Far Beyond The Stars: The Archives

6 Steps Toward Additional Income Streams In Order to Quit Your Day Job.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

This is the second post in a series on quitting your day job in order to live and work from anywhere. The first post was on the challenge of preparing to quit your job.

Don’t miss out! Sign up for free updates via RSS or EMAIL.

Last week I wrote a long article on how to prepare to quit your day job. If you missed that post, I definitely suggest going back and reading it.

In that post, I mentioned that it was useful to develop income on the side using the Internet, in order to quit you day job. I glossed over the details of how to do this, in that post.

A number of people emailed me asking for more information, so I decided to write this post in order to help more people start to make a small amount of side income in order to quit their jobs more effectively.

I’ve been working online for most of my adult life — I was part of the professional blogging team at New York Magazine, and Gawker before that. I’ve been a student of the income potential of the Internet for over ten years now.

Recently I began to earn my entire living from this blog and from my e-book The Art of Being Minimalist.

I hope that this article will help you gain independence.

Many people haven’t realized the unlimited selling potential of the Internet.

They’re stuck back in 1982, calling people 1-on-1 on the phone and hoping to make a sale. It doesn’t have to be that way.

You’re much more likely to succeed if you embrace the power of the Internet.

This was made clear to me a few days ago — I was at a bar in Brooklyn, wishing a good friend farewell the night before she crossed the Atlantic for adventures in London.

I found myself in conversations about what I do, with two people. One an old friend, another a random stranger.

1st person, who is on unemployment for 6 months after being fired from his job:

Him: “So, how did you land that job, being a blogger?”

Me: “Well, I didn’t land it, I built it.”

Him: “You can make your own job?”

2nd person, who is working as a temp after not finding much luck getting jobs five years after graduating from college:

Her: “Well, I’m a temp, and I just sit around all day on Facebook.”

Me: “Why don’t you use that time to build an empire and start making $1000 a week on the Internet?”

Her: “You can do that?”

Both of these people got blank looks on their faces and walked away from me when I suggested that they could actually change their lives. This illustrated to me just how unconventional the idea of selling a digital product online really is.

There are only a handful of people actually making the jump to digital sales, the rest of the planet is still stuck back in 1982.

I imagine some of you are already thinking of clicking off this page. You think I’m just trying to sell you something, but I’m not.

I want you to realize how simple it is to embrace the Internet as your job.

If you’re interested in the above statement, I suggest you read this blog post thoroughly. Do not skim it. Do not jump around. Read each word, bookmark this, and then try each step separately until you’ve done everything here.

You can live and work from anywhere, –if you put in the work.

It will take you at most half a day to complete the first 3 of these steps and start making money online. It’ll take you a little longer for the last step, creating your own product, but you’ll get there eventually. Trust me!

The changing reality of Internet communication.

The reality is, you can change your life, and you can make a decent living working online — if you put in the work. I’ve done it. It’s far easier than you might think. I’m starting to believe that one of the biggest barriers to people making money online is their willingness to admit to themselves that it’s possible.

We’re a society that trains people in school to work in factories, and then they get out and their wonder where all of the factories went.

You’re on your own, the only person who’s going to give you permission to work online is you.

The true dynamics of the Internet.

Twenty years ago, the only way you could establish a brand and market a product was:

1. By spending a ton of money on ads on the television or other media.
2. By opening a brick and mortar storefront.
3. By pimping yourself and your friends to a mid-level marketing scheme.
4. By calling random people on the telephone and crossing your fingers.

All of these options still exist, but the internet bypasses all of the inadequacies of these systems. This means you can skip them, and go straight to the Internet.

On the internet, instead of your relationship being 1 to 1 with a buyer. The relationship is 1 to whoever you can get to come to your website and contact through social media. This can be 1 or it can be infinite.

The power of the digital product.

The internet has revolutionized how products are produced.

The cost of broadcasting on the web has fallen to zero –see Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price for specifics. This creates a situation of complete selling democracy, and infinite potential, because:

1. Anyone can create a product.
2. Anyone can sell a product.
3. To anyone in the world.
4. At any time of day.

This creates amazing situations for independent professionals, such as making money in your sleep.

The way I see it, if you have something to offer people, you should product a digital product and sell it. You can’t lose money, because the distribution is free.

What’s the worst that can happen? You create a product and no one buys it. This means that no one needs it. If no one needs what you offer, you probably need to reevaluate what you’re offering.

The minimum you need to start.

I write about being minimalist, so I’m not going to go overboard recommending what you need to use in order to make money online.

Some people will tell you that you need to invest in all sorts of infrastructure in order to sell online. This is absurd.

Everything you need to sell online can be yours for free. Don’t spend any money until you’ve made money, it’s just absurd to be buying expensive software when there are free alternatives.

That’s not to say that you don’t want to upgrade eventually when you need more advanced technology, but don’t do this until you’re making at least $50,000 a year off your website. Then you can actually afford the expensive stuff.

That being said, I’ve recommended a few products below, that I believe in and I’m an affiliate for, that will help you learn. If after reading this you’re still scratching your head as to how to begin to earn money online, these educational products can go a long way towards filling the gap in your knowledge.

These products aren’t requirements, they’re simply options if you need additional learning in order to be able to take this path towards success.

It’s not necessary to dish out a lot of money in order to find success online. You can learn everything you need to for free by reading blogs and experimenting on your own.

The minimalist tools for making money online.

1. Why you need a blog.

Your blog is your home on the Internet, you need to make one now if you don’t have one already. Go to WordPress.com to sign up for a free WordPress blog to get started.

Eventually you’ll want to get your own domain name and hosting, but don’t worry about that until you start to find some success online.

1. Start blogging at least twice a week.
2. Set a schedule and stick to it.
3. Write content that is extremely useful to people.
4. Pick a niche market as your focus.
5. Make it easy to subscribe to your blog via RSS and email.

Some people will tell you that you need all sorts of other things for your blog. Don’t worry about those things now. Just write good content. If you’re trying to escape your day job, you don’t have time to spend hours messing around with little blog widgets.

Writing good content is 80% of your blogging career, the rest is just extra. If you find yourself spending 20% of your time on content and the rest of the time checking your stats or otherwise wasting your time, stop!

Focus on content, and you’ll find blogging success.

Read Problogger and Viperchill to learn more about how to blog successfully.

If you need additional education, I highly recommend Darren Rowse’s e-book 31 Days to a Better Blog.

2. Social networking.

Sign up for two social networking services. If you have a pulse, you’re probably already on Facebook. If you’re not, join.

The second service I want you to join, if you haven’t already, is Twitter.

Why only two? Because you need to focus. If you’re on 10 social networks, you’ll never have time to be good at any one of them. If you pick only two, you will be able to be effective on at least two platforms and start to develop a significant amount of traffic to your blog from these sources.

Install tweetmeme and Facebook share buttons on your blog, and start pushing your content out to these services every time you post.

Next, start social networking with other bloggers who interest you.

The best way to do this is to retweet their posts every single time they post, this will show that you respect and admire them.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

1. Ask bloggers questions.
2. Start conversations.
3. Interview bloggers for your blog.
4. Be helpful.

Don’t spend too much time on social networking. 30 minutes a day is just enough. Social networking is 20% of your traffic, so don’t spend 80% of your time there — believe me, you will be tempted to do so. Social networking can become an infinite feedback loop — you need to do it, just don’t spend all of your time doing it.

Focus on content for your blog, and let the social networking happen naturally.

To learn more about social networking, read Chris Brogan’s blog and read Trust Agents the book wrote with Julien Smith.

Also check out Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Guide to the Social Web for some more in-depth learning if necessary.

3. Create a movement.

Once you create a blog, the next step is creating a movement — read this free e-book by me next.

Then come back to this page in order to learn the power of selling digital products.

4. Sell someone’s product first.

Before you invest all of the hours in creating your own product, try selling someone else’s product on your blog first.

When I first started my blog, I was an affiliate for Leo Babauta’s A Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life. Selling for Leo provided a small amount of income for me while I built my business, and helped me learn how to effectively sell online. I chose this e-book because it was a huge inspiration for me. It made me think how to apply minimalism to my own life, and how to write about minimalism so that others could accomplish their ambitions in order to live happier.

Many bloggers will let you affiliate market their products for 50% commission. You can earn anywhere from $5-$200 per sale.

I only sell products on my blog that I support, and I think you should too.

Don’t sell anything you don’t believe in.

It’s much harder to sell a product when you don’t believe in it’s benefits. It may take you some time to locate your idea product, and that’s okay. Take your time and pick something you believe in.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself (51% commission)

Adam Baker’s Unautomate Your Finances (50% commission)

Glen Allsopp’s Cloud Living (51% commission)

Also, you can become an affiliate for my e-book, The Art of Being Minimalist (50% commission).

5. Create your own product.

Once you’ve sold a few copies of other people’s products, it’s time to create your own.

What is a digital product?

1. An e-book that helps people.
2. An audio recording that helps people.
3. A software program that helps people.
4. A video series that helps people.

I say ‘helps people’, because that’s one of the biggest questions you need to ask yourself when you create a product. Who is this helping? If the answer is “everyone!” your product is probably way too broad and not interesting enough for anyone to buy it.

Go niche or go broke. You need to create a product for a specific group of people. Scratch your own itch, fix your own problems, and you have a good chance of creating such a product.

Creating a product is different for everyone.

When I wrote The Art of Being Minimalist, I created the product over two weeks of intense writing. I combined this with writing I’d been working on over the last couple of months, and suddenly I had a product. This process is different for everyone.

The truth is that this was a book idea that had been floating around my head since before I’d even started my blog. It was a book idea that was set into motion from the moment that I quit my job in July of last year and jumped on a plane to Portland Oregon.

Everyone has a product idea in them, you just have to find it. A good idea will come to you naturally through the work that you do on your blog.

For more on creating digital products, check out Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself.

Another good resource is Dave Navarro’s How to Launch The **** Out of Your E-Book.

6. Let people affiliate market for you.

Once you’ve finished your product, sign up for a sellers account at e-junkie for only $5 a month –this is free for the first week. This will handle all of your payments and distribution automatically, and allow your community to earn money selling your newly created product on their own blogs.

This is the moment when the real magic happens. If you offer your product for 50% commission, suddenly you can harness the power of others to sell your product. By offering 50% (or more) commission, people will spread your product far and wide across the Internet. Some people will sell 5 copies, others will sell 500.

Imagine if you get 500 people to sell 500 copies each of your product over the course of a year? Even if you’re only charging $10… …well, you do the math, because you won’t believe me if I just tell you.

The infinite potential of reaching people via the Internet makes this possible.

Best of luck in your endeavors!

Now you have the skills to create a small to sizable side income while you’re at your day job. With any luck, you should be able to grow this income to replace your day job, or start a new income stream from the ground up.

Then you can leave your job and start living and working from anywhere! Congratulations, you’re almost free!

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This is the second post in a series on quitting your day job in order to live and work from anywhere. The first post was on the challenge of preparing to quit your job.

Don’t miss out! Sign up for free updates via RSS or EMAIL.

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This article helped you, I’d love if you could share it with anyone you know who wants to quit their job.

Hit the retweet button, or email this to your friends, this only takes 10 seconds and it’s the single best way for people to discover my writing.

Thank you.

The first step to leaving anything is preparation (but not too much of it.)

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

This is the first of a three part series on using minimalism to leave your day job in order to live and work anywhere.

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If you’ve been following this blog long, or read The Art of Being Minimalist, you know that I left my job last August in order to launch my minimalist business and live and work from anywhere.

If you’re in a situation like I was a year ago, –the monotonous repetitive days, the future of my creativity rapidly dying,– I imagine you want to do this too.

You want to be like Colin Wright, and country hop every four months. Or like Karol Gajda, making a reasonable living online while crafting a hand-made guitar in India. Maybe you want to be like Tammy Strobel and start a very small writing business to support your car-free lifestyle.

Maybe you want to be like you! That’s even better.

It doesn’t matter what ideal life you imagine, you just need to know that it’s possible.

Before I get started: whenever I write these types of things, I always get comments from two kinds of people who think I’m nuts.

The first is the people with kids, “oh it’s so hard, I could never do that” crowd.

I know, it’s so much easier to quit your job when you’re single and in your twenties, but it’s not impossible to change your life just because you decided to procreate. Leo Babauta started his own business and quit his job through minimalism, and he has six kids! You can too, no excuses!

The other group of people who comment are the ones who claim to love their job.

Great! I’m so happy for you, don’t change anything.

But, if you really love your job, why are you reading a blog post about leaving your job? Go read and comment on something else! …unless you actually secretly hate your job, in which case you need to ask yourself some hard questions. Don’t just deny everything until you wake up one day 15 years down the road and wonder where your life went.

Now then, let’s get to business…

The obstacles of leaving your job.

Quitting your job is never easy. There are a number of obstacles to overcome in order to even think of going out on your own.

1. Overcome your fear of certain death.

Everyone told me that if I quit my job during the greatest recession, I’d end up living in a mud hut down on the other side of town swigging malt liquor out if a sipper cup.

This is the opposite of true. I’ve found that the biggest growth opportunities are here, right now. Everything about the way we’re doing business is diversifying immensely. The time to start your own very small business is now, as there have never been more opportunities to reach out and find the tribe that will support your goals.

So ignore every horror story that you hear. These people are trying desperately to keep you from making a change –and who can blame them? If you can do it, it looks badly on them if they’ve settled for mediocrity.

Don’t listen to their pleas to be realistic.

The worst possible thing that could happen to you, if you do this, is probably not nearly as bad as you think. It’s really hard to fail hard in our society, as long as you have some basic common sense about you.

2. Realize that you’re going to need new non-work friends.

I’ve lost touch with every single friend I had at my old job — except the ones who left too. The common bonds that create an instant social network at a job are shallow indeed. When you’re talking about entrepreneurship, and they’re talking about maintaining the status-quo, this creates an instant barrier to communications.

Automatically assume that anyone who you work with now is not going to go out of their way to support your quest for freedom. Find help elsewhere, meet other people who have made this journey — the Internet is a great place to do this– these people are invaluable, and will tell you not to settle when you’re thinking or giving up.

That being said, some people will support you! That’s great, don’t fire your friends if they’re helpful. Fire them if they’re holding you back by telling you that you can’t succeed.

3. Dare to dream unrealistically.

I wrote recently about the need to be completely unrealistic. You need to write down an unrealistic goal and start to live and breathe it every single day. This can be simple, or more complex. Make it crazy though! The sky is the limit, and trust me, people have been up there too.

Everything crazy has been done already, so you might as well do it again.

My goal was to become a minimalist in order to live and work from anywhere. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. My primary income source is this blog, which I never thought would happen this quickly — the income potential to earn money online is enormous. You can reach almost anyone.

Your dream doesn’t have to be about making money online, but you do need to have some sort of goal.

4. Be confident when presenting your ideas to friends and strangers.

One of the biggest challenges, when deciding to leave a day job, is the opinions of others.

When you tell your best friend that you’re opting out of the rat-race to pursue a career as a writer, they will look at you like you’re a nutcase. It’s okay that they have doubts, you’re making a change and it’s only natural for them to worry.

That’s why it’s important to present your plans with confidence. Don’t hesitate or shake uncontrollably in fear when you tell people of your plans. Just say in a firm voice, with confidence, that this is the path you intend to tread.

I shared my unrealistic dream of becoming a location independent writer with people, initially they thought I was crazy! Six months later, I’m making a full time living. I’m no longer crazy.

5. Don’t let others decide your fate.

Ultimately, your decision to make a change is up to you. No amount of deliberation with friends and family will make your decision easier. In fact, the more you talk the harder it will be to do something.

Don’t spend a year trying to decide to make a change, just do it.

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Now that you’ve overcome some preliminary obstacles, it’s time to prepare for your departure.

Things to do before you jump.

1. Figure out your cash flow.

You need to start figuring out ways to make a small amount of money outside your main job.

Unless you’re crazy, like me, it’s best to have at least your basic expenses covered before you make a jump.

Start by trying to make $10 online doing something other than selling your stuff on Craigslist. It sounds like a small goal, but that’s the biggest hump. If you can sell one digital or even physical product or service, chances are you can scale that.

Once you’ve made your first $10, try to make $10 a day. Then scale up from there until it’s $100 a day, then $10,000 and so on.

It’s important to have the objective in sight when you’re thinking about new cash flow. If you want to make passive income on a digital product, like I do, make that your goal and go straight to working on the product.

Don’t mess around in other areas outside your focus, unless you realize that your product isn’t going to sell more than 5 copies.

There are of course many other ways to make money outside of the online world, that’s just where I make money, so I used it as an example. I also believe it’s a lot easier to make money online than it is in the real world in the current economic climate.

2. Save up enough to survive until you actually have cash flow.

If you don’t have time to get cash flow going, or just have no idea what you’re doing (I was in this boat when I left), at least save up enough to cover you expenses for a few months while you figure out what you’re doing.

Most small business gurus recommend a 6-month cushion. 12-months if you’re a rock star.

Start by getting your finances in order. If keeping track of your spending scares the crap out of you, I recommend reading Adam Baker’s brilliant e-book Unautomate Your Finances in order to get a handle on how much you’re actually spending every month.

If you spend a lot of money every month, you’re going to need to cut back.

My ideal living expenses are around $1400 a month now –this isn’t to say I’m not making and spending a lot more than that, this is just what it costs for me to survive in Brooklyn.

When I was in Portland I spent around $900 a month on living and eating.

When I left my job, I’d saved up $3000 and lived on that for three months. You might need more or less depending on your living expenses.

The less you have to spend, the larger your chance of success.

Worrying about how little money you have to pay for stupid stuff will weigh on your mind and destroy your chances of striking out on your own.

When you work at a day job, you get used to having that steady stream of cash coming in every month. The more you make, the more you rely on. You need to break that cycle now, and start stashing away every last penny, or you’ll never be able to leave.

How can you cut down your expenses so that they’re reasonable?

3. Apply minimalism to your life.

Cut back on everything before you quit. Initially you’re going to be making a lot less than you did when you were employed. Go car-free. Rent your house to strangers. Sell all of your furniture. Cancel every single subscription — especially cable TV, then sell your TV. Call your phone company and reduce yourself to a basic plan.

Do this until your only expenses are eating and renting a small apartment.

Eventually you’ll be making enough from your new business to spend more, but it’s entirely unnecessary to scale back up after you downsize like this.

The stuff keeps you down, rooted to one place, and completely ineffective.

You can’t pursue your dreams if you’re surrounded by crap.

I’m not saying you should go all monk on us, but realistically consider living with your 100 best possessions, and nothing more. This will make you more flexible, so you can move whenever you want and focus entirely on your business when you need to.

Here are a few articles I’ve written over the past month on how to apply minimalism to your life in order to save money:

Two Methods for Less Stuff

The Stunning Truth About Focusing on the Important

How to Focus on Minimalist Income

How to Live with 75 Things

The Ultimate Guide to the Minimalist Work Week

If you’re serious about leaving your job and starting your own small business, I suggest you read the following immediately:

Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself.

Pam Slim’s book Escape from Cubicle Nation.

Timothy Ferriss’s The 4 Hour Work Week.

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That’s all for now!

Check back next week for the second part in this series. Don’t miss out! Sign up for free updates via email or RSS.

Don’t forget to check this out: Interview with Everett Bogue: How to Pursue the Reality You Imagine Yourself Living at Tammy Strobel’s Rowdy Kittens.

Karol Gajda can teach you to be free.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Some people are content to live their lives in three places 95% of the time.

They valiantly wake up every morning, put on clothes, and walk the five steps to their car.

They fire it up and drive to work, where they spend twelve hours checking Facebook and doing what they’re told.

Then they go home, exhausted.

Once a year they hop aboard a flight to a cheap beach somewhere and spend a few days getting sunburned and sipping tequila.

Does that life sound familiar?

These people have convinced themselves that this is the only reality. There is no other option but to maintain the status-quo and deal.

Until they get to retire at some point impossibly far into the future, after they’ve wasted their youth. Then what?

Well you might be taking that path, but it’s not the only option.

There are people who’ve decided to opt out of this life sentence of working until you die.

These people want to teach you how to free yourself (if you want to.)

I want to introduce you to my friend Karol Gajda.

Karol went from having the house and an expensive car to living and working from anywhere in very little time.

Currently he’s teaching people how to attain his level of freedom over at Ridiculously Extraordinary. He just made a guitar with his bare hands in India! How awesome is that?

You can do this too, Karol can teach you how.

A few weeks ago Karol emailed me a Minimalist Quick Start Guide based off my work in The Art of Being Minimalist.

I’ve delayed too long in releasing it,  so I’m just going to put it up here now!

The Minimalist Quick Start Guide explains Karol’s own journey towards living a minimalist life free from the confines of society’s expectation. It’s awesome, it’s free.

Download Karol Gajda’s Minimalist Quick Start Guide for free.

Definitely check out Karol’s work at Ridiculously Extraordinary.

I interviewed Karol a few months ago.

How adopting a minimalist approach of unautomating your finances can get you out of debt.

Interview by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Adam Baker and his daughter Milligan

If anyone can teach you the skills to get yourself out of debt, it’s Adam Baker of the blog Man Vs. Debt.

Over the last year, Baker, his wife Courtney, and their daughter Milligan, paid off all of their consumer debt, sold all of their ‘crap’, and traveled to Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Now they’re back in Indiana, and Baker has written an amazing and simple e-book on taking control of your financial situation.

I don’t talk much about finances her on my blog, usually my advice is quite simple: stop buying stupid stuff, start living your life.

Luckily, Baker goes into a great deal more depth in his new e-book Unautomate Your Finances: A Simple, Passionate Approach to Money.

I’ve been a huge fan of Baker’s, before I even started writing Far Beyond The Stars. His writing on Man Vs. Debt and as a contributing writer on Get Rich Slowly helped inspire me during my own journey towards minimalism.

My favorite part of the Unautomate Your Finances is Baker’s signature 2-page minimalist budgeting system, which is the simplest method I’ve seen to force yourself to acknowledge the money you’re actually spending during every transaction.

Today, I’m honored to present this interview I did with Baker over the weekend. We discussed the benefits of Unautomation, the danger of subscriptions, and how Baker sold all his ‘crap’ and traveled the world with his family.

Everett Bogue: Your e-book is called Unautomate Your Finances, and your theory of Unautomation is heavily discussed throughout the e-book. How can Unautomation help get you out of debt?

Adam Baker: Unautomation is simply any time you are willing to trade convenience in for increased consciousness (basically the opposite of what we do when we automate). It can help people get out debt in many ways!

First, it raises awareness of our situations. This is often the first obstacles in coming to grips with just how destructive debt can be in our lives. Unautomation also encourages us to focus on one goal at a time. Often, we never pay off our debt, because we are juggling so many of our “expected” responsibilities. We may be expected to live a certain life, save a certain amount, or do a certain set of things.

By ramping up and honing in our focus, we can start to really chew away at our debt.

Everett: What is one powerful way to Unautomate your finances?

Baker: In the guide I cover at least 27 “core action steps”. However, one of my favorites is adopting a simple budget.

Courtney and I primarily budget by hand, using two sheets of paper and a very straight forward system. It’s worked wonders for us and budgeting this way is not only easy, but it raises our awareness more than any other method!

Everett: I love your approach to stuff (sell your crap) in UYS. How can a healthy relationship with stuff help you get out of debt?

Baker: Excess stuff creates all sorts of burdens. Clutter begets more clutter. And excess stuff takes space to store and money to maintain. It trains us to want more and more. Look, there’s nothing wrong with having possessions, but like you pointed out we’ve crossed the healthy point as a society.

As a bonus, most of us can generate up several hundred dollars (or even more) when we go to actually purge our possessions. This can be used to aggressively attack our other goals!

Everett: What are some of the things that you got rid of when you were downsizing?

Baker: Oh gosh… Well, we really got rid of everything! We started with big obvious things… excess furniture, electronics, a television, and even one of our cars. But we kept going! Eventually we took what was an apartment full of crap and turned it into two backpacks to start our travels.

We’ve accumulated some more stuff since coming back home, but we’re desperately trying to fend off our urges to consume.

Everett: You talk in your e-book about how subscriptions can take an unnoticed toll on our finances. What are some of the unnecessary subscriptions that we sign up for?

Baker: Cell phone contracts, cable services, rental leases, magazines, newspapers, online apps, widgets, bells, whistles, monitoring services, etc…

Let me be very clear, though. There are plenty of cases where subscriptions are necessary and/or desirable! My suggestion is to mentally purge your subscriptions and start from scratch. Examine them all and figure out which ones you really want/need.

Also, be sure to look for creative solutions and/or alternatives to avoid them (this is sometimes not hard at all). Be careful of signing long-term contracts on anything. 2-3 months from now your “necessary” expense could quickly become not so important!

Everett: Leo Babauta discusses in the forward of Unautomate Your Finances about how he used many Unautomation techniques to get himself out of debt, but now he’s back to automation. At what point do you think it’s acceptable, or even advantageous, to go back to automating your finances?

Baker: I think automation is extremely powerful when applied to healthy, sustainable finances habits and when it is reevaluated on a regular basis. But we have to be careful of looking at automation as a solution to our problems or financial issues. It’s not a solution. It can be a powerful tool, but it only magnifies the existing habits we have!

Installing the empowering habits in the first place often takes the opposite of automation!

Everett: Thanks so much for this opportunity Baker. Good luck with your e-book launch!

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Adam Baker’s new e-book Unautomate Your Finances: A Simple, Passionate Approach to Money is available now for only $17.

Because I’m a huge supporter of Adam Baker’s work, I’ve decided to become an affiliate for his work. 50% of the sale price goes to support my work here at Far Beyond The Stars.

If this interview helped you, I’d love if you could share it with anyone you know who’s having trouble with their finances.

Thank you.

Special Launch-day Bonus (March 9th ONLY!): I’ve just been informed that the first 100 people to purchase the e-book get access to UStream with Baker himself, where he will discuss any questions you have about the e-book and finances in general. Don’t miss out!

Many people don’t succeed for a simple reason: they set their sights too low.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

If you caught me a year ago and asked me whether I could have left my job, started a very small business, and would be earning enough passive income to live in New York City in only one year’s time, I would have told you that you were crazy.

And yet, here I am, doing all of those things.

In July of 2009, I set a series of seemingly unrealistic expectations, (to myself at the time), all of which have come true in a remarkably short period of time.

The reason is simple: it’s lonely at the top.

99% of the people in the world are content to exist within the confines of their own settled mediocrity. The boredom of sitting under florescent lights all day begins to set in over time. Their current situation burns into their psyche, and they stagnate.

The thought of rejecting the status-quo scares the crap out of them.

It starts with the idea that you have to be realistic. Everyone knows a horde of people who either are being realistic or will tell you to be realistic. Well, these people are wrong. They’re blinded by their own passivity.

They’ve given up. They’re walking zombies. You don’t want to be one of these people.

And more importantly, don’t listen to these people.

They call them worker drones for a reason. These people are not being compared to busy bees, they’re being compared to The Borg.

Does this sound familiar? When you look at yourself in the mirror are you beginning to see the last remnants of life seeping out of your soul?

It’s never too late to start having unreasonable expectations for yourself.

You can make a change, you can make a difference in your own life and the lives of others.

Since I’ve already achieved my “unrealistic” goal of living and working from anywhere and earning at least $30,000 a year (by current approximations) it’s time to up the ante.

Here’s my new unreasonable goal: By this time next year I want to earn $100,000 a year, in addition to all of the other accomplishments I’ve unrealistically achieved over the last four months.

I don’t want to do this so I can spend it all on hookers and plasma TV’s. Because of my minimalist lifestyle, I’ve estimated that I can live comfortably making around $25,000. When I make this unrealistic amount of money, I will use it to help as many people as I can achieve exactly what I did. This blog will teach how to achieve everything that I’ve accomplished.

But enough about my unrealistic goals, and more about yours.

Here are 13 ways to start thinking about achieving unrealistic success.

1. Set at least one unrealistic goal to achieve in the next year. I’ve become a firm believer that everyone should set unrealistic goals for themselves. Take a moment and think, draw, write down your unrealistic goals. For reference: last year my unrealistic goal was to work from anywhere, quit my job, and move to another city. Done. Done. Done.

2. Map out your ideal life. So you’ve set your unrealistic goals, now you need to visualize them. Tim Ferriss calls this practice Dreamlining. It’s the idea of mapping out your unrealistic ideal life. On that piece of paper, start adding more details to the unrealistic world you’re creating. Do you want to be sipping margaritas on the beach? Swigging wine with Colin Wright in New Zealand? Training to run marathon? Ask the girl of your dreams out on a date? Write it all down: but please, do NOT be realistic.

3. Change your career. Have you always wanted to be a writer? A photographer? A chef? Now is the time to make that change in your life. Now, I don’t want you to be an ordinary member of these careerists. I want you to think unrealistically: contemplate how you can rise to become the best in your field in just one year, using very few resources. It’s hard, but possible.

4. Remove the floor. Many people exist with a constant safety net to catch them if they fall. What if you remove that net? Take it away, and then start to have unreasonable expectations for yourself. The Bahamas or the gutter, which will it be? You’ll have no choice to fly to the top, because there are no other options.

5. Be unrealistic about what you don’t need. Just like thinking about what you unrealistically want, but the opposite. What can you survive without? Basically, everything. You can live in a room, eat Brussels sprouts and be happy. It’s very hard to hit the bottom when you have big ambitions. Trust me, I’ve tried to hit the bottom.

6. Learn a new skill that you never thought you could master. When I was 16, I decided that I had to go to New York. The only way I could see to do that, at the time, was to become a professional ballet dancer. So, I took 14-17 dance classes a week for months on end. I lost 40lbs and became a vegetarian. Eventually I auditioned for NYU’s Tisch dance department and was one of 24 dancers accepted into their program. I did the same routine with this blog. What can you train to do that’s theoretically impossible?

7. Gatejump your way to unrealistic success. The last 150 years were defined by Gatekeepers. These were the head honchos in charge. A few television networks, newspapers, and publishing houses had all of the power. But no longer: everything has changed. If you’re still waiting for a Gatekeeper to come along and let you in, you’re going to be waiting a long time. We now live in a bottom-up media society, and everyone has the power to develop a following on the Internet. These Tribes are the basis for our existence. These people who support you are your power. How can you harness your tribe to Gatejump your way to success?

9. Leave your old life behind. Over time we humans get sedentary. We have our old friends, our old habits, and we keep returning to them. Where do you want to go? Who do you be? I’m going to live in Oakland California, and I’m going to be a blogger who earns $100,000 a year.

10. Ignore everybody. People will nay-say you into oblivion, and they are not to be trusted. Do not listen to negative opinions or influences. You are able to accomplish anything if you put your mind to it. And ultimately, it doesn’t matter anyway, because nothing you do matters. Man has gone to the moon, you can leave your day job, trust me.

11. Concentrate on existing systems to amplify your unrealistic success. One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they’re being unrealistic is to try and build everything from the ground up. Don’t! There are tools available to amplify your success. Use social media to have a 1:100 connection with your Tribe. Use a blog to publish big ideas. Use automated services to make your income come without effort. Nothing can stop you if you use tools that already exist.

12. Quit early and often. If you’re unrealistic and it’s not working, don’t be afraid to change course. There’s a huge difference between being unrealistic and being a stubborn numb-nut. Set your sights above 99% of the population, but don’t be stupid. If you’re in The Dip, push on, if you’re just failing constantly, learn to abandon your projects and focus on ones that have a chance of success.

13. Read books about achieving unrealistic success. I owe a great deal of my success to the work of a couple of authors. I’d suggest reading these books, as they will help you start to think bigger about what you can actually accomplish. There are no doubt many more books that will encourage you to think unrealistically, these are just a few of my inspirations. Linchpin by Seth Godin. The Power of Less by Leo Babauta. The 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

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It’s my birthday today. I’m 25. The best gift you could give me is to purchase a copy of The Art of Being Minimalist. It’s only $9.95.

If you’ve already purchased the book, thank you so much. I’d love it if you could email your copy to five friends.

Thank you.

How to manipulate your use of time to focus on the important.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter

The idea that time is your most valuable commodity is not new, but it is often overlooked. I’ve done a lot of research on the importance of focusing your attention in the last year.

There are a number of very successful people, such as Timothy Ferriss, Seth Godin, and Leo Babauta who use their time very effectively in order to accomplish greatness.

I call this emerging science Timejacking.

The idea is that you don’t exist within the accepted constraints of time as other people in the world do. These people don’t let the unimportant eat up their time.

When compiled, designed, and published The Art of Being Minimalist in under 2 weeks, I also employed a number of Timejacking techniques for greater effectiveness. I plan on writing at least one more ebook in the next two months, so Timejacking is on the forefront of my mind.

Many people choose to spend their time in ineffective ways:

• Watching TV
• Paying off bills they shouldn’t have acquired
• Working at low-paying jobs
• Multitasking
• Checking email every 35.5 seconds
• Reading information that doesn’t matter out of obligation

I could go on forever about the ways you can spend ineffectively spend time, but that wouldn’t be an effective use of my time.

The Timejacking manifesto is simple:

• I will value my time to the highest potential.
• I will not engage in activities that do not contribute value to my life.
• I will focus my attention on creating great work which changes the world.

Here’s one Timejacking case-study:

When I was living in Portland, there came a moment in time when I didn’t have any money at all. I had moved there with $3000, and around November 1st I realized that I had reached bottom. I had very little income coming in at that time, and none of it automatically, like it does now.

Then I walked by a Starbucks, and they had a help-wanted sign up in the window.

For a brief moment, perhaps 17.7 seconds, I considered taking that job. (I’m confident they would have hired me, because I’m badass.) It probably could have been paid fairly well for what those jobs pay, around $11 an hour I imagine. I could have made just enough money working part time to pay rent and buy food in Portland. I would have been ‘set.’

If I had taken this action, it would have ended my writing career before it began.

By putting that safety net in place, I would not have had the incentive to start growing my small business online. I would not have hunkered down and spent a number of months banging out valuable content for my e-book.

Anyway, I don’t mean to say this to put down people who are working for 11 dollars an hour. For me, it just doesn’t make sense. It is a very safe way to live, you can pay the electric bill. However, it isn’t a way to be find artistic success.

The rationalization for me was simple:

If I spent the next two months working on creating what is essentially, a digital work of art, it will pay me indefinitely. The truth is that my e-book made far more money in the first month of launching, than I ever would have made working at Starbucks for the last four months.

I had timejacked my way to success, and I want to help you find the skills to do that as well.

I’ve written more about my success through minimalism in my e-book The Art of Being Minimalist. I highly recommend reading it, if you haven’t already.

The nearly complete Timejacker manual for success.

1. Reduce your email usage.

Internet communication is one of the biggest problems manifested in our era. Everyone feels they need to be on the internet all day long answering stupid requests and keeping in touch. The problem is, when you’re on email all day, you never get anything done. If you sit at your computer all day, hitting the refresh button your gmail, you will never get anything important done.

Stop checking your email please. I know, this is one of the biggest crimes that I commit as well. I’ve wasted countless years of my life checking email, and I’ve made the resolution recently to make it stop. I value my time too much to waste it the endless time-vortex that is email.

This should be a separate article, and I’ve written about a healthy approach to email before. But, here are a few basics:

Do not check email first thing in the morning.

This can ruin your whole day, because you might get an email criticizing you, or requesting a massive amount of information. Suddenly, it’s all you can think about.

You know what I’m talking about, right? It’s so easy for email to take control of your life.

Start by checking email twice a day.

Set two times per day that you check email. The 1st time should be around noon. I’m doing 2pm today, because I woke up at 10am, and I need at least 4 hours to write at least 4000 words of content. The second time is around an hour before the end of your work day. Anywhere from 4pm-6pm, depending on how long you work.

If you have a boss, which I know many of you still do. (You won’t for long if you start to apply these techniques.) Explain to your boss that you will see a huge productivity bump if you start to adopt these techniques.

Offer to do a trial period, where you check email twice a day for one week. Present evidence to your boss that your productivity has skyrocketed. If it hasn’t actually boosted your productivity, be sure to prepare enough material in advance so that you can successfully demonstrate that it has.

A Timejacker isn’t afraid to fake the evidence. It might take up to 4 weeks for you to see the results of this experiment, so it’s important to have enough time to see actual results.

Compose an auto-response to train the people who email you.

Write a very nice formal message explaining to the people who email you that you’ve started a Timejacking experiment. You’re free to copy and paste this one, if you need.

Dear friend,

In order to produce the best possible results in my work, I’ve adopted a policy of only checking email once per day at 12pm EST. Email is a huge time-suck and I’ve discovered that by not spending all day checking it, I become a much more effective individual. If this is an emergency, please contact me at my phone number 555-555-1212. I hope you understand.

Thank you for your time,
Insert your name here

Quickly move to checking email once a day.

Once you’ve established the barrier of only checking email twice a day, move as quickly as possible to a schedule of checking email only once per day. This will double your productivity instantly. Choose the middle of the day option, because it will give you time to respond to email that require action without spreading over into your off-time.

2. Automate social media.

I do NOT use Facebook or LinkedIn, but I have a presence there. Because of my work, it is absolutely essential that I have as many outlets as possible for people to find the work that I’m doing. However, this doesn’t mean that I spend endless hours poking around on Facebook.

How to automate social media:

1. Turn off all notifications except incoming personal messages from real people.
2. Make the Wall on Facebook 1-way. People often leave messages on your wall, and you don’t want to have to spend time policing that location. My wall is one way, and only displays my blog posts. This way, anyone who visits my Facebook page is almost guaranteed to read my blog, instead of interacting with me on Facebook.
3. Program LinkedIn to pull in your Twitter feed and your blog feed. This will funnel people into interacting with you at your blog (your home base) and your Twitter, which limits their ability to write you five paragraph long emails that don’t say anything.
4. Delete any profiles that you have to work very hard to find value from. There are a million social networking sites out there, if you’re not seeing significant returns from them, you need to delete your profile. For instance, I used to be on a photographer forum/social network called Lightstalkers. I recently deleted my profile because it wasn’t contributing any value to my life. Stick to the powerful social networking sites that give you results.

3. Value your time properly.

A Timejacker doesn’t do work unless they’re being paid at the absolute highest rate. This might sound like laziness, but it’s not. A Timejacker isn’t using their off time to watch TV or eat chips, instead they use the time when they’re not working to train, learn, and grow their strengths.

For instance: I value my time around $100 an hour. This means I can do ‘work’ around 10 hours a week an make at least $1000. This is more than enough to cover all of my expenses for that week. I plan to grow this amount until my time is worth at least $500 an hour. This way I can earn around $5000 a week for 10 hours of work.

In the above mentioned Starbucks story. No matter how hard you work, you can never reach the potential of earning $5000 a week. Pushing the Frappachino button just doesn’t scale into high-impact income.

4. Don’t do meetings.

Once you interact with more people than yourself, you introduce the concept of bureaucracy. This is why many bigger organizations have a hard time maneuvering and growing, because you need to sit a committee down on a Friday night for four hours in order to endlessly debate whether or not to order a new snickers bar.

Simply avoid interacting with other people when decisions are being made. The section details how to solve this problem:

5. Make decisions on your own.

Take initiative and make important decisions for yourself.

The reason for this is one of a Timejacker’s biggest strengths. If you introduce an idea to another person, they will almost always have some reason to argue about how it can be done better, or how they think it will fail.

For most average decisions, you can reasonably assume that you can make the logical decision yourself, and get the minor decision done and out of the way. This way you can move on to the next decision. For important decisions, or ones that might potentially lose a lot of money, you may need to interact with other individuals if you’re working in an organization.

Knowing the difference between important decisions and squabbling over stupid decisions is one of the most important elements of any successful Timejacker. Act on decisions that have simple answers without asking for an opinion.

6. Eliminate as many unnecessary tasks as possible.

Many people simply do things because someone told them to. Don’t accept the status-quo; if you can eliminate or automate a task you must make the decision to do so.

For instance: if you’re still updating a spreadsheet that lists all of your business expenses manually, you must stop doing this and outsource it to an automated financial program.

I don’t care if you really enjoy the task of reading all of your receipts for coffee last week and typing them into Excel, doing this is effectively killing hours of your time. Use an account at Mint.com for your personal finances, and Outright.com for your business expenses. These services automatically keep track of cash flow and budgets for you, and you can see your exact net worth in a matter of seconds.

This can apply to any number of tasks though. Do an audit of your time and see where you’re wasting it, then destroy those time wasting elements. I did this with email, and it’s helping my ability to focus on the important immensely.

7. Focus on your strengths.

A Timejacker acknowledges that they cannot be good at everything.

Many people spend their entire lives trying to be as balanced as possible. We’re encouraged in schools to get high math scores, even though 80% of us will never have to do algebra again after high school. Why are we wasting all of this time learning math, when our cellphones can do it for us?

Focus on becoming the absolute best at your good abilities, and stop focusing on fixing your problems.

We all have problems, and I know we can be very insecure about them, but it’s okay. There are other people who are better at these things.

If you’re bad at giving haircuts, don’t try to fix your hair-cutting ability, instead find someone who can cut your hair for you. There are a million other ways that people focus on fixing problems instead of focusing on becoming the best at their strengths.

All of this is wasted time. You could pay someone to do the little things, or not do them at all.

8. Use existing infrastructure.

I went over this in depth in my article on simplifying your start-up. It got a huge positive reaction, and I can understand why. Everyone thinks they need to reinvent the wheel, but the truth is that making that decision can keep you in Starbucks-land for a very long time.

Be aware of the applications and services that are available to you, and use them to Timejack effectively. One way that I do this in my business is by using e-junkie to handle all of my transactions. My digital goods are transmitted, and payments are received instantaneously with no interacting from me. I can simply check my cash flow every night and adjust my strategies properly if I need to.

The old way to do this would be to rent a space in the real world, hire someone to run your cash register, and have them manually handle all transactions. This is costly, and ineffective in the modern world. A Timejacker doesn’t do brick and mortar unless absolutely necessary.

9. Make it hard to contact you.

With my new-found minor fame over the last month, I started to receive a huge amount of email every day with questions from readers. I love interacting with readers, but many of these questions could have been resolved by the person if they had just sat down and thought for 30 seconds.

In order to cut down on the amount of email I received, I installed a ‘contact me’ form that lists a couple of expectation that I have for incoming messages. For instance: keep it short. Don’t email me asking me to promote stuff. Contact me on Twitter first.

I plan on writing a brief Q&A for some of the most frequent questions that I receive.

If you make it more difficult to reach you, it will make sure that only the people who really need to contact you will. This way you can get more important work done, and spend less time answering mundane questions.

10. Avoid consuming information for information’s sake.

The majority of the information on available, especially on the internet, is valueless. Do not consume it for the sake of feeling like you’re reading something.

You are not reading anything of value.

Chances are you won’t remember what you just read. I only subscribe to 15 blogs, and these are the blogs that contain information that is incredibly valuable to me.

I suggest, as I did in my article on focusing your digital attention, unsubscribe to as much information as possible. Do not follow people on social networks just because they follow you. Focus your digital attention on only the sources that create worth for you.

How to stop reading newspapers (they’ll be dead in two years anyway.)

I recently stopped reading newspapers entirely. I used to have a sizable New York Times addiction, because I felt like I needed to read that information.

I did a month-long experiment in order to see if the information in the New York Times was really contributing to my life. I simply stopped reading it. After a week, I no longer missed reading the endless flow of useless information that comes out of the Times.

Instead I dedicate this time to reading books, because the level of information contributed is significantly higher in value quality.

I found that when important things happened, like the quakes in Haiti and Chile, my Twitter friends did their best to notify me. If something happens that actually effects me personally, I imagine I’ll be able to walk out my front door and ask a bystander what’s going on, and they will tell me.

I think when the New York Times puts up their pay wall, they will see just little society values the information that they contribute. Which is to say, not very much at all.

What information are you consuming that doesn’t contribute value to your life? Turn it off.

11. Only work when you want to.

A Timejacker doesn’t work for the sake of working. They focus their attention on activities that are incredibly important. If you find yourself sitting at your computer, and no ideas are coming to you, stop sitting at your computer! Go read a book. Go outside and sit in the park. Go to a yoga class or to the gym and exercise your body. Cook yourself a healthy lunch.

There are a million things you could be doing besides sitting in front of your computer with a glazed over look on your face waiting for ideas to come. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that the ideas won’t come in when you’re in front of the computer.

I wrote this entire article in my brain yesterday as I walked down west side of Prospect Park. I stopped at the bookstore and pursued the stacks. I got a cup of coffee and watched people do what people do.

I decided that Timejacking was the most important element of success as I was NOT sitting in front of a computer. The next day, I simply sat down and wrote a nearly 3500 word article in an hour. Because this article is so valuable, it will no doubt return an incredibly high value to my business.

If I had spent yesterday staring blankly at a computer screen, I never would have written this article. Take this to your own life though; how often do you sit at a computer screen just waiting for ideas to come?

Go out into the world and experience what it is to be alive.

12. Don’t do things you hate doing.

A timejacker doesn’t do things out of obligation. If you’re sitting at your desk right now, just waiting for the clock to strike 5pm. Stop, get up, go outside. The best decision you could ever make is to stop doing anything that you hate doing. Especially for a pay check as small as $11 an hour. If you hate your job, you should be working towards finding a way to leave your job, instead of just being a zombie.

13. Focus only on what is truly important to you.

A timejacker recognizes exactly what activities are important. Almost all of my income comes from writing professionally at this moment, so that is one of the most important activities to me.

Take a moment and determine exactly what is important to you. I like to pick four areas of my life which are most important. Right now I’m focused on writing, cooking, yoga, and reading.

Make a resolution to only focus on your areas of interest on any given day. Many people choose to spend their days focusing on many different things. Like they spend five minutes tinkering with an art project, and then they spend five minutes shopping for shoes, and then they spend five minutes thinking about philosophy. This leads to a day worth of little useless activities.

A timejacker focuses only on the important, and harnesses their strengths in order to become incredibly successful.

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If this helped you, the most important thing you can do is to hit that retweet button, so more people can be helped by this information. Thank you.

9 Ways to Focus on your Priorities

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

It occurred to me yesterday, as I was doing the laundry (slowly, without rush, because I didn’t have to be anywhere), why minimalism is becoming so popular:

Minimalism is the ultimate lifehack.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term: lifehackers find little ways to make their lives more productive. The idea of lifehacking has spawned thousands of blogs, sites, books. Lifehacker is one of the most popular lifehacking blogs. Getting Things Done is one of the more famous lifehacking books.

Being minimalist trumps all of the little stuff. Minimalists don’t have to figure out how to do more stuff quickly, because they have no interest in doing more stuff.

The average person has lots of things to do every day. This leads to stress, pain, anger, and frustration, because they can possibly get it all done. Then they go shopping to make themselves feel better.

Being minimalist is about focusing on the important.

A minimalist says: I’m going to do three (or even one) things today. I’m going to focus on them completely, and I’m going to do them well.

You don’t need a personal organizer, personal assistant, super-productivity system or whatever to do three things well in a day.

The magical thing that happens, when you concentrate on very few projects per day: you start to make great work.

Once you get to that point, you can unsubscribe to all those little lifehacking sites, with their little tips. You can throw out your personal planner. These things just aren’t necessary anymore.

You can stop spending hours looking for ways to be more productive, because you’re simply not interested in “being productive” anymore.

When minimalism is applied correctly, you actually have all of this leftover time. For instance, all of my work is done fairly early most days, so I spend the rest of the day reading books. I have so much time to read books, that I’m finishing way more than my original goal to read one book a week.

All of the books lead to big new ideas, which positively effects my writing. I can contribute more value to you, the reader, which in turn makes more people interested in reading me.

Here are 9 ways you can focus on the important

1, Identify the four areas of your life that are most important to you.

Simply write them down. It can be powerful to know what is most important to you, because then you can begin to focus on only the essential.

My four priories are: Writing, Yoga, Cooking, and Reading.

I find it helpful to only do one of these things professionally at one time: right now I’m only a professional writer, and nothing else. You might notice that photography is no longer on my list of important things. It’s been replaced by cooking, which dominates my thoughts whenever I’m not writing. What does that mean? I’m not sure yet, but it might mean I’m not interested so much in doing photography anymore. What do you do that doesn’t interest you anymore, but you keep doing because you thought it was your identity?

2, Learn to say no to requests.

Once you’ve identified the essential, you have to start saying no to things that come your way which don’t coincide with your interests. It can be easy to say yes to a lot of projects that are all over the place. We all want to be helpful to as many people as we can, but inevitably we get involved in projects that we aren’t any good at. This just frustrates people, and wastes a lot of time.

3, Start to eliminate things you don’t care about.

Stop doing things you’re doing just out of obligation. Abandon the busy work. Stop going to that book club that you dread going to. There are a million obligations that we get ourselves into over the years. These obligations keep piling on top of one an other, until you have no time for yourself anymore. Gradually stop working on projects you don’t care about. Tell people you quit the book club. Eventually you will have time for yourself again.

4, Give yourself huge blocks of time to work on one project.

Give yourself five hours to work on one project, and do nothing else. Spend all of your time concentrating on the work involved in this project. Make mistakes, and then make breakthroughs. Most of all, make progress. When you feel your attention wandering, slow down, and continuing working on what is important to you, until it’s done.

5, Turn off distractions.

Nothing is worse than trying to get work done with the TV on in the background. You might think that it’s helping you work: it’s not helping you. Seriously, these distractions sabotage everything that you’re trying to accomplish. Turn off your phone, power down Twitter, destroy your TV, and eat your lunch before you sit down to focus on the important.

6, Don’t comment on things that you don’t want to be involved in.

We all have opinions, but we need to consider whether we’re most useful to people if that’s all we’re giving. It’s so easy to offer an unsolicited critical opinion on the work of someone else, especially in this age of Internet anonymity. What you’re saying might hurt people, and it might not have any grounding in reality anyway. When you’re a critic your own work can also suffer from your own negativity. So, next time you’re tempted to tell someone that what they’re doing is wrong, maybe consider first: are you willing to help them do it right?

7, Make time for important things.

Many people spend less than 2 hours a week on their important work, and the rest of the time they’re distracted or at a job they don’t enjoy working at. You have to make time to work on what you’ve determined is important to you. If you want to be a writer, you have to write every single day for at least a few hours (if not more.) If you want to be a photographer, you have to shoot every single day for at least a few hours (if not more.) You can’t expect to get good at anything if you’re a weekend warrior.

8, Tell people about your priorities.

Make it clear what your priorities are to everyone you know. Tell your best friends, your significant other, your kids. Start a blog and write every single day about how your priorities are being accomplished. By telling people, you can hold yourself responsible. You can also compare notes, if your girlfriend thinks your priorities are beer, xbox, belching and sleeping, and you think your priorities are painting, productivity, cleaning, and thinking… well, you might be doing something wrong. Live and breathe your priorities, and they will become what you are.

9, Learn as much as you can.

You have to study your priorities in regularly. If you’re a creator, read as much as you can about creativity. If you’re a cook, read as much as you can about cooking. Subscribe to blogs that share common interests with you. Read real books! Books are amazing creatures full of ideas; they will cause you to grow. Investigate whether there are classes you can take in your area, or online, which will help you learn more about what is important to you. You will never stop learning, so keep consuming information that will help you. I promise you, it is the most important element.

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How do you focus on your priorities?

If you enjoyed this article, the best way you can help me out is to take 10 seconds and retweet this post. Thank you for your help!

Location independence, passive income, healthy profit margins. Chris Guillebeau can teach you how to succeed in a very small way.

Interview by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Chris Guillebeau is one of the more remarkable people on earth. He’s risen to ‘overnight’ blogging fame, inked a book deal, visited over 125 countries, and he wants to teach you how to achieve world domination.

It’s not hard to see why so many people are part of his unconventional community; his ideas actually work. I was a skeptic, and then I tried it myself. You can start a Very Small Business and start producing passive income in a very short time.

Today I’m excited to present you with the interview I did with Chris as he was flying out of Manila airport to Papua New Guinea last week.

We spoke about strategies for success, and some of the common mistakes people make when launching a Very Small Business.

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Everett Bogue: Chris, you and I are both running Very Small Businesses, but can you take a moment to define what a Very Small business is for our readers?

Chris Guillebeau: I think of it as a for-profit project that exists to a) create value for happy customers and b) provide a steady income for the business owner without becoming like a job for him or her. Very Small Businesses tend to have no employees other than the other, or perhaps one or two additional employees. In other words, it’s a lifestyle business instead of a business focused primarily on growth.

I also think of the following characteristics as being part of a successful Very Small Business:

• Location Independent (can be operated from anywhere)
• Some Degree of Passive Income (don’t trade time for money)
• Healthy profit margins (don’t compete on price!)

These characteristics are optional and don’t apply to everyone, but it will be easier to get a new venture going if they are met. Another optional characteristic (but important for many of us) is connecting the business to a cause greater than itself. In my case I am working with Charity: Water on a project to raise funds for water wells in Ethiopia.

Everett: How can starting a Very Small Business help you leave your day job?

Chris: The most important thing in starting a business is reducing your dependency on the day job, whether or not you leave it. But naturally, if you can replace at least 50% of your income through a side project, you might want to think seriously about taking the leap.

Everett: Have you seen any Very Small Business ideas (other than your own) take off lately?

Chris: There are so many! I recently asked for case studies for an upcoming ‘Empire Building Kit’ project, and I heard about 300 examples in a couple of days.  Among others, I like what these people are doing:

• Norris Hall Studio
• Verge Wine Cellars
• Tsilli Pines
• Soniei
• Live Adventurously
• Charlie Gilkey
• Michael Bungay Stanier

Everett: Does the Internet make all of this possible?

It certainly helps! I’ve made my living through the internet for 10+ years now. One of the best features of internet-based businesses is that you can get instant feedback on the feasibility of your business for a very small cost (sometimes even free). It also helps to keep expenses low, which is especially important when you’re starting without much capital.

Everett: What are some of the big mistakes that most people make when they launch a Very Small Business?

Chris: Here’s a short list of big mistakes — I think they’re all important:

1. Failure to consider why other people should care about what they’re offering
2. Failure to think carefully about how they’ll actually get paid
3. Failure to develop a strategy to market to existing customers (it’s much easier to sell to someone who’s already purchased something)
4. Poor follow-through or simply giving up too early

If you can avoid those four mistakes, especially #1, you’ll be off to a much better start than a lot of people.

Everett: Is there anyone in particular who inspires you right now?

Everett: Chris, thanks so much for the opportunity to speak to with you.

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If you’re interested in starting your own very small business, I highly suggest Chris’s excellent Unconventional Guide to Working For Yourself.

You can visit Chris Guillebeau at his blog The Art of Non-Conformity, and also follow him on Twitter.

Help spread the word about this post, give it a retweet before you go!

Why your start-up doesn’t need a million dollars of venture funding to succeed

This is the last post in a series on starting minimalist businesses. Previously I wrote about the art of high-impact income and the power of passive income. But it’s not over yet! Tomorrow I have an interview with The Art of Non-Conformity’s brilliant Chris Guillebeau. Don’t miss it! Sign up for free updates via EMAIL or RSS.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

A number of people have come to me recently to evaluate their business plans for their online start-ups. I’m not usually a business consultant, but I decided to offer my services for free to these people, because they asked for input.

While I don’t pretend to be an expert at these things, (I was a part of Nymag.com’s blog launch and had my own start-up launch,) so one common element stood out to me in all of these cases:

All of these people thought they had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to start their business, when in reality their business could get off the ground for under $15.

That’s right, you can launch your start-up for fifteen dollars.

When you launch a start-up, everyone assumes that it’s going to be very hard. They’re going to need an investors. They’re going to need a cutting-edge team of marketing experts. They’re going to need to work 16 hours a day for the next 3 years in order to make their business succeed.

That’s all great, if you actually have a business model that is incredibly groundbreaking. But, most business plans aren’t. They’re simply offering a service and making money.

Why over-complicate things?

Make your start-up as simple as possible, and you’re way more likely to succeed.

Here are 9 ways to simplify your start-up launch for success.

1, Don’t invent your own infrastructure.

If the wheel already exists, you don’t need to reinvent it.

Your business plan has a problem if it assumes that the Internet hasn’t already been invented and companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google haven’t been innovating on it for a long time on it before you came along.

Infrastructure on the internet is serves the same purpose as it does in the real world. You wouldn’t build your own roads next to the ones that the city government already built for you, right? A lot of start-ups do this though, they build their own roads instead of using existing ones.

There are thousands of useful tools available on the Internet that you can build your business on top of, you don’t have to start from scratch.

In fact, if you do start from scratch you’re much less likely to succeed because you’ll spend a lot more money, your infrastructure will suck compared to the one that already exists, and you’ll waste a lot of time.

I know this might seem obvious, but it isn’t to a lot of start-ups.

Facebook already exists, you don’t need your own social networking platform to run under your service. The solution here is to integrate with existing social networks, because honestly, no one will join yours (Facebook already takes up enough of their time.)

Video blogging software already exists, you don’t have to code your own before you launch a video blog. Just install WordPress and upload your videos to Vimeo or Youtube. Simple, easy, you’re up and running in less than an hour in both of these cases.

2, Use the existing infrastructure.

If the infrastructure exists, by all means use it! Start-ups that ignore the existing infrastructure are going to exist in isolation. This goes for bloggers too. You are 500 times more likely to have more than 1 reader/customer if you find ways to integrate with existing infrastructure. Simply offer social media buttons for people to share your content with, and you’re way more likely to succeed.

Ignoring existing communication infrastructure is to exist in a vacuum. You’ll have to rely on word of mouth to get out the word about your start-up. That’s the equivalent of hiring a guy to pass out fliers on the street. Yes, you might get a few customers by taking that approach. But do you want 5 customers who stumbled across your site because your mom told them or 5000 because you were willing to install a Retweet button?

Five ways off the top of my head that you can use existing infrastructure for your business plan right now:

• Start a blog and publish daily.
• Use a Twitter account and help people with it.
• Use Facebook to interact with customers.
• Use Aweber for your communications with clients.
• Use e-Junkie for your checkout and affiliate marketing.

This might seem obvious, but I’ve observed people coding newsletter systems from scratch and closing transactions via emails. It’s not 1982 anymore folks, these services exist to automate and simplify those areas of your business.

3, Reduce business to the most basic element.

Figure out what your business is about before you launch it. A mission statement like “We’re going to revolutionize the way that people think about publishing.” is not a business idea, it’s an abstract idea.

Business ideas need to be simple, they need to focus on what the business actually does to help people. Simplify, simplify, simplify until a real actionable idea is present.

4, Launch immediately.

If you don’t make the mistake of building your own infrastructure, you can start working immediately.

Register the domain, install a blog, and start talking about the services you’re offering. I don’t care of the service isn’t ready yet, talk about it, gather interest. A lot of start-ups exist in lock-down mode until their product is perfect, but this is the opposite of what you should do.

Make every action you take public, and judge the reaction that people have to it. If you create a product in a vacuum, you’ll launch in a vacuum.

This means that three people will know about you when you launch, and you’ll have to spend another twelve months on marketing before anyone buys it.

5, Focus on a niche.

Many start-ups suffer from trying to tackle too much at one time. Instead of launching one product, they launch five. Instead of focusing on one area of interest, they aim for the center and end up interesting no one.

Pick one incredibly slim market to focus on.

One of the biggest offenders in this area is photography businesses –yes, photography is a business. Many photographers launch as generically as possible. “Hi, I’m jack, I’m a photographer.” The problem with this is, no one knows what you do. You use a camera, but so do the other million people with Digital Rebels and iPhones. You have to focus on a niche, or no one will seek you out.

Writers suffer from this too. I’ve been to endless blogs by people who are ‘writers’. That’s great, but what do you write about? You and every other person on this earth has the ability to write. You have to pick a niche to succeed at in any business.

6, Don’t hire people until you need to.

Most start-ups can be launched with one man and a laptop. But many start-ups insist on hiring five designers, three managers, and a secretary before they’ve even decide on what they’re selling.

No amount of new hires will make your product succeed if it sucks. Launch the product first, hire people when it becomes clear that you need them. Adding additional people to a staff just over-complicates things, making it harder to get things done.

7, Don’t rent an office.

Most people hate going to offices and chances are your business doesn’t need one at this phase. Can you do your work from a coffee shop? Can you do your work from your home? That saves you a hunk of money you didn’t need to spend if you just choose to use email and video chats to communicate with people, instead of renting.

Another bonus of not having an office is you can work with talented people who might not be in your area.

8, Offer a free component.

Freemium works for a reason. For instance, this blog provides free information constantly, and yet I’m able to pay myself a nearly livable wage. Your business has to do the same to compete. As Chris Anderson covers extensively in Free: The Future of a Radical Price.

We’re rapidly heading to a point where everything has to offer a free component.

If you don’t offer a free services, you’re missing out on a way that you can help 80% of your audience and retain potential customers for the future.

Maybe this is a version of your product that offers limited features. Maybe you just offer everything free and accept donations. It depends a lot on what you’re offering, but chances are there is a way to give away something to people.

9, Focus on your product’s value.

No amount of anything will help you succeed if your start-up doesn’t make something that people want to buy. And yet so many start-ups launch without thinking about the simple fact that they need to contribute value. Instead they spend $100,000 reinventing existing infrastructure, or hire five people to yell at each other over a table.

Before you launch, think about how your product helps people and contributes value to their lives. That is the most important element of any start-up.

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If you found this helpful, please help me spread the word by sharing this article via Twitter, Facebook, or any other way you prefer. Thank you.

Don’t forget about the interview with Chris Guillebeau tomorrow. I’m really excited about its potential, and I hope you are too. Sign up for free updates via EMAIL or RSS.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

This is the first part in a series of articles focusing on the key elements of being minimalist. At the end of the series I’ll be packaging the whole deal and releasing it as a free e-book.

Don’t miss out on the next one, sign up for free updates via RSS or Email.

The world has changed, we no longer need most of our stuff anymore. In fact, those who forsake their stuff entirely open themselves up to a world or opportunity.

A minimalist realizes that stuff only holds you down. When you decide to give it all up, to free yourself from the endless cycle of meaningless consumerism, you can be free to make your dreams reality.

Technology is the enabler.

Technology has given us the power to take our businesses online. We can automate and facilitate transactions that revolve around ideas. A new generation of minimalist practitioners are applying this philosophy to free themselves from the constraints of the physical world. Their businesses are thriving online, while the brick and mortar world is constrained by permanent location.

Permanent location under florescent lights.

Instead of harnessing this dream, many of us are still spending so much money on stuff we don’t use. We spend so much time and effort maintaining stuff we haven’t looked at in years, and might use someday.

It’s all understandable though. The industrial age taught us with billions of advertising dollars that we need to buy buy buy, but another piece of plastic stacked in a corner never made anyone happier.

You’re forgiven.

Now we’ll show you how to change.

It’s time to give it all up. Minimalism can free you, if you let it.

Consumerists are dodging around the truth, and meanwhile you’re the one filling up someone else’s pockets with money they didn’t need to have.

By being minimalist:

• You can quit your day job.
• You can travel the world.
• You can move anywhere you want.
• You can work from anywhere.

There are many examples of people doing this, but Colin Wright is one of the best.

He decided to ditch all of his stuff and took his sustainable design studio online. Now he moves to a new continent every four months, and since leaving has visited Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, he stopped over in New York and LA, and now he’s headed to New Zealand via Melbourne, Australia. He lives with less than 70 things, and they all fit in a backpack. His business is thriving, and he’s even found the time to write two brilliant free e-books.

I bet you wish you could be like Colin, but any number of excuses are popping up in your head.

Here’s the thing: none of those excuses matter, the only difference between you and the life he leads is the decision to not be afraid.

You are the director of your own destiny.

So why are you filling your house with junk instead of living your life? Make the choice now to rent a dumpster and destroy your attachment to the piles of useless physical things forever.

We’re living in a post-geographical society, and this has changed everything.

You can attain freedom. You just have to make the decision to free yourself. It starts with the stuff, next comes your time, eventually you’ll find that you had the power all along to thrive with only the essentials.

We all have the ability to be free, to live anywhere and work from anywhere. Being minimalist is the key.