No statesman can live without a teleprompter when the nation needs to be addressed and you shouldn’t have to live without one as well.

If you don’t know what a teleprompter is, it’s a device that will show you a script while you are speaking and while public figures but also used by pretty much all news anchors so they can look directly at the camera without looking at his or her notes. But heck if you’re after definitions I would suggest that you visit Wikipedia.

When recording videos it will allow you to look like a pro while looking directly at the camera and engaging with your audience. And also, it’s a gadget that you can pimp up your video studio with, so do we really need an excuse?

Damn they’re expensive

Well one excuse could be that Teleprompters are frigging expensive easily costing thousands of dollars for just the entry products.

Now I’m for a cool gadget just as much as most other guys, but in a budget video studio I really can’t justify that the most expensive item is a teleprompter that I only use every now and then.

You could of course just go Eric Brown Style and steal the president’s teleprompter, but I don’t think this would prove a valid long term strategy (it wasn’t for Eric )

So I thought I would share my teleprompter budget solution with you and show you how I use the teleprompter in my video studio.

So are you using a teleprompter on all your videos?

The last year or so I’ve been recording a lot direct to camera mainly for my private mastermind program.

But the short answer to if I use it on all my videos is: No, not by a long shot. Since I’m the “just do it” type, I prefer to simply get a few talking points, turn on the lights and the video camera and then talk about these points for 10-20 minutes.

My problem is that while the video would probably improve if I stuck to a script, it would also take forever to record even the simple videos as every word had to be written in a script. And I’m probably a bit too lazy for that.

So instead I’ve mainly been using the teleprompter to do sales pages and opt in pages. When that is said I didn’t bring the teleprompter with me to Thailand (we’re traveling with two small kids so we had the suitcases stuffed with diapers ) so if you check out my video for my Lifestyle Business Mastermind Program, it is done without.

But if you want to see the first video I did with the teleprompter you can head over to Life Outsourcing Mastery. While it’s not my best video you can clearly see that I can have much more eye contact with the camera.

So the short answer is that I try to use the teleprompter when it comes to me having to sell something because here the message needs to be super clear, but doesn’t use a teleprompter when I’m recording content videos for products.

Not thereby saying that my content videos are crap, I often just need a few more words to get to the point:).

Cheap Teleprompter Setup

So how do you get yourself a nice teleprompter without you having to bust your bank account…?

Well I have good and bad news for you.

The good news is that you can get a super professional solution for less than $150, but the bad is that you need an iPad which will set you back probably the same as an entry level teleprompter.

So I’m sorry but this will only work with that nice iPad you bought for your kids for Christmas…

The setup consists of:

• Teleprompter that has a cradle for the iPad
• iPad teleprompter software

I assume that you already got a tripod for your video camera; I needed to go out and find a new one because I couldn’t replace the screw in the bottom of the top plate (required by the teleprompter mount).

So I ended up ordering this baby right here:
R810-10 Universal Teleprompter

Mine is actually an older version that has a different mount (and I also think it was a 10-20 bucks cheaper at the time, can’t remember).

For the software part there are a ton of iPad teleprompter applications, but the one I ended up buying and that I see most people recommend is:
Teleprompt+

There are a few things that annoys me about the app, but in all it does the job.

Nice…

So there you have the setup I thought I would just end this off by showing you a few pictures of how it looks in my studio.

Teleprompter mounted with the camera and iPad. The image has some funky colors because I had to use the flash

Here’s how it looks from the other side of the teleprompter,because the black cloth removed.

So go out and step up your video game (and get a new gadget to play with). Let me know in the comments if you have nay teleprompter related stories you want to share

The post Cheap Teleprompter Setup – Go Presidential Style in Your Videos appeared first on Retire My Ass.

In my mind this is all about risk management. You probably know the risk matrix but if you have the likelihood of an event happening in one dimension and the impact of the event if it happens in another, then I guess that there is a low probability of me being late for the plane. But on the other hand will I missing the plane have quite severe consequences as I might be really delayed and end up 3-4 times the price of the original ticket.

Being five minutes late for a plane is just not the same as being five minutes late for the bus or your dentist’s appointment.

I guess that we can agree at least so far .

In general if your situation qualifies for a yellow quadrant you should at least think about the risk and if it’s a red quadrant I would recommend that you do some actual planning to avoid the risk.

So I’m the type of person that gets to the airport really early. The reason for doing so is that something could go wrong. My cab could get stuck in traffic, the subway could suddenly stop running due to some technical fault or I could simply have mistaken the flying time with the check in time.

“The dog ate my homework”-routine might work, but you’re still the one who has to pay for a new ticket (and still be half a day delayed)

Actually thousands things could go wrong.

Now I’m not the person to worry about a lot of things, it’s really just a risk management on my part.

You probably also know the other kind of person. The one that always seem to be a few minutes late for everything and somehow always ends up being the one that the airport ground personnel is calling for while she (could be a he, but you know you girls often get delayed in the shopping area of the airport, right ) is running for the gate.

So why am I writing this? Well I currently have an hour to kill while I’m waiting in one of the more tedious airports I’ve been to.

The Tegel Airport in Berlin should really have been replaced by this new and awesome airport that apparently are a few years behind schedule meaning that most travelers are stuck with the old one.

But this blog post is not really about risk management while I totally urge you to use the above matrix (take precautions accordingly). No it’s about the reason why I was in Berlin. Why I chose to be away from my girlfriend and kids for an extended weekend (leaving Friday morning and getting back late Monday).

Family (don’t know the pushy pet with the long nose)

When you’re running a lifestyle business most often you’re pretty alone in your ventures. Even though you might outsource parts of your business chances are that you could be running the business wearing only your Speedos from the hammock of an otherwise inhabited island in southeast Asia (don’t worry, you won’t see a picture of me in Speedos next )

Now this might sound like a nice thing, but if there’s one thing that can really boost your business and help it take it to the next level, it’s the right connections.

And let’s face it running the business is often a lonely job in contrast to if you’re in 9-5 job and talking with a lot of your colleagues each day.

The problem with this “solitude in business” is that because you do most of the activities in your business yourself (or dictate how other should be doing them), we can sometime forget that there are a tons of people out there who can help our business and scale it even faster than we could ever do alone.

Heck you probably fall into the trap that I do sometimes thinking that no one knows your business better than you and things are currently going quite alright… right?

I guess that we could call it something like the “narcissistic black spot syndrome”.

We cannot see the opportunities because we’re too busy looking at ourselves (and our business).

However this is not working directly on your business. You don’t just go to a cocktail party and have your revenue double the next day. Building your network and finding the right people that can help take your business to the next level are most long term strategies.

So the reason why you should go out and socialize even though you cannot see any direct consequences of this in your business, comes down to two different factors. The “SOCIAL” factor and the “NETWORK” factor.

The Social Factor

People are more likely to help people they know directly and have some kind of social experience with.

It’s much easier to ask help of someone whom you have a social relation to; otherwise you might just be another email in the inbox.

The Network Factor

Remember when you get to know someone, you instantly also get access to everybody he or she knows.

When some decides that you’re a nice person they can most often also help you by setting you up with people in their network. You will have them vouching for you and you might meet people this way that can take your business to even higher levels.

Actually most of the times you don’t even need to know who the person you’re sitting in front have in his or her network. You can simply tell the person what you’re currently struggling with and they might know someone who can help.

It also doesn’t require a big investment to simply hook you up with someone else making it an easy thing to do for someone who wants to help.

So back to Berlin. The reason why I was there was to hook up with 80 other people who are also having lifestyle businesses a lot of them traveling all over the world while running them.

While there was some speakers on different topics such as how you build a business to sell and growing a language blog to the number one in the industry, it was really a social event where everybody was pretty much talking with everybody over a German beer, or in my case, a couple (ok probably more than a couple) of white Russians.

Having looked most of these guys in the eyes and heard their personal story makes it so much easier to chat with them in our private forum.

The post Why Sipping White Russians and Killing Time in Worn Down Airports Will Boost Your Business appeared first on Retire My Ass.

an organization should create new demand in an uncontested market space, or a “Blue Ocean”, rather than compete head-to-head with other suppliers in an existing industry

source: Wikipedia

When it came out it was the new black in business and it currently has a four star rating on Amazon. But is this the “Perfect Business Idea/Strategy”? I think not… read on…

(for the record, I agree with this guy’s review)

So why am I bringing this up?

One of the most frequent questions I get is how to “get that perfect idea that no one has ever thought of.”

Now if you’ve read my free ebook you probably know my opinion on “getting perfect ideas.”

They don’t exist! In a rather old video I ranted about good ideas vs. bad ideas because in my world there are only ideas.

Too many people get so fixated on getting the right idea for a product or service that they quit (or at least stall forever) before they’ve even started. Guess what: Building a business or product takes time and effort and if you already quit before even starting, my prediction is that you won’t ever achieve success with your own business.

If you’re a solopreneur or just starting out in your own venture, the Blue Ocean Strategy sucks BIG TIME.

You don’t want to “create new demand”!

Do you know how hard it is change people’s habits? This is essentially what’s in the “create new demand”

This would require a marketing effort and money to do so that no small business owner can do alone. It would require a team of people and money to spend on SuperBowl scaled advertising.

So while it may sound like the method of an evil genius to just “create new demand” you don’t want to create a new market for yourself. No instead what you want to do is: copy what’s working and improve it.

You want to position yourself in customer streams where money is already being spent, not trying to persuade people to spend money on something that they didn’t spend money on before.

When you build your product or service you want to take some existing idea that is already making money and see if you can improve it slightly. Perhaps bring it to a new market segment, perhaps you can create a more professional online presence or perhaps you can simply negotiate a better deal with the suppliers because your best friend is sleeping with their CEO. Who knows…

Dan and Ian over at the Lifestyle Business Podcast also dedicated a whole podcast to their take on this method that they call Rip, Pivot and Jam. They are crazy guys and I strongly urge you to listen to their awesome podcast.

Why having more than 300 competitors is a good thing

Someone who’s really good at this method is in fact a Danish internet entrepreneur (and kick ass guy) called Martin Thorborg. Most of my Danish readers will know him but if you don’t live in Denmark chances are that you haven’t heard about him before.

Back in the early Internet days he started a site called Jubii, it was basically a local clone of Yahoo that was dominating the search/portal market at the time (Jubii is the Danish word for Yahoo ). A perfect example of taking something that’s working in one market and bringing it to a new one.

Martin has a Danish podcast and in one of the episodes he argues why competitors are a good thing (in Danish).

When he helped start the company SPAMFighter they had more than 300 competitors! How’s that for a crowded market? Heck they even had Microsoft as a competitor!

What they did do was to

1. target the non-techies in the market and
2. localized/translating the application to a crazy number of languages bringing it to markets that normally would have trouble with English only applications.

Hooking into customer streams

So what can you do to create a business that hooks into an existing customer stream?

1. Start with the market not the product

Instead of focusing on developing a product, you should start out with selecting your existing market. You could optionally start out with selecting the product you want to “clone” and then focusing on the existing market that product has and how you can tune it.

2. Design the product to the market

I know a lot of entrepreneurs are pushing the message that you should develop something “scratching your own itch“. In my book that’s a lousy way to do business. You are not the one who’s gonna buy your own products are you? Are you happy designing your business with only one guaranteed customer?

Don’t get me wrong by the way, I hold a high degree of respect for 37Signals (the guys I linked to above). So much that I at one point had a company called 41Concepts (with the name partly being a tribute to them). But I don’t recommend that you follow their advice in this situation.

Ask your potential market what they want in a product, try to see what kind of questions your potential market asks and build all of that into a product!

3. Identify ambassadors and passionate leaders

Because there is an existing market, there are most likely people discussing products and services in that market. You need to identify them and reach out once you have a minimum viable product and have them test it.

They can both help you sell the product by reviewing it online but they can also give you valuable feedback on the actual product that you can use to improve it.

So unless you’re in a market like toilet paper that no one really cares about… no wait…. I stand corrected, even in the toilet paper market someone is testing and reviewing .

4. Launch your product where your customers are

If your potential customers hang out in forums, facebook groups, physical events or what have you, doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is that you are where they are.

So instead of mindlessly buying AdWords or similar standard marketing strategy, spend a little time getting to know the whereabouts of your customers. If you can establish yourself as a leader in the space of your customer chances are that you have a very viable business. Even with no original idea, a ton of competitors and no money to spend on marketing.

Kicking ass is underrated

So summing up here…

Taking a product or market that hasn’t evolved much in a couple of years and bringing “kicking ass” to the table is really a fantastic business idea.

You take something that is already making money and has proved it’s worth and then spend your energy on differentiating yourself from competitors that might have had a cash cow for the last couple of years and have really been lulled into comfort by their current market position.

What’s your take on this? Do you have any other good examples or do you think I’m hopelessly wrong here? Got a method for identifying perfect business ideas? Let me know in the comments

The post The Perfect Business Idea is Hooking into Existing Customer Streams appeared first on Retire My Ass.

It’s not long ago that I wrote a list of 10 awesome bloggers, but chances are that you already knew these guys as they have really successful blogs. This time I’m gonna look on a list of bloggers I feel should get more attention.

Here are the blogs from a group of writers that are exceptional in their fields, since what their blogs contain are engaging and based on real experiences. The blogs are based on the stories of their lives, which makes everything more interesting even if some of what they say can be a bit tricky to understand at times. The common denominator amongst them is not having a tremendous amount of followers in social media as well as not getting the attention they truly deserve. If you read through their blogs, you will absolutely agree that their talents should be admired more than they currently are.

1. George Ioannou

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George specializes in eCommerce design and the likes, email marketing, marketing strategy and a lot more.

He created some remarkable blog posts such as 5 Great Tips to Seriously Increase Your eCommerce Revenue and Keeping your Content Marketing Strategy Simple: 6 Pointers for Success which can greatly contribute useful ideas to those who needs it.

He was able to write blogs with this information based on his experiences and knowledge about the subject matter. He has great knowledge and understanding of the usability and information regarding architecture and wider access designs.

Having worked with clients who are in different sectors, which include Telecom, Government, Retail, Apparel and more has given him valuable information in these fields as well. Unfortunately, he is one of those bloggers who are not getting the attention they deserve though his work is exemplary.

2. Sarah Peck

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She has been doing her share of writing and still, she says she hasn’t figured out where in the online world she truly belongs. She writes about almost everything. She has wonderful blogs about psychology, creativity and business, which she all has first-hand experience on all areas.

She engages in various activities such as designing her own jobs, help in charity work and launching small businesses and many side projects. Attending to all of these gives her valuable information she can impart to everyone who reads her blog.

Despite being on the Internet for over two years, her blog does not have that many followers, making this something of an online hidden treasure.

3. Sibyl Chavis

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A graduate from Harvard, you can expect nothing less from this lady than important and valuable information which you can use in your business or even in your everyday life.

As she claims, she is like everyone else who finds something to complain about. Until she realized that she can do something to improve and change her life. She went to Harvard Law School and spent 10 years in corporate America which built her into a “substance” individual.

However, even after doing that much of her life, she still feels that there is still something that is missing and she is not accomplishing everything she believes she is capable of.

She pushed herself to a forty-day challenge, which turned into 5 years, which eventually resulted in her blog called The Possibility of Today. She talks about life in all perspective that is actually a realistic thing. Everyone can learn from her expert thoughts and opinion.

She believes that everyone should take advantage of whatever possibilities happen each day since it is an opportunity to see a new world and a different way of living. Some of her exceptional blog posts are How To Make Sure You Aren’t Thinking Too Small – Get What You Really Want, 11 Things You Really Want to Stop Doing Today, 39 Things You May Want to Do Even If Other People Tell You They Are Wrong

4. Colleen Wainwright

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For Coleen, the best way for her to connect with her readers is to tell them stories and not bomb them with how much of an expert she is on subject matter. She finds biographies the best kind of self-help books.

She depends on books to enhance her knowledge and enjoys reading biographies of various types of people she takes an interest in. She especially likes those who have what she calls a “fair amount of actual obstacles that they overcame.”

After all of this reading she was able to come up with useful ideas she put into writing. Her work is very fun and entertaining, which will keep her readers glued to what she posted.

5. Jenny Blake

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Jenny Blake is one of those bloggers who are personally driven to help individuals find out what they really want in their life before they waste it. The tag line on her website is “Wake up, live big! And love the journey.” It is rightfully used since she focuses on writing about things that can help a person in deep slumber and complacency.

There are many people who are tired of their lives and tend to just sleep through it or sit and not care in finding a way to improve it. She has been an established employee of Google and she claims that it is one of the “defining moments of her life.”

Her life with Google meant five years of training, coaching and career development on the authors for the Google team as well as herself. She was also a Senior Strategist on the Training and Development team and give AdWords product Training and web development to over a thousand people. That is more than enough credentials to make her an expert in her field as well as understanding what life brings.

Having all those experiences and having met all those people should have her a lot more followers and readers since these can be people who can really use what she is saying on her posts and books.

6. Jaime Tardy

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Even when she was still a little girl, she believed that she will someday own a million dollars and that is her inclination in life even with her writing. What she does she says, while she doesn’t have her million yet, she interviews millionaires to learn tips, tactics and seek advice based on their successes and failures.

Just like any normal person, Jaime thought that if she studied in a reputed school her chances of getting a high paying job would be much greater compared to the rest. She was actually doing great because at the age 22 she was already earning 6 figures.

However, she also did a lot of spending and by the age 24 she became indebted for over $70,000. Life was a tough teacher for her and she decided to quit her job. She learned that wanting to have a million dollars is not enough, she needs to find work that she will love.

So, she started rebuilding herself and did a great deal of studying and came across the world of personal finance and entrepreneurs. She learned a lot from what she had studied and now she is helping other people build their businesses and use their resources to have an amazing life.

It is an enlightening way of learning that makes her a great teacher. Reading her blogs would be a very enriching experience.

7. Pace Smith

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Pace Smith is another blogger who also is a writer and a free soul that wants to do everything she can to improve the lives of others in general. Reading her blogs will show you her calm approach to life and how much she values it.

She is a claimed transgender, spiritual nomad with Sufi, Reclaiming and Buddhist Influences. Having all these conflicting aspects of her life, she is still able to balance it and make the best of everything.

She and her partner started their writing adventure when they were given a chance to speak in front of a small audience regarding communication and relationships. Some of those people who heard them even coaxed them to write a book which they did and that started everything. Having gone through a lot makes a person sincere with what they do.

8. Barrie Davenport

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Barrie wrote some helpful blogs such 3 Steps To Clean Up Your Finances And Prepare For Your Passion that are really very helpful to people who are having great difficulties in putting their life all together.

She has the ability to build you up, allowing you to realize on your own what are the things that you needed to do this can actually be a better way to hone or change a person rather than telling him what really is his issues. Her way of approach is nurturing, encouraging and caring for that individual to support them.

Reading what she has written is an eye opener and if only a lot more people would take their time to review what she is saying. Knowing that you want a better life or a more exciting life or even a passionate life is not enough. You need to find a purpose and meaning to your existence and that is what she is good at making you realize.

9. Leo Wildrich

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Realizing who you are and rebuilding who you are is what Leo usually talks about. Something that most people actually need but just doesn’t understand why. Individuals who are tied to responsibilities or even just the fear of not being able to succeed create a non-believer of one. Reading Leo Wildrich’s blogs will enlighten you to some of life’s truths and will even let you decide on what it is you really want in life.

His blog posts such as What listening to a story does to our brains, 10 Simple Ways To Get more Customers Using Psychology and Listening to music is like taking drugs can do a lot of wonders for readers, especially those who needs it.

10. Gregory Ciotti

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The 3 Psychological Triggers that Matter to Happy Customers is one of Gregory’s posts on the BufferApp blog, which are really worth reading, but remember also to visit his own blog here.

He is someone who loves psychology and learning things about human behavior. Most of his works are related to business and finance but there are also some which talks about life in general. He believes that smart people should master behavioral psychology in order to be ahead of their competitors. For individuals who are creative or just have a curious mind, his writings can be really entertaining and valuable as well.

Do you know any great bloggers that should have been on this list? Let me know in the comments

The post 10 Kick Ass Blogs appeared first on Retire My Ass.

For this blog post on 10 influential online business owners, I’m going to focus on those online business owners and marketers who are most relevant to the principles I teach here on my blog. At this site, my goal isn’t for you to create a behemoth website like Facebook that keeps you working 70 or 80 hours per week. My goal is for you to create a successful online business that allows you to do whatever you want to do, whether that’s working, playing, snorkeling, traveling or just sleeping. Therefore, in this list of online influencers, I’ve chosen to go with the men and women I consider to be true “lifestyle hackers.”

A lifestyle hacker might be someone who works in his or her pajamas a few hours per week while spending the rest of his or her time with family and friends. A lifestyle hacker might manage his or her business from a Mac Book on a beach in Thailand or a mountaintop in Brazil. Although some of them become filthy rich, not all of them do. That’s not the point; the point is that these influencers use online businesses as a way of supporting the life of their dreams. While some of them may be people you’ve never heard of, all of them have lifestyles you’ll envy.

1. Tim Ferriss

Job titles: Best-selling author, entrepreneur, angel investor, consultant
Influence stats: 393,000+ Twitter followers, 167,000+ Facebook likes, Klout score of 82 out of 100

It would be impossible to write a list of impressive lifestyle hackers without starting with the granddaddy of them all, Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss is most famous for his three best-selling books: The Four-Hour Work Week, The Four-Hour Body and The Four-Hour Chef. Each of Tim’s unique and audacious books are based around the premise that things we normally think of as taking a long time, like our work week, can actually be compressed down to a few short hours if we focus on the few activities that will bring the greatest benefit.

Tim’s ideas aren’t mere theory. He was his own guinea pig. After suffering a near nervous breakdown due to a supplement business that was consuming his whole life, Tim realized that the more he stepped away from his business, the better business got. His lucrative supplement business became something he managed via email just a few hours per week while he used all the extra time to travel the world, learn foreign languages, break world records in the tango and write a few best-selling books.

2. Adam Baker

Job titles: Blogger, writer, movie producer, entrepreneur
Influence stats: 15,600+ Twitter followers, 8,300+ Facebook likes, 15,300+ blog readers

Adam Baker’s wife, Courtney Baker, gave birth to their first child when the couple was in their late 20s. Bringing their daughter home from the hospital, an exhausted Adam (who usually just goes by “Baker”) and Courtney sat down at their small kitchen table. They began to have a conversation that would change their lives for good. Where were they going in life? they asked themselves. What was it that mattered to them most? What kind of life did they want for their new family?

One conclusion they arrived at was that they didn’t want to be strangeld by their debt and their “stuff.” They made a pledge to themselves that night that they would spend one year paying off all their debts and then they would backpack together as a family through Australia and New Zealand.

The couple then unloaded mounds of possessions on sites like eBay and Craigslist and used the money they made to pay down their consumer debt. Meanwhile, they started a blog called ManVsDebt to track and publicize their journey to financial freedom. After they quit their jobs to go backpacking, they never returned to the 9 to 5 routine.

Since then, Adam Baker has written several popular courses, in the form of ebooks, that show just how his young family managed to escape the mountain of debt they were under.

3. Karol Gajda

Job titles: Entrepreneur, thinker, writer
Influence stats: 4,900+ Twitter followers, Klout score of 54 out of 100

Baker and Karol Gajda are friends. Together, they launched the website Only72.com, which sells affiliate products at discount prices for just 72 hours once every few months. In their first go-round on Only72.com, they made $500,000 in 72 hours, donating $40,000 of it to charity. Gajda is one of several “digital nomads” on this list. That is, he frequently runs his various online businesses while he travels to various spots across the globe.

4. Chris Guillebeau

Job titles: Travel hacker, blogger, writer
Influence stats: 102,500+ Twitter followers, 52,700+ Facebook likes for his Art of Non-Conformity page

While working for an NGO in Africa, Chris got the crazy idea that he should travel to every country in the world. That’s the kind of goal that most people feel must belong only to rich and famous people who work hard for many years, then retire early and spend their remaining time on Earth yachting or flying from place to place. Chris didn’t want to wait until he got old, and he also didn’t want to get tied down to a boring 9 to 5 job. Still in his early 30s, Chris has already visited more than 175 countries, yet he’s never had a “real” job. How has he managed such a feat?

Chris has been making money on the Internet for years now. He started off selling stuff on eBay and later graduated to making money with Google AdWords. Later, he started writing about people who essentially fit our early definition of “lifehackers,” starting by writing ebook guides about his own travel adventures. His latest book, The $100 Startup, has become a bestseller.

5. Simon Fairbairn and Erin McNeaney

Job titles: App developers, web designers, bloggers, travel hackers
Influence stats: 6,800+ Twitter followers for the NeverEndingVoyage blog, 3,800+ Facebook likes for the NeverEndingVoyage

This couple, who shares their adventures with readers at their blog NeverEndingVoyage.com, were regular office workers in Manchester, UK, who always had plans to travel together and see the world. Erin had taught English abroad before; Simon had website design skills. After a while of thinking how they could escape the monotony of English office life, Erin realized that between them they already had the perfect skill sets to work from anywhere in the world. Planning out their journey well in advance, they sold all their stuff and bought a one-way ticket to Rio.

These days, they make their living from website design and app development and blog about all of it at the website mentioned above.

6. Jonathan Mead

Job titles: Blogger, writer, entrepreneur
Influence stats: 16,200+ Twitter followers, 955 Facebook likes for Paid To Exist, Klout score of 60 out of 100

Like several of the other influential online business owners mentioned here, Jonathan Mead has a wide streak of non-conformity in him. Bored in corporate America by his early 20s, he quit at 23 and never looked back.

In one post, he writes about how his early attempts at online entrepreneurship were total failures. His first attempt at Google AdWords yielded only $2.38 after three months. He tried his hand at affiliate marketing and made a little bit more. Finally, he decided he wanted to sell his own products. These days, his blogs, webinars and e-courses are all very popular and funding his “Paid to Exist” lifestyle.

7. Michael Dunlop

Job titles: Blogger, software developer
Influence stats: 6,500+ Twitter followers, 3,700+ Facebook likes for IncomeDiary

Speaking of young online influencers, Michael Dunlop of IncomeDiary.com and RetireAt21.com first started running websites at the age of 16. Now 24, the two blogs listed above are the most popular of a handful of online properties that make Michael money. Meanwhile, his Popup Domination software has sold more than 10,000 copies.

8. Ana White

Job titles: Blogger, homemaker, furniture builder
Influence stats: 6,600+ Twitter followers, 12,600+ Pinterest followers, 137,000 Facebook likes for Knock-Off Wood

Ana White’s Pinterest profile states that she makes “cookies, dinner, and beds.” The Alaskan mom always enjoyed making her own furniture; in the most remote and wild of America’s 50 states, being handy with a hammer is certainly useful sometimes. From a friend, she heard about the phenomenon of blogs. Curious to see if anyone else in the world would be interested in her homemade furniture plans, she signed up for a free Blogger account and posted some plans of things she’d recently built. Over the course of that first year blogging, Ana posted hundreds more plans.

The response she received was overwhelming. Before she knew it, she was getting millions of visitors to her site. Most of her visitors were women who were looking for DIY projects that they could complete without too much trouble. Ana continues to offer her furniture plans for free and cashes in on her millions of visitors by selling banner ads on her blog.

9. Matthew Wolfe

Job titles: Membership website entrepreneur
Influence stats: 3,100+ Twitter followers, 2,200+ Facebook likes for WordPress Classroom

Like Jonathan Mead, Matt Wolfe spent time on a number of business ideas that didn’t pan out before he hit one that stuck. At the beginning, even though he had several blogs going at once, he wasn’t making more than a few hundred dollars per month from them. The idea that finally worked for him was a membership website helping others to make WordPress blogs. By this time, he had a lot of experience working with WordPress and tinkering around under the WordPress hood. With his new membership sites, he went from making a few hundred dollars per month to making more than $22,000 in one month in early 2012.

10. Brian Moran

Job titles: Facebook expert, ebook writer
Influence stats: 2,100+ Twitter followers, 302,000+ Facebook likes for Get10000Fans

At first glance, Brian’s story may not seem as exciting as some of the other stories on this list. Unlike Matt Wolfe, he didn’t lose his job and find himself in a sink-or-swim situation when it came to making money online. Unlike Adam Baker, he didn’t sell all his possessions and backpack around Australia while blogging about it. Rather, Brian kept his full-time job until just last year, when he felt his online business had stabilized enough to replace his full-time income once and for all.

By the time he quit his job for good, Brian’s ebooks on his site Get10000Fans.com were already making him more than his full-time job. This was 2010 and many marketers were just beginning to figure out how important Facebook was to online success; Brian had established himself in the niche just in time.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about these creative online entrepreneurs. More than that, I hope you’ve found their stories inspiring. They are each living proof that there’s no reason to content yourself with a grueling, 9 to 5 lifestyle for the rest of your life. Use your creativity and the resources I provide here at my blog to emulate their success.

The post 10 Inspiring Influencers in Online Business appeared first on Retire My Ass.

I really wanted to be blogging more while I was here and there was a lot of video training I would like to have recorded. Now I have recorded a couple of videos for my private mastermind group, but it’s super to hot to stand outside in the sun recording for hours.

Perhaps it’s the whole tropical setting that has made me even more lazy that I normally am (is that at all possible?) or perhaps it’s because I don’t have a proper office where I can get a little productive time away from the kids.

Right now I’m writing this from the living room with my youngest sitting on the floor twisting his whole body to some kid song on the DVD and my two girls are in the dining room playing with play-dough.

And I think that our maid will arrive in ten minutes time. So while it’s a big house it can be difficult to concentrate on tasks that will drive my business forward.

Major WTF Moment…

Now you might think that this is the topic of this post, but it isn’t. I actually enjoy our time here and the way the days are.

No – a thing happened that forced me to suddenly get out of my tropical slumber and actually got me feeling a little stressed

So what was that you might ask? Well it all started last Wednesday when I received the email below from my hosting company:

Hello Rasmus,

We have found that your account has been reached the limit of CPU.
Because of this we have forced to decrease the cpu limit from 20% to 10% to
prevent of Suspension of your account. You need to start to decrease
CPU usage. Below is the CPU usage log:

####
User Domain % CPU % MEM MySQL Processes
[removed] [removed].com 41.21 0.22 0.9

Top Processes
User Domain % CPU Process
[removed] [removed].com 115 /usr/bin/php /home/[removed]/lifestylebusinessmastermind.com/wp-cron.php
[removed] [removed].com 111 /usr/bin/php /home/[removed]/lifestylebusinessmastermind.com/wp-cron.php
[removed] [removed].com 108 /usr/bin/php /home/[removed]/lifestylebusinessmastermind.com/wp-login.php
####

Please get back to us if you need any further assistance and let us know how else we can help.

Thank you and have a great day,

Eugen D.
GreenGeeks Support Team

I was a bit puzzled about this because while I got quite a few heavy plugins running on the LifestyleBusinessMastermind.com site (such as the membership plugin Wishlist Member), there hadn’t really been that much traffic to it that day.

Actually there had only been 23 unique visitors that day and it was still in the beginning of the day in the US that is my primary market.

So needles to say, as they wrote “we have forced to decrease the cpu limit from 20% to 10% to prevent of Suspension of your account” I assumed that this was just a spike in the CPU consumption and not really something that I should be concerned about as the site had been running fine for months.

And be writing the above I assumed that everything was ok as they had already just limited my account.

But that turned out to be a mistake because exactly one hour later I got the next email from Greengeeks.

Hello Rasmus,

As far as I can see your account is still overload our server resource:

[removed] [removed].com 44.34 0.22 0.9

root@server7 [~]# ps axufS |grep [removed]
root 115652 0.0 0.0 61216 732 pts/5 S+ 09:44 0:00 | \_ grep [removed]
[removed] 115604 4.0 0.0 214004 11396 ? R 09:44 0:00 | \_ /usr/bin/php /home/[removed]/lifestylebusinessmastermind.com/wp-login.php
[removed] 115544 12.6 0.2 251560 50132 ? R 09:44 0:00 | \_ /usr/bin/php /home/[removed]/lifestylebusinessmastermind.com/wp-cron.php
[removed] 115590 41.0 0.2 268900 68048 ? R 09:44 0:00 | \_ /usr/bin/php /home/[removed]/lifestylebusinessmastermind.com/wp-cron.php

We have been forced suspend your account in order to prevent further server interruption for other our customers.
Please contact us when you are ready optimize your site.

Please get back to us if you need any further assistance and let us know how else we can help.

Thank you and have a great day,

Andrey C.
GreenGeeks Support Team

Quick Security Tip:

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Tell us how we did: http://www.greengeeks.com/why-us/testimonials_submit.php

Let me just bold that statement in the middle for you:

“We have been forced suspend your account in order to prevent further server interruption for other our customers.”

WTF???

You Cry or You Kick Ass

They had just shut down my entire hosting account! 8-10 websites effectively shut down due to one website that had 23 visitors that day including this blog.

This is shared hosting in all it’s glory! They promise you unlimited traffic and space, but the second they detect any problem at all, you will be shut down because you then become a liability to every other person on that server.

Now I could begin to argue with the people over at greengeeks.com, but where would that have gotten me.

15 minutes after having received the suspension notice, I had ordered a new cloud VPS over at Site5. I knew that I would no longer depend on shared hosting. It’s not more than a couple of months ago I migrated from Dreamhost to Greengeeks and now I had to move again.

This time it would have to be a more permanent solution.

Now I don’t feel that I get that much traffic, I mean I get some to this blog, but caching should be taking care of that. The membership sites on the other hand cannot be cached (as people are logged in).

I really feel that I should be able to run this from a shared hosting account, but I’m done taking chances.

Getting the shit up again

Basically Greengeeks told me that they would lift the suspension once I had removed the problem. THey had shown me the file that was the sinner, but I couldn’t really see what I should do. I disabled the wp-cron (you can do that in the configuration) but still experienced peaks.

In the end I had no idea what was causing such a disturbance, remember that these sites have been running for months and that day only 23 had visited the site that should have caused havoc?!

And Greengeeks could only send me links to their standard articles on optimizing WordPress, if they had just looked at my installation or checked our dialog, they could see that I was already using a caching plugin.

In the end, I more or less took down LifestyleBusinessMastermind.com so I could get the suspension lifted and get my other sites up.

Approximately 24 hours later I had all sites migrated to Site5 and the DNS changed.

Don’t run your business on a $5 host

I learned my lesson. I got money coming in and this blog is important to me, why would I risk all of that on a $5 host? Well maybe because all the shared hosts out there advertises that you can!

But no more. I’ve chosen to pay more than ten times more per month in order to secure the future of my business. Down the line I might even end up upgrading my server as well, but now I just need to get a little experiences with all this “running my own server” thing.

How are you rolling?

So what are you rolling in? Are you still on a shared host or have you upgraded to your own server? And what made you take that decision?

Let me know in the comments.

The post Thoughts of the Frustrated Blogger appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Is 2013 the year where you will take action and build that business that in time will let you follow your dreams and live life like you want it?

This post is my forecast on what’s going on with online business in 2013 and I will go into what I think will be the trends and best practices here in 2013.

This is not a in any way a final list, so let me know your thoughts in the comments.

But Why Really Create an Online Business?

If you’re a regular reader I’m pushing hard that people build a lifestyle business in order to be able to have more time and freedom for the stuff you’re truly passionate about here in life. But the traits of a lifestyle business can be fully supported by an online business. You might say that a lifestyle business is a subset of the term “online business”.

But would you want to build an online business? Well it can be run from almost anywhere on the planet not keeping you tied down to an office desk. And it can scale much better than the usual strategi of selling your time for money meaning you can work less and/or make more money.

How to Build an Online Business

Some time ago I wrote a post called How to Build an Online Business in a Week, so for a 7 day business creation model you should certainly visit that.

Hoever there’s really no secret to building an online business.

Just like a “normal business” in order to achieve success you need to create value for somebody who wants to return the value with money.

It’s as easy as that.

So the question everybody seem stuck on is: what should that value be?

I generally tend to favor the “passion based business” over just looking at needs, but you can see more about passion vs. needs in this video.

But this post is really not about finding the right online business idea, if you want to know my take on this, you should read evaluating lifestyle business ideas.

My 2013 Projections

So what are my thoughts on online business here in 2013?

I’ve listed a couple of trends below that I see and I will focus on in 2013. If you want to add something to the 2013 Online Business trends, then add your voice in the comments below.

Forget Crappy Looking Websites

I’m still amazed at how many crappy websites there are online today. And I’m also amazed and surprised that people can’t see this themselves. Now I like to launch early with a minimum viable product, but there are limits to how crappy your website can be.

Buying anything online whether that is products or services is about trust. Most of the time you have no idea about who’s behind the website; a big corporation or just a single guy sitting in a one bedroom apartment.

This means that the one thing that can encourage trust and confidence will be the overall impression of your website.

Now design is subjective, but a website can still be rated “ugly” by most of its visitors – so how do you create a good looking website?

Well I’m a lazy bum so I usually just use WordPress with a premium theme of some sort. For instance this blog is using a modified theme from WooThemes. This mean that I can focus on just adding the content.

But the issue here is that now most people can do this (if you sign up over at LifestyleBusinessMastermind.com you will get a video showing you how to.

It has simply become sooo easy to get a good looking website that it has raised the overall bar. What might have worked just a few years back is now perceived ancient. So if your website is a couple of years old (or you haven’t got one), you probably want to get a new one in 2013. It’s easier and more accesible than ever!

Niche Sites are Dead

As you can also read in my rant about niche sites, I really don’t see them as a viable long term business model. There are a few exceptions but you can read that in the post I’ve linked to above.

The main issue is that small niche sites with mainly AdWords to generate income simply has no other viable traffic model other than getting organic traffic (that’s traffic from the search engines… and let’s face it: Google). The problem being that Google keeps changing their algorithms making it increasingly harder to get a small site ranking well with out the need to post more money into it than it will end up making.

Most of the people screaming about niche sites (no one mentioned, no one forgotten – or insulted ) are all now talking about the next thing: “Authority Sites” which to me just means a niche site with better content (and of course taking more of your time to develop).

If you look at my post about making money blogging, you can see that it’s even hard to make money with quality content that is frequently updated (something Google loves), so making money on crappy low quality websites filled with $5 Filippino articles is totally dead in the water. But again, if you’re making a killing with niche sites, by all means prove me wrong in the comments below.

Information Products will Focus on Advanced Topics

In the last couple of years it seems that everyone has been targeted beginners.

Whether that is teaching you to run your first marathon, decorate your first cake or create your first – yikes – niche site.

Everybody is targeting the beginner and you see very few advanced topics being taught.

I believe that this is going to change. A lot of the beginner friendly information can now be found for free online and this has devalued the paid beginner information products.

While there will always be beginners in any industry (which is probably why so many are targeting this segment) there’s currently a whole in the market for more advanced products that skips all the basic stuff.

I’m actually releasing an advanced video course which I will give away for free within a couple of weeks. It will assume that you know all the basics of the topic and only be concerned with trying to take you to the next step. You can’t of course know if this is something for you from this sparse cryptic description, but if you’re interested you probably want to join my mailing list as I will let my newsletter recipients know about it first.

But getting sidetracked here, moving on…

Information Products will be Higher Quality

Years ago everybody was praising e-books and while there is now places like Kindle and technology like iPads (ok tablets, but the iPad kind of defined that space) the typical PDF ebook being sold from a website today has very little perceived value.

Heck I even bought into this more than three years ago (and I do mention that awful “niche” word there as well).

Video on the other hand has a higher perceived value and therefore we’ve seen a lot of video through the last couple of years. However most of it has been screen-capturing a PowerPoint/Keynote presentation though.

Now video equipment is going down in price and I think we will see more high end quality productions that requires both more money and time to produce. For me it’s always about the 80/20 rule so I like to get as good a video quality with the lowest possible investment.

If you want to see how I currently produce my videos, I have a post on my current video setup.

I’m actually doing a lot of direct to camera videos in my LifestyleBusinessMastermind.com. It’s me in the studio in front of a whiteboard teaching the topic of building lifestyle businesses.

More Widely Use of Technology Supported Business Automation Among Entrepreneurs

Technology Supported Automation… Damn that’s a fine sounding phrase. What I mean is that in the past only the big companies could pay for having someone build a custom system (or build on top of some kind of enterprise platform) that supported most of their business processes.

With Software As A Service products and all the Open Source products in existence today, it has become much easier to get your processes automated using technology. Sometimes it involves you getting a small little piece of code developed to act as super glue between two existing products/components and other times someone has created a product that you can use to get 95% of the results.

10 years ago everybody was doing Content Management Systems (CMS – for managing your website) today this market is much more consolidated with a lot of the homegrown systems being thrown out as open source CMS’s are coming in.

Today not many start on the task of creating yet another CMS, instead we see an increase in more specialized systems. Systems specialized to certain demographics or business segments.

I often get plugins done for WordPress, not plugins that I’ve been selling but simply small plugins that would cost me $200-$500 but in the end would automate some part of my business and thereby save me hours and hours of time each month.

Now the biggest obstacle in technology supported business automation for entrepreneurs in usually the entrepreneurs lack of understanding for what is really possible. It usually requires someone with a little IT understanding – but it’s at least something that is trending right now.

So there you have it…

A few points you need to consider if you are planning on building or expanding your online business in 2013.

Am I missing something? Wrong? Let me know in the comments!

The post Creating an Online Business in 2013 appeared first on Retire My Ass.

My girlfriend hates it and tries to keep an eye on the abductor while I assume the classic male approach and hope that they might forget to come back with my offspring (well – not really but if you have kids you’ve probably had this fantasy as well ).

But as I wrote in my last post I launching my private membership site where I help people work less and live more while we’re here.

And my site has a so called “squeeze page”. A page where I promise to give you something for free in return for your email address. You will get a series of free training videos, but eventually you will of course also receive “an offer you can’t refuse” to join my membership site.

So it’s important to me that as many people sign up on the squeeze page as possible.

If there is one universal truth about what words sell online (whether that is video, audio, pictures or text) it is that no one really knows in the specific case.

There are some best practices and you can have an idea that some combination of words will perform better, but without testing the assumption, no one can really know for sure.

So that is why we need to do split testing. We need to prove (or disprove) our thesis.

If you want to make it big with selling stuff online the big secret is continuous testing. Just look at Amazon – even though they’re a huge success, they are still split testing all the time (that is why you often see small changes in the layout and design of their site).

But I’m getting a head of myself I believe the title was squeeze page split testing ninja tricks, not how to optimize an e-commerce site (although the technique is the same).

I know that there are several good split testing tools, but I still just use Google’s offering. It’s inside Google Analytics and well integrated with everything eles in Google Analytics.

This blog post won’t be a walkthrough in using Experiments as it’s called in Google Analytics – you should be able to find that every where, instead I’m gonna show you a super secret ninja trick that can help you split test your squeeze page, actually I don’t really care what tool you are using, you can use these tricks in any split testing framework.

A Good Ninja Needs a Katana – and traffic

One the biggest problems I face with split testing is that you need traffic before you can do it. When you’re creating a new site guess what, you most likely won’t have much traffic.

But let’s face it before I start spreading the message about my squeeze page in a big style I would like to have some idea if it converts or not. For instance I won’t start recruiting a ton of affiliates for the backend product as long as I don’t know if the traffic they send me will actually convert.

This means we have a chicken or egg situation! We want traffic to our squeeze page but we won’t advertise the page until we know that it converts, and to test whether or not it converts – we need hmm… traffic through an a/b test.

So here’s the first Ninja trick. If you head over and sign up for List Joe, you will get 1000 free “credits” when signing up (1 credit = send 1 email to 1 person). Now the draw back of this is that you allow other List Joe users to spam you as well.

My first advice is therefore not to use your primary email address or create something like a filter in Gmail in order to keep the List Joe emails out of your inbox.

Now you can either send an email to 1000 subscribers right after signup, or you can wait while you collect more credits (you can either buy or spend time on clicking on other people mails to get additional credits).

I must warn you though…

You don’t get many clicks from other List Joe users. Apparently everyone just wants to send their shit, not read the emails from other users

So don’t expect to get many customers this way. But this is also why it’s perfect for split testing squeeze pages as your goal with this is not to sell products but optimize your squeeze page.

The traffic you are getting are most likely people who are used to be looking at squeeze pages and know all the psychological selling tricks in the book, so if you can convert any of them then you have a great squeeze page.

AND you get the added bonus of being able to split test your squeeze page without having to waste valuable visitors from say your newsletter list before you know that you actually got a fantastic squeeze page.

Don’t follow Sensei – grasshopper must follow own road

Now you might take my advice on this, I will at least continue to use this method for testing my squeeze pages (at least until they get enough traffic of their own).

But I also want to show you some numbers and share a little (ok big) mistake I did.

A minute ago I wrote that you didn’t get many clicks from List Joe, well let me show you the numbers for my first campaign I sent out.

As you can see I only got a 4.4% click through rate. Not exactly something to light the fireworks over. But I was just so excited to try this out that I just went in and sent the damn thing right after signup.

Problem was that it was Saturday… And as you probably know, the time that you send the email has a great influence on how many opens/clicks you get. And Saturday is probably one of the worst days to send email on.

Heck even my normal newsletter broadcasts are using functionality to send the email on just the right time based on the subscriber’s timezone. So I should know better.

So your numbers will most likely be higher if you try to send out Tuesday mornings instead of Saturday like my first broadcast.

One last lesson young grasshopper

Remember that you can split test your emails as well. You can send 1000 emails with one subject line and 1000 with another subject line.

This way you know what subject lines will work when you send the same email to your newsletter (or higher valued subscribers).

Let me know if you have any other cool split testing ninja tricks I should know about in the comments .

The post Squeeze Page Split Testing Ninja Trick appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Well maybe it’s not so much of a secret if you read my plans for 2012.

In that blog post I write about my 2012 plans including launching two membership sites and writing a book.

And you know what? I DID!

Now my first book is currently being reviewed by my editor and we’re working on getting the final illustrations and cover in place, but it got written in 2012. I must be honest I was hoping for a 2012 release, but you know… things take time, at least things that you haven’t had experience with in the past

But that’s not the project I want to talk about in this post.

Now what I would like to show of is my own private mastermind program that I launched internally to my email list in 2012. So if you’re on my newsletter list, chances are that you’ve heard about the program.

After having built a couple of businesses that gave me more time and freedom to travel, people starting asking me for advice on how they could do so too, and instead of telling people the exact same thing over and over again, I thought it would be easier if I just recorded a ton of videos.

So if you want to get started with working less and living more, then you should head over to lifestylebusinessmastermind.com and sign up for the free videos where I show you the model I use for building my businesses.

I even give you an exclusive look at one of my own businesses and how I make some of my money.

Now here is the kicker….

While there is certainly some free videos you can learn from, you will at some point (if you enter your name and email on the site) be offered to join the private mastermind area.

Now I’ve had a super low entry price for charter members (people from my newsletter list) and when I launched to the public this price would go up (with more than 100%). But the problem is that I’m shooting some new videos and the price won’t be raised until I get these videos recorded. Therefore if you hurry over and signup right away, chances are that you can still get the low price otherwise only offered to my newsletter list.

Heck there is even a free 7 day trial so you can see the thing before you’re actually charged!

A little favor

Even if you’re not interested in the program itself, I would love if you would give me some feedback on the free videos. It would mean a lot to me to get your feedback so I can improve the videos and the content.

It’s been a long process creating the site and all the videos, so I might just write a blog post on why it had to take almost a full year to be released to the public . (hint: it’s proved really difficult to get a payment gateway/merchant account that works with 1ShoppingCart when you’re a European based company).

But let me know what you think!

The post My Secret Project Revealed appeared first on Retire My Ass.

It can be a long trip travelling to Thailand with children from the cold Denmark. A 11 hour non-stop plane ride is never fun, and having two small kids with you can be somewhat of a challenge.

Cecilie chasing a balloon by the pool

In this blog post I will discuss some issues that will hopefully help you prepare for a similar trip, or you can just choose to enjoy this small insight into travelling with kids .

While we went to Thailand, I guess that you can use some of the stuff I’ve written about anyway.

But let me back up a little and give you some context.

If you’re not a regular reader you probably don’t know this but while we normally live in Denmark, we also have a house in Hua Hin, Thailand that we spend a couple of months in each year. Typically in the winter season where the weather is crappy in Denmark.

Now we’re not the jungle trekking kind of family, personally I’m more into a cold drink by the pool chatting with friends than a mosquito jungle hell carrying a backpack with a guide. However we’re not travelling charter though, mainly because we have our own house and stay for more than the usual 14 days.

So if you’re the jungle trekking type, there are probably a lot of other stuff that you need to remember as well, and you’re probably more relaxed than we are. However personally I wouldn’t bring two small kids out in the jungle for an extended period where it can often be hard to find proper shelter for rain/sun, baby food (that your baby will actually eat – ours eat something like 6 meals per day). But if you’re not as tight ass as we are, I’m not the person to cast judgement over other people.

I’m actually writing this while we’re here in Thailand, I guess that I wanted to get it all out while it was still fresh in mind .

Preparing

Now our little princess (3-year old) is a bit sensitive to perfume and all the additives that the big companies put in everything including stuff made for kids. It’s not like she’s allergic or anything, but her skin is a bit sensitive.

Now the problem is that in Thailand (and many other places as well) they put a lot of perfume in diapers, so we chose to pack enough diapers for the two kids so it would last us two months. Now that takes up space. I’m not saying that you should do this too, just know that it can be a little difficult to find diapers that are free from all the crazy stuff the companies insist on adding.

We also packed all the shampoo, cremes etc that we wanted. Normally I would just have bought a lot of it in Thailand and travelled light, but since we only had to carry/transport all the suitcases for a short period in the airport we didn’t care about the extra weight.

Actually we ended up bringing three big suitcases (and three pieces of hand luggage AND a stroller) with us. Two of the suitcases were actually over weight and we had to pay extra for getting them on the plane. That’s not the usual way as most people I know who are going to Thailand tend to have a lot of extra space going out, so they can bring a ton of shit with them on the way back.

DISCLAIMER: OK… I had a ton of equipment with me as well as I needed to shoot some videos while I’m here (can’t just blame the kids here ).

But again, you’re probably not as anal about this as we are.

Guess which color our little princess has

We also brought clothes from Zunblock, they make some great sun protective clothing that the kids can swim in while being protected from the sun.

Hats are a must have for our kids as they both have light hair and will quickly be burned if not protected (however here was one thing that we actually bought here instead of bringing it )

One thing that is really hard to find in Thailand is rye bread. You’re probably not eating this so it’s not a problem for you, but our kids get rye bread for lunch every day.

The last time we were here we find some in a store that specialized in importing groceries, but as you might guess, the prices were horrendous. I don’t think they imported the bread, but the price was crazy and it didn’t taste anything what they were used to.

This time around we actually did find something (but still really expensive) but you get a little suspicious when a bread is good for 9 months (and should even be organic with no preservatives ).

Hint, look at the production/expiration date

But this time around I actually brought some flour mixes that should just have added yeast and water, and then put it in the oven. And again, we bought four bags (so we could do four big rye breads) with us.

I’m not sure if it’s ok to import this stuff into Thailand, but I searched online before doing it and I couldn’t really find anywhere that said specifically no. But please don’t take my word for it, if you bring any kind of food into Thailand you should probably check if it’s ok first.

And something I keep reminding my girlfriend is that they also have kids here in Thailand. While we spent days packing (not all the time of course) you can never pack everything, and at some point the madness must stop. Most things can be bought in Thailand, so it’s really only if you have some special requirements for your kids that you should think about packing more than the clothes.

The plane ride

While you are most likely aware of this if you’ve ever flown with your kids, the ear-popping sensation is a normal part of air travel is not a really good experience for them. Specially if they are small and you cannot explain to them that they should just try and swallow.

So we always stack up on snacks and bottled water in our hand luggage.
(you cannot bring your own bottles anymore because of a mad bomber trying to blow a plane up with liquids, so remember to pick something up in the airport).

Our babyboy is also still being breastfed, and takeoff and landing are perfect times to do this.

Now one thing we’ve always insisted on has been to fly at night time while it’s the kids’ natural sleep time. Spending 10-12 hours on a plane is a long time if there’s no sleeping involved. We also always fly direct to Bangkok although it’s cheaper to select tickets with a stop.

This is of course a money thing, but we’ve found it to be a lot less hassle than having to deal with tired kids in a foreign airport in the middle of the night.

Now the only problem in taking a flight in the night and have the kids sleeping, is that you need to make sure that the kids are comfortable before you are. And if you’re travelling with a kid under two years they don’t have their own seat. If your kid is less than nine months you can get a bassinet, but these are limited to the seats by the bulkhead so there are no guarantees that you can get it.

So while the kids might sleep like babys (get it? ) there is a chance that you won’t. I’m a tall guy so I usually never sleeps while flying, I’m simply not that comfortable in the seats. But this can of course strain your resources the day after arrival.

Now I’ve mentioned that we brought three pieces of hand luggage, but what usually happens is that you put most of them in the overhead compartment area. And this is a problem when you perhaps are having kids sitting or sleeping on you. So we packed all the important stuff we knew we needed on the plane in one piece of luggage, and kept it on the floor. The remaining two suitcases went up in the overhead compartment.

The stuff we absolutely needed was: diapers (actually a small kit that folds neatly together), snacks and water for take off/landing, duvet for our baby to sleep with and a few toys.

And on the subject of toys, a secret ninja trick is to get a new toy that the kids haven’t seen before and give it to them on the flight. This is of course doing this at the precise right moment when the kids are two seconds away from a hysterical attack.

And while on the subject of hysterical kids on a flight. We all hate them right? Well things change when you get kids of your own. Because now you know that it’s mostly the parents that are stressed out about it.

No one wants to be labeled bad parents and everybody seems to stare when your kids are behaving less than optimal.

The first time we took our baby princess to Thailand she was just nine months old. During take off she had to sit in our lap, we couldn’t take off right away so we had a little extra time taxiing on the runway. Our girl quickly lost patience and started screaming.

Yikes…. Our first flight with her and already now we pictured her screaming for 12 hours straight! But as soon as we were in the air she went to sleep and slept the entire way. Once we landed people around us came up and congratulated us with such a quite and easy baby. Success… And in the end a lot of stress and worrying about nothing.

Transfer

So you’re still reading? Fantastic

Well after the long flight there is usual some kind of transfer to your destination. Our house is in Hua Hin and this means a ride for two hours and thirty minutes. But the problem is that the kids are now awake and most like a little tired of being confined to small spaces…

With tons of luggage and two child seats, we needed something of this magnitude

You can even get baby/child seats when you book the taxi in advanced. We don’t have child seats when we’re just getting around in Thailand, but the two hour thirty minutes drive from the airport on the highway, we do.

You can always rent a car yourself, but the fact that they drive in the wrong side of the road (at least for us) and believe in reincarnation is just a bad combo in the crazy Thai traffic. So we never rent cars or motorcycles when we’re there. We just call a number and we’re picked up 10 minutes later (although airport transfer were booked from home).

When we spend months at a time, we usually get an ok price and just use the same driver for the whole period.

Actually we had a funny moment during our first visit where our cab driver offered to lower the price even though we hadn’t asked for it. You know you’re paying too much when a Thai is trying to haggle the price down in your favor

Try not to have too many plans the first day. Two tired kids that need to find a new sleep pattern and a couple of parents that haven’t slept much, is just not a good combo for the overall mood on top of a potential jet lag.

While in Thailand

“Seat belts? What do you mean by seat belts?” – with two small kids safety is suddenly an issue

Now as I mentioned we usually use a taxi to get around in. We tend to avoid tuc tucs. When we didn’t have kids we didn’t thought much about car safety, but now that we do – we have some seconds thoughts.

I mean, racing at 80km/hour down a mountain with you just holding on to you kid?! If we crashed into something (well anything) we would be thrown out of the tuc tuc and be pretty wasted.

Heck, just today I saw a foreigner in the compound we live, driving his motorcycle carrying with a 3-4 year old boy in front. I don’t understand that you’d do something like this. Would you do this in your country (is it even legal? I know in Denmark it isn’t – and you should also wear a helmet at all times).

So why the f… would you want to do this in a country with this crazy traffic is beyond my understanding. But than again, who am I to judge (the Thais are another issue, most of them have no other ways of transportation and you often see entire families on just one motorcycle on the highway)

Ahhhh… Calm down Rasmus

Well, as I mentioned previously we also brought an umbrella stroller. It’s actually rather difficult to use strollers in Thailand since the sidewalks aren’t really suited for them, but for short walks and in the airport they are great. If you have the space to bring it fine, but I would most often recommend something like a Baby Björn baby carrier instead. I can’t find the model that we have. It has a mesh net in most places making it nice and cool compared to the thick material I currently see on their page.

Most of the days we try to keep inside during the hottest hours around noon. Both of the kids also need a nap around this time. This means that most shopping and touring is done either around 10am or after 3pm. The little one could sleep in the Baby Björn but it’s not always that we can get our three year old sleeping in the stroller (and since she terms into a little devil if she does not get her nap, we are kind of anal about her nap time).

A small siesta in the hottest hours is great for a few laps in the pool or reading a book in the shadows without the kids running around .

One last thing to think about is the mosquitos. Depending on where you’re staying it may be a good idea to bring or by an extra mosquito net. It’s something we always seem to be buying (don’t know where the old ones went?!)

Man I was tired…

The first couple of days I was totally screwed by jet lag. I don’t normally get hit that hard, but the combo of being on stand by for two kids and getting them into their sleeping patterns, totally destroyed me.

So for a few days I couldn’t sleep in the night at all. Basically it’s a long trip and it’s not something I enjoy doing, but now that we’re here (and I’ve gotten some sleep) it’s great.

I love the people, the food and of course the weather (oh and did I mention the food?).

Thailand is a perfect place to take your kids, there isn’t much crime (most of them are buddhist and living of tourists – and karma’s a bitch), the people love kids (they WILL be abducted from you in a restaurant during your stay at least once because the waitress want to show the kid the kitchen), and it’s a great place for just running around without much clothes (just remember the sun). Depending on the place there will also be plenty of other kids to play with.

So if you’re in the Hua Hin neighborhood, stop by and let me buy you a cold beer

If you read all of this…

… and don’t have kids... I’m impressed.

I’ll promise that I won’t ramble about my offspring as the proud father that I am in the next post

Have any input to travelling to Thailand with children? Or anywhere else for that matter?
I would love to hear from you in the comments.

The post Travelling to Thailand with Children appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Nothing in life comes easy and before you realize the better (said the grumpy ol’ man ).

Building a successful business requires effort, whether that is a bad ass venture funded iPhone app developed at the corporate offices in the Valley or a lifestyle business where you’re the only person operating the thing from a hammock in Bali.

Now this year my goals included launching a couple of membership sites and writing a book.

Well I have launched two membership sites and my book is currently in the editing phase, not too shappy if I might say so myself.

The problem is that the membership sites should really have launched in the spring of this year, and both of them was only beta launched within the last couple of months.

Me whining about quitting

And that leads me to the topic of this post. Because before I continue to whine (and trust me whine I will) I wanted to put this post into context.

Because there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who quit and those who succeed. As Robert Kiyosaki says “Quitting is the easiest thing to do”. And you know what? He’s absolutely right.

The problem is that we’re tempted with quitting again and again because of the fact that it’s the easy way out of the pain.

Moving outside your comfort zone

Now if you just go about your usual grind going to your job each day and living like you’ve done for the past 5-10 years (or maybe more) chances are that you are acting well within your zone of comfort. This is a nice place to be because then you are a success in everything you do, simply because you know it so well.

But if you’re trying to build a business (or run a marathon, jump from space or any other crazy ass venture) then you will be pushed outside your comfort zone again and again. And when you’re pushed outside this nice and fluffy place of comfort, you will experience obstacles (and pain ).

So the easiest thing to do is to quit what you’re doing and retract back to the comfort of what is known and safe. But the problem is that this won’t build you a business! This won’t push you into new ventures or realize your dream goals.

I see a lot of people wanting to build a business but gives up at the first sign of trouble. The problem here is that building a business will be nothing but trouble, so if you quit in the face of the first one or two, then you are very far from reaching your goals.

And you know what? This is perfectly ok! Not everybody wants to build and run a business. But if you’ve made the decision that this is something you would like to do, then you should stick your nose to the ground and kick ass all the way through the obstacles you meet.

Let the whining continue

So why am I telling you about quitting and kicking ass and all of that? Well because I’ve had some – you could call them technical issues – that has continued to annoy me for more than six months. And I’m an IT guy with more than 12 years of experience used to dealing with pretty intensive problems for my clients (the few months each year where I have clients).

Both membership sites were pretty much ready to launch in the spring this year (2012) and I had chosen the platform 1ShoppingCart to automate my business. The platform of course has a full shopping cart with support for recurring products that I need for membership sites, but also full affiliate management and autoresponder built in.

As I didn’t want to use PayPal to receive payments (and I didn’t since my customers need a paypal account if they want to pay me automatic each month) I had to go find a “real” payment gateway.

Since 1ShoppingCart is a hosted platform I was kind of locked into the ones they support. And this is actually quite a long list.

First problem was that since I’m based in Denmark I couldn’t go with a US based gateway. For some reason most US based companies don’t really know that there are quite a few potential customers in Europe.

But luckily 1SC also supported a few UK based payment gateways. So I went with one of them and started the application process. They would also make sure that I got a merchant account (something you also need to get paid).

And let me just say that the amount of paperwork involved in getting a payment gateway and merchant is a lot. They basically need to know that I’m a real person and my company is really a legal registered entity here in Denmark. So this took some time (close to a month as far as I remember).

Then when everything was in order the bank that should supply the merchant account stopped taking in new customers. I got a couple of lames excuses that I couldn’t do anything with.

After months of waiting I started working on a backup plan (another merchant account) but then suddenly the first bank started taking in new customers again. Then after four months I get the message that the merchant account had changed their policies and no longer would take recurring payments.

WTF?! That was pretty much the only thing that made me apply for the damn thing in the first place.

So 4-5 months wasted. I had already paid the payment gateway close to $1500 in signup fees and so on (and I just recently got that money back from them).

After all these months I was back to square one!

So what did I do? I launched with PayPal – I mean, what could I do? I might as well get some experiences with the whole thing while I licked my wounds and came up with a another plan.

Getting back up on the horse and kicking ass

So I started looking for other UK gateways and merchant accounts, but all of them took a crazy time in setting up and most of them had terms that I just didn’t want to apply with, like 1) recurring products can only run for a maximum of one year and 2) you cannot offer someone a “lifetime access” to this product.

Again… WTF. It seems like they are all just super conservative and don’t really know much about selling informational products online.

So what was the end result?!

I dumped 1ShoppingCart! It’s a nice (although a bit old product) but I simply found something that was better and let me use a Danish payment gateway. Of course this also means that I’ve wasted $100 per month on this product (and I prepaid for a full year).

I ended up with a product called Zenbilling. It is targeted at people and companies who want to sell informational products, workshops and seminars and does most of what 1SC does (although much nicer I might add).

It’s created by a Danish guy so it supports Danish payment gateways and merchant accounts. Recently he integrated with a product called SpreedlyCore (it’s a nerdy code thing so I won’t link to here as you most likely never have to hear about it again) so the product now integrates with over 40 different payment gateways all over the world.

Now I’m closer than ever to getting my gateway setup and all I’m currently waiting for is to get a dispensation from my merchant account that will allow me to process foreign VISA and Mastercards without running them through 3D Secure (an extra security measure that is just annoying most of the time).

So why this story

So why do I share this with you? Well I thought of telling the full story and naming the UK gateways and merchant accounts that I wasted so much time with. This would hopefully have learned you a thing or two, especially if you’re in Europe and needs a payment gateway.

And surely, this whole thing has certainly more than once made me swear out loudly (and a few time I think I actually did just that ). But then I got to think about what I’ve learned about this whole charade and I came up with how I face obstacles.

Obstacles are just the way the world is. I never even considered quitting. The goal was to be get that payment gateway and merchant account so I could process credit cards and not depend on PayPal, so if that was the goal then I just had to continue until I reached that goal.

Now I of course considered alternate strategies along the way, but I kept trying and kept struggling even though it in some periods drained all my energy completely.

But this is building a business! It’s filled with nasty obstacles you didn’t plan for and your job is to navigate in this clouded water.

So my advice is to… keep moving towards your goal. It might be longer that you planned, it might rain a whole lot more, you might get terrible annoyed but in the end you will reach it!

If you quit a long the way you definitely won’t….

The post A Business is You Overcoming Obstacles appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Now as you might know, we spend a few months in Thailand each year, and if you’ve ever been in Thailand you’ve probably also been exposed to the tailors that are located pretty much everywhere there’s a chance that a farang (=> western foreigner – most likely with money in his pocket) will stop by.

Since there’s quite a lot of competition the tailors are often rather agressive when it comes to literally pulling people into their stores.

I write literary because this was my first experience with a Thai tailor back in 2002 when I first visited the fantastic country. It was the first day on Phuket (an island with a lot of charter tourism) that I got exposed to their aggressive marketing techniques. Basically a guy jumps out in front of me and puts out his hand to greet me.

As the polite young man I am, I also put out my hand in order to shake his (apparently he was part of some Thai welcome committee that insisted on greeting everybody). You know that awkward moment when you feel that you really should stop shaking hands? Well it came and went and the guy was still holding on to my hand.

And while he was trying his best to show off all the different Danish words he’d learned, he was walking backwards and pulling me into a tailor shop.

And you might think that I shake myself loose, but again I’m a really polite young man and I thought about how he would react if I just yanked myself free from his grip.

I mean there are a shit load of Thai boxing places and since they’re mostly Buddhists and believe in reincarnation, I didn’t really like my chances in case he got mad at me for rejecting me (now of course I’m a little wiser… ).

So, long story short. I ended up getting out of his grip and didn’t end up spending a day in a tailor shop being sold to.

And I must admit that I even to this day often find Thai tailors a bit pushy, but with that said I’ve become increasingly interested in their business models. Also, they clearly know a thing or two about selling – so this blog post is all about all the ninjakickboxing selling tricks you can learn from Thai tailors.

Marketing

• Blind marketing – in front of many tailors you can see young boys typically in nice shirts (I guess they get a discount) who are only concerned with getting people into the store. Now the twist here is that they are not really knowledgable about the actual product, but is mostly trying to bond with you by speaking to in your native language (which they only get right half the time)..

  If they mention the product it will most likely just be something with “cheap prices for my best friend”. This leads my thoughts to the term “Blind Marketing” where it’s really about getting a lead without any mentioning of the product or service.

  Now while it might not sound ethical it can be a strategy you would use to optimize the leads you get. Just see how much buzz (and leads) The Segway got even before people knew what it was.

• Success are in the numbers – The tailors know that the success lies in the number of leads they get. I’m convinced that most tailors have an almost exact number of how many bewildered tourists that need to step through the door before they make a sale.

  So by focusing aggressively on the marketing the pump up that number. It’s super simple but cannot be repeated often enough. The more people who sees your offer the more sales you will have!.

• Cheap offers to get people in the door – you often see really cheap prices for suits and shirts hanging in the windows of the tailors (and on printed promotion being handed out). Actually this happens a lot with tailors who don’t have people out in front to pull people in.

  The problem is that once you’re in the store the price is most often much more. This is because that the price you saw only was if you selected some really crappy fabric and I’ve even heard bad excuses with the offer had expired and so on.

  So what can you learn? Well try to have some really killer offers (that are real I might add, in Denmark the tailor way of marketing would be illegal) to get people to get into the store and then try to do some up-selling (see next section)

Selling

• Up-/cross-selling – they are masters of draining you from your last cent. Once you thought that you should buy those three suits, they will ask you if you need two pair of trousers for each suit. They will also offer you a sweat deal on 3+ shirts. And what about your spouse? She should have some really cheap tailor made silk kimonos right? (don’t even get me started on silk kimonos, but it’s safe to assume that we got a couple of them at home that have never been used).

  If you are selling a product or service, how can you get even more money out of your customers? Once they have the credit card out, it’s really easy to get people to buy 10-20% more.

• Reciprocity – argh the secret jedi mind trick of reciprocity.

  If you don’t know the term, it’s basically that you give someone something of value for free. That individual feels an obligation to return the favor. So guess what. They are picking you up from your hotel or villa (or wherever you’re living) and bringing you to their store. They are also driving you home again if you prefer. And that’s not all. When you get inside they offer you cold drinks while you’re browsing through their model catalogs.

  Ahhhh damn them. How can you say “well thanks for the ride and free drinks – I don’t really want to buy anything from you”.
  We see this a lot online where people are offering stuff for free in order to get something in return at a later time. This is very powerful stuff!

Business Model

• Competition is good – I often talk with people who have this unique idea with absolutely now competition. WTF? Competition is good.

  It shows that there is a market and money are being spent! You can just copy the business model and focus on improving it 10%. Here you can really see this in effect. So much money is being spent in this market that it’s a good idea to open another tailor even if there are already three other in the same street.

  We used a tailor in Hua Hin (where we have our house) that owned three stores in the same small city. The stores were all in short walking distance of each other?!!!
  So don’t be afraid of competition. A crowded market just means that someone are making money.

• Minimize fixed costs – the tailors typically operate this way: There are some people owning the stores who buy all the different fabrics. The good thing about the fabric is that it can live a long time on the shelves – they don’t suddenly go “too old”.

  The store owners then hire freelance tailors to do the actual production. Actually the freelancers are typically specialized in just one garment type (such as trousers or well… silk kimonos). So while there is an initial investment to start up the store, the owner can really just employ some cheap labor that really only have to look smart in a suit to greet you in the store. The most expensive employee (or employees) is the tailor who are paid per item sold.

  This also gives the added bonus of getting people who are very specialized in what they do. Otherwise a small store owner would perhaps have just one tailor employed but by only working with freelancers he can get the ones who are best suited for the particular product (and in the end also get the best price as he can play different contractors up against each other)
  I use a lot of (outsourced) freelancers who are only paid per client project and this is one the strategies I use for keeping the fixed costs down.

Do you have any ninjaThaiboxing business tricks?

Have you been to Thailand? And if so what were you thoughts on the tailors?
Let me know you thoughts in the comments

The post Business Lessons Learned from Thai Tailors appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Well I want to discuss a model that I’ve taken from my book that’s almost ready to be published. The model is called The 4S Model and is a way that I evaluate business ideas and models.

By the way… the book is going to discuss several business models in details that is perfectly suited for lifestyle businesses, but you’ll probably hear more about this once the book hits Amazon.

You can use The 4S Model if you’re considering building a lifestyle business and want some kind of idea if this is a business that will let you focus on your overall lifestyle. So this model is not about finding the business models and ideas that will pay you the most, but the models and ideas that will give you most time and mobility.

In the book I will dive deeper into the model, so you can see this blog post as just “scratching the surface”

As the names says the model consists of 4 different parameters that I evaluate the business on, in order to use it you can either just go through each step and see how it fits, or you can go as far as to give your idea a rating from 1-10 on how well it’s aligned with the given parameter (the “S”).

So without further explanation… Here is the four S’s.

Simple setup

First up the lifestyle business should be simple to set up. We do not want a business model that requires us to spend years working on a product or service only to see it fail.

Typically you would want to build multiple streams of income instead of focusing on just one business idea. I know that everybody in the Valley will tell me that I’m totally off and you need to build a huge company using venture capital and then do an IPO after 3-5 years.

And sure that’s one way to go around it. But that’s just no lifestyle business and you will most likely have a couple of years where you don’t see anything else than the office. In the mean time you can find me in my flip flops and shorts, sipping a drink (with umbrella I might add) in our house in Thailand.

I have never spent more time than a few months on a product or service and some of the ones that I actually make money on have most of the time been setup in just a week or two.

So focus on building a small business or product and realize that you can always build another one afterwards to get multiple streams of income.

Small in size

Now something that should be simple to set up is most likely also small in size. In a lifestyle business you shouldn’t go out and hire a lot of employees and sticking them in an office making yourself the manager. I use often outsourcing in my businesses, but they are paid per project or per client so I don’t have any fixed costs or management overhead.

Small in size also means that you should not go out and “do everything”. Focus on selling just one product or one service. This will make your company smaller but also much meaner and focused. And when it comes to say outsourcing it’s also much easier to outsource when you just have one product or service.

In my businesses I do get across a few potential clients that I must refer to someone else. They are just not a good match for my business/product. But doesn’t this mean that I’m loosing out on some business? Sure it does, but I also saved a ton of hours that I would otherwise have to spend on the client. So niche down, focus on fewer products and just do that one thing really well.

And don’t think that you’ll make a million bucks, that’s not the goal. But if you built a business in two weeks that would pay you $2000 each month with little work, wouldn’t that be interesting? And couldn’t you just create another one after that?

And again, if you’re after VC funding you’re probably reading the wrong blog anyway .

Scaling built in

I don’t mind spending a little time setting something up when I know that it will be relatively “hands off” afterwards. Now don’t misunderstand me. I like the term passive income and have used it more in the past than I do now. Because very few businesses are truly 100% passive.

But the business should be able to run without you being the bottleneck. You should be able to party a few days on a remote island without internet only to find 10 new payments in your PayPal account when you get back.

The main factors I’ve used in the past to get this kind of leverage has been

1. Focus on describing the process – this will help you identify if there are any wholes or time killers in the delivery process
2. Use technology – more than once have I had small pieces of code created in order help me with something. For instance PayPal can not show VAT on their receipts when doing recurring payments, something that is required by law in Denmark. So I got a small WordPress plugin done that could send these receipts to my customers automatically. Hours and hours of boring administrative work fixed by paying a developer $200 I think it was
3. Use outsourcing – Could you hire a project manager to take over some client cases? In the past my best project manager I ever had was a guy from the Philipines. I paid him $65 per month for spending 10 hours per week project managing a few of my clients. Money very well spend.

Scaling and automation is something that I really enjoy putting into business models and ideas, because I can see the number of hours I need to work go down as I implement it.

Secondary to your life

This might be a little controversial because of course should you focus on your business in order to succeed with it, but still your business should be secondary to what you want to do in life. Don’t you want to be a good parent? Don’t you want to train for that Marathon? Don’t you want to see the Galápago Islands? Or write that book you’ve always wanted to write (hint hint… ).

Well, perhaps it’s just me who doesn’t think that work and business are all that there is to life.

Kicking Ass with Your Lifestyle Business Idea

So do you have an idea for a lifestyle business that you could build in a month? Let me know if in the comments if it’s something you want to share.

And if you evaluate a lifestyle business using other parameters I would love to know about it

The post Evaluating Lifestyle Business Ideas appeared first on Retire My Ass.

I usually hate all the hype over all the WSOs (Warrior Special Offer) that are being sold their as most of it is totally crap where there has gone more time into creating insane sales letters than the actual product.

Actually that’s one of the reasons why I really hate the expression “Internet Marketing“. It assumes that the most important thing is to market stuff to people instead of providing value to them. If I should choose an expression I like “online business” better. Here you indicate that you have a “real” business but have chosen to run it online.

Well, this post shouldn’t really turn into a giant rant of the internet marketing industry, but I feel that I have to mention it now that I’m also bringing The Warrior Forum up. And don’t get me wrong you can find a lot of really great tips in there as there are some really clever guys (and gals) in there, I’m just kind of fed up with all the products being launched there and their quality.

But back to the story. I fell for one of the sales letters that was pushing a WordPress plugin. It had to do with integrating my WordPress blog with Facebook with the end goal of giving me more Likes and attracting more people to my newsletter.

Most WSOs are really cheap in order to attract people to the offer, but then have tons of upsells once you purchased the original product.

So the product was something like $9.95 not too shabby for a WordPress plugin and at least something I could afford to throw a couple of hours after at this low price.

Of course there were a ton of upsell offers and one of them included some hosted SSL for I believe it was $29. Now for the non-techie, SSL is short for Secure Socket Layer and is the technology we use to secure pages online, you know when you log into your bank (or Facebook for that matter).

WTF? Do I need to set up some SSL for this to work? And then I got a little mad. I had purchased this plugin at $9.95 because I thought that it would help me only to discover that I had to buy something more to get this working. Notice that even though I have several websites and blogs and run businesses online, I’ve never had to use SSL before.

(The reason is that Facebook requires an SSL when you work with your own “Facebook App”.)

And then I got a little pissed (to put it mildly ). Instead of just paying the $29 once and have them host everything, I decided to buy my own SSL certificate and install it on my own hosting account.

So this cost me $5.95 per year for 5 years => 29.75 and then this required that I had a dedicated IP address (web server phone number) on my hosting account, this set me back another $30 (per year but I’m only paying for one year at a time).

So this 10 buck plugin ended up costing me close to $70. Hmmm… maybe not such a good deal now where I really just wanted to test the plugin, right?!

So everything was setup, I spent close to half a day getting all this setup simply because I got pissed over an upsell, but things should get much worse than this.

Now spending $70 is nothing with the cash-flow I got in my business, but I hate wasting time!

Then disaster struck…

As my hosting company added the dedicated IP (after I’d paid the $30) all my sites basically went away. Because now the domain names (like retiremyass.com) was pointing to the wrong IP address. And to make things worse, I only discovered this the next morning. So this blog and a couple of my product sites had been down for a lot of hours!

As I’m writing this the sites are all up in the US, but visitors from Europe are still having some issues loading the sites. Hopefully this will clear up within the next 12 hours.

So to sum up…

I expected to spend $9.95 and trying a WP plugin spending maybe 30 minutes to an hour and generally being in a good mood.

Well, I ended up spending $70 and more than half a day, 10+ sites down for more than 12 hours and generally feeling pissed enough to write this blog post.

So, let’s cool down a little.

Some wise and objective words: There is no failure, only feedback

But let’s summarize what have I learned from this?

1) I should take my own advice and don’t fall for sales letters on The Warrior Forum
2) I should be better to see the whole picture and plan better instead of only thinking of the next step. As someone working with IT I knew (if I had stopped up to think) that getting a new IP would mess up my sites.

So in short! “Rasmus, even when you’re pissed YOU PROBABLY WANT TO PLAN THAT!“

The post You Probably Want to Plan That… appeared first on Retire My Ass.

You could of course following my post about how to get a $5000 website for less than $50. But when you’re building a business, the technical setup behind the website is just one small thing that is not so complex that it used to be.

As technology evolves it also becomes much more accesible to use.

But this is just technology. There are other things you need to build a business – other skills.

“Well Rasmus…. “ – you might add – “can’t I just outsource the stuff that I don’t know how to do? Isn’t that what you’re preaching?”

I feel that there are a couple of criterias you should follow to determine if you should outsource:

1. Do you have the cashflow to afford to pay someone else?
2. Do you know how to do the task/project you’re outsourcing yourself?

Both of these criterias should be met before you should outsource. It doesn’t makes sense to pay someone else if you have no money, and it’s hard to instruct someone in a task you do not know how to do yourself.

That is why I recommend that you branch out a little, learn a few extra skills in order to build your lifestyle business.

And here they are…

Basic HTML skills

HTML stands for “Hyper Text Markup Language” and is basically what websites are made of. Normally you have some kind of CMS (Content Management System) that actually generates these HTML codes for you. For instance I usually recommend the CMS WordPress for most sites.

If you “right-click” on any website and click on “View Page Source” (or similar – the wording varies a little between different browsers) you will be presented by the HTML codes that makes up the page.

Now I’m not gonna tell you that you have to learn everything about HTML. You don’t have to be in a place where the page source makes any sense. But it’s a really good idea to have a few basic skills for when you’re editing your website. For instance even though I have a visual editor in WordPress to edit my posts (you know with basic formatting like bold, italic and so on) I actually prefer to use the HTML editor in WordPress where I can control the formatting a little more using html codes (or tags).

Just learning a few basics will help you do without a webmaster for a very long time. It’s annoying if every time you need to fix just small issues with a header or similar that you have to call on someone else.

HTML uses tags and basically that means that in order to affect the content you create some tags before (opening tags) and after the content (closing tags). So if I wanted to make something bold, I would wrap the “bold” tag around the text. The bold tag is “b”. In the example below the words “jumps over” would be bold in the page:

“The quick brown fox <b>jumps over</b> the lazy dog”

And this is basically it. Of course there are a ton of tags, but they can all be looked up. I recommend that you look at the HTML tutorials over at W3 Schools. Once you are done, perhaps take a little look into CSS that is the technique used for styling the HTML output (think sizes, colors, positions etc).

Remember! You do not need to be a HTML wiz kid. You do not need the skills to build your own websites from scratch, only enough to know what it’s all about and be able to make adjustments on your own website.

Newsletters and Autoreponders knowledge

The second thing I would recommend is getting a newsletter list up and running as quickly as possible. Email is still the best way to reach out to your desired audience and people who have opted in to your newsletter have thereby indicated that they are interested in you and your message.

If you are doing anything online – just if you have a simple website or a blog – I will ALWAYS recommend that you somehow think email strategy into this.

In newsletter systems such as AWeber and Mailchimp (have used both, actually you can read more about why I migrated from AWeber to Mailchimp here) there are basically to main ways of sending out emails to your list subscribers

1. Campaigns – just sending one big broadcast to all recipients of your list, and
2. Autoreponders – sending a scheduled list of emails to your recipients as they sign up

Now it’s easy to use campaigns to send emails when certain events happen or you simply have something to share with people, this is also what emulates sending a normal email the best (just sending the email to a lot of people at once), but one thing that is often overlooked is the autoresponder functionality.

When a new subscriber signs up they get a series of emails over time. For instance they would receive a welcome email as they signed up, then another one a day later with some additional content. Then three days later you could follow up with an inspirational story or whatever suits your industry/niche.

It can of course take time to come up with some good emails for this autoresponder series, something that I’m struggling with myself, but one strategy could be to add any campaigns you send out to your autoresponder series (if relevant). This way your autoresponder would become one mail longer each time you sent out a broadcast to the entire list and the autoresponder thereby over time become longer.

Copywriting

When doing business online it’s hard to sit infront of your potential customers and assure them that you are really a super nice guy who delivers on your promise. Most of the time you just have text and images to get people to buy or do some kind of desired action online.

Therefore I would advise you to learn a bit of basic copywriting skills. Now this is something I’m still trying to learn. I’ve read several books and tried to write a lot of stuff in English (this blog for instance and the book I’m currently writing), but pure copywriting where you want to sell something online is something that I’ve only done a few times and mainly for my Danish businesses. So it’s not like I’m gonna teach you something in this area.

I can just say that this is an absolutely vital skill if you want to sell anything online. You could of course outsource it, but getting a good copywriter usually costs a lot of money. I’ve actually had professional written copy on a niche site I wanted to try out at some point and after a year I have only sold one product from that site (ok – I could also have promoted it more, but I could see how the sales went with just a few visitors, so it needed really big scale in order to make it worth my time).

So I recommend that you learn some basic copywriting skills yourself.

I can recommend the following books that I’ve read (notice that I’m using affiliate links, meaning I get a buck or so if you end up buying one of the books):

• The Ultimate Sales Letter – a timeless classic. The book really focuses on direct sales, but is still super relevant online. Dan Kennedy has written a ton of books on the subject
• Web Copy That Sells – a bit more updated book targeted at online copy.

I like that both the books provide kind of a framework where you can just “throw in” your own content about your product. They are both really hands on.

Also if you ever buy something online, try to figure out what it was that made you click on that buy button, maybe you can use it in your own business.

If you can get people to buy from you using just words, you are golden!

I actually had a few more skills…

But they will have to wait. If you are planning on doing any kind of online business and a lifestyle business in particular, I would recommend that you look a little into these three skills.

What do you think? Any skills that you feel are equally important?

The post 3 Skills to Learn if You Want to Start a Lifestyle Business appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Everybody and their mother are blogging about making money blogging, writing ebooks on the subject and generally praising the shit out of “A-list” bloggers.

Heck I even fantasized a little about making a buck or two on this blog. With every new venture I throw myself into I like to see the business case, so I did a little research into blog traffic and earnings and was quite surprised about the picture I saw.

In this post I have analyzed a number of successful blogs (most of them 10,000+ monthly visitors per month) to see just how profitable they are typically bringing in. Luckily a lot of bloggers are now revealing their stats and I took as many blogs I could find that wrote both monthly earnings and visitors.

Again this is not a rant about the blog owners, they all provide super quality content – it’s only the whole “make money blogging” wave I feel needs some contrast.

Notice that I am only focusing on the money brought in directly to the site, not on other sites the blogger might own such as small niche sites. You can go here if you want my view on niche sites.

Why you shouldn’t blog for money

To start out with the conclusion…

The average visitor was worth $0.06 per month. That’s 6 cents!. The visitors numbers varied a great deal so it’s obvious that the more traffic you can bring to the blog, the more money you will make.

In average the bloggers wrote little over 16 posts per month with numbers between 2 and 45 (one blog with 59 posts in one month was removed due to very shorts posts in a special case). Many of the productive blogs had multiple authors.

Now if we assume that it at least will take you 3 hours to produce (researching, writing, editing, finding resources) a quality blog post (most of the time it probably takes longer, but humor me).

On top of this you typically also have to manage your blog (updates, roll on updates) and comments. Let’s just say that this amount to 5 hours per month even though a lot of these blogs have hundreds of comments on each post.

Again assuming that the you had 20,000 visitors per month pushing out just 10 quality posts would result in $1,200 per month which might not sound too shabby.

Now the $1,200 you make per month is probably not enough to avoid a day job. And then you suddenly need to find time for the 40+ hour work weeks and 30 hours per month writing posts on the blog.

So you probably have guessed my point already. You would have an hourly wage (at best) of:
$34.

So why isn’t this fantastic?

Sure if you are in a low cost country making $34 per hour might sound like a hell of a deal. But if you’re like me in Denmark, most of Europe or in the US this is probably not really that great.

Not to mention the biggst problem there is. You are trading your time for money. Just like in your J-O-B!

It’s not scaling, if you would suddenly stop blogging guess what this would do to your traffic? It would go down, quickly, and then your income follow.

Making a little extra on the side

One of the most prominent arguments I hear is that you can make “a little extra on the side”, meaning that the money you make online can be used for paying your car loan or that extra holiday with the family.

But the problem is that you are trading time for money and assumes that you have nothing else to do with your time! One thing I could think of was to BUILD A REAL ONLINE BUSINESS. One that would make you money even when you weren’t spending time on it.

If you want to make money online, build a business

No one ever got rich from working 9-5 PERIOD! If you think I’m an asshole making a statement like that, let me know in the comments.

So if you want to be making money, and if you want something that can bring in money in your sleep you need to build a business. There is no way around it.

Writing blog posts is NOT a business. You are just creating a new lousy paid job for yourself.

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool, but it’s not a business model in it self.

Where are the money coming from

The sites I looked at used different monitization strategies in order to make their money.

Affiliate marketing
Most of them used affiliate marketing (where they are paid if someone buys a product through their link)

Paid advertising
Specially the higher traffic blogs made money through paid advertising.

Qualified leads
It the personal finance space, it’s also very profitable to sell qualified leads to insurance companies and banks.

Google AdSense
A lot of the blogs also used AdSense which I really don’t understand. If you only make something like $50 per month is it really worth it? I mean… in the end all you are doing is alienating your readers and decreasing the value of your brand.

So what works when it comes to blogging

I hate giving advise on stuff I don’t see myself as an expert on, and blogging is not really something I see myself as an expert in. However I’ve been through all the blogs in the research material and there are a few best practices I can see is really working for them.

• Blogging in the personal finance space (I know that it’s a big niche but I was still a bit surprised to see the numbers) -> Choosing one of the big niches with a lot of money (Finance (personal finance/investing), Dating, Health)
• Strategic guest blogging (strategic partnerships), while I’m a likeable guy I’m really bad at reaching out to other bloggers (probably because I feel that Danish being my second language that I don’t have enough to offer). This works well for pumping up visitor numbers
• Doing income reports (people are suckers for that shit – I don’t but you can see a part of my income here)
• Multiple income streams and being everywhere (like the boss Pat Flynn)
• Creating own products/services and only using the blog as a marketing tool (but not making money on it self) TREATING YOUR BLOG LIKE A BUSINESS! (the blog gets you visitors to your business, but you still need something to sell to them) (up until now I’ve just blogged about my existing businesses and tips on how you can build one as well, but I haven’t really had a product to sell to you my dear visitor – although that’s gonna change soon I hope (had some difficultites you will hear about once I’m over the bump – because that’s what is it))

This is how much I spent

Well, I’m from Denmark so I might write a bit slower than one speaking English natively. But below I’ve tried estimating how much time I spend on this post.

1) Brainstorming blog outline 15 minutes
2) Research (own and outsourced) 1 hour (VA => 5+ hours)
3) Writing 2 hours
4) Editing (heck can’t you tell… I tend to forget the editing phase )
5) Resources (finding images and prepping the excel spreadsheet for download) let’s say 1 hour.

A total of 4+ hours hours.

And I’m not gonna make any from money it? No!
(while there are a few affiliate links here and there on my site, it’s bringing in so little that I’m almost embarrassed mentioning it).

Also notice that this blog post only is less than 1400 words, most of the blogs in my survey were doing much longer posts than that.

Data source

If you want to do some analyzing yourself, the sites that I have gotten my data from (and that I’m truly grateful publishing their numbers) the following sites:

http://www.moneyistheroot.com/2012/01/blog-goals-updates-2012-1/
http://www.bitdoze.com/make-money-online/bitdoze-com-stats-income-report-june-2012/
http://worksavelive.com/2012/07/blog-income-and-site-statistics-june-2012/
http://www.wpkube.com/wp-kube-traffic-stats-income-report-march-2012/
http://www.kreativtheme.com/kreativtheme-stats-income-report-april-2012
http://www.thewphowtoblog.com/income-report-and-traffic-for-my-blogs-march-2012/
http://slashmarks.com/slashmarks-com-blog-traffic-income-report-february-2012/
http://www.magnet4marketing.net/2012/07/11/traffic-and-income-report-for-june-2012/
http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/make-money-income-report-march-2012/
http://www.escapenormal.com/2012/07/01/blog-stats-income-for-march-june-2012/
http://www.dragonblogger.com/dragonbloggercom-traffic-earnings-report-june-2012/
http://wplift.com/wplift-stats-income-report-june-2012
http://www.mydevelopmentstory.com/category/regular-features/traffic-and-income-report/
http://www.dragonblogger.com/april-2012-earnings-traffic-report/
http://pinchofyum.com/april-income-report-making-money-from-a-food-blog

Disclaimer:
I did remove to blogs from the data set that was making a ton of money in the personal finance space. I felt that they obscured the data a little and pulled it away from my point.
So the point of this is that if you want to make money blogging you could also blog about financial subjects.

Got an opinion? Am I right/wrong? Let me know in the comments

The post You Can’t Make Money Blogging appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Everything will be laid out! You will learn to:

• How I got the idea from the boring dark and cold winter in Denmark
• Specify your app by creating a prototype. This will help you immensely in the communication with the programmer. You can even download the prototype I did
• How I found the outsourcing company that programmed my app and how you can find someone to help you. I will show you exactly what I did.
• How I managed the development process, you will even be able to download all the communication that I’ve had with my programmer.
• How to avoid some of the mistakes I did

Background

I need to start out by saying that I’ve had this idea for an iPhone game a couple of years now. I think it’s a fantastic idea for a game that uses the same gameplay as an old classic game that I haven’t seen (yet) in the app store.

The issue with this game and the reason why I haven’t created it yet is because it’s quite costly. I’m probably looking at an investment of $20,000. And while I can afford this kind of investment in my company I stil need this to make me some money in order to justify this kind of investment. So my main concern with starting this project has really been that I have absolutely no knowledge of the app market, and frankly I don’t like going into a totally new market that I don’t have any previous knowledge about.

So therefore I hacked the plan to create a small iPhone app to get some experience in the whole thing.

And because the iPhone app I just created is not mission critical for me and because it is quite a small app I thought I would share my experience here on the blog. Complete with all the nitty gritty details. If you feel like I’ve left something out and you want to know more about something in the process, please let me know in the comments and I’ll expand on the post.

Also, if this post help you in any way, I would love if you would like it on Facebook or share it on any other social network you’re on.

Introducing my app

So my app is Life Mood and it’s an app that enables you to track your mood. Over time you will be able to get statistics on how your overall mood is. It will also give you small uplifting tips and quotes if it detects that you might be down for a longer period.

It’s a rather simple app and there are certainly things that turned out a bit different than originally planned. But more on this later

Getting the idea

Basically the winters here in Denmark is rather dark and cold, which is also why we tend to spend them in Thailand.

But I see a lot of people feeling a bit down in this period where the sun is only out for a few hours each day (and people tend to be working in these hours, making it dark when they go to work and dark when they leave it again).

So the idea was to create an app where people could register their mood and make sure that it wasn’t something that spanned over a longer period. So while this is certainly no cure for stress or depression I think that it is easier to work with stuff that you register somewhere. So the app should show statistics so people could follow up on their mood.

And since there isn’t really long from idea to implementation, I started on creating a prototype after chewing on the idea for a couple of days.

While I don’t expect to actually make much money on the app, I can say that it’s a free app with an in-app purchase option of removing the annoying ads (more on this later).

Improving the app

You should notice there are still things in the app that I’m not totally satisfied with, but it’s been a long process as you will see later and I also wanted this thing released at some point. So I chose to launch this also some of the things I wanted improved I could really have the programmer do without paying them more. If I haven’t specified something well enough it’s hard to hold the programmer responsible.

So if you decide to try to download and try the app (hey it’s free) you should note that I really would like to change some stuff, like:

• Improve the statistics – some of the graphs that shows data over a longer period should really display a month on each page, and currently it just shows X entries (I forget how many). This makes it a bit difficult to compare data between months. The developer spend a lot of time on this but because they couldn’t easily do it I told them that the way they had done it was ok. This was something that wasn’t fully specified in the prototype so I didn’t want the programmer to suffer from this.
• Loose the tags or use them for something meaningful. Currently the tags aren’t really used. The plan was to expand the use in version 2 of the app. Like you could tag what people, events, situations etc that drained your energy. This way you could identify your mother in law as the reason of your beginning depression over time. The problem is that the tags aren’t really used in the current version why they are mainly cluttering up the interface.
• Spend more time on a better design – Now I know that I’m gonna insult like a billion people here, but you can’t really get good design in India. I know I know, design is subjective and that’s perhaps the real point here. The design we like here in Scandinavia is different from the design they prefer in India. I got a couple of different color alternatives, and I just went with this light blueish thing.

Creating a visual prototype

Creating a visual specification of what you want created is perfectly suited for

1. Making sure that you’ve been into all the corners of the app – and making sure that the ideas that you have in your head actually will work once they come to life
2. Have a specification that is easy for a programmer to use – as you are probably going to outsource the programming of the app it’s a great force to have your app represented visually by a prototype. It’s much easier to convey your thoughts and ideas with a visual mock up than with a written specification.

Now since I’ve been many years in the IT industry I’ve used a number of different prototyping tools. Problem is most of them are way to advanced for normal use. It will simply take forever to get even simple prototypes done. While other tools (a lot of them web based) are too simple or require a monthly fee which might be a little much to do if you’re just planning on using it once or twice.

So I knew that even though it was (is) a simple app I wanted to create a visual prototype that would make it easy for me to explain the idea to the programmer.

Now I decided to look for prototyping tools (yet again) to see if something new had come on to the market since the last time I searched, and there sure was.

Say hello to Keynotopia.

It’s basically a template for Keynote (mac) or Powerpoint (pc) and this means that you can use the simplicity of your presentation software to create iPhone/iPad and Android apps prototypes quickly.

I cannot endorse this product enough. You can use all the tools you normally use and quickly get something to show for. I spent an evening doing the main part of the prototype and added a few more things over the next couple of days.

You can view and download the full prototype that I did here:

Download the Prototype

Finding a programmer

Now that I had the idea and prototype for my new app it was time for getting someone to actually create it.

Whenever I need to find a programmer I usually go to Elance (and sometimes Odesk).

This is the original job that I created (also referenced the prototype):

I need an iphone application developed that is basically a diary type application. Means that it should be possible to log text entries (with a little more meta data)

One of the meta data of the entry are tags. So besides being able to tag the entry itself, it should also be possible to manage the created tags (delete them and so on). If a tag does not exist when the entry is created, the tag is also created at the same time (tag field should of course feature autocomplete for known tags).

Besides the entry registration, there should also be three different kind of statistics shown based on some of the meta data (on bar chart, one line chart and one pie chart).

Based on the entries, the application should sometimes provide some feedback. The feedback is randomized from a large list of “good advice” that we should be able to change myself (either in an xml file or in some kind of easy to edit database format). The entire list of advide entries will not be provided during development. The advice should come up based on a simple algorithm.

One other small thing. The entire application should be (optionally) locked by a password (or 4 digits – or android like lock screen with connect the dots).

THe application should include adspace on one screen! This can be removed by making an “in app purchase”.

If you bid on the project we can send you a simple clickable prototype of the functionality.

I want a FIXED PRICE on this first version of the application based on this description and the prototype. I’m aware that I will most likely have more versions developed, so we see the first version as the “iteration” or phase.

(besides the statistics and the in app purchase it looks a lot like the app Simple Note in complexity)

I received a total of 23 bids for the project, most of them from India.

Lowest bid was: $1,315.07 (India)
Highest bid was: $5,995.00 (US)

Based on their previous feedback and a couple of messages on Elance I chose the provider:
Tvishi Infotech Pvt Ltd (They have disabled their profile, not sure if this is temporary or permanent – and hopefully nothing to do with my project that was delivered ).
Their bid was: $1,600

Managing the process

Because I had a fairly complete prototype there was mainly minor questions, however there was still a total of 93 messages flowing back and forward. You can even see the different logo drafts that they created.

Some of my communication with the developer

Download the ALL communication (one big image of the communication)

Now something did go a little wrong here. I selected the provider the 10′th of January and the app was delivered here in the beginning of August. So a development time of more than half a year. It’s a small app and shouldn’t have taken more than 1-2 months (including everything). While I’ve been fairly quick to answer their questions, I’m also to blame here. The app has been done for a few months and we’ve more or less been waiting for:

1. me to be approved into the Apple Developer Program
2. the app being approved in the Apple App Store

If I had actually applied for the developer program when I started the development I would have been ready when the app was . Lesson learned.

As with all outsourcing projects it has to be win-win. You shouldn’t make them pay for your mistakes so don’t require more than specified by them.
If they’re not happy with the project, in the end neither will you be.

Monetization

Now I’m sure that this app won’t be a goldmine, while I still like the idea, it’s missing some polishing in order to make it stand out.

As I started out my saying I’ve added ads to the app in order to make a little money. Also the user can make an in app purchase in order to remove the ads ($0.99).

I ended up using AdMob for ad provider (I also considered Apple’s own iAd program) and just to end this post with some nice graphics, you can see below that I’ve almost made $1 and aprox. 50 downloads in the first few days (oh yeah….. well… sort of…)

UPDATE: I actually also made one sale ($0.99 to remove the ads) on the second day, just didn’t see it because that was on a separat tab

Again if you’re interested in testing the thing out, it’s free as in free beer.

You can download it here.

And if you like the post, please help me by sharing it on Facebook/Twitter or where ever you hang out – thanks

The post How To Create Your First iPhone App appeared first on Retire My Ass.

However the title is misleading in one place. In this post I’m not gonna focus on organized crime as a whole, but rather on Frank Lucas who had a drug empire back in the sixties.

Now I don’t do or condone drugs in any form. However I still think that we can learn a few things from Frank.

I got inspired to read more about Frank Lucas after watching the movie American Gangster by Ridley Scott staring Denzel Washington in the leading role.

Frank Lucas the short story

So the ultra short story is that Frank moved to Harlem in 1946 as a boy. He became the right hand man of the gangster Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson and went to take over the market as Bumpy died.

Frank started importing the drugs directly from Thailand using/bribing army personal to smuggle it out during the Vietnam war.

This enabled him to short cut all the middle men and deliver a high quality product at fraction of the cost.

He eventually got arrested by the authorities and ended up ratting out pretty much everyone turning his 70 years sentence into just 15 years.

Further reading? You can read up on Frank’s life here

Learning points from Frank

So what can we learn from Frank? Well quite a lot I think. If we try to ignore the fact that he dealed drugs and try to focus on the business side of things, I think that there’re a few things that we can take with us when creating our lifestyle businesses.

Backtracking

Frank used something that he called backtracking.

Frank Lucas wanted to be rich—what he called “Donald Trump rich.” He not only believed he could make it big in the drug world, he understood how to do it. He started with the planning. He called it “backtracking.” He would hole himself up in a hotel room, away from any distractions, for a month or two at a time. He would look back on all his past experiences and what he’d learned. Then he’d look forward to the future including every possible detail and the detail of the details, making sure he mentally walked through every step of the operation.

Source: http://www.biography.com/people/frank-lucas-253710?page=2

See just how valuable this is? The street thug is strategically working with analyzing his past decisions to plan future ones. And he even gave it a title making it easier for him to let other people know what he was doing.

I think most people could spend some time reflecting over the past to dominate the future.

In Neuro-linguistic Programming we’re also working with something called Strategy Elicitation where we define the actual strategy in a given situation. Read more about this in the link above. Although this does not involve spending months in a retreat it is just to show that modern best practices are using techniques like Frank did.

Expectation of Invincibility

Another super cool term Frank invented.

Frank Lucas had what is called an “expectation of invincibility.” He really thought nothing of getting on a plane by himself and traveling half way around the world to Thailand. He knew little about the country, and didn’t speak the language. Yet, he was engaging in one of the most deadly occupations imaginable—international drug trafficking.

Source: http://www.biography.com/people/frank-lucas-253710?page=2

Basically Frank didn’t think too much over the consequences of his actions. He wanted something and he tool bold action. While this can also border to recklessness I feel that most people today act too much out of fear of the future.

If we all invincible how would our actions change? If we weren’t afraid to lose our home wouldn’t it be easier to start your own business?

Maybe it was because of who he were. A young colored man without much money at the time. He simply didn’t have too much to lose. But we see this pattern all through his career. The moment that there is a problem with the shipments from Thailand, he puts himself on a plane and go out there. Jungle or no jungle.

Branding

In a time where the term branding was very young here was a drug dealer with an education on the streets who saw the gain in creating a strong brand for his product.

His brand was “Blue Magic” and people knew that it was only very pure quality goods. There is actually a scene in the movie where Frank talks with a guy who’s “cutting” the product to earn more (mixing it with a cheaper substance). And let’s just say that Frank is not that happy.

He understood the importance of a strong brand. It is also because of branding issues that I recently changed my blog to a new domain.

Go directly to the manufacturer to get the best price

Even if it means you need to get your ass on a plane and hustle it yourself
Frank went to Thailand himself to find the manufacturers of his product. In the end it resulted in him taking most of the market because he could supply a better product at a lower price.

If you know the balla guys Dan & Ian of the Lifestyle Business Podcast you know that they advocates hustling as well and Ian did travel to Shenzhen (China) for 30 days to find the provider of a certain product they wanted to import to the US.

So there you have it. You can still learn from people you might not look up to!

The post Frank Lucas – What Business Owners Can Learn From a Drug Dealer appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Most of my career has been in the IT business. In my last 9-5 job I worked as a Microsoft Solution Architect for a Swedish company in Denmark. The company later got bought by the UK giant Logica and is now known in Denmark by that name as well.

When I found out that I wanted to change my life and work less, I of course started out by leveraging my knowledge by using the skills I knew. To begin with this still meant working all year long as an IT consultant but this time as a founding partner in a small consultancy company.

So my salary went up but I still had to work on other people’s projects all year long in the 9-5 grind.

In the end I knew I wanted a better control over my time and mobility and in 2010 I sold my shares and left the company I helped start.

Again I knew that I could use my skills but this time I had no clients of my own and a very small network to use. So I started freelancing and in this post I will tell you all about how to make good money as a freelance IT consultant.

Now I know that most readers of my blog are probably not in the IT space but some (if not most) of these tips can also be used in the case that you want to start freelancing in other markets.

This could be that you wanted to start as a freelance CPA, a freelance journalist or something completely different.

I don’t usually disclose my earnings or income reports like some other people in the blogging world, but in this post I will make an exception.

My “never revealed before” income report

Now I don’t really like the idea of selling my hours and it has certainly been my focus to build up businesses that would not depend on me trading my time for money. But it can still be a lucrative business and at least for me it has served as low risk income – remember that I have a girlfriend, two kids and two homes (one in Denmark and the other in Hua Hin, Thailand). So having a steady paycheck for at least my expenses has been valuable for me as I ventured into building my lifestyle businesses.

So I normally don’t advocate that you sell your time, but it can certainly be a great step on the road to the life you want for yourself and those around you.

Last year I worked six months as a consultant, this year the plan is to work just 3-4 months. Each month I work as a consultant I typically bring in $20,000 (rough numbers as I’m paid in Danish “Kroner”)

I could probably bring in even more if I spent more time looking for the right types of jobs, but I’m a little lazy and don’t want to spend too much time in the “sales phase” as I will also discuss later on.

Why someone would pay you an insane amount of money

Now if you are already a business owner you already know this. But if you’re currently in an 9-5 job you might wonder why someone would pay $20,000 for a single developer with no management responsibility at all.

I got just one word for you, well actually it’s two words: Business case

If the stuff I’m creating for my client will help them save $2,000,000 over two years, paying me $60,000 for three months is a no brainer.

This is really true about how most businesses spend money. If you got knowledge about any market or segment you will most likely be able to identify these kinds of business cases. If a business owner can see that they can double their money (or save them) then it’s an easy choice to simply buy whatever you’re selling at whatever price you’re asking.

But as you will see later I don’t actually do these kinds of client/business case analysis, I get someone else to do all the hard selling while I’m relaxing by the pool in Thailand.

The IT consultant winning mindset

Now being a freelance consultant you’re really just leveraging your knowledge for your own gain. You might be a highly knowledgeable person in your area and you should of course still use this. But you might need some changes in your mindset coming from the typical 9-5 “salary man”.

Actually I still see a lot of other freelance IT consultants fall in these traps.

On a project I was on, I indirectly managed to get the other freelance consultant on the project fired simply because his mindset was totally off (that and I performed at least double as good as he did). He was out after the first month.

Don’t be a programmer, be a consultant

Now if you’re not in the IT industry the headline might not make much sense to you. But you could substitute the word “programmer” with “geek in my industry”.

Now I’m going to be a total generalist now and say that a lot of people in my industry are programmers who are detailed oriented and focus on creating the 100% best technical solution each time. See more about my thoughts on different personality profiles here.

It is of course a good thing to want to create the best technical solution each time; the issue is that the software application you’re developing is most likely being created to solve some kind of business problem. This means that the application is existing in a business environment with constraints like money, time, deadlines, legacy systems, politics etc.

I have tons of stories of well meaning developers who spend way too much time on something that is really not needed from the business perspective. Again remember that this is about the business case not who can create the most stunning piece of art, ahem… software design (or got the biggest dick – pardon my language…;)).

So does that mean that I advocate creating crappy products, NO – actually I’m really good at my trade and typically deliver better technical solutions than what I see in the industry, it just means that you need be able to balance all these different stakeholders and interest groups.

While working for a big financial institution here in Denmark I saw one guy spend close to three months on a task that wasn’t really needed from the business side of things. Actually he was just creating “a framework” in order to solve the actual task that was assigned to him. Shortly after I left the project (I tend to keep my projects short because I don’t want to work all year) the client found out about this and asked the company in charge to replace him.

Be better

If you come out on a project and are paid considerable more than your employed piers then you need to be able to perform. If you are not able to perform better than most of your piers then you should really consider if this is for you.

Is it a lot of hard work to become really good? Of course it is. But luckily you have a few things going for you.

When you make more money you can also set aside more money to training and events and generally invest in yourself.

You also have the upper hand over “normal employees” that you don’t have any old projects you need to maintain and don’t have to spend a lot of time going to tons of meetings. Basically you have a lot more time to be productive that the regular employee, so use it well.

And this brings me to…

Don’t act like you work there

You don’t take long lunches and hang out for hours by the coffee machine. You are paid by the hour so don’t give the client the impression that you are not doing anything for your salary.

With one client the other developers (employees) usually went down to shoot a little table tennis or pool after (a rather long) lunch. They would often invite me as well. But in the 3 months I was there I didn’t go with them once. So even though they invited me, it would still be a little hard to explain to the people paying for my time.

It all comes down to that you need to act like a professional.

You are not their buddy so you don’t sit and whine about your relationship. You don’t brag about the new car you just bought (for their money). You don’t tell inappropriate jokes even though everyone around you does.

After hours socializing? Of course you should attend but remember still behave like a professional. Don’t run around drunk and but naked. I usually tend to be “good company” but prefer to be the one making the least noise (and I’m not usually like that at all ).

You are a professional hired to come in and solve a job. So don’t act like you work there!

Specialize and get more high paying jobs

This is a big one. A lot of people think that they need to know all kinds of technologies and products in order to be a good consultant. The opposite is actually true. The more you specialize in a given product the easier it will be for you to get jobs and the more you will get paid.

The thing is that when you are a freelancer you are mostly sold on your resume. And if a client has three resumes in front of him and he needs to hire a person, then he will choose the person with most experience in just the field that relates to the job/project.

Most of the times it’s the opposite case when it comes to being an employee. Here it’s good to know a little about everything so you can jump from chair to chair and solve every problem thrown at you.

So specialize, niche down. You should of course specialize in something that there is actually a market for, but when you are working with the right technologies there is almost no limit to how much you should specialize.

Don’t just be a .net developer

Now this is going to be a little technical and I apologize in advance. I know the programming language C# and as a C# programmer you are typically working with something called the Microsoft .NET Framework. Since this is Microsoft stuff, there are a lot of people around the world doing the exact same thing.

There are thousands and thousands of developers working with C# and the .NET Framework. So why would I want to compete with all of them?

There are being spent billions on Microsoft technologies and licenses by big corporations each year so I don’t need to be a “broad know all”-developer. I can niche down.

So my main area of expertise is the Microsoft SharePoint family products. Actually I could niche down even further and make more money, but I really don’t want to invest any more learning time on something I’m cutting back on. But I have people in my network who are ONLY working with the search engine in SharePoint or just working with deploying (moving an application to the production environment) SharePoint applications. Now that’s specializing and they are both being paid more than I am.

This is all very Microsoft centric, but it’s what I know. However it’s the same on other platforms like JAVA or SAP.

Enough with all this technical mumbo jumbo.

Go after the money

Now a lot of people work with open source tools which is great. I also use free open source stuff like WordPress for this blog and pretty much any other site I produce, but when it comes to working as a freelancer you need to go after the money.

And let’s face it, most money are still being put into the big software supplier’s, like Microsoft, pockets.

There is a saying in the IT world. “No one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft”. Also if a big company has a “Microsoft strategy” they are simply not going to implement some free open source PHP (PHP is another technology) project even though it’s better from a technical standpoint (not saying they are, it depends on the project). Remember the business case argument again? If the entire operations organization is used to handling Microsoft servers (perhaps thousands of them) they are not suddenly going to be installing some weird other kind of server that they have no experiences with.

So specialize in the technology/ecosystem where the money is.

I usually also advice to specialize in a product over a technology. A technology is a very broad thing while a product is more narrowed. It will have new versions that needs to be upgraded to and so on.

Industries that will rock you

Now I’ve mentioned that I usually work with Microsoft SharePoint, but there are other great industries/products to get into. such as…

• Microsoft’s Business Intelligence line of products
• SAP (I don’t know much about this, but there are tons of opportunities to specialize here)
• JAVA is used in a lot of enterprise size organizations and there are a ton of opportunities of specialization.

But again my background is with Microsoft technologies and though I often curse over SharePoint, it’s still a great paying ecosystem.

Why agencies totally rock

Remember me saying that I didn’t want to do the selling my self? Getting jobs is not a trivial task and since I only have one or max two clients per year it would be a rather big task to network and build up a big client database. Even if I managed to get relations to 10 potential clients I could only work a couple of months for them every 5 years.

This is not the way most companies hire help.

Your very own selling machines

No I use regular selling machines that have all the contacts, that eat lunch with potential clients, that meet people on the golf course etc.

Now agencies take a cut out of your salary to help you find a job, typically from 15-25% of the agreed price. Most of them are pretty transparent about their price structure and will happily tell you how much the client is being charged and how much your cut is.

Most of the time you can even bargain their percentage a little.

Some people don’t like some other party taking a cut of “their earnings”. I pay this with a smile. They struggle to find me jobs and I can spend my time between clients the way I like.

Also remember that these agencies typically have framework contracts with all the clients. Big companies will almost never hire in just one freelancer without an agency. They don’t want to go through all the hassle of agreeing on an individual contract with yet another company. Instead they simply write these framework contracts with the consultancy agencies that can then deliver any number of consultants (freelance or not) under that contract.

So I pay the percentage with pleasure and I always find my jobs through agencies.

Do what you do best

When leaving the selling up to the agencies you can also focus on what you do best. You don’t have to be that outgoing, lead seeking, cold calling super sales executive. You can focus on being you, an expert consultant in some specialized niche.

You can do what you do best and focus on becoming better instead of trying to do tasks that don’t really resonate with who you are.

Focus on projects

Now a lot of freelancers that have their own clients usually work a few hours here and a few hours there. Every time the client has a little problem – typically after delivery of the main project – the freelancer will come in to help. This is of course “good customer care” but it’s also just a few hours here and a few hours there. And it’s hard to bill all hours during the day like this jumping from one client to another.

The good thing about the agencies is that they will book you for a projects spanning X months full time. Once the contract is over you don’t have a further responsibility for that client. The agency is the one having the responsibility to deliver a new consultant or hire you again.

So you can bill all your time for those months (for me that is typically 7.5 hour per day).

I don’t have any wasted time jumping between clients and I don’t have any responsibility to the client once the contract is over. You can bill all your hours. That alone is worth going through an agency.

But what about places like elance and odesk?

You might think that you can find work through elance and odesk, and as a freelancer you probably will be able to do just that. But remember that when you are on one of these sites you are also being compared to people in lower cost countries.

I’ve never worked through one of these sites (although I find a lot of people there for my own projects). The problem with the sites is that there is a focus on price and people almost expect bids from freelancers in lower cost countries.

Also projects on here tend to be smaller in size and I generally tend to be “project based” with you being responsible for the success.

So I recommend that you specialize and then find jobs in your own country. Of course if you are already based in a low cost country then it can be a good idea to go on elance or odesk but that’s an entire different story and not one I have the most experience with.

Money but no responsibility

You of course need to do a good job, but as I briefly mentioned, the client’s contract is with the agency and therefore you don’t have much responsibility. The types of projects I get out on typically involve a lot of developers, so I can just focus on doing my job and sending invoices.

In this day and age with a lot of complex IT systems going over time and over budget, I can relax because it’s not me having the overall project responsibility (as it would be if I had the client directly). Of course if I were in some kind of project manager role I would have more responsibility even as a freelancer, but contractually the responsibility would still be with the agency that hired you.

When all this is said I of course still recommend that you have some sort of consultancy insurance policy to cover your ass, just in case.

So is this for you?

This is a post I’ve been a little hesitant to write on this blog because I know that most of my audience is not potential freelance developers, on the other hand I do feel that going the freelance route is a great way to remove yourself from the 9-5 desk job and instantly get more control over your life.

So I would love to hear from you in the comments if this is relevant to you or not. Or any other input for that matter.

And thank you for reading through the entire post, I think it’s one of the longest I’ve ever written on this blog .

The post The Cash Sucking IT Consultant appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Showering and a Revelation

Today I kind of got a small revelation when I was drying myself up in a towel following my obligatory after run shower (I run in the mornings and yes… I sweat a lot… Yeah I know, too much information).

As I was thinking about the day and what things I wanted to do and follow up on, it suddenly hit me that I was running the towel on complete autopilot. And this was including quite different positions such as me holding the towel under my chin folding it and moving on to my legs.

I froze up a bit realizing that I had just interrupted something that was usually 100% automated simply by being aware of the fact that I was doing it. As I stood there I was kind of amazed by the fact that my body apparently was executing a lot of different steps without need for my brain to give conscious instructions.

Now I write “without conscious instructions” because I guess that somehow the brain needs to tell the arms and rest of the body what to do, but these instructions weren’t popping up in my conscious mind and I could use whatever of my brain’s processing power I had at that moment on something different.

Now there are several things that our mind and body have kind of perfected to an automated routine that really do not involve our brains using valuable resources, so this might not surprise you too much.

You probably don’t think much about brushing your teethes or putting shampoo in your hair and stuff like that.

But have you thought about using this proactively? This was the question that really hit me as I froze up wrapped in my towel.

Back to the revelation… I thought what if I could simply train my brain to always make the best decisions when it comes to attracting a given financial goal. You know, let my brain make money on my behalf.

It may sound farfetched but what if I could make it as intuitively to make money as it is for me to use a towel. Meaning that making money without really making any conscious decisions, but simply letting the actions flow.

Neuro-linguistic Programming

Now perhaps I’m a little biased towards thinking like this. I’m currently pursuing a degree called NLP Practitioner that’s really about optimizing communication both external but also internally using different tools that have been modelled after people who were successful in their given topic of expertise. Educating myself is one thing I enjoy when not having to work all the time.

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created in the 1970s. The title refers to a stated connection between the neurological processes (“neuro”), language (“linguistic”), and behavioral patterns that have been learned through experience (“programming”) and can be organized to achieve specific goals in life.

Source: Wikipedia

So I find the whole notion of modeling successful people quite interesting.

Comeback Kids

How can it be that millionaires who suddenly find themselves bankrupt have made their old fortune (and more to) back just a couple of years after their bankruptcy?

I mean most have probably heard the story about Donald Trump who lost everything but is currently worth billions. But also people like George Foreman, Francis Ford Coppola and Stan Lee have all experienced a personal bankruptcy.

So what is it that makes people like this just bounce back and then generate a fortune out of thin air?

I believe it’s their mindset. They simply think differently about money than the average Joe. Now this is nothing new. There are tons of books on getting the right money mindset, a few of the books that I’ve read springs to mind.

• Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
• Think and Grow Rich
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad

But one thing is knowing the right mindset, another thing is actually using the strategies described in the books.

A totally third thing – and this is what I would like to focus on – is to have this incorporated so deeply in your mind that you don’t even think actively about the choices you make.

Consumers vs. Producers – The Epic Battle

As I started thinking about this, it hit me that I already have some of the mindset integrated.

One thing that I’m often annoyed about is buying “stuff”, and we’ve just moved to a new house half a year ago so we’ve had to buy a lot of “stuff” lately.

In the beginning I couldn’t really put my finger on what it was that annoyed me about this, but after spending some time reflecting over it, I now know that it’s because it puts me into the “consumer mindset”!

Every time I buy a gallon of milk or a new dining table, I’m a consumer – It’ might sound silly but I don’t like that one bit.

SILLY SIDETRACK: Well we actually buy milk by the liter here in Denmark, but I didn’t want to confuse all my US readers, so I used gallon in my example

Because guess what – when you’re in the consumer mindset you are not attracting money, instead someone else is earning your money!

The big problem with this is that most people go around as consumers most of the time when they are not at work, and here’s the kicker, when they are at work and in the “creator of value” (or producer) role they are in fact generating value for someone else (their employer).

I really prefer it when I know that I’m creating or producing something of value.

Cultivating the Autopilot

So does one go around cultivating this autopilot so you can make money as easily as wiping your ass?

Well I don’t have the answer, but I can give you the model that I’m currently pursuing.

1) Knowing the Optimal Actions

This includes reading a lot of books, blogs etc. Of course only focus on the stuff that resonates with you. It’s really difficult to implement something that you have an internal resistance against.

Whenever you need to make a decision – and this occurs thousands of times each day – you should deep down know the most beneficial answer.

I don’t think that there is ever a 100% right answer. Life and business are simply to complex for this. However I do truly believe that there are some actions that will propel you more quickly towards a goal and some other actions that will make you go backwards.

The idea here is to have a good reference over possible actions. Once you have a reference of say how Henry Ford would act in a certain situation, they you have more choices and something to chose from. And this brings us to…

2) Apply Strategy through Awareness

Since it is not yet a part of your instinct to act according to the most beneficial outcome, you need to work strategically with it.

The first thing to do, and something you work a lot with in NLP is awareness. We stop the auto pilot and become aware of the situation and reflect over the most optimal way of acting. With thousands of decisions each day, the brain is used to running most decisions in the background on autopilot.

This means that you need to take back the power and actively reflect over any decision that is in someway connected to the change you want to make. In this case a change towards a financial goal.

In NLP we have a model called Strategy Elicitation to identify these auto pilot actions and define the strategy behind them. So try to work strategically with your actions instead of let the brain take over and run everything for you.

If you want to know more about Strategy Elicitation you can google it as it is probably a little out of scope of this post.

3) Appreciate the Process

No one has ever done a hole in one without any training. Accept that this is a process and there is no 100% goal you need to reach. Every time you actively train this, you get better and improve your chance of success.

Will you Automate your Money Mindset?

So this is something that I’m currently working on integrating in my life – and I hope that there was something in this that you could use as well.

Do you think it’s possible use and train your mind like this and is it something you could see yourself working on?

The post The Autopilot Money Mindset appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Now this is of course a topic that resonates a lot with me these days after my second child (Oliver) was born in January. So how do you balance the business sides of things with the family side of things.

Now I think the the whole Dad and family angle is important. A lot of the blogs on lifestyle design online are usually run by fairly young men in their twenties free from obligations and roaming around in Southeast Asia. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is a bad thing. I mean if I could spend all year in our house in Thailand I would probably do so, but the issue is that it’s much easier to be your own boss and do exactly what you want to do, when you don’t have obligations such as a mortgage and a family to take care of.

Again I’m not saying that you cannot travel around Thailand if you have a family (on the contrary, that’s one of my points) – I’m just saying that the online voice on lifestyle design is often dominated by guys in their twenties who has not yet bought into the whole wife and kids thing.

This post should serve as a needed contrast to that.

The Challenges of Being a Father

So what is the issues here. Where are the challenges when it comes to being the perfect father who wants to break free of a 9-5 and have more time with the family.

1) You need a cashflow to support your family

If you are a twenty something you guy travelling Southeast Asia, you just need to earn $1-2000 per month in order to live like a prince. This is easily reached by simply freelancing for a a couple of clients (like setting up a website or doing some writing). But if you’re currently in a 9-5, have a wife and two kids and live in the US, you probably need to earn a little more than that in order to maintain your desired lifestyle.

While someone like Timothy Ferriss might recommend that you cut down on obligations, I like to say that each and every person are where they should be in their lives. If you’re a family guy, enjoy spending time with your family, love the neighbourhood you live in, are active in the local community, then you probably don’t want to chase other people’s dream of moving to Buenos Aires for six months and learning to dance the Tango.

So I’m not advocating that you sell all your things and start from scratch in order to travel. Just know that it’s an option if your dream as a family is to travel the world. Then a good strategy could be selling or renting out your home while you are away on a boat somewhere for a year.

But bottom line is this: If you have a family and obligations you need to make a baseline income in order to pay your bills.

2) Your kids take time

And that’s a good thing. Especially being able to spend a lot of time with your kids while they’re young (once they reach their teens they suddenly don’t want to know of you… or at least that’s what I’ve been told ). But it also means that you don’t have all the time in the world in order to work on your online business empire that eventually will set you free financially.

Having kids have just made me want to focus my life even more. I have way more times with my kids than those of my friends who are working in a normal 9-5, I’m way more flexible when it comes doing stuff with my kids in “normal business hours” (and that’s usually when they are awake, right?!)

This fact alone is one of the reason that I like to promote lifestyle design and help people taking action in their own lives.

Now on the other hand, I do talk with entrepreneurs (online as well as offline) who say to themselves (and their families) that they will just work intensively on their business for a limited period and after that they will have time to spend on the family again. Heck just the other day I read a blog of a Danish entrepreneur who worked 100 hours a week and was proud of it (don’t even get me started on time versus productivity).

The problem with this strategy is that
1) it always takes longer to setup your business than you plan, and
2) people with this mentality will most often have trouble cutting back on the hours once it’s possible
3) people with this mentality often think that time (and working hard) can solve a problem instead of using strategies such as the Pareto Principle and Parkinson’s Law (as well as a ton of other strategies) to work smarter. They adapt the 9-5 mindset and think that work is measured in time (not results).

So you might just scrap this (at least if you want to spend time with your family) and look into other strategies.

Five Tips for the Online Dad

So does this mean that you shouldn’t build an online business if you’re a dad? (or mom for that matter… Sorry girls, I haven’t experience motherhood but guess you’re facing the same issues )

No of course not, I would suggest the following list of tips.

1) Allocate a little time each day when the kids are sleeping

Turn off the TV and bring out the trusty old notebook, pour yourself a good glass of red wine, put on your favorite pair of slippers and work for 1-2 hours.

The important thing here is not how much time you spend but that you do it every day like clockwork. It only takes 21 days to form a habit (or at least so they say) so what might feel a little odd in the beginning will feel very natural after three weeks.

It’s important that you do it at the same time every night. I know that this might limit your social life, so you can also select to just do it say 5 times a week (at least one hour).

You don’t have time you say? Well according to research apparent we all watch 34 hours of TV every week, so at least someone is having a ton of time but is prioritizing differently.

So focus on getting the habit of working on your business each and every day. I know that 5-15 hours of work per week might not sound like much, but at least this way you will at some point have an online business compared to if you worked zero hours a week.

2) Focus on a single strategy

A lot of people who work with online businesses tend to suffer from the shiny object syndrome and in our terminology it might be the “shiny business model syndrome” where we try different strategies for making money online.

I for one have quite a few projects that I’m a little embarrassed to show off on this blog .

So focus on one thing and choose a strategy that you believe has worked for others. It’s really not about what strategy you choose. It’s more about what you choose first!

A lot of people tend to get stuck in either choosing the right business model/strategy or choosing the market/niche to go into. And again, sure there are probably better niches than others (like fitness, dating and stock trading) but it’s really just a decision and the longer you refrain from taking that decision the longer you will stay in limbo and not move forward at all.

And in the end, you can make money in most markets/niches as long as your passionate about the topic!

Once you’ve built your first online business you have attained super valuable knowledge about what works and what doesn’t and you can focus on building the next business even better.

3) Manage the expectations

You probably want to get the support of your wife or girlfriend.

The problem is that for a lot of girls don’t see it as work when you sit in front of the computer working on your next online empire. It can be difficult to understand because your sitting in the precise same positions with your computer as when you’re watching the new Lady Gaga video on Youtube.

So it’s important to let her know what you’re doing that one our each evening. You could also try to let her in on what you’re doing. There’s a lot of room for entrepreneurial moms online as well.

Also try to focus on why you are doing this. Why would you want to spend time infront
of the computer, what are your trying to achieve for yourself and your family?

When the brain is given a reason it is much more inclined to accept it (a little theory if you’re interested).

4) Focus on taking consistent action

Remember that I said that the niche and strategy you select was not important but just decisions?

The problem is that we tend to push (what we believe to be) hard decisions in front of us. Stopping everything else in the process. I’ve seen tons of people spending months on choosing the right e-commerce platform to use with their new e-commerce website. The answer is that it doesn’t matter, just select a platform and move on. You have just wasted months where you could have been shoveling in money.

Realize that most decision can be re-taken. What’s the worst thing that can happen? You need to be able to take quick decisions and realize that your time should not be used on “thinking about stuff” but on taking action on where it creates value.

So if someone evaluated e-commerce platforms for the first two months, well guess what, in those two months they could have had a complete solution designed and implemented, they could have spent the time putting in hundreds of products, they could have started their first AdWords campaign and getting their first paying customers.

Decisions don’t take time. They are instant. Don’t spend too much time on them, instead focus on taking consistent action where it matters.

5) Remember that you are a father first

Nothing should mean more to you than your kids. I know a lot of people will agree with me in this, but when the same people tell me that they are working 50+ hours per week in their 9-whatever job I must laugh (at least on the inside). If this was not a contradiction I don’t know what is.

In the end you are doing this in order to be able to spend more time with your kids and family. And that’s what count the most.

Good luck in your Dadventures

The post Online Business for Dads (five tips for you) appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Well – there’s a reason for that. I’ve moved my old blog My 4 Hours (.com) to this new domain. All the old content is however already there. This is just a quick post (and actually my post #100) to explain a little about the move.

What’s with the domain name?

For a long time I’ve been discontent with the domain name my4hours.com. It insinuated a close tie to Timonthy Ferriss’ “4 Hour Workweek” franchise. This was always the meaning since this was the book that inspired me to take action in my own life and start living totally different from the life of the average paycheck slave.

When I first chose the domain name I really liked it because it was short, but I also made a few mistakes that you could learn from.

First of I used a number in the domain name. That’s a problem for someone just hearing the domain name (could be in a podcast) or trying to remember it. I’ve also found out that someone has actually registered the domain with the word “four” instead of the number “4″ (I won’t link to it!) so his strategy is to get some of the visitors from this blog.

Secondly there was this close tie in with Timothy Ferriss’ brand. There are certainly other blogs out there doing the same, my buddy Eric’s blog springs quickly to mind. But the problem is that I’ve kind of branched out. In the beginning it was about tracking my own experiments and document my successes and failures, but eventually it has turned out be a little more nuanced than that. Also it’s really hard to build your own brand when you are always in the shadow of some else.

Lessons learned…

But are you using ass in the domain name now?

Sure why not. I like the domain name to have a little “edge” and it was an easy domain to remember. I had a long list of alternatives but I kept going back to this one.

Hopefully I won’t turn too many people off by this, hopefully it would take more to shock a well read and intelligent reader like yourself .

So I selected something that basically explains how I have tried to structure my life. To retire myself now and only do stuff I’m passionate about. I still work a few months each year so I’m not completely retired, but I work a lot less than most people I know and I also spend much more time with my family than most people I know.

The Retire My Ass name was just short and provocative (and then the .com was available ).

But hey – maybe I’ll be moving to a new domain in a few years if I turn too many people off, just because I make a decision now doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind later, right?

Could you help me?

I’ve been hard at work doing this but there are probably a lot of dead links. If you find something that is not working, could you please let me know either through the comments or by contacting me? Thanks so much!

Thank you sooooo much

Pat Flynn. I have totally stolen your top banner here. Hope you don’t mind too much, else I’ll have a designer on elance redo it. I would be totally happy to give you full credit for this

The post What the F… is going on with this blog? appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Yeah, I know that I’m gonna get an entire internet marketing army after me for writing this blog post. If you’re currently running niche sites or if you’re thinking about creating one, I would love to hear from you in the comments.

I see a lot of people pushing “small niche sites” these days. Most often they are quickly setup WordPress sites (not that there’s anything wrong with WordPress though) with some quickly written articles – most of the time by someone who has no idea of the subject. The sites are most often monetized by Google AdSense showing ads to the unlucky visitors who get sucked in there in the promise of a quick fix to their problems.

Of course niche sites can be much more than this, but this is pretty much the model that I see most people online try to do.

Now don’t get me wrong, this does sound like an awesome business model, I mean create a website in a couple of minutes, create a few blog posts and add Google AdSense through a simple “click to install” WordPress plugin. Most people who have done this before will tell you that the entire site can be up and running within a day.

Usually you won’t make a lot of money from a small niche site with AdSense on (some people are also adding Amazon products through affiliate links) so the real power of the model is to create tons of these small niche sites. Now when I say tons I really mean tons. I’ve seen people with hundreds of these type of sites.

But I really feel that the business model is flawed in some way – more on that in a minute.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve never made any serious money doing niche sites (Disclaimer: I have written an ebook in a narrow niche and selling it through a niche site, but is not really seeing many sales), so perhaps it’s just me who’s being a little bit naive. So if you’re raking in millions on small AdSense enabled websites, then feel free to comment below and call me something less flattering.

To me it just looks like someone is making a ton og money teaching other people to start small niche sites – but most people doing them are making peanuts.

Now I’m all for creating online businesses that can support your desired lifestyle (actually you can work with me in a coaching program very soon!) but when I look at a business model I really need to see how ALL aspects of the model goes together. And I like the business to be a win-win situation where my clients is also getting something of value and not some poorly written 500 word article written by someone with no knowledge of the subject matter besides a few Google searches.

So without any filter here are my thoughts on the business model.

The content is crappy most of the time

Since it’s all about getting traffic to a site so the visitors can click on the ads, and because the business model is about quantity over quality – there is really very little time to create the content.

The entire business models relies on people clicking on an ad and leaving your site, so the content should just be good enough to attract some people, not good enough to keep them hanging around.

You could of course argue that you are giving this content away for free and your visitor is not paying you anything, sure that’s a valid argument – but again I don’t think that makes for a sustainable business since people won’t be coming back to your site once they left it (at least not on purpose).

I know I’m generalizing here, there are exceptions and later I will share my thoughts on what seem to work.

Traffic generation is almost always organic

And this is really a big one!

Since these sites are generating so little profit, you need to rely on free traffic from the search engines (oh… did I say search engines? I mean Google of course ).

Because of this the niches are very narrow ensuring that they can rank well in Google using absolut match domains for long tail keywords.

But let’s face it….
Google’s a bitch and you’ve just based your entire business on it!

With first the Panda update and now the Penguin update (if you don’t know what’s up with all the animals, just know that they’re changes to the Google result algorithm) a lot of niche sites have been killed totally in the search results. Typically jumping from high page one positions to nowhere to be found. Not just a few positions, or maybe a page… No.. Totally off the first 10 pages for their targetted keyword.

Heck I’ve even lost 10-20% traffic from Google to this blog after the Penguin update even though I think I put out some quality content (at least to the best of my ability ).

But hey… I don’t blame them though – we should all be interested in higher quality content online.

But since you’re using Google as the only traffic strategy to these sites (since you don’t have the money to pay for traffic with these very narrow sites).

So if you need to create better content and get better backlinks to your site, that means you need to put a lot of hard work into the site (surprise surprise).

And let’s face it… If you can potentiall just make $50-$100 a month and you’re not really passionate about the subject, then why the hell start one in the first place.

We’ve all been told the lie that it’s easy to make money online.

I hate to be the one telling you but that’s simply not true. No… making money online is EASIER than it was to create a business before in the offline world. There is a lower entry barrier because you no longer needs a physical presence, stock and employees, but with that said, you still need to work you ass of before the money come rolling.

So what works in regard with niche sites

Well the first guy that comes to mind when I think of the word “niche sites” and has been responsible for getting it out in a big way is Pat Flynn.

Now Pat is super cool and most likely the nicest guy online and he’s made quite a cool site with his niche site on Security Guard Training.

But again as you can probably see if you go through the site, he’s spend a lot of time on the site. Also he had an entry into the niche as his mother has apparently been working as a security guard. So while the initial site could probably have been setup in a day, he has spend a lot of hours on it.

Actually Pat is probably the closests thing you come to a productivity robot and he seems to provide quality content on a lot of different areas (if you don’t know his blog you really want to head over there).

He also have a few other niche sites but they are making peanuts compared to the Security Guard site as you can clearly see from his most recent income report.

I haven’t followed the progress of those sites however, so I cannot tell you how hard he’s working on it.

On a different note you also have Justin and Joe from AdSense Flippers. They are pushing out tons of niche sites, but their business model is really about selling the niches sites (as in the word “Flippers”).

Although they are bringing in almost $3000 in AdSense alone – as you can see by their most rencent income report – I’m looking forward to the one for April to see the results after the Penguin swept the land.

So the new buzz word is…

Should we have a drumroll here?!

Authority sites. Yikes… Don’t even get me started. If someone has a decent definition of the word, please share this in the comments.

To me it’s also just bullshit as my definition is that it’s just a website with quality content with quality backlinks leading in.

This is simply how a website really should be!

The post What No One is Telling You About Niche Sites appeared first on Retire My Ass.

It’s funny how that when you look at our western culture we tend to identify ourself with how we make money, what we do for a living, what our JOB is.

Well actually it’s not that funny since we (and I’m using we as a broad term as I don’t see myself in this group of people) tend to spend most of our waking time on our job, leaving very little time to things like our family, our personal well being, time to reflect over life, our true passions and hobbies, caring for friends and personal relationships etc.

But what is the alternative? We need money to survive don’t we?

Before diving deeper into my point with this blog post, I just want to share a study made by a palliative nurse who recently wrote a book called
“The Top Five Regrets of the Dying – A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing”

And yes, as the title goes – it’s basically about what people regrets when they are on their deathbeds.

Regrets of the dying

The top five regrets of people dying are according to the study:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Reference: http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html

While all of these points could in it self be discussed, I really want to spend some time with point number 2.

I wish I had’t worked so hard

Isn’t it strange that the thing we are told by the surrounding society to spend the most time on, also turns out to be almost our biggest regret of life?

Isn’t it a failure for us as a society when we continue to tell our young ones that the secret to well being and a good life is to get good grades, get a good job, work your ass of and eventually retire with a false hip, bad heart and a little bit extra in the bank account?

The ultimate currency

For me having worked with lifestyle design for several years now, have radically re-programmed me from these believes and public expectations. Also having two kids and wanting for them to have the awesome childhood I don’t think I ever got, has helped me realize how I truely feel our priorities should change.

I know no longer see money as the true goal to pursue. While sure money can be spend and leave our lives, we can always get more and replenish the money that left us. It’s a replenishable resource!

On the other hand is TIME.

Once time is gone, it’s gone for good. While we can certainly extend our lives a little by living a healthy life with exercise and eating sensible, we really only have a fixed period on this wonderful planet. Until someone invents an “live-forever-machine” TIME is an unreplenishable resource!

So how come that we most of our lives pursue money, in order to get a litte time towards the ends of our lives?
How come most people live after what Timothy Ferriss calls “The Deferred Lifeplan”?

My own conclussion

For me TIME has become of much greater value than money.

I want time for my kids and my family, I want time with my own personal projects that I’m truely passionate about, I want to inspire other people to take action and change their lives for the better and tons of other stuff that don’t involve me going to a boring 9-5 working on someone else’s ideas.

I get time by building businesses where I don’t end up selling my hours. Businesses that scale well and can generate cashflow even though I’m not directly involved in every little thing.

I get time by using outsourcing and have people helping me out with the stuff I’m really not that passionate about or stuff that I suck at and would spend way to much time stressing over having to do it.

I get time by actively choosing what “stuff” I want in my life. While I certainly loves a good gadget as a lot of other people, I really think about whether I truly need something before I buy it, or it’s just another “thing” that will take up space and drain mental power because I have one more thing to care about. Turn your back on consumerism and accept “needurism”

So treassure your time more than money. It’s certainly of much higher value. And think about how you want your life!

When you are on your deathbed, will you also regret having worked too much? Or will you smile and say that you lived a truly wonderful life!

The post The Thing That’s Worth More Than Money appeared first on Retire My Ass.

As Timothy Ferriss directs his attention to his other books is the 4-Hour Workweek book dead?

It might be a provocative blog title since the book is still selling quite well at Amazon

(source: Amazon)

But what I mean is that it’s being mentioned less and less and people are searching for keywords relating to it less and less. And when you as me has a blog that’s related to “brand” as you might say. That is something that worries me (although this blog has turned out to be about a lot of other stuff as well, mainly focusing on the business side of things).

As you can see below the “4 hour workweek” keyword is indeed on a downward curve.

(source: Google)

The book is really about lifestyle design, so I guess that a lot people has taken the whole idea behind the book and the values and perhaps ditched the whole “4 Hour Workweek” term. Probably because a 4 hour workweek really is not the end goal. Tim’s book is more of a manifest rather than a recipe, it’s really all about living the way that is right for you and not being stuck in a 9-5 if you all you want is to travel the world with your family.

Tim just shows you that it’s indeed possible to work less and still support your desired lifestyle. It worked for me and tons of other people (just check out all the success stories on Tim’s blog).

Another symptom is the declining use of the official 4 Hour Workweek forums over on Tim’s site. Not sure what the state is now, but recently it was not possible for new users to sign up because of a lot of spam being done. Some time ago I considered setting up my own 4 Hour Workweek forum because I thought that the official ones left something to desired.

UPDATE: My buddy Dan actually went ahead and put up a new forum. So if you want a place to discuss 4HWW related subjects with likeminded people, you should visit his 4 Hour Workweek Forum (or you could join my private mastermind program that also includes a forum ).

While they have still not been updated, I would never be able to compete with the official domain, so I scrapped the idea (although my guy did end up setting up a forum).

EDIT: I can’t post or reply on the forum. How crappy. I’ve been a member for a long time now and have contributed constructively. There has been activity as late as yesterday (15′th of April 2012) but apparently only certain people can post there. So I guess that the forums are dead!

For the record, I still think the 4-Hour Workweek kicks ass

This is not me having a problem with the book, there are a lot of skeptics out there, but for me it has served as great inspiration.

It made me take a look at my life and question if I wanted to work full time on other people’s ideas or take control over my own life and build a business that would support my desired lifestyle. And now with two kids it’s more relevant than ever.

So should anything be done

So why is this even remotely interesting. Well… perhaps it’s not really that interesting to you (sorry – but I’m super excited that you’re still reading ), but lately I’ve been considering moving this blog to another domain name.

It would still be the same content and topic, but simply to build my own brand instead of biting the tail of an established brand that is on a decline.

The blog is certainly having it’s own audience now, but I still see traffic to the blog coming from Google through “4 hour workweek” related keywords, so perhaps it’s a bit early for it.

On the other hand, most successful people who are blogging about lifestyle design and changing their lives in order to gain time and mobility as well as money, are doing this under their own “brands”. Perhaps mentioning Tim as an initial inspiration on the about page, but that’s it.

My buddy Eric is currently blogging about niche sites, so I guess that he has sort of the same problem with his domain name that is really close to mine (old domain name was my4hours.com)

Not sure if he has some of the same thoughts, but as Timothy Ferriss continues to release books and the whole marketing machine will be directed further and further away from the first one, we will eventually all have to think about this issue.

So what do you think?

Am I being paranoid here? Should I start my own brand? Have you also created a blog tied closely to another company/person’s brand? Got an awesome idea for a new domain name for this blog?

Let me know in the comments…

The post Is The 4-Hour Workweek Dead? appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Want to work less and enjoy life more, and would like help with this? Well read on…

Over the last couple of years, a lot of people have contacted me through the contact form on this page.

Some with simple questions on a specific plugin I use on this blog, but most on how to start living their own 4-hour workweek (disclaimer: I work a couple of months each year).

Sometimes it’s been enough to simply point them in the right direction or simply inspire them to take action, while othertimes I’ve worked with them more closely typically communicating over email or Skype.

I’ve basically done this free of charge because I like working with people and I earn my money elsewhere. But I’ve also reached sort of a max on how many people I can manage this way.

So I’ve thought about how I could scale this and help more people. Most of the time I drag people through the same process anyway so why not define this process more explicit than what I’ve done in the past over just over email and skype sessions.

This has lead me to create an online training program where you also get access to me.

The program will help you create lifestyle businesses that in return will reward you with more time and mobility. It is of course inspired by the 4-Hour Workweek book by Timothy Ferriss, but the program will be more focused on the business aspect and getting deeper than the book can take you.

This post is merely a teaser the people on my newsletter list will be the first ones to know since they (that’s you if you are already on it) have already shown an interest in what I do.

So if you want to work with there is good and bad news. The good news is that I will be able to work with much more people and have a much more organized process, the bad news is that I’m going to charge for it.

When that is said, everyone on my newsletter list will get a super low introduction price if they become charter members. This charter member price will only be announced to the newsletter list and only available here, so if you are even remotely interested in working less and enjoying life more, you should consider signing up for my newsletter list (you can always unsubscribe and you get a free ebook as well).

I want to reward those who have already taken action and while the charter member price is probably going to be a bad business move for me, it will make sure that everyone can participate in the fun.

Once I’ve made the offer to my newsletter list, it will be opened up for everyone, but at a slightly higher price.

Besides the paid program, I’m also going to release some video training that you can enjoy even if you don’t want to spend any money!

I’m super excited about this. I’ve been recording videos the last couple of months which has been super fun and I can’t wait to share it all with you.

So look forward to the big announcement about this

The post Want To Work With Me? appeared first on Retire My Ass.

And then it happened. This site got hacked! If you’ve visited this site in the last couple of days and have been redirected to some obscure website most likely to end with “rr.nu” or something like that I sincerely apologize!

Luckily I found this fairly quick and I don’t think that this has been going on for more than a couple of days (on and off, I’ll explain a little later), but if you have noticed strange behavior on this site for more than 3-4 days ago I would really like to hear from you in the comments or directly through my contact form.

It has been quite nasty. If you went directly to my site typing the url in the browser address bar, you would see my normal site (and this is basically how I visit the site), but if you came through Google (as the majority of people who visit this site), then you would most likely be redirected to a site that the hacker had chosen.

This small thing makes it quite difficult to actually identify that your own site has been hacked, I will discuss later what you can do to make sure that you’re not hacked yourself (and what you can do if you are).

Getting Access To My Site

The hackers installed some “malware” on my site so they basically could steal the traffic I had. In order to do this, they modified some files on my hosting account (all the php files in the theme I was using).

And this is the first problem, because how did the hackers actually get access to the files on my hosting company? First I thought it was through a file in my theme that I know has been a problem before, but I remember fixing this file a long time ago when I first heard of the problem. I also keep fairly complex passwords on all my hosting accounts, so the idea of someone guessing my password is also not a viable solution.

Then I remembered that my hosting company was recently hacked and they forced a password change to all accounts. Could it be that the hackers had actually created a backdoor at this point?! For now I think that is the most likely explanation.

The problem is that while I can clean the infected files on my hosting account, if I didn’t find the hole that the hackers had gone through there would really be no point as they could just infect my site again.

So what do you do when your site get hacked?! Well here’s what I did and usually the recommended fix.

Cleaning Out the Ghosts

Remove the malware

First of all I needed to clean all the files. My main concern was all my theme files, so I went through each php file in my theme and looked for code that should not be there. The particular malware that was installed on my site had some encoded php code in the beginning of each file, so it was easy to identify and remove it.

I did this on a local copy of the theme on my own machine in order to make sure that the files was not infected directly after I removed it.

Change passwords

I changed the following passwords

• FTP user passwords
• Database user password

I could also have chosen to change my WordPress administrative user password (my website is running on the WordPress platform – if you’re using some other platform you should still change the password for your user), but instead I opted to simply reinstall WordPress because I wanted to make sure that the hackers hadn’t also changed some of the core WordPress files (simply too many to go through all of them).

Reinstall WordPress and Plugins

While I did have a recent backup of my WordPress database (I revisit doing backups later ), I chose to keep my database as it was (besides changing the password of the database user) and only reinstall the WordPress files. This meant wiping all files on my hosting account. IF YOU DO THIS, REMEMBER TO HAVE A BACKUP!

For me that included in copying the folder /wp-content/uploads/ to my desktop because this folder contained all the uploaded images. I made sure that there was no php files in there that could be infected (some hackers put php files in that folder and it hides among your perfectly normal images).

I also had a backup of my now cleaned theme (since it’s a custom theme that I’ve changed over time).

So I scrapped all the files on my hosting account and reinstalled WordPress (using the old database). I then manually reinstalled all the plugins I was using before (I had written down a list of them), uploaded my theme and my uploaded images.

Then I should be ready for rock’n rolling.

Back From Planet 9

It didn’t take many hours before I noticed some strange behavior on my site again (I watched it closely). Actually it was just the next day, but this could easily have happended after just a few hours (or literally minutes).

Now I had just spend half a day cleaning out after the last attack, so I was quite annoyed by this. I had clearly not closed the whole that the hackers came through.

And this also made me feel a little in despair because while I don’t know how to code in PHP (the coding language behind WordPress) I do know a thing or two about coding and computer nerdy stuff. So if I couldn’t clean out the malware and didn’t know how to close the whole after my elaborate cleaning process, then what should I do?

Going to the Dreamhost

I created a support ticket with my hosting company Dreamhost. Up until now I’ve satisfied with them, they’ve had a few things that made me look elsewhere, but the majority of sites was still hosted here.

It was obvious that I needed some help with this. I also started looking online for other people being hacked this way and infected with the same malware. And I found a quite a few people having this exact issue and mainly people using Dreamhost.

Could This Be a Coincident?

I mean they was recently hacked right? Well waiting for a support ticket with Dreamhost could take a while and I wanted a solution now. Also I kind of expected the first response from them would be something a long the lines of instructions that I’d already done.

So what should I do instead?

Moving Day… Bye Bye Dreamers

Now I was unsure if this was because of Dreamhost or not. I had several other sites there, and perhaps if one of the other sites was infected they could somehow get access to this site. It meant that even if I cleaned this site, the files could still be infected by the other site.

So I moved! Also the fact that I didn’t hear from Dreamhost support (and now after nearly 24 hours I still haven’t heard from them) made me want to at least do something.

I have another hosting account with Greengeeks where I create all my new sites, and while I still like parts of the whole Dreamhost experience better, I simply need an alternative after so many years with Dreamhost.

So I did the whole operation again! This time also restoring the database to the new database server.

I waited… And the malware was back from planet 9! I had clearly NOT closed the backdoor that they were getting in through.

Back in despair… What to do… Can’t even blame Dreamhost (although it started with them and most infected people I’ve seen online is indeed hosting with Dreamhost).

Getting the Shit Fixed

In my search for other people sharing my pain I stumbled across the company Sucuri. And they wanted to take my pain away. First off they had this scanner on their page that could instantly identify if there was something wrong with your site, and since it can be difficult to find this malware (in my case only visitors coming through from the search engines was redirected to the hackers page) this was a quite cool thing.

I strongly recommend visiting their website and trying to scan you own website!

After my latest attempt to clean it out myself with the move to Greengeeks, I chose to pay Sucuri for removing the malware for me. The price is rather low, and compared to all the time I’ve spent on this, I couldn’t turn this down.

So I bought one of their packages and reported that I had a malware problem.

Now I won’t bore you with the details but after just 1 hour and 20 minutes after I had reported this they had cleaned my site. Looking at the list of cleaned files, I think I identified a couple of files that I had not found the malware in myself, so I guess that this was the backdoor. At least here half a day later (just had to sleep a little ) the site is still ok according to their scanners (I had to change passwords again, but this is a minor thing).

By the way, Dreamhost support has still not answered my support ticket although I created it with the second highest priority (the higest one says something like “people are dying…” and though I don’t want my site infected… I can’t quite say that it’s killing people).

Also the cost of me spending time on fixing this again and again is way higher if you factor in my own hourly consultant/coaching price, so I should probably just have gone with Sucuri to begin with.

Any Learning Points Here?! Recommedations?!

Well up until now I’ve been using a simple WordPress database backup plugin. I’ve always installed this plugin on my WordPress sites, but haven’t really had use for it up until now.

But this also made me realize that while the database might be really important, there are several other important files on your server. All your uploaded content (such as images) and the theme itself. Heck just all the plugins. It still takes a lot of time to having to reinstall all the plugins again.

So I ended up buying a dedicated plugin for backups. I have to realize that much of my business simply relies on all my WordPress sites and that they keep running, so why not invest a few bucks in a proper backup solution.

I ended up buying the BackupBuddy plugin that a lot of people online tend to recommend.

And this plugin has quite amazed me. Besides being able to just save the backups as zip files on your hosting account, they can also be moved automatically to places outside your hosting account like your Dropbox folder or even Amazon S3 (the option I’m currently using).

Hopefully you will never need to go through this, even me with a technical background, found myself a little helpless, so if you take nothing else away from this post… at least be prepared.

Have you been hacked to in the past? Experiences with Dreamhost? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

The post Hackers Got My Ass and How You Can Prevent It From Happening To You appeared first on Retire My Ass.

While I do remember a few situations where more planning would certainly have worked wonders, the “just do it” strategy has worked really well for me.

I believe that all people are different and some people perhaps favor planning over actual doing. This is actually a pattern that I’ve seen in a few people and also the topic of this post.

Is there some small kind of tweak or secret that can make people who are perhaps a little low on getting things done up and perform like crazy?

DISCLAIMER:
Notice that by “perform like crazy” I mean getting things done! I really hope that we agree that eventually something must be done and you cannot just sit and brainstorm/plan/prepare/think forever. Implementation and action should always follow up planning. Hereby not saying that I don’t think that you should plan, if this is something you feel for, by all means… plan. Just remember to timebox the planning so you know when you should actually start doing something so you are not caught in a never ending planning/brainstorming phase.

People are passionate but are not taking action

I’ve met and talked wth several people who are clearly very passionate about a given subject and can talk forever about the subject, yet they never seem to follow up on this passion and do anything about it (other than talk about it that is).

This is of course not you…

It could be as simple as creating a blog or perhaps starting a small business where they could start focusing on what they were really passionate about instead of their boring 9-5 job.

Yet even though they would love to just follow their passion and only work with the subject all year long, they seem to be stuck where they are.

I of course acknowledge that not all know how to easily setup a website or how to generate profit on your passion – but surely if you were very passionate about something you would try to figure this out, wouldn’t you?!

Also… there are a lot of people who are indeed trying to do this, the pure number of blogs online are solid evidence of that, they are not all geeks or techies.

This has always left me a little puzzled, someone who says that they really want something and can talk passionate about the subject for hours, but does nothing to follow up on it.

As I like to help people follow their passion (and generally enjoy life more…) I started looking into their situation, and for most of them it turned out that…

The same people are working really hard in their 9-5 job?!

This was kind of strange to me. Someone who in their own time on the subject of what they were really passionate about, didn’t really get anything done, but at the same time were really productive in their 9-5 job. Not that everyone hated their 9-5 but they clearly enjoyed talking about what they were passionate about more.

So this left me intrigued. What was the secret ingredient that was different in these two contexts?

Well you can certainly say something about that you have more energy in the timespan of 9-5 while your energy might drop a bit after you’ve had dinner and are ready to start working on your own – but still… If someone was truly passionate about a subject, wouldn’t a little energy drop stop them?! I don’t think so.

Then secondly, was people afraid that they would be fired if they didn’t do a good job? No not really. Most of them felt pretty safe in their jobs and didn’t really think of being fired? Some of them even felt that they could easily get a new job if they were to be fired.

So where has this lead me? Well… it has nothing to do with fear, if anything it has to do with praise.

The secret of productivity

So what is the difference?

It’s a little word called “accountability”!

In the 9-5 job people are expecting them to deliver! If they don’t deliver, they will be held accountable both by their boss but also by their co-workers. You cannot sit at lunch and just say “well… I didn’t do shit today and I don’t think I’ll do anything tomorrow either”.

People EXPECT you do to something at work and you simply follow through on their expectations. In the same process you also gain their respect and recognition something that is normally pretty damn important for human beings.

So how can you become more productive

GET ACCOUNTABILITY (outside of your own brain that is…).

Team up with someone who perhaps would also like to work on something outside of their job and be each other’s accountability partners.

Schedule weekly phone/skype sessions where you discuss what you did the previous week and what you’ll do in the next. It really doesn’t fell that good to always be the one to say that you didn’t do what you agreed on the last time.

Heck… Instead of just one person, find a whole group of like minded people and have them all act as accountability partners.

It’s always easy to promise yourself something and end up “forgetting it”, it’s much more difficult to “forget it” if you’ve committed yourself to doing it infront of a bunch of other people.

So start commiting yourself openly to others, and if you’re serious about you passion, find accountability partners who are in the same boat as you are!

The post The Secret Of Productivity appeared first on Retire My Ass.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about how you could find free images that you could use on your site. I can spare you a click to that post and tell you that I recommeded that you use flickr.com and searched for images with the creative commons licens.

Well, now I’ve found something MUCH BETTER

Before I knew about this, I typically paid way too much money on sites such as Dreamstime.com for stock photo that I could use. There are tons of other sites like this like istockphoto.com, GettyImages and so on…

I originally chose Dreamstime over the other because they were somewhat cheaper. You could normally get an image in a lower resolution suitable for you blog post or website for for $1. This has kind of worked out for me, but lately the prices have shot up. I now find it hard to find good photos costing less than $3!

In a world where I can get all the music I want on Spotify for less than 10 bucks per month and all the movies and series I want on places such as Netflix and Hulu for 7 bucks per month paying $3 for a single image in a super low resolution is simply way too expensive!.

I’m not quite sure what has happened to the stock photo pricing for the last year or so, but at least personally I feel that they have gone up instead of going down such as every other digital product out there.

So… When I saw these outrages prices I was faced with the choice of either shutting up and paying the price OR trying to find an alternative. And yet again I started out by going to Flickr, but I ended up just browsing through holiday photos – the stuff that gets uploaded to Flickr is mostly personal stuff and IMHO there isn’t much stuff you can really use for anything.

This lead me to do a little more research and did I find something good. Oh yeah:

Photl.com

http://www.photl.com/
Almost a half a million images in their database as of writing. The lowest resolution image is free, yes… absolutely free! And the lowest resolution is actually higher than the lowest resolution at Dreamstime that usually ended up costing $3.
Higher resolutions can be bought extremely cheap. Think $1. Fantastic!

Kozzi

UPDATE: Kozzi has raised their prices a lot! Now they are just like a lot of other image sites out there, but with a smaller database. I had paid for a year of free images (max 25 per day) and they have just nuked that subscription and given me 100 credits (that’s 100 images in low resolution). They didn’t even send me an email about this (or it went into the spam folder). Based on this fact, I don’t think I can recommend Kozzi anymore

http://www.kozzi.com/
Another fantastic site with 30.000+ free photos. Here you can also get hiqh quality images for free. Apparently they make their money of advertising.

And yes, if you wonder about the image on this blog post… It’s from Kozzi . Hope you could use this small trick.

If you know of any other great sites to find free stock photo please let me know in the comments.

The post Free Images for Your Blog appeared first on Retire My Ass.

My goal with the videos was to have as professional quality at the lowest possible price. I guess it’s the 80/20 thing setting in. Yes you can spend tens of thousands on professional grade gear, but what if you could get the same quality for way less.

My First Ventures Into Online Video

I’ve owned a Flip Mino HD camera for some time now. It’s an excellent small pocket with great quality video compared with the price let alone the size. I basically chose it because it won most test on image quality over other cameras and because it was small.

When I bought it I was still on my trusty iPhone 3G that certainly didn’t have any video capabilities to show for (well… it did do video… but nothing you could use for anything).

But as I wanted to do more than just small videos of me in the pool I quickly realized the shortcomings of this wonderful gadget.

I also found out why most other people wanting a similar small sized camera had begun to buy the Kodak Zi8 instead of the Flip camera series (even though the Flip Mino camera looks more snazzy).

It had external microphone input! While the video quality of the Flip Mino HD were really good, it only had the internal microphone and that is a no go if you want to do anything other than just small fun videos.

So I was now in a position where I could buy something like the Kodak camera (or something similar) or I could step it up a bit. I chose the last… Also because I’ve already wasted money on one pocket camera so I didn’t really come home to the girlfriend and have to explain why I needed yet another one (you know girls simply don’t understand gadget unless they come with flowers ).

So I went on the look out for something a bit more professional. Really my only requirement was that there was an external microphone input.

I quickly found a new Panasonic range of cameras that seemed to provide the best quality/price ration. I knew I didn’t want to go pro, but I also didn’t want to save a few hundreds and then be stuck with some crappy cheap consumer “play” camera. So I chose something in the middle.

DSLR vs. Video camera

When I started to look at video cameras I quickly also found myself looking into DSLR cameras. They have now become so good (and cheap) that many people are using them for professional video cameras. I’ve even seen TV and music videos being shot with DSLR cameras (although probably the top of the line stuff).

THe advantage of buying a DSLR camera instead of a video camera was obvious. I would also get a really good still photo camera for the same price.

But as I started to look into this category of cameras, I found a few things that didn’t quite resonate well with what I was gonna use it for.

1. Manual focus when in video mode (I could work around that since I was mainly going to use it for direct to camera, but most of the time it would require a second guy acting as a cameraman
2. Most cameras I looked at could not record much more than 15 minutes per take making it pretty much a no go for me as I also had record hour long seminars
3. No built-in stability compensation. Not really a problem for me as I was gonna use it mounted on a tripod, but it would still make it a problem if I had to use it without
4. They become really hot. Not sure that’s a problem – but it’s clearly that they weren’t designed for long term use

So for me the DSLR (at least at the time I was looking into this) was a no go, but perhaps in the near future I’ll go the DSLR route.

So I ended almost ordering the Panasonic HDC SD800 but realized that I couldn’t find anything about an external microphone input which was really my only requirement, so I went with big brother Panasonic HDC SD900 instead (together with a 32GB memory card)

After I had bought the camera I also got rather inspired by Smartphone Video Producer where this guy basically shows you how to get quality video production with the video camera in an iPhone. If I had seen this site before I’ve purchased the Panasonic camera I might have thought twice.

Because this leads me to…

The Secret of Good Video

The secret behind good and professional video is not the camera. And that’s a strange thing as this is usually the most expensive thing in the setup.

NO – doing good video is all about good lighting and sound.

And that is also the fact being teached by the smartphone video guy. If you have great sound and lighting no one can see that it’s recorded on an iPhone 4 (or similar smartphone).

So realizing this… now… – and having spend good money on the camera (and therefore could not see myself suddenly going over to recording on my iPhone) leads me to how my finished video production studio looks like.

Video Production Studio Elements

Video camera

Panasonic HDC SD900

This was the camera I bought. I produces good looking video. To begin with I recorded in Full HD but this gave me big files of the “MTS” format which is a killer to work with on my mac. So I quickly started recording in a lower resolution which the camera can output in MP4 format that is much easier to work with as it does not have to convert it first (which can take hours with the MTS files on my 2 year old MacBook Pro – “Hey Rasmus… a good excuse to go out and buy a new MacBook Pro….” => Exactly ).

Also I’m gonna use them for web use only, so while it would be nice to have them in Full HD there is really no need. Good sound and lighting are much more important

Microphone

Sennheiser FreePort Presenter Set

As sound is really important and I’m doing direct to camera, I wanted a clip on mic. First I bought a cheap one from China as again I’m an 80/20 guy figuring that I just need something that is good enough. And the mic was also “good enough”. The sound quality itself was fine, unfortunately there was so much “static background noise” that I threw it out and realized that I had to spend a little more than $15 on the mic.

I basically wanted the cheapest clip on mic from one of the more established names in the music/recording industry. As I have a small music studio I knew about Sennheiser’s products and found this set to be the cheapest one on the market. I think I paid approximately $200 for it here in Denmark.

It’s a complete set with lavalier mic, broadcast and receiver unit. It doesn’t attach to the video camera (like on the horse shoe) or anything, but for the price it’s awesome sound quality.

Lighting

PhotoSEL LS21E52 Professional Softbox Studio Lighting Kit

Next on my list was lighting. Again I didn’t want to spend a lot but wanting the minimum viable solution that would look really good. There was a number of good lighting kits in the Amazon.com store, but being from Denmark it’s much easier to buy from the Amazon.co.uk store that unfortunately didn’t have the same big selection of light kits.

I did however find the PhotoSEL kit that was quite reasonable priced. I started with one kit, but quickly realized that I needed more lighting. So currently I’m using two kits (which is four lights) (EDIT: Down to two lights in my new studio) and I’ll probably buy some smaller lights to ensure better background lighting in the future.

Tripod

Hama Star 63 Tripod

Not sure if I should list this as well, but it’s kind of the last piece of the puzzle and it was cheap

Screenflow vs iMovie

So what about editing your movies you might ask!

In the beginning I was editing my movies on iMovie but it’s a pain to work with. They “tried to make it super easy” but they failed miserable. I mean who has ever heard about video editing software without any timeline.

So currently my process involve editing my videos on Screenflow which is really a screen capturing application, but has much better video editing capabilities than iMovie (at least the 20% that you use 95% of the time).

After I’ve done with the video I export it and run it through Handbrake a fantastic free application for converting videos into MP4.

(EDIT: I’ve actually stepped up and bought Final Cut Pro, so I’m currently doing most editing in this program but is of course still using Screenflow for recording and editing screencasts).

So what now?! What’s all the video for

Well, I’m glad that you asked (and you actually sticked to the end of this post).

I’m currently working on an online private coaching program. Over the years I’ve gotten a lot of questions on how I manage to not having to work all year, and since I mainly saying the same things over and over again I figured there might be a better way.

So if you are someone who is passionate about changing your life and willing to take action, then I would really love to work with you.

You’ll probably hear more about it on this site when I’m ready, but if you want to be absolutely sure to be among the first to hear about it, you should consider joining my newsletter (and get a free ebook at the same time).

If you got any inputs on the whole video setup thing, I would love to hear from you in the comments.

The post My Video Production Studio Setup appeared first on Retire My Ass.

If you’re a person that uses these words a lot, then don’t worry, I don’t hate you or anything – but chances are that you are not really that much in control of your own life as you might like to think.

Throughout our lives we’ve been indoctrinated with what is expected of us and what lifestages we should all follow in order to “have a normal life”, and we’ve learned to say things like “I have to do XYZ” or “I really should do ABC”.

Stuff like “I should go to school” or “I should be working for the man – getting a steady paycheck” or “I should really call my mother in law”

Let’s just get that big fat rat out in the open!

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO ANYTHING!

Instead you can choose to do something. That might sound like “same same” to you, but there is one big differentiator. If you say “choose” you put yourself in control instead of someone else really determining whether or not you should do something.

And if you are in control, then you can choose not to do XYZ.

“Are you crazy Rasmus” – you might ask… “if I don’t ABC, my boss/wife/mother-in-law/insert-more-terrifying-beasts-here will most certainly KILL ME!”.

Sure, that could be a consequence, but notice the word here. Consequence. When you have the control you can weigh out the different potential outcomes, risks etc and determine for yourself if you believe if you feel that you can live with the consequence.

If you “had to” then you “had to” and then you would have to eat the consequences in any given outcome.

So if you start substituting the words “I have to…” and “I should…” with “I choose to…” you will put yourself back in the driver’s seat of YOUR LIFE!

And isn’t that’s where we really want to be?

BONUS: Can’t

If you say that “you can’t do something…” well guess what happens. Your brain will automatically shut down and spend brainpower somewhere else (I mean there are plenty of areas that could use some extra brainpower right )

But! If you tell your brain that the situation is really doable, your brain will like a miracle start looking for solutions, because guess what… That’s what our brain is doing. Finding solutions to stuff we throw at it – whether that is riding a bicycle and coordinating our limbs at what first seems like an impossible action or inventing the next line of smart phones.

So when you say can’t you are really speaking the truth… You can’t and you won’t be able. But if you tell your brain it can be done… You most likely can!

Ahh… so glad that’s over

So what are your thoughts here? Have I stretched it a bit too far this time? Let me know in the comments…

The post Mamma Said "Don’t Curse" appeared first on Retire My Ass.

So we’re on the border to a new year and it’s always a great opportunity to look back and evaluate what worked and what didn’t and to look ahead and make promises.

And while I don’t really believe in new year resolutions (if you want to change something – you should do it NOW), I certainly believe in setting goals for one self.

And if you don’t want to any read more about my highs and lows in 2011 and my goals for 2012 let me just take this opportunity to say HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2011

So looking back at 2011 I’m really not that proud of my progress, although a lot of things certainly happened, I still feel that I should have accomplished more. But before I talk myself totally down, let’s see what actually did happen.

We (my family and I) started out the year in our house in Thailand – so that was great. While Denmark was having snow and ice – the only place we could find ice was in our drinks .

And while we’re on family – 2011 was also the year where my girlfriend got pregnant again (the second time that is) and we expect a little baby boy here in the beginning of January.

Personally we also moved to a new house here in Denmark (as of 1. of December) so the last part of the year was pretty much spent packing and unpacking – talking to banks, lawyers and so on.

But what happended on the business side, well besides me growing my businesses in Denmark, I also got much more targetted on what it is I really want to do (more on this later). So during 2011 I’ve spent time terminating projects that was taking too much time but wasn’t really getting me in the direction I wanted. Some of it was business that gave me money and some of it just took my time.

I worked six months as a consultant as I’ve budgetted and as part of my focus, I’ve actually transferred some of my clients to other freelance consultants. Was this necessary? No I could have kept the client. Didn’t I earn money on the clients? Why sure I did. Good money actually – but the fact remain. If I still have to work some months each year as a consultant, I really just want to do so for ONE client, I don’t want to go around having to work a week or two on that client and then jump to another client and then to a third.

It’s really too much “client maintenance”. These kind of clients also usually tend to think that I’m “always available” so when they have a small one week task, I can just get to work immediately. NO – even though my hourly rate is higher with these kinds of customers – I prefer just one client buying my services for 3-6 months in a row.

When that is said, I do not expect that I have to work 6 months as a consultant next year as my cashflow looks currently (but if I get a really interesting job I might…. “no Rasmus – bad dog…. Remember the focus… no more IT consultancy…” )

But what didn’t work then? Well I was going to launch a big online membership site together with a friend in Bangkok and while we’ve certainly worked on this – and even launched a beta program – we didn’t get to launch as planned in 2011. When that is said!! We’ve worked up some really interesting JV partners, we’re in a market where a lot of money is being spent, and we have a really interesting niche product with an angle where there is not much competition, so I’m really optimistic about this in 2012. Currently it looks like we will be able to launch in February, but let’s see after a planning session in new year.

Also I know that I like taking it slowly (kick back and relax and everything ), I did expect that I would be able to do more “products”. I did a couple of information products (ebooks – one I wrote myself and one modified PLR product), but not really something I had my heart in – and I mostly did it to get some experience with the whole process.

One of the ebooks (it’s in Danish) is something I really expect something from. I know that the product is solid, and again we’re in a market where a lot of money is being spent. Even for a small market like Denmark. The main problem is that the niche is targetted women, and let’s face it… I’m a guy. So I’ve had some trouble with the marketing. I’m totally aware of this, and I need to redo the marketing part (not the product). The problem is that I really want to do some video marketing but I need a woman to record the sales video. Unfortunately my lovely girlfriend is not up for the task, so I need to figure out what I could do then.

If this was an English language product, I could just have used something like fiverr.com (a lot of voice talents will do almost anything for five bucks. And if that didn’t cut it, go somewhere like elance.com.

But it’s not only the video, it’s also all the site graphics, product “package” and so. But because this product is not my #1 priority (I’ll get back to that in a moment) I have put this off for now. I guess that I will come back to this later in 2012 – I still think it’s a great product.

Lessons learned…

I’ve learned that when I do partnerships I really need to be the one being in control. I’ve helped out on a few projects where I was paid a percentage of the revenue. Not that the idea or implementation of that idea was bad, but I can just see that I work best when I’m calling the shots and can set the direction.

I can also see that I really need to focus on only one or two things at a time. I way too easily sidetracked and I certainly no stranger to the shiny objects syndrome. So that is why I’ve found it necessary to cut out a few projects and put other projects on standby for a period.

Bu what is my current focus then?!?

2012

I did “coach” a few people in 2011. Some people contacted me through this blog, while other people came from my network. This was mostly something I did without charging anything, basically because I’ve found out that I enjoy working with people, inspiring them to take action and help them pursue their own dreams.

So I thought why not do an online coaching program and be able to help even more people? I mean… I kind of tell people the same things anyway. And this way I might also make a little money at the same time, although I currently do not expect this to be my primary source of income. So I started in November creating the content, and I should have started recording videos in December, and while I did succeed in recording some of the content (two out of six core modules) most of the month went with our moving process.

So I’ll continue to record videos in January although also this month might go past quickly as our baby son is planned to be born in the beginning of January. Hopefully I will be done with the content in January and start the launch and marketing process in February. If you keep reading this blog and/or if you’re on my newsletter list, you’ll certainly hear more about it. Unfortunately I cannot reveal much more right now, however I can say that it’s all about following your passion, working less and enjoying life more…

So as you might see, I expect to have two membership site launches in the beginning of the new year!

Other news for 2012

I’m starting studying for a NLP Practitioner certification (that’s Neuro Linguistic Programming). I love to develop myself and learn new stuff, and being my own boss enables me to do these kinds of courses and events that a “normal” employer might not have found relevant for my line of work and therefore didn’t want to pay for or give me the time needed for it.

Also I’ve begun to brainstorm ideas for a book, it’s still way to early to say anything more about it, but I certainly hope that I will be able to write one in 2012. While it’s not so much of a goal because I’m still very unsure about the whole process so……

Argh… Who am I kidding… IF I DO NOT TELL MYSELF THAT IT’S A GOAL – IT PROBABLY WON’T GET DONE…. So.. infront of the entire world! I promise to write a book in 2012 (a real one… not “just” another ebook ).

You can hold me accountable!

So that was about it… What are your plans for 2012? Is this the year where you quit your job and pursue what you’re passionate about?

The post Looking back at 2011 and towards 2012 appeared first on Retire My Ass.

I’ve never lost so much money before. NEVER. And I don’t fancy loosing so much money never again. When that is said – this is the story about I lost more than $100.000 but ended up with a smile on my face.

It all began when we bought a house

We originally lived in an old small house in a Copenhagen (that’s Denmark folks ) suburb. Though it was a nice house, it was originally bought back when I was single and wanted a bigger place that I could have my music studio in.

The house was pretty old (from 1930 I think) and it needed a loving in a few places. And since I’m really not that handy (well not handy at all) we sold it and started looking for something new.

Because we came from an old house – we were looking for a new house and we found one in another Copenhagen suburb. The house was just built (not a year old at the time).

This was back in late 2008. The property market had already started to decline but as time would tell – it would go down for several years to come.

To keep the story short what basically happended was that I got a daughter and we decided that we wanted to live somewhere else and we had to sell our house in the absolute worst market in years.

In this process, we had to sell our house for more than $100.000 less than we’d paid for it just a couple of years before.

But to cut to the chase this is not a story about losing money on selling your home. It’s about how you think about money.

DISCLAIMER: It’s important to point out that I’ve actually earned money on all past property sales. You win some and you loose some.

Accepting the loss

First when we got the low offer I was both sad and angry, not so much on the market or people who’d made the offer, but most of all on myself. Why the f… did I not see this coming? Why had I paid so much for a house that had lost so much of it’s value so fast? At first I didn’t want to accept their offer, not at this price, and had the made the same offer just after we had put the house up for sale, I would surely have declined it. But here we were a year after we had first put the house up for sale, and we really just wanted to move on.

So in the beginning I had all these negative feelings but we signed the papers anyway.

Programming your mind

I’m not quite sure when it hit me. Maybe it was seeing the joy in my girlfriends eyes after we’ve signed the papers or maybe it was realizing that there are far bigger issues in the world than loosing a little paper money selling your house.

But at some point I simply decided that I wouldn’t have anymore negative feelings about this. The deed was done, the house was sold. How was negative feelings ever going to help me?

So I started thinking about all the positive aspects of the sale. And as I added more positive thoughts to the whole situation, the less space the negative had and the money seemed more and more irrelevant.

In the end… it’s only money, I can always earn it again. Did it hurt in the moment? Yes absolutely, but I will not spend time punishing myself or feeling bad.

So if you have a problem that might seem like a really big issue, try to focus on all the good things that can or will come from the situation. The more positive thoughts you associate with it, the less space the negative thoughts will have, and the less of a problem it will seem to you. You will also be in a more positive flow which will follow you in everything you do.

Don’t swallow in negative emotions, cry if you have to (even if you’re a big boy), get over it and go out and kick some ass.

We’ve moved on to a new place that suits our needs better, so lately it’s been all about moving which is also why I haven’t blogged so much lately (you know boxes everywhere…). Hopefully that will change

Image credit: Jim Larson

The post How To Loose $100.000+ And Smile appeared first on Retire My Ass.

So you want to start your own business but are unsure how to do this? In this post I will list 3 different strategies you can use and also give you an idea on when to use it.

So you still have a “normal” 9-5 J-O-B like most people but want to quit the rat-race and become your own boss… I often get people who think that there’s a big threshold to starting businesses and it can be, but of the time it’s really just a decision! Once that decision is made – there’s no stepping back and everything becomes much easier.

DISCLAIMER: First of this is not some kind of magic bullet or shortcut method, I absolute recommend working hard at reaching your goals (my goal is getting more time, so I focus on setting online businesses up that scales well and does not require me much in the operation). These are JOB EXIT STRATEGIES, and they of course do reqire that you actually take action and do something.

So this post is not a online business model or anything, I think I’ve written a lot about business models in the past, they are overall strategies and I would generally advice you select one of them and adapt it to your own situation.

Freelancing

You’re currently working with something. Instead of being an employee you could simply be doing the same thing you’re doing now, but for different companies as a freelancer.

As a freelancer you’re typically paid a little more (because you’re more flexible and has to do all stuff regarding healthcare, pension etc yourself). The main point is however that you get much more control over your time. You can decide when to take on a new client, often also when to work for that client. And you can better structure your time and work on your own business ideas.

This was the strategi I used when I went from an employee to self-employed entreprenuer. It is of course not in all jobs that you can instantly go out and become a freelancer, but do not close that door without at least looking into the opportunity. The strategi allowed me to gradually cut down on freelance hours as I got more passive income in from my own businesses.

A few tips if you want to start as a self-employed freelancer.

Specialize

Don’t try to be a jack of all trades. The more you specialize the easier you will find companies that will pay you for your services. Think about it. All companies that are looking for a freelancer want’s to have a given problem solved. There’ll be a big pool of people who could probably solve the problem, but wouldn’t you prefer to hire someone who specialized in just that problem?

This worked wonders for me, and I never have trouble finding a job when I still freelance (now down to only 3-4 months per year).

Do not sell yourself too cheap

Do not just charge what you’re currently being paid in your given job. There are always expenses with having an employee, so make some market research beforehand to find out how much you can actually charge as a freelancer

Focus on selling your results

In the “old world” when you needed to land a job, your resume with your educational background and past jobs was usually the main document to use. When you sell yourself as a freelancer, try justifying the cost of you and focus on the results you have provided your customers with (or the results that you have generated in your current job).

Get jobs through companies that got the jobs

When you start out as a freelancer, your biggest concern will be how to get jobs! You could perhaps do a deal with your old company to be hired on a freelance contract instead of being an employee but that will only get you your first client.

Another way is to go through consultancy angencies. Yes they do take a cut of your salary (in my industry that’s around 10%-25% not sure how this relates to other industries) but this is money I’m more than happy to pay them. Because they got something you don’t…. Clients. And you save all the time trying to do cold canvas calls to potential clients.

But…

Notice that you are still selling yourself for hours just like you did as an employee. So do not get stuck in this strategy! Your end goal should probably be to create something that scales a little better than just selling hours. I know a lot of freelancers who just work the entire year. This will give them a little more in their bank account but they will still be selling their time and it doesn’t scale. Remember money is not everything – you need to factor in time and mobility as well.

Another thing to notice… When I’m saying freelancing, I’m not talking about doing jobs on elance.com, odesk.com or similar. I know a lot of people doing this, and you can of course investigate the opportunity, but let’s face it. On those portals you usually end up competing on price and you will typically loose to someone who will do it cheaper.

Bootstrap In Your Own Time

Second strategy is simply to spend time outside of your job to simply build your own new business that in time will give you enough money to quit your job.

This can be hard work and it will typically require a great deal of dicipline from your side as it will require a lot of effort over a long period.

However this is a common way of starting your own company and eventually quitting your 9-5 job. There are a few tips that can help you with this strategy.

Have a definite major purpose

Know why you’re working so much to be you own boss. What is the life that you’re reaching for. How should your life look like in 3-5 years?

If you don’t know why your are going home to work on your own business after you’ve just spent 8 hours in your “normal job” – then it can be really hard staying on track and motivated over a longer period and with the first sign of opposition you will most likely quit.

So define how your life should look in 3-5 years in 1-3 sentences, print it out and stable it to your computer or somewhere else where you’ll see it daily! Also read it out load at least once per day to keep it fresh in mind. You might think that it sounds like mumbo jumbo… but your brain will always look for the easiest solution and if it does not know “why” it has to do something, it will simply tell you that you do not have to do it. And working against your brain is REALLY DIFFICULT!

Divide work and leasure time

Know when your working on your own business and when you’re being a good spouse, father, friend etc. Make clear rules so those around you know when they should not disturb and when they can get some quality time with you.

This could be as little as setting up 1-2 hours each evening after dinner and the kids are put to bed (if you got any of those as I’m writing this I have my second on the way ).

People in the western world are typically watching way too much TV, so instead of spending time in front of the idiot box try spending that time working on your next business idea!

Get support from your family

If your family and friends are not supportive about what you’re going to do, it can be an uphill battle. So it’s always easier to take that battle up front and tell them why you are doing it (your definite major purpose remember?).

Here you can also agree on when you are working on your own business and when your father/spouse/friend etc.

If your still and got no family or strong commitments, now is the time that you should focus on getting something off the ground

Be more productive when you work

Because you do not have all the time in the world, you should focus on becomming more productive.

There are tons of strategies for this, I usually have an 80/20 mindset and only focus on working on the stuff that really gives value. But it could also try to timebox tasks and block outside disturbances like email, phone etc. If I’m working in a place with other people I also tend to put on earphones even if there is no music in them simply because it indicates to other that I really don’t want to be disturbed.

But this is not a post about productivity, there are other posts about that.

Just focus on getting the most out of the sparse time you got.

Save and Execute

This last strategy involves you working your ass off and saving enough money to give you a buffer period (could be 6-12 months). Then quit your job and live of the money you’ve saved.

This is not for everyone because the strategy assume that you can actually save money and not just spend all you get on your monthly paycheck. It also assumes that you are willing to take the risk of simply quitting your job without more than your savings.

This is a really great method for young people who haven’t started a family yet and who have not yet tasted French fine wines

Cut down on expences

This might be obvious but if you just plan on this from the beginning you could perhaps add another month or two in the end. And in this situation time is probbly more important to you than that new LCD display!

This of course assumes that everyone is on the same pace. If you have a HMW (“high maintenance wife” – sorry ladies ) then it can be an uphill battle to get her to turn down the spendings in the period. You know… once you’re used to getting a lot of nice stuff each month and that second car and all.

I know people who’ve sold there appartments and started living on a shoestring budget simply because they believed so much in their idea and their definite major purpose that it was totally ok for them (even though they were used to a much higher living standard before this).

Have a little extra buffer

Getting income streams up and running usually take a little longer than planned. Assume worst case and then some! Initially you should focus on getting even small income streams up and running instead of working on that one big contract/business idea that will remove all your financial worries in generations to come!

Cashflow is much more important. If you got 6 months worth of cash, if your just get a little cashflow in you could perhaps make that 12 months or even sustain you on a small budget! You can always spend more time optimizing your cashflow channels once they are up and running.

Believe strongly in your idea

This should be tied to your definite major purpose! You should be able to visualize your entire business idea in your mind and believe that it’s just about setting everything up and then see the money pooring in.

If you do not believe strongly in your idea, your brain (remember that from before) will try to sabotage you because it finds that little corner of doubt in your mind. You should be 112% dedicated to your idea and believe that it can be done while you are still having money in the bank (or under your mattress).

There you have…

Three different strategies, so get off your ass and start taking action .

I chose one of these strategies and I know people who’ve used the other two. They can all be used to great success, but it requires that secret ingredient… YOU TAKING ACTION

Credit: epSos.de

The post 3 Strategies For Getting Out of the 9-5 Rat Race and Be Your Own Boss appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Or Why You Should Fire Your Designer – Or probably not hire one in the first place.

By reading this post, you will be able to save thousands of dollars on website design. Actually you can have a complete website that look better than what your designer would probably end up doing completely free or less
than $50.

Here’s the deal… Someone wants a website and they go out and hire the first and best designer. Often it’s a friend or friend of a friend, and sometimes it’s even a family member.

It is however not limited these segments. Everybody who can open up Photoshop call themselves a designer, including tons of people on the usual places like elance.com, odesk.com, guru.com etc.

I see this pattern again and again. “I want a website but does not know anything about it, so I’ll have someone else do it” On paper that might sound like a great idea (I mean, I’m all for -outsourcing-)

The sites they end up creating is usually “ok looking” but nothing more. The site owner ends up paying them per the hour so they usually end up spending a lot of money because design is subjective and they want
something changed.

Often I see people pay $1000-$5000 for these kind of website designs

After having this amount of money you should now have a killer website, but a lot of the time, that’s not the case!

The problem is that all websites have a goal. They want to hit a certain people segment, they want to sell products, they want to generate leads, they want to establish a brand etc.

When you simply tell a designer to do a site, you never get through these thoughtprocesses. Your designer might be interested in who your potential audience is and will modify colors and style to this, but doing a complete
“information architecture” as it’s called is seldom done my entry level designers (and you as a client do not want to pay for something that you don’t know exists).

5 Things That Are Typically Wrong With These Sites

• No clear benefit statement (why should the visitor want to stay on your site (or take action)
• No clear call to action (what do you want the visitor to do?)
• Way too much text and bad imagery (I feel like stabbing myself with the nearest pencil whenever I see two shaking hands).
• Overdesigned websites
• Bad navigation

It’s Partially Your Fault!

Basically you are trying to purchase something that you know absolutely nothing about. You basically do not know what to ask for. Imagine going to the grocery store and telling them that you want a box with something
inside. The problem is that you basically do not know what’s inside the box and let the grocerystore make that decision. And remember that we’re not talking about a pound of butter here… We’re talking about thousands of
dollars here.

Good News

I Can Tell You How To Get A Professionally Looking Website Free

I’ve done several online businesses and most of the time I end up spending less than $100 on the entire website (that’s including the design ).

It’s basically a three or four step process.

1. Use WordPress
2. Know what good design looks like
3. Select a free or paid theme
4. Optionally: Have modifications done to your theme (like getting a real logo)

Use WordPress

You’ve probably already heard of WordPress, it’s basically a content management system (CMS). There are other systems out there (too many to count actually) and I’ve also seen designers recommend some custom
developed (or perhaps no CMS at all).

All you need to know is that you should use WordPress period!

• It’s search engine optimized out of the box
• It’s typically a “one click install” with your webhosting company meaning that you can click that button yourself and thereby remove the need for a programmer/developer)
• It’s so widespread that you can get thousands of plugins or extensions to the system so if you like some special functionality chances are that it’s most like already developed (and in most cases free)
• There are also so many people who know the system, so if you actually did want to outsource small tweaks, it’s really easy (and cheap) to get people who know the system.

See this is where mediocre webdesigners/developers fail, they tend to focus on features of the CMS itself, forgetting the ecosystem that the system is part of, and the whole lifecycle of your website (like who can work on it, and when should it be updated. I’ve seen numerous sites made on some proprioraire system where the developer stopped working on the system years ago and he was the only one knowing the sytem)

I know that you got a good friend/cousin/even a son who’s telling you that you need Joomla, Drupal, Mambo, INSERT ANY NAME HERE, etc. Don’t listen to them! They might enjoy playing with tech stuff themselves but most of us really just want to start a website and focus on content (I’m really a programmer at heart and still do some consultancy some of the year – so I should know).

Know what good design looks like

Sorry to say, but you probably need a little education. Design is subjective, what I find attractive you might hate and the other way around.

There is basically no wrong or right when it comes to the design itself, BUT. There certainly is a right and wrong when it comes to archiving a certain goal online.

The three things that your design MUST HAVE

1) A clear big font statement telling your visitors exactly what the benefit of your site or product is

It’s hard getting visitors to a website, and when they get there you most often only have their attention for ten seconds before they leave again. It is vital that the visitor in that 10 seconds. By guiding the visitors’ eyes by having a big ass font clearly explaining why they should stay on the site you give them a reason to spend just a little more time!

2) Super clear navigation in the top with no more than 7 menu items (and preferable less)

Some years ago a lot of sites used left navigation and even other kinds of strangly positioned menus (I’ve even seen menus in the bottom of the page!). If you take a look at every major website outthere (and there are of course always exceptions that prooves the point) they all use a simple horizontal top navigation. No need to reinvent something here. Go with a simple horizontal menu in the top. Don’t try and make anything fancy here.
The goal is to make it easy for your visitors to find information on your site, everytime you make something “fancy” you’ll probably end having frustrated visitors.

3) A clear call to action, big buttons are awesome

Now if you’ve managed to get the visitors to stay a little more than ten seconds, you probably want them to do something. Even if you’re just having a blog and not selling anything you probably want them to stay a little long. So look at the end of all my posts, they contain “Related posts” in order to keep you a little longer.

But also if you’re selling something, you either want to get the visitors to buy or at least get a lead that you can sell to at a later stage.

So make it clear to your visitors what to do if they’ve bought your message and want to know more or even buy something from you. Don’t be afraid of big ass buttons so the visitor doesn’t need to look all over your website (again, if they need to spend more than ten seconds looking for a “Buy Now” button or “Get In Contact” or “Signup For My Newsletter” button, you’ve probably lost them).

There are of course tons of other things you could look for, but if you just look for these three things you are ahead of 95% of the competition!

An example is the Extatic theme that I’m using for one of my sites:

Select A Free Or Paid Template

A template (also known as a theme) is a predesigned web design that is being given away or sold.

The last many websites I’ve started have been using standard themes (mostly costing me less than $20).

The main strength with themes is that you can instantly see what you’re getting and decide then and there if it’s something you like and feel will appeal to your target audience.

You don’t have to wait months for your cousin to make you that first draft you end up hating but use anyway because you do not want to spend two months more waiting for another

Just remember to look for the three things that I outlined above 1) prominent placed (big ass) headline, 2) Simple horizontal navigation and 3) clear call to action and quickly discard the theme if it does not live up to these criterias.

Get Your Design In 5 Minutes Instead of 5 Months

So you might ask where you can find these free and paid themes, well let’s start with the free themes.

Google:

“free wordpress theme”

and you will get thousands of hits.

The problem with this is that you can spend days looking through all of this. If you want to filter this a bit, you can also look at someone like Smashing Magazine who creates long lists of free quality wordpress themes, I’ve found a theme or two in the past this way:

• 100 Amazing WordPress Themes 2009
• 100 Amazing WordPress Themes 2010
• 100 Amazing WordPress Themes 2011

I usually go with a paid theme, basically because there is more quality than quantity (the opposite is true with free themes).

My primary source of quality commercial themes is ThemeForest.

The weakness of using a theme is that you do not get something uniquely designed for you, but this very overrated, it’s rare that I find someone using the same theme as me and most of the time I’ve had a logo developed or perhaps changed the colors a little (most paid themes makes it easy to customize it a little usually through the administration interface).

So if you’re Nike you probably don’t want to buy a theme (I’ve seen how much money then spend on branding!) but if your a small business this will give you a way better result in the end.

Customize the theme

One thing you most often will lack when you use a theme is a logo. On this blog I’ve chosen a theme where I did not have to have a logo. It’s just the title of the blog in some smart font (but I might have a logo designed at some point)

There are several ways to get logos designed. I’ve heard several people use 99designs.com but I usually just head over to fiverr.com.

Click this link to see how to get a logo for only $5.

I usually make sure that I have the theme in place first, this way I can show whoever I hire on Fiverr what the logo should fit into.

Conclusion

By following this recipe you can basically have a website up in a couple of days (where you spend most time writing the content) instead of using months. You’ll also be able to do this on a budget And most of the time,
you will actually get a better result in the end.

Big companies often spend a lot of money, get multiple design drafts and many numbers of iterations over the design

DISCLAIMER
I’m not a designer, but have been in the online industri a long time, and know quite a lot about the mechanisms that happen online, including user behavior.

Photo Credits

The post How To Get A $5000 Website For $50 appeared first on Retire My Ass.

(Well if you’re a beginner like me and want to start running!)

“So Rasmus” you might ask… ” is this blog going to turn into some feel good exercise blog?”

Well no… But since Timothy Ferriss also wrote The 4-Hour Body, and The 4-Hour Workweek is really about hacking your life – I found it ok to discuss this as well.

But don’t worry, the next post will be back to normal, I promise

The Story Of My Body

Well to keep it short… My body was not built to lift heavy things. Basically I’m tall and quite thin. I’m 189cm tall and weighing approximately 75kg. Most of the jobs I’ve had, have included me sitting down most of the day infront of a computer. And when I got home, I could also sit infront of the computer.

Now when I work as a consultant some of the year, I pretty much sit down infront of the computer the whole day, and when I don’t have to work but is playing around with my own projects, guess what…. This also includes me working on my computer.

I haven’t really been doing any sports for the last 15 years.

While this might sound like an old man speaking, after I turned 30 I could really begin feeling my body taking a downhill turn. I could feel my back after a long day, my energy level was really low when I got home in the afternoon, and other such sympthoms.

Sidetrack: If you want to see my body in action, you can get a glimpse here where I show it of while we’re in our second home in Thailand.

Before we got our little princess, my girlfriend liked spending time at the gym, so it was an easy fit to just tag along with her. But I’m however not quite “gym material”. Besides the time it takes getting there, I’m really not into the whole sweating on machines (with ridicoulous low weight on) while looking at (searching for?) my muscles in a big mirror.

So I was self aware enough to know that if I bought a gym membership, I would probably only go once and curse myself for paying for something I didn’t use. But the problems were still there and I knew that I needed to find some kind of exercise form that I would stick with.

In the end however, I also knew that the most important thing was not starting exercising. It would be to start a habit.

Creating a new habit

Here’s the secret! If you want to start exercise for whatever reason (loose weight, get more energy, enjoy nature) and assume that you have a hard time motivating yourself? Forget about the exercise to start with. Focus on getting a habit first….

Allow me to explain…

When I had to start running, my first success criteria was to get on my running clothes, my running shoes, starting the music and then run a quick trip around the neighborhood. Basically I only ran something like 800 meters the first many times.

The problem is that if I focused on running, I would probably have done it a few times while I had the motivation, but as the initial motivation for starting running is replaced with procrastination, rainy and cold days etc. And soon you run less and less until you would just stop it all together.

So most references I’ve found basically says that it will take you 21 days to start a habit, so therefore I focused on the habit before actually focusing on the running.

So did I feel pathetic running less than 1 kilometer? Sure I did. Did I proudly tell everyone that I’ve started running? Absolutely not. I wanted to have a success with the habit first, then I could start running “for real” and then I could go and tell everybody who again would keep me accountable!

So how do you start a habit? Here’s another well kept secret. You stick it next to another existing habit!

For me my mornings are almost on autopilot, I get up, go to the toilet (“argh Rasmus… too much information….”), brush my teeth, shower, put on contactlenses, put on deodorant, put on clothes, return to the bathroom to use wast amounts of wax on my hair and put on some facial cream. And I’m ready (I really should move on to breakfast, but I currently don’t have a steady breakfast routine).

All of this happens almost with my brain need to step in and do anything other than controlling my feet and arms (some people might say that’s all my brain do all day ).

So I decided to start the morning with running before my morning ritual, and it worked like a charm. I started out running three times a week. In the perfect world I should really do it everyday in order to get into the habit, but I didn’t want to stress my body (as mentioned earlier I really hadn’t done anything for years) and I wanted a habit that I could follow also when I started adding distance.

After a year, I steadily ran approximately three kilometers three times a week. Not much, but it was steady (I wasn’t proud of the distance, but I also wanted to have a success just getting out running, so I was not so concerned with the distance).

Then two things happened that made me break from running 1) I had a little baby princess and 2) we had a really cold and snow filled winter here in Denmark.

So I stopped running again. Good news is that I’ve started again, and this time I surprisingly started out running six kilometers with each trip. 100% improvement even though I’d had a years break and I was only used to running three kilometers.

How I increased my distance with 100%

Notice I have absolutely no proof that what I’m saying is true. This is just what happened for me and what I think happened. If you want to start running, you could try the following method to increase your distance/stamina.

Thank you Tim

After reading Timothy Ferriss’ second book, The 4-Hour Body, I basically fell into the whole “Occam’s Protocol” and basically thinking more 80/20 about your exercise (the minimal things to do to get the maximum benefit).

So while I don’t want to eat like a horse (like Tim suggests) and I did start doing push-ups three times each week. As a tall thin guy I could certainly use a little form in the upper body area, so I thought “why not try it”. And I had basically been doing this for a month or two when I took up running again.

And guess what. The first time I was out running I felt great. Normally it was my lungs quitting on me and I always felt terrible wuite quickly, so I just extended the course as I was running. And this one day – hadn’t run for a year and back then only three kilometers – I ran just about six kilometers.

So… If you want to get more stamina (that you can use with your running plans), try doing pushups a couple of times each week. I cannot be sure that this was what did it, but it was the only thing I’ve changed since then.

When I do the pushups, I’m basically doing as many as I can three times (three times a week). I won’t bore you with the low number of pushups I can do

One Last Super Tip

You’re probably listening to music when running, but if you don’t you really should try it. Specially something with lot’s of energy. There are several research papers out that says it’s a really good idea

Just Do It

So that’s it, just do it. Don’t wait for better weather, better timing… Timing is never right, just put on your running shoes and go outside for a couple of minutes. Get the habit first, then extend the distance. And try as many pushups you can master a couple of times per week to gain stamina that can be used running.

Happy running…

Photo by ccarlstead

The post The Ultimate Guide To Hacking Running appeared first on Retire My Ass.

If you want to know more and get some free training, you can go to Experts Academy Here.

A lot of the stuff I found about him online prior to the event, was just affiliates pushing his products, so it wasn’t quite unbiased reviews.

The Millionaire Messenger

The only thing that I had before I went, was his book “The Millionaire Messenger” that was given to me by the same guy who invited me to the event (he’s a member of Brendon’s “Empire Group”).

So I read the book and found it “ok”. It’s not on my absolete must read (link) list, but it was not not bad either. Basically his message was that you can live of your expert knowledge. One of the points I resonated most with was the different types of experts.

• The Result Expert
• The Research Expert
• The Role Model

I know many people who wants to know “everything” within an domain before they want to go out and start sharing that knowledge, or perhaps feelt that they have to have generated millions before they can help others have financial success.

In this quest they tend to forget (and I’m certainly prone to this as well) that they already know more than 99% of other people, and the 99% could most certainly benefit from their knowledge. It also was a wake up call to me. I do not have to work only “4 hour workweeks” before I can start teaching people what I know. I already have a life where I work less than 99% of people with a job, so why not go out there in the world and inpsire and grow people? Something that I’m really passionate about.

During the semimar it actually came out that Brendon wrote the book in 13 days, which I guess shows at bit. It’s a short read and probably compiled of knowledge that he had readily on hand because of his many seminars.

It is also clear that the books serve as the low tier product that he uses to pull people into his “product funnel” (or “integrated product suite” as he calls it). Before people hands over the $2000 for a seminar or one of his online products, Brendon needs to establish trust, and he does this by low tier products such as books (his next book is already scheduled to be written).

The Seminar

So I went basically not knowing what this was all about. As I wrote I got the ticket for free because I was invited by an Empire Group member, so I *only* had to pay for plane ticket and hotel.

Because of this it was also difficult to be disappointed in any way as I had absolutely no expectations whatsoever.

All that I’ve concluded from reading the book and talking with my friend who invited me, was that the seminar was about how to establish yourself as an expert and create information products in that expert domain. Something that I resonate well with as I’m currently trying to do with ebooks and membership sites.

At the seminar there was a handout that was pretty much the powerpoint presentation that Brendon used. Although every other line included something that should be filled in. Except for the fact that I really don’t like presentation (powerpoint/keynote) that uses a lot of bullet points, it kind of worked well with the whole “fill in the blanks” of the handout. This kept the audience waiting for the next bullet to be revealed so they could fill it into their handout. It also prevented people from reading ahead in the handout and thereby not listening to what was being presented.

I can see myself using this same handout format in the workshops I give myself.

Brendon of course went into the mindset you should have in order to position yourself as an expert and to create products. He also went into how to create your brand, how to design and structure your content, what kinds of products you can create (online and offline but with a focus on online products).

There was also information on how to actually create the content and this was something I found really interesting, as I guess most of us know all this stuff about a given area, but not quite sure on how to structure it so other people can learn from it.

There was also a strong focus on how to market the products. He also went into details on doing launches and how he has used JV partners (or promotional partners as he calls them). The model he proposes is almost identical to Jeff Walker’s “Product Launch Formular” model. I really liked how he actually went into the actual content of each of free videos leading up to the launch (the model suggests having free content that is released up to the launch).

Another thing he went into was list building. Most people in the IM industry agrees that “the money is in the list”. He shared some interesting statistics about the use of images in the mails he sent out. As many marketers he spends a lot of time split testing different combinations – and he has done a lot with email. It’s also nice seeing one that isn’t just using plain text 50 character wide pure marketing spam email like it seems most people in the IM industry is doing.

On the email subject, they also talked about open rates, and that actually made me consider moving to iContact, as it seems that have rather high open rates compared to the competition (the idea is here that you get more opens because they are better at avoiding the spam folder).

But who knows right? If you’ve tried multiple autoresponder systems and have input on open rates I would love to hear from you.

He also covered a little bit on how to spend your time. The interesting thing here is that basically said that 70% of your time should go with marketing related tasks and only 20% should go with creating the actual product!

Overall I think it was a great seminar. One thing that I didn’t expect was all the awesome people there. I met many inspiring people and Brendod did a great job at facilitating the conversation and networking through group exercises and requesting that we found new people to talk with for each exercise.

You also got time for networking in all the breaks, and I had lunch with different people everyday.

As one curious thing… I actually met another guy there who is named Rasmus and who lives in Denmark. It actually started when a guy talked to me like we’ve just spend a couple of hours chatting and I didn’t knwo what the h… he was talking about (we all had nametags on). So I slowly realized that there were another “Rasmus” at the event, so in a break I scouted through the crowd for another good looking tall guy (I mean, he must look like me right?! ). Cool to find another Dane at the event.

Fantastic Surprise Guest Speakers

Apparently Brendon got a lot of cool friends, and he pursuaded a few to pop by and talk to the crowd. So the following list of people stopped by.

• Debbie Ford (author to more books than I can count )
• Frank Kern (the most laid back guy in IM – he gave some solid content while saying “fuck” every 30 seconds… he was in short… awesome)
• Scott Hoffman (Brendon’s agent – on book deals)
• Rick Frishman (publicist – also on book deals)
• David Hancock (also in the publishing biz like the other two)
• Bo Eason (former NFL player – now actor, writer etc. Did his entire Broadway show on stage!)
• David Bach (author of 9 NY Times bestsellers)

I might have forgotten one as there was a lot of guest speakers, so if you was at the seminar and remember anyone I’ve forgotten please let me know.

The seminar lasted for four days (the two first of them was very long and not many breaks) and I think it was awesome. If nothing else – I came home super inspired really wanting to take action, and you cannot put a price on that

Brendon is a fantastic speaker and I took a lot of notes only on how he worked the stage.

The “Expert’s Academy” seminars seem to evolve, as some had also attended previous “Expert’s Academy” seminars and could confirm that there was a lot of new stuff, so it seems like Brendon is putting effort into making each event better than the last.

Were You At The Event?

If you were at Expert’s Academy I would love to hear what you thought of it and if you found it as fantastic as I did

The post Brendon Burchard’s Experts Academy Review appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Timothy Ferriss calls this Filling The Void. When you have your passive income (muses) setup, left your old 9-5 job and you basically no longer have to work, what do you do?

I get the “But I love my job…” thing a lot – most of the time people find it difficult to actually think outside of what the society “expects of you”.

My own journey towards a 4 hour workweek has certainly also added some learning points and let me start out by saying that the goal is not a four hour workweek in itself! My goal is more to be able to do and work with whatever I’m passionate about. This means that I can spend time with my family, work on projects I find interesting and basically have the opportunity to “select my own battles”.

As it looks right now, I really only have to work (as an IT consultant working for hours) 3-4 months next year which is even better than this year where I probably end up working 6 months.

So what did I learn about myself in the progress? This post as you might already have noticed, is pretty much about me and my journey, you might be able to find some stuff in there that you can use in your own journey, or you might just find it a little too much of an ego post. Either way, I would love to get you input on how you would live you life if/when you wouldn’t have to work!

So back on track… What I’ve learned from not having to work for six months this year!

1 – I need to know what to do before I do it

Sounds basic right? Well… when I’m out working as a consultant I seldom take time out to think about what I’ll do when I don’t have to work, so once I don’t have to work I spent the first week trying to figure out what I should do the next couple of months. A trip to our house in Thailand is of course planned months in advance, but I’m really bad at planning what to do there before we arrive (I’m generally really bad at planning). So I’m basically going there without a plan for when to spend time with the family and what to of my own projects I want to work on (and when). My usually plan is “I figure it out when I get there”.

The problem for me with this approach is that I didn’t have an overall strategy for what I wanted to get done, so while I might have worked on a few projects, I stretched my self over too many projects that for the most part is not really aligned with my overall strategy. Guess that I fell for the “shiny objects syndrom”. People said that this and that was working for them, so I thought I would give it a try. The problem was that this was basically stuff that I wasn’t very passionate about, so it quickly lost focus (such as my niche site on baby sleep). I did it because it didn’t really take much time for me and I figured that I had the time (to do it… there is also the whole “how the hell do I get traffic” thing).

So I’ve realized that

• I need to focus on my overall strategy and make sure that my projects are all aligned with this.
• I need to be passionate about the projects I’m doing in order to make sure that I will actually keep a focus on them.

2 – I should charge for my time

This probably sounds a bit odd. I am most certainly charging for my time when I’m working as an IT consultant, but because I’ve been really passionate about helping other people work less and follow their own passions, I haven’t charged anything for the coaching session I’ve done.

I just love trying to help people, so I covered the coaching in under my “free time”. Heck I thought, I don’t need to make any money on this. And while that is true that I do not *need* to make money, I still feel that I provide value. Also people are more likely to be are bit more serious about the whole thing if they need to pay for the advice.

Don’t get me wrong, you can still send me an email through my contact form and I will answer personally (no virtual assistants there) – but I probably won’t do the indepth analysis of your business or do Skype sessions for free.

I’ve also thought about how I can get my message out and help an even bigger crowd, and since I don’t feel that 1 on 1 sessions scale that well (remember I’m trying to cut down on working for hours), I’m currently trying to empty my head into a structured online coaching program – but I will probably write more about this in future posts. If you would be interested in a structured coaching program that helped you live a “four hour workweek” be sure to sign up for my newsletter as my regular readers will be the first to know of this when it launches.

3 – Spending Time With The Family Is Awesome

It is a priveledge to be able to spend months at a time together with my family. Normally you just get to spend one or perhaps two weeks of vacation together and then you normally don’t even get to “stress down”. The months we spend this winter in Thailand gave us an opportunity as a family that I wouldn’t have traded for anything in the world.

When that’s said, I sometimes move out of the house (when we’re in Denmark that is) in the daytime in order to be able to focus on specific projects. When you need to get something done on a project you (well I do at least) really need several hours of undisturbed hours which can be difficult if I’m just sitting in the “home office”.

You also get a little weird when you just sit in front of a computer wearing only tights, haven’t shaved for a week and can’t remember when you showered the last time .

Current focus

Lately I’ve been working with getting more focus and integrating long term strategy into my work. This means abandoning a few projects that are really just time wasters. They could perhaps generate money over time, but there are other projects I’d rather work on and I’m more passionate about and need the focus. After the Experts Academy I’ve been really inspired to do something about the online coaching program and this will take a lot of my time, energy and focus, so other projects will need to be left behind.

So when my current consultancy gig ends here in October, I feel I have a strategy for what I want to do. Also I’m going to be a father (for the second time – yeah) in January to a little baby boy, so the family is also high on the priority list.

Photo credit: Karen Brazier

The post 3 Things I’ve Learned From Not Having To Work All Year appeared first on Retire My Ass.

UPDATE: See my Experts Academy Review right here

In the beginning of September (2011 that is if you’re reading this later) I’m going to Brendon Burchard’s Expert Academy in San Fransisco – well Santa Clara more precisely.

It all started with that I got the book The Millionaire Messenger by Brendon Burchard by a friend six months ago. It turns out that he was actually (and still is) in Brendon’s coaching group and really only had good things to say about it.

So I quickly read the book (it is a quick read) to see what it was he was raving about.

His method or model is basically to establish yourself as an expert in a given field and create information products. No big surprises here. I however find him a little more interesting than the usual internet marketing crowd, because he seems to be a little more professional about his business. A business that he apparently grew from $0 to $4 million in just two years.

Also his seminar runs for four days so I expect a little more than “become an expert and write an ebook”

It seems like he came out of nowhere and I certainly hadn’t heard of him until I was given the book. But in very little time, he has made a name for him self.

And he certainly seem to run with the “in-crowd”…

From his website:

Brendon has shared the stage with gurus like Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, John Gray, Brian Tracy, Mark Victor Hansen, Andy Andrews, Keith Ferrazzi, Harv Eker, Les Brown, and Jack Canfield. He’s also shared the stage with the Dalai Lama, Tony Hsieh (Zappos CEO), and Sir Richard Branson in inspiring others to be more giving and compassionate while building their businesses

But I will most likely write a longer review of the seminar once I get home again. I’ve found it difficult to find any unbiased reviews of his products online because most sites that ranks in the search engines are affiliates who earn a commision on any sale they refer. So stay tuned.

And.. if you’re in San Fransisco in the 7th to 12th September feel free to contact me if you feel like chatting over a beer.

The post Brendon Burchard’s Experts Academy – and beer… appeared first on Retire My Ass.

* Excuse my bad pronunciation, poor grammar and foul language

Why you fail miserably in Online Business

(Transcription with just the core message and without all the rambling)

Now I will tell you why you fail miserably in online business, I know this is a prerogative title but I know it will get you going. You are basically facing three main challenges; let us start with the first challenge.

The first challenge is that you do not have the right mindset. Success is not a “guru blueprint”, some secret sauce or perfect business model. Look at all the internet marketing products out there, look at those online
businesses that are using these products, 99% of them do not have success. So, it all starts in your mind. If you keep telling your mind that you can possibly do something then you can certainly do it. But if you will tell your mind that you can’t do anything, you cannot really do anything. So to start it off, you should define your major definite purpose, your most important goal right now. Perhaps, this is the lifestyle that you
want in a year or two from now, or you want to pursue something in the future. It’s not like “I want a million dollars”, there’s no success with this dream.Success is something more realistic, which you really want to pursue, like “I want to spend time with my family in Bali”, and also like few years from now, “I want to work just 4 hours a day and relax”. The second step is that you should have a burning desire to archive your major definite purpose. Last tip I would like to give you is to read the book “Think and Grow Rich”. This is free and there’s no excuse to this! This had gone
into 25 years of research on training the mindset of people to become successful. This is an absolutely brilliant book.

The second challenge is that you hate failures. If you are afraid of failure, you will and can never start. This is the number one reason that keeps people from pursuing their dreams. The second thing you do in the second challenge is that you keep on researching but you never take action. If you spend all your time making it to become perfect, guess what, perfect does not exist! If you spend all of your time to make it
perfect, chances are you will never get the product to be launched or the sad thing you can never start anything. For this, you should probably use the 80/ 20 rule; just get it good enough then get some feedback from your target market. So get it out in front of your customers’ eyes as soon as possible. You really should start! So to wrap it up, it is better to have tried and failed than never have tried at all. I mean, just go out, and do it!

The third challenge is that you do not take action. Nothing happens unless you do it. A lot of people want a successful online business but end up spending the evening watching their favorite TV show. Yes, I also do have a favorite show but this should not be an excuse of not doing your business. Taking action is the number one thing I see all successful entrepreneurs agreeing on. Taking action means making a decision and implementing the decision. Making a decision can be done in a second, so do not ever spend hours, days, months and years before you decide, not unless this is really on higher level of decision of making. Once the decision is made it is easier to act on it. So go, decide and act now!

So these are the three things that you should remember to avoid failure. Again, Focus on mindset, do not ever fear failure, and lastly, take action now.

The post Why You Fail Miserably In Online Business appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Instead of trying to remember the entire book, I’ve cooked it down to three steps, this should be somewhat easier to remember. So if you want to become more productive you should probably read on…

This post is not so much about the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) system itself, I recommend that you read the book yourself, but more a take on how I use the system i everyday life.

If you’ve never heard about the “Getting Things Done” book or David Allen it’s basically one of the most celebrated productivity systems. I cannot think of any other productivity system that has been implemented in more software applications. But again, you should really read the book, it’s excellent.

One thing I like about the book/system is that it’s really simple. Many books try to embrace everything and make the perfect system. David Allen went for a lightweight system.

Using software for GTD

The book was written in 2002 so David Allen might be excused for talking about post-it notes and using paper stacks to remember tasks. Luckily the book was such a hit that there has been developed a lot of applications for tracking tasks and help getting stuff done.

I found this list of applications that can be used with David Allen’s model.
http://www.priacta.com/Articles/Comparison_of_GTD_Software.php

Personally I use the application Things. It’s an application for mac, and there’s an iPhone version as well that syncronizes task with the mac app.

While it’s not perfect it does have a few things working for it. I’ve created a short pros/cons list if your interested. While I really recommend it, it’s mac only so all you Windows users need to look elsewhere. If anyone has recommendations, please share so in the comments (and all you Windows users are most welcome to skip the next sections ).

Pros

• It’s not an online app – this makes it really fast and there is a hot key for quickly creating a new task. This is important because you usually remember something you have to do while working with something else
• It’s really easy to use
• Works well with my iPhone
• Native GTD implementation – many applications are simply a task list or some big beast pushed into the GTD model. Things is only GTD nothing else

Cons

• It’s not an online app – this means that all my data is stored locally not somewhere in the cloud like something like Remember The Milk
• iPhone syncronization only works over WIFI (bluetooth and mobile network would really work magic)
• Comes with a price (not sure if that is a con, but there are a lot of free alternatives)

Before doing the 3 Steps For Getting Things Done

I assume that you have already broken down you project into manageable tasks. I try to keep all “tasks” less than 2 days of work. If they are any bigger than that I would want to break them down. Notice that most tasks are typically much shorter than this, typically 5 minutes to a couple of hours.

Actually breaking up a project into tasks are in itself a task! I usually only define the first couple of tasks so I have enough to get started. One thing I’ve learned from many years working with IT projects is that you cannot plan an entire project on paper. Instead just plotting down a few tasks and get going, will give you a quick start and most likely also a quick success because you can start on taking action immediately.

And then the 3 steps

And finally, the three steps for getting stuff done!

Collect

You need to have a place where you store all potential tasks. I use Things for this but it could as easily be post-it notes or an excel spreadsheet. The whole idea here is to get the stuff out of your head and into a more permanent form.

We humans can only have a few things in our “working memory” so trying to keep something you need to remember in your head, will only give you less brainpower for other activities. I often get ideas when I lay in bed ready for sleep and if I do not get them out of my head I will keep thinking of them, often preventing me from sleeping. Once they registered I can think of something else and go to sleep.

Sometimes when it’s just thoughts and ideas I don’t use Things – at this time there is not really a “task” here, so I typically use an iPhone application for keeping this. Currently I’m testing an iPhone app called Simplenote, but I know a lot of people use something like Evernote. I’ve tried starting with Evernote several times, but I think it perhaps does too much for me. I really just want something dead simple where I can quickly get my thoughts down.

But once I have a “real” task that I can act upon, it get’s into Things. Most of the time it starts in the iPhone version because I have this with me at all times and then gets syncronized with my mac when I get home and started the computer. Then end up in an “Inbox” for later organization (notice how the registration of the task happens at another time than the organization, that’s important).

I generally just add everything, I can always remove it. Some tasks are date/time specific. It needs to happen on a certain date. Some of these I add to my Google Calendar simply because I can then get a notification. While I can certainly also schedule stuff in Things, I really like having it in my calendar because I syncronizes with the calendar in my iPhone and I get notifications popping up. Things probably got some kind of push notification system as well, but I’ve just gotten used to using the calendar.

Process

Now that you’ve got everything registered, it’s time to organize everything. I usually look at my inbox a couple of times per week and try to clear it out. Clearing it out does not mean doing the tasks, only that they are “labeled and put into categories”.

There’s a simply process for processing tasks in the inbox (hmm that’s a lot of processing going on there).

• Delete it if it’s not relevant anymore
• Do it if it can be completed in less than two minutes.
• Delegate it to someone else if it is really not something you should be doing
• Defer it to later if it’s not something that falls in the other categories (again look how the different processes are separated from eachother)

In GTD tasks are organized into areas and projects. Things also has some tagging that can be used to categorize tasks.

This is perhaps the step that I could improve the most. I really do not have that many projects and most of the time, the tasks end up in areas depending on what business it relates to (or if it’s personal, has to do with friends or family).

I do have some projects, but I think it’s less than 10 and more like around 8. I could probably think of several other things that could be classified as a project. I’m biased towards action, so I really don’t enjoy sitting and labeling stuff and putting it into boxes. I just want to register it and then do it. But I know that we’re all different, so I guess that some people really enjoy having this neatly organized.

The tasks are of course also prioritized so I know what to do first.

While I look and empty my inbox a couple of times per week, I generally only revisit existing tasks for organization and reprioritization (and deletion of tasks that are no longer relevant – you’d be surprised how many tasks I don’t do but simply delete after a certain period of time) every other week or so (I really should be doing it once a week)

Do it

Yeah, I guess that the title says it all. This is where you do the tasks.

One important thing to note is that GTD works with a “next list”. Instead of scheduling tasks to a certain date (unless they are timespecific like “going to the hairdresser” – ok, bad example) you have a “Next List” that is just all the tasks prioritized so you always know what you should work on next.

These are of course divided into contexts (remember projects and areas from before), so when I’m working on a business I should of course not be running errands and buying groceries. So the projects and areas set the context and from there on it’s just starting from the top and doing the tasks…

Some closing ramblings

While I’ve been very happy with Things and the whole “Getting Things Done System”, I find that I’m best at tracking tasks related to business and work. While I do have a few personal related tasks in there, I’m simply not consistent enough with it, and a lot of the time, these are the tasks that wait the longest to be done (maybe that just says something about my priorities?!)

So if I should be better at this, I should probably focus on being better at processing and organizing the tasks, and then also remember to include more personal and “soft” tasks.

Do you GTD?

I would love to hear your take on the GTD process, and also if you use some system for it. It would be great to also offer all you Windows users an application recommendation.

The post 3 Steps For Getting Things Done appeared first on Retire My Ass.

* Excuse my bad pronunciation, poor grammar and foul language

Sites mentioned in the video

• elance.com (my preferred place to outsource)
• odesk.com (great alternative to Elance)
• bestjobs.ph (the place to find Filippino VAs)
• onlinejobs.ph (John Jonas’ alternative)
• virtualstafffinder.com (screened VA’s)
• fiverr.com (everything is $5)

The post Outsourcing To Elance, Odesk and The Philippines appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Watch it on YouTube for a HD Experience

In a recent episode of The Foolish Adventure Podcast there was discussion about the topic of this video.

Traditionally they have recommended starting a business in a niche you’re passionate about. But after reading the book “The Millionaire Fastlane” by MJ DeMarco (who recommends focusing on needs when you decide on a business), they were somewhat torn on the question.

There is a great discussion about the subject, but no real conclusion here .

So I’ve tried to sum up my thoughts on the subject.

The post Needs vs. Passion Based Business appeared first on Retire My Ass.

Lately I’ve been doing informal coaching sessions and sparring with mainly solo entrepreneurs, and I absolutely love to inspire and being able to help people realize their dreams and goals.

You could of course argue that a coaching business scales pretty badly because I have to sell my hours, well here’s the shocker. Up until now I’ve been doing it for free simply because I love doing it.

I guess that this is the benefit for not having to work all the time. I get to follow my heart and help people grow. This doesn’t mean that I won’t start any other businesses, but only that I will spend more of my “play time” helping people.

So how is this going to play out?

This is VERY early in my process, but hopefully by committing to you today, you will hold me accountable and follow up on my progress. By committing to the public I am more motivated to actually get this done. If I’d only committed this to my self we all know how it usually goes right?!

I’m going to focus on three different services

Free content and services

Basically continuing putting out quality content on this blog and free information like my Free Membership Site Ebook.

I get a lot of positive feedback on the site which makes me super motivated to provide you with great content. I really want to do more video blogging or training but haven’t really found my way yet. I don’t really like the videos I’ve done on this blog (maybe with the exception of The Mexican Fisherman Story ), but it is a learning game and the more I do it, the better I get.

Lifestyle Design Academy

I’ve been involved in the e-learning business for several years and have a lot of experience in this industry. I’ve also seen a lot of Internet Marketing online video courses (most of them promising you instant riches, but most just loose their money when buying the product).

What I’m basically dreaming about is doing an online coaching program that is targetted the individual. Instead of the training being done the way the trainer likes it, what about targetting it to the individual, and working with the individual’s strengths and weaknesses. So one of the ideas I’m playing with is doing a personality test on all members, and using this to make a better delivery of the content using communication specialized for the individual’s personal profile.

We all learn and act differently, so why not use this for online learning as well.

The academy would focus on building your own muse providing you with passive income. It’s still very early though and I’m currently only trying to outline the entire thing and gather all the ideas I have.

Personal coaching and workshops

I would still like to work directly with people, and while I might do this through the academy, I would also take on one-on-coaching. I’m currently doing workshops here in Denmark and I would really like to do more speaking and workshop gigs.

So what’s the action plan

I’m considering taking an NLP course this fall. I haven’t quite decided yet, but I’ll probably write a bit more about this.

There is a lot of communication and behavioural patterns training that I find really interesting when trying to grow other people.

August 27th I’m doing a full day workshop on the 4 Hour Workweek model and I’m doing coaching for a few people online (thank you Skype ) in order to get some practical experience.

And a small bonus

If you follow me on Twitter you probably saw this, but I was recently interviewed by David on how I’ve organized my life.

You can see the full 45 minutes of me rambling and shedding some light on my take on online businesses. There’s a lot of stuff in there I haven’t shared online before (you know once you get started, right…)

You can see (and hear) the entire interview here:
http://4hwwsuccess.com/interview-with-rasmus-lindgren-from-my4hours-com/

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My longest post to date, yeah!

So, what’s an online business?

There a lot of different business models online and lately I’ve been focusing on creating a paid membership site (that’s about to launch within the next month) but in this post I’ll focus on how you can build an online web agency using outsourcing.

The model in a nutshell is to sell services to a given market segment and outsource the actual production. You act as a broker or proxy between the customer and the provider.

The benefit from the customer’s perspective is that you can provide them with a low price, while they are still dealing with a local company.

Currently I have two such businesses targeting the Danish market. A business that does complete e-commerce sites on a budget and a linkbuilding service (if you don’t know what linkbuilding is, you only need to know it has something to do with search engine optimization).

I have to do a little work per client in the first business meaning that it doesn’t scale as well as I would like, but the second business scales extremely well and I do not have to work more per client I bring in.

The model spans over seven days, and if you are prepared to put full time into this, it should be possible to start a business with less than $50.

Identify the market

As you might know, I always start out by finding the market first. Unfortunately most people start with the product first, and once it has been developed start looking for a market who wants to buy it. While this can certainly work, it comes with a much higher risk for failure.

Often people who goes the “product first” route, typically creates the product in order to “scratch their own itch”. This is something recommended by 37signals in their book Rework.

From 37signal’s success it is obvious that this can work, but they were also part of a very clear target audience themselves. The small software development company. They also released a hughly successful open source product at the same time, making the marketing of their paid products even easier.

I still believe in finding the market first and designing a product for that market.

For me it has been designing products for Danish entrepreneurs, mainly because I’m active on a Danish online forum for entrepreneurs. This has been partly modeled after the success of of “WSO” products on the Warrior Forum.

If you do not know the Warrior Forum or WSOs you just need to know that it is THE online forum for internet marketers. And WSO stands for “Warrior Special Offer”, an offer that one member of the forum puts out to the other members. Here you have a huge market interested in anything about making money online, so if you can design a product for this audience and release it as a WSO there are a lot of potential buyers for your product.

Going this route can give you an instant audience instead of having to find clients through the search engines and paid marketing.

Design product for the market

When you design a product, it should probably be something you’re interested in. The last couple of months I’ve been doing an information product (an ebook) in a market that I don’t really feel for, and it has taken forever to get everything done (I’m almost there….). If you choose something that is closer to your heart it will be easier to put the hours into it that it requires.

But what kind of products should you do?

There are several good candidates, but in this post I will focus on what can be called “on online web agency”. Basically providing online services.

A few ideas spring to mind (remember that you should find the market asking for these services before designing the product).

- Developing ecommerce sites for aspiring entrepreneurs (which I’m currently doing in one of my businesses)
- Providing search engine optimization services (that I’m doing with linkbuilding in my other business)
- Providing facebook services (such as designing facebook fan pages)
- Providing simple wordpress websites to small businesses
- Specializing in websites for a highly targetted audience (could be building sites for plummers or carpenters)
- Managing adwords campaigns
Try to develop a “product” rather than a service. In my own businesses I basically only provide one product. In my ecommerce site development business, I clearly state what my customers get and what they do not get. As an example they are responsible for putting content into the site, another example is that we provide a fixed amount of design drafts and fixed amount of design iterations (how many times the client can change the design). But this makes it possible for us to charge a fixed price, making it a clear deal for the client (they do not pay us by the hour).

In my other business my customers can only select between 40 and 100 monthly backlinks (it is a linkbuilding service that creates links to the customer’s site(s)). What if the client want more or less? Too bad, they have to go somewhere else.

Don’t try to cater for all customers in a segment, focus on the 80% that will fit into the product and recommend a competitor to the last 20% of the customers that won’t. My most important job with my ecommerce site business is trying to identify the clients that I don’t think will fit into my concept (that basically have too high expectations of what they can get for $1750 that I typically charge for my services).

So the learning point here is, try to only do one product. Don’t be a web agency that does everything. You need to describe the whole process, and this is impossible if you do everything. And without a process, it is hard to outsource and you end up doing everything yourself and selling your hours (which we do not want to… the goal is to free hours).

You should end up with a clear defined product you want to a clear defined market through a clear defined channel.

Define the process

Try to move through your entire delivery process step by step and scetch it out in a diagram.

A couple of questions you can ask youself.

- How do I get customers, what is my value proposition to them
- How do I handle questions in the sales phase (in my example we have no phone number, we usually take all communication over email – most people can see that we provide a service at a low price and accept this. Those who do not, I gladly forward to someone else since they tend to be “high maintenance clients” that drain your time)
- How do people order the services? (in my business all ordering is online only – they also fill out their requirements online)
- How do I deliver the service/product?
- How do I handle input/questions in the delivery process? (in my example we have 2-3 design iterations where the client can give us input on the design)
- How does the production team get information about the client?
- How and when do people pay? for the product/service (do they pay online or do you send them an invoice manually?)

Try to sketch out the entire flow on a piece of paper.

Now the important stuff… How much of this can be automated!

The more that can be automated, the less you have to work and the better the business will scale.

Because of my background in IT, this is actually one of the steps I’m very good at. But it is perhaps also the step that is the hardest to explain to someone else. It all comes down to you having an idea of what can be done easily with existing products such as WordPress and plugins, and what have to be developed especially for you.

I cannot give you my 10+ years of experience, but you have a couple of opportunities. 1) find someone in you network who knows about stuff like this, or 2) send me an email – if it’s a short one and you send me the process outline, I’ll try to point you in the right direction.

As an example I had a small component developed (cost me less than $200) that could send invoices to my clients in one of my businesses. This saved me from sending out 20-30 invoices manually, and will save me even more time once I get even more clients (scaling).

Identify provider

Since we are providing services and do not want to do them ourself, we need to find a service provider that we can outsource it to.

This is perhaps one of the most important steps. There is always some risk when you find a provider on the other side of the planet. I have used both Elance as well as online research to find my providers. I’ve even used a VA from india to do additional research on a couple of companies.

A couple of things you should look at when chosing the provider.

- How long have they been in business? The more years they’ve been in business, the more goodwill they have around their brand that they want to protect.
- How many people work for the company. (avoid freelancers and small companies with only a couple of employees)
- Previous work. Take a good look if they provide any references. You can also try to contact some of the clients listed in the referece section to hear about their experience with the provider. This can also provide you with information about any gabs that you should pay particular attention to.
- Communication skills. It is vital that they have good english skills to avoid misunderstandings. I usually email, chat and even skype the provider in order to get a good understanding of this.

Remember, in the end it has to be a win-win situation for you and the provider you end up chosing. If not, it mught start out well, but you will suddenly find yourself without an provider for all your customers.

I’ve lost one provider because I pushed the price too much, but got an even better provider afterwards so it was not a complete loss.

Pricing

What will your product cost?

I will usually want to pocket at least 50% of the asking price, but this again goes to if you can the provider who is willing to work for a low price, compared to how much you think your potential customers are willing to pay for the product/service.

When you design your product you probably have some idea of the price that you can charge for your product, so here you will have to work from that price and identify all the costs you will have.

As an example I include hosting and payment gateway in the ecommerce site packages I provide. I of course have to pay a partner for this besides the actual design/development of the site.

Create website

Use WordPress!!!! It is easy to setup and you can get something up and running in no time.

If you do not have hosting yet, go to Dreamhost and signup. Buy a domain and use their oneclick installer to install wordpress.

They even install a lot of designs (called themes) in the installation process. I usually get free theme or buy a cheap one. You could try to take a look at Woothemes or Themeforest. You could also simply do a Google search for “WordPress theme” but then you can spend days looking through the thousands and thousands of hits.

Remember not to go into “details mode” like “well I like this design, but I would really like to have that and that changed”. Try to accept “I like 80-90% of this design” and just go with it. Most of the time it is not whether or not “you like it” that will generate sales. It should just look professional and most of the themes on the to sites I’ve linked to live up to this.

The success criteria is not whether you like it or not, but if people with trust you with their money when seeing the site. Also, once you get up and running, you can always change the design, it is dead easy to too.

One of the things I usually spend a little money on, is the logo. Most of the time the “wordpress theme” comes with it’s own logo, and while you could probably start up a graphic application and hack something together, it is much easier to simply get a logo from Fiverr.com. Just remember to provide a reference to the design you are planning on using when you order. If the designer knows the context the logo should go into, it is much easier to get something that will blend nicely with the design.

If you haven’t tried setting up a wordpress blog before, you can get a few tips in my free ebook here. It is about membership sites, but the basic wordpress setup can also be used for a normal website.

Create copy

This is typically where I spend a lot of my time. It really depends on the service though. One of my services has a lot of copy because the price is quite high (well everything is relative, but $1750) and the other has less since it is a more inexpensive product ($50-$100 per month).

The only advice I can give you here, is not to provide too much text on the pages. People don’t read on the web, they scan. Try to look at your own behavior when you browse to a page with a lot of text. My guess is that you instantly say to yourself that you do not have time for this and move on.

So cut down on text, and only write what is really necessary.

In my last business I had a writer write a few articles that I could use on my website in order to get a little more content. So don’t be afraid to try and outsource this as well. I prefer to the writing about the actual product myself, since I probably know it better. For these kinds of services I don’t do the traditional long internet marketer long sales letter, but a “normal website”. You are however welcome to try the long sales letter format if you feel it can bring in more sales.

Create process support

In your process, there might have been a few things that you wanted automated but cannot do with out of the box components. This is the step where you potentially outsource small bits of the process.

In general try to focus on the steps where you will get the biggest gain.

As an example I had two small components developed for my linkbuilding service.

1) As I already mentioned, a small component where I could send invoices to all my clients in one go (developed as a wordpress plugin since this is where all my clients are registered as members), and

2) A component that could send linkbuilding reports to my clients (so my provider sends the reports to a specific email address and the component then forwards the report to my client – this was done in order to hide the sender/provider from my clients).

As already mentioned, this is a difficult step for a “non-techie”.

Make offer

Now is the time to go to your market and making your offer. If your market is in a forum like mine is, go there and post.

I typically try to get a few beta testers on at first. This ensures that you get the entire system tested and often also a few testimonials you can put on your page. The betatesters typically get something like a 50% discount (almost most of my earnings).

This cannot be stressed enough. People usually want references before chosing a provider and by giving some people a huge disount you will get this. When you give people a disount and tell them that it is for testing your product/service then they are often more patient if something doesn’t quite work out as planned.

As an example, I’ve had a lot of trouble with the WordPress plugin that does integration with my payment processor (PayPal), so much in fact, that I’m planning on replacing the entire wordpress plugin. This however will come at a cost because all my customers will probably have to sign up again, and I might loose some in the process. Therefore I will probably have to give all my customers a free month of service in order to ensure that they make the switch.

A costly operation because I chose poorly when looking at wordpress components that could help me with my process (actually because I chose a cheap product at $27 instead of the one I really should be chosen priced $97 – it is costly to try and save money!).

Conclusion

So there you have it. This is the process I’ve used a couple of times to design a service for a market. While it is not my only income, these businesses has provided nice profit that I have used to invest in other projects.

What do you think about this? Would it be possible for you to do this as well and make a little money online?

The post How To Create An Online Business In A Week appeared first on Retire My Ass.

If you’re a regular reader, you might know that I promised to post every week. But for the last couple of weeks there have been a couple of holes in this plan.

While I’ve been really motivated towards blogging, everytime I start on a post I feel someone else has done it better than I ever could and get discouraged.

So I’m currently having a bit of a writer’s block.

How do you find inspiration for blog post subjects? I’d love to get your input.

What I’m currently up to

So I think this post would be a good idea to tell you about my current projects.

SAP Project Training – I’m almost ready to launch a coaching program for SAP project managers. It’s really awesom and I’ve gotten a SAP project manager with more than 13 years of experience from huge enterprise projects do all the content. We’re currently planning the launch. If you know anyone in the SAP business please help spread the word

Save Thousands On ??? Ebook – I’m almost done with an ebook that tells you how to save thousands of $$ on a particular type of product. Currently the ebook is in the Danish and for this market only, but if it proves a succes, I might consider translating it and start an English site. The site is done, and the ebook is 80% complete!

4-Hour Workweek Workshop – I love doing courses and workshops. I got a full day (8+ hours) workshop planned on the 27. of August. It is the same workshop that I also held last year and I’m really looking forward to this (and hopefully inspiring a few people to taking action and change their life!)

Free webinar on Passive Income (in Danish) – A few months back I did this free webinar on passive income. Unfortunately it is in Danish. Let me know if you think it is something I should do in English as well

Besides this I’m of course still running Get A Shop (makers of Magento e-commerce sites for the Danish market) and Backlinks.nu (professional linkbuilding on subscription also for the Danish market).

I’ve also spent some time coaching (informally) small business owners or people who want to start getting a passive income online.

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So I thought I’d write a short post about the books that I recommend that most read. You don’t have to be anything like me to enjoy these books, they are all awesome and I think everyone can benefit from them.

I won’t go into “The 4-Hour Workweek” as I think you might have guessed that I recommend this book, so I’ll focus on the other books.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Rich Dad, Poor Dad on Amazon.com

A classic and a quick read by Robert Kiyosaki. If you feel like you never have enough money by the end of the month, this book is for you. It is basically “Money 101″. I’ve read several of his other books as well, and while you might feel that there’s a theme that repeats itself, they are all good.

Robert uses storytelling about his childhood which makes it a real easy read.

Getting Things Done

Getting Things Done on Amazon.com

This grand classic on well… getting things done is a masterpiece on work-life management (notice how the dreaded Time Management word is avoided ). David Allen does a good job in outlining a system so simple and basic that it is actually useful.

While the book talks about physical folders and post-it notes for keeping track of the tasks, it is clear that the system works well as a software system. There are a lot of software applications and I myself am using Things for mac including their iPhone app.

Presentation Zen

Presentation Zen on Amazon.com

If you’ve ever fallen a sleep at a “death by powerpoint” meeting, this book is for you. Actually it is for everyone who has ever opened PowerPoint or other slideware applications.

This should really be mandatory reading if you consider doing a presentation with the help of a computer. So help make the world a better place by eliminating all the crappy presentations we need to attend on almost a daily basis by reading this book!

The book is named after the blog with the same name by Garr Reynolds

Brain Rules

Brain Rules on Amazon.com

I actually think that it was a reference in Presentation Zen that lead me to this fantastic book. While brain research might not be your cup of tea, John Medina does a fabulous job of explaining complex research so everyone understands it. This is one of my all time favorites!

BONUS: At dinner parties I can quote brain research reports and findings and sound more clever than I really am

Besides this the book is really also about how we learn and act and is super well written.

So there you have it…

I read tons of books but these are the ones that are my first answer to most questions (besides “The 4-Hour Workweek” of course). At some point I might release a longer list of good books, but for now these books are absolutely required reading

The post Books I recommend again and again appeared first on Retire My Ass.

As you might have noticed, I didn’t write last week. This was due to me being down with the flu. Unfortunately last weekend was also the time where my lawn exploded with dandelions.

I don’t know about you, but looking out at all the dandelions exploding up in my lawn from the sofa in the living room with almost 40° fever was almost too much to bear.

Stress comes when things move outside your control

I certainly suddenly felt stressed out even though I was shaking with cold in full clothing under two blankets. I could just look at the damn dandelions and do nothing but become more stressed out.

So has this blog suddenly turned into “confessions of a sick gardening rookie”? Well no – but I would like to remind you that outsourcing is not always some guy in India setting up a website for you, no… Outsourcing is also closer to home, the tasks you don’t want to do yourself.

“But I can do that myself”-syndrome

Some people certainly enjoy gardening more than I do, but the point here is that there are several things you might get someone else to do. I know, I know, you can paint the garage yourself, but here are a few reasons why you might want to get someone else to do it.

You can spend more time with friends and family

When having a normal 9-5 job, you typically do all the chores around the house in the weekends where you have a little more time. But the weekend is also the time you could spend with your family.

Wouldn’t you rather spend a few hours with your children (if you have any) or your spouse rather than doing spring cleaning or chasing dandelions? Well, I know I do…

You don’t have to do stuff you don’t really like doing

I’m really not that handy and therefore I also hate all the small things that always have to be done when you own a house. For instance I once spend 3 months painting our bedroom (well, I didn’t paint for three months but from I started painting to I removed all the covering it did take three months), and I ended up hating the result…

Professionals are so much faster

The next time I had to get something painted I simply hired a professional. He had it done in two days flat (and that was a space bigger than our bedroom that took me three months).

So here a few things you might want to outsource that you might not have thought of.

5 Things You Probably Want To Outsource

Cleaning

This thing alone is probably saving me from a fight with my girlfriend each week. You know… over who will use the vacuum cleaner and who will play his latest PlayStation3 game

By having someone come help us with the cleaning I can play my game without feeling bad (or work on my business, or spend time with my little baby princess, or… well.. you get the idea)

Gardening work

I have really considered this, but haven’t taken the plunge yet. I really want to have “green fingers” and our garden is really not that big, but it is also being a pain the butt, so I might just end up having someone help me with this.

In our second home in Thailand there is of course a garden company that looks after the garden three times per week, but this is quite cheap labor. Here in Denmark it is quite expensive (so… if you a cheap guy who can come and look after my lawn once per week – in the Copehagen area, Denmar – throw me an email).

Cooking

In the “4-Hour Workweek” book Timothy Ferriss actually writes about a family who got some private person to cook for them. This gave them a lot of free time as they didn’t need to go to the supermarket and buy groceries, they didn’t need ot spend hours in the kitchen preparing dinner and so on.

I really want to experiment with this, but have found it a little expensive. One solution could be to get “au pair” do some of it, but this probably take some persuasion of my girlfriend (also I’m not sure that I would like to have someone living with us all the time. I’m open for comments on this ).

Grocery shopping

This is a little like the one above. Recently we’ve actually started to buy groceries online. You’ve probably done this for a long time, but in Denmark buying groceries online has really only been possible for the last year or so.

There were some pioneers a couple of years ago but they all had to close down because the market really wasn’t ready for it at that time. The main issue is delivery because we have quite high salaries in Denmark. This means that the added price of delivery can be quite high.

Well…. Currently my girlfriend shops sunday evening for the entire week, and we get everything delivered during monday. A lot of time is saved this way.

All sorts of handywork

As mentioned earlier, I’m really not that handy. This means that I generally call a professional even if it is just something like our dishwasher making strange noises.

You should basically do more of what you are good at, and just ignore the stuff you’re bad at… I’m really bad at everything that requires powertools and/or drywall, painting, electricity, water pipes etc (you get the idea )

What do you pay someone to do so you don’t have to?

So, what are you doing? And if you are not doing any of this, then why not?

It all comes down to what your hourly rate is! And if you want to “buy time”!

I usually say that my goal is to only work with stuff I’m passionate about, why shouldn’t this apply to my personal life as well?

The post 5 Things You Probably Want To Outsource appeared first on Retire My Ass.

But if it is as simple as taking action, then why are not more people doing this? Well, this is what we’re gonna look at today.

We are all unique

Every individual is unique and every induvidual is special. With this said, we all share some common traits and attributes. I am not talking about to eyes/one nose here, but more on who we are as a person and how we act in given situations.

Different personality types

It might provoke you to be labeled or put into a box, as I said every individual is unique, but in order to be able to see common challenges I need to put you into a box or two .

During my professional career I’ve taken several different personality tests. I know that there are too many different models and people generally like one over another. The test that I feel that has defined me the best is the Insights Profile. It generally place people into four colors (categories). The profile is of course more nuanced than this and builds like a lot of other profiling tools on the work of Carl Jung.

The four core colors and there characteristics are:

Blue

Green

Yellow

Red

Try going through the colors again….

There are probably words in all boxes that describe you, but if you only had to choose one color, which color would you say it is?

Biased towards action

As I said in the beginning I mainly find that entrepreneurs are biased towards action and thereby putting them in the red box. People in the yellow box tends to generate ideas but is not really that great at following through (also a lot of entrepreneurs in this group, but they might be more struggling or has teamed up with a “red“).

I am not writing this to insult all the “other colors”, simply stating that some people might have an easier time to get something done.

Putting it roughly I would say that 80+% of succesful entrepreneurs that I’ve ever come acros have either been in the red square (most likely) or yellow square.

But this is not me

“So Rasmus are you saying because I’m not red I shouldn’t be an entrepreneur and keep my 9-5 job?”

NOT AT ALL

I’m just saying that you should be aware of your strengths and weaknesses.

As an example, blue people could be the typical engineer that like to spend a lot of time inventing a product. The problem is that this personality type (and yes I’m generalizing) likes to focus on the product and will most like never be finished simply because the product needs to be 110% done before even talk of market/clients/partners etc. can begin.

This process can take years and the market could shift or the market was perhaps never there. Someone like me is all about getting the product to the market as soon as possible.

Speaking about myself, you might like to know that I’m on the border between red and yellow (on the red side though). This also corresponds well with my motto (that some other small shoe company also uses): “Just Do It”.

If you know your weaknesses it is also easier to surround you with – or even partner up with – someone who supplement you. Just as long that you are aware of eachother traits or else you will most likely end up as cats and dogs fighting over every little thing.

It is a classic scenario between the engineer who wants to get the product “finished” and the marketer that wants to get it to the market and test the reponse (or simply sell it).

So… if you want to start start a muse that through passive income can help you get a four hour workweek, then you should probably start to look at your own strengths and weaknesses first.

And because I’m red I like the following quote

WHAT COLOR ARE YOU? Please comment below, I would love to hear where you would place yourself

The post Why some people are taking action and others are not appeared first on Retire My Ass.

A brief intro…
As you might know I still work some months of the year as an IT consultant in order to pay my expenses, currently I am working for a big insurance company here in Denmark. I am hired to help them build version two of a business calculation tool.

The job itself might not interest you much, but what you might like to know is that I perform like crazy and the client just loves me and all the stuff I get done.

In order to perform well, I have model that I usually use in both my consultancy work but also when I work on my own projects. This enables me be typically 2-3 times more productive than my peers when I use this model.

But before we dive into the model, let us just briefly touch on a subject from the 4-Hour Workweek book.

Effective vs Efficient

At first glance the two words might look the same, at least the did to me the first time I saw it. In Danish we usually just use the Danish word “effektiv” as you might have guessed means “effective”. And while I’ve heard a couple of translations of “efficient” there is really no good and simple word for this in Danish (to the Danes reading this I’ve sometimes used the word “iværksom” but I really don’t think it covers it fully).

So let’s take a look at the definition of the words.

Effective: is doing the things that get you closer to your goals

Whenever we do a task that helps us complete a given goal we are effective. So hiring that guy to do the design of your new website, is one step closer to getting your new professional website.

Efficiency: is performing a given task in the most economical manner possible

This is really where Timothy Ferriss is brilliant. He gives many examples in his book on how he “hacked” different goals.

So what can you learn from these two words?

How would you like to create your own spaceshuttle and sending it into space?

Sounds crazy right? Well someone is doing precisly that here in Denmark. Read on… I’ll share a link in a moment….

From Effective vs. Effecient you can learn to…

1) Identify the tasks that will get you closer to your goal, don’t work to keep yourself busy (work for work’s sake)
2) Test assumptions about the task in order to find smarter ways to solve it. Challenge status quo.
3) Use the 80/20 rule. Don’t go for a 100% solution where 80% is good enough. It’s the last 20% that will slow you down and make you loose your momentum.

Copenhagen Suborbitals
These crazy Danes are well on their way to be launching a manned spaceshuttle into space on a budget <-- MY NEW PERSONAL HEROS

So let’s move on to my model…

This is a simple 3-step approach but I find myself using it more and more and specially when I am selling my work on the hour. When clients pay by the hour but can see that you perform way better that the standard, big surprise, they want to hire you again and again. My problem is that I don’t want to work as a consultant all year so I have to turn down potential clients a lot of the time.

So let’s take a look on the first step!

1) Define the tasks

“Duh…. Why of course” you might say, but stay with me on this one. If you want to get into a zone of productivity you need to have a “known problem space”. You should be able to focus on “production” not on stopping up to gather more information about a task.

The typical example if you work in desk job is that you need information from someone else in order to complete your own task. The whole idea is to accept this and simply ignore that part of the task for now. Accept that you can only do 80% of the task. Do it and move on to the next task.

If you stop and try to gather that information, you will have to go “outside” of the zone and this will count as an interruption. And as you might know, interruptions are the mother of all bad when we are on the subject of productivity.

So if you depend on someone else to finish a task, do what you can and move on the next task.

Also on defining tasks…

Find tasks that share common traits and batch them together.

By doing the same thing over and over again can really put you into the zone. You brain is wired to that particular task, you have all the tools prepared for that task so this can be leveraged if you can do the same thing over and over again.

Start to think in patterns (or at least learn to spot them)

If a task is not defined well enough we often start procrastinating, like…

“Oh.. I just have to wait for [INSERT COLLEAGES NAME HERE] to deliver that report… well.. I can just quickly visit Facebook in the mean time”…. (yeah right… 30 minutes later you are still not working on the task at hand).

2) Block the outside

As already mentioned interruptions are the nemesis of productivity!

So do the following:

1) Put on earphones. Music block the outside noice and makes it obvious to people around you that they cannot just start up a conversation. This makes them interrupt you only when it is really important.

2) Turn off ALL notifications. This means turning off notifications on mail, instant messaging, skype etc. Hey.. Why not quit the applications, I mean, how long does it take you to start up your email client? 10 seconds? If you quit the application entirely you also remove the temptation to cheat and open up to see if someone mailed you.

3) Phone on silence mode. You might even put your phone into your bag or drawer. Most of us can see it ringing out of the corner of our eye even when it’s on silent.

4) Close the door. If you are in your own office or like me sitting in the “home office” some of the time, you can benefit from closing the door. This indicates to people around you that you are doing something and they shouldn’t just barge in.

So… now you should be ready to start producing

3) Produce, do not correct

—> Recommended by most professional writers <----

Since I’m Danish I’m really looking to improve my English writing, so I’ve been reading a couple of books on writing (yeah I know still some way to go ).

Something that I see all the professional writers recommend, is to write as fast and undisturbed as you can!

Do not go back and correct, but focus on getting as much done as you can. This is something I also recommend when you have to work. Focus on being productive and realize that you cannot run at 300 miles an hour and do everything perfect. Accept that you will have to go back and fix a few things.

This might sound controversial but this again goes to the 80/20 rule. Just do it 80% and accept that you might have to revisit the task at a later stage. It is totally ok to finish a task at a later stage.

You can’t be super productive if you get stuck in details all the time.

One last tip is that you could set a deadline on the task. Tasks have a habbit of expanding so they fill the time available for their completion.

This is also known as timeboxing. Try to push yourself a bit. You will be surprised to what you can get done in very little time when you have a fixed deadline.

So there you have it! This is my three step model that puts me ahead of the competition!

And one last thing…

Accept that you can’t be hyperproductive all the time

None of us can, we’re not robots right?!

As a consultant I like to come in and kick ass. Once I’ve proved myself, I can take it down a notch (but still be really productive).

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