Last Updated on May 21, 2020 by Shane Corbitt
How do you feel every morning when that alarm clock goes off, are your eyes going to snap open and sparkle with enthusiasm?
Are you going to head off to your commute with a spring in your step? Are you looking forward to weeks, months, and years of that routine?
I really hope you are, but sadly the odds are against it. In fact, according to one study, almost 60 percent of people around the world don’t like their jobs!
You probably work too much for too little with people you don’t like doing stuff you don’t care much about. At least part of that sounds like you, right?
I don’t think it’s healthy to spend all of your waking hours working a job you don’t like just so you can get up to do it again tomorrow. And then to keep doing it forever hoping to save enough so that you can eventually quit and then do nothing.
Instead, how about building a lifestyle you like today so you don’t have to postpone so much of your life until retirement? An opportunity to redesign your career and your life to achieve financial independence and success on your own terms.
Use this action plan to redesign your life starting today!
STEP 1: REALLOCATE YOUR TIME
Look at your daily schedule and determine how much time you can commit to investing in a new venture. Take whatever you can get, but try to commit a consistent number of hours each week toward the many small steps you’ll need to get going. Force yourself to turn off the TV and do something constructive repeatedly.
The sooner you start building your new pursuit into your lifestyle the better. Even one hour a week can add up over time, and one hour a day is even better.
STEP 2: REDESIGN YOUR SCHEDULE
Think hard about where you can find more time to invest in pursuit of your new lifestyle.
For example, save some vacation days for research and planning, ask your boss for a schedule change that allows you to work from home or avoid the worst commuting hours. Maybe even change some of your responsibilities to project-based (results) instead of hours-based (face time) to free up time that you can invest in your new business.
STEP 3: START A BUDGET
Divert whatever money you can afford into a new savings account. (I like free online ones like those available from INGDirect.com.) Set up an automatic weekly or monthly transfer of whatever you can afford into this account to start building a nest egg.
Set this money aside specifically for new business research, training, and development expenses. Even if you don’t know what you’re going to do or when, start saving now so you have capital to implement or even quit your job later. Even $10 a week can add up over time.
You can do these first three steps without even knowing what your new lifestyle business is going to be!
Start reorganizing your life around what you want it to become and your lifestyle will start to change to reflect your lifestyle goals.
STEP 4: ANALYZE YOUR LIFESTYLE GOALS
To get your lifestyle redesign thought process started, brainstorm answers to the following questions.
Income:
- How much money do I want?
- How much money do I actually need each year?
- How would my financial situation change if I worked from home?
If I Didn’t Need to Work At All, I Would Invest My Time In:
- These 5 favorite activities?
- These 5 favorite places?
- If 1,000 fans were paying me $100 each annually, what would I do for them?
Current Lifestyle Questions:
- Why do you live where you live? Would you like to change that?
- What limits have you placed on your own life and behavior that may not be fair to you?
- Which of your daily activities are old fashioned habits and routines that are unnecessary today?
- Which of your recurring self criticisms or self doubts are not fair to you and the potential you represent?
- Which of your behaviors are in reaction to events of your childhood or incidents in your past that you could and should have let go of long ago?
- How could you redesign your lifestyle to address these issues and improve your day to day happiness?
Making changes in your life takes courage and commitment over time. That’s why it’s easier to do with friends along for the ride.
As you go through this process, try to find a friend or relative who can support you. Feedback from someone else’s perspective can be very helpful in clarifying and accomplishing your goals.
STEP 5: GENERATE BUSINESS IDEAS
In order to help you identify a profitable and enjoyable lifestyle business, take some time to work through the following areas. Really brainstorm your ideas!
Start With the Four P’s
Choose one of the following four P’s as the foundation for your new lifestyle business.
- Passion
- People
- Problem
- Product
Audience Needs Analysis
Next look at the needs of the audience that your chosen passion, people, problem, or product topic attracts. How can you best help your audience?
Determining how you can help others is the foundation of most great businesses. Starting with the people who share your passion or have the problems you want to target, what are their top needs that your business could make money by serving?
Profit Potential
Evaluate your target market’s size and the needs and purchasing power of the potential customers in that market. Does this audience spend money on the products, services, or information you propose to offer?
Looking at the needs you’ve listed previously, will those customers pay money for you to help them? If so, are there products already available that you can sell?
Competitor Analysis
Look at similar sites to see what is working to serve needs similar to those you are targeting. The marketplace will show you what works if you look.
Don’t look only at direct competitors but also at similar products/services in other markets. What are those sites offering?
Format and Distribution Analysis
The format you choose to deliver your content can have a huge effect on your success, even with the same content.
So given the audience needs you identified earlier, what’s the best way to reach your audience?
- blogs
- forums
- podcasts
- videos
- webinars
- mobile apps
The best format for your business is the one that your target audience prefers. So, where do your customers spend time and how do they prefer to consume info?
Product Development
Package up your research, lifestyle, redesign priorities, and ideas into a few of your best guesses at the new product you’ll create. Which items, services, or concepts offer you the best opportunities to create your lifestyle design and help your audience?
Combining the several filters of what you like, what you can deliver cost-effectively, how to market it competitively, and the Click Millionaires Lifestyle Business Design Success Principles will help you narrow down even the wildest ideas to practical businesses. So go ahead—dream big and have fun thinking up clever ways to reinvent your life.
STEP 6: DO SOME RESEARCH
Educating yourself about the field you have chosen and your competition is a good investment of time, too.
- Read books. Read three to five books. Half of these books should be about your chosen topic areas and target markets to help you become an expert. The other half of them should be about “how to do it” online by building websites, Internet marketing, and product development and differentiation. Then stop reading! That’s enough. Money comes from doing, not reading.
- Go online. Set up free Google Alerts to automatically email you the latest blog posts and web page updates on the topics that you’re exploring. Look for holes in the market and ways that you can serve the needs of people you would enjoy working with.
- Study your competitors. Subscribe to the noozles or blogs, buy the products of, or join the communities of three competitors to learn what they’re doing and identify ways that you could improve on it.
Avoid “Analysis Paralysis”: Don’t overdo the research! Research is often used as a crutch to avoid the fear of failure. Set a time line that allows you to learn enough to be dangerous and then a deadline for moving forward.
STEP 7: DON’T SPEND MONEY
We are all trained to think that buying stuff will help solve our problems. But if you’re going to create something new and valuable, it’s more likely to come from inside you than from the latest “guru” product or course.
Don’t spend more than you can afford on a highly promoted business, marketing, or product development course.
Instead, spend at least 30 days just looking, reading, researching the competition, discussing with friends, and thinking about what you could and should do online. (Of course spending a little money to educate yourself, learn about the competition, and participating in forums and blogs and social networks is okay and better than just reading but only if you can afford it and if those activities are advancing your project rather than just distracting you.)
STEP 8: START A TEST SITE
Once you have an idea of the direction you’d like to go, start a test website.
When you’re getting started, you’ll probably find this much harder than you expected. However, you’ll see that building websites is like learning a language.
At first it all seems like difficult gibberish but with repeated exposure and practice, you’ll soon learn words, then phrases, and soon be able to build your own sites faster and faster. There’s no need to learn any programming these days to build a basic website.
For this experimental phase, I recommend using a cheap or free website building service like Weebly, Blogger, or WordPress. Of course, you can hire outsourced contractors to help you, too. And, if your business is more about podcasting or videos or auctions, then you’ll want to invest this time learning how to use BlogTalkRadio.com, YouTube, or eBay instead.
Your test site does not have to be perfect, it doesn’t even need to be good. You don’t have to put your real name on it or tell all your friends about it, either.
Your goal is simply to get some hands-on experience of how e-business works. It’s better to do that privately, when there’s little money on the table. You are going to make mistakes and are going to look stupid at least once, so the sooner you quietly get past that part the better!
STEP 9: TAKE ODD JOBS
If you are trying to change careers or learn new skills, try doing some freelance contracting on the side, away from your current job. Join project marketplaces like Elance, oDesk or Fiverr to see what skills employers are seeking.
You can even surf the “Gigs” section on your local CraigsList to see what small projects you can take on to get paid while learning. Even if you don’t make much, getting paid to learn valuable new skills is a great deal.
STEP 10: ESTABLISH YOUR BRANDING
Start brainstorming domain names once you have an idea of the business direction you are headed. You want a name that is short, easy to spell and remember, and available, ideally with a “.com” extension. There are not many of those left, so this can be harder than it sounds.
Once you have a good domain name, be sure to join the more popular social networking services using your new brand as your username. You want to establish your usernames with these services to make it easy for customers to find you (and to make sure competitors don’t take them).
Following this 10-Step Action Plan can get you on your way to building a successful Click Millionaire lifestyle business of your own. I hope that it’s helpful to you in changing your life for the better.
For more in depth information on building the lifestyle business of your dreams, read the book, Click Millionaires: Work Less, Live More With An Internet Business You Love.
Please feel free to comment below on your findings and plans to redesign your lifestyle!
