if you, if you are able to tap into that and the belief that you deserve these things, that you are somebody who works and has faith and is coming from a good place, wants to impact not only their own life, because let's be honest, we're building in part for ourselves, but we're building for our families, whether it's the families we have now or our future families. we're building for our communities.
Most people to an extent want to impact the wider world. I'm not saying they want to impact every single person in the world because like it's a few billions it's kind of hard but most people want to leave this world a better place than when they got here. I believe that.
I believe the people on my channel, I mean the people who watch my videos want good for themselves and they want good for the people around them. You have to start loving you and committing to you before we can achieve any of that. Before you can make the money that you want, you know, to make it out of wherever you are or to help the people around you or to build into that business, perhaps you have an idea for something that you know could help people that are like you or that came from where you came from, right?
But you have to start with committing to you and loving you enough to take this on to take on this project 90 days 90 days, what are we doing? What are we achieving? I'm so pumped. I'm gonna like you guys.
I'm excited the next year of my life It's gonna be big the next year of your life's gonna be big, but it starts with the next 90 days. So I'm See you in the next video