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

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…

What’s crackin rock stars? It’s been a long week here and it’s only friggin Wednesday. Was this the life that I wanted to get into doing the Internet Lifestyle stuff?

The video I threw up last week sure didn’t make it seem like I was growing grey hair and stressing like Martin when Gina gets mad (did you pick up on that?)

Listen, as much as I love the Internet Lifestyle and the luxuries in time and freedom, product launches are a pain in the ass, especially when you get into what we just did, software. Anyway, next week I’ll have a pretty good run down of the launch and the things you can do better and the things we could do better (along with what went great - like the pre-launch, which many are calling overrated or dead or lame).

Anyway, so last night was part of the craziness. Social Media Club Orlando asked me to present on Social Media Metrics to a crowd that included local Orlando Sentinel reporters, ESPN Radio hosts, the Sea World social media team and ton of other cool people in the space. I had a great time talking about crowdsourcing contests.

I had run 2 contests recently and both went really well for the branding and bottom line numbers of both instances.

An Epic Change Of Sorts

Anyway, after the event I was approached by Stacey Monk and Sanjay Patel from Epic Change. I had been meaning to get to know them for almost 2 years now and we always seemed to miss each other. We are only about an hour and a half away from each other - both helping to change the world from our little home offices.

I first ran into Stacey while working on a project for Lee Cockerell called Creating Gen-Y Magic - a site where we spoke with Gen-Y’s and saw how they were creating magic in the lives of others through their work.

From there I have seen them literally take over the social media world with their fundraising campaigns for Tweetsgiving and To Mama With Love. Talking with them last night really got me thinking about my life and some of the changes I have gone through and some of the goals I still want to accomplish.

Goals to help more young people become rock stars in their own life. Goals to help more musicians quit their day jobs and perform music that inspires others and get paid very well to do so and well, personal and selfish goals of making a ton of money by helping people and rocking my own ass off through products, live events and coaching.

Personal Motivation

I always believed that learning from others that are doing what you want to do, or living where you want to live, is one of the best personal development tactics you can spend your hours, minutes and seconds on. Tony Robbins was on to something with the NLP strategy of modeling. This basically means that if you want to do something…

find someone that is currently doing it and copy their state, copy their movements, their attitude, their posture, their accents, their stress levels and anything else you can about the person that is achieving those results. If you can copy them and put everything together in the same order, it is like baking a cake and following a recipe. Our minds and bodies behave in the same manner of a recipe - the only problem is that in life we often need to hunt for the success recipe.

That is my interpretation of it at least. ON my own quest over the last 2 weeks I have been reading and diving into a new training series by Karol Gajda called How To Live Anywhere: The Official Guide To Ridiculously Extraordinary Freedom.

Now there have been a ton of product launches in the “do what you want and live wherever and add value and start a business crowd” over the past few weeks and months. Some have been good, most have not. It’s unfortunate because I am sure these people put a lot of time into their products, but many are not living the life they portray. Many are still working towards their goals and have gone on a trip or 2, but are not location independent and rocking an online business doing great.

And then others have this minimalist attitude. Like make your passion your business, throw away all your shit and live of 2g’s a month on some island or 3rd world country.

Sorry that’s not me. I want the Ferrari, the beach house, the girl (check) and some parties that rival P. Diddy in the shiny suit era. I also want to help people, give to some awesome nonprofits and take some trips that you can only imagine but never dream you are there.

You can’t do that kind of shit for 2g’s a month. Even if its on auto-pilot.

Back to Karol. So what I liked about this is that it is multi-engaging through the NLP tactics I stated earlier - modeling. You get to see how he runs his own business, plus look into the businesses of others. If you only look at one dude, you become a clone. I like to be considered a really, really expensive sponge (like the Scrooge McDuck of spunges).

The first thing I did dip into was the guide. In fact, I stopped my pre-launch insanity to take a glance at it and didn’t put it down for like 2 hours. It was that friggin good.

Then I learned he is boys with John Reese. You may know him as an Internet Marketing legend, but I know him as the guy who dropped $1,000 to donate to Rock For Hunger because I was having a bad day on Twitter. (don’t get me wrong I am a member of some of his programs and also an affiliate for his products, but that is now)

Karol has a nice audio interview with the guy that blew my mind. I listened to it on the way to work instead of the leaded Drake record (even though I bootlegged it, I’m still going to buy it). It is the album of the year (unless Em comes all the way with Recovery).

The entire course (more redonkulous stuff than I have time to mention here) is all about this lifestyle that I think we all want to obtain. More time. More adventures. More money. And more life.

This thing we call life is real short. We get caught up in things like work, product launches, clients, weekends, family and all we have left is what we did with our time. I’m glad I spent a few hours going through this course. I’m also glad I got to hang with Stacey and Sanjay. And I’m glad this product launch is making me go friggin nuts (its why this blog post is taking hours instead of minutes).

I get to look back at it all and say I am kicking some ass and rocking out.

I hope that you are too.

-Greg

P.S. Yup, those are affiliate links to Karol’s course: How To Live Anywhere. If you scoop it up, you are helping to fund my rock star life. Which is cool because if we do ever get to hang out, it’ll be like I owe you a beer or something.

P.P.S. Yup, this is Internet Marketing 101. If you buy Karol’s course I am going to hook you up with my new unreleased course called No Limit Networking. No hype today, you will get plenty of that whenever we decide to get it off the shelf. Just email me your receipt to rollettmarketing@gmail.com.

Holler back youngin - woo woo.

top photo by Giampaolo Macorig

It’s been a long time
I shouldn’t a left you
Without a dope rhyme to step 2

I have a killer video I shot for you on online entrepreneurship, affiliate marketing and product creation that I am using to live the Rock Star Life. You will get an inside look at my business and how you can start igniting your own dreams of a rock star lifestyle much sooner than you thought was possible.

The video is a bit long, but it’s one of the dopest free videos I have shot (you know I like to charge for this stuff). Go grab you some pop corn, a Monster Energy Drink and a big ass sheet of notebook paper if you have dreams and goals of making some chedda online this year.

So, that’s what I have popping. Here are some takeaways:

• Create diverse products
• Give the user multiple experiences
• Get paid to test ideas
• Just do it
• Have fun!

Oh, and here’s a cheap plug that No Limit Networking is coming soon. It’s the sexiest launch that I have ever done. You’ve been warned.

Shoot any questions, ideas, comments and stuff below. Let’s start a party to kick off the summer months.

-G

Shout out to AGL Brand. I am rocking the Grassroots Tee in this video. You can scoop one up yourself here.

Sometimes you just find cool people that come into your life and you are like wow, they get it, or they are doing the things you wish everyone you were working with would just shut up and do. Jared Kessler is that kind of guy. We were intro’d to each other by Adam Baker (aka Man vs. Debt), and had a quick phone call about business + music.

A few hours later he had 2 guest posts in my inbox and I was able to check out some of his products and music. I don’t usually mix the music with this site, but Jared is the exception. His music is the gateway to something bigger, yet undefined at the moment. He has studied behind Jonathan Mead, Eben Pagan, “the Billionaire” and others, people whom he has worked with in a 1-on-1 relationship, and others that he has looked into their work as inspiration and used as modeling for his projects.

Jared sells music as well as info products, a physical book and maintains the essential lifestyle design tool, a blog. One that has been retooled to fit his persona, or as he said in the post I just put up at Gen-Y Rock Stars,

Until recently, I was going a certain direction with my book, eBook, music, etc. What happened was, people I think looked at my site a few months back and thought, “Oh this is cool.” But recently I thought, “I don’t want people to think… oh this is cool.” That’s fucking lame! Since recently having these visions I thought, “you know… I’m going to take down that nice little veil I put up where I make myself look and sound a lot better than who I really am. I’m tired of people that are just blasé about the things that I’m passionate about!”

So I reinvented myself.

Took the bullshit curtain down and started to get real with people because… that’s who I am to my core. And when I did that, people were fired up! More importantly, I was fired up – and people could see that.

This is really important to understand and I get caught up in it too. The image that we present to the world needs to be a reflection of self and not a representation of what we think people are going to want to see.

Site note story: Over the past 6 months I began looking at clothing companies to sponsor all the crazy shit I am doing. I went through a ton of companies that offered “cool” stuff. Companies that had a lot going for them and some money in the bank to try some big promotions.

Ultimately I chose AGL Brand (big launch stuff coming soon, right now it’s still a quiet partnership) because of both the style and the message in the brand. Charlie and the crew over there are young entrepreneurs that are more interested in doing, than talking about doing. Charlie also has a brownie brand/company and is looking to expand into other dimensions as well.

That is something that I wanted to be a part of and showcase to the public. I’m proud to rep the Latter (the L in AGL) and am really excited for what we are about to show people.

As part of this outreach with Jared, he wrote some words for RSLD about music + life and I wanted to share them below:

The Real Value In Music

Turn off your radio. Hold your ears the next time you’re in an elevator. When you’re phone rings, silence it. What do you hear?

Nothing.

Although, it’s golden sometimes to hear silence in the wall of noise out there we’re in, you’ll sometimes have to lose something in order to appreciate it again. I feel that is where music is today.

The thing is music is probably more responsible for more successes than anyone talking about “success” really wants to admit. But why don’t they talk about it? Because their not fucking musicians! They have no clue what it takes to bare your soul to an audience of strangers who knows nothing about you, but the songs you sing. What it takes to have to write down a song you have in your head before you take a bite to eat. Stay up late and bang your head against the wall to say that one thing you’ve been dying to say in a song to someone you’re deeply in love with but you just couldn’t find the words to say… so you write it, sing it, or share it in a song.

Whether people are willing to admit it or not, music helps us achieve more things than our society is willing to admit. Music helps us get through:

• Breakups
• Fuckups
• Jobs that suck
• People who suck
• Hard times
• Good times
• Crazy times
• Sad times

As I said before and I’ll say again, music saves more lives than churches do yet we undervalue it today, more than ever.

Putting Value Back Into Music.

Seriously, that sounds like such a fucking daunting task… that just about every label, record executive or online music source is trying to figure out – putting value back into music. Why? Because we fight change, instead of accept it.

Sure there is great music out there, but what does it do for people? Where does it take them? Do you know? Do you care… or are you just so adding to the abundance of noise that is already out there?

For this reason I released my fifth album, “Flight.” It cost me a total of $200 to do (only for the mastering). It’s my fifth album since 1997, and I’m proud to say that I’m selling it as a download only on my web site. No CdBaby. No printing 1,000 cd’s. No hiring graphic designers… a producer or buying thousands of dollars of studio time… just me.

And here is the beautiful thing… nothing gained, nothing lost. If it flops, cool. If it’s a huge “success.” That’s cool too. What I’m saying is, it’s only a piece of me. I’m a brand. A label. A distributor. A marketer. A copywriter. A musician. A composer. A business-owner.
This is the face of music. Ever changing. Ever evolving. Ever flowing.

Are you?

_______________________________________

I wanted to go back and focus really on the last paragraph. Jared is a musician at the core of his business, but he considers himself a label, a distributor, a brand, a marketer, a copywriter, a composer, a business owner, etc.

This is one guy running an operation. A rock star in today’s economy. The virtual CEO. The lifestyle designer who is doing the things they love and working their ass off (not 4 hours a week) to make the things they want to see in their life happen.

I encourage you to check out his music, especially his new album “Flight.” He calls it music for work. I agree. I am working right now and listening. It’s dope, it’s fly and its everything you would expect it to be after getting to know this dude. The music also comes with some cool bonuses.

He also has a really cool guide on mentors. I love the mentor philosophy and have been looking for about 2 years for the right one to pop into my life and make shit happen for me. One of the best quotes in the book is something like the teacher will appear when the student is ready. So true, but damn, I’m ready.

Anyway, what I loved about the PDF is the actionable stuff. I love when I can write out thoughts, or go over checklists. Don’t underestimate the paper and the pen, it is one of the most important tools I’ve used for business success. If you want to learn about mentors and how to apply them into your life, check out the “Uncommon Guide To Finding the Ultimate Mentor.” Yup, that’s an affiliate link.

So, let’s end this post with some questions for the Rock Star community:

• What role do you play in your business? Are you wearing multiple hats because you want to, or because you have to?
• Do you have a mentor? Why or why not?
• What do you think about music in your life? What role does it play?

Let’s chat below.

-Greg

Over the last few weeks our team has been doing just this and I can honestly say there is a 360 degree of difference in our business and really in our own lives and the lives of others. It all stems from stopping the “talk the talk” mentality and actually “walking the walk.”

Peep the video and holler back in the comments:

So, let’s start a nice “cypher” in the comments.

What are you doing this week that would constitute as “doing stuff” to enhance your business or your lifestyle or what “value stuff” are you providing to others that enhance their business or lives?

My answer: I have written 3 guest posts and shot 3 more videos for other people’s sites, to give value for their readers. I have a nice covert operation to have an amazing St. Patty’s Day with the misses (also happens to be our anniversary) and we’ll close off by picking up the scary phone and learning about more music startups than I knew existed just to hear their models and give some advice.

Your Turn!

-Greg

I don’t necessarily think this is a problem. We know our limits and when to pull the trigger and when not to. I think that stems from the basis of my entire financial education up till about a year or two ago.

“Money is just money. You either have it or you don’t. You can’t take it with you when you’re dead.”

Thanks dad. That’s been my mantra since I got my first job, working in the backroom at Target and has followed me till this day.

I bought my current car on a Tuesday when I took Jen to the Scion dealership just to look at some cars and get some ideas. When I was surprised that they were willing to give me the payment I wanted, we left with a car.

When we were in Tahoe last winter we wanted to sneak our way into a free snowmobile trip. All we needed to do was sit through a timeshare presentation, firmly say no and off we would go to start backflippin our snowmobiles. Out we walked with a nice, new timeshare (that is much sweeter than we thought and has a super awesome summer retreat planned - half work - half wakeboardin on Lake Tahoe).

Had a good week selling some products, out at the bar with friends, buy drinks.

Had a slower week online, out at the bar with friends, look for happy hour specials.

Then I started reading. A lot.

First was Ramit, right around the time of his book launch for iWill TeachYouToBeRich. Then came the shocker that I was about to lose over $100,000 that I had invested in real estate over the past few years. Our taxes had eclipsed what the land was worth and giving up was the best option. Then came the bankruptcy to the builders of our townhouse community.

Only 5 buildings in out of a proposed 20, Lennar and their builder had decided to abandon the community (I still hate Lennar for how they handled everything and lied to our faces for a hot minute - now they just ignore). So we just lost all of our investments, our home was belly up and this Internet Marketing thing was not cutting it like I wanted (it was about the same time that I left the agency I started to go back on my own).

During this time I kept myself busy writing for this site, pumping out products for the music business and taking on some awesome clients.

All the while things looked sweet from the inside, but on the inside our finances sucked. Our savings had all but disappeared. Our reserve funds, gone.

Things really did suck. The stuff I was used to buying started to disappear - well the tags didn’t get popped like they used to.

Then I Started Reading Adam Baker (aka Man vs. Debt)

This dude had it tough and was telling everyone about it and more importantly how he was going about fixing it. I first met Adam when he dialed into a live chat Jun Loayza and I were having about SEO and StartUps on a Saturday afternoon over uStream. Adam was a fresh faced blogger with a ton of passion.

Over the next few months I watched Adam write some of the most innovative financial blog posts to blow up his SEO and brand and then combat that with really solid and transparent financial advice.

Seeing Adam lay it all on the line, made me rethink my own finances. I started using Mint.com on a regular basis. I started looking into things like online savings accounts and took inventory of all my subscriptions, marketing products, spending habits, lunches and other things that I liked, but were unnecessary.

What Has Happened This Year

Were only 2+ months into the New Year and I can already say things are leaps and bounds better than ever financially. I have launched 2 new products that have produced almost as much revenue for me in 2 months than all of last year (and last year wasn’t bad).

I am on pace to eliminate all non mortgage debt by the middle of this year and have plans to make this actually happen.

I am using Internet Marketing and my business plan to create creative strategies to get rid of debt and get over the fear of looking at my bank accounts everyday.

Here are some things on my calendar that are directly related to my finances:

• New Music Economy - this one product has eliminated one entire credit card and portions of another. All from a product that has literally no overhead and was created over 4 weeks at about 2 hours per week.
• New Music Mastermind - this is a mastermind coaching product that I am launching in May, that will be very exclusive and limited and will eliminate about 80% of the rest of our debt in one day (as long as things go as planned).
• Super Secret Software - we have some super secret software in the works for the Lifestyle Design community that has a goal of producing a big blockbuster launch and then a recurring backend to support 3 people full time with minimal maintenance and it doesn’t need a ton of customers (the true 4-hour workweek product, right?)

Back To Baker

I am a big fan of Baker and it was a lot of what he is talking about that has me thinking about finances. What I really like is that he isn’t Donald Trump or Motley Fool talking about finances. He is someone like me. Someone from Gen-Y that is making a difference with their finances. He has the “I can do it too” teaching mentality and today he is ready to share that with the world.

His new book “UnAutomate Your Finances” is 80 something pages of young money mentality. Don’t let “unautomate” fool you. Baker is not completely taking you away from automating your finances, but actually looking at what you are doing and seeing where the real money is being made and saved. These are the same techniques that he used to knock out $18,000 of their debt and put away $17,000 into savings in a little over a year. Oh, and he’s married and has a little one to take care of.

Did I mention that he still writes killer blog posts, is a founder at UnTemplatr and got Leo from Zen Habits to write the forward?

The eBook is only $17. I told Baker he was crazy. He said he wanted the message into more people’s hands. I’m cool with that.

So I Am Hooking You Up

If you go and grab Baker’s “UnAutomate Your Finances” through my affiliate link (they are everywhere on this post), shoot me your receipt to rollettmarketing@gmail.com and I will send you the Core Influence video from the Rock Star Business Series. The people that have gone through the course say this is the one video that really opened their eyes to what is possible with their lives.

It’s a pretty cool 1-2 combo. Get your mind right and then get your money right (I think a smart guy by the name of Jay-Z said that).

I read the whole think over the weekend and it has me working with Jen to really step our game up. That way we never feel guilty for buying stuff while still keeping our finances tight.

What Is Your Financial Story

Even if you don’t grab Baker’s book, or you got it somewhere else, I’d love to know your financial story! Where are you at and where do you want to be? How are you going to get there? If it’s through Internet Marketing or an online company - what roadblocks or questions are in your way?

Let’s chat in the comments below.

-Greg

Top photo by TrevinC