The Easy Way To Create Wealth Online and Live Your Dream

by Charlie Cook

Yanik Silver skydives from 28,500 feet, ATVs and scubas in Iceland, races dune buggies in Baja, and parties hard in Baltimore. He’s having fun, big time. Profits from online sales of his marketing products have made his maverick lifestyle possible, and he’s loving it.

You may not long to go skydiving, but I’m certain you have an ideal lifestyle in mind. Are you living it yet? Why not? Isn’t that one of the main reasons you went into business in the first place?

Every entrepreneur and small business owner I know talks about working less and making more money so they can do the things they’d really love to do — travel, buy that sailboat, take the family to Timbuktu, live debt-free. But year after year, they’re still working way too hard and not getting any closer to living their dreams.

What’s Getting in the Way?

Of course, there are potential obstacles…. Don’t let yourself be one of them.

I’ve been there, working long days and seeing business grow steadily, but still not living the way I wanted to. One of the things I wanted to do was to spend more time on the ski slopes. I love to ski. Actually, I really love to ski.

We bought a condo at a ski area in Vermont nine years ago, but I was only getting there a couple of weekends each winter. I couldn’t get away to ski enough – I was working too hard!

I was very frustrated, and I knew if I waited too many years to live this particular dream, it’d be too late.

The answer was simple. I added broadband access to our Vermont home so I could ski and work there in the winter. I’ve been doing that for three seasons now and I’ve finally found the lifestyle I’ve been wanting for years. And my business is thriving too.

What was getting in my way?  ME!

I had convinced myself that I needed to work from my Connecticut office to keep my business on track. Once I let go of that idea, I had to overcome my fear that if I spent more time skiing in the winter, my business would stop growing.

Actually, it grew faster than ever before — and yours can, too.

Is It All In Your Head?

Unshackle your mind, and you’ve taken a big step toward achieving business success and your ideal lifestyle. And who’s in charge of your mind anyways? You are!

Almost every entrepreneur and business owner I know makes the same mistake: they focus on making money. They get obsessed with growing their business to bring in more revenue.

That’s what I did, and once you have that mindset, you’re trapped by all the details of running your business. You spend every day putting out fires and looking at the bottom line.

How To Get Unstuck

I’ve coached and mentored hundreds of business owners over the last twenty years. Their problem has never been a lack of ideas. But I’ve seen way too many clients hold themselves back by identifying all the rational, logical reasons they couldn’t live their dream. And they weren’t hearing their intuition, which was telling them they could reinvent their lives — or their businesses — and make it to the top.

Step 1 – Identify Your Own Negative Thoughts

Before I could achieve the lifestyle and the business success I wanted, I needed to relinquish a handful of ideas that were keeping me from just doing it. When I was able to let go of a handful of wrong headed notions, I was amazed at how simple it was to find the simple solutions the helped me live the way I wanted and continue to grow my business.

The biggest obstacle to creating the lifestyle you want is the banter in your head that keeps you from giving yourself the permission to do so. You know, the thoughts that keep telling you:
“My wife/ husband will kill me if I suggest….” In my case she suggested the solution.

“If I cut back on the number of hours I work, I’ll make less.” Not true. If you make better use of your time you could make twice as much in half the time.

“I’ve never done it before and don’t know how.” If I’d told myself that before I sold a website for almost a million dollars ten years ago, I’d still be struggling.

Action A:
List the 3 biggest concerns you have about changing the way you work and live, and giving yourself permission to seek the lifestyle you really want:

1. ______________________________________________
2. ______________________________________________
3. ______________________________________________

Step 2 – Use Both Logic and Intuition

When Yanik initially told his friends he was thinking of writing a book on sales letters and selling it online, they laughed at him. They knew he had no experience in writing, publishing or selling online, no idea how to set up a website — and had only a few thousand dollars to launch this business.

Fortunately, Yanik ignored his friends. Four months later, he was making $9,000 a month from the $29 ebook he wrote and was selling online (with essentially no overhead). With the help of his wife but no other employees, Yanik has now sold over thirteen million dollars worth of his info-products online.

Action B:
Take each of the logical reasons you previously listed for why you can’t achieve your dream lifestyle and explain why each is nonsense or is actually a great reason to make a change:

1. ______________________________________________
2. ______________________________________________
3. ______________________________________________

Step 3- Paint a Picture of Your Destination

It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again; in order to reach your goals, you need to identify them, make them specific, and commit to them.

I have a friend who tells me over and over that he’s overworked and  needs a vacation. But he never sets aside the time or makes any travel plans, and something keeps coming up at work… and he keeps complaining about not getting a vacation.

The first step is to have a clear idea of what your ideal lifestyle would be. How and where do you see yourself working and playing? The more specific your description is, the easier it will be to create a plan to achieve your success.

For example, if you’re a ski nut like I am, you’ll want to figure out your schedule week by week, to guarantee that you have the time to spend on the slopes. In the winter, I schedule my client contact and calls in the afternoons so that my mornings are free for skiing and evenings for catching up with other tasks.

Action C:

Describe your ideal life in a few sentences. What would a typical day, week or month look like? What would you be doing? We’re not talking about a vacation here, but about what your integrated work/play life would be. Create an image of how you will be spending your time:

______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________

Step 4 – Make Room

Have you ever told yourself you’re going to lose weight and then kept eating the same way you used to? The pounds didn’t come off when you still had those donuts every morning, did they?

Have you ever tried to get your staff to take more responsibility for solving daily crises, but still stepped in when crunch time came? No wonder they can’t solve problems without you.

Or made a new marketing plan without setting aside the time or resources to implement it?

None of these work. You can’t do things the old way and the new way at the same time.

People make this mistake all the time. They hear about an idea that sounds great and they try adding it to an already full schedule. They tell themselves that if they just work harder, they’ll get more done in a day. In fact, when you overburden an already full schedule, less and less gets done.

What’s the solution? There are two simple steps to reaching your goals:

  1. Identify the behavior you need to change. This may be as simple as setting aside time each week to take a walk, develop a new product or to find joint venture partners.
  2. Determine what you need to stop doing. What do you need to clean off your plate in order to create space for your wealth-building activities and for yourself?Do you need to stop reviewing your email first thing in the morning and instead focus on your agenda? Or stop answering the phone during certain hours so you have time to write that article or play a game of golf?

Every ambitious person who is serious about being successful is already busy. There’s no lack of things to do, but are you doing the right things?

Action D

Identify the tasks you need to stop doing. List 1 to 3 things you can delegate or eliminate in order to give yourself the time to focus on the strategic tasks you really want to do, and give yourself more time to enjoy life.

1. ______________________________________________
2. ______________________________________________
3. ______________________________________________

What About Creating Wealth?

Why haven’t I given you the blueprint to creating wealth yet?

Because the steps I’ve outlined above are the biggest challenges entrepreneurs and small business owners face. Master the previous three steps and making enough money to live your dream will be possible. In fact, that may become the easiest part of the equation.

Still want a simple strategy to create wealth? – Here it is.

Solve A Problem

Yanik Silver, this month’s featured interviewee, started out as a salesperson in his father’s medical supply company. He wanted to make more sales to impress his Dad. He also wanted to make his work easier, and he figured that if he struggled to write good sales letters, other salespeople were having the same problem.

That’s how Yanik’s first book, Instant Sales Letters, was born. Others followed suit and he’s now living what he likes to call an “Ultimate Lifestyle”.

Action E

Solve a problem. List 1 to 3 ideas for products or services that solve a problem. This may mean simply looking at your existing services from a new perspective, or coming up with related products or services. To develop ideas for new services or products, stick with the familiar, like Yanik did.

While launching a new product may look like a great opportunity, you can also solve problems by providing your target market with increased selection, convenience and/or service. This is what has made the online shoe store Zappos.com so successful, for example.

List 1 to 3 products or services and the problem they solve:

1. ______________________________________________
2. ______________________________________________
3. ______________________________________________

Ready to live the ultimate lifestyle? The people who make it, who have the wealth to work and live the way they want aren’t necessarily any smarter they you. And it’s not that they just got lucky.

The difference is they made a commitment to make their dream a reality and then they took action. You can do it to, but don’t put it off, get started today.

Additional Resources

• Yanik Silver’s sites:
www.yaniksilver.com

www.instantsalesletters.com

www.surefiremarketing.com
www.internetlifestyle.com/blog

• Timothy Ferris’s Four Hour Workweek
www.fourhourworkweek.com/

Worth a read, but take it with a large grain of salt. Timothy slaved away for years working 80-hour weeks before he was able to step back, delegate, keep making money and have the time to enjoy his passions. Most entrepreneurs I know aren’t trying to eliminate work completely but are trying to get their lives in balance.

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