Now, I just got back from the beach out here in beautiful Santa Barbara, California and we’re staying at a beach house overlooking the ocean and it’s absolutely magnificent. I’m running up here to shoot this Daily Growth Hack because I just got off the phone with an old client of mine. When I got off the phone, I related the conversation to a colleague of mine who said, “You know what? That’s a perfect Daily Growth Hack because Doug you get asked this question all the time,” and they were totally right.
I’ve been asked this question four times today alone. The question goes something like this, “Doug, love what you’re doing, but I want it too. I want a lifestyle that actually works around me and my goals and my dreams.” Really what they’re saying is, “I want to develop a digital lifestyle where I can travel where I want to go, still run my business, still affect people in a positive way, but I don’t know how to do it. I feel like I’m chained to my current business or to whatever I’m doing currently.” Whether you be a business owner or an employee, that doesn’t really matter. These people all happen to be business owners and that’s really my circle of influence.
Now, so what really was asking is this is an old client of mine and he said, “Jeez, what can I do now? What is the fast track? What’s the fast track? Should I get a job with somebody that’s digital and sell my business? Should I just go … is there a class I can take? No MBA really covers this. How do I do this Doug? What’s the next step?” Now he was a young business owner and so what I told him is the same thing I’m going to tell you, it’s the same thing I would tell you if you’ve been in business for 30 or 40 years.
Running a business digitally is no different than running a brick-and-mortar business. You must master the fundamentals of business. You must master all those skills first. What people don’t see … they don’t see that I started this journey 10 years ago by hiring my first virtual employee, which forced me to actually build the systems around my business and really learn and learn exactly what needed to be done, what communications styles, what software to use, how I could run this in a digital manner.
You see, back then I owned three businesses, one of them being a brick-and-mortar business that actually required me to be at that physical location for the most of the time. Business 2007, I remember exactly where I was, sitting, writing in my journal, and realizing that I was not living the life of my dreams. I was not being the author of my own story. I’m going to share with you exactly what I told this individual this morning.
What I told him was, “Look, digital lifestyle’s great. You want to make sure though that your business works around your lifestyle and not doing the opposite, of what the 99% of the rest of people do is they work their lifestyle around their business. Always hoping to have a vacation, always waiting to live life when they’re done with work.” See, being a digital nomad means you’re almost always working. Although I was just down on the beach, I’m down here with one of my employees. Course we’re enjoying that, we’re having a great time, but at the same time, we’re also talking business strategy. While we’re doing that, I have it so I can pull out a mobile device and talk to the rest of my team. For me, it’s an iPhone and I’m able to chat with them on Slack or HipChat or some other system. We use Voxer, we have different protocols for each of our systems. This is what works for me.
One of the reasons I record these Daily Growth Hacks isn’t just to hear myself speak, really what I’m doing is I’m actually decided to do this so I could speak to Doug 10 years ago. The idea was, “What if I could talk to myself 10 years ago and help him leapfrog all the things that I’ve done? The courses, the classes, the mistakes, all the experiences that brought me here today, that allow me to live a lifestyle that I’m truly grateful for, and one that actually garners all these questions about how do I live this life.”
This is also exactly why we created the Author of Your Own Story University, launching September 1st. We wanted a structured program because there’s no place for me to direct people. Every time I get asked this, I don’t have a place to send somebody. I can’t tell you where to go, what class you can take. It’s a multitude. I’ve read thousands of books, I’ve taken courses, I’ve spent well over half a million dollars on this program. What I want to do is share that all with everybody else. This is just like the overnight success. You know there’s no such thing as an overnight success, yet each of us is still trying to achieve that. An overnight success is really someone that’s put in the hard work and their success is overnight only because you’re now seeing the shining star.
This is exactly what I told this young business owner. I said, “Look, yeah I can recommend books. Yeah, there are some online courses I can recommend for you as well, but there’s not a structured program that exists today, that I’m aware of, that allows you the opportunity to develop a digital lifestyle or a life on your own terms. That really allows you to be the true author of your own story. You see because the digital lifestyle isn’t just about business. You also need to balance your relationships, your fitness, your soul, and also, of course, your business and your mind.”
This is where we came up with the Five to Thrive. This is a holistic aspect because I’ll tell you, when I first started the digital lifestyle, I was missing a lot of the legs to this table. I had the business, but I was missing some of the relationship issues. I was missing some of the things with wellness. There are all kinds of things following us, I was juggling all these plates because now you have ultimate freedom in the schedule, but less structure, and so what do you do with that? How does your time because efficient? But then it’s easy to work all the time because you don’t have any hours.
These are things that people often don’t think of when they think of the dream of the business lifestyle or of the digital lifestyle. These are things I want to share with you because you can have it. You can have it all and you should and you deserve it. Go out today … what I want you to do is grab your journal, write out the reasons why you want the digital lifestyle and maybe this doesn’t apply to you. If it doesn’t, don’t worry about it, but I do get asked this question at least two times a day if not more. Every day on social media, in person, people just want to know, “How do I do it?”
There’s no secret. It’s structured educational learning and again, this is exactly why we’re opening the Author of Your Own Story University because to our knowledge, we can’t find it anywhere else to direct somebody. This is a limited group of people we’re taking through structured educational forms. It’s not about a digital lifestyle, it’s about a holistic balance where I pick one topic every month, a generalized topic, and we deep, deep dive into it. We deep dive into it in such a way that we’re creating meaningful conversations, discussions, and grow out of that topic. As we roll into the next month, it’s another topic that builds upon that layer by layer, to allow you to leap frog my 10 plus years of experience doing this, as well as, our team.
You need to remember that my team is also living the digital lifestyle and they’re also growth motivated. These are the kind of people I surround myself with and this is why I’ve become the author of my own story. I’m really passionate about this and I hope this is coming through because I get asked this so much and I want you to have it all. I want you to live the life of your dreams and if it encourages or includes this, I want to help you get there.
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