The end of a stage

Ok, today I have something important to announce to you:

I have decided to put Living to the Fullest on pause and take a break for an indefinite period of time..

Last week I canceled the 10th edition of Find your Path that we had planned for September.

Isa and Jesus They will stop working with me in the next few days.

And right now I am in the process of reducing the company’s fixed expenses to a minimum so that it costs me as little as possible to keep it open.

(If you are in one of my programs, don’t worry, you will continue to have access to the content and everything will continue to work normally. I will continue to be 120% involved with my students)

As you can imagine, it has not been an easy decision…

But life and business are about making decisions, and I am convinced that at this time it was for the best.

This is the full story.

The firsts years

I started Living to the Fullest in February 2013 with a very clear objective:

Attract into my life people who think and who see the world like me.

I also started the project because I felt a moral obligation to share my reasons for leaving Microsoft and everything I’d learned along the way, and because I wanted to improve my writing… but what I was mainly looking for was meeting interesting people.

In addition, in the medium term I dreamed of creating an audience of loyal readers and making a living by creating and selling to them what they asked me to do, which is what I had seen many of the American bloggers I followed do at that time.

To achieve all this, I decided to forget about SEO, Social Networks and any other recruitment channel, and focus solely and exclusively on publishing 2 valuable articles each week.

Every Monday and Thursday, whether it was hot or cold, whether I felt motivated or unmotivated, whether I was in Cáceres or India, I published. Without exception.

And so, through being consistent, I grew and realized my goal of meeting amazing people, many of whom are still my best friends to this day, and as I grew I built a profitable business around blogging.

In 2014 I launched my first product.

In 2016 I hired my first employee.

In 2018 we organized an event with 250 people in Madrid.

And in 2020, the year of the pandemic, we broke our sales and student record.

At that time, Vivir al Máximo was 3 people working full-time + several collaborators, and we had 3 main sources of income:

• Idea2Blogwhich was sold all year
• Find your waywhich we released once a year
• Affiliate promotions, which we did several times a year in a timely manner

Everything was going well.

The model worked, I was enjoying my work and the company allowed me to live very well.

Unfortunately, from there things began to go wrong.

a turning point

In early 2021, as we had cash in hand and Find Your Path was mature enough as a product, we decided to go big and make our biggest launch to date.

We invest €100,000 in advertising.

We incorporated Jesús into the team to help us with the technical and analytical part.

And I worked tirelessly for several months to improve the offer and the content of the free training with which we were going to present the product.

Unfortunately, the results did not accompany.

We managed to barely recover our ad spend, and although we closed with a profit thanks to Vivir al Máximo subscribers who signed up for the program, revenue was much lower than expected.

My initial reaction was to attribute the poor results to some strategic error or bad marketing, which after all has never been my forte.

However, it didn’t take me long to discover that we weren’t the only ones to whom something like this had happened.

Other courses and programs that we had been promoting as affiliates for some time also began to have poor results in their launches.

This meant that in many cases their creators stopped selling them, because they were no longer profitable, and consequently we stopped promoting them and making money with them.

It was there, at that moment, when I saw the ears of the wolf and realized that I had to make important changes in the business.

anti-crisis measures

After the launch in early 2021 and seeing how the market was doing, I came to the conclusion that we couldn’t risk spending a lot of money on ads once a year in a single launch, because it was too risky.

We also couldn’t depend on recommending third-party products, because we didn’t know if those products would work as well as before.

What we needed was to find a way to have a more regular income, distributed throughout the year and that depended 100% on ourselves.

There began some very hard months during which we tried different strategies with the aim that the sales of Find your Way were enough to cover the company’s expenses:

• We went from one to three-four editions a year
• We implement a registration system by call
• We created a new series of emails to sell the program
• Etc.

The results of these initiatives weren’t bad, but they weren’t anything to write home about either.

They gave us to survive quarter by quarter.

And that was precisely the problem:

That we did not finish leaving the “survival mode”.

Instead of working on projects that added value and that really excited us, our focus was on solving the new problems that were arising and on seeing what we could do to invoice enough so as not to lose money that quarter.

I had to work vacations and weekends to finish all the tasks that I had assigned, and also in February 2022 I was a father for the first time.

But even so, he did not throw in the towel because he understood that the situation was temporary.

There was always a new strategy that excited me and that I wanted to implement, because I was convinced that this was what we needed to reach the “goal”, and somehow that pushed me to continue.

Until June 2022 arrived and I ran out of ideas.

a difficult decision

Last June, after trying to organize paid workshops to promote Find your Path, we made a launch that again came out regular.

One of the hardest things when a pitch doesn’t go well is that as soon as it’s over you can’t rest, you’re forced to make decisions…

And in my case, it was my turn once again to decide how we were going to save the situation for the next edition of Find your Path that we had planned for September.

As I was telling you before, in previous quarters I had always seen clearly what the next step was, what we had to do next.

However, this time, no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with any idea that convinced me and that I believed could work.

My feeling was that the model that had been operating all these years had been exhausted.

That the market had changed a lot, that I had changed, and that my circumstances had also changed, and that therefore a change in strategy was not enough.

And on top of that, Isa, who had been my right-hand man for the last +5 years, had just told me that he wanted to take a leave of absence starting in the summer.

For my part, I felt that I had been rowing against the current for months, that everything was being much more difficult than it should be.

I had spent too much time thinking only in the short term, playing not to lose instead of winning, and it was very clear to me that this was not what I had started Living to the Fullest for, that there was no need to continue like this.

Deep changes were needed.

Go back to the blackboard and rethink the business from scratch taking into account all these new variables.

And besides, I had to do it as soon as possible, because Find your Path 10 was just around the corner and meanwhile we were burning thousands of euros a month.

The problem is that making those changes now It necessarily meant spending another summer working at the highest level, and this time I didn’t think I was capable of doing it.

The business had been taking up all my mind and energy for the last few months, and I was exhausted.

I needed to disconnect for a while, because if I continued in the loop and with the energy I had at that moment, I felt that I was not going to be able to see things clearly or make good decisions.

So, after talking to several close friends and listening to their point of view, it became clear to me that there was only one possible way out:

Stall.

Closing this stage, taking a break from the business, enjoying the summer without billing pressure, devoting time to other interests, and creating space for new ideas and opportunities to emerge.

And then, with a fresh mind and without haste, decide my next professional stage.

The last weeks

On Monday, June 13, I informed the team of my decision.

And surprisingly, when I did, I was not nervous or sad, but grateful and at peace.

Grateful for all the people I have met through the project, for everything I have learned and what it has allowed me to live, and for having been able to work hand in hand with a group of incredible professionals who, above all else, I consider my friends.

And at peace because, despite the thousands of mistakes I’ve made, I’m super proud of the work we’ve done and everything we’ve contributed to the world during these 9 plus years that I’ve been leading Vivir al Máximo.

Both Isa and Jesús were taken a bit by surprise by my announcement, but they still understood it and everything went well, and since then we have been working to close the different issues that we had open and to make the transition for the next few months.

As for me: well, it goes a bit in gusts.

There are days when I feel a little sad because this first stage of Living to the Fullest is coming to an end…

And there are other days that overwhelm me when I think about my situation: without income, with recurring expenses every month and a family to support, and without a clear job to do.

But in general, I am calm and excited about the possibilities that open before me, and for all the good things that I am convinced are to come.

Right now I am in Islantilla with my family, and my only priority is to disconnect and enjoy the summer.

I feel like reading, training Crossfit, writing, studying copywriting, playing with Dario, resuming my Czech, opening the new barbecue I bought in Prague, chatting with interesting people outside of the marketing sector, learning how to make coffee well on the V60 , and try to program some apps on Ethereum to see what it’s like, among other things.

And then…

Then we’ll see 🙂

What will happen with Living to the Fullest?

First of all, I want to make it clear that this is not a farewell and that we are not bankrupt.

I’m not going to close the company.

I am not going to close this website or the podcast either.

And of course, I am not going to stop delivering the 9th edition of Find your Path, which is underway right now, nor to stop serving customers of the rest of our products.

I’m just going to take a few months off (or as Bosco would say, “active-sabbatical”) to rest, disconnect and explore other interests… and after that, I’ll rethink my business and the role I want it to play in my life from here on. forward.

That means there will be no new editions of Find Your Path until further notice…

And although I am clear that I am going to continue writing and recording interviews, I have no idea when I will resume the content or with what format or frequency.

I may be missing for a few months, or I may post more than ever from now on, I still don’t know 🤷‍♂️

What I can tell you is that when I have any news or if I decide to share a reflection with my audience, I will do it first on my mailing list, so if you want to follow my steps in this new phase, make sure you are signed up.

Also, I will remain active On twitterthe only social network I use, and through which you can write to me at any time.

And that’s all, for now!

Happy summer, and as always, thank you very much for being there.

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The photo is from the last face-to-face meeting of Encuentra tu Camino, which took place at the end of June in Madrid.