Rock Star Lifestyle Design

Today I have a kick ass guest post from someone that I truly respect in the lifestyle design/nomadic/online entrepreneur space - Cody McKibben from Thrilling Heroics. I have known of Cody since the early Brazen days and seen some amazing work, humanitarian efforts and lifestyle changes that could fill a lifetime and he has done them in a few years. In his own words “Cody is a Nomadic Entrepreneur, Lifestyle Designer & Traveler based in Southeast Asia who challenges readers to Design an Unconventional Lifestyle on their OWN terms!” I think you guys are going to like this one.

I talk a lot about living life remarkably. To me, life is meant to be lived adventurously, not passively. As humans, we’re meant to go out and hunt and gather, and chase what we want, live an active lifestyle, not caged up in little boxes staring at screens 24/7.

Since I got my start as a web programmer, I’m guilty of staring at computer screens too much myself, but that’s why I’m passionate about helping others break free—liberating themselves from traditional mindsets about work, getting them out of the cubicle, creating their own entrepreneurial ventures, living remarkable lives, and doing good for others.

As a child, I saw most of the “grown ups” around me settled for doing something boring, pushing paper or some other buls#!t, as long as it put dinner on the table. For some people, they find something that allows them to provide a great lifestyle for their families, and that’s more important to them than being ecstatic in their work, and that’s just fine if it’s what you choose consciously, but for the majority of folks, I see people beaten down and brainwashed conditioned over time to conform to societal standards—their childhood daydreams battered out of them—and giving up on any higher aspirations in life.

Most people become content to settle and do something they’re not passionate about, in exchange for a minimal level of comfort. If it pays the rent, gets you cable TV, and a set of wheels, well there’s really no point complaining or rocking the boat because you want more out of life, is there?

One day I snapped out of it and realized that settling for spending 2/3 of my life in a box and watching other people live like rockstars on MTV wasn’t enough for me.

I wanted a life like in the movies. Don’t we all? We convince ourselves that it’s unrealistic, that we’re not special enough, or that the luxury life full of adventure and excitement is only for the lucky few who sell their companies for millions.

But like Tim Ferriss says, you don’t actually want to be a millionaire, you want the experiences you think only millions of dollars can buy.

Tim’s book The 4 Hour Workweek was a key ingredient in my realization that there isn’t just one path to any goal—there are thousands of ways to get where you want to go. The key to living your rockstar life is to think outside the box and seek unconventional ways to accomplish what you want, and have the experiences you want to have.

My decision to move to Southeast Asia where the cost of living is much lower allowed me to continue to build my business but also have much more free time and flexibility. If I were to live the lifestyle I have here back home, it would most certainly cost me four or five thousand dollars a month, and keep me working 80-100 hours a week with no time for friends and travel, which are two things that I love most about life.

For me, choosing the remarkable path and living a Thrillingly Heroic life means prioritizing what I’m passionate about above everything else—above money, above status, above prestige. So I moved to Thailand, where I could thrive on much less income, and have more freedom and time to do things like

• travel to the ancient wonder of the world, the Angkor Wat ruins in Cambodia
• spend a few weeks working from the beach in my favorite place I’ve ever found in all my travels—Krabi, Thailand
• fly back home to attend my favorite concert, the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in the SoCal desert for 3 days
• collaborate with In Search Of Sanuk on charity mixers and fundraiser parties for the Bangkok Refugee Center, urban garden project in the slums, and volunteering with orphanages in the Thai countryside and on the border with Burma
• and now renting an incredibly beautiful beach-view home on an island with my girlfriend
• all for less than I’d spend on rent in California!

Finding the work that makes you passionate is not easy. It’s a long journey—one that I’m still on—but I believe that money follows passion. I prioritize the things that are important to me—free time to write and create, quality experiences with my friends and loved ones, and traveling and learning about different people around the world—and I have found unique ways to provide value to others and afford the life that I love.

Giving something meaningful to the world in a way you’re passionate about is more important than all the wealth you could ever gather up. What do you have to offer? What do you love to create? And how can you find unconventional ways to get started and make a living?

And I’m not just talking about getting by—I’m talking about thriving. Who can you team up with to do spectacular things? Who can you network with to achieve the results you want. How could you change your circle of friends to surround yourself with successful people that are doing the kinds of things you want to do? Where in the world can you go where you can serve the right people and live the lifestyle that you crave?

Get out of your box and realize that there is a wide world of opportunities out there, with a much more diverse range of possibilities than you think.

Leave your comments and thoughts below.

Today I have a guest post by UK lifestyle designer Richard Adams. Richard has been building online businesses since 2000 and recently launched his own lifestyle blog, Lifestyle Design Unleashed. Leave your comments below and welcome Richard to the RSLD community. If you would like to write an article for RSLD, shoot me an email to rollettmarketing@gmail.com.

I first started to build websites as a hobby in the distant days of 1997. We’re talking about the days before most people had heard of Google. When the few people online had Yahoo email addresses and free web hosting sites covered in banner adverts were the norm.

In those days I taught myself HTML from scratch, and learned the basics of how to write and edit PHP and Perl.

It was a long hard slog and when I released my first “commercial” site in 2000, I managed to turn over a total of $20 in my first six months online. After all that hard work and months spent learning computer languages it wasn’t the most impressive result.

These were the days before building niche-specific sites were popular, when very little was understood about getting good rankings in the search engines and when the idea of internet marketing was using some software to blast out hundreds of classified adverts to every website possible.

Fast forward to today and the online business sphere is so different it is barely recognizable. You can set up a complete website in minutes using a variety of software such as Wordpress. You can add functionality in the blink of an eye with various plugins and change the appearance of your site with the thousands of free themes available.

Technology has taken over from the need to be a computer programmer and bought the potential to set up a website into everyone’s grasp.

We also know more than ever before about how to market a website and how to make a profit from it. There are hundreds of websites and ebooks out there teaching effective search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, sales letter writing and more - much of this information available free for anyone willing to go looking for it.

Competition in the market has also made setting up your own business more cost effective that ever before. When I launched my first “proper” website in 2000 I paid $400 for a year of web hosting, then I bought various pieces of software ontop so it all added up.

These days you can spend less than $10 a month for web hosting for an unlimited number of websites, buy a domain for the price of a McDonalds burger and basically be in business.

That means that the barriers are coming down all the time and it is easier and cheaper than ever before to set up your own business online.

On the other hand, this lowering of barriers means that more people each day are trying to do just that. Which means that while it gets easier and easier to get online, there is increasing competition.

In a few years time it may not be so easy to make a profit online; and of course the sooner you start your own lifestyle business the sooner you will start making a profit. Internet businesses rarely, despite some of the “gurus” saying so, make you a fortune overnight. They take time and effort to build and promote.

But it *is* possible to earn a living online; you just need to be patient.

Many business owners find that it can take 6-12 months to really build an internet business up into something great so the sooner you get started, the sooner you will start seeing those results. And when the results come in you’ll be in a strong position to consider giving up your job, paying off your debt and living the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of.

In other words, *now* is the ideal time for you to get started on building your location independent business. It’s cheaper and easier than ever before, and the sooner you get started, the less competition you’ll have and the sooner you will be able to quit your job.

Don’t delay it. Don’t wait for some fabled time. Don’t spend months writing an ebook and never launch it. Dive in today. When six months have rolled by the only disappointment you’ll probably have is that you didn’t get started even sooner.

Again this post was written by Richard Adams. Go holler at him at Lifestyle Design Unleashed and leave your comments and questions below.

Top photo by biblicone.

Remember middle school (or even high school) dances when the guys sat in one corner of the gym and the girls sat on the other. Then there were the 2 popular and good looking kids dancing in the middle and everyone envied them, but were too shy to do anything about it.

I was a guy on the bleachers. But that was then. You know me know.

The point I wanted to make, was that the people having fun took action. They weren’t scared. That put it all out there.

This same middle school strategy applies to online businesses. In fact, its actually a really large part of how many people online succeed. The relationships and the people you meet along the way will help you much greater than any Google Ads or SEO results (although that does help). A few partners, some new ideas and new voices will go a long way.

This past week I connected with 3 new people that are going to change my business. Not new business models, but partners that can help answer questions. People I can run ideas across with. Someone that I am going to co-launch a huge product with. Someone that can hook me up with a beer (or 3) in exchange for some marketing advice. Someone that interviewed me for 30 minutes about cool stuff like business and lifestyle.

The key ingredient all 3 people had? They hit send and got in touch with me. It’s really can be that easy. But if you never make the effort, you can never get the reward (or insert the Gretzky quote here).

The hard part is adding value to your new contacts but that’s another story for another day. Today I want you to contact one person that can help you out. And I want you to add value to them.

Here is a paraphrased version of one of the emails I got:

“Hey Greg, your site and message are awesome. I want to see if I can fly you out to “insert cool location” and help me launch a product. We can split it and make it the biggest launch ever in this niche.”

Wow - that got my attention. Now you might not be able to fly them around the world, but you have something that you can offer. Maybe its an interview to introduce them to your audience or a guest post that may be valuable for their audience.

Think about your strengths and go do it. Right now. Then come comment here and tell me who you hit up, why and what value you are bringing into the table.

-Greg

Top photo by WanderingtheWorld

So it’s July 1st. Half-way through another amazing year.

Are you where you want to be in your life? your business?

I’m not. It may appear that I have a ton of stuff going on and going in the right direction and I do. Shoot, we got Diddy to ReTweet one of my guest posts last week (Work Your Online Business Like Diddy).

Anyway, here is a video that goes over 4 things that I want to correct in my business this year and I think you can use to help get yours in the right place. Have fun and check it out.

If you are in the US, have a happy and safe 4th of July.

In the comments I’d love to hear some of the things you wish had gone better in your business thus far this year, AND what you are doing to ensure you get it right.

-Greg

Just thinking over the last few days about what all my RSS Feeds were telling me. All the products that were just launched in the last 2-3 months in the lifestyle design, productivity, pro-blogging arena all shot at me with one common theme - do something you are passionate about.

Passion is cool. We all should have it somewhere.

The problem I see is that everyone is passionate about being passionate. Bloggers teaching people how to blog. People who quit their job telling other people how to quit their job. Internet Marketers teaching people how to make money online by selling them courses on how to make money online.

Maybe the people in other niche’s are too busy making money and changing lives in those niches to care about us, but it’s interesting. One thing I admire about Darren Rowse (even though I quit reading ProBlogger ages ago) is that he has a niche site that does better than most of this niche’s main site (on photography, a pretty crowded niche to begin with).

You guys know my story. I tried to dabble in the make money online niche and did okay (the product was actually pretty damn good). But I did it for the money. When I went back and started working in the music industry things started to get better, much better.

The next launch I do will be both to the business/entrepreneur niche and the music niche. It will be interesting, but I had a ton of fun in making it.

The next thing I do may be something completely different in some crazy ass niche, but I won’t stand for being passionate for passion’s sake. I have some core beliefs and a personal life purpose that can allow me to move into different markets and still be true to the core shit that I stand for. This core purpose helps guide me into projects that I really do care about, mostly because I care about the people I am working with and helping.

Let’s talk about this stuff for a minute if you’re down for it. If you are getting passionate for passion’s sake, or because some online dude said to get passionate and all you came up with is something like,

“I am passionate about making money and helping other’s make money and I am really passionate about it, but I have never done it but some blog said I can do it too, even though it isn’t my lifelong passion, just my passion this week, so let’s fucking rage on it,”

then I want you to think about what you are doing.

Thought kids?

-Greg

BTW - I start kickboxing class tonight and I am pretty stoked. Still trying to shed the pounds that I have digesting in the form of Bacardi and Coke all spring.

Photo by hexodus…