Welcome to this August 2021 Monthly Blog Review!
Each month, we write a post about how the month went for us at Teen Financial Freedom. We start by sharing news, announcements, and what we worked on. Then, we finish by sharing how the month went for each of us individually.
Let’s get into it!
New Blog Posts
This month, we published these blog posts:
- July 2021 Monthly Blog Review
- The Pros and Cons of a To-Do List
- Trey Miller: The Story of a Young Entrepreneur Who Took the Leap
- The Benefits of Creating a Vision Board as a Teenager
- How To Create A Vision Board That Works
- 10 Key Takeaways From “Rich Dad Poor Dad”
- The Importance of Self-Reflection As A Teenager in 2021
- Ways To Practice Self-Reflection As a Teenager in 2021
- How I’m Going To College Debt Free
New Podcast Episodes
We also published these podcast episodes:
- How To Get Into Real Estate Investing At A Young Age
- How To Plan Your Life With Dani Kaur
- Our Financial Independence Goals
- Living Your Life To The Fullest With Dani Kaur
- Millionaires Don’t Buy These Things With Dani Kaur
- Buying Your First Real Estate Property at 19 Years Old With Jabbar Adesada
- Long Distance Real Estate Investing With Jabbar Adesada
- How To Set Up An Accountability System
Annoucements
Website Ads
This month, you may have noticed that there are now ads on the website. We’ve put ads on the website before, but we found that it didn’t work well with Google Adsense. Their ads were too demanding on our site, hurt our SEO, and didn’t pay enough for it to be worth it. So, we took them down and have been slowly growing our site in the meantime. However, this month we got the opportunity to sign up with Ezoic, and decided to put ads on the website again. These ads aren’t as bad on the site, don’t hurt our SEO, and pay a lot better than Google Adsense did. We know ads are a slight inconvenience for you readers, but that’s what is going to allow us to continue to work on TFF. We plan on reinvesting what we make on ads back into TFF to grow it bigger and better than ever before!
What We Worked On
New Team System
A large portion of my (Jacob) time this month was spent on coming up with new systems to help our team to function. If you read last month’s review, you’ll know that we added 3 new members to our team, doubling our old size! While it’s great to have these members, it doesn’t do as much good unless we put systems in place to fully utilize them. We came up with a lot of new workflows that will help us all work more efficiently. We also implemented EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), which has been tremendous in making us have more productive meetings.
Sponsorship Proposal
This month we also spent a lot of time working on a sponsorship proposal that we just started sending out to companies. Our goal is to have companies sponsor our platform, and in exchange they will grow awareness about their company. It took a lot of work to get this proposal set up and there were a lot of steps we had to take to get it to where it is today. We’re happy to say that the proposal is finished (for now), and we’re now working on getting our first client!
Blog Writing Service
Along the lines of monetization strategies, we also started working on a new plan we have of offering blog writing as a service. Teen Financial Freedom has now collectively written almost 200 blog posts. Needless to say, we’re starting to get pretty good at writing them. We also enjoy writing quite a bit. However, there are a lot of people who can’t say the same. Most people either don’t enjoy writing or don’t have the time for it. That’s where we come in. We’re working on offering blog writing as a service to other bloggers out there. We plan on making it one of our main monetization methods going forward.
Statistics
Our last few months have been pretty unimpressive when it comes to our stats. We took a little downturn this summer, and that continued into this month. But, the good news is that we are starting to see it bounce back this week! I made some changes at the end of last month that are just starting to register with Google and we’re starting to see some positive results. I’ll also mention that I found out that many industries saw major drops in traffic at the start of the summer. As the world started to open up again and people were eager to get out and go somewhere, people starting consuming a lot more travel content and a lot less finance content 🙁 But, with school starting up again I have a hunch that people will be shifting away from travel content again. Regardless, here are our stats for the month (keep in mind I am writing this on the 27th, so there is still time left in the month):
- 4,100 Users
- 13,500 Pageviews
- 59,000 Pinterest Impressions
- 130,000 Google Search Console Impressions
- 3,000 Google Search Console Clicks
Personal Lives
Let’s get into our personal updates from the month of August!
Jacob
Last month I mentioned that I would be heading off to college in August and I had a lot to wrap up before hand. But, I don’t think I fully understood just how much I had to do back then. Looking back now, this month was the craziest, most stressful, yet most productive month of my life.
When I say crazy, I mean it was an emotional roller coaster. It feels like every month I come on here and write about how my month was an emotional roller coaster. But really, this month was an emotional roller coaster like nothing I have ever felt before. Let me explain why. I started the month feeling very stressed about everything that I had to accomplish. I felt like the time I had to work with was shrinking faster than my list of projects and things to do. But eventually that started to fade as things were accomplished and I realized that I could get everything done. Then other feelings of excitement, anxiousness, and sadness started to become more prominent. I found that my mood could change from frustrated to sad or from excited to nervous very quickly. The best way I can describe it is that my emotional state has just been “off” these last few weeks. It’s been really weird and I think I’m just ready for a new normal.
When I say stressed, I mean stressed like I never have been before. There were points this month that I literally felt like I just couldn’t do everything I had to do. Like no matter how much time I had, it wasn’t enough. I had several appointments to go to. I tried to spend a lot of time with friends before they left. I had a bunch of college prep work to do. My Fiverr business had the best month it has ever had. I was trying to help get the TFF team set up and move along our projects here. There were a lot of side projects that I wanted to wrap up before I left the house. To top it all off, I was trying to maximize time with family whenever possible because I know that will be hard to come by from now on out.
When I say productive, I mean I pushed the limits of what I thought was possible this month. Not only did I accomplish more tasks than ever before, but I accomplished harder tasks than ever before. This month I quit procrastinating and did things that I had pushed off forever. I made it my goal to have everything finished by the end of the month. Literally, I wanted to have 0 items on my to-do list by the time college rolled around. Obviously, that proved to be a little unrealistic as new things always come up. However, I can confidently say that I’ve never been this productive before. I worked almost every minute of every day, only stopping to spend time with family or friends. I sacrificed free time to get everything done. And, I think it paid off big time. I’m feeling good about where I’m at right now.
Which leads me to next month. At the time of writing this, I’m spending my last night at my parent’s house in Colorado. Tomorrow we fly to Arizona to move me in to college. I feel sort of nomadic right now with all of my life packed away into suitcases. Anyways, this next week will be really weird for me. Flying out, getting moved in, and getting involved has me really nervous right now. But, I’m looking forward to giving it all my best shot. More than anything, I’m looking forward to my new routine and my new normal.
Terry
In my last update, I mentioned how the month of July had been pretty vanilla for me. Thankfully, August has spiced itself up a little (a little on accident and a little on purpose lol)! I started school in mid-August but made the mistake of not reading my class syllabuses beforehand, which caused me to get behind on all of week one’s reading in five classes and I found myself starting week two with double the homework. Big mistake. Don’t be me, be smarter. Read your class syllabuses ahead of time and save yourself a little pain!
Besides school, I realized about a week ago that I honestly had no reliable system for managing all of the tasks associated with school, TFF, my personal finances, and other businesses, which is honestly pretty ironic for a guy who has been studying productivity-related subjects for several years. Thankfully, Jacob was able to provide some insight and shared a Notion template for a part of his personal system. I was able to take that template and customize it to my specific needs, and I’m really happy with how it has turned out! It allows me to track every single task that has to do with any aspect of life, categorize it, prioritize it, and assign a deadline. Then, I made a sub-table that shows all of the day’s tasks so I know exactly what I need to be doing on any given day. It’s just the right mix of functionality and simplicity so it can do everything I need it to do but I can also keep up with it make using it a habit.
Also, two days ago I sent an email called “The Most Important Email of Your Life” to 22ish friends and family. If you’d like to read the email to see what it’s about, here’s the link! I also included the chapter where I first read about the idea. Basically, it’s a challenge that was created by Hal Elrond. Hal wanted to better his life and realized that if he wanted true, objective, feedback on what his strengths and weaknesses were he was far better off turning to those who knew him best rather than just trying to figure it all out on his own. He shares the whole story in the PDF attached to my email if you’d like to hear more and maybe try it yourself! Don’t worry, it’s nowhere near as scary as it sounds – I’ve had fantastic feedback from every response so far and no one was bothered by it!
Summary:
Big Fail: Not preparing properly for classes.
Big Success #1: A new task management system that is working really well (thanks for the help Jacob!).
Big Success #2: Sending out that cool email and receiving great feedback.
I’m excited to be using both the new system and the feedback I’ve received from the email I sent in the month of September for some really good progress!
Dani
For me, the month of August has been revolving around change. Change in lifestyle, change in habits, change in tasks, and more.
The month started off when I got back from an awesome family reunion that lasted for 10 days. After coming back home, I definitely missed my family and cousins after sharing so many great memories. However, I knew it was time to grind after being back home. The first major task/accomplishment I completed was setting up my notion page! I have it fully set up with dedicated pages to different aspects of life I want to focus on. I definitely write a blog on how my Notion is set up! But, while I do have it all prepared, I haven’t been using it quite as much as I thought I would. I set up a to-do list for each day, a running to-do list, a habit tracker, a page just for journalling, and more. But, the only thing I have consistently been using is the to-do list.
When school started about a week after I came back from vacation, my whole lifestyle has changed, & improved. First off, I have been waking up at 6:30 am every day on the weekdays. During the summer, it was impossible to get up before 7:30, and here I am, awake as soon as my alarm goes off. I believe that the reason why I suddenly changed and found the motivation to wake up early is purpose. I wake up early because I know I have to complete my morning routine before leaving to school. In the summer, I didn’t have this purpose.
Besides my morning routine, the whole course of my day has changed. I’m practically out from 8 am to 7:30 pm from Mondays to Thursdays. I made the JV tennis team, which I am super stoked about. Practice is 4 days on weekdays from 5 to 7, so I stay at school to complete my homework till then. This new schedule has made it a bit more difficult to balance school, life, and work, but I’ve been able to keep up with it by setting priorities, becoming more organized, and scheduling my time. I recently wrote a blog on how to balance school, life, and work, with 10 tips I personally use, so be sure to check it out!
Because this month was full of new changes and adjustments to me and my routine, next month I’m hoping to get used with it and be settled. The first year of high school is not that bad, and I have had to step down in some of my other positions to dedicate more time to school. High school is a lot of fun, and so is being part of a sports team.
I’ve been taking things one day at a time, and something that has really helped me is focusing on one thing at a time.
With all this being said, I don’t regret anything from this past month and I’m excited for what comes next!
Ruby
The month of August was amazing and also pretty tough. This month I transitioned from being on vacation in California surrounded by family and friends, to going back home, and going back to school. At first it really felt like school starting had ruined everything. I went from waking up at 8:30 every morning (and getting on track with sleep) to waking up at 5:30 every morning without time for my lengthy productive morning routine. I felt like I lost the freedom in my day to drive wherever I wanted, be where ever I wanted, and work as long as I wanted, to having to take the bus at a certain time and go to classes that have nothing to do with my current businesses.
But with the disappointment of school starting and feeling like summer was only a week long, I’ve really managed to find my motivation back for running my business. For months now I’d been running off of pure discipline to get things done during my burnout period. But somehow during the month of August I got my motivation, inspiration, and determination back, which feels a lot better than just pure discipline. During school all I can think about is getting back to work and reaching my goals, which is just the way I like it!
I’ve been finding myself absolutely exhausted still though, and it still feels like I need an extra 5 hours in my day to get everything done. It often feels like the to-do list is never ending especially with school taking up the entirety of my day. But still, I have so much gratitude for this month of August. I’ve had moments of pure joy because of business success, financial freedom, and willpower for the future. This month also made me realize how incredibly close I am to making it with B.D.F.O. (my lifestyle clothing brand), I can feel it in my core. And until then, the grind never stops 🙂
Ian
August went by fast, how is it September? When thinking about it, 2021 had crazier range of events yet
went by faster than 2020. August was a emotional roller coaster for me this month.
I had started school and the stress was beginning to make me rip my hair out. Then one day I learned I
had to merge clubs and I was so stressed by running around campus that I fell asleep in English class.
Finally, I had to handle friend group drama from back-to-back pool parties and the school’s dance was
cancelled.
Business wise, my main one made over $1000 dollars while eBay lagged. Due to personal errors, my
eBay rating dropped, and I must now fix it and get it back up to standard.
For September, I hope to stay on top of everything in my life and work on my grades. I have been
playing catch up all month in August and it has been draining. I hope y’all had a good August.
Chase
My god, August has gone by so fast. I must say, I feel like it was just yesterday that I was writing my first blog review for TFF, and now I’m through my first month on the team! It was a bit slow going at the beginning, but now that I’m really into the system and we have gotten down to the mechanics of working as a part of a larger team, it feels like we move faster and faster everyday!
I’ve found some amazing hacks recently, and utilized those to book some amazing guests onto the podcast!! I don’t want to spoil too much, but there are big things coming soon…
In terms of my other jobs, I have continued to work close to 40 hours per week in spite of starting school! I’ve been working a lot, but due to some massive car expenses and a few other issues, I haven’t made a ton of progress on my savings goal. My 75 Hard challenge has been going really well, and I’m super excited about it! I feel like I’m getting stronger and happier everyday.
In summary, August has been a time for new beginnings! I feel as though I’ve been prepping for something big that’s coming in the future, I just can’t see it yet. Before long I’ll be moving at the speed of light! Per Aspera, Ad Astra! It’s time for an amazing September.
