Early Exit #39: The Last Finance Update (May 2024)

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You’re reading Early Exit Club — a newsletter about leaving the 9-5 workforce to build a $20k/month solo business your dream life by Nick Lafferty.

• Last time: April Finance Update

• Next week: Building the life you want (lessons from early retirees)

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Welcome to my last monthly finance update for the foreseeable future. After sharing my income with y’all every month for the last 12 months it’s time to wind down this series.

Don’t worry, the Early Exit Club will continue but the monthly income series has run it’s course and I’ll explain why below.

First I’ll share more about where I’ve been and why you haven’t heard from me in the last four weeks.

I don’t believe in gating my content archive behind a paywall so feel free to browse my previous finance updates which document my journey from quitting my job to earning $40,000 in April.

Where have I been the last four weeks?

I spent the month of May searching for an apartment in Brooklyn and hanging out with my buds like Francis (pictured below).

Francis writes the very good Creator Spotlight interview series for Beehiiv which features behind the scenes stories from the creator economy and tactics that you can implement to grow your own newsletter. My favorite is about how the Cheapskate London newsletter gives away free bottles of gin to their subscribers 🎉.

I didn’t plan to take a break last month but I gave myself permission to put other things aside while I averaged 15,000 steps a day bopping around Brooklyn and making more in-person connections in a month than I’ve made in the entire last year.

And after spending the last year slinging Google & LinkedIn ads for some really cool companies, taking you all on the journey with me by grinding out tons of LinkedIn content, publishing 35 newsletters, and taking more networking calls than one person ever should, it was time for a break.

I needed to prioritize me, my family, and our future life. Here’s how I’m doing that.

Work as a means to a dream

As I spent the last month walking around my new neighborhood, I realized I was living a real-life version of the fisherman and the businessman story.

A few months after quitting my job I was a happy fisherman working for myself and building a comfortable life earning $20k/month. That was more money than I ever made as a salary man and it came with less working less hours (and less BS).

But my silly monkey brain kept pushing me to be the businessman in that story. It wanted me to hit even bigger monthly numbers: $30k. $40k. $50k.

Those are shallow goals. Past a certain point more money doesn’t make you any happier.

If I wanted to keep growing my business then I’d need to go into agency-mode by taking on more clients and hiring people to help me. Long-time readers know how I feel about this. Yuck.

So the monthly finance updates end because I’ve reached the point where I don’t care about them anymore. The finances aren’t the goal anymore.

So what is the goal? It’s far more qualitative than my previous goals.

I just want to earn enough to live a comfortable life in Brooklyn.

I want to see my friends every week and give them a hug.

I want to do my networking in-person instead of behind a computer screen.

I want to coordinate events here in NYC for the freelance community (reply if you live here and this sounds cool?).

My work is now just a means to live my dream.

Here’s how much revenue I made last month:

Next week I’ll share a story about how the FIRE community coined one of my favorite phrases, build the life you want, and how I’m applying that to my freelancing business.

Cheers,

Nick

Taking myself on a solo date to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden at the end of cherry blossom season.