The Watering Whole

posted January 11, 2019

Welcome to the “Tell Your Story” highlight reel.

If you haven’t guessed it as yet, everyone has a story. Within each is identifiable life experiences, anyone can glean from if open to receive.

This is a Highlight Reel of another’s life journey designed to inspire. Have a coffee/tea and read on as Erik shares his story.

Thank you, Al, for giving me the chance to tell my story

My name is Erik, I’m a 26-year-old living in Minnesota and I’m looking to become a little bit better each day on the way to creating my dream life and doing what I want with my time.

Some of the favorite things to do with my time are yoga and exercise, spending time with my family and sisters, reading fiction or non-fiction books, and trying to help people through my content online. I’m a little bit of a weirdo and am on the pursuit of “mastering life” (which can never happen, but is kind of fun to think about), and am always looking to tweak and adjust things in my life to make it easier or more fulfilling.

I started The Mastermind Within, my blog, at the end of 2016. On the blog, I focus on how a person can reach their wildest dreams through personal development and becoming better in different areas of their life. We all have a powerful brain and a limitless potential; these things we can use to our advantage if we ask the right questions and make the right decisions!

I also talk a lot about personal finance, as being good with money gives us options to do what we want.

For my day job, I work as a statistician and programmer and am constantly hustling on the side with my blog, podcast, some consulting work, and a subscription box company. I like staying busy ☺

Why did you start blogging?

I started my blog as an attempt to create an income stream outside of my day job. At the end of 2016, I was reading 1 book a week and wanted to try to start a book review website, but also mix in personal development and personal finance tips.

Also, I believe that through working on communication, leadership and entrepreneurship that you will become better as a person. This becoming better will result in extreme results in many different areas of life.

Now, after 2 years, I’ve finally been able to make a little bit of money from it (about $1,500 from ads), and I’m excited to see what happens in year 3!

What hurdles (mental or physical) did you have to overcome to get your blog started and continue on today?

For starting, I’m someone who forces myself to get out into the world and try things without thinking. This mindset has positives and negatives, but because I forced myself to start, I don’t remember too many hurdles.

Now that I’ve been blogging for nearly 2 years, the biggest hurdle is time and the schedule I set for myself. 

One of my goals is to build a following and have a bigger blog. This can certainly be done with less content, but with more content, there are potentially more pages for your readers to interact with.

I publish 3 posts a week, and this goal brings a constant push for new ideas, research and everything else that with the goal.

As I mentioned, this takes a decent amount of energy and time, so this is the biggest challenge right now.

But, I’m young, have a lot of energy, and am doing all of this so that in 3-5 years, I can reach my goal and have a large website ☺

What advice would you share with someone who want to start blogging?

Ideas are worthless without ACTION. It costs less than $100 to start a blog. If you are reading this, that probably isn’t a huge amount of money to spend (if you buy coffee every day from Starbucks, you can afford to start a blog).

Something I’ve learned over the past few years is the best way to learn and experience something is to actually do it.

You can watch all the documentaries, TV shows or YouTube videos to “understand” what something is like, but until you actually do it, you really won’t understand what it’s like.

My advice is to start!

I had a blog back in 2015 that was a mess and completely sucked. Just by starting though, I learned a ton about how to set up and design a website, a little on how to market your online business, and improved my writing and communication.

3 months later, I was burnt out, but I’m still glad I tried.

It helped me learn a lot of things that lead me to my current website. Now, I’ve been consistent for nearly 2 years and I’ve seen great growth!

Even though I’m not famous or a huge blog, I still have something bigger than nothing.

Thank you for reading!

If you’d like to read more of my content, please click over to my blog at The Mastermind Within. If you’d like to hear my message, I run a podcast called The Simple Minded Millennial. I’d love to connect if you have any questions about becoming better over time to reach your goals.