In 2009, I worked in a supermarket for £7.91 an hour.

Back then, what I wanted from work came down to one word.

More.

More hours. More money. More of anything that meant the month didn't run out before the pay did.

Eleven years later, COVID shut the world down and took my video production business with it. That business was our household's entire income. My wife was two months away from giving birth to twins.

So I started running ads on her books at £10 a day, mostly because I didn't know what else to do.

That version of me didn't need to sit around wondering what "enough" meant. He needed the bills paid. More was exactly the right goal. More readers, more sales, more income.

And more worked.

It worked so well that I never let go of it.

WHEN MORE BECOMES THE RULE

Here's the problem with a goal that works: you stop questioning it.

A strategy that fails forces you to stop and think. A strategy that succeeds just asks you to do it again, only bigger.

So that's what I did. If an ad was profitable at £20 a day, I wanted to see it at £40. If a launch went well, the next one had to beat it. If a month broke a record, I was already planning how to break it again.

That's normal. Growth is good, and a lot of what I teach is about helping you grow.

But at some point, more stopped being a decision and became a reflex. And I'd never stopped to ask the obvious question.

What's all this for?

Money is great, don't get me wrong. Money gives you options. It pays the bills, it takes the pressure off, and it buys you room to breathe.

But what's money without the time, the freedom, the health, and the energy to enjoy it?

Without an answer to "what's all this for", a bigger number on a royalty report doesn't make an ordinary Tuesday any better. It doesn't give me more evenings with my kids. It doesn't make the writing more fun. Past a certain point, it mostly hands you a bigger number to beat next year.

In 2009, money was scarce. In 2020, readers (and money, to be honest) were scarce. Chasing more solved both.

The scarce thing now is time. I've got three young kids, and the years when they want me around every evening won't last forever. So my goal these days isn't a revenue figure. It's a business that doesn't need more than three or four hours of my day.

I know what the other trade looks like, because I've made it.

When the twins were newborns, my alarm went off at 3am. I'd walk out to the office in the garden and work until 9, then head back into the house and look after the twins for the rest of the day, so my wife could get some rest and write her book.

The twins weren't great sleepers. Which meant I wasn't much of one either.

That season built this business and my wife's author business, and it was the right call for that season. But it was never meant to be the plan forever.

WHY ENOUGH IS HARDER THAN IT SOUNDS

Setting a bigger goal takes no thought at all. Take last year's number, add 20%, get to work.

Enough is harder, because nobody can hand you the answer. You have to know what you want your weeks to look like, how much work you enjoy, and what the money is actually for.

Picture a romance novelist releasing a new book every eight weeks because rapid release works. It does work. It also means she hasn't had a month off in three years and can't remember the last book she wrote for the joy of it.

Or a business coach with three non-fiction books that feed this coaching business. They're working, so the plan is a fourth book, a course, and a podcast. Each one makes sense on paper. Together, they've turned a business that gave him freedom into one that takes his weekends.

Neither of them is doing anything wrong. They just never decided where more was taking them.

FIND YOUR ENOUGH NUMBER

So here's your task for the weekend. A few questions, answered truthfully.

→ What does a good, ordinary week look like for you?

→ How many books a year do you enjoy writing, rather than tolerate?

→ How many hours a week do you want to give to marketing? And how many hours to writing?

→ What do you need the money to do for you?

Then put a number on it. The monthly royalty figure that pays for that life. That's your Enough Number.

Maybe you'll look at that number and realize you're not there yet.

Good. Then more is exactly the right goal, and you should chase it hard.

Whether your next milestone is your first $1,000 month or your first $20,000 month, you don't need a lesson in finding comfort. You need the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, closed. The 2020 version of me would tell you the same.

The point isn't to stop growing. It's to know what the growth is for, so you notice when you've arrived.

It also changes how you build. If you grow by adding hours, you'll hit your number in money and find you've got nothing left in time.

If you grow with things that compound (a book page that converts, one ad platform you understand properly, a series or catalog where every book sells the next), your royalties can grow without your hours growing with them.

That's the only kind of more I'd chase.

I still have plenty of ambition. I like building things, testing ideas, and seeing what works.

What's changed is that "it could be bigger" isn't a good enough reason on its own anymore. More needs a job to do.

More is a brilliant goal while it's solving a problem. Just make sure it's still solving yours.

That's it for this week.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

To Your Success
Matt