Our boy Jay-Z says it better than I ever could: “You’re not a business man – you’re a business, man!” If you want to be a small player, make just enough money to “get by”, report to a boss and spend your whole life working entirely too hard – keep calling yourself a freelancer. Treating yourself as a mere individual and limiting your value to your specific range of skills is the surest way to get crushed by someone else that’s done nothing more than shift their mindset. (More after the video)

(Apologies for the audio quality on this one. Sometimes a mic just doesn’t behave. No worries… content is all that matters.)

All this talk about freelance work, consulting, creating companies – you might be wondering how it all relates back to lifestyle design and turning your income into an afterthought. Simply put: you’ll never do it if you don’t get your thoughts right. Freelance work is almost certainly what you’ll use to fuel your more serious ventures in their early stages. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, unless it consumes every waking hour that should be focused on actually eliminating it with something smarter. Treating yourself as a business gives you an extraordinary feeling of autonomy and control over your time and the opportunities you’re able to pursue. Quitting your 9-5 job to do freelance work is basically a decision to become an employee to as many bosses as you can find. Just because you call them clients doesn’t mean they won’t dominate your time.

To create a symphony that sends chills down spines, you need more than persistence and a little instrument. You need to become the conductor. Be the person that can say yes to any opportunity. Be the one setting the rules, not the one playing by them. Be the CEO or live at the whim of the person bold enough to claim that title for themselves. Your freedom and your time rests on these distinctions. The cost of changing your thinking and elevating yourself above your individual limitations: free. The cost of not doing it: don’t find out for yourself. It’s not pretty.

Mentioned in this video:

• Law of Requisite Variety

This one’s a little different as we sit down with Craig Krisulevicz (or Craig K. once you get tired of misspelling it) to profile his muse-in-progress built around a thriving, ultra niche community: heavy metal guitar players, or shredders for those in the know.

Though it might look a bit sparse right now, Metal Shredder TV will soon be rolling out a ton of video micro-lessons and e-books on different techniques, starting with TapAttack. While his past few muse ideas have seen sales and created an income stream, what matters now is that he’s living what he sells and has the passion to blow it up. He’s got the calloused fingers to prove it. He’s going to have a killer, passionate community because he’s passionate, and his products/content will be world-class because he’s got the expertise. Here’s a promo video to show you what I mean.

Finding your niche – the space you can absolutely own and monetize endlessly – is where a lot of people get tripped up. It’s less often about finding something you love, and more about deciding which passion is worth pursuing. Let’s get a discussion going on this and see if we can get past that and start executing.

Here’s a quick rundown of the video…

• Solid advice from Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee)
• People want solutions, not information
• Do you have passion? Expertise? Both?
• Why will people buy from you? (Insight from Seth Godin)
• Challenge: Find a ridiculous niche (and a few examples)

If you want to check out the Boston event with Gary, click this link to watch it: NomX3 with Garyvee: Wining, Dining and Signing. The question Seth asked (mentioned in my vid) is at 52:55. Also a question I asked about risk & failure just before it (51:20).

Over the past few weeks, I’ve received an impressive response to a survey of your current muse creation progress and pain points. Overall, the majority of you are forging ahead with your muse concepts, obstacles be damned. It says much for our community and your committment to achieving the new rich lifestyle at all costs.

What follows is a glimpse into the minds and progress of your fellow musemakers. After the video, I’ve included a number of excerpts from the qualitative comments and opinions that were included in the survey response.

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The last thing I want to do is set a negative tone, but there’s been a topic I keep hearing come up in various communities that it’s time to weigh-in on…

To start things off, below is a quick video to let you know what Muselife is all about. Take a minute to watch and then check out the post below it for more…

Muselife is born of equal parts inspiration and frustration: inspiration to share experiences with outsourcing and niche product creation, and frustration with the torrent of conflicting advice and common questions I see absolutely everywhere. It’s time to centralize the conversation and share both the experiences and resources needed to make a killing turning your ideas into income and aggressively reclaming your time.

It’s important we start by defining our end-game: ultramobility & total personal autonomy enabled by highly automated sources of passive income. Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Work Week succinctly and powerfully codified a lifestyle and methodology many of us were already pursuing, and a thriving community has emerged to further the effort. Within these circles, we call one such source a muse to distinguish it from a traditional business – as the focus is an essentially hands-off, automated way of generating revenue that lets us focus on far more important facets of your life: time with family, friends, exploring passions, travel, philanthropy, and so on.

Consider Muselife your no-bullshit resource for all facets of achieving such a lifestyle, focused on rapid product development, niche market testing, fanatical outsourcing and complete process automation to give you more of what you can never get back once it’s gone – your time.

Click below to keep reading…

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