Happy New Year from Krabi! Best of 2009… Goals for 2010

I hope you guys had a fantastic 2009, and thank you for making my year a great one.

To all my readers, I wish you a very happy New Year! Last week I shared my Christmas letter to my friends and family and shared a lot of the great things I’ve been fortunate enough to do this year, people I’ve met, and places I’ve seen.

Since this time last year, my visitors, subscribers, and revenue here at Thrilling Heroics have increased fivefold. My photography was published in Frommer’s Bangkok Day By Day guide. I helped my friend raise thousands of dollars for charity and get coverage from CNN. I officially became a regular, paid freelance writer with my staff writer position for SocialMediaMarketing.com. I interviewed social media heavyweight Gary Vaynerchuk. I’ve been involved in planning the TEDx conference coming to Bangkok in February. I traveled throughout Thailand, to Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and near the Burmese border. I hung out with lots of cool kids that put smiles on my face, I met tons of extraordinary people from around the world.

I even got to spend my Christmas day out sailing with friends in Railay, Krabi (my favorite place) and cooking up a fresh fish dinner!

pulling up anchor for some Christmas sailing!

James, Jane, Vanessa & Alysia

2009 has been a great year for ThrillingHeroics.com too! The Top Performing Articles in 2009 were as follows:

  1. Steal My Blog Design: Announcing the Free ThrillingTheme for WordPress
  2. 22 Inspirational Quotes for Living the Rockstar Life
  3. 49 Tools for Living the Location Independent Lifestyle
  4. Obey the Law Most of the Time (guest post by Colin Wright)
  5. How to Turn Your True Fans Into Your Worst Enemies
  6. 11 Incredible Positive Thinkers You Should Follow on Twitter
  7. Choosing the Life Path Less Taken
  8. 10 Travel Ninjas You Should Follow on Twitter
  9. 14 Mandatory Manifestos for the Lifestyle Design Journey
  10. Reach Your Dreams with Lifestyle Design (video)

[Interesting that half of these results are list posts. I'll definitely come back to the Twitter lists.]

I’ve also become Chief Marketing Officer for an exciting new startup with some truly incredible co-founders—Jun Loayza, Adam Baker, Carlos Miceli, Monica O’Brien and Andrew Norcross. We’re still keeping the project under wraps, but next week we’ll have a remarkable free manifesto for you all about living on your own terms and taking back control of your life in 2010.

I can’t top this 2008 article on how to set meaninful goals and reach your New Year’s resolutions, but on that note here are a few of my goals for the year ahead that I hope to share with you on Thrilling Heroics:

  • Successfully build our new startup into a strong community for other twentysomethings that want to create their own “untemplate” lifestyle
  • Participate in Josh Kaufman’s 12-week Personal MBA Business Crash Course (we’ll be giving away three free seats in this $500 program with the launch of the new site, so check back on Tuesday)
  • Return home to attend the South by Southwest conference in Austin, TX in March, and the Coachella Music & Arts Festival in Indio, CA in April (make a small donation to help me get my SxSw ticket!)
  • Increase TH to 50,000 monthly visits, 5000 RSS subscribers, PR 4, and break into the Alexa top 40k sites online with proper market research, SEO, and guest blogging on high-ranking sites
  • Re-read Tim Ferriss’ new expanded 4 Hour Workweek and David Walsh’s SourceControl to systematize and automate my businesses as much as possible, and research outsourcing systems to virtual assistants & hiring service providers on Elance
  • Spend 1+ months living in at least one of the following: Krabi, Philippines, Bali, Argentina.
  • Implement the Bond Body exercise routine
  • Increase passive income by releasing my first two ebooks, finding regular advertisers for Thrilling Heroics, getting my exclusive newsletter back up and running, building a portfolio site to showcase my photography, and possibly developing an online nomad school
  • Check email only 4x per day at most, continue to eliminate distractions more rigidly, apply 80/20 principle at a regular interval, and increase productivity by applying principles from the 4HWW checklist for example
  • Create an updated Dreamline worksheet every 3 months to define & make sure I’m on track to reach my travel & lifestyle goals

What are your goals for 2010? Will this be the year you take back control of your life? What is the one thing you most want to learn to achieve your dreams?