Sam Carpenter (@workthesystem / Blog) is a consummate entrepreneur, business owner, and author of Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, winner of the prestigious Best Non-Fiction of 2009 award at the New York Book Festival. As a huge fan of The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, discovering Sam’s story and process-driven approach to business was a godsend.

We took a trip to meet Sam earlier this month. In addition to inviting us into his home in beautiful Bend, Oregon, he took the time to walk us through Centratel , the highest quality answering service in the United States. After only a short time there, it’s clear why. There is positively zero disparity between the words of his book and the person he is, or the business he’s built. It supports the lifestyle he demands and deserves, and is built on sound principles that you can absolutely replicate for the venture that will fuel your lifestyle.

Before you hit play on these videos, let me be blunt: If you…

• have to show up somewhere to earn your income
• consider yourself invaluable or irreplaceable (and view that as a good thing)
• rely on people instead of systems
• have little or no cashflow
• are working day and night to invent the next big thing
• think service-based businesses can’t be automated and provide passive income

…then you need to listen with keen ear and open mind to this interview series.

Part 1: The Systems Mindset

Part 2: An Eye for Opportunity

Part 3: The Fundamentals

Get your FREE copy of Work The System

Sam Carpenter has generously extended a free book offer to everyone reading Muselife. To immediately receive your full PDF copy of Work The System, simply send an email to pdf@workthesystem.com with the word muselife in the subject line. The actual email can be blank. You’ll receive an auto-response with the PDF attached. Simple!

This offer will expire on March 15th, 2010 so get your copy while you can!

If you haven’t been following Robert Granholm (@robgranholm) over at The Life Design Project, you are missing one of the few down-to-earth, practical voices on lifestyle design. No fluff, no “maybe someday”, no hesitation – pure execution. His experiments are entirely systematic, methodical and empirical, and he’s seeing the results of the ridiculous amount of time he’s spent deconstructing everything he does into something someone else can do. He works under IT Arsenal and has a number of products in the works to turn his expertise into a niche, low-input passive income stream.

We’re specifically talking about streamlining the painful process of finding new clients and projects (a massive timesuck if you’re a freelancer) and the alluring drug called the paycheck. Robert elaborately details his experiments in this blog post. You may be wondering why we’re hitting on freelancing and service-based income. Isn’t the point to eliminate trading time for money and create passive income? The answer is yes, but it’s critical to start from where you are and build yourself out of the inefficiencies that rule your life (something Robert talks about). You shouldn’t necessarily scrap it all and start over. Anything you’re doing poorly is an opportunity to improve and freelance work can nicely fuel your grander plans for a more low-effort income.

In Gestalt therapy , there’s a core concept I love called the paradoxical theory of change, and it couldn’t be more fitting. We can view our current job/business through the same lens we’d view our personal lives…

The more one attempts to be who one is not, the more one remains the same (Yontef, 2005). Conversely, when people identify with their current experience, the conditions of wholeness and growth support change. Change comes about as a result of “full acceptance of what is, rather than a striving to be different”.

If you’ve mentally shifted your mindset but remain enslaved by unquestioned inefficiency and tedious, low-value work, your lifestyle will never match your intentions. Wherever you are, start there and build yourself out of it. The entire experience of liberating yourself, of shifting from employee to CEO, is invaluable. Trying to skip over it will only set you back further.

Some links and resources mentioned…

• Work The System by Sam Carpenter (@workthesystem), an unparalleled exploration of systematic lifestyle & business design
• Source Control by David Walsh (yes, me), an lifestyle-focused approach to outsourcing and intelligent process design
• E-Myth by Michael Gerber, another classic book about building your business as a prototype, enabling scalability and streamlined operation
• MindMeister, a killer tool for deconstructing your processes and understanding what you do to create results
• HeyCraig & AllOfCraigs, two helpful services for scanning Craigslist efficiently