23' Reflections, 24' Projections

Can't believe it's 2024!

In 2023, I re-framed what ‘career success’ means to me. The single biggest shift in my thinking revolved around my understanding of the topic: Quality of income. More specifically, how that relates to my daily energy levels, and happiness. Below is a good framework you can use in your own career, or share with friends/fam.

Categorizing your Income

You can judge your Quality of Income (QOI) based on 3 factors:

• Predictability
• Energy Source
• Absolute Amount

Example: Predictable income that creates energy is the highest quality (top right quadrant).

Predictable:

Predictability is critical. For example, after leaving Meta I started consulting. It took me 6 months to begin generating more per month from client work than I was being paid at Meta. Awesome! However, I quickly realized that after each contract ends I need to begin selling again (very unpredictable). This would be comparable to needing to re-apply and interview for my position at Meta every quarter. It’s great to have the spike of income, but I’d rather have slightly less if it’s more predictable.

Energy Source:

Energy is critical. Taking my last startup, Teooh, as an example. Although the quality of revenue was significantly worse than having consistent monthly income from Meta, the source of funds was providing my energy on a daily basis (ie. I was self employed). In order to collect my check from Meta I needed to ‘fit in’ and oblige to all the rules. I hated feeling like I couldn’t be myself. While consulting was technically self-employment, it was hardly different from working directly for another company. So I quickly realized it fell into the bottom left quadrant. I decided I needed to focus on work that brings me energy.

Absolute Amount

Absolute is important, but not the end all. I used to think that the amount of money was directly correlated to happiness. But if you’re making $1M and living like a caged animal who barely sees their family… and your energy is being drained every day to the point of borderline depression…. not worth it. At least, not for me.

My Career in the QOI Framework:

I finally got the milestone I was hoping for from Client Work and didn’t feel happy at all. I began to feel that income fell into the bottom-left quadrant. Drains energy and is unpredictable.

So I stopped doing all client work, and took a bet on myself. I was going to find a new source of income, but this time it would fall into the upper-right quadrant. In Q4 2023, I texted my two best friends and told them I’m at a crossroads:

I started learning the software tools necessary in order to build an online business which can do good, bring me energy, and generate recurring revenue. The other kick was that I wanted to do this through organic marketing, keeping costs near $0. And, after 8 weeks, it’s starting to show promise.

In the past week, I’ve had two posts on Linkedin hit 30K+ impressions, and a tweet hit 13K. All of this drove inbound leads to my website (took me 3 weeks to build). I captured information from about 250 potential leads (via Typeform application ). I tried speaking with as many founders as I could to understand how much they're trying to raise, why, and which VC's are most interested.

4 Common AR/VR Startup Problems:

Today marks the first day of the accelerator, and I am pumped! We’re going to do weekly meetings with a group of 10-15 vetted founders every Wednesday. These are the 4 common problems AR/VR founders have expressed to me over the years:

“Lack of funding because investors don’t care about AR/VR”        

“Can’t figure out how to get our app onto the Quest/Apple App store”        

“Had to do agency work because we were too early, now VC’s discredit our revenue”        

“Know we have a great product but can’t figure out how to accelerate growth”        

This 12 week accelerator is going to solve all of those. And be reaallllyyy fun.

Imagine a group of 15 passionate XR pioneers all trying to build world changing companies, huh? Sounds epic to me, and I can’t wait to get this going.

If you made it this far, thank you!

2023 was a WILD ride. I started working at Facebook, moved into client work in April, and am ending the year ready to launch an online product. This year I learned how to build websites, automate marketing, build a newsletter following, record/edit podcasts, deliver organic marketing on Linkedin, and book revenue. I did it all in an efficient and controlled manner, plus getting plenty of time to spend with family /friends. It was a perfect year. When Teooh failed, we had $0 revenue. That’s unacceptable for a business, I promised myself never again. As a result I’ve sold more things in 2023 than ever before, but it all was backed by my time. In 2024, I want to make the same impact on AR/VR, jump into music, but do it in a more automated manner so I can get to that upper right quadrant for the first time in my life.

NYE Present to you all!

This habit helped me grow. It feels corny at first, but works if you stick with it. I was introduced to the monthly habit of a ‘Personal Board Meeting’ this year by Matt Gray. Basically every month on the last Thursday I sit down with myself for 1-2 hours and fill out those 3 slides. I then name the file '(month) personal board meeting' and save it in this folder. They include me setting 1, 3, and 10 year goals. It forces me to think about my life and visualize what I can do over the next month to get there. It also asks questions about my happiness via an IKIGAI. It’s pretty amazing to have such a check in period to make sure I’m not losing sight of what’s important to me.

You can download the template here if you want to use the same one I use.

(TEMPLATE copy) Personal Board Meeting Exercise

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Apply for Accelerator!

Don Stein

APPLY: Typeform App

Connect: www.dhirubhai.net/in/donstein