Still aren't following me on Twitter? What are you waiting for?
I just created my first ’successful’ muse and I don’t think you should follow in my footsteps. Or at least not quite yet.
Note #1: If you don’t understand some terms being thrown around here (like ‘muse’) see the glossary at the end of this post.
Note #2: David Walsh of MuseLife.com might physically attack me for writing this!
I put ’successful’ in quotes because my muse is still in development. I’m just below my desired income level and I’m also not fully automated yet - meaning I still deal with customer service issues, web design, and other things that I shouldn’t be involving myself with.
Why You Should Hold Off
OK, now why some of you (yes you - the aspiring lifestyle design person) shouldn’t be trying to create a muse…
I know from the survey over on Corbett Barr’s blog, Free Pursuits, that a lot of people who read my blog are interested in lifestyle design and have a blog of their own.
And something I’ve noticed is that many of these lifestyle designers and bloggers are extremely interested in creating a muse so that they can travel. Travel seems to be the thing to do as a lifestyle designer.
Here’s what I think you should do instead: save money, travel some first, then develop your muse.
I say get out and explore, have some crazy adventures, maybe even get a job overseas. And, while you’re doing this, keep learning new skills that you can funnel into a muse.
It’s not as hard you might think to save a lot of money quickly and go on a trip like this - read my article about saving money on Vagabondish.com.
A lot of people complain that they’re not an expert on something so they don’t know where to get started with their muse. What if you went out and became the expert you wanted to be? 3-4 months of solid effort is probably enough to set you up with some authority on a subject.
You only have to be slightly ahead of people in your niche to provide them something of value. Corbett made a great point about this in his post Is Fake It Till You Make It Mentality Keeping You Down?
So instead of having your muse fund your travels, have your travels or experiences fuel your muse.
This is exactly what I unintentionally did with the 007 Lifestyle. I really didn’t start focusing on creating a muse until 5-6 months into traveling and accomplishing goals I set for myself. I was then able to funnel what I’d learned into a muse.
Other Real Life Examples:
David Walsh’s Source Control. This muse was created by David after he went traveling through Europe & Asia, doing consulting work at the same time. He figured out how to outsource like a champ out of necessity.
Corbett’s Morning Spanish was created after his trip to Mexico and he saw a need in the Spanish language learning niche.
Take Away Point
If you’re struggling to come up with a muse idea, focus less on creating it now, and more on developing the skills to create one later.
Simplified Glossary
1. A muse is a fancy term that Tim Ferriss of the 4 hour Work week coined to represent a business that provides semi-passive income after the initial set up.
2. Lifestyle design is creating the life you want based around your muse(s).
Photo Credit: Sun Crane by Hamed Saber - get it? A crane represents building a muse. So clever.
Great point on travel first and then develop your muse. If backpacking, you can easily get by on less than $1k USD per month in places like Asia, Africa, South & Central America. Glad you referenced Morning Spanish. I am going to check that out now.
Casey thanks for stopping by. The power of geoarbitrage is incredible!
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I couldn’t agree more…great cautionary telling here…it’ll help people hot off the “yay I want millions, while I do nothing or travel” vibe, but instead get down and dirty in resetting their mind. It takes exactly what you say here…5 or 6 months doing some reading, researching, and needed mind resetting to get yourself in a place to try creating an easily managed online businesses. Now some people out there are entrepreneur business creating monsters, they may need less time…this is still a could caution to put in front of people…evaluate where you are…then hustle.
I concur!
I’m experimenting here and there with automating side-businesses while I travel, but at the moment I feel like I still need to (and WANT to) live life a bit more before I spend a handful of months building an asset (after all, I want this to be a super-valuable asset for myself and for the people who make use of it).
I don’t think David will take this personally (though he does look like he could throw a mean punch, so watch your back!).
I’m with you on most of this. Where we diverge a bit is that I think you’re assuming both mutual exclusivity and that your ideas will be better after you travel.
I’d suggest that if we get rid of the mutual exclusivity assumption, the second becomes irrelevant anyway. All I mean by mutual exclusivity is that it’s totally possible to have multiple muses. Not only is it possible, if you have the management properly nailed down, it’s preferable.
If you can wrap your mind around an idea now, apply the 80/20 principle and crank it out. Perfect idea, schmerfect idea. Maybe it will help support travel, maybe not. Maybe your travel experience will open your mind to a better idea, but maybe not. Maybe your travel experiences will allow you to improve on your original idea in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if you hadn’t executed before you started your other adventures.
I don’t think what we’re saying is all that different. You’re saying save, travel, execute. I’m saying experiment, experiment, experiment and skip the saving part and experiment now if you can handle the risk. I’ve run out of money in foreign countries and ended up literally looking in the mirror trying to convince myself that I could think my way out of it. Did it suck sometimes? Hells yeah, but I didn’t starve and I’ll do it again. Well.. hopefully I’ll just take the risk again and skip the whole failing miserably part.
Part of this comes from my self-awareness that having money in the bank makes it really easy for me to shift too much energy to play. So… if you’re the type of person with the tendency to procrastinate, the advice to save and delay might be counterproductive.
It is nice to see a post that counters the “you have to create a muse right now” mindset. While I think there is certainly a time in place to create your muse, doing it prematurely will hurt both you and the people you are trying to sell it to. I think if you are going to do something, you need to make sure you take the time to do it right.
Bravo to you for doing the James Bond guide right, it looks awesome.
@Andrew - I think we’re on the same page here. If you have idea right now by all means try to execute it.
But if you’re stuck, get out there and do what you’re passionate about (i.e. most lifestyle designers seem to want to travel), become an expert at something, and then create your muse.
I think a lot of lifestyle designers could fall into the trap of thinking they’ll need their muse to support their travel…then they’ll discover the work it takes to create a muse…then they’ll never get to do the traveling they’ve always wanted to do.
Kickass post Derek. I agree with you. For anyone who doesn’t know what muse to build, they obviously don’t have the experience or expertise to share yet (although you could borrow someone else’s). I’m finally finding myself ready to write my first few books based on my business & travel experience now, although I felt I should have had a flagship product out there ages ago.
I am actually working on a few projects right now, but I definitely get your point and I feel that once I begin my vagabonding journey I’ll be that much more motivated to do the work that’s necessary - I’ll become hungry for it. Right now I’m a bit too comfortable and that’s damaging for achievement.
Brilliant!
First become an expert and then start sharing. And become an expert by traveling. I find this amazing and I admit I didn’t start to travel until recently. I think I’m on the team with “have your muse support your travels”, but I can totally relate with your concept. When I started my business, 10 years ago, even if I didn’t physically traveled, I embraced many crazy challenges (one of them being the online business in itself).
Home run, Derek! I recently had an experience where I needed $3k I didn’t think I had. Turned out to be not true. The lesson was this: just keep moving!
@Cody - Glad to hear you’re ready to make the leap. I’m sure you’ll kill (crush) it.
@everyone - thanks for all the comments guys.
I’m in the “becoming an expert” phase, so this really hits home for me. I’d like to just take off, but realistically, that a few more months away. People seem to forget that Ferris spent a couple of years living under his desk before he got it figured out. Likewise, I make myself leave the house - daily - whether I want to or not!
Definitely! Couldn’t agree more. The most ’successful’ muses will be the ones that add value to the customer’s life. Whether they’re a domestic consumer or a business. So the only way to find things to improve, or think of a new product, is to get involved in the workforce, or travel a bit, look after kids, anything, “Life Experience”.
Anyway, enough of that, time to keep plugging away at my muse!
P.S. 4HWW - Four Hours my Arse!
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