Mind the Beginner

One step at a time

Check out the Empire Building Kit and take one small step a day towards your business

Chris is offering his empire building kit one more time, but isn’t going to make a lot of noise about it this time. It’s a strictly low-profile launch so here’s a heads-up. You don’t want to miss out on this chance to work with one of those powerhouses in the bloggosphere.

What is the Empire Building Kit?

The EBK examins the process of building your own successful business. Defined here as a small business where you have one or perhaps two employees. At it’s core is of course something that the owner (this could be you!) loves to do. That’s the business part, the success part is defined as an annual income of $50,000 up to $150,000. A small business; a huge revenue. You like how that sounds? Read on!

Chris takes up this process in a way that works absolutely great and I’ve talked about often: ever smaller steps. There are 365 steps in the kit to be exact. One step a day the Empire Building Kit walks towards the goal of becoming your own boss (emperor if you will, or empress) You’ll get one mail a day, and all the extra’s.

Be warned however, the EBK demands hard work, as do all businesses. But you already know this so that won’t be a problem. If you don’t have a business yet, you’ll learn the fundamentals, if you already have a business the EBK will help you seriously increase your business income.

What do you get?

As said, the launch is under the radar but Chris offers you “a FREE copy of Backyard Biz Profits that helps you apply online biz-building principles to your local city or neighborhood.” if you pick up the kit TODAY. (It will cost you $50 after that) That of course is just the bonus, the kit itself comes in three flavours, depending on your taste: Emperor-in-Training, Hail Ceasar, and Alexander the Great (More info on the options at the Empire Building Kit site)

The kit is packed with video interviews, audio recordings and case studies. Everything you’d like to know. These aside you also get the 365 daily steps to that empire of your own. The case studies will teach you a lot about how real people actually did it and became their own boss. But you’ll not only hear how they did it, you also get the inside information about money, it’s what keeps a business going after all and you’ll need to know these things.

Think not only along the lines of “How much money did you make last year” but also “What is your best seller” and many other questions. There’s no use in just being told that you earn “enough”, that would be like shopping for a new car and nobody willing to tell you the mileage you’ll get or what the insurance would cost. You need details like that and the Empire Building Kit offers you the details.

Check out the Empire Building Kit and take one small step a day towards your business

There’s a buzz in the lifestyle design sector the last few days. Clay Collins is about to re-open Project Mojave to the public. For a modest fee you can take part and learn how to build a “freedom business” in 3.8 months.

But what is it exactly. What I can tell you is that the project is a collection of people who have combined their skills in teaching people how they can set up an Internet business with the goal of making an income that’s automated leaving you with enough time on your hands (because you no longer have to work) to do what you really want to do. You’ll be freed from the bonds of the 9 to 5 till 65.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Well, yes it’s a sales talk of course it sounds great. But does it really work?

No! it’s not a magic program that will get you up to speed and guarantee you your freedom business. For Clay it’s a business and as any business it earns him money. 200 people, times $99 a month or something like that equals buckets full of money, split in several pieces to pay all the other stakeholders and it’s still a lot of money every month.

But you know what? That’s perfectly alright, it’s a get rich scheme for Clay but at the same time its a wealth of knowledge brought together in one place. All the knowledge is out there on the Internet but most people can’t find it. At Project Mojave it’s all there in easy bite sized bits and easy to follow tutorials. Setting up a business really isn’t that difficult, save for one single thing everybody seems to keep forgetting:

It’s damn hard work! Hundreds of hours you need to spend staring at numbers until you find a niche, hundreds of hours working on an information product. So in the end it’s not a get rich quick scheme. It takes many many hours of dedicated work. On both sides… You get a lot back for your $99 a month, knowledge painstakingly gathered and tested over and over to give you the best possible chance to make it through and be successful. All it takes is a lot of perspiration, some inspiration and a modest monthly fee.

You’ll be in there with people like Jonathan Mead, Johnny B Truant, Laura Roeder and Carl R Nelson, all discussing their take on things and helping you get through the program through discussions on a lively forum.

If you’re up to it and believe this is the path for you, click the banner below and take part on the project, I promise you that if you do the work you’ll make it through. Just don’t underestimate it…  Good luck!

As promised yesterday I’m going to give you another great resource: a list of fears those aspiring to become location independent suffer from and a list of the fears the already independent suffer from.

There are a few recurring themes in these two lists that were composed using the recent Location Independent and Digital Nomad Survey.

Without to much beating around the bush I’m going to give you the results, broken down into a few categories. This post might be rather boring to the casual reader but I’m sure there are plenty of you who see this lost for what it is, a treasure, a wealth of information that you can use. So what exactly are the fears that live in our community?

Let’s look at the aspiring Location Independent first:

In the knowledge department:

• A lack of knowledge (how to’s)
• Failure (this one comes back dozens of times)
• That this doesn’t work out
• Worry that I will have given up everything for something that isn’t as great as I have built it up to be
• Being less well informed (currently working in a newsroom)

Travel:

• Encountering legal issues abroad
• Being so enamored with a foreign place that I won’t be disciplined enough to work
• What to do with all my stuff, I’m not a light packer
• Getting taken advantage of
• Loosing focus or loosing interest in my work in favor of travel
• I will have to reduce my wardrobe!
• Being stranded
• Safety in third world countries
• Political unrest

Regarding money and business:

• Not having/earning enough money (a common fear)
• Failing to maintain that income/long term income stability (another common fear)
• Not being able to handle state-side matters
• The business drying up
• Losing clients
• Having no nest-egg for retirement
• Procrastination
• Money management (don’t want to rely on relatives for that)
• Connections and communication
• Not being able to get on the Internet

Social and family issues:

• Not being home quick enough if a loved one is dying (This actually is my biggest fear)
• Being away from family
• Solitude/loneliness/home sick/being isolated and alone
• Never finding a partner/inability to form deep relationships
• No home base to come back to and relax
• Feelings of detachment
• Lack of face to face social interaction with colleagues
• Being away from my children
• That my wife will get tired of the travel
• That my spouse won’t be happy
• Leaving family behind
• Getting sick or getting into trouble and not having my family with me
• That my fiance will not truly believe we can achieve this life and that ultimately it will lead to the breakdown of our relationship
• Keeping in touch with friends and family
• Judgemental family
• People’s reactions

Other issues:

• Taking to long to get back to it (former LIP)
• Not getting to the point of LIP
• Health insurance
• Being your own safety net
• Work taking over
• Missing out on the fun things that I’m doing right now
• Being forced to return home against my will and search for depressing work in a depressed economy

So far the list of the aspiring location independent. There are a few recurring themes in this list don’t you think? A quick scan tells me it boils down to knowledge (and lack of), insecurity in travel and earnings, loneliness, being away from family and friends and the fear of being unplugged (no Internet).

Now let’s have a look at the fears the Location Independent suffer from. Yes, these people suffer from fear too, they live the life we dream of, is that life a nightmare? I think not, as we saw yesterday it’s hard work though but worth it. There are a few fears here as well that keep coming back. Here is the list, again in a few categories:

Money issues:

• The costs and not making enough income
• Not having the income anymore and having to stop traveling
• Making expensive mistakes
• The money tap will stop
• Not making enough money to fund our old age

The Business

• Being out of touch when a client needs me
• Lack of trust (and therefore business) from clients
• Others thinking I’m not working because I’m not “on site”
• Losing it

Technical dependency:

• Internet failures/hackers
• Forgetting a power cord – seriously
• The Internet dies
• Loss of equipment leading to loss of work information
• Laptop crashing

The downside of the location and travel:

• Large scale disasters and being stuck in a third world country
• Visas.
• Brisbane’s abysmal broadband service
• A plane crash
• Border control
• Health issues in developing countries
• The weather
• Visa issues: That I live abroad illegally and get deported
• That we’ll get bored with it, or that life will become nothing more than cheap thrills and excitements, but bring not lasting joy
• Getting comfortable and settling (yes it’s a fear)
• Finding myself unable to stop someday

Social and family issues:

• It’s extraordinarily difficult to feel as if you have established roots when you’re always uprooting yourself to seek new experience. Permanence is a foreign feeling. Maintaining personal relationships requires extra care and attention, particularly when it comes to love and romantic relationships. The lifestyle itself creates no fear – only anticipation of a fresh new day.
• Not being part of a community
• Stability of family life
• Losing friends who aren’t living the same way
• Losing contact with local community and friends
• Having to head home because of a family emergency
• My partner not being able to go somewhere with me
• Never stopping and being looked at like a weirdo by my peers back home
• Loosing the ability to maintain long-term relationships
• To estrange from family an friends
• Lack of community
• That we lose connection with any social network, and cause our son to be deprived of meaningful friendships with other kids (especially any who understand what we’re doing, and why)

Other issues

• A loss of motivation or burnout
• Losing important mail

Atually, if we look at this second list there are remarcabe similarities although I’ve used slightly different categories. Money problems, loosing the business or clients, computer/internet problems, the practical problems of travel and the lack of social interaction with the home front.

Compiling this list we end up with a shortlist of fears:

A lack of knowledge

Not making enough money/security of income

Being stuck or getting into trouble abroad

Not having an internet connection

Social interaction/family ties

I actually believe these five fears sum up all the issues the entire community suffers from in one way or the other. There are however enough LIP’s who claim not to have any fears at all.

There you have it, the list of 86 fears of the Location Independant and Digital Nomad community.

You might have heard of this one. The quarter-life crisis is a phase you go through somewhere in your twenties or as Wiki puts it “a term applied to the period of life immediately following the major changes of adolescence, usually ranging from the early twenties to the early thirties.”

It’s a phase where all kinds of insecurities develop. Again, Wikipedia provides us with a nice list I’d like to share:

• feeling “not good enough” because one can’t find a job that is at one’s academic/intellectual level
• frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career
• confusion of identity
• insecurity regarding the near future
• insecurity concerning long-term plans, life goals
• insecurity regarding present accomplishments
• re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships
• disappointment with one’s job
• nostalgia for university, college, high school or elementary school life
• tendency to hold stronger opinions
• boredom with social interactions
• loss of closeness to high school and college friends
• financially-rooted stress (overwhelming college loans, unanticipated high cost of living, etc.)
• loneliness
• desire to have children
• a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you

There are a few here I confess suffering from. Although I don’t feel the need to have children I do feel “not good enough”, an underachiever and the sense that everyone is doing better than me. With one foot I’m in the adult life, after all, I’m 26. But on the other hand I’m going back to university this September and hopefully will be busy with that till I’m 30 something. In the mean time all the kids I grew up with are now engineers, run their own practice or are lawyers and have been doing so for a few years now. I feel left behind.

I know there are more people out there suffering from this. After all, there is a term for it right? We feel we missed the train somehow and got left behind.

Advantages of the slow life

But taking things “slow” in this way has offered me with a perspective few other have. I doubt anyone who by the age of 26 is fully tied up in a dayjob and a social life, perhaps even with kids would have a chance to break free from it all. Let’s just say I didn’t get suckered in when I was not fully conscious about it and now am in the position to choose if I take that step and settle down.

Yes there is a downside, my monthly income is laughable to anyone working full time. To anyone working actually… I don’t own a car, all I have is a motorcycle I bought for 200 euro’s and maintain myself. (If you’re wondering what a 200 euro motorcycle looks like, follow this link.) I don’t own a fancy laptop/macbook pro and I don’t run a highly successful business. I do however have a lot of free time on my hands at the moment. I have few obligations and if I want to get up somewhere around noon that’s just fine. Sure, I have gaps in my resume you couldn’t fill with a dumptruck but who cares. That damage has been done already. I’m not successful according to most people, I stopped being that as soon as I decided the first major I took in University wasn’t for me and I dropped out for the rest of the semester. It took me almost six years to complete my training as exercise therapist which should take only four years. Again, failure. (Or look on the bright side: persistence)

Crystal mind

You know what?! I actually don’t care about all that. Yes I suffer from a quarter life crisis but it’s not stopping me. It’s actually my source of strength. The ideas on what I want to do with my life are crystallizing perfectly inside my mind and I have concrete steps I know I have to take to make these things come true. Take that you soon-to-suffer-a-midlife-crisis-former-classmates! You might have that nice job right now and the nice car (did someone say Ferrari?) but I’ve got a life philosophy, I’m writing a bucket list and I’m setting up a freedom business. None of these are signs of success in the traditional sense so I’m also working on that master’s degree to rub in their faces and learning skills I deem essential to become a Location Independent Professional (or LIP for short). The rubbing in is only a nice benefit by the way, I really want to learn those skills.

I’m 26 and I’m ready to take on the world, on my terms!

How do you feel about your life? Please leave a comment, I’d really like to know.

[update 20090611] I just stumbled across a blogpost that seems to fit in nicely with this post “I am a failure – The Biggest lie out there” and I would really like to share with you. Got it through @scottbradley[/update 20090611]

A bit of a chaotic post today. You might recall me writing about Project Mojave in my post on Monday and my writing about it stating that I hope it really does work while at the same time trying to kick everyone who believed in such things and keeps reading without acting upon it. After that ass-kicking blogpost on Monday and the long post on hormones last Wednesday I though I’d go in a different direction today.

I want the globe to be my playground

Project Mojave  opened up to new subscribers last Tuesday 4.30pm PST. At which time it was 1:30 am where my bed and computer are located at the moment so I was sound asleep seeing as I had to get up at 5 am the following day.

Now this is where Carl (Slacker Reform) comes into the picture. This guy really is amazing as I’ve said before. He gave me a heads-up on the project back in April and I’ve been hearing about his adventures on the project for the last month. He got so excited about it all that he really wanted to have me on the project too.

So how do you do that? Remember I was asleep at the time the project went live. I could of course sign in on at a later time but perhaps I would miss out on all the nice bonus material. I could also just wait for the next run of the program but who knows when that one would be. I went to sleep with some thoughts about that and thinking about an offer Carl made me…

..

In the mean time

..

…He signed me up and made all the arrangements! There was a mail in my mailbox the next morning with my login details stating that everything was payed for. Although this was the offer Carl made me while we were talking over twitter I never imagined him doing this for real. I’ve known Carl now for little over a month and we have only talked using twitter and through blog comments, and now this. I knew we were roughly on the same wavelength now and then but this is absolutely crazy. I guess he really wants me on the project and I’m very happy to be on it!

Sorry for the rant-like blogpost but it’s hard to write properly when you’re this excited. So for the next three months I’ll be simultaneously doing three things aside from my every day life:

• Run this blog like I have these past months and reach my goal of 500 views a day, followed by transferring this blog to it’s own domain
• Working with Project Mojave to create a freedom business, perhaps I can combine this blog and the project here and there. You’ll notice soon enough
• Preparing for university which starts this September but for which I still have to do a math test or more accurately a test in proposition and predicate logic.They want to see if I can wrap my head around that kind of thinking

So what is the future holding for me?

• A successful blog, where I can vent my creativity and generate a small side income
• An income through online entrepreneurship aka running a freedom business which will make me location independent
• A degree in information science which if the first two things don’t work out will be my “backup” to a normal job, with more than enough possibilities there to either earn enough to be financially independent or become an entrepreneur using what I’ve learned at uni. I’ll be learning some major computing skills there and whichever way my life goes this will come in handy

All things considering one of my biggest life goals is Financial Independence to do all the things I’ve been dreaming of. To summarize: I want the globe to be my playground as a zen inspired vagabond/digital nomad and I will achieve that, one way or the other.

You there, sitting at your screen, looking at this text. What the hell are you doing, staring at a screen and reading this text. As if the act of reading by itself will change your life.

All those self help, personal growth and success instantly blogs are lying to you. Zen habits? Useless! Blogmastermind? Don’t make me laugh. All those stories about setting up a payed member site and raking in six digits a year. Just that, stories and marketing. Designed to lure you in and and to keep you coming back. RSS feeds, mailing lists, their sole purpose is to feed you more info and through advertisement, affiliate programs and memberships earn the smarter guy on the other end some (or a lot of) money. The latest of them being “Project Mojave”, even Jonathan Mead over at Illuminated Mind got sucked into this one and is now “Director of Ass Kicking” apparently.

That is exactly what you need right now! A kick… How many blogposts have you read about setting up an online business. How many bloggers are you following who write about this? Is the Tim’s Four hour workweek in your bookcase? Along side Seth’s Purple cow, Ramit’s I will teach you to be rich and all those other books that tell you how to do things. I should probably kick you myself but that is the problem with Internet. I can’t actually kick you for reading all that!

…

So, now I probably got your attention, if you are one of the few who is still reading this. Why am I pissed? It’s simple, you’re only learning what you should do. That’s all that reading does for you. It let’s you learn how to do it. But the simple fact that you are reading this blogposts states clearly that even though you know how to do it you are not doing it right now!

Close this screen and start doing what you have learned. Don’t spend another minute reading all the info and stop being amazed that these people got so successful. What sets them apart from you is the ability to not only learn but to act it out, even if they don’t know every detail. Although they do fear the unknown they respond with  ”I’ll figure it out while doing it” in stead of “I need to learn more before I get started”. The guys over at Project Mojave have learned some skills and now they want to sell you those skills. Where did they get them? Probably through the same books and same blogs you read. They threw in some common sense though and did some serious research. Now they expect you to buy in to what they have to offer and buy their nice little package so you can learn more, and more….. and more…. but will you ever act on it? I sure hope so otherwise you’ll have made another author some money and didn’t get anything back from it other than more information and dreams about how things can be if you just do so and so.

What are you waiting for, shut down this screen, get off your chair and start actually making a difference right now! I’ll still be here tomorrow and so will this blog, the minutes you spent reading this blogpost are gone forever. Were those minutes of your life worth it?

Don’t just read and learn. Reading is useless! Stop reading and start doing what you know!

This all being said and after reading the liberation manifesto written by Jonathan for the Project I can tell you he does manage to kick virtual ass in there. They might just really be on to something. Although they have posted a “success” video log on their site please do remain critical and ask yourself “Is this genuine or did they ask someone to make up a story just to get things rolling?”. There is great potential on the web to make a side income, many have done so. However, for every one person that succeeds there are countless who don’t make it. Be ruthlessly honest and do what you believe to be right. It’s damn hard work and ever a  ”get rich quick” scheme. There is no such thing as easy money. However concerning making money (earning a living/dying) the paradigm has shifted considerably because of Internet.

If I offended anyone with this post I’m truly sorry, I’m just trying to make a point here and I hope that writing about it this way actually got the message across. I’m sure all the people I wrote about are nice and honest people and actually do want to help you achieve financial independence or a better life with healthier (financial) habits.

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