Life Designed: 6 tips to create your life as you want it
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This is something I have not really shared black on white since I started this blog although it goes in par with my motto “Life is short, create memories”.
What I am about to share in this blog article is the result of:
- Thousands of euros spent in education
- Thousands of hours spent on learning and practicing
- Experiencing this lifestyle
If it is your first time reading this blog and do not know much about me, I’d like to invite you to watch that YouTube video below where I share the full story of how I got started online.
Just press on the play button.
Have you watched the video yet?
Ok, great, if you are still reading this after watching this video, that means that you resonate with my mindset and want to design a similar lifestyle.
So, let’s dive right into what you came here for! Here are what you will need to design your ideal lifestyle
Who do you need to become?
Who do you need to become to live the type of life you imagine?
What are the things you need to change in your life right now to become the person you want to be?
When I started my freelance online journey, I was still working a 9to6 job that was very demanding. But there was one thing I was done with, and that was to push tomorrow something I could do today.
I always wanted to travel, but always found excuses not to travel.
From the moment I made that mental shift and decision to set travel as a priority in my life, things started to change in my life.
I stopped hanging around with certain people. I started saving money. I started educating myself about ways to travel for cheap.
And guess what?
I then went on weekend getaways locally or abroad. I started to travel solo. I started to capture moments of my adventures with a camera. I started writing my travel experiences.
What matters is to take tiny actions every day that align with the person you want to become in the future.
2. Have a vision
If you do not have a vision for your life, someone else will create that vision for you.
Without a goal you cannot score.
Without a GPS it will take you a lot of time to find your final destination. Without imagining what you want you cannot create.
Stop reading this article right now and have a look around.
Everything that you see around you comes from someone’s mind.
The device that you use to read this blog came from the mind of someone who then found a way to create it.
Same for the sit you are using right now, the cup you use to drink your coffee or tea, the desk you use to work on, etc… you get my point.
You need to have a vision of what you want to be able to create it.
Call it the law of attraction if you like.
But one thing for sure is that once you start being single minded, meaning that you move toward one goal, your subconscious mind will help you find the answers you need to get there faster, and you will start seeing things you did not pay attention to in the past.
The best example of this would be when you start looking to buy a car.
You usually know that you want a specific model in a specific colour. Once you set that thought in your mind, the next day you start seeing this car everywhere you look!
Our brain is our best asset!
3. Know where to find the information you need
Nowadays, Google is your best friend to find the answers you need.
I personally wanted to find ways to earn a living online. And thanks to internet, the sky is the limit when it comes to options to earning a living.
My goal is to create streams of passive income and I specialised in setting up automated online systems over the years, that generate me a revenue 24/7.
And the best way I found how to do that is to leverage the technology at my disposal.
Hey, I am a millennial after all!
But I also have a professional background in digital marketing and for me, getting introduced to the digital world was life changing. It showed me that earning money online is just a matter of working smart.
If you are still wondering what type of online careers you could go after, I wrote a free guide that you can download here that sums up the 16 best ways to earn a living nowadays with social media.
In this blog article I am going to break down the ones that I used myself.
Blogging
I started blogging since 2015. At first it was just to share my passion for travel and photography and then I built an online audience and started to monetise it using Instagram.
If you are wondering if blogging is still a great option nowadays, just click here or below to read a blog article where I share with you that now is still a great time to start one.
The ways you can make money with blogging are via advertising displayed on your blog, via sponsored posts and via affiliate marketing.
Freelance Content creator
I bought my first mirrorless camera a year after I started my blog.
I learned and practiced photography a lot to reach the level I am at today and I still have a lot to learn.
But, through the years I built a portfolio and this has allowed me to work with brands.
It is something I started doing more frequently since early 2020 and that I am aiming to do full-time in the future.
I learned how to find work with brands by joining an online community called the Lost Creator Academy.
It is run by a travel vlogger known as Lost Leblanc and he created his online academy where he shares the behind the scene of his creative business.
If you’d like to learn how you too could become a content creator, you can click here to access a 1 hour free video training where he breaks down The 10 steps to go from beginner to pro content creator & the 5 steps to escape the 9-5.
Affiliate marketing
This is what allows me to make most of my income from my blog.
I already wrote a few articles about affiliate marketing that you can find below.
But to sum up, you promote a product or service on behalf of a company and you get a kickback for every sales made via your recommendations.
This is the easiest way to make money online as a beginner in my opinion. I learned most of what I know from a social media bootcamp I joined to help me monetise my blog. It lasts for 14 days and costs only 7$. If that’s something you are interested in, just click here to learn more about it.
Sell digital products.
I wrote a few ebooks and created several digital courses related to the knowledge I gained throughout the years and put everything in my online academy.
I also created Lightroom presets to help beginner photographers edit their photos faster.
The benefit of digital products is that there is no upfront cost and no shipping fee involved. Everything happens online in a matter of seconds and can be fully automated.
Sell physical products
I started selling prints of my photos taken in Dublin since 2020 and this has been a great source of passive income that is fully automated.
I use a print on demand service that takes care of the production and the shipping to my clients from the moment the order goes through. There is no stock involved and everything is fully automated.
There is no upfront cost but bear in mind that the supplier takes a percentage out of the sale to cover the production and shipping costs. So make sure to price your products accordingly to keep a profit.
Content Creator and social media influencer
I have partnered with brands from time to time to promote their products on my Instagram account.
My niche is focused on travel and photography. This is not something I often do but from time to time it is a fun way to earn some extra income.
Same, I learned everything I know today on how to receive freebies from brands in exchange of exposure via my social media accounts thanks to the Lost Creator Academy.
Consulting
One thing that you may have noticed in my previous examples is the word “automation”. This is something I specialised in throughout the years. For me running an online business is all about working smart and using the online tools as leverage.
That’s what I help my clients with. Better understand marketing automation to get them the results they want and free up their time to live the life they aspire to. If that is something you would like to discuss further, do not hesitate to schedule a call with me.
Those are the main ways that I use to earn a living online that is aligned with my lifestyle. My goal is to use leverage (here technology) to automate my work as a solopreneur so that I spend less time on my laptop and more time doing what I love. Whether it is being with my family, traveling or going out to take photos.
Most of them can be done online from anywhere in the world and does not require me to work more than a couple of hours per day.
But note, that most people see only the successful part, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. What lays under the water is the foundation to any success.
4. Surround yourself with the right people
Finding your community is very important.
The reason being is that most people from your current entourage won’t understand the reason behind what you aspire for and won’t even understand what it is that you want to do to earn a living.
Hence the reason to be surrounded with people striving for the same life goals as you. You cannot imagine how great it is to feel understood. Not having to justify the reasons why you went on that entrepreneurship path.
Finding your community that gets you will lift you up rather than stalling you to unleash your true potential.
I found mine among the content creators and digital nomads. Up to you to find yours based on what I have shared with you so far.
5. Focus on your strengths
The biggest lie that we are being taught since our young age is that you need to be great at everything and that you are not allowed to fail or you might get sanctioned.
Although, failure is the only way to learn and become a better version of yourself.
But at school for instance, if you get bad grades, you’d need to work hard to get better grades or you might fail your school year…
Why should we focus on our weaknesses and not on our strengths?
As an entrepreneur, that will be the mindset shift you will need to make.
You are the one running your business, you need to know the way you work and what you are capable of doing to not waste time.
All the things that you are not great at can be delegated nowadays using freelancers on Fiverr or Upwork for instance.
6. Be patient
photo credit fearlessmotivation.com
It takes time. If you will do for the next 1 to 4 years what no one else will do, then you can have for the rest of your life what no one else can have.
You may feel lonely at times, you may believe that all the hard work you’ve done will never pay off.
The biggest curse of our current society is to seek instant gratification.
Although, the best rewards are the ones gained as long term gratification.
The journey is what leads to success and makes you the person you wish to become.
So, set your goals, keep putting in actions every day and trust the process. Soon or later an opportunity would come that you will be able to seize and will change your life for good.
As you can see designing your ideal lifestyle requires time and commitment.
It won’t happen from one day to another.
But as long as you move forward towards your goal it will eventually happen.
I never thought I’d be able to travel across the world and set foot in 46 countries once I set my mind to travel more back in 2015.
I never thought I’d be earning a living online and working remotely.
I never thought that I’d become a travel photographer.
If the digital nomad lifestyle is something you wish to learn more about, whether you want to work fully remotely or want to do a career reconversion, I invite you to join my free online training where I share all the research and steps I have taken to transition into this lifestyle.
Things in life just happen when you follow your guts or that little voice in your head.
You are the one in control and no one else can tell you what you can or cannot do.
It is up to you to design the life that you want with the resources at your disposal.
And today with Internet, the answers to your questions are just a couple of clicks away.
I hope that you enjoyed reading this article and that you found value in the advice I shared with you.
If you did, make sure to like it, it actually makes a difference. And if you’d like to receive more articles like this one, but also travel and photography tips, don’t hesitate to subscribe to my newsletter below.
