Oh gidday! Some of you will have got an email a bit like this on already. But most of you won’t have because it occurs to me that I only sent it to the people who subscribed to my 30 Day Challenge, in which I — as the name would suggest — challenged myself to make up for lost time by sending an email every day whilst simultaneously spooling up a hybrid art/marketing consulting business with a goal of getting $10k revenue booked in one month.

Well… it’s worked?

I probably don’t need the question mark. I have a little spreadsheet I put together for how much revenue¹ I needed to book or get paid in October to hit my target of $10,000 and I, uh, did it.

It’s a funny feeling. I’ve worked like mad to get to this point and now all I need to do is either repeat or exceed the same target next month and every subsequent month for the foreseeable future. Goodness gracious me. But, to actually allow myself to feel triumph for once, I think pulling ten grand in the first month of a new business is pretty good. Of course, it’s not much in the scheme of things! There are taxes and my salary — a term I am using very loosely — to come out yet. The salary will not be at all what I was earning in my corporate job. But by gosh it’s a start, an auspicious start.

Let’s recap a bit. During the course of the 30 Day Challenge I:

• Laid down a challenge for the business to make $10k in revenue (it did)
• Went a bit viral on TikTok for my video of me painting a giant rubber duck invading a Bob Ross landscape
• Made the front page of Reddit for a picture of said duck, which was seen by about two million people(!)
• Launched the Two Ruru Print Club
• Launched a different project that didn’t do too well, to be honest, but that’s OK! It was worth a shot. Part of this whole process has been about learning that some things inevitably fail and so long as you got some good learns² out of it it’s probably worth it.
• Fixed the curtains
• Survived on too little sleep (partly because of the hustle, mostly because of the kids)
• Contracted an absolutely savage gastro, also because of the kids
• Worked out any number of times, biked my son to school on every day that didn’t have inclement weather and several that did, went hiking, mountain biking, and golfing, all of which served to remind me that I go absolutely crazy if I do not go outside and exercise and do all right if I remember to. (Update: I forgot again, which is why I’ve been a bit crazy today).
• Burned out about… five times, I think? It might have been more
• Picked up a few thousand new subscribers across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram
• Made products out of my art and put them up on my website, where a decently large number of people bought them
• Worked on a whole bunch of commissioned artworks and got the most thrilled message ever from one of my customers, which I am posting again here

• Emailed galleries and wildlife sanctuaries about stocking my art, with some positive results!
• Wrote some fiction for the first time in forever
• Wrote and published a piece at Webworm for the first time in forever, which was great, about a horrible topic, which was horrible
• Mowed the lawns
• Did my first professional development session, teaching art to teachers
• Baked two cakes
• Talked about all the weird habits I have
• Talked about my Harry Potter fan-fiction again (sorry, not sorry)
• Forgot to send a daily email once
• Sent a daily email 30 times

This is the first challenge like this I’ve ever managed to stick to.³

It’s also the most self-improvement-y thing I’ve ever really done for this newsletter. If you signed up in the hope that I would actually do some self-improvement at some point, well, now I have. I hope you enjoyed it.

It has had its ups and downs, but overall has been the most resounding absurd stonking success; I really couldn’t have wished for better and I am proud of myself to a degree that is a little unsettling. This is not something I am used to feeling.

I also have a useful little daily writing habit that I am absolutely keeping, and from now on Cynic’s Guide updates are going to be weekly or better. I’ve tried that before, and it never really stuck, but now I’ve done thirty days straight, weekly seems like a doddle.

And now I have a couple of tardy New Year’s Resolutions to get back to. Two more one-month challenges and I should have them in the bag.

#inspiration

Inspired? A few people have emailed to let me know they have been! If you’d like to try something similar, please let me know — either flick me an email (josh@tworuru.com will always find me) or drop a comment down below. Who knows, I might even revive the Discord if folks are keen.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

The full archives of the 30 day challenge are archived right here! If you didn’t sign up specifically to the 30 day challenge series, you might get a kick out of reading back through them all. It’s been quite a journey.

1. As in “money in to the business,” as in “not the same as profit,” but it’s still useful! ↩︎
2. I refuse to learn to say “learnings” ↩︎
3. I came close on my video challenge, but I still plan to finish that series, and make a lot more videos besides. Daily videos are a mug’s game though ↩︎