Lifestyle Redesigned

I thought this really sets the tone of the relaunch – of my site and my life.

I’ve been struggling to find a proper direction for this site since I started it 10 months ago. It sure took me long enough, heck it takes less time for a baby to be born. But that is kind of what this site is like, my new baby. The new heading for this site is all about lifestyle design. In other words, living the life the way you want to live and not the way people think we should, or people expect us to live. Enjoy things today and not putting them off till tomorrow, or when we are too old to enjoy them. In essence the art of strategically making your life the most fulfilling it can be right now.

So how did I decide on Lifestyle Redesign as my new focus? It is the major focus of my life right at this moment in time. I want to free myself from the life I’ve unconsciously developed over the course of the last 30 some years through wrong decisions, or worse – not making decisions and allowing things to go along as they may. I wanted something more from life and I awoke one day determined to get it. My original problem was that I didn’t know exactly how I was going to do it.

I went back to old school basics – brainstorming, dreaming, and goal setting. I took a weekend and listed out my goals and dreams, and what I wanted to do and have over the next ten years. I started broad and worked back to things that I could achieve every year, quarter, and month. Now I didn’t get that detailed execpt for the first year, the other nine I left as broader goals. It really helped me outline what I wanted out of life.

Some of the things on my list:

• Workless – travel more
• More free time
• Not working for someone else
• Learn a foreign language (or two)
• Visit with my family and friends more
• Take up skiing again – in the Swiss alps
• Travel across the world
• And the list goes on…

I noticed that the majority of my items revolved on free time, working for myself, and travel. How would I achieve these things? My first step was to find a way to make money that did not require me to be tied down to one place and work for someone else. The problem was I had to do this while I was tied down to one place and working for someone else…bummer. This meant my entire free time would be dedicated to trying to start a second business. I would have to sacrifice friends, family, and social life for the greater long term good. This would not be fun, but I need to treat it like building a business.

So what type of business did I decide to build? Marketing. Internet Marketing to be specific. I started looking into it about the same time I started this site. I read all the free information I could, took in the good, got duped by some bad, but by November of 2009 I had figured out a business plan. Then I took a vacation, and with the holidays didn’t do much of anything till January of 2010. I started to press forward and started to make some money online.

February rolled around and I really started to put some work in. I got distracted on more than a few occasions and started reading again instead of doing. Which is where this site’s new direction came from. Documenting my journey to lifestyle redesign and making myself accountable. I’ll probably make some long informative posts here, but most will be updates on goals and progress so that I can keep myself accountable.

So what does march hold in store for me? I have 10 sites that either need to be started from the ground up, or have more content added and a serious marketing campaign needs to be done on all properties. For these sites, I’ll be trying 3 separate techniques to try and evaluate if one works better than the other for me.

Where do I stand currently? One site fully developed, 4 more partially developed, and 5 that need to be built from scratch.

March Goals:

• Launch all 10 Sites
• Run a full marketing campaign on each one
• Increase income from $35 a month

Long Term Goals

• Make $1,000 Per Month by the End of June
• Make $3,000 Per Month by end of September
• Make $6,000 Per Month by end of Year

These are pretty lofty goals for sure, but I believe they are attainable. I’ve be researching and testing for almost a year now, so I don’t consider myself a complete beginner. I wouldn’t have been able to make those type of goals a year ago and have a rats ass chance of making them. It is going to take a lot of hard work and dedication. I know what needs to be done, the question is whether I have the drive to do it…only time will tell. But quitting my job by Jan 1, 2011 is my goal. At that time I’ll be sitting on the beach in Thailand drinking a Singha and appreciating what my new life has to offer.

So from today on, I’m committing to myself and the rest of the interwebs to give up my friends, family, and social life for one year and work my ass off to have a better more fulfilling life. Here’s to making lifestyle redesign a reality…Cheers!