haven’t touched my social media pages in over 8 months, but here’s what i’ve been up to:

it’s that time of year where things are wrapping up, clients tighten their budgets, and finances get reorganized. with that usually comes reflection and analysis.

just 9 months ago I was working at a smoothie shop now Im earning 3x what I made in my own pursuit.

this is a reflection on where i’ve been, and where i want to go (mostly pulled from my journal).

my agency is doing just north of $6k per month (some months as high as $8k, but typically i’m hovering around the $6k mark). below my standards if i’m being honest. here’s a screenshot since i know a ton of people bullshit online.

my environment is changing for the better. i got a gym membership that’s pretty damn pricey, but the environment is next level.

i’ve been aggressive with my spending dropping hundreds, sometimes thousands, on education (a.i. automation, newsletters, manychat).

i’ve been working as a generalist, not a specialist, and it’s time for that to change.

if i stay on this path, i have zero doubt i’ll reach serious levels of growth not just income wise, but in relationships, health, and overall personal beliefs.

i believe i’ll be levels ahead of many people my age.

these are my new goals:

notice none of these are monetary. previously they were. i’m more concerned about a way of life than how much money I make. in retrospect this will, I feel, result in even more fulfillment and more revenue earned.

i do a lot of thinking, journaling, and watching. i’m naturally pretty observant (man of few words), and because of that i’m able to pick up on trends most people don’t see or see but never act on because many are lazy.

i’ve traveled to bali, japan, spain, portugal, costa rica, new york, and bali again, and i’ve spent real time thinking about where i want to go.

to paint a picture of what my life has looked like over the past few months: pure chaos. chasing clients, saying yes to anything anyone asks me, and working 7 out of 7 days a week until 10pm or until i fall asleep at my desk.

someone recently asked me when the happiest time of my life was, and it’s definitely not now.

so things need to change.

a quick story:

when i got my first $5k invoice, i went and bought a csgo skin. pretty stupid, but it made me realize something huge. if you’re curious, it was $200 and it ended up going to $300 so I guess solid investment.

when i get messages on instagram saying “your content has changed my life,” i have a hard time even articulating that. i had an impact on your life? one of the things im optimizing for is impact (thanks nick)

but it’s also all about learning for me. my monthly spend is high, but i’m learning more because others are too scared. this is my highest roi skill right now: spending.

i will continue paying experts not to do things for me, but to show me what i’m doing wrong. there’s a huge difference between someone doing it for you and someone pointing out your mistakes until you can identify the problem yourself and fix it.

in my 23 years on this earth, there hasn’t been a course or program as eye opening as nick’s community (maker school). ive spent over $15,000 on online learning. from the skool community on the business side, to the step-by-step action, the accountability, the community engagement it’s next level. since age 15 i’ve worked with discord communities on whop specifically in the reselling space, and i haven’t seen a level of engagement and overall thriving community like maker school.

the reason i’m saying this: invest in your interests. automation is something i feel everyone needs to learn, but if it’s copywriting, invest in it. if it’s video editing, invest in it. you get me. don’t stop learning.

from me to you you’re a fucking idiot if you think courses/programs are a scam (standing on that till i die).

the king and the slave analogy shows that both power and powerlessness are illusions, and true freedom comes from seeing beyond the roles we think define us. in other words, the king and the slave story teaches that strength and weakness are both illusions, and real freedom comes from seeing past the labels we give ourselves.

to summarize: i need to prioritize me. i don’t care about alex hormozi’s crippling work obsession that’s not me, and it never will be. i value more than just work. while i love what i do, it’s not my only priority. i want to nurture relationships, family, and of course side passions, which i’ll talk about later.

something i’ll definitely pivot to in the future is helping entrepreneurs avoid burnout, maintain relationships, and expand their business.

i’m getting obsessive and i wish i did it sooner. i watch a lot of Nick Saraev and it’s real simple: track every 15 minutes for a week, and your future will be revealed to you. relationships become clear, and my focus improves drastically. this is easily one of the highest roi tasks i should be doing weekly. if you’ve never tried it, you should — it’s scary how much time we waste.

one of the reasons i’m a productivity freak is because all good founders are obsessive about who and what they give their time to.

i heard mr beast talk about his early stages, and honestly i’ve heard a lot of other founders say the same thing aggressive early day spending on product research, personal learning, and growth. it’s a pattern that repeats.

i now know what i want to specialize in, which took a long road to figure out, but it’s time to zone in on two things: newsletters + automation.

spend spend spend to earn earn earn.

it’s a big time waster, but it’s also something i really enjoy. finding a balance for this is pretty tough, although because of the nature of my work, it helps a ton. it does concern me, since i’m often closest to burnout when traveling timezone changes are pretty difficult with clients, and that’s one of my biggest problems with bali.

not sure how i’ll tackle this yet, but it’s really important that i continue to travel and find an environment where people have bigger pockets, bigger thinking, and unique ways of living.

preferably near the ocean i don’t see it any other way.

a few weeks ago i joined gannon.meyer’s live workshop it was $600 i believe, and one of the best investments i’ve ever made. one thing that stuck out was how important it is to invest in what you care about. to summarize: i learned a ton and recommend anyone do the same if you have an interest. invest in it.

i’ll be heading to new york from december 5–14 to meet with him and others. pretty stoked it’s a mastermind event. (heres is a pic from the even, i wrote this before trip)

seriously, the more you understand you know nothing, the faster you learn and grow. ask questions. you want to be the dumbest in the room if you’re not, you’ve got a big fucking problem on your hands.

i recently worked with a client and, to summarize, he said, “tre, you’re a fucking idiot.” i really took it in, didn’t deflect, and thought, what if he’s right? oh, he was right. at the time we were doing 10m impressions, and now we’re doing 30m impressions every 30 days. so yes, i was 100% the idiot.

the point of that story is this: when someone criticizes you, they are right in their perspective. they clearly see something you’re missing. so take it into consideration it might add 20m impressions to your instagram account (lol). keep your ears open, and that alone will make you better. i guarantee it.

so i met with callum carver pretty randomly he posted on his ig and ended up picking me to interview. he took a look at my business and gave me some advice on my bottlenecks. he told me everything i was doing wrong, and it was one of the biggest perspective shifts i’ve ever received.

to summarize the call

had the opportunity to chat with nick briefly back in september. my impression of him was that he’s very analytical, has a sharp head on his shoulders, and seems laser focused. very respectful, very kind, genuinely curious. but overall, he felt like a killer in the business sense. you always here of those business killers but when they are on the other side of a screen and you’re interacting with them it gives you a different perspective i hope you get to experience some day.

funny takeaway: nick joked that he didn’t want to poison my youthful ears. but i asked him, “nick, how do you manage everything? how do you seem to be everywhere at once while still balancing your life?” and he said not verbatim but something like: “tre, you know, i had a conversation with alex hormozi as well as sam ovens, and alex told me that balance isn’t real. pay now or pay later. there’s a time to grind, and it’s now. the reason you might think i seem balanced today is because i’ve been busting my ass for the last 8 years. now i’m finally at a point where i can rest more than i used to. i hope that makes sense but it’s true.”

i agree of course. i still have my disagreements with hormozi’s work style, but he’s right: pay now or pay later. it’s a grind, but once you get it, you get it. besides, i’m not in this game for the short term i’m here to be a killer.

in every business, if you’re unaware of your bottlenecks, that’s when there’s something deeply wrong. problems are good and in business, the bigger the problem, the more money i continue to make, time and time again.

it’s essential that i create systems to track my daily time input, social media growth, and any other personal pursuits i take on. huge shoutout to nick for this completely jacked his idea. but this isn’t about tracking instagram growth; i need something similar for my own time tracking where it reveals total time spent, % of the day spent on each activity, etc.

i also want a visual pie chart showing where my time is going (family, relationships, clients, tre time, etc). it’s critical that i see visually what’s happening day to day and week to week. again if you track time, you can track your future.

recently had the pleasure of talking with my now coach gavin, and he told me exactly how he structures his day and he’s doing over $100k/mo.

to put it simply: sales/marketing → client delivery → operations. it was simple, and i like simple.

seems rather simple, but people don’t do it. they get pulled in all sorts of directions but not me, not anymore. i’ve told all of my clients that i work from 11am–4pm, and if they miss their window to connect with me, they can either find someone else to do the job or wait until i respond tomorrow. not up for negotiation.

my clients need me i don’t need them (though i truly love my clients). i’ll continue bringing them serious roi and delivering exceptional service, giving them that feeling of “this is money well spent.”

i’m young, so i have time to learn this but i want it fixed. leadership sits right next to communication in my book, and it needs to be effective. got some reading and people to meet to assist with this.

i’m not doing any because if i took on another client, i might explode. the clients i have now, i love they’re much higher ticket and are beginning to see roi from my services. but if i want consistent $10,000–$15,000 months, i need to retain clients and get them results month after month.

but again, not sending outreach is a huge no-no. that machine should never stop. same with upwork it’s great for both inbound and outbound projects.

i need to launch my skool community one of my goals is impacting 33,000 people via Skool and to do that i need to launch! ffs just do it and don’t half ass it the rest should work itself out. i will say the bottleneck here is getting sucked into constantly working on this when i should potentially be working on client work or other things.

to be quite honest, i’m not entirely sure what metrics i need to be tracking. i’m young and only recently started taking business accounting more seriously tracking time and tracking growth. so i’m still figuring out what actually matters. i know i should be tracking, but which metrics?

there are tons of vanity metrics out there (metrics that mean nothing) and only a few that actually matter. i need to figure out what those are for my business, my content, and my personal life.

looking back at this i built a CRM (now tracking better metrics) AND im tracking my finances much much better done weekly (see below)

my health has taken a hit over the past few months since most days i’m working between 8–12 hours. there’s not a ton of room for the gym, running, or surfing. it’s easily one of the highest roi actions i need to be doing, but separating from work is tough i’d say 5 out of 7 days.

no more one-on-one calls unless it’s for in-person growth (which i plan to do soon). they’re a waste of my time, and unless someone is paying me $100 for the hour, i won’t be doing them. not high enough roi lots of time wasters.

i need to show up in my client work, at the gym, and in my friendships and relationships. i don’t want to half-ass any of that. it’s something i’m already regretting over the past few years.

i remember playing soccer in high school and half-assing practice, weights, everything and it cost me the chance to potentially play in college (not that i wanted to, but i 100% could have).

matthew mcconaughey had advice from his father about pursuing acting: “don’t half-ass it.” and that’s what i’m working on daily.

often i find myself rushing the process, but that’s not the point. move slow, do it right, and you won’t have to do it again. rushing causes me to waste time, redo projects i thought were finished, and deal with problems i could’ve avoided.

Recently went ahead and tracked my time for an entire 24 hours here were the results

client delivery → 62.7% (8 hours)
content → 9.5% (1 hour)
personal → 27.8% (4 hours)

after looking at this, no wonder i’m near burnout i’m delivering everything for my clients by myself. i realized it’s time to hire, so in the coming months i’ll be onboarding a writer, a video editor, and a social media manager to assist me. this will let me produce even more content, which at the end of the day brings me the highest roi that and, of course, outreach. my mood most days is extremely tense, and i feel anxious to leave my desk or stop working. this is a leadership, boundary, and team building problem, and it needs to be handled.

well, adding a writer is charged per article, so the way i’m thinking about it is operating at 50–60% profit margins on newsletters and it’s already proven to work with one writer. the bottleneck is finding writers who know each founder’s space better than the founder knows it. that requires an llm, poppyai, and a deep understanding of each founder’s audience. thats gonna be my job understanding audinces (thank you copywriting).

adding a video editor is worth it i really hate video editing. it’s never a good use of anyone’s time. there are always higher-leverage tasks i could be doing. that’s a $5/hour task.

a social media manager is interesting. i’m hypothesizing this will be a big game changer, and the reality is i have a coaching student i want to give this opportunity to. he’s got potential, and i want him to get comfortable managing socials and learn how to spot trends before they happen. i’m certain he’ll crush it i just need to give proper direction and provide more value than he knows what to do with, while also keeping things simple (a weird balance i’m figuring out).

i would estimate i’d lose about 40% of my monthly revenue, around $2,400 per month but i’d save roughly 4 hours daily. that’s a huge power move, and it would mean income coming into my pocket from content, the skool community, and any coaching i take on. overall net benefit.

i sure have my limiting beliefs like most people do. most recently, telling my clients i only operate during specific set hours and boy was i wrong. they didn’t care, and some even said “ok tre.” that was it. that’s what i was worried about.

sales - has been a big one for me. at one point i literally closed my laptop because i didn’t know how to handle an objection. is it my biggest limiting belief? no. i teeter between being very confident and not so much. but i really think it comes down to one idea: do i know i can make this person or business an roi? if the answer is no, sales gets rough for me which just means i need to improve my service.

selling digital product — for whatever reason ive felt weird selling something and almost thinking to myself would people really buy? i will prove that voice in the back of my head wrong i know it but its there!

automation - it’s something that’s in the works, but i question about my ability to automate. it’s a night-and-day difference from a couple weeks ago, but i’m still concerned about whether i can keep growing the agency while continuing to learn.

finding balance with work — i’m not there just yet, but i’m very close. i need to scale to the $15k range to build a small war chest that lets me hire talent, build automations to make onboarding and client delivery seamless, and bring on again amazing people. i can smell that $15k/mo it’s near. i just have to hammer my inputs daily. i know i’ll hit it soon enough. if i were to estimate (February 26, 2026).

My hires
hire video editor | hire writer | hire graphic designer (done) | hire graphic animator (done)

How I’m operating
standard of clarity | standard of ethical growth | standard of being present | standard of outperformance | standard of lifelong learning | standard of calm excellence | standard of meaningful work | standard of authenticity

What I’m optimizing for
impact | aggressive learning | simplicity | ROI (for my clients) | King not slave mentality

let’s start with business i plan to be doing $100k per month, likely in the ecom space. i’ve played around in this field and loved it. ecom’s growth is booming, and i don’t see it slowing down anytime soon. it also ties hand-in-hand with my email marketing strategy. some founders operate with 30–50% of their mrr coming from email same with ecom businesses. but for now i want to stick out this newsletter agency for founders (i love it and meeting awesome ppl)

i’d also speculate i’ll have some tie into the ai industry. i’m having so much fun in maker school, and becoming an ai consultant is something i want to pivot toward in the coming months. if we’re talking impact, it genuinely sounds fun being able to generate huge returns for companies. even being a youtube strategist would be awesome.

the last speculation i have is assisting entrepreneurs avoid burnout, balance life, relationships, and grow business.

content — i’ll be honest, i don’t plan to do content forever. i feel my cutoff is around 35 years old. looking at other creators, that’s the age i’d prefer to be out of the constant race of coming up with ideas. so i need to go hard right now, posting daily and thinking bigger. ultimately, every great thing in my life has come from content.

now for living — i hope i have my own place, although i do love having roommates. san diego is somewhere i want to stay (although taxes are brutal). i want a villa in bali or japan (not sure which one yet). i hope i have a good couch by then mine currently sucks. i would love a dog, a nice truck, some surfboards, a boujee gym membership, and regular trips to japan, portugal, bali (most likely because of ecom).

network — built from content, akari network, and my nonprofit (no name yet), which will be ocean related. my friends are high level, but i’m also still hanging with college buddies mostly high income earners. network principle: be the one to spark conversation. keep it simple.

impact — im very close to reaching my goal of impacting over 33,000 people. ive always struggled with finding my skill or passion, and i think thats the real challenge for most people—discovering what they truly love and turning a skill into something they can monetize.

travel — just keep doing it dont stop. its important to maintain a strict routine when you travel so you dont lose momentum. at this point you’ll have it down to a T.

relationship — i know my future lady needs to love travel too. i don’t see it working any other way.

i used to think I couldn’t focus. but I was actually just focused on the wrong thing. hate him or love him kanye said:

for a full year, i was doing something i didn’t love (freelancing), but it was all part of the journey. i had to figure out what i actually enjoyed and what i was good at. as soon as i could, i stopped freelancing and pivoted into becoming an agency owner, and it’s been so much better.

there’s a lot of work ahead and tons more to learn, but it’s fun for me. i really see this like an addicting video game almost like minecraft or csgo. i notice so many patterns, and not a day goes by where i regret quitting my job.

for me this chapter isn’t about grinding harder it’s about becoming someone I can trust. calm. precise. consistent. someone who finishes what he starts, protects his energy, and builds impact without burning himself or others down.

that’s the standard now.

i’m sure i’ll re read this at some point down the line. im certain those goals will be hit.

but for now its grind time

dont half ass it, talk soon

— tre