(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

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.

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).

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.

The Pulse of the Musemakers

What are you struggling with?

I’ve kept these anonymous and paraphrased for clarity.

Niche Identification

The thing that frustrates me the most is finding a niche and developing a product. [...] Finding the niche is the single most important step.

Demand Simulation

Finding a way to systematically test my market would be valuable.

I’d like a better way to size my market and test my products profit potential before creating it.

I’d like to know that my niche knows about my product and will really pay for it – successful test marketing translating to successful sales.

I get frustrated because I can’t see ideas through due to lack of hard numbers telling me the idea would be successful.

Offer Construction

I desperately need to be able to create sales pages fast.

Creating and shaping my sales copy isn’t something I’m comfortable doing. I don’t know where to find the right writers for the job.

Product Creation

Collecting or creating product content after I’ve planned out the entire offer is time consuming and a big task. I don’t know where to begin.

I’d like help licensing & distributing products outside my home country

Targeted Promotion

A huge benefit to me would be list building. If I could get [#] number of people on my list, I could easily hit my TMI. The more targeted, the better.

Ultramobility

I am excited at the idea of a “mobile” lifestyle, but I have been trained for corporate life. I’m getting closer to breaking free of this but still want more resources.

Automation & Outsourcing

The main one is managing outsourcers. I’d love to hand over web coding to offshore contractors, but my past experiences haven’t been positive.

I’m pretty sure I would have more live muses if I managed offshore labor better.

My biggest challenge I see will be picking the right partners to launch my product, such as a publisher, web designer, virtual assistants, etc.

Motivation & Community

Something that continuously motivates you in the process would be of great help.

A good section on goal setting and seeing it through.

How to get things off the ground. I have a good idea of what I want to market and sell, but not sure which step is the next step I should take.

I don’t know where to start, or more accurately, how to start.

Summary

Remember one thing: whatever roadblocks your experiencing, however large or small, you’re not alone with it and the more you can collaborate with others and push each other forward, the faster we’ll you’ll start cranking out your muse(s) and seeing your income become passive. Serious resources on on the way, and I’m absolutely amped to see how you’ll take advantage of them to create income from your ideas.

Survey is still live

The survey will remain online for quite a while so feel free to add your thoughts or comments to this post.

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…

Simplify & Clarify

Let’s strip down the topic of creating passive income online to its absolute simplest form:

• Identify a need within a niche audience/market segment
• Create a product that satisfies this need
• Enable them pay you in exchange for your product’s value

Given the simplicity, why do so many think of passive income as a sort of unattainable end? The answer is just as simple: failure to clarify the unknown. As a whole, it all seems rather complex and overwhelming – creating your product, building your sales page, marketing to your niche, processing payments and delivering your product. Where do you start and how do you ever know if you’re going about things in the so-called ‘right way’? The short answer is: you don’t. When it comes to selling information products, there is no right or wrong, but rather effective or ineffective approaches.

• Someone reads your sales letter and buys or they leave as if your product never existed
• Someone clicks your Google ad or they read it and move on with their life uninterrupted
• Your new customer keeps your product or they request a refund

At every single step of the way, you simply need to be as effective as possible and convert desire, need, or curiosity into hard-dollar sales.

What’s ahead?

Derived from my personal muse creation/outsourcing experiments, as well as ongoing participation within the community, you can expect Muselife to detail explorations, experiments and resource. As a quick overview…

Outsourcing & Automation

Finding the right teams around the world, what to watch out for, success studies and process outlines to ensure you get high performance and optimum output

Ultramobility

Through extensive global travel – be it Bangkok, Budapest, Melbourne or Mexico – I’ve experimented with all facets of conducting business without a solid real base of operations. I’ll share the priceless lessons learned – on islands, in airports, across timezones.

Muse Case Studies

From concept to launch, we’ll explore case studies and profiles of successful (and not-so-unsuccessful) muses. Through it all, we’ll extract the critical lessons you can only learn by doing.

Resources & Reviews

Whether you’re looking for the simplest digital content delivery, software you can’t live without, or unbeatable muse-focused books, you’ll find it here.

“I will automate my income.”

From this point forward, make this your mantra. Scrawl it on your bathroom mirror and stick it to your computer. Automate your income and you recapture your time.

I’m launching Muselife to share as much as possible, to ensure you can absolutely kill it creating and selling your own products. Make 2009 your most ambitious year yet, a year you’ll reflect on with no regret – make 2009 the year you reclaimed ownership of your time, managed outsourcers around the world and did something few people you know ever will – create flowing income sources from nothing more than an idea and plan.