The day I did something
Yeah, this is refreshing to read. One of my favorite scenes in movies is the Wolf in Pulp Fiction, because the comedy of it is how there's no magic to the Wolf. My own entry into consulting was similar to this guy's story - it felt huge and mysterious and forbidding beforehand, but in hindsight it was just a bunch of breaking problems down to stuff that felt boring and mundane in hindsight, even if the solutions were stylized to my own needs.<p>One thing that was important to me was to be able to max out retirement contributions even while being self-employed. (I think a lot of folks that go into business for themselves will too easily convince themselves to sacrifice that early on.) So I had a spreadsheet that basically factored in my needed take-home income after taxes and retirement contributions, and added in those taxes and contributions, and I turned it into a daily (weekday) dollar amount that I needed to earn, complete with 7-day and 30-day moving averages. Being able to check that daily helped me to know whether I was on the right track.  For the first few years, I think that was around $300-$400 per day - later on, I was able to stop paying attention to it since I was exceeding it so much.