Do you have a Lifestyle Design Mindset

Moment of Clarity

Few people get the opportunity to experience a moment of clarity but when they do its usually a life-changing experience for them. I think I had mine in late 2008.This was after I closed down my second

brick and mortar business. The entrepreneurial life was exactly as advertised – exciting, challenging, and frustrating all at the same time.

My wife and I had just put in a year’s worth of backbreaking work with our business in which we endured long hours of dealing with demanding clients and stubborn employees. Bootstrapping a business is never easy. I’ve had it with employees, I said to my wife. The next business we start I want it to be with as little or with no employees at all.

For my next business venture I wanted something different. I told myself. I want a source of income that will not raise my blood pressure beyond what the BP monitor can measure. I wanted to have a business with no employees, that will operate on its own, while I am out playing my favorite sport. I would prefer it if I get to play everyday. I jokingly told my wife. With a skeptical look on her face she replied – What kind of business is that? Does it even exist?

Tim Ferriss’ book

This is where my quest for an alternative way to run a business while living life the way I wanted to started. I was trolling the internet searching for ideas and opportunities for a couple months already when I came across the website of a guy named Tim Ferriss. His website was intriguingly named FourHourWorkWeek.com. I was so intrigued by the title so I checked out his website for like 5 hours straight. I could not believe the radical concepts I was reading about here.

So I bought his book – The 4 Hour Work Week (Escape 9 t0 5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich). It took me several days to find it, I had to go through several bookstores before I did. It took me a week to read the book. Normally a mere 300+page book takes me less than 3 hours to read but because of the radical and thought provoking ideas it contained. I had to stop reading every few pages and stare at nothing while trying to comprehend the concepts of the book.

Achieving a Lifestyle Design Mindset

It was so life changing for me. It gave me a new sense of freedom from an old way of thinking. And the best proof of that right now I here I am writing this blog post about it. I was forced to alter the way I thought about earning money. I had to change my mindset to absorb these Lifestyle Design Concepts. I needed to gain a Lifestyle Design Mindset.

Some of the concepts I had to understand in Lifestyle Design are the following:

• Low Information Diet
• Technology
• Globalization
• Income Channels
• Outsourcing
• Geoarbitrage

Let me now attempt to tackle each one:

Low Information Diet – due to the advances in communications technology and a globalized marketplace, people are surrounded with and are drowning in too much information. I for one fell into this trap. Having a technical background I felt the need to keep up with the advancements in the technology space that I worked in. When I was still working as a product manager for Microsoft Philippines back then, having 300+ emails in my Outlook Inbox was a source of pride. We even bragged about it. I was in every product related email alias or group in Microsoft.

When I got hooked on the internet – I subscribe to over 30 RSS feeds of different topics that interest me. And me thinking it was smart thing to do – tried my best to digest all of them. Ha ha ha! I was putting so much pressure on myself just to keep up. I learned from the book that this was a losing and useless cause. Trying to keep up will never work in this day and age.

What is important is to acquire the knowledge when you will need it and not hoard knowledge in your brain that you might not even use except for the occasional witty remark in parties that you think makes you look smart but does not really add value beyond that. So I had to learn to move to a Selective Information Diet.

Technology – I thought I understood technology quite well. Having a computer science degree, I can program code, design networks, build computers, and can use and configure pretty much every piece of software I’ve seen. But Tim Ferriss’ book – The 4 Hour Work Week changed the way I viewed technology. I thought technology was a great boon for my professional productivity back when I was in the corporate world. Email, Powerpoint, Spreadsheets were all tools that help me do a lot more work.

The book gave me new way to view technology. The value of technology is not how much more uber-productive it can make me but how can technology automate parts of my life that I don’t want to worry about. Like say managing a business.

Old school thinking says to ensure the success of a business you have to be hands-on. Managing a business needs your personal attention to guarantee success. I used to think that way. The Lifestyle Design Mindset says use technology to automate your business and manage it remotely and still ensure its success while your having a the time of your life in Bora. But that is only one part of the equation, there is more to it than that.

Globalization – before I thought globalization was just for big corporations. That only the big guys can take advantage and benefit from operating on a global scale. The 4 Hour Work book opened my eyes to the fact that globalization is also good for the little guys or even to an individual. As long as you understand how to leverage it for your benefit. That even a single person with the proper knowledge can take advantage of having the whole world as your market

Income Channels – If your like me, a GenX degree holder, middle class background with professionals for parents, you grew up with the mentally conditioned with this mantra – “Study Hard, Get Good Grade, Get a Good Job, Earn a Good Salary”. The only Income Channel that was taught to us growing up was “BECOME AN EMPLOYEE”. Exchange your time and talent for a fixed monthly salary.

This was one sacred cow concept that was shattered when I read the book. I was amazed, I never thought this way. I did not realize that what I was taught and mentally conditioned growing up was not the only way. There are other Income Channels that are potentially more lucrative and much more rewarding. Working for money (exchanging your time and talent) is an obsolete concept already. In fact having only one Income Channel is not only obsolete but not very smart as well. People who has imbued the Lifestyle Design Mindset are aware of the advantages of automating and outsourcing their identified Income Channels.

Build an Income Channel once and earn from it forever. Understanding the concept of  working on your business not in your business take on even greater importance. Why you may ask? They key is automation and outsourcing. Develop the Income Channel to be able to operate and earn without your presence required allows you to move on and work on another Income Channel. This is another key concept. In this age of the internet – it is totally possible to achieve multiple Income Channels. That way not only do you have the opportunity to do really well  financially but it also supports the old adage of diversifying your business interests.

Outsourcing – I touched on this on the previous concept discussion. Let us now focus on outsourcing itself. Just like globalization, I thought that this was the domain of big corporations. Boy was I wrong! The Lifestyle Design Mindset embraces outsourcing with wide open arms. In fact I would even state that based on what Tim Ferriss said in his book, outsourcing is one of the cornerstones of Lifestyle Design.

With the Lifestyle Design mindset you are confronted with the tough decision of figuring it how much of your life can you outsource? Figuring it out is key because the more time you free up – is more time you can focus on developing new Income Channels. Which you will also eventually will automate and outsource to give you more free time!

What to do with your free time

Once you have enough free time what will you do? As a successful Lifestyle Design enthusiast you no longer work for money but money now works for you through your multiple Income Channels. What do you do with all that free time? I have 3 suggestions:

• Enjoy life and pursue your passion. Travel around the world, Learn how to skydive, Relocate to a new country.
• Focus on your family. Spend all your time with them. Never miss a recital, a reunion, or a wedding. Isn’t family after all what is important and the reason you worked so hard to build all those Income Channels
• Help People. Go join that foundation or charity you’ve always wanted to get involved in but had no time for.

And lastly Geoarbitrage

Geoarbitrage as defined in The 4 Hour Work Week as the “exploitation of global pricing and currency differences for profit or lifestyle purposes” It sounds sinister but it’s actually a very simple concept. What it simply means is to operate your automated and outsourced Income Channel in a high currency market and spend what you earn in a lower currency market.

For us Filipinos that means earn in Dollars and spend in Pesos. Now you might be thinking right now that this is nothing new. We have 12 million Pinoys working all over the world doing exactly that. Actually there is a very big difference. They are working overseas physically. This means that even thought they might be earning a lot they also spend a lot due to the higher cost of living overseas.

A Lifestyle Design Concept

The Lifestyle Design concept here is – Earn in Dollars while based in Manila. Target the global market with your Automated and Outsourced Income Channel while living in the Philippines.  Dollar profit – Peso cost.

So to answer the question that has formed in your mind early on in the post – How to do this? The answer is operate an Online Business. And that is how my journey in Internet Marketing began and is one of  the key reasons why I became an Internet Marketer.

Have you ever considered an alternative way of  earning income from what you are doing now? Are you really satisfied with how you earn a living now? Comments and feedback please. Post your comments on the comments box below.

Live Long and Prosper!

P.S. Curious to know more about this topic? Keep following my blog to read upcoming posts that delves more into this topic. Bookmark my blog so you don’t forget. Better yet click here to subscribe to my blog updates.

P.P.S. If you are interested in reading Tim Ferriss’ book – The 4 Hour Work Week. He has an updated version of  the book. Click here to view book info.

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