Because you only live once…
7 Ways to Fail at Lifestyle Design
May 22nd
Here are some sure-fire ways to fail at creating the UnWork lifestyle.
- Read too much about Lifestyle Design. This one may be surprising to some, but reading too much can actually prevent you from accomplishing your goals. First, reading too much can cause you to become overwhelmed with ideas and then get so bogged down that you never act. Second, you can’t read it all, so saying that you just need to read that next product before you start is a guaranteed way to fail. So if you are looking to fail, go ahead and read too much.
- Never focus. Businesses that try to be everything to everybody usually don’t succeed. Even companies like Google who seem to be doing everything started with a very small focus (in Google’s case, providing the very best search engine). When starting your business, whether it’s a product, a blog, or anything, focusing on a very narrow niche or providing one well defined service helps you succeed. You can also always add more to it later once you have grown a bit. When you are starting out, if failure is what you are after, don’t focus.
- Never start. The best way to fail is to do nothing at all. Never start your blog or create your product. Never take the first step towards your new life. Of all the ideas for failing listed here, this one is the best. If you don’t want to succeed, never even try.
- Quitting too Early. Most lifestyle businesses don’t have instantaneous success. It’s not “build it and they will come.” But given that you are providing value to an audience that needs value provided to them, they will come. You just have to keep at it. If you find that they are not coming, try evaluating why and change your tactics slightly. But even if you are totally awesome, your success will not be over night. There will be times when you feel like you are writing to no one. If you want to fail, that is when you quit. If not, just keep at it.
- Not Quitting. When you start out, you may go through many ideas until you find the one that you like best. No matter what your niche, if after a month you can’t stand thinking about it, maybe that is not the niche for you. You need to be able to really enjoy your work. Don’t be afraid to quit something if it’s a bad fit for you. Trying to do something that you hate is a great way to fail.
- Don’t Produce Value. I mentioned this above, but it’s worth repeating. If you don’t add value, you are doomed to fail. Don’t repeat others. Don’t copy. Add something special that only you can add. Your whole topic doesn’t need to be unique, but you need to add something to the topic in order to succeed. If you don’t, do one would have a reason to buy from you.
- Don’t Market Yourself. Face it, if you are online you are a marketer. Jonathan Fields wrote about this in greater depth a few weeks ago. It is through marketing efforts, usually through social media and networking, that people find your blog for the first time. If no one ever finds your blog or sales page, no one will ever be a reader or buyer.
What other ways can you fail at all creating a lifestyle business?
Honesty, Friendship and Empires
May 18th
I went to Pei Wei for lunch today, which is the land of free fortune cookies. I, of course, helped myself to a handful. After opening a few that were about food (I don’t think that a Wonton a day will actually keep the doctor away), I got one that rang true:
Honesty and friendship bring you fortune.
I have never seen a truer fortune cookie (except maybe “You like Chinese Food”), because honesty and friendship are the key ingredients to building an information business online. If you are dishonest, people won’t believe you and won’t buy anything you sell. If you don’t build friendships, you miss out on a whole range of partnership opportunities.
I’ve seen this first hand in the case studies that Chris Guillebeau put together in the Empire Building Kit.
The what?
About a month ago, I signed up for the Empire Building Kit brought to you by Unconventional Guides. All I knew was that I was working on building my online business and could use all of the help I can get. The turns out to be one of the best purchases I’ve made all year. The kit consists of interviews with real online emperors that you are guided through over the course of one year by email. That’s 365 emails! Add to that a No Question Left Behind policy and your get the Empire Building Kit. I recommend it to any UnWorkaholic out there!
I think this product is so great, I signed up to be an affiliate. I would never recommend something that I didn’t think you could benefit greatly from! But I am getting a referral fee if you buy the kit through my link.
How’s that for honesty? 
and now for the friendship:
I’d like to extend Chris’s No Question Left Behind policy. If you have a question about building your empire and becoming an UnWorkaholic, send them to me and I’ll answer every single one. This is true whether you buy the kit through my link or not.
Do You Have to Be a Writer?
May 15th
I wish I had a dollar for every time I hear someone say, “I can’t create an online business because I can’t/hate to write.” Even I thought this for a while. But is this true? Do you have to be a writer to be an UnWorkaholic?
I will admit that it helps. If you love writing, you can produce blog posts and informational products easily and enjoyably. And since information products and blogging have a pretty high rate of return, writing can indeed help you succeed in an UnWork lifestyle.
But the answer to the question is no. You don’t have to be an writer to make it online. You will have to write some, even if it’s just getting your thoughts on paper for someone else to polish, but there are ways to minimize the writing. Here are my tips for doing so:
- Pick a non-writing business – If you hate to write, sell something besides information. If you are selling a doodad or something physical like that, you won’t have to write in order to produce it. A similar option is selling software, either that you coded or you hired someone to code for you.
- Use alternate media – Hate to write but love to talk? How about delivering your information through audio or video? A successful video blog can be just as powerful an online tool as a regular blog. And plus, audio products have a higher perceived value when packaged into a product, which means your audio information product may sell for more then an ebook anyway.
- Hire a transcriptionist – If you still want to have a blog, you can record your entries and hire someone to type them up for you. You may have to try a few people before you find a good fit, but this is definitely doable. Some of them may even be able to post your entries to your blog for you.
- Hire a writer – You come up with the outline for your post or ebook and then work with someone else to actually get it written. This works great for information products where you supply the ideas and someone else actually writes it. This is called ghostwriting.
- Create a group blog / community – This is where you have a team of people all writing on your blog. Your audience knows about the team and can see who posts what, but you hare still running the show. You provide direction to the team by setting the goals for the site and benefit from the group success.
Those are my ways to still be successful online even if you don’t like to or can’t write. If you try something and keep hitting road blocks, that may be a sign that you need to look into alternate paths. I hope these can provide you with a starting point.
What other ways can you think of to get around a writing road block?
Fear of Being Normal
May 10th
Throughout my whole life, I’ve struggled with fear. Growing up, I was afraid of fire and thunder and stuffed bears. As I’ve aged, some of the fears have lessened and changed, but I’m no way over my fear. I’ve replaced my fear of bears with the roar of the airplane that is about to take off under my feet.
I still fight my fears. I still go on trips and light candles. But there is one fear that I’ve had for my whole life that I will never hate and will never try to get over. It is the fear that, until college, ruled my life.
It’s the fear of being normal.
I fear conformity. I fear the crowd. I fear that people will look at me and claim that I’m just another one of the sheeple. I fear waking up when I’m 40 and realizing I never did anything with my life. That I’m am ordinary.
Because I want to be extraordinary.
In college, I got beaten down a bit (not literally) and burnt out. By the end of college, I just wanted to veg out and do my job. I had turned into one of those dreaded sheeple. After graduation, I got a job as a web developer. As jobs go, it’s pretty nice. I make a decent living working 4 days a week.
But as the burn out from college began to subside, my old fear began to come back. I felt normal. Well, I was normal. And that needed to change. I began searching for myself. I wanted to prove that no, I wasn’t just an ordinary girl. I could be extraordinary.
That’s what got me to where I am now. I started this blog and am working on some super awesome projects.
And never again am I going to be normal.
Want to join me?
Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet / CC by 2.0
Is this all a Pipe Dream?
May 9th
So I know that many people reading this may not grasp how all this can be done. How can you make a living without working for someone? How can you make a living working for yourself, out of your own home?
First let’s define “Making a Living”. You make a living by earning enough money so that you can live comfortably while doing the things you want to do on your off time.
Most people accomplish this by getting a traditional job and working 40 hours a week in order to earn the money they need so that they can enjoy what little free time they have. The problem with this is that you are stuck. You make a set amount of money and that is it (in most cases).
The alternative way is to work for yourself. You are still working and producing value (although it may not take nearly as long to do so when you remove the clutter that comes from an office environment), but you have freedom and are not stuck with that fixed income.
Imagine this. You work hard for a couple of months producing something super awesome. Then you launch it. You make your year’s income in a few weeks. Take some time to enjoy it. Maybe you can travel some. Then you go back producing your next awesome thing. You set the schedule and enjoy the freedom.
Don’t think it can happen? Let’s look at some numbers. I’ll use myself as an example.
I currently make $40,000 a year as a computer programmer working 4 days a week. I will use that as my base salary in doing these calculations. Feel free to redo them with your base salary (also, you will need to take into account the fact that you may have higher personal expenses when you work for yourself).
- If I have a $1000 product, I would need to sell 40 of them.
- If I have a $500 product, I would need to sell 80 of them.
- If I have a $250 product, I would need to sell 160 of them.
- If I have a $100 product, I would need to sell 400 of them.
Do you think those numbers are unreasonable? For a year? If you have a really good product, selling 400 of them for $100 each would not be that hard. The key is that you need a really good product.
Now take a different approach. Sell a monthly subscription service. Maybe that is a membership site where you provide weekly teaching on a topic that you are knowledgeable in. It could be a subscription to a product that you sell (think ‘Wine of the Month Club’ style). It might be a website that is a really good tool that people really find useful.
Okay, now say that you charge $20 a month for it. That is $240 a year. Can you get 167 people to buy this product or service? Plus, if it is a super good product people will keep using it. You won’t have to worry about making $40,000 in new sales the next year because some will follow over from the previous year. Your income can grow.
I pay for a NetFlix membership, a World of Warcraft subscription, an email newsletter service, an announce-my-blog-post service, a membership forum, and probably some other things that I am not thinking about right now. People do actually buy that type of thing.
Your products have to be good, and you probably have a lot to learn to make it happen. But no, it’s not a pipe dream.
Lifestyle Design is Here to Stay.
May 7th
Is lifestyle design a fad? Will this go away in a few years when people start forgetting about Tim Ferris and his 4 Hour Work Week?
I don’t think to will. Lifestyle Design captured the heart of so many people because it truly mends some deep-seated cultural desires. Lifestyle design is here to stay.
- People hate jobs. Log onto Facebook on Sunday night or Monday morning and you will probably see people complaining about the start of the work week. The hate of work is so wide spread that no matter how good a place is to work, you can find people who don’t want to work there. UnWork is the alternative. You can still add value to this world and care for your family without a job.
- People want freedom. As a web developer, I can take 21 days off a year. And that is a pretty generous program. That equates to an entire month away from my job. But if I were to take a month off at one time, I would get looked down upon from the higher ups. With a job, you can’t just go traveling the world for 6 months at a time. You are stuck. You also don’t have the freedom to move to a new city whenever you would like. You are stuck. UnWork give you freedom.
- Potential for Wealth. People chase money. The evidence of this can be found in the large number of people who fall for scams. Just look online. Some of the best selling products teach people how to make money. In a job, you have a salary or an hourly wage. Even if you max out your hours, there is still a cap to how much you can make. With Lifestyle Businesses, there is no cap. Awesome products make awesome profit. Where there are profits, people will follow.
What reasons do you have for wanting the UnWork lifestyle?
10 People You Should Follow on Twitter
May 7th
There is a meme on Twitter where you link to people that you enjoy following on Fridays. It’s called Follow Friday. The trouble is that you don’t know why people enjoying following the people they link to. Well, a few weeks ago Chris Brogan had the idea to do Follow Friday through your blog, allowing you to give more details about your follow friday choices. I really liked this idea.
So here is my Follow Friday choices for people who are interested in an UnWork lifestyle and those who just like awesome people. All of these people are awesome!
1. Nathalie Lussier – Also known as the Raw Foods Witch, Nathalie helps people transistion to a raw foods lifestyle. She even got me interested in raw foods! She really is magic! She is an awesome example of living the UnWork lifestyle.
2. Pace Smith – The idea for this blog actually came from a conversation I had with Pace at South By South West in March. She runs the Freak Revolution along with Kyeli (next in this list), which is a blog about personal development for freaky people. I am currently taking their 52 Weeks to Awesome e-course, which I’d recommend to anyone looking for an awesome personal development course.
3. Kyeli – The other half of the Freak Revolution. I enjoy the honesty and openness of her tweets and love staying informed about the cool stuff the she and Pace are up to. Check out their Manifesto.
4. Chris Guillebeau – Chris is an inspiration to me. He writes about the Art of Non-conformity. He has a goal to travel to every country in the world in 5 years. How awesome is that! I am currently enrolled in his Empire Building Kit, which is one of the best resources about Lifestyle Businesses that I have found. Also, if you want to be truly inspired, read his Manifesto. Seriously… it’s a must read!
5. Charlie Gilkey – Charlie writes about Productivity and how people can “Do Epic Shit”. I use his blogger’s and freelancer’s planners to keep track of all of the stuff that I do on this blog and in my life. They are simple and that’s what makes them work so well. Follow him for announcement about all of the awesome stuff he does and writes about. Like this.
6. Pamela Slim – Pam is the author of Escape From Cubicle Nation. She is awesome and gives a ton of really good information about starting a lifestyle business so that you can quit your job. She even wrote a book about it.
7. Corbett Barr – Corbett writes about Lifestyle Design and building high traffic web sites. I really enjoy reading his posts and tweets because I always learn something.
8. Jonathan Fields – Jonathan starts every day with the question, “Morning, friends! Who can I help today?” He writes and talks about finding a life… not just a job. Well worth the read and the follow.
9. Chris Brogan – Chris Brogan is a Social Media Guru. I learn something every time I read his blog. If you are marketing online, you should be following Chris.
10. Ed Dale – Ed Dale is a bigger Apple fanatic then I am. And he is an Internet marketer who runs a really awesome free training program every August. His program, the 30 Day Challenge, gave me my start in internet marketing. Everyone with a website should do the challenge. Even if you don’t end up following his program on your stuff, you will learn a ton about how the Internet and search engines work. Oh, and did I mention that he loves his iPad.
There are many more I could include, but I limited myself to 10.
Who would be on your list of 10?
5 Common Lifestyle Businesses
May 5th
So once you have figured out (or have a rough idea) of what you consider to be your UnWork. How do you build a business that can supports it? What types of businesses are out there that are suited to supporting your passion?
Here is a list of common lifestyle businesses:
- Blogging and Information – If your UnWork is centered on a topic that you know a lot about and others would find interesting, you could write a blog about it. Blogs can earn money through ads, affiliate products, or the creation of your own information products. Not all blog topics have audiences that are willing to buy products, but if yours does, this is a fun way to use your UnWork to support your life.
- Products – If you have an idea for a physical product that others would be willing to buy, you can sell your products through drop-ship services like Amazon. There are also specialty drop-ship services that deal in specific niches, such as drop-shipping for musicians.
- Software – If you have a technical side or a good idea for software, you can create or hire someone to create a piece of software. Then you can sell the software or a subscription to it for a web application. But note that a lot of people are used to getting software for free or cheap, so if you plan on selling software, make sure it’s awesome.
- Freelancing/Coaching – Some people don’t stop trading time for money, they just increase the amount they make per hour so that they don’t have to work full time. If you have a technical or coaching skill that you believe is worth a lot, you can turn freelancing or coaching into a lifestyle business.
- Investments – Real estate investing is another common way to generate a residual income that you can live on. The option needs a large investment in both money and education to get started, but has the potential to generate a lot of residual income so that you can pursue the life you want. If you go this way, I’d recommend joining a real estate investment club in your area.
Remember that lifestyle businesses are not limited to just these ideas. But I hope this list gets your mind thinking about what you can create to generate the income to support your lifestyle.
Also note that most of the lifestyle designers that I know (including myself), use a combination of business types to create a well-rounded business.
What other lifestyle businesses have you run across?
Introduction to Lifestyle Design
May 3rd
I used the term “Lifestyle Design” while talking to a group of friends the other day and only one of them had heard the term before. That made me stop and think about the fact that when you’re around an idea all of the time, you can easily forget that others don’t know what you are talking about. So now I’m going to do what any blogger would do, write a post about it. I’d like to take a moment to introduce you to the term “Lifestyle Design” and how that relates to the UnWork lifestyle.
What is Lifestyle Design?
The term “Lifestyle Design” is thrown around the Internet a bunch these days. You’d think it was a balloon that everyone is collectively trying to keep in the air. I was first introduced to the term while reading “4 Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris. In that book, Ferris talks about a new type of entrepreneur that was popping up around the globe. These people were not out to create huge companies to take over the world. Instead, they were out to see the world and/or aid the world. They didn’t need mansions and fifteen cars. Instead they needed plane tickets and hotel rooms.
All they need to do was set up a business that allowed them to be 3 things:
- Location Independent – They could run their business from anywhere by the powers of the Interweb.
- Financially Sound – They had enough money coming in to cover their chosen Lifestyle.
- Free to Follow their Passion – They must have enough time to do the things that they want to do — not just what they need to do to earn a living.
The term comes from the fact that Lifestyle Designers choose their lifestyle first and then build the business in order to support that lifestyle. It’s like taking your retirement now.
Unwork and Lifestyle Design
The idea of UnWork fits very nicely with the concept of Lifestyle Design. The key difference is that I focus more on the lifestyle that you are designing. I see lots of people, including me when I started looking this direction, say “I hate my job. I’m going to start a Lifestyle Design Business.” But then they would have no idea what to do or how to get started.
The first step, in my experience, is to figure out what you are passionate about. You must figure out what you want to do and how you want to spend you time. This is what finding your UnWork is all about. Without this, you are creating a lifestyle design business that allows you to quit your job. Once you succeed, you may discover that you are either bored, or find that you could have created your lifestyle design business out of your passion. Starting with your UnWork allows you to have something to work towards (not just away from) and can offer a great source of inspiration along the way.
What is your ultimate lifestyle?
Photo By: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nattu/ / CC BY 2.0
8 Ways to Find Your UnWork
May 1st
My last post was about looking for your UnWork in your childhood. I wanted to follow that up is some more ideas about places to find your UnWork.
1. Your Job
Okay, I know this is suppose to be about gaining freedom from your job, but if you like your job at all, that is a great place to look for your UnWork. I work as a Web Developer and really like the work that I do. I definitely plan on incorporating programming into my UnWork lifestyle. What aspects of your job do you like and want to continue doing?
2. Your Social Groups
Are you in any clubs or groups for social reasons? What attracts you to them? Is that something that you want to keep in your life? Some social groups may be purely for entertainment, but others may have real substance to them.
3. Your Friends
Think about your close friends. What attracts you to them? What do you enjoy to do with them regularly? What have you helped them with in the past? Another option is to just ask them what they think would be a good fit for you. You may get answers that you didn’t expect. Even if you don’t get any ideas for UnWork, it’s a fun experiment to do to learn more about yourself.
4. Your Reading Material
This one was a big one for me and ultimately what led me to my UnWork ideas. What do you read on a regular basis? What topics do you enjoy reading about? Would you be able and interested in writing about any of those topics? This is especially true for blogs that you may read regularly.
When searching for my UnWork, my rss subscriptions were really telling. Most of them were either programming, productivity, or lifestyle design. Those are the three topics that I consider to be my UnWork.
5. Your Hobbies
What do you do in your spare time? What of these activities add the most value to your life? Even if the activity itself isn’t something that you’d consider to be UnWork, some variation on these activities can lead to both UnWork and product ideas. I have an unannounced product that I’m working on that was inspired by an activity I enjoyed but also considered a waste of time.
6. Twitter
Who do you follow on Twitter and other similar social networks? Whose tweets do you just love reading and why? Are they tweeting about topics that interest you? What are you tweeting about?
7. Vacations
For many people with a regular job, vacations are a rare and treasured time. What do you choose to do with this time? What do you go see and learn about? Do you have any future vacation plans that could tell you something about your UnWork?
8. What Do You Love
What things do you just love? What topics could you just learn more and more about and never get tired? Really, all the previous ideas boil down to this one, but its worth stating on its own. What makes you want to get up in the morning?
Have you found your UnWork? If so, what helped you discover it? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.
