March 2023

Happy March,


The month that includes my birthday and the promise of spring ❤

Weight

I’m so glad I have you guys to keep me accountable. Have I truly eaten a diet that is representative of me losing weight?! Does the data lie?


Both the answer to these questions is a no. I’ve lost motivation however because of my systems and your guys’ accountability. I’m confident I can put things in place to do better next month!~


My twin brother has added that he’ll do a race to 83kg as well. We are both similar in weight and however pretty sure his fat percentage is lower than mine. It’ll be interesting to see who wins. Wager anyone? I believe this is ‘good for the game’ of losing weight 😂


I believe it’s important here to recognise that I’ve come a long way. If my goal was to lose 20kg and I lost at a rate of 2kg a month ( which is fast in my opinion ). It’ll still take 10 months.


Slow and steady wins the race 🐢


If anyone has given up on their new years’ resolution, hopefully, this is a ‘pick me up’ to say. You can start today. The new year’s resolution is to just do better than oneself than last year. Let’s keep going <3


Exercise and sleep are being managed through my systems however my diet is NOT.


I think I would like to add some diet knowledge to my to-do list.

Youtube latest video:

Exercise

– FancyFeats


Last month, I talked about how we should leverage more money to get what we want more quickly. Today I wanted to give you an example of where I did this.

I ad-hocally followed a subreddit called ‘r/jumprope’. Within this subreddit, someone was mentioning if this ‘new app’ was worth it called ‘FancyFeats’. The subreddit explained that because of the paywall and the fact that we can find the resources for free. It isn’t worth it.  (3) Thoughts on Lauren Jumps Fancy Feats app? : jumprope (reddit.com)


The app was 25 pounds a month.


The app was structured in a ‘skill map’ and showed you logical progression like a game until you can do the next trick.

You start with the ‘basic bounce’ which unlocks other skill sets as you progress. You then ‘tick’ the skills you’ve mastered which give you other skill sets.

All the information is in a consistent format and includes instructional videos.

Now would an expert jumper in jumprope need this information? Most likely not, as they built systems that allowed them to research, find and process their jump rope technique. As a person who was struggling to work out what skill to learn next to improve my jump rope, I struggled immensely to find consistent and free information. With one skill being taught by a different youtuber and another skillset being taught by another.

Consistency is the true value here in my opinion. From the basic bounce, all the way to other skill sets showing logical progression in each one.

The way I see it. I now have Lauren ( Lauren Jumps – YouTube ) in my pocket as my personal coach for only 25 pounds a month. To get an average representation of how hard it is to build an app. It will cost around £20K to get a contractor and also if she wanted to add any more features she’ll have to keep paying them. Hiring an App developer will range from £40k (graduate) to £100k  (top of the field) in the current market. Most likely, she is currently running at a loss in her app but is being funded out of her pocket. This is a bargain. She isn’t trying to make the app expensive, she is trying to leverage scale to reap the costs. Hopefully, she can keep afloat to carry on this fantastic work.

I have been wanting to learn skipping for years and never researched or had the motivation to stick to it. Now from January, I started skipping every day and this app came in beautiful timing for me to progress to cool tricks. Lucky for me!

If there are other books, apps, or quizzes people wanted to do but never thought it was worth it because of a paywall. Please send them my way and I’ll have a look to see if it leverages value for me. Most likely I’ll find that it will as someone put time and effort to create it.

I no longer have to spend hours on youtube looking for the right teacher, trying to work out how to do something and I definitely learned skills faster (as you can see from the picture). 

As my audience is mainly full-time employees, I recommend you pay for this app if you wanted to learn skipping. Leverage what you can put to risk to achieve the goals you want faster since your time is scarce. 

Sorry for being a repetitive person but a personal trainer is worth it. Don’t want to think about your diet plan and exercise plan but want to do the motion? PAY. You’re going to pay in time or money anyway. Time is more valuable. Use money. The biggest problem I have found is that we use the time to make money. Hence each piece of money gained is dependent on time. The app is proof of one of those things that you can make money which is orthogonal to time.

The things you can create to produce money are as follows => Code, Content, Capital (money), and Labour. 

For my brothers who have heard the wisdom of our business father. He says there are three ways to make money, “Body, Money or Brain” => I argue the brain he is referring to is code and content in this day and age.

 

This concept is from this youtube video => Watch these 55 minutes if you want to be a millionaire in 2022.. – YouTube

Big companies like amazon use all four. I’ve started with code, I’m trying to leverage that with my product in the future and slowly learning content. I’m learning with trial and error at the moment but if I had the capital or a labor force I will leverage that too. 

Books I’ve Read

Complete Calisthenics – This book was exactly what I was looking for. It has a complete guide on calisthenics and each progression. For example -> normal push-ups to diamond push-ups etc There are so many push-ups!!! What I like about his Fundamental Five is that we have to do 20 perfect push-ups before we can move to the next progression. This is much better than finding the exact youtube video you were looking for to learn a new technique. The book has all stretches that I resonate with yoga as well. Looking forward to having this book as a reference for many years to come.

 

It also has a section on what calisthenics is. I loved the emphasis on moving your body in space and also being in total control of oneself. This is in contrast to the gym workout that my twin brother likes. (Don’t get me wrong if it works for him, great) I always did what my friends or family did in workouts for me the other important factor was social. However, since I have time now I decided to spend some time researching exercises that I like. This book has ALL the information I could have ever wanted for mobility stretches, push-up progression, and conditioning. I’ve managed to make a program that I would like to do and have started it since March 1st. Progress can be seen on my youtube shorts: New plan: be flexible – YouTube

 

The Surrender Experiment – This book showed emphasized something me and Eden recently talked about. It doesn’t matter what choices we make. We don’t know if it’s good or bad. The important thing is to choose. There are many roads to becoming successful. Many of us a stuck to choose the most optimal, most that makes sense. It doesn’t have to be. It can be wrong. This book even emphasizes ignoring what you dislike or like (your inner chimp) but letting Life choose for you. Or surrender yourself to life aka The surrender experiment.

 

He goes on to tell his amazing story of what happened when he let life take its course through the surrender experiment.

 

I resonated a lot with the first half of the book which was his approach to meditation and how he wanted to achieve total silence and my relationship with mania. He has a separate book about meditation so I think I’ll pick that up called The Untethered Soul. Which I believe will be more what I was looking for. It was nice to hear a successful entrepreneur’s story and what lessons he learned throughout the book, I just didn’t realize I was going to read an autobiography 😅

 

How to do the work – I wish I read this book before my manic episode. Work is defined by the trauma we experienced as a child and how to work our way through them with the pragmatic advice in the book. A lot of lessons were rehashed for me and I learned a lot from boundaries which is a book recommended by my brother BEFORE I got ill but only read DURING my recovery. I actually prefer this book over boundaries however they both have their uses. This has given me the initiative to re-read boundaries as boundary problems happen ALL THE TIME.

 

How to do the work was more relatable and very well worded whereas boundaries can feel like a textbook/bible.

 

The book for me had a strong start, a weak middle, and an amazing ending due to all the pragmatic advice and loads of empathy for my problems. I would recommend it, especially to people who don’t think they had a traumatic life. All my problems are due to a lack of boundaries and also not understanding my emotions which were created by my trauma. It is my job to manage it and this helped immensely to continuously improve.

 

I obviously know that some characteristics such as my duty-bound roles of son, brother, and soldier. Allowed me to create systems that got me decent grades and a good work ethic in the workplace. However, I now get to choose which duty-bound I want.

 

Today I choose:

  • Health manager to myself
  • Husband to Eden.Y
  • Director of MealCraft Limited.

A section about love in the book resonated with me a lot. It essentially defines what love is and how it is not the chemical highs we are looking for which were wired with the history of our love with our family but when two people allow each other the freedom and support to be fully seen, heard, and self-expressed. Rooted in the awareness that the other person is not property, not something to be owned, and that my partner is not my parent figure and not someone that I can fix or someone that can heal me.

Embrace your True Expense

For those of you who are wondering how I manage my personal funds, company funds and joint funds. I use YNAB.

 

In regards to YNAB, one of the rules of Ynab is: ‘Embrace your True Exepense’.

 

I think the founder of Ynab in a podcast said it the best. ‘Embrace, like a hug, your true expense’.

 

What should we budget for?

 

If you have a car, a classic example is car repair!

 

The other classic is maybe your new phone. Or do you think your phone is going to be in perfect condition forever?

 

It’s hard to embrace your true expenses but it could happen one day. Having 1 pound saved towards that goal is better than zero.

 

Personally, I make a category in Ynab with all my true expenses so at least I know what my trade-offs are if I move money from one of my true expenses.

 

Some True Expenses I have embraced:

  • Medical costs for my pet dog
    • My partner didn’t have insurance for her dog because it was not ‘worth it’. This might have been true when she was young but our poor dog is getting old and coming to the age of 10 years old. I’ve put in about a thousand pounds just in case.

    • Update 18th March 2023 -> Boree (our dog) had to go to the vet 3 times this month because she was scratching her eye. The worst-case scenario was that she might need eye surgery which would have cost 5000 pounds. Fortunately, we had a budget of 1000 pounds already saved because of the True Expense and with meds and diet management, we were able to avoid the surgery. However, I have now changed our joint budget for Boree Medical expenses to 10,000 Pounds. It is not funded but that is the target I will like. It has also made me realise that unless we have 10,000 pounds in the bank OR  pet insurance I would prefer NOT to have a dog within our household. Eden has agreed we can start saving for a goal of 10,000 pounds for Boree.
    • We aimed to achieve this goal in about 5 years. As you can see we can reach this goal provided we save 125.11 per month from today. It’s nice to show you guys a real example that I had to go through and adjust my budget accordingly.
      image.png
    • I’m grateful that today my medical bills and costs are covered by the NHS.
  • An emergency flight home to Korea in case news of family illness
    • I don’t like to think about it but my grandparents are getting very old. I visited them last time in Christmas 2022 and they met my life partner. I’m very thankful that I still get to see and call them. However, a rainy day might come when their time is running out. I want to ensure that I have flight tickets to literally come running. Currently, I have 2000 pounds funded for this goal.
  • Renewal of my driving license and passport (it even has an expiry date!)
    • Hopefully self-explanatory. Because it’s like 3 years away I have to fund like £1 every month. I think I can manage that and I’ll have some funds for the renewal when the time comes :D
  • PC repairs costs
    • This one required some thought. How much should you put in for unexpected PC repair costs? From my personal PC repair and build experience. If I want a really nice computer I’ll spend roughly 2000 pounds. (REALLY NICE). I expect this computer to last me 10 years. Thus, 2000/10 => 200. 200 / 12 months equates to about 16.67 a month. I decided to make a monthly savings of 20 pounds a month.
Ynab Consultation

 

I would like to thank everyone that gave me their testimonials for my consultation for budgeting. Thank you! 

 

Testimonials

Team Frozen
Recently I found a life hack to eat more greens.

Instead of buying ‘fresh’ broccoli. Buy ‘frozen’ brocolli!!!

Get one of your fancy pyrex measuring jugs and hot water from the kettle. Instant delicious broccoli on your doorstep! Honestly changed my relationship with broccoli. I’ve always been a big fan of broccoli but cooking broccoli and ensuring it doesn’t go bad was a nightmare to manage. I always threw away my ambitiously-bought broccoli but NO MORE.

I’ve tried frozen spinach as well and it’s just not the same. If there is a better way to cook frozen spinach someone please let me know.

A friend of mine from my old workspace ( shout out to Gabor ) has told me similar results can be done with frozen cauliflower. I look forward to my fiber and protein intake with broccoli and cauliflower now <3

Not only does it last longer in the freezer and cook easier but it is also cheaper!

With about 900 grams of frozen broccoli costing £1.20. Fresh broccoli costs about 1.92 per kilo. Honestly a no-brainer for me.

Life Priorities
Your dollars (pounds) are essentially a vote of what you think is important. However, when spending it’s hard to picture your trade-offs. Thus, it is a good idea to understand what your priorities are.

Last year in 2022 my life priorities were as follows:
  • Be there for the love of my life
  • Travel with the love of my life
  • Spend time with friends
  • Financial Independence 
  • Solve problems with friends
These were my goals as an employee and I hope you guys saw I literally put my money where my mouth is. However, now that I’m unemployed my life view has changed drastically. My top life priorities are now:
 
  • Improve Health (through the improvement of sleep, exercise, and diet )
  • Improve Relationships ( My partner + friends + family + network )
  • Improve Freedom ( freedom to move; freedom to choose; freedom to quit )
  • Reach Global Elite (0.12%) in the game of life ( measured in many ways, some people say happiness, some people say fulfillment. Mine is taking full responsibility for things I can control and doing my best to notice but not interfere in things I can’t. )
  • Improve my habits ( I call it systematology but good habits/systems improve all of the above)
This is mostly because of the realisation of systems. I trusted the systems of my previous employment and the balance of my work life. Now that I’m an entrepreneur. I literally had no structure. Fortunately, I could make my own. You are literally seeing the benefits of work through my system right now.
Slice of Pie
 
I regret setting up a private limited company. Yes, in the long-term goal of starting a business, I would have got here anyway but now I have to deal with accountants and lawyers to move paperwork as it’s behind a lot bigger paywall. Yes, you can just pay them but trust me when I say this, it cost a lot more than 25 pounds a month!!!!
 

I did this because we had no fair way to keep track of progress, hours we put into the work, and money we put in. However, I have learned and evolved.

 

Introducing slice of pie:

This software has allowed me and my partner to focus on work instead of stupid business administration. It defines a fair way to do business. Any business. 
 
Now my personal definition of fair is: Only fair at the moment of signing but never with time until the next iteration.
 
This method keeps track of all the hours I work, and all the money I put in and figures out a way to split equity on that. If I put more time and money into this business then I put myself more at risk. Thus, the risk should be rewarded in more profit in the future. Gamified the systems again and I love seeing my ‘stock equity’ go up. 

Here’s a diagram of the pie chart:
It even deals with things like leavers, investors, and leasing of equipment to the company. Absolutely beautiful. I personally loved that me and my partner have a third-party book we read our information on and base our decision using this framework. Puts emotions out the window. 
 
I currently pay 20 dollars a month for this software. If you think about this in potential lawsuits with your partners and the time and energy you would have spent arguing. This is cheap as chips. Furthermore, we spend more time working and not admin.

If you want more information about this slice of pie, please either ask or find more information from the author himself: Slicing Pie (thepieslicer.com), his video resource:  (2) An Introduction To Slicing Pie Fair Founder Equity Splits – YouTube. 

I share this knowledge because if any of you start a business in the future, I hope you don’t go through the pitfalls I had and instead focus more on the product. BE BETTER THAN ME.
 
For anyone joining my business, this is required reading. The hours you spend reading this book will count towards your equity.


So what’s happening with the Wedding?
Some of you have asked for an update on my wedding plans with my fiancee 😅 Once WE KNOW we’ll let the world know. For now, it has done the effect we both want. The announcement of the engagement has told our families that we intend to be life partners. The world knows we are seriously committed to each other and I enjoy wearing my wedding ring every day. We currently have 300 pounds funded for our wedding. Me and Eden are reviewing our financials in April 2024 (2 years of engagement) to see where we stand. We are happy to just go together and get our best man and bridesmaid and do the paperwork. We live together, solve problems together and laugh together. I couldn’t ask for much more. Thank you for supporting me in my business endeavor and making my dream come true. I love you and I’m blessed to wake up next to you every day.
 
Brave Souls
For people who have gotten this far and read throughout the whole email. I have a favor to ask. Currently, I have a system to write this email, and as you can see it’s quite long! To improve the reading experience for other people – I would like to make a separate email list to get the RAW email a week earlier. If you are interested in getting this email a week earlier and want to help me review, shorten, and feedback on formatting. Please let me know.
 

It’s been a pleasure writing this for you guys,


Till the next time,