This is a letter to my readers.

In this annual summary, I will be writing about what happened in 2021, and what will happen in 2022. In the first part, I will be writing about the development of the website SuperBusinessManger.com and my family finance as it happened in 2021. In the second part, I will be writing about the importance of focus in life and what I am planning to focus on in 2022.

What happened in 2021?

In the first part, I am writing about the development of the website SuperBusinessManger.com and my family finance.

1. WEBSITE

THE PROCESS OF STARTING SUPER BUSINESS MANAGER

It took me over 10 years to research and development this website. Lots of time went into thinking about what to write about, how to write about and what the website should finally look like.

I managed to put myself, and all of the pieces, together to finally launch SuperBusinessManager.com to the market at the beginning of 2021. I decided to write only about what I am good at and do things the way they are supposed to be done. Do the right thing in the right way. This approach to doing things in my life has always paid off for me.

THE REASONS FOR STARTING SUPER BUSINESS MANAGER

Firstly, what drove me personally to start Super Business Manager is the desire for this website to be a hub where I can collect altogether in one place all of my lifetime activities and experiences in the area of business management.

Secondly, I also hope for this project to be the 3^rd passive income source for my family – an economic engine to realize strategic goals in the long-term perspective; mainly to provide new earnings along with diversification leading to increased financial security.

Thirdly, I also want to popularize business education around the world by giving an entrepreneurial example how to start and grow an online business from scratch.

Finally, and most importantly, I would love to transfer my business knowledge to my wife and children. This is challenging! Both you and I know that very often children do not follow their parents’ footsteps. Family wealth does not tend to last longer than two generations. Hopefully, one day in the future, my children will inherit this website and turn it into something even better.

Find out my other motivations described in details in Reasons for Starting Up Your Own Business.

THE OBJECTIVES OF SUPER BUSINESS MANAGER

In the first year of operations, I have been focusing on introducing Super Business Manager to readers from around the world, spending endless hours of coding HTML, setting up all technical stuff and solving tons of mundane website design problems.

I am building my online business upon three very strong areas that I specialize in:

Modern business management.
Global business journalism.
International business education.

With this project, I am adding value to businesses around the world by helping thousands of people to improve business knowledge and managerial skills. I only want to have the best business content you will ever need. Hence, I want to offer only the best business resources you will ever find anywhere in the world. All this under my own brand. Having the best business resources is necessary. This high-quality content is expected to drive massive traffic turned into massive advertising revenue.

I am also adding value to your personal life, so we can see improvements in quality of life in the long-term. Hence, after the website is filled in with business content, I am planning to focus more on life management, a new area of science which I develop and aim to promote around the world.

This is actually the Holy Grail of this project – using business tools, theories and techniques to make better life decisions. For example, using The Decision Tree to decide whether to sell a house this year, next year or later in the future. Or, using The Fishbone Diagram to identify the causes of being constantly late for work. Using proven solutions that business managers use to make companies perform better, but our daily life, is not easy. But, applied business management, if done right, gives tremendous benefits.

At Super Business Manager, I launched something more than just another business publication. I offer the personal human overlay that turns business information into life inspiration.

THE WEBSITE STATISTICS OF SUPER BUSINESS MANAGER FOR 2021

The popularity of Super Business Manager in the first year far exceeded my expectations. Let me get into details regarding the website performance in 2022.

1. WEBSITE VALUE

What creates value for any website out there is the content that is published and the readers reading that content. Here is how I calculated the website value in 2021: Website Value = USD$100 x No. of Articles + USD$10 x No. of Readers

The current website value: USD$444,970

2. ARTICLES AND PAGES

Here is a brief overview of all pages and articles that have been published so far.

The number of pages: 19

The number of articles: 382

TOP5 most popular articles:

TOP5 most popular YouTube videos:

3. WEBSITE TRAFFIC

I am showing you all the quantitative and qualitative details of the website visitors.

The number of readers: 40,677

The number of pageviews: 180,164

How do readers find the website?

Organic traffic from search engines: 72%
Direct visits: 21%
Referrals from other websites: 7%

TOP5 countries where readers are visiting from:

China | 🇨🇳
United Kingdom (UK) | 🇬🇧
United States (USA) | 🇺🇸
India | 🇮🇳
Nigeria | 🇳🇬

TOP5 cities where readers are visiting from:

Shenzhen
Lagos
Shanghai
London
Nairobi

How many percent of readers are returning? 16%

Readers by gender:

👩 | Female: 59%

👨 | Male: 41%

Readers by age: 18-34

What categories of devices readers use?

Computer: 51%
Mobile phone: 50%
Tablet: 2%

4. EARNINGS

Of course, I will share with you how much revenue this website generated in 2021. I started off with using Google AdSense which is working just fine on the website for generating first advertising revenue. Here are the details:

Advertising: ~USD$300
Affiliate Marketing: USD$0
Products: USD$0
Services: Confidential
Sponsorship: Confidential

I am hoping to start monetizing my YouTube channel in 2022. Next year, I will also be joining affiliate marketing programs to start generating revenue from recommending great resources. I do not have any business publications to sell yet in my SHOP, and this will perhaps not change in 2022. Due to the nature of the job, I am not in the position to make public any information about revenue from business SERVICES that I provide, nor disclose any revenue from those businesses and individuals who SPONSOR this website.

DEVELOPING SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE FOR SUPER BUSINESS MANAGER

I am currently using 10 different social media platform – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Medium, Reddit, SlideShare and Mix. I use them mainly to promote the website content rather than engage in any social discussions. The purpose of using so many is to be everywhere.

I am trying to start monetizing my YouTube channel, but I am still struggling to gather more people to subscribe. I need at least 2,000 subscribers (I currently have only 23) and 4,000 watch hours (I currently have 183) to start earning advertising revenue from my videos. Please support me by subscribing to my YouTube channel, if you have not yet done so. BIG Thanks!

Check my videos on YouTube »

2. FAMILY FINANCE

CONTINUOUSLY GROWING FAMILY WEALTH

At this stage of my life, me and my wife are focused on ‘systematic and continuous wealth building’.

We are not yet at the stage of ‘wealth preservation’. We still want to increase our Net Worth, or wealth, making the snowball bigger.

In short, our approach to personal finance is that on one hand continue earning money from full-time jobs and part-time jobs, and on the other hand that we put our hard-earned money into work to let our current money make more new money for us. This makes our personal approach to building wealth over time is very simple. Me and why wife are growing our family’s Net Worth, or wealth, in two ways by generating: Active Income and Passive Income.

A. ACTIVE INCOME (75% + 5% = 80%): Firstly, me and my wife earn Active Income from our two full-time jobs and some part-time gigs. We are aggressively saving cash from our paychecks every month. Believe me, one of the best ways to sustainably grow your wealth is to save a big portion of your paycheck every month. Small amounts of money being put aside over a long period of time will result in a big pile of cash. So:

FULL-TIME JOBS bring salary. They are a stable Cash Cow generating the largest part of the total income, approximately 75%. Not much growth here.

PART-TIME JOBS bring wages. They are a stable Cash Cow generating the smallest part of the total income, approximately 5%. Not much growth here.

B. PASSIVE INCOME (10% + 10% + 0% + 0% = 20%): Second, from this Active Income, we invest all our savings into those assets that can help us to earn Passive Income. I call those Assets the ‘Income-generating Assets’. These assets also earn money for us every month or quarter. If we had more spare cash, we would just build a bigger snowball by investing in Passive Income-generating Assets only that I consider the greatest: Real Estate, Bank Deposits, Online Business and Stocks. They are an important part of my general investment strategy. The abovementioned sources of Active Income and Passive Income are the only income streams that I consider worth developing at the moment.

REAL ESTATE brings rent. This is a stable Cash Cow generating a small part of the total income, approximately 10%. No growth here.

BANK DEPOSITS bring interest. They are a growing Star generating a small part of the total income, approximately 10%. Growing this income source aggressively.

ONLINE BUSINESS brings profit. This is unknown Question Mark generating 0% of the total income. I am just starting. Growing this income source very aggressively.

STOCKS bring dividends. This is Next-To-Be income source. I have not started yet. In the preparation phase.

Currently, I do not consider any other investments to put my money into. I simply do not think that there are any other proven ways of generating substantial amount of large earnings that are as good as real estate, saving in banking products such as deposits or saving accounts and businesses (either your own business or someone else’s business).

THE ALLOCATIONS OF FAMILY WEALTH

When it comes to the allocations of our Net Worth, or wealth, we are following a 20%-80% allocation. It means that 20% of our family’s Net Worth is allocated into our primary residence, our home in China, and the remaining 80% is invested into different ‘Income-generating Assets’ I have mentioned above.

The reason for this 20%-80% arrangement is very simple. While we are still relatively young, we want put more money into work which is 80%.

Also, owning your own house or apartment where you live is perhaps one of the worst financial decisions from the quantitative point of view, not the emotional aspect.

After we earn and save some more money, we will perhaps buy a larger home which may account for as much as 40% of our total Net Worth.

ALL THIS LEADING TO FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE

Starting very soon, we are hoping to increase the percentage of Passive Income in our future family income streams from the current 20%. And then, when we get older, to have the Passive Income to slowly start replacing all Active Income as we will move towards early retirement.

We are going to have our ‘Income-generating Assets’ bringing us more than enough Passive Income every year to cover annual spending of our family.

This year in 2021 our Financial Independence (FI) Ratio is 77%, so we are not financially independent yet.

Honestly, we are expecting to reach the status of financial independence starting from next year when our FI Ratio is forecasted to hit 100%.

Our forecasted FI Ratio for 2023, 2024 and 2025 is going to be around 175% each year on average. However, due to the growth of our current family of three into the family of four, our spending will increase. Therefore, realistically I am looking at our FI Ratio to end up around 150% each year on average. This will get us 50% margin of safety which is decent.

Despite being fully financially independent, we are planning to continue working in the next few years because we want our savings to grow and enlarge the snowball.

What will happen in 2022?

In the second part, I am writing about the importance of focus in life when it comes to money and personal life.

1. FOCUS

Focus is the keyword for me in 2022.

FOCUS ON LIMITED REVENUE-GENERATING ASSETS

I decided to focus all my family finance on a very limited number of revenue-generating assets only. I consider these four assets as a good and the only way to safely value invest my family money. In the long-term, these four assets build wealth, preserve capital and bring steady passive income. In my opinion, these are the best and only wealth-building investments:

INVESTMENT TYPE:

Real Estate

Bank Deposits

Online Business

Stocks

REVENUE TYPE:

Rent

Interest

Profit

Dividends

STATUS:

Finished

Finishing on December 31, 2022

Started on January 1, 2021

Starting on January 1, 2023

Within stocks, I consider investing my money in dividend stocks, Index Fund ETFs and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).

So, in total I am focusing on developing four passive income sources, each being independent from one another. Generally, I expect to receive from each passive income stream approximately USD$15,000 per year (around RMB100,000). This will bring approximately USD$60,000 per year in total (around RMB400,000). This amount is fairly enough to support a medium-size family living modest life anywhere in the world.

To break down my revenue-generating assets into details, let’s take a look what makes them so independent from each other.

Rent is paid by individual tenants.There are lots of people in the society who need to rent apartments; they need to live somewhere, but cannot afford to buy their own.

Interest is paid by banks. These are highly regulated and stable financial institutions.

Profit comes from customers. It is all about the money in life, and we have seven billion people living on earth these days and almost everybody has access to the Internet; business education is valuable.

Dividends are paid by companies. People need to do something on daily basis as they fulfill their needs and wants; businesses existed, exist and will exist.

FOCUS ON BUILDING PASSIVE INCOME

To have my investments increase faster (growing a wealth snowball over time), I do a few things.

Firstly, I keep on reinvesting capital together with new earnings. For example, when a bank deposit expires, I make a new one using both the old capital and new earnings.

Secondly, I keep on adding new capital every month, actually several times each month. For example, this mainly comes from the amount of money me and my wife save from our monthly paychecks.

And thirdly, I try to find investment opportunities with higher returns within each of the four assets that I rely on for building our family wealth. For example, I search for bank deposits with higher saving rates, or will buy different stocks that offer higher dividend yield.

1. REAL ESTATE

This is our 1^st passive income stream.

We own real estate in China for different purposes. I badly want to finish decorating our apartment in Zhanjiang which is our primary residence – our home for us and the children. To make the apartment nice and cozy, we need to add a few things such as another desk in the master bedroom, another leather armchair in the children’s room, a wardrobe in the second bathroom, some big flowers, etc. I do not plan t to write about other property too much. What I can write is that I am not planning to increase or decrease our holdings of real estate, so things will not change here.

2. BANK DEPOSITS

This is our 2^nd passive income stream.

I am going to continue building the portfolio of bank deposits throughout the entire 2022. I have started at the beginning of 2020. Next year is the third and the last year of investing in fixed income 3-year bank deposits. Currently, a 3-year deposit at one of my banks where I have bank accounts is at 3.5% annual interest. I saw that Bank of China and China Merchants Bank have bumped their saving rates on fixed deposits up to 3.5% as well. I am hoping for even higher saving rates next year.

3. ONLINE BUSINESS

This is our 3^rd passive income stream.

I am going to keep on building Super Business Manager until 2030 perhaps. In 2022, I am planning to keep on publishing around 20 to 30 articles per month. As of today, the website earns around USD$70 per month from advertising itself. My target is to reach USD$1,300 per month in regular advertising earnings. That does not seem like very much, but it means that I will need to increase the current earning by 20 times. Here are specific targets that I have for the website next year:

Write differentiated articles to fill in empty categories. Many categories that I want to write about are still empty such as INSURANCE, TAXes or RANKINGS. I would like to start working on adding first few posts into those categories. I have a lot of unpublished resources on my computer from the time when I was the university student. I am planning to check each of them, edit thoroughly and publish as soon as they are ready.

Keep promoting. When it comes to promotion, I have two objectives. Firstly, do direct marketing. I will keep on introducing the website for the first time to people who have never visited. The purpose is to inform strangers that this kind of website with great business resources exists. So, the purpose is mainly to increase brand awareness. I want as many people around the world as possible to have the knowledge that the SuperBusinessManager.com website is available for free to anyone in the world. Secondly, I need to focus on growing visits through referrals because only 7% of all the visitors find my website through referrals. I will try to post links to SuperBusinessManager.com on other websites and social media. It would be fantastic, if you could add into your website the link to my website. It would help me a lot to grow.

Push for YouTube Monetization. Also, I need to focus on YouTube in 2022. I want to be able to monetize my video content. It will require my YouTube channel to have the first 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours. So far, I have achieved maybe 3% of this target. Could you help me out by subscribing to my YouTube channel? Thanks a lot!

Check my videos on YouTube »

Start Affiliate Marketing. I badly need to start adding affiliate links to RESOURCES and TOP in order to start generating earnings from affiliate marketing. In order to do so, I will need to join around 100 different affiliate programs such as The Amazon Associates Program. Let’s see how it goes. Anyway, starting earning revenue from affiliate marketing is a must for 2022.

Add new articles about healthy living. I still have some old stories written a few years ago about HEALTHY LIVING. They are saved as drafts. I am planning to edit them and incorporate into the website from time to time while I continue publishing mainly about BUSINESS MANAGEMENT.

4. STOCKS

This is our 4^th passive income stream.

In the second half of 2022, I am going to start preparations for purchasing stocks starting from January, 2023. I am planning to open my first brokerage account in 2022, most likely with Interactive Brokers to start investing mainly at NYSE and NASDAQ where the most valuable businesses are listed. These two markets are also very liquid. I am not really interested in other markets as I focus on slow value investing in dividend stocks rather than quick aggressive growth.

My aim is to own high-quality stocks that pay regular quarterly and monthly dividends.

I will be purchasing shares until I build the portfolio that pays around USD$15,000 per year in dividends. At around 3.5% annual dividend, I will perhaps first invest around USD$450,000 between 2023 and 2025.

FOCUS ON MY HOBBIES

Personally, I badly want to focus on my hobbies. I only have three hobbies: personal finance, collecting business books and outdoor sport. These three silly hobbies pretty much holistically cover the all-around development of mine as a human being.

Personal finance. The challenge of investing money is really good for the mind. I will be entering into the stock market at the beginning of 2023. Very looking forward to building this 4^th and final passive income source. The stock market will also increase money earning power for my family.

Collecting business books. Reading books is great for the soul. I am building my private library of business books at home in Zhanjiang. So far, I have only collected around 100 different books and textbooks, mainly about business, management, investing, economics and personal development. I am hoping to grow my small library into the whole-room library in the future. This dream will perhaps require buying a bigger house first.

Outdoor sport. Finally, outdoor activities, or any type of sport, are fantastic for the body. I usually do lots of walking and weekly running sessions near where I live, as well as some basic weight training at home. I do not have any expensive gym membership. You can find out more about my approach to staying active and healthy in the Body. Mind. Soul article.

**FOCUS ON ‘WASTE’ REDUCTION**

My plan for 2022 is to also streamline my life by removing all sorts of ‘waste’ from my daily life. What I mean here is to live ‘leaner’.

For instance, I am planning to get rid of any unnecessary things from the apartment and stop doing unproductive activities Also, I want to eliminate redundant processes from my daily life that cost too much energy and mental effort, but which do not bring much benefits.

By removing waste to make my life leaner, I will be able to focus only on very few but important things – family, money and health.

FOCUS ON SUPPORTING MY WIFE TO RECOVER AFTER LABOR

At the beginning of December, my wife gave birth to the baby girl. Her name is AnAn (安安) which has connotations with safety. Now, my family has four members – me, my wife, our son and our daughter.

This is actually a very nice experience to have both the baby boy and the baby girl. As a father, you want your son to be like you and follow you. While you want something different for your daughter – to protect her at all cost. Overall, the laboring process itself at the hospital was quite smooth, and we were home quite fast though.

Now, my wife needs a few months to recover after giving birth to our second baby. Therefore, in the first few months of 2022, we will be focusing on postpartum care making sure that she has enough rest and nutritious food to eat. I am not planning any major activities for our family in the first half of next year. So, it is going to be a very mildly moderate start of the new year. Fantastic!

So, stability could be another theme for 2022 in addition to focus. We currently live in Changsha, Hunan Province in China, and this will perhaps not change. We relocated from Shanghai to Changsha for my work in 2020. Before living in Shanghai for four years, we used to live in Beijing for six years. Here in Changsha, on the suburbs of Changsha really, we rent a very large spacious 3-bedroom-2-bathroom apartment in a really green community near where I work. So, I can walk to work every day. The subway station, shopping centers and a small hospital are near by, so life is very convenient. For now, the city of Changsha is our second home.

In fact, we consider Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province in China to be our first home. This is actually my wife’s hometown in southern China We have a beautiful new apartment over there in a gated community with the swimming pool right next to the huge park and very close to the sandy beach with palm trees.

We miss our apartment greatly, and we may go to Zhanjiang during the summer holidays to spend some quality family time at home.

A Letter to My Readers