Hey Friends,

Happy 2024! 🎇 Hope you’d an incredible start to the year 😀.

Today, I want to share with you:
- My Single Biggest Lesson From 2023
- Annual Plans & Inspiration for 2024

This is a more personal email than usual. I think and hope it can help and inspire you. I’m a believer in the “you can have it all” approach - (fancy work, side business, kids, travel) - and here I get concrete on how I plan around this.

BUT First - Do you ONLY want Denmark-specific content?
- Yes - Only Denmark Content ​
- No - All Good​

You can let me know. I upgraded my email systems and I can personalize a lot more. (I can even send one email and leave the Denmark or non Denmark parts out depending on what you tell me 😉).

🦁 The Big Lesson From 2023 - Living With Boldness

In 2023, I set as my main goal to be BOLD.

For Context - I used to have insane self belief. Really over the top.

Then, with time and age, startup and career failures, and in a context of janteloven I started to lose that edge. I became a more “normal” and even humble person.

(Being humble is not bad. But I over-corrected too much.)

So, all through last year I worked on my self-belief daily, and even hired a therapist to help me get back on track.

The key was to make bold moves.

For instance, in my job at Maersk, when my boss was fired - and no replacement immediately tapped in - I not only pitched myself aggressively for the role, making plans and presentations, but also acted as if I had the role: without anyone asking me I set up the team’s operating system, asked everyone to make objectives and plans and positioned myself as the go-to guy with the new boss.

It was indeed a bit too aggressive, but it worked: I didn’t get that role, but I got another leadership opportunity within the same wider team.

(All in what was, objectively speaking, my weakest performance in the job over a 12-month period.)

It’s not always comfortable, but I can attest life is better when you aim high and act with confidence 💪.

Ref the Therapist - He’s 89-year old and a non-BS guy. He bluntly told me: “You’ve a great career, a very profitable side business, wrote two books, traveled to 139 countries, are a good husband and parent to two kids - What the fuck you need me to tell you? You’re already what you say you want to be".

📕 If you’re interested in more of my (very specific, as always) take-aways from 2023, I made a 20+ min exclusive video for the people who joined my Mastermind. I also shared with the same group two hours worth of videos on how to prepare and review the past year and plan the next one.

​Mastermind is my most intimate and personalized program. It’s a low cost, high value setup where you’ll get live Q&As with me every month, access to a growing “Mastermind Vault” (a lot of productivity content), an Mastermind-only exclusive forum and the possibility to book a 1-1 with me. In 2024 we also want to do live meetups in Copenhagen every quarter.

👉 You can hear more about the Mastermind here.

🐣 Looking Forward - My 2024 Plans

(I’m publishing this (and a longer version) as a video on YouTube this week too).

1) Habits - Gamify My Life 👾

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I’m a big “habit is destiny”-guy. I believe in habits so much that I wrote a full book about it, and have been tracking my habits - so, workouts, journals, focused work, and so on - for more than six years.

I believe that if you do the right things every day, and do it consistently over the long term, you will get what you want. (And while I’m not uber successful, I have managed to build an exciting and well balanced life that is an inspiration to many, and did at force of good habits.)

I’ve been, all the way up to now, just using a simple spreadsheet called Lights to do all the habit tracking, and this year - in what is a total revolution in my life - I’m dropping Lights and starting to use a new app called Habitify to do the work.

Here I got inspired by my year-long use of Duolingo. Duolingo is so - so! - well designed and I just got inspired by all the small things it has to nudge you to study: streak count, daily quests, monthly quests, leagues, badges, friend challenges, etc.

(You can find me in Duolingo here, and hat-tip: you can get almost-premium for free if you sign up as a “Teacher”).

SO: Applied to habits, I now not only count a daily score, but also streaks, monthly and yearly totals (and count vs. target), printed badges to put in the fridge if milestones are reached, started “daily quests” (more on that in a minute), joint challenges with my wife for e.g., workouts.

If life is good, it doesn’t mean you can’t keep build on and improving what works well already.

2) Career - Be an Inspirational Leader 🦅

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As I wrote above, I’m a team leader now. I’m super excited because - ever since I had my startup ten years ago or so - I never had people responsibility. Now I’m getting a big and high-stakes team.

My one, biggest objective for 2024 is to nail this - to excel at work and get results, and, on the way, become a bold and inspirational leader.

I’m working on the specifics of what becoming a bold and inspirational leader will mean in practice - and, I’m going to be reading, talking to people, and trying multiple ideas and frameworks.

3) Business - Publish 2x Videos a Week 🎥

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While my “day job” will be the focus for me this year, I don’t expect to dial down on my business. Instead, I want to build on the big work I have done through the past years:
- I will finish writing and filming the two courses I have promised for end of 2023 and that are still pending: Second Salary and Financial Freedom Blueprint. (It’s embarrassing it’s taking me this long and I’m committed to getting them done ASAP.)
- That done, and with a lot of upgrades to my courses and platforms done through last year, I will leave that money-side of the business on auto-pilot and focus on YouTube and this newsletter.

Specifically, I want to publish two videos a week (vs. one, normally) and one newsletter per month. I believe I’ve a good shot to get to 100K subscribers in YouTube and the two weekly videos will help me work towards that. It’s a long way, but I’m confident I’ve a strong plan to make it happen.

(I'm off in Florida and the Caribbean for most of January, so this is more of a coming-soon goal).

4) Habits - Start Daily Quests 🗺️

Back to Habits, I told you about the “Daily Quests”. Here, I’m using a Duolingo-inspired setup:
- Each day, when I write my morning journal (which, for reference, I’ve been writing for at least six years), I either put down - and frame as the daily quest - a) the one most important thing I have to do to make the day a success, or b) an exciting/innovative thing I could do to make the day more fun.
- These can be, for instance, to e.g., film two videos, write that important newsletter, send that email I’ve been afraid to, etc. But, to make it more fun, it can also be that I set to work from a cafe in the afternoon, or take the kids to a new playground after work, or I cook something new at home.
- Then, I track my “Completed Quest”-count, and, just as in Duolingo, if I complete a set number of quests, I can give myself a nice prize.

And Look - I try things like this often. I love playing with habits and systems, and I bet you that - comes June or July - this quests-setup could be completely different. But I’m confident that I’ll incorporate something like this for the long-term

… For 5) and 6) you should check the video on YouTube, but - spoiler alert - there are some health and travel goals ✈️.

For 7) - I wooould like, MAYBE, a bigger place or home in Copenhagen. I’m not a suburb boy, so I’m looking if the right place pops up in our neighborhood, and if it does I could end up moving in 2024. You’ll hear all about that if it happens, as MANY of you follow me from my real estate content 👋.

New Courses & Product Updates 🔥

I did A LOT of back-end / behind the scenes work on my online store the past months:
- I’ve moved my website and online courses to a new platform and there’s A LOT of new nitty gritty added as a forum, new types of lessons, soon a blog, and a kick ass chat/customer support setup.
- I also improved the email funnel, and now you’ve new nicer looking emails, behind the scenes personalizations with powerful surveys and a nice refer—your-friends setup.

For courses, I made many updates to Dream Home Denmark and launched:
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🤑 Second Salary - How to Build and Online Business. I’ve been making money online since 2009 (!) and this is a course with 100+ lessons on the system and strategies and tactics you can use to build an online empire with only a few hours a week. I’ve launched the first 30+ lessons, the rest are coming shortly.

🌐 Mastermind - My Personal Coaching Program. I told you about it above, but share again: this is the ultimate and most personalized setup I have. If you need help or advice for buying a home, investing, building a business or overall productivity, it’s the best I have to offer.

That’s it from me! Thanks a lot for reading my emails all this time, and wishing you an amazing start to 2024.

Hugs from Florida 🏝️,

Mario