Really dreaming big
And working hard
A few days ago…
A few days ago I wrote a blog post called The Entrepreneur’s Work Schedule. In it, I shared how I used to work from 8am to 9pm in my late teens and early 20s. That may sound like hell on Earth, which is understandable! Even I grew to dislike grinding every hour of every day. I felt trapped.
However…
Now that I am running a business that is 100% mine, I miss trying with all my might to bring a fulfilling dream to life. And that’s why I’ve switched things up. I work vigorously on my goals for 10 to 11 hours on weekdays and another 10 hours in total over the weekend (i.e., 5 hours a day).
I feel so alive!
My weekday schedule is pretty much 8am to 6pm. I rest from 6pm to 9pm and work once more from 9pm to 10:30pm. I sleep at 12:00am. On weekends, it’s more flexible. I may do 8am to 1pm on both Saturday and Sunday to then leave the remainder of the day free. But it’s up to me and changes week to week.
It’s like I’m 23 years-old again.
At the time, I had just started my business, the Calgary Language Nerds. I was afraid: what if I failed? At the same time, I was excited: what if I succeeded?
Back then all I really did was flail around blindly, figuring out how to run profitable business in a way that brought me joy. A lot of my social media content was simply me documenting my journey.
I am 33 now.
Here we are, 10 years later. It’s time for a new chapter and I genuinely feel younger. Hungry. Eager. Ambitious. Alive. I’ve been running a profitable, stable business for years. It has grown moderately year-over-year. So what’s the plan over the next decade? What’s next?
My goals.
I know how I operate; my goals fluctuate. They move. It’s like there’s a North Star and after each step I realize that my aim was a little off. But in the end, I land in the right place. I suppose it’s scary sharing my goals because I fear being judged or viewed as a failure when, at this stage, I am reasonably confident the goals are likely incorrect. Or my vision isn’t clear. But nevertheless, here’s where my head is at today.
Project 1: The first “real” Gujarati course.
There are no comprehensive Gujarati courses on the market. I mean, there are introductory courses on Udemy and other sites, but nothing remotely close to as useful as what you’d find for “popular languages” like French or Spanish. I am actively creating such a course. I have recorded a little over 70 lessons so far. I think I will need to make about 500, likely organized into levels with a variety of assignments, to ensure it is thorough enough to lead to a conversational level.
Project 2: Language learning app
My Guaranteed Fluency program is something unique, particularly in the way my team and I are able to measure progress numerically. I’ve now seen with my own eyes how useful it is for language learners to have these metrics.For the past month, I’ve been working with one my closest friends to take my expertise and deliver it via app form. I’ve never done something like this before. Of all the projects I’ll be telling you about, this is the one I feel has the lowest chance of succeeding, but the highest potential upside in terms of impact in the language learning space.
Project 3: Secret Spanish Course
I have one tutor on my team who wants to offer something truly unique for Spanish. I won’t share any details yet ;)
Project 4: A big business
I would love, over the next 10-20 years, grow my business to the point where I have 100 employees. It’d be meaningful to work with that meany people on cool projects we’re all excited about.
Project 5: Guaranteed Fluency
I can’t stress enough how special and impactful my Guaranteed Fluency Program is. I’ve got this down a science. It’s working. Reliably. No more hiccups. I want to keep doubling down on this and helping more language learners to reach their fluency goals. It just frustrates me how almost nobody even gets remotely close to reaching their desired level, despite their best efforts. I now have a solution that works.
Project 6: Learn languages
I’m 18 years into a lifelong project. I want to reach an advanced level in 8 languages. I currently speak 3 languages at an advanced level, 2 languages at a high intermediate level, and then 1 more language at a beginner level. Lots of work left to do here.
Project 7: Fitness
I want to be in peak physical shape. I’m guessing it will take 10 to 20 years to really be at the fitness level I am picturing in my mind, after which I would switch into a maintenance mode. I started this journey about 2 years ago.
Let’s see where this leads
I’m sure not everything will pan out how I envision it, but boy am I excited! I’ll, of course, keep sharing my progress online :)
Talk soon,
Azren
Calgary Language Nerds owner
https://azrenthelanguagenerd.com