The Art of Consistency

Where it all started

First, a little backstory. It started in 2014 when I moved to Austin, TX from Upstate NY to try and find better opportunities with real estate.

I decided to move pretty much spur of the moment, and 6 months later I moved. I had no job and nothing lined up.

I had some money in my bank account, a little help from my parents, and a small app business bringing around $1,000/mo, oh, and a lot of credit card debt.

Long story short, real estate wasn’t working and I burned through my savings and pretty much maxed out all my cards at around $40 or $45k.

I had the cliche entrepreneur moment where after working until 2 am, I went to go to bed and couldn’t sleep. I had no idea how I was going to pay next month’s bills including rent. I literally could not afford to sleep. So I got up, made a pot of coffee, and got to work.

Creating a plan

I created an entire plan with goals and milestones to get out of this hole. I was going to focus on my app business 100% and make it work.

I figured out how much debt I had, and how much my monthly bills were, and worked backward to set goals. I knew I wanted to pay off the debt ASAP and I knew I wanted to make at least 2x my monthly bills.

I broke down the big goals into small milestones. And from there, I created action steps

Overall, my plan was simple, I was just going to take what works and do it every single day. At the time, it was app reskinning.

Making changes

I had already spent tens of thousands of dollars hiring people to build apps in the past but this was a terrible ROI and not working. There was long development times and if it didn’t work out, a lot of money and time was wasted.

Instead, I was just going to clone and change the apps myself. You could buy source code from different marketplaces and I already had several apps of my own to do this with.

A complete reskin could take hours to maybe a day or 2. It was fast and this allowed me to launch a lot in a short period of time.

Instead of trying to overload my schedule and say I’d get a million things done in X amount of time, I told myself I would try to get 1 new app every 2 days. This wasn’t on the fast side nor was it on the slow time, it was a timeframe I could manage long term.

Another thing I changed was I wasn’t trying to build the next big app anymore. I was focused on base hits, apps that would earn $50, $100 or maybe even more per month. At a rate of 15 per month, this could add up quickly.

Keeping it simple

A lot of it came down to creating systems and routines. I would analyze what I had, do research on new niches, keywords, apps, etc. that I thought would be good, then I put everything into an Excel doc to stay organized.

Each morning, I would look at what app was on the schedule and get to work. I would completely change all the images, make some slight modifications, and then release the new app.

It was repetitive which allowed me to be efficient and knock things out quickly.

By creating this system, knowing I didn’t have an overwhelming schedule each day, and knowing there was a plan that would help me reach my goals greatly reduced my stress. There would be occasional problems but for the most part, it was just chugging along each day.

Slow and steady wins the race

As I released more apps, the results started to compound, and in multiple ways. Each app was more revenue each month but also, I was testing so many different apps and niches, I was seeing what was popular.

Within only a couple of months, I tripled my revenue and was now making enough to cover my bills, things were moving quickly even though I wasn’t overworking myself, I was sticking to schedule and plan.

In addition, I had more data to increase my chances of success. I focused more on what worked and less on what didn’t.

For example, I discovered the Minecraft niche was very popular. Building apps around this niche led to some of my biggest earners. I released Minecraft style apps that earned anywhere from a few hundred per month to as much as $15,000 a month.

The payoff

Then, within 8 months I completely paid off my credit card debt. For the first time in a very long time, I had a surplus of money each month.

At this point, I continued to work on my system and constantly create apps. Eventually, I hit some big success. I had a few apps that were doing a few thousand per month on their own and then one app that reached over $15k in revenue per month. At this time, I was doing about $30k per month in profit.

Key takeaways

• Create goals and a plan. If you just leave everything in your mind, you’ll feel overwhelmed and it will distract you and slow you down. You have to space it out and create milestones along with a plan you can chip away at every day.

• Have a routine. While it may be boring, waking up and relying on muscle memory to get you going greatly improves your efficiency. The more you do it, the more efficient your routine will become thus making you more efficient.

• Remember that slow and steady wins the race. You may want to try to do everything in a day and start seeing results, but it usually doesn’t work this way. If you are consistent each day, the results will come, probably sooner than you think.

Remember the key: consistency

While everyone wants to be an overnight success and build a product that reaches a million dollars in the first week, that’s just not how it happens.

What events a person does may differ but if you look at ANY successful person or solopreneur, you’ll see that they were and are extremely consistent. They have a system and they work it every day.

If you’re struggling to find success, it may be time to step back, reevaluate, create a new plan, and work it one day at a time.