Why $5k MRR, not $1mil ARR?

Since setting this financial goal yesterday, I’d been pondering why I seem to have sold myself shot compared to the previous two years where I had set audacious goals like earning $1mil ARR.

Have I gotten timid? Had the experience of the pandemic affected my ambition, my sense of adventure? Have I lost ‘it’?

COVID had certainly dampened the spirits, even till now. But the feeling that guided me to a seemingly smaller goal wasn’t borne of fear, but of quiet doggedness. Yes, that sense of cockroach persistence. Just waking up at 5-6am everyday, not whining, not over-eager either, and just putting in the work. No grandiose visions or audacious proclamations, just having a goal, and silently killing it.

By the way, goals do matter though. I like knowing where I’m heading. It just doesn’t have to be bigger than it has to. At least less than how I used to make it.

If I had learned anything from the stay-home lockdowns, the forced consistent routines at home, is that easy or not, time will pass anyway. I might as well get over myself and just keep at it. With equanimity. With a ordinary heart. I kept imagining, perhaps that’s what the traditional Japanese craftsmen—the shokunin—were embodying…just decades of going at their craft with quiet fortitude, on their way to grand-mastery but without caring about it that way. Like water drilling through rock, one drop, one drip at a time. I like that metaphor, that image and feeling it gives. A lot of calmness, silence, but understatedly powerful.

Perhaps it’s age, too. I’m hitting mid-forties soon. Perhaps age and time does mellow someone. Those fiery ambitions and goals of youth, starts to feel distasteful. I’m sure part of this also comes from fatherhood. It has a way of giving fresh perspective on what’s really important in life.

Whatever the reason, I’m not sure I care too much. I just know—just as I did with my #100daysofcode—that I can do this for $5k MRR. Just put in the hours, with deliberate practice, purposeful intention, and smart execution.

It’ll come.