A Better Mousetrap?

Dear Friend,

In my earlier post titled, The 3rd Secret to Living the Good Life, I introduced the concept of Virtual ATMs, which provide you with the money you need to live your chosen lifestyle.

Virtual ATMs are mechanisms that you create to generate money for you as you need it.  And these mechanisms are chosen because they fit nicely into your unique lifestyle.

Due to the complexity of the subject, it was impossible in that post to get into much practical detail.

In today’s post, I’d like to introduce you to some of the skills that you will need to internalize if you want to build a first class money creating ATM.  So I have summarized for you below some of the leading edge thinking from today’s marketing world.

First, creating your own Virtual ATM money making machine often involves developing a new business or product that you can conveniently offer to the world.

And, since you are likely to be acting the role of an entrepreneur of sorts, you must familiarize yourself with the basic rules of business.

Learning this stuff isn’t something that you can outsource.  Sure, others can go through the motions of running your enterprise(s) once you get them going.  However, before you reach that point you must understand the fundamentals of business.  Or, more to the point, of how to get strangers to send you money, over and over again.

Of course, in order to succeed with any product or service, you need customers.  Those are the folks who write the checks and pay your bills.  But how does one go about getting customers or developing a profitable following in today’s marketplace?

Let’s start with some background.  Call it Marketing 101, Hugh DeBurgh style.

Back in the early 1980s I was an undergrad majoring in Marketing.

In those days the professors drilled a very specific definition of the nature of marketing into our heads.  I’ll never forget it.

They said that the old expression that, “If you build a better mousetrap, the public will beat a path to your door,”  was patently false.

If the public has never heard of your mousetrap, has no idea that it is better, and doesn’t even know that you exist, much less where your door is, then your “better mousetrap” is going to languish and die.

Marketing, they said, educated, persuaded, and then directed the public to the products.  Without marketing, nothing happened.

Of course, the Internet has changed everything.  In fact, the key question today seems to be whether or not the definition of marketing that I was taught has any place in today’s world.

It may in fact be that, today, the best selling products are those that the customers themselves have discovered, promoted, and directed the world to.

The best customers, fans really, are driving the popularity of today’s products.

If this is true, then exactly how does somebody go about promoting their own products?  Is promoting in a traditional sense counter-productive today?  Does it make the seller look desperate?

Obviously, huge amounts of money continue to pour into marketing budgets.  Is this because these efforts actually work, or because the companies behind these budgets don’t know what else to do?

No one wants to leave the popularly of their products strictly to chance.  We want to do whatever we can to encourage more sales.  But what would that be?

Perhaps today, marketing should be re-defined the effort to encourage and promote the growth of self-developing “fan clubs.”  These groups of fans aren’t created by the firms.  Instead, firms simply create a comfortable environment that encourages the spawning and growth of these groups.

Think in organic terms rather than in engineering terms.

Customers aren’t created through marketing.  Instead, fertile ground is prepared so that, should a seed fall, such groups of fans may sprout.  And once they sprout, everything possible is done to encourage the health of that group, without smothering it.

Get it?

It’s an idea that requires a delicate approach to “promotion.”  Any whiff that you are in fact promoting just drives fans away.  For old-fashioned, used car salesmen, this is just a bit too esoteric.  But that’s the way it is.  And the “marketing” geniuses of the future are going to be those people who are best at encouraging and feeding the growth of fans.

Think Hollywood promoters, writ large.

Are you ready to be a star?

Some marketing folks call this brand development.  You are really selling the image of your product.  This all takes for granted that your product is fantastic and will appeal to a decent number of people.  If not, you’ll never get this far.

Nike shoes has been doing this forever.  Nike owns no factories. It doesn’t make a single shoe.  I’ll bet you didn’t know that.  And even if you did, it makes the point.  Nike is an image.  A brand.  A club.  When you carry that image, you are announcing to the world who you are.  It is a social statement.  It’s a club of fans.

Now, true, this kind of marketing may not seem to fit well with sales of toilet plungers.  But then, that’s a commodity product.  Something that is sold based on price and availability.  And probably not a good product choice for you.

But growing fans is something that, once you get it going, has a life of its own.  And sometimes, the more distant and reclusive you are as the key player in all of this, the better!

That just might make it the perfect marketing technique to use in developing your unique ATM.

So, marketing today is the process of nurturing fan clubs.

Sounds anticlimactic, doesn’t it?  Yet, if you get good at it, people with money will be beating a path to your door.

All the best,

Hugh

Being Present

Dear Friend,

Know Your Priorities – Be present with who and what you love – otherwise, what’s the point?

The greatest gift that you can give to another person is your full and undivided attention.  It’s also the greatest gift that you can give to yourself.

The reality is, every living thing seems to thrive on attention.  From people right down to your houseplants, your focused, sincere and caring attention is what life craves.

What you pay attention to most defines your life.

Because what you do in each moment is your life, regardless of what you hope your life will be someday or what you think your life was about before.

I think of the parents out there who work hard so that they can give their kids a better life.  Or so that they can spend more time together in the future.  What happens?  The kids grow up to resent their distant, uninterested parents.  They become trouble makers, or they just make trouble for themselves, all usually because they just want some attention.  They just want to be noticed, and to be acknowledged for who they really are.

You cannot know another person unless you accept their invitation to enter into their personal space.

When they let you in, they are telling you that they trust you, and that you matter to them.  Once inside that private space, you need to focus on what you see.  You also need to respect the honor they are granting you.

Sharing true intimacy is the greatest gift that life has to offer.

It is the embodiment of love.  And it is the best way to nurture and grow your relationships.

You know, I had to search long and hard to find an appropriate image for this post.  One that effectively conveyed the idea of sympathetically giving someone else your full and focused attention.  It makes me feel that, perhaps, we live in a world where everyone is so focused on themselves that they don’t know how to be truly present with another. People seem to have their priorities screwed up.

Then again, having someone focusing on you can be unnerving.  Threatening, even.  In the animal world, to look directly into the eyes of another is often a threat.  I guess the assumption is that the only reason you would be focusing on them is to size them up for dinner. 😉

Trust is the key to sharing intimate space with another.

And trust seems to be a rare commodity these days.  Yet without opening to such trust we are truly alone.

You cannot achieve the happiness that you crave simply by focusing on yourself.  Like it or not, we are social creatures.  And our psyches require positive interaction with others to achieve a sense of peace.  We need the loving attention of others.  And we need to share our loving attention too.

Paying attention to what matters defines your priorities.

To put off focusing on what really matters only ensures that you are not really living your own life.  In other words, it ensures that you will never be as happy as you could be, as you so deeply want to be.

Our minds live in time, but our feelings live only in the present.  So if you want to be happy, focus on the now.  Be here, now.  And make the most of this moment.  Not ten minutes from now.  NOW.

Meditate.  Contemplate.  And yes, plan and dream.  Be present with those you love.  And acknowledge the honor you are being granted to share this intimacy.

The key point to the 5th Secret is that everything that matters needs attention.

And if you want to be happy, you need to learn how to focus and share that attention.  So get out of your thoughts and take note of your life.  It’s right in front of you.

All the best,

Hugh

Relationships

Dear Friend,

Why is it that relationships are so hard?

When is a relationship a success?

Some people would say that if your relationship is perfect, it shouldn’t be so hard.  Unfortunately, I’ve never met anyone in a perfect relationship.

I don’t know about you, but almost everyone that I know who married around the time that we did isn’t married anymore.  Of course, the reasons vary.  Infidelities, addiction, or just growing apart, there always seems to be some reason.

So, what does it take to make a relationship last?

I know that in my case, I have a huge amount of respect for my wife.  And she pulls a big piece of the weight in our family.  We are quite different as people, but that can be a good thing.  You can be complementary.  I think that we work together well as parents, though I tend to be much more laid back than she is.

I’ve heard that there are as many kinds of relationships as there are relationships.  That makes comparing notes hard.

Maybe the key to happy, long-lasting relationship success is how much you each draw positive energy from the other?

I don’t believe that a relationship is a success simply because it lasts a long time.  There are many Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton dysfunctional relationships out there that seem to go on forever, to the misery of all around them.  Some people seem to feed off the negative energy of others.

There are folks who claim that people were never meant to stay together for fifty years or more.  They say that in pre-history, life spans were short.  A lifetime relationship ended when the wife died in childbirth at 25 or the husband died of cholera at 30.  So the idea of a lifetime relationship when the individuals live as long as people do today is a new concept.  It is untried.  And perhaps it is the rarity when a happy relationship lasts ’til death.

Personally, I try to focus on today.  Now.  I think a relationship that works today is a success.  Who knows what tomorrow brings.

What do you think?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.  What do you think best defines relationship success ?

‘Til later,

Hugh

RVing in Mexico

Dear Friend,

I am proud to announce that I am writing next week’s guest post at The Bold Life, Tess Marshall’s excellent blog at http://theboldlife.com.  Should be posted on Wednesday.

I am really looking forward to speaking to Tess’ followers about my unique approach to living the family life.  I hope that you’ll stop by there and check it out!

We are getting closer to getting on the road.  I just received the excellent two-DVD set, RVing in Mexico, from Kevin and Jeanne Shipman’s Roving Productions.  You can pick up your own copy here.

After reading all of the fear mongering about traveling south of the border, this production was a breath of fresh air.  Filmed during a twelve-month RV journey around Mexico in 2004, the scenery is gorgeous, and the reports detailed and very helpful.  I have also found the discussion groups at RV.net quite enlightening as well.

Are we going to Mexico?  Not decided yet.  You know that I despise planning!  Anyway, I would want to install an Internet satellite dish on the Warrior before heading down that way.  And do more research.  If we decide to go, you’ll be the first to know.  I promise!

I am now targeting the first week in February as our escape window.  The Fun Time RV dealership service department in Texas where the Warrior languishes while awaiting repairs won’t return my phone calls, which isn’t a good sign, though I assume it’s because they aren’t done yet.

Still, a follow up would be refreshingly professional.

I’ll be posting more of the 7 Secrets soon.  These are really the core of my philosophy and are what you will need to absorb if you want to take the plunge and change your family life forever.  So if you haven’t read them yet, please check them out.

Until later, your friend,

Hugh

Time is Life ~ Spend it Wisely

Dear Friend,

“Focus your days around what you love, not around earning money.  Money is only a means to an end.  Living is the end you seek.”

I believe that the amount of time that we spend doing something should roughly equal the priority that something has in our lives.  In fact, one of my personal goals is to achieve this balance everyday.

Of course, things have a way of intruding and forcing their way into your neatly-planned schedule.  In fact, the experience of living seems to be a continuous effort by the forces around us to turn us adrift.

Are you a human or a rock?

I believe that the difference between a conscious being and a simple rock is that we, as conscious beings, are meant to defy these forces around us when they get in the way of our free will.  Rocks simply react in consistent and predictable ways.

It is our ability to set a course through life and to weather the storms that try to defer that course that define us as human beings.  So to merely drift through life is to fail to be fully human.  To fail to find the star that you must steer by, or to steer by someone else’s star because they claim that it’s better somehow, is to fail to live.

I believe that we, as humans, are still learning what it means to be conscious beings.  And the process of knowing ourselves and learning how to ply our way through the universe, and particularly through a crowded world full of unconscious humans, is what is meant for us.  It is a necessary stage in the path to full human consciousness.  It is what we must master if we are to be more than mere rocks.

Part of setting our own course is the process of identifying what really matters to us.

I have said before in this blog how much of my life that I spent breaking every rule that I write here now.  Perhaps this is why I believe these things so passionately.  I have lived on the other side.  It sucks.

Don’t even start to make the mistakes that I did.  And if you already have, let me be your example that you can escape your life, no matter how deep that you think you are committed to it.

One of the biggest changes in my life today is the amount of time that I spend doing what matters most to me.  Normally, parents teach their kids to put off pleasure in favor of hard work.  I believed that message.  I preached that message.  And I learned the hard way that life without pleasure is life not worth living.

I won’t go back to that way of life.  Not ever.  I can’t.  Now, that doesn’t mean that every day of my life now is just all pansies and roses.  But the stress is gone.  The underlying angst that comes from doing things that you hate because you “have to” isn’t there.

In the old days, every day that went by felt, deep down, as if several more days of my future died with it.  I felt like I was dying inside.  I was dying inside.

Life isn’t about dying.  It is about living fully.  Being conscious.  Knowing yourself.  It is about making what matters to you the highest priority in your life.

I’m not just talking about lip service, here.  If your kids come at the top of your priority list, then spending time with them should be what you do most.  Do you do that now?  Saying that your kids are your top priority while you spend your life in business meetings is disingenuous.

If you really prefer business meetings to spending time with your kids, then stop lying to yourself.  I’m not going to judge.  It’s your life.  It’s your business and no one else’s.  You can lie to the world about your priorities.  But stop lying to yourself.  Otherwise, you are doing what matters most to you but you aren’t letting yourself enjoy it out of misplaced guilt.

The 4th Secret is about honestly prioritizing the way that you spend each day in a way that is fully in sync with what really matters to you.

Consider how you spend your days.  Embrace that which you love.  Begin the process of ending whatever it is that you are doing that takes away from doing what you love.

You have made commitments in the past.  Prepare to break them.  And, if necessary, to pay the consequences.

If you want to be happy, will will be faced with undoing commitments that you made when you weren’t carefully protecting your time.  Don’t let fear of hurt or dishonor stop you.

You must be honest with those around you.  Do they really want to hold you to these old commitments if doing so will prevent you from achieving your own true happiness?

Breaking some of these commitments will come with a cost.  Pay it and move on.  Apologize and move on. No matter how high the cost, it can never be high enough to justify you deferring your dreams.

Do what you have to do.  And then begin living the life that you are meant to live.

Trust me, all of this effort will be worth it.

Until later,

Hugh

Got Yours Yet?

Dear Friend,

Whenever I hear somebody talking online about having my own ATM, I start holding onto my wallet.

The idea of having an ATM pumping out a seemingly endless supply of easy money sounds great.  But it also throws up red flags.

It sounds like wishful thinking.  It reminds me of the time when my kids thought that they didn’t need money, because with Dad’s credit cards, everything is free!

Of course, when you use a real ATM, you are usually spending your money, not making more.

When I use the ATM analogy, what I am trying to communicate is the idea that your method of acquiring money needs to be convenient to your chosen lifestyle.  It needs to assist your efforts to live the life of your dreams – not get in the way like careers often do.

This is rather revolutionary thinking.  Traditionally, your life’s focus is, first and foremost, on ensuring that you have enough money to survive.  Then it is on having enough to support a family.  And then it is on ensuring that you have enough money to take nice vacations.  And so on.

And finally, you wake up one day to discover that you are not very happy, your spouse is a stranger who wants a divorce, and your kids are more strangers who have been raised by babysitters, nannies, and their friends.

Life is too short to put off until tomorrow.  Life is too short to put making money ahead of living.

But being poor really sucks.  If you don’t believe me, just ask a poor person.

So, until recently, people had little choice in how they lived.  Either live a spartan lifestyle surrounded by the things that you love, or work your a** off in the hopes that you can do it fast enough to enjoy at least a bit of it before you die.

Today, you do have a choice.  Utilizing creative techniques to earn money while you live your perfect lifestyle is a key component of Intentional Lifestyle Design.

There are many ways to generate income on-the-fly.  Or, alternatively, to generate just enough income to support your lifestyle and provide adequate insurance for the future.

If you have a business that you can run from anywhere, and that does not interfere with your ability to live your life, your way, then you have your virtual ATM.  If you have a skill that you can put to use to earn some cash when needed, you have your ATM.  If you have an online business that allows you to sell your unique knowledge to someone else on Earth who needs it, then you have your virtual ATM.

What you will be avoiding is any job or business that entangles you in ways that get in the way of your lifestyle.

Your virtual ATM – your money machine – is your unique set of marketable, portable  skills that you can pull out of your pocket whenever you need them.  Or perhaps it is a business or series of businesses that achieve the same thing for you.

It doesn’t matter what you do or what skills you utilize to generate money as you need it.  What does matter is that it works for you.  That it allows you to live your life your way.

The amount of time that you spend making money isn’t the most important factor.  Only that your method doesn’t interfere with your chosen lifestyle.  For example, you may even be one of those rare lucky folks who love to do something that also makes you a living.  That’s terrific!

Understand that when the focus of your life changes from spending your best years in a career, making money, to following your dreams, you can no longer expect to be bringing in massive globs of money all at once.  But that’s OK, because you don’t need to.

In fact, having too much cash can be a liability.  You can’t really trust banks anymore, and now governments severely restrict how much cash that you can carry on your person when crossing borders.  If they find “too much” on you, they will simply seize it, and never give it back.  The assumption seems to be that if you have cash, you must be a drug dealer or something.

Your money needs to be available to you at the moments that you need to spend it.  But that is all.

Personally, I am very possessive of my time.  I believe that time is the stuff of life, and I have already spent so much of it.  So in my ideal lifestyle, I have reversed the role of career and vacation.  My career is living my life, my way.  Occasionally, I go on vacation to make some money to pay for it.

To create your own 21st Century ATM you will need to identify and develop systems, businesses, mechanisms, careers – call them what you will – that can generate cash for you when and where you need it, with the virtual reliability of a real ATM.

Unlike a traditional job, you won’t have to build your life around your vacation schedule.  Follow my advice, and everyday of your life will feel like a vacation!

The ATM analogy creates the image of easy money.  I don’t mean to suggest that from now on making money will be easy.  But it will be of secondary priority to living the lifestyle that you love.  And it will be of a character that allows you to do what you love to do.

I strongly recommend that you read the New York Times Bestseller, The Four Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss.  In this book, Tim does a fantastic job of explaining this revolutionary new view of earning for living.

And don’t think that this lifestyle is only for single twenty-somethings.  If you are your family’s primary breadwinner, you can do this too.

Understand that it takes time, creativity, and patience to create a virtual ATM for you and your family.  But it will be one of the most valuable creative gifts that you can give them.

So do not delay!  Begin to educate yourself now.  And don’t quit your job yet!  You will need today’s cash flow to buy you time to get yourself ready for your new lifestyle approach.

Know that as you take this journey, you will be taking the first tangible steps towards a life that you will love.

So, go for it!  I am 100% behind you!  And so are many others.

All the best,

Hugh

These Guys Are Way Too Serious!

Dear Friend,

My son tells me that I have been too serious in my posts lately.

He suggested that I write about something more fun.  Like hitting the road again!

OK, OK, I surrender.

I am ready to hit the road.  The Warrior is languishing at the dealer’s service center.  God forbid that I was in a hurry!  And now that the cold snap in the southeast has let up a bit, I’m starting to get the itch again.

I am on their butt to wrap things up soon.  I expect that in a few weeks we will be ready to roll.

Thinking about heading straight south.  Maybe to Brownsville, Texas?  Still intrigued about Mexico, too.  But I might want to go there in a convoy.  Who knows?

I just ordered a 2-volume DVD set on RVing in Mexico.  I’ll let you know how it is.

Anyway, I’m working on my next post in the 7 Secrets series.  Some of this stuff is a bit heavy but, taken all together, it really is a roadmap to the good life.  If you haven’t had a chance to check the posts out, I highly recommend that you do.

Until later,

Hugh

Is That Your Savings?

Dear Friend,

In today’s economic chaos, how can any of us ever hope to earn enough to break out of our life rut and start living the good life?

The good news is that you don’t need to.  Instead, what you must do is refocus your life on living with meaning, rather than on making money, while developing unique skills to generate all the buying power that you will need at those moments that you need it.

One of the big problems that we all face is that the way in which we go about attempting to build personal wealth is flawed.  It may have worked once, but it just does not any longer.

In the 21st Century you will need to focus on the accumulation of wealth rather than money.  And wealth creation will often involve spending what money that we have left on developing our skills to generate currency on demand.

What am I talking about?

Consider first that wealth is not represented simply by currency.  I define wealth as your ability to persuade others to do what you want them to do.  Or simply to get what you want at the moment that you want it.  This type of wealth comes in three possible forms.

1. There is raw force.  This is the oldest and least effective technique to get what you want.  And yet it is still widely used every day. Long ago the biggest brute in the village could just take wealth from anyone weaker than he was.  Today there is less tolerance for individuals who use force, while there seems to be more tolerance for the use of force by organizations, such as the government, to achieve social or economic goals for “society”.
2. The second best way to get what you want is with money.  This is the method that most people use today.  I explain below why it’s not a good idea to keep all of your wealth in the form of currencies.  It is just too easy to lose.
3. The best way to store your money is to invest in knowledge.  By knowledge, I mean your ability to take whatever unique skills, abilities and circumstances that you find in and around you and utilizing them to get what you need when you need it.

Today, there are several, generally unquestioned techniques that we all utilize in order to build personal wealth.  All of these techniques focus on money as our primary measure of wealth.

First, we focus on making money, spending the better part of our life in this pursuit.

Second, we try to save some money (usually not much).

Third, we invest money in order to get our money working for us (even though we really have no idea where to invest, and neither, apparently, does our broker).

When we work, we generally take jobs that involve selling hours out of our day.  Some of us even punch time clocks!

Our wealth is measured by the size of our bank or brokerage account, plus the equity value of our home.

This is the old way to create, preserve, and measure wealth.  Unfortunately, it is quickly becoming hopeless.  In the 21st Century, wealth will be measured by your ability to get what you want whenever you want it.  This will include your ability to generate cash whenever the world demands cash. But the value of the cash that you hold will not be the primary measure of your wealth.

The storage of money (savings) is quickly becoming a dangerous way to preserve your wealth.  Consider the following examples of how hard it is to hold onto money after you earn it, even if you live frugally:

• You can lose your job and eat up your savings while you look for another one;
• You can be downsized;
• You can discover that your unique marketable skill is no longer valued as it used to be;
• You can get divorced once, twice or more and watch what little you have saved be divided between your spouse and the lawyers over and over again;
• You can discover that all of those dollars that you have been hoarding have been lost by your broker in the latest stock market crash;
• Or your dollars are worthless because the government has printed so many dollars to pay its unending debts that the money you saved for years is no longer worth anything;
• Or maybe your kid gets in a bad accident with your car and you lose everything in a huge liability lawsuit;
• Or your business goes bankrupt because of new regulations that make it impossible to compete with cheap foreign suppliers;
• Or you lose your business as the result of a massive lawsuit by an ex-employee who was sexually harassed by another of your employees in a remote office that you rarely even visited.

So, do you see that the whole concept of spending your life earning and saving money is flawed from the start?

A big part of the process of converting money wealth into knowledge wealth is simply considering what you want out of life.  Rather than wasting your money on stuff that you don’t really want anyway, you will now consider how much money that your preferred lifestyle actually requires, and how much money you will need to keep on hand at any one time.

Rather than putting money in the bank, you may use that money to attend a course with the most skilled entrepreneurs and lifestyle design experts that you can find.  If you have chosen your mentors wisely, and after some practice, you will now have skills that you can use to help you to earn just enough money whenever you need it.  And you will wrap these skills around the lifestyle of your choice.  You will be building your own, virtual ATM machine.  And you will carry that ATM wherever you go.

If you invest in knowledge, you will have confidence in your ability to pick up a few thousand dollars from your virtual ATM whenever you need it.   Ready for that ski trip to Patagonia?  Just pull some cash out of that ATM of yours and go!  You work occasionally, and specifically for the purpose of paying for your next life’s adventure or project.

And your skills of persuasion and wealth creation do not depreciate like currency can.  They can be converted into any world currency when needed, as needed.  You no longer have to leave your hard-earned wealth exposed to the machinations of inept politicians and Wall Street crooks.

This view of wealth makes people nervous.  We can all identify with the idea of money in the bank, safely waiting for us in a secure vault until we are ready to spend it.  Of course, that’s not where it is.  Money in the bank is really just a contract between you and the bank wherein you loan the bank your money on the promise that they will pay it back to you whenever you ask for it.  This assumes, of course, that they’ll have enough to pay you when you ask for it.  But then, we have government deposit insurance to guarantee our money should the bank come up short, right?

The problem is that most governments today are out of money.  Everyday, while they print an unending supply of paper and distribute it to banks, what they are actually doing is making your savings more and more worthless.  It is as if they keep breaking into that vault and stealing a bit of your savings every day.  They might as well.  The effect is the same.

The danger here is real and quite serious.  Within the next few years, I predict that huge numbers of honest, hardworking people are going to find themselves virtually destitute.  Their savings worthless.  And their hopes for retirement a distant memory.

I hope that I can influence as many people as possible to begin the process of teaching themselves how to support their desired lifestyle in a manner completely consistent with that lifestyle.  And I hope to achieve this while their money will still buy them whatever knowledge they require.

This stuff is complicated to think about.  And it involves wrapping your mind around new ways of thinking.  But we have no choice.  We must transition our lives in order to live a better life.  The good life.

All the best,

Hugh

It's Time to Live the Good Life

Dear Friend,

Now its time to go to school.  Creative Family Lifestyle Design school, to be exact.

What is Creative Family Lifestyle Design?  It is you taking charge of the direction of your life.  It means making your life work for you.

The 2nd Secret to Living the Good Life is to re-prioritize your life.  You will now focus on doing those things that you love, while avoiding those things that you do not enjoy.

A big part of this process will be your discovery of a new technique for earning and storing wealth.  And you will utilize this technique to live the good life, free from today’s constant threats of losing everything to forces out of your control.

Most folks drift through life, living from paycheck to paycheck.  These people give up on their childhood dreams because the demands of adult life make achieving those dreams seem impossible.

Yet, you can achieve your dreams if you start living your life intentionally.  And you can start today.

If you have followed Secret #1 to Achieving the Good Life, then you already know who you truly are.  You are now able to take stock of how you are living your life, and compare that to how you really want to live.

I like to say that your life is properly prioritized when the amount of time that you spend doing a thing is directly proportional to the priority that thing has in your life.

You will be surprised at just how much of your life that you spend doing things that you really don’t enjoy, like working to make money.  You will also notice how little of your time that you spend doing things that you love, like spending time with your family and friends.

Of course, for most of us, we put off doing what we love so that we can stay one step ahead of the bill collectors.  Money is critically important to living the good life.  The “good stuff” can be pretty expensive.  Summers in the south of France don’t come cheap.  And I do not propose that you live like a pauper.

However, there are many ways to make money.  And there are many ways to live life richly without spending so much of your time in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

I like to say that time is the stuff that life is made of.  So I never sell my time.  Well, not if I can absolutely help it.  This means that I do not work at jobs where I get paid by the hour.  And I do not work at jobs that require me to be at some particular place, such an office, with any frequency.  I like to spend time with my kids, so I make sure that I can be home pretty much whenever I want.

I also like to travel, so I make sure that the way that I make money can be done from just about anywhere.

Another important issue regarding money is the relationship between when you earn it and when you spend it.

Most people spend large swaths of their life, particularly between their 20s and their 60s, focused on making money.  They don’t do this because they love making money.  They do this so that they can save up for “retirement.”  But there are a lot of problems with this approach.

For one, you essentially waste the best years of your life, waiting until you are old and weak to enjoy the fruit of your labor.

Second, life has a lot of ups and downs.  Money that is earned can easily be lost, and usually is.  I like to say that it is ten times more difficult to hold onto money than it is to make it.

Also, most people do not get the best value for their dollar.  They do not shop around enough.  I’m not talking about spending hours at yard sales to save a few pennies (unless you enjoy that sort of thing).  What I am talking about is much bigger.  You can increase the power of your wealth to bring you the life that you enjoy when you spend your money wherever it buys you the best return on your investment.

Years ago, people bought everything from their local market.  They knew the proprietor, and he was close by.  However, by failing to shop around, these folks were paying much more than they needed to.  Today, the world is your oyster.  By taking advantage of great deals on international travel, and utilizing your flexible schedule to travel in non-peak seasons, you can live the good life for much, much less.  You can buy incredible goods in out-of-the-way places.  You can live a healthier life in exotic and safe locales, being waited on hand and foot by appreciative maids, chefs and butlers, for much less expense than you pay today for your fast-food, heart burn dominated life.

You can do much better.  And as you can see, it’s not about working harder, or about making more.  It is about working and living smarter, and earning just enough money when you need it.

Are you starting to get the picture?

This is a lot to digest at one sitting, and later I can supply you with a list of resources that will help you to understand the Creative Family Lifestyle Design approach better.  But for now, I just want you to understand that living the good life really is achievable.  You just have to make this a priority, develop the right skills, and take action.

My next post will go into detail about how you can develop your own system of wealth creation that will pay for the lifestyle that you really want.

Until then,

All the best,

Hugh