Hello Hello, 
Wassup, How are you? 

Happy New Year! 🎉🎊🙌🏻

Last week I shared my review for 2023 → 2023 in Review - The year nothing went according to plan.

Today, I have come up with my plans for 2024.

But before that, I have launched a free email-based course for folks interested in launching a newsletter. Check it out here 👇🏻

I would strongly recommend launching a newsletter. We got more than 200 sign-ups in the first 24 hours and some of them have even started building their newsletters.

Everything I would do in 2024 would be on the foundation laid down by my newsletters and super readers. So, even if you take the course or not, please please please launch your newsletters. You will thank yourself next year for launching one.

Preview of 2024 — Obsession and Collaboration

On the 1st of January, I shared the following message on company Slack. It was all about my plans with Moonshot, what things were coming their way, and what to expect of each other. Not very carefully written, but shared from my mind and heart.

This email is a more polished and carefully written version of 👆🏻.

Theme - Obsession and Collaboration

In 2024, we will 10x our experiments and collaborations to increase the speed of execution, results, and money and impact-making opportunities for everyone.

Core Guiding Principles:

• All the content we produce and products we build should be overly optimized for value to readers/listeners/users. We will never sell anything that we don’t believe in. Our produce should always provide 10x value to the users. Obsession.

• Our edge in life and business will always be the speed of execution and experiments. Constant experiments and relentless execution will take us a long way. Obsession.

• We have to create an ecosystem of products/services, that evolves into loops. The user once entered should be exposed to all other products/businesses and ideally engage with some. Collaboration.

Business Wise:

I always think about our business as a portfolio of different services and products that complement and supplement each other and should add value to users while making sure we sustain the growth and value output.

I like to divide the experiments, services, and products into three categories — Engines, Rockets, and Moonshots.

Engines

These are the businesses that keep the ship running. Mostly high effort, high ownership things that ensure the cash flow and foundation for all the other stuff we want to build.

• Distribution:

  1. Our Publications - Product Monk, Marketing Monk, Adventures of India, and Experimentality should evolve into some form of community to increase engagement and we are closer to our readers. I don’t want to build a community until and unless we can clearly define a 10x value add at the core level. Not sure how, but it will surely happen this year.

  2. Podcast - We will Launch a Podcast this year. Might end up building a small studio and launching 2 to 3 YouTube/podcast channels too. We still need to put a lot of thought here to figure out the right strategy. But we will execute it this year.

  3. We are scaling up our efforts on Social Media. It will still be a low-focus area but we will put some efforts out there.

• Services Agencies:

  We are either partnering or co-launching a bunch of Agencies with super-talented operators out there.

  Services Agencies are great positive cashflow businesses and with my experience in running 2 agencies, I don’t want to leave the cash behind.

  By the end of January, we will have

  1. A design and development agency

  2. Marketing Agency

  3. Newsletter Agency

Rockets

I categorize Rockets as businesses that are low-effort, high-reward businesses. These are generally, built once, maintenance is low, and if the idea clicks can be rewarded handsomely. Courses, SaaS, and Affiliate income fall here.

• Email Based Very Niche Courses:

  Last week, we launched a 7-email newsletter course filled with immense value to anyone thinking of launching a newsletter. We will have a bunch of more free email-based courses teaching a single skill.

  We have to set them once, refine them to optimize the value, and then redirect the readers from our distribution channel to the landing pages.

  We spent 20 days building Newsletter Mastery and got 200 sign-ups within 24 hours. We have to take it to 10,000 sign-ups in 2024.

  How do we make money? Free email-based courses generally have affiliate links and even Newsletter Mastery has some.
  Newsletter Mastery also opens up a dialogue with the right audience which will open doors to the paid community and pipeline for newsletter agency.

• Micro SaaS:

  MicroSaas is a piece of software that will do very specific tasks, and solve a very niche problem for a very small user base.
  Eg. An AI-Resume Generator, if we can find 1000 users to pay us 1000 Rs./Month. This becomes a Rs. 10lakh/month business.

  I am talking to some more builders to figure out an idea for MicroSaaS.

  Through collaboration with some indie hackers and builders, I envision building 5-6 of these.

  ps: I am looking for an indie hacker/side hustler to collaborate with or join the team and build our first microsaas. If you are one or know anybody, please connect with me.

Moonshots

Moonshots are generally high-effort-taking, long-term experiments designed and executed to achieve immense scale. These generally move very slowly and have a high potential of failing because of too many dependencies and unknowns.
With all the things in our hands and my desire to bootstrap this moonshot, we will have only 1 shot in 2024 to do this.

If it works out, it will be an orbit changer, we will be in a different league altogether. If not, we try something else next year.

It will be the Toys business for us in 2024. As we speak, our first lot of samples is on its way and we will place a bulk order in February. I will soon unveil the name of the store and you will be the first one to get a chance to order it.

Why such a division?

1. Engines feed our needs and take care of us. They are the foundation on which everything is built. We can never mess up on Engines. Engines keep our creativity and sales skills polished and keep us on our toes.

2. Rockets are the bets we take that either increase our cash flow to decrease pressure on Engines or teach us some things for Moonshot. Rockets as the name suggests are short bursts of building that might create an everlasting impact. They are less risky than moonshots and more risky than engines.

3. Moonshots are scalable, hence they are businesses that can eventually grow to 100 Cr. Revenue. Since I intend to bootstrap some other business to take care of distribution and funds until Moonshot is successful.

   Also, moonshots might make us wealthy but engines will ensure we do not lose everything while building moonshots.

Revenue Goals

All combined, we should hit Rs. 5 cr revenue this year.

Personal

This is the year I will become lean and travel extensively.

Fitness:

I have been very inconsistent with workouts and consistent with junk food. This year, I will reverse it. 😤

Some of my major travels:

1. Me and my lovely wife Vini (I know you will be reading this 😘) are traveling to Nepal for 6 days in January.

2. We might spend March in Thailand/Bali for a month-long workation.

3. I will be riding to Leh Ladakh on the bike from Goa sometime around July.

4. We will do our customary European trip with our cousins in August/November. Planning is still on.

5. Sometime in there, we will take our parents to Dubai.

Habits to focus on:

1. Journalling.

2. Meditation

3. Reading - I am reading Goa Inquisition and Elon Musk at the moment.

Activities to restart:

1. Playing football

2. Surfing

If you find this interesting, please do two things:

1. Reply to this email with your story. Let’s become friends?

2. Share this with someone who would find this interesting.

If you feel like, my emails are not for you. Feel free to unsubscribe, I do not want to clutter your inboxes further. No hard feelings! Total Love ❤️