Benny Lewis is one of those guys you’ll eventually meet – in some absolutely random spot on the globe – and immediately take a liking to. For me, that particular meeting spot was near Khao San Road here in Thailand – appropriately enough, in an Irish pub named Shamrock. Here’s what’s remarkable about this chap: at any given moment, you can hear him shift between any of 7 languages in casual conversation. Benny Lewis has the type of linguistic skills that make me feel like a low-functioning autistic by comparison. Fortunately he has that disarming Irish charm to spare the fragile, unilingual ego of the average American.

After hearing him speaking Esperanto (seriously), I was fascinated. After hearing more than a wee’ bit o’Gaelic, I felt an Irish camaraderie with him. Having heard no mention of Elvish or Klingon, I knew he wasn’t just some lonely language nerd (though he did deconstruct Na’vi). After listening to him charm a Parisian model to the point of melting – in fluent French – I was straight-up jealous of him. I recall Sean Ogle and myself were about ready to bow at his feet after we witnessed that moment.

So, how is this relevant? Aside from being fascinating, what does this have to do with turning passion into passive income, product creation, and mobility? Everything.

Mobility

First off, Benny is entirely location independent. He’s lived all over this fine globe, supporting his travels as a language consultant and translator. He has the workflow and toolkit to a science, and this work also develops and maintains his core language skills. He is not crunching spreadsheets in a cube, hating his life, dreaming of a someday that will never come. He’s found a way to fuel his lifestyle doing what he loves.

Check out this post on Fluent In 3 Months for more on going freelance: How To Become A Location-Independent Freelance Translator

Product Creation: Content is king. You are nothing without content.

I don’t speak 7 languages, and I never will. That’s not my passion. However, I could make Benny relatively rich by helping him beautifully package everything he knows into something marketable. Nothing is possible without the content.

At present, you can’t buy anything from Benny. When you go to his sites, you aren’t hammered with promotions for an e-book or a course he’s selling. Everything he’s doing is 100% pure content emerging from his own learning process. This is the foundation for what will become a seriously profitable product/course. Content is all you need. If you are cranking out content around the thing you know best, you can create income. Packaging knowledge is formulaic – possessing the knowledge and sharing it liberally is what counts. Go buy yourself a $500 package from Rosetta Stone or Berlitz. By the time you’re thoroughly frustrated and regretting your decision, Benny will have something out there worth buying. He’s setup a mailing list to keep everyone updated on the status of his Language Hacking course, so I highly recommend you jump on that here.

Proving it

Benny doesn’t flaunt his language chops. He won’t bust into a language for the “Oohs!” and “Ahhs!” it surely gets. Instead, Benny blogs, tweets & films in all 7 languages – every time. Want proof?

• Twitter: English, Irish, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Esperanto
• IrishPolyglot (Blog): English, Irish, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Esperanto
• Video: He re-dubs every video in each language too. Below is a compilation. Check out his YouTube Channel for more.

Wrapping it up

There’s a lot to digest here, but the simple point is this: share as much as you can about the thing you absolutely love, and do so with the realization that you can monetize it. You cannot monetize an intention. You need substance, you need remarkable content. It costs nothing and there are no excuses. Start consolidating, structuring and focusing what you know best, and leave it to guys like me to show you how to turn it into income – fuel for your lifestyle.

Want more on the actual language hacking process?

• Cody McKibben also sat down to talk with Benny, where he goes much further into his specific language hacking techniques and concepts – highly recommend that you check it out over at Thrilling Heroics.
• Check out FluentIn3Months.com

As a traveler, you want to be spontaneous. You want to just throw planning and time constraints to the wind while you frolic carelessly through random countries, ducking into a Starbucks every few days to check your Paypal balance and laugh while you count up the orders for that brilliant product you created. Let that dream marinate for a second then wake up.

The raw truth about going mobile with your lifestyle and business: it’s a logistical, technical and psychological hazing that separates the men from the boys (or something more gender neutral, albeit less punchy). It’s never the big things that burn you. It’s the tiny, trivial ones. Your plane won’t crash – your hard drive will. You won’t lose your backpack – you’ll lose your wifi signal. You won’t look around your office and see everyone else that resents their job – you’ll look around the fantastic cafe you’re in and resent all the people having conversations that aren’t about work.

With some simple preparation, management and contingency planning, you can skip all that. You can live your lifestyle design fantasy and never wake up. Define your experience ahead of time, or the surprises you didn’t consider will define it for you.

If you haven’t already, check out my related post on all of this: The Lifestyle Design Intervention (which admittedly skews more towards passionate rant than actionable advice).

Everything ahead is based on personal experience. Though it’s bursting at the seams with judgement and condescending criticism, it’s also my own massive ego-check after rugged experimentation. It’s my realization that location independence is simply not enough and move back to the drawing board with unshakeable resolve for more.

First off, I want to tell you I’m doing this because I care about you and don’t want to see you destroy your life. This is a safe space, free of judgement. I’ve organized this intervention because I’m seeing a pattern. I’m seeing you fall short of your potential and lose sight of what you set out to accomplish.

Now, onto the unsafe space full judgement, where I’m going to say what no one else will…

Location independence is a weak compromise & it’s absolutely not awesome.

When was it decided that mobility was a good place to throw our hands up in victory? We all set out to climb Everest, and you’ve planted your flag at base camp, perfectly geared up to suffer the cold.

Look around. We’re claiming achievement and expertise in a space we haven’t actually figured out. Labeling a compromise doesn’t change the fact that it’s a compromise.

The Unsolicited New Rules of Lifestyle Design

What follows here is not for everyone. If you are content working constantly or do not have genuine passions which demand total time ownership – this is not for you. This is only for the dangerously ambitious who demand absolute independence, of both mobility and time.

1) Mobility is not Independence: Stop blurring the lines.

Mobility is as admirable a start as it is pathetic a finish. It is not wrong – it’s simply incomplete. Wireless isn’t freedom – it’s an extended leash. Call it whatever you want – it’s glorified telecommuting giving you an ever-greater sense of how big a world it is that you’re missing.

Mobility is nothing more than logistics. Connectivity, communication, visas, timezones, itineraries – it is all just infrastructure supporting your portable job.

You need to have an unquenchable thirst for life and absolutely refuse to just take little sips between client work.

Mere mobility leaves no room for full immersion in passion-pursuits. It’s an admission that you will always have to work to deserve your lifestyle. The beast must forever be fed.

2) Perpetuation is not Elimination: Stop whoring your time for mobility. You deserve both.

Designing new lifestyles around old work is ass-backwards and entirely broken.

When did we stop demanding time and mobility? Nearly half of all location independents work 40-50 hours a week. That’s a ridiculous number of people working absurd hours. When I was doing the same, none of those hours were focused on eliminating that problem. Are yours?

3) Mobility is not Fulfilling

If you ever want an unforgettable case of nomadic blue-balls, try travelling the world working from your laptop.

Photo credit: Flickr User Cybjorg

When I’m in a wild new place, doing passionless work, I feel extreme resentment. I feel like a failure that only solved half a problem – which is precisely the case. We need to stop telling people to become a freelancer, travel the world and suddenly life will be amazing. Why? Because it’s fucking cruel. Leaving an office and taking your work somewhere exotic does not eliminate frustration - it inflames it.

Doing something you don’t love in an office feels oddly acceptable – it feels right. Yet somehow when there’s an elephant sanctuary 5 minutes away or a raging cultural parade marching down the street, sitting in a cafe designing some logo isn’t as glamorous. It stops feeling like an enabler and starts feeling like an obligation.

A raw sampling of the work-supported location independent lifestyle…

• Ireland: You lose your debit card and have $8 cash. You pawn your possessions to cover a hostel for the 6 nights it takes to get money wired. On the flight out, you realize the pawn shop sold you back the wrong external hard drive. Goodbye 2 weeks of client work, hello 8 hours of explicit amateur Russian porn.
• Stockholm: After a flirtatious exchange with two of the most stunning blonde girls you’ve ever laid eyes upon, you’re unable to accept their invitation to their normally all-girls fondue pajama party, due to your extended client work review session that evening. For the first time ever, you actually feel a dream die.
• Melbourne: You stand on a 6th-floor balcony stealing wi-fi, uploading critical revisions for a presentation halfway around the world. The girl you flew all the way there to visit enjoys a crazy night with other guys at a pub. You communicate via text message. Emoticons are used.
• Mexico: You cross the border for tequila, tacos and tanning. Two weeks later, you’re welcomed back across that same border with a $950 mobile roaming bill from all those leisurely conference calls you were so smugly taking from the beach, cocktail in hand.
• Santa Monica: You’re finishing a massive demo for the CIA/NSA/FBI in 4 days. Your keyboard & trackpad dies. You do not sleep for 72 hours without progress. You have had a date with this yoga instructor you met. Clock ticking, you spend $2,000 on replacement gear. You are the guy in Coffee Bean with 2 computers, wires everywhere, surrounded by boxes. You leave without surfing once.
• Prague: One minute, you’re the guy in a pink boa entertaining a German bachelorette party – the next, you’re learning harshly that absinthe before conference calls is a very poor decision.
• Bangkok: You don’t turn on your laptop for 2 weeks. It is the single greatest 2 weeks of your life.

Lesson? Mobility without time ownership simply creates extraoardinary opportunity for unexepected experiences – which is right when obligation walks in, punches you directly in the face, drops you to the ground and steps on your back while you watch potential walk away, unrealized and forever lost. I demand more.

4) Logistics is not Ingenuity: Stop saying anyone can do it.

Even very smart people work constantly from one place. Slightly smarter people can travel the world working constantly from any place. The ingenious ones eliminate non-passionate work entirely to make room for experience.

Absolute independence is significantly more difficult than mobility. It requires you rethink how you fuel your lifestyle and demands ingenuity and tremendous risk tolerance. Few people talk about this because so few people have figured it out. It was easier to just slap a label on settling.

5) Enabling Passion is not Passion: Stop lying to yourself about loving what you do

There’s one thing I became extraordinarily good at after leaving the corporate world: lying to myself. The huge mistake we make is confusing what we’re doing with what it enables. I’d always tell myself that it’s acceptable to not love every minute of my work, because it was enabling me to have wild experiences and travel. That’s a compromise we should no longer we willing to make.

Listen. Before you argue that you “actually love” what you do, think very, very hard – harder than you’ve ever allowed yourself before. Would you do it if there was no prospect of it ever making you money? It should feel uncomfortable, because you’re asking yourself to question a part of your identity. Do you remember the feeling when you realized your old job wasn’t as signficant as you pretended it was? We need another round of introspection. The freedoms of mobility and self-employment gives us an entirely fresh set of things to justify doing passionless work to sustain.

If you say you love something as inhuman as search engine optimization, and don’t have a Google logo tattooed on your ass: I don’t believe you. You’re either repressing your true passion, or haven’t discovered it yet.

Just because you’re doing something from a bungalow in Thailand doesn’t make it something you love. You just love that it lets you chill in a bungalow in Thailand. You would never rationalize like that if you were doing it from a dank Scranton office park.

So enough of that. It’s time to talk about changing this and turning a demand for more time into something real.

Announcing Sourcecontrol & the MuseModel Challenge

We are concerned with one thing only: creating more time. Can you totally re-think the way you currently support your lifestyle in a way that gives you more free hours in the day? Can you outsource, productize, or otherwise streamline what you do? There’s a flight (and more) in it for whoever has the sharpest idea…

Click here for the full details on the MuseModel Challenge

Amidst the hustle, focus and ingenuity behind creating your muse – your passive income stream – it’s all too easy to lose sight of the driving motive that set you down that path in the first place: independence. Muselife, above all else, exists to transform passion into the income which fuels your lifestyle and experiences. It’s one thing to know why location independence and financial self-sufficiency matters – it’s another thing entirely to actually make it happen. As is always the case when taking the road less traveled, it’s also easy to feel you’re alone in your ambitions, particularly when everyone around you are simply living towards retirement and content with someone else owning their freedom.

Now is the perfect time to say it: you are anything but alone in your pursuit. Not only is there a rapidly growing movement towards ultramobility and living for your passions – but there’s also a thriving set of entrepreneurs that have achieved the new rich lifestyle, and freely share what they’ve learned along the way.

For the first time ever, we’re taking the pulse of this movement and community, and intend to share it all with you. Corbett Barr of Free Pursuits and Jonathan & Lea Woodward of Location Independent have tightly orchestrated a simple survey and it’s time to add your voice. You don’t have to already be location independent to participate. It’s enough to simply know you need to escape your job, travel unencumbered, and turn passion into income. Muselife is in good company on this one, spreading the buzz alongside 18 other exceptional lifestyle design blogs.

Take me to the survey on FreePursuits.com ›

You’ll see the results of this once the response reaches a healthy tipping point, so this is not something you want to miss.

Photo: Embracing my location independence over Budapest, 2008

The words that follow will make you uncomfortable. Liberation and absolute autonomy lies in your reaction to that discomfort. Let’s get this started…

What do I know about this?

Feel free to skip this entirely if you just want to get into the “how”. I write this only to give some backing to my advice.

In 2007, I quit an extraordinary job with a salary to match. I had zero money saved, no backup plan, no academic safety net – nothing. I’d just returned from an extended trip to Australia & Thailand and there was simply no returning to the office hustle. Quitting was exhilarating, terrifying and one of the most uncomfortable things I’d done in my life. It was also, without question, the smartest move I’ve ever made. It sparked a chain of events I could have never foreseen and has lead to experiences and destinations I’d never anticipated.

The same day I quit, I was invited to join a start-up venture as an early partner. Extending the offer was an extraordinary friend who knew where my head was at the time. He knew why I was escaping corporate life, respected that drive, and was willing to do whatever it took to get me on-board. Casual conversations evolved quickly into signed dotted lines, but only after consciously designing the lifestyle to go with it.

My terms, in short, guaranteed the following:

• Absolute location independence
• Agreement that any work may be outsourced at my discretion
• Explicit exclusion of all work that fell outside my core 20% value
• Array of gear to support ultramobility (new MacBook Pro, global broadband card & contract, etc)
• Substantially higher monthly income (Ironic? Quite.)

Without hesitation, I bought the first ticket out of the country and spent the next year in constant motion. Ireland to Sweden to Finland to Prague to Austria to Budapest to Germany to Philadelphia to San Francisco, down the entire Pacific coast into Mexico, and finally back to Southern California for a much needed unwind.

The point is simple: That unforgettable year, I was simultaneously building a wildly successful company, without a day spent in an office. Recruiting new hires, securing venture capital, creating game-changing technology – from a backpack and a laptop.

Now the focus is on muse creation, rather than building companies – but the fact remains: you need to take back your time and your freedom in order to do something worthwhile.

Now, back to your situation…

Let’s assume you have a job. Excluding unnecessary meetings and the fact that you have to be at your desk to answer your phone, you realistically don’t need to be in the office to create the value you’re paid to deliver. If that isn’t true, you’re likely getting paid for your behavior more than your results.

I’m writing this based on set of assumptions.

• You are valuable to your employer. Not irreplaceable, but inconvenient to replace. It needs to be more compelling to concede to your proposal than to lose you entirely.
• You’re willing to have uncomfortable conversations (even though they usually turn out to be no big deal)
• You’re willing to get your time back, at any cost.

The strongest negotiator is always the person willing to walk away, the person with nothing to lose. Remember – and this is critical – you aren’t discussing what you want, you are asserting what you need.

Presence to Independence, Step-by-Step

Inventory your week

Over 5 workdays, carefully track everything you do inside work hours, in a typical week. If you want to move faster, you can do this mentally – but be rigorous and don’t skip over anything. Pay close attention to the following…

• Dependency: Who are the people that create the need to wait? What tasks in your routine have dependencies? Approval signatures, creative/client reviews, quality assurance, technical assistance or return phone calls? Take note of any task that must pause until someone other than you takes action, and how long you waited for that action to occur.
• Presence: In all but rare cases, meetings are unnecessary and a massive time-suck. More significantly, they create a demand for your presence. On most teams, there’s one person that is responsible for every unnecessary meeting and, by force of habit, adds your name to the attendee list. Take note of these people – you’ll be having a conversation with them soon.
• Repetition: If you repeat a task or behavior within 2-3 days, it can be systematized, automated or batched. Take note of any repetitive, generally left-brained behavior or action. As a rule of thumb, if you feel like a well-programmed robot or piece of software could do it instead, it’s repetitive.
• Misspent Time: This one focuses on you. What do you do that you wouldn’t otherwise waste time doing if it weren’t for your job? Smoke breaks? Long lunches? Empty conversations? Funny company-wide emails? Happy hour? Don’t even get me started on happy hours. Everything takes time, and now is your time to identify it as wasteful.

After you go through this exercise, you’ll have a clearer idea what you actually do in exchange for your paycheck. You’ll likely realize how much of your time is squandered waiting on someone else to act, in time-filling social interaction, or on repetitive tasks which maintain the illusion of being busy.

Warning: This process is humbling. It can shake your confidence and bruise your ego, as it tends to reality-check how much of what we spend time doing actually matters.

Seed the conversation

Who you talk to matters far more than what you say. The most articulate, well-reasoned of propositions will fall on dead ears if you’re placing in front of a human resources manager. Ask yourself this: who would defend your value and contribution if it were called into question? Who is the person that could fire you? In most cases, they’re the one to talk to. With a quick email or a tap on the shoulder, ask him or her for a moment to talk. This is not the type of discussion that should be scheduled, but rather casual and informal.

In the most casual, lowest pressure way possible, let him know you’ve been thinking of ways to maximize your work-week and eliminate any wasted time, and would like to know his thoughts. The key here is to lay the groundwork for a proper conversation but not put him on the spot. You’re asking for objective consideration, not firm decision. No one wants to be thought  of as closed-minded, so he’ll certainly allow you to lay out your ideas. Let him know you’ll come back with more detail.

Structure your ideal week

Now you can get creative. Based on your original work-week inventory, assuming elimination of all dependencies and superfluous meetings & interactions, how much time would your job actually demand each week? Can you batch together tasks that used to span a whole week? Does anything you do require you do it during normal business hours or can you do it at night just as effectively? Focus on tasks instead of hours and be brutally honest with yourself. For now, don’t be concerned with how your manager/boss will interpret all of this, but rather focus on your ideal week. We’ll make sure to shape it into an irresistible proposition before they lay eyes on it.

Some starting points…

• When do you prefer to work – morning, afternoon or evening/late night? When are you most efficient?
• What times/days are absolutely off-limits for work tasks?
• What tasks would you rather not do at all?
• What communication method do you prefer – phone or email?
• At what interval will you check/respond to emails?
• Are you willing to work at unusual hours or on weekends?
• Are you willing to make financial concessions in exchange for your flexibility/remote agreement? Are there other concessions you’re willing to make?

Position yourself for guaranteed approval

Below is a loose outline of the topics to cover in your proposition. This can be presented conversationally or as an actual email/document, depending on your comfort levels and what you think will be best-received by the decision maker.

Discussion Points for New Structure

• How will you measure output/performance for your manager?
• How do you prefer to be reached? (eg: Email, phone only for urgent matters)
• How often will you be in the office? How will you communicate your availability to others? (auto-responder, shared calendar, etc)
• How often will you check your email?
• How will you be involved with essential meetings?
• How will you share documents or files?
• How will you track tasks you’re working on or are responsible for? Shared web-based spreadsheet or tool is often the most effective.

Core Value & Contribution

What are the 20% of your activities that create the highest value? Clarify the things you are best-suited to do.

Areas of Low-Value

What are the 80% of your activities that do not deliver high value or are best suited for someone else? Clarify the things you are not best-suited to do.

Potential Concessions

These are the things you’re willing to concede in exchange for your time/flexibility. Ideally, you’ll concede nothing and simply get what you want in exchange for your more results-oriented approach – but be willing to bargain in whatever way you feel is compelling.

• 401k Enrollment?
• Any paid vacation time?
• Any paid sick days?
• Insurance (for some, it’s costs very little to get insurance outside your employer)?
• Any company perks you don’t need (transit/parking/expense reimbursement, etc)?

Time Window

A 4-6 week window is healthy and often accepted as reasonable. Propose a discussion half-way into the trial period, as well as at the end, to re-assess and discuss anything that comes up during the month. If you’re kicking ass, chances are the mid-point discussion will never happen. If you continue to do so, the 2nd discussion won’t either. This is simply to respect the power dynamic between yourself and your manager. Frame everything based on his personal comfort with the situation, rather than hard metrics or output. As long as you are not creating more stress, the arrangement will naturally continue.

Critical Points

• Respect gets respect
  Realize this: if you’re talking to a director/manager, or especially the owner, they’re going to understand an entrepreneurial proposition. Don’t assume they won’t get it – they often understand entirely. Conversations like these completely change how you’re perceived and shows you demand more from life.
• For this to be about you, it needs to be framed around them
  Shift your perceptual position and try to hear everything your proposing through the ears of your manager. What does he get from giving you what you’re asking? Where’s his up-side? This makes all the difference.
• Law of Reciprocity
  What have you given before asking for something in return? If you’re a stellar employee, you’ve already been giving and you’re in a good place to ask. If you’re a half-ass slacker, why expect to receive anything in return?
• Never “if”, always “how”
  Your entire process needs to be framed not with the question of if it can work but rather finding how it can work. Always seek alternatives and compromise until you get a “yes”. Keep pushing for more until you have everything you need.

Excuses & Misconceptions

Finally, let’s dismantle some of the more convenient or common excuses and limiting beliefs around remote work agreements.

I need to replace my current income with a muse before I’ll quit

Bullshit. You do not need to replace your income before you quit. You should set aside a month or two of living expenses and that’s all; most people I know that say they need to replace their current income make far more money than they actually require to live, and piss most of it away dealing with the stress of their job (booze, clothes, weekend benders, vehicles they use to commute to the job they hate, and so on). Create positive pressure on yourself. If you don’t trust yourself and your abilities enough to take negligible financial risk at this stage of the game, you have more introspection to do before quitting.

Cut your expenses and spending now as if you’ve already quit, and measure what you truly need to live. It’s far less than you think.

I work for [insert massive corporation here] and they have protocol/policy that won’t allow remote arrangements

Protocol and policy is for the 98% of employees with an employee mindset. It’s possible you’re not working in a place that supports your need for flexibility. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make the attempt, but do realize some companies are rigid and bound by bureaucracy.  They do not, and will never, support your transition into the new rich lifestyle. Acknowledging that is critical and it calls for more drastic action. That said, never assume they won’t go for your proposition.

My boss is an absolutely unreasonable person and will not agree to this

Every person has a turn-key, a way to break down their barriers or get inside their head. If you’re up for the task, it’s time to do some exploration and find the chink in his armor that will lower his defenses. Remember, you need to make this compelling for them. If the situation feels futile, time to find a new job that will be more flexible – or be aggressive and dive right into creating your muse.

Next Up: Part 2 – Ultramobility: Work & Play from anywhere in the world

In the next article, I’ll focus on what to do after you secure your new job structure, including some common mistakes and overlooked issues that you can avoid. Once you completely remove yourself from the office and the 9-5, the world is your playground and all you need to do is stay connected.

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.