So you want to quit your job and pursue the Internet Lifestyle?

If you have decided that striking out on your own on the Internet is the way to go for you like I have, you will have some crucial decisions to make.

In my case I was (am) making really good money at my day job. This is great thing of course but it also can work against you.

It is much harder to quit your job and take a risk on your Internet business when you have all that steady and ‘safe’ money to lose.

That is why I am building my side business before quitting my day job (as of this writing Im still 3 months away from my quit date).

Basically you need to have the day job that pays the bills and work on your side business at the same time for awhile.

So this post is for all you out there who want to to make money online full time but arent ready to give up your steady paycheck yet.

I am going to show you how I am able to juggle both effectively.

In fact with these methods I have recently been given a promotion at work while at the same time growing my side Internet business to the best profits its had so far.

 

Before we get into those tactics lets look at the first two major options for starting your online business.

 

If you are going to quit your job and move into your own thing they are basically 2 main ways to go about it.

 

Method 1: The Burn the Ships Method

The Burn the Ships Method is the ALL IN route. You have decided what your Internet lifestyle business is going to be and you quit your day job to pursue it full time right away.

 

With this method there is no turning back, its live or die. Many people who have been successful at this swear by it because it really forces you to go all out in your business and do everything possible to succeed.

 

If you do not have a family to support or high living expenses this might be the best route to go.

 

Another reason you might want to do this method is if you REALLY despise your job and just cant wait to get out of there.

 

Even if you don’t have high living expenses, no family to support and cant wait to leave your job, Id still recommend at least having a few months of living needs saved up. I am a little more cautious financially. 

 

Method 2: The Safety Net Method

The Safety Net Method is less dramatic way of converting to this lifestyle. With this method you continue to work your day job while you build your Internet business and save money.

 

The benefits are obvious in that you can make income from two sources and build your business while still enjoying your usual lifestyle.

 

Now the drawbacks are you will have less time and more pressure to work on your side gig, so this means quitting your day job and reaching your ultimate goal lifestyle is likely going to be a longer process.

 

If you have a family to support or high living expense the Safety Net Method is probably the best choice for you. Also if you do not completely 100% hate your job/boss then this is choice works because you can stand to wait a little longer. 

 

For me I am more conservative financially, have a family to support and for the most part actually like my boss and job so the Safety Net Method is for me.

 

In this post I am going to describe exactly how I am using the Safety Net Method. These tactics allow you to ease out of your job and have the income to support your lifestyle and living expenses waiting for you in your new ventures.

 

What Kind of Internet Business Will You Have?

The first thing you have to decide is what type of business you are going to have. You need a business that is going to replace the income you make in your day job.

 

You will need it to generate this much income (or at least close) while you are working your full time day job. So how can you make money on your side gig while simultaneously being at your day job?

 

You need to either create and start a business and pay people you trust to run the day to day operations of the business or you need a business that’s income does not depend on your physical presence.    

 

A Good Side Business:

A really good side business for slowly transitioning out of your day job is an online business. How do I know that? Well I have one myself and hits so many items on the checklist.

Now of course its going to depend on what type of Internet business you have but most online projects are going to be more ideal for this than traditional location based business.

 

Lets looks at some of the advantages I have with my online business:

 

Ton of flexibility.

For the most part my work can be done anywhere/anytime there is an Internet connection.

 

Not to big of a burden.

If you want to build your side business to replace your day job you will need to work both at the same time for awhile. It would be tough to keep your day job income if your entire day was consumed with work on the side gig.

So you need something you can build slowly that won’t get you fired!

 

Has potential to make enough money:

Since this online business will be replacing your day jobs income eventually (and hopefully surpassing it), it has to have the potential to earn that much.

My primary online business is Internet marketing and sending solid leads from the Internet to my clients who own local service businesses.

 

Right now because of my limited time I only have two active clients. But with just two clients I already average a little more then ½ of what I make in my full time day job.

 

And my full time day job pays me over 6 figures a year.

 

So this online business is clearly a viable business. When I quit my full time day job that is going to free up about 55 hours a week for me (9 hour work days, plus 2 hours round trip commuting).  

 

To put that in perspective I only spend about 4-5 hours a week total on my side company right now.

 

Those hours involve almost zero time in trying to get new clients. (because I don’t feel I have the time to provide them a good service right now)

 

So if I had an extra 55 hours a week to work on my own business do you think I could get just 2 more clients and double my income?

 

Sales is not my strong point but Im pretty confident that it would not be to hard to get 2 more clients pretty quickly. In fact my goal as soon as (or right before) I quit my job is to have 5 clients total to more than match my day job income.

 

That is exactly what you need to do.

 

Figure out how much you need to make monthly to get the life you want or to match your current day jobs income.

 

How do you do that? Create your business and get your first client! You will need to simultaneously run your side business and day job for awhile.

 

After you have established you have a real business (no company is valid without at least one paying customer) then just do the math.

 

How much do you make per month on that one client? You should be able to do some quick calculations and figure out how many more clients you need to match your day job income.

 

The first rule is to keep that first client happy! You should bring a ton of value to them and make sure they are a recurring customer and not just a one off.

 

With just one customer it should not be too difficult to balance their needs with your day job responsibilities.

 

Then get another client and another, until you match or are close to matching what you make at work.

 

I will go into much more detail about exactly what type of side Internet business I have and steps on getting clients in a future post.

 

Getting Super Efficient in Your Day Job

So even just starting out with one client how do you manage to do your full time day job and still successfully run a side business?

 

You need to find time! I have a pretty busy job but work in an office in front of a computer so I have easy access to do tasks for my online business as well.

 

Now no matter how busy we are in our day job if we are being honest we still find time to get on Facebook or Youtube throughout the day.

 

The key to getting things done in your side business during the day is not to randomly jump on and work on it whenever you have 5-10 minutes to spare during your day job.

 

You wont get anything effective done in that short amount of time.

 

Instead dedicate a full 20-30 minutes uninterrupted to ONE important task in your business. During that 20-30 minutes, no phone calls, instant messaging or Facebook just focus on completing that task.

 

I try to do this 2-3 times a day. Instead of like my co-workers who are jumping on and off Facebook, CNN and all the other time wasting sites, I use these dead moments for my side business.

 

But I dedicate 20 straight minutes to it so I have time to get something effective done instead of just busy work.

 

So how do I manage to get 40-60 minutes free time for my side gig while at a busy job?

 

Time Management in Your Day Job

You have to be relentless in your pursuit of efficiency and time management. No one notices I’m working on my side business every day because I get stuff done at my job!

 

In fact I a probably get more done now and I’m a bigger value to my employer then I was before I started a side gig!

 

How can that be? Well I don’t fill my day up with ‘busy tasks’ any more.

I focus on getting the impactful things done first every day.

People usually avoid these types of tasks because they are normally also the most difficult thing to do as well.

 

So they spend all their time (I used to do it to) on unimportant ‘busy tasks’ that are easy but have no real impact on the bottom line important stuff management is interested in seeing get completed.

 

Controlling Your Own Time

As much as possible you have to get as much control over your own time as you can. One of the best strategies for me in gaining back more of my time when I started focusing on controlling meetings.

 

Meetings in the modern day work office are for the most part a complete waste of time!

 

Here is a humorous video from a Ted Talk on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Qo8IDsVNg

 

That video pretty much depicts my current job and the last 2 jobs I had before that perfectly on what a waste of time meetings can be.

 

People love to schedule meetings at my job!

 

I used to come into work some days and see 3-4 one hour meetings scheduled in a day. That is ½ of the 8 work day. How are you supposed to get any actual work done?

 

I will post in the future a full strategy on how to reduce the burden of meetings and the time suck they are. But for now here a few tips you can use.

 

• When someone sends you a meeting so you can answer a specific question, tell them you may be able to help them out right now and ask for a quick chat or email directly.

 

• Dont automatically accept meetings with no agenda. Email the person back and say “I want to be best prepared to help you, please let me know specifically what you need from me in this meeting agenda”. If your lucky they tell you and you give them the answer and boom your out of a meeting.

 

• People love to send 1 hour meeting requests, its kind of the default time window. Most meetings should NOT take an hour. If they are well run they can be over in a ½ hour or even 15 minutes. But here is the crazy thing! Many times all the agenda has been covered in a meeting but people will try to stretch out the hour by repeating themselves or filling up time with nonsense. So if someone sends you a one hour meeting request and it looks to you like you could help them quickly respond back and ask them to change it to a ½ hour meeting because “while you really want to help them you have a tight schedule that day”.

 

• If you absolutely cant get out of a meeting here is another trick you can use. Sometimes the meeting organizer has many teams they need to talk to. You get stuck on the line listening to all this stuff that is irrelevant to you. Contact the meeting organizer ahead of time and request to have your topic covered early. Use the excuse that you have another issue you are working on but you really want to attend and assist them.

 

Dedicating Hours

Maybe you dont have a job like mine where you work in an office on a computer all day and can just switch your time on YouTube watching cat videos to working on your side business.

 

If you have the type of job that requires your full attention during working hours dont give up on your Internet side business.

 

You can still be successful but it comes down to one word.

 

And that one word my friend, is:

 

SACRIFICE

 

Dave Ramsey has a great quote:

“If you will live now like no one else will, later you can live like no one else can.”

 

Now granted I think he means it in a financial planning sense and if you save money and sacrifice some things now you will be able to afford much more later in life.

 

But I apply this awesome quote in the sense that, you are going to have to give up some of your free time and work much harder for a year or two to build your business then if you just keep continuing to coast on your current routine of a day job.

BUT you will be rewarded greatly a few years from now when you can quit that day job and get your free time back.

All those guys who were not willing to make that 1-2 years sacrifice that you did will be stuck in the same job routine forever. 

You can also free up some time by taking advantage of all the software and online tools available to us today. I will write more in depth about this in the future.

One great platform I use to fullfil short term gigs I need done is Alex Beckers Konker.

 

 

Evenings and Weekend Work

People are selling the dream of making money on the Internet everywhere so why arent more people successful at it? Is it a scam? To good to be true?

 

No. The reason is because its not easy! What the gurus are leaving out is that it takes hard work and dedication to make it online today.

 

And that means when you get home from your long day job you get online and start working on your Internet business.

 

Not watching 4 hours of TV until bed time. Not playing video games all night. Not Netflix and chill.

 

When you get home jump online and work! That is what the average person is not willing to do and that is what makes you different.

 

You are willing to work all day and all week at your soul sucking job and then turn around and use your weekends and evening free time to strive for MORE and to build your future freedom.

 

Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t have some down time for fun activities just make sure enough of that free time is dedicated toward building your side business.

 

Because that extra time you put in now is going to give you back complete control over your time. That same precious time that your day job has complete control over now.

 

 So if you are like me and want to use The Safety Net method before quitting that cushy day job, follow these same techniques I have to set yourself all up.

 

Until next time!

Stefan

I sat there with kind of blank stare on my face. It was a tough question and honestly one I hadn’t really considered.

He asked me again, “So why exactly do you want to make one million dollars a year?” The person asking was a very successful ‘new lifestyle’ friend of mine named Dave who was mentoring me.

I dont know, I stammered, I guess if made a million a year I would have enough to cover the lifestyle I want and still not have to worry about money?

 

He shook his head slowly. So magically one million dollars is the exact number that gives you the lifestyle you want?

Look he explained, lets say you make roughly $1,000 to $2,500 per month per client right? On your side business you are currently making about $5,000 – $7,000 a month, which is $60,000 – $84,000 a year.

If you wanted to make a million a year income that would be about 35 clients x $2,500 (high end) which is just over 1 million a year.

 

I got where he was going with this. I was able to manage 2-3 clients at a time even with my full time job but not many more.

 

When I quit my job I would of course have more time to get more clients and make more money.

But the main reason I wanted to quit my job in the first place was to have more free time! If I were to go from 2-3 clients a month to 35 I would be swamped and it would totally go against the lifestyle I wanted!

 

Now of course I could hire people and scale up as I go but I’m not really interested in managing dozens of employees as that also goes against my ideal lifestyle.

This conversation is when I first realized you really need to get detailed and specific to the type of lifestyle you want so that you can be in total alignment with it in your work and goals.

 

I have since had this conversation with many people and have realized I wasn’t alone in my lack of planning in this area.

Some people I know are already doing really well financially but they really don’t know what their destination is. In other words they make more money just for the sake of making more money.

When they make more money they spend more money.

There really is no end to it.

On the other hand I’ve also talked to people who like me are exploring this Internet Lifestyle but they are not detailed on what they want and how much they need to make to get them there.

 

So what about you? Have you figured out your exact ideal lifestyle and what it is going to cost you to get there?

I promise you that once you know exactly what you want it will be easier to achieve it because all of your energy and goals can now be in alignment towards it.

 

Since being woken up on this Ive done a LOT of thinking about it.

Below are some techniques and exercises that I have used to give me more clarity on this.

I hope you can use some of these techniques in your own life. Id recommend it be something you do sooner rather than later or you may end up working really hard for years to get somewhere you didn’t want to end up being in the first place.

 

Imagine Your Ideal Day

One great way to truly know the lifestyle you want is to imagine your perfect day. If you had a really, really great day what would it look like?

And I don’t mean a day when your on vacation in Hawaii.

I mean what is your average day like? A typical Monday/Tuesday work day. Why not strive to make your typical, average day amazing?

So Im going to get a little new age with you but calm down this is totally worth it.

 

Close your eyes and imagine yourself waking up to your ideal reality.

What kind of bed are you in?

What does your bedroom look like?

What neighborhood do you live in?

Do you have a view from your house?

Who are you waking up next to?

 

Now think about the clothes you are picking out. What do they look like?

Now you are out in your garage. What kind of car is there?

Are you commuting to your office?

What type of office do you own? Or maybe you work from home?

How many hours do you work and what are you doing?

Do you work solo or have employees?

 

Now work is over and you are heading home for dinner. Imagine your perfect evening from dinner to bed time and everything in between.

 

So that exercise was the typical work day. Do the same thing for your perfect weekend.

 

My Ideal Day Example

Here is my perfect work day.

I wake up around 7AM and wash my face and brush my teeth. That is followed by 5-10 minutes of mindful thought and positive affirmations of how I want my day to go.

I then do 30 minutes of my daily P90X or some other similar exercise.

Next I shower and get dressed in my extremely nice outfit that I laid out the night before. I go out to my backyard in the Burbank Hills that has an amazing view of the city.

 

I relax on a chair and do a few minutes of reading or play with my son before he goes to school.

Now its time to go to work. I actually dont like working from home so I go out to my garage and climb into my BMW. Its a BMW X3. I know not the flashiest car in the world but I have a kid and wife so need to have some practicality with what I drive.

 

I take the short commute into Los Angeles and go to one of my favorite trendy coffee shops. After a few hours there I head up to the Penthouse of the office I share with my brother (luckily this penthouse office part already exists.)

 

It has a rooftop view of Los Angeles. I work from 9AM-12PM and then its time for lunch. I either go with people from the office out or eat the healthy lunch I brought from home.

 

I go back to work from 1:00PM to about 3:00PM. I then go out and hit a new, different spot in LA. One of my hobbies is to explore new places in the city so Im always looking for more time for this hobby.

Around 5PM I head home. After decompressing, I hang out with my son and wife and see how their days went.

 

After a clean, healthy dinner I spend an hour watching TV or doing some other activity with my wife and son. They go to bed about 8:30 and I jump back online and finish anything I missed during the day or plan out my one most important work task for the next day.

From 9:30 PM to 10:00 PM I read in my room or office. I then lay out my outfit for the next day and get ready for bed and off to sleep by 10:30 PM.

 

That to me is a perfect workday schedule and much different to what I have now.

Now I am forced to get up earlier than I want, rushed through the morning to die slowly in 45 minutes of LA traffic and sit at a desk for the next 9 hours.

Only to be followed by an over an hour commute in miserable LA traffic back to my house.

 

Do The Math On Your Ideal Lifestyle

OK now it’s time for you to do the Math on your Perfect Lifestyle. How much is your dream life going to cost you?

If there is a neighborhood you want to live in go online and look at houses that just sold recently. Pick out the absolute best house for you. How much did it sell for?

Now you know what you need to earn to achieve this major piece of your perfect day.

Do some research online for the cost of that car you pictured yourself driving? How much to buy it in cash?

What about your family vacations? Will you be taking 1-2, or maybe 3 a year? Estimate all that cost.

Now you figure out how many clients you need to pay for this lifestyle.

You will be able to achieve these things if you know what you want and how much it costs. Because once you know those two things you will know exactly what it takes to achieve it.

Just dont stop getting clients/selling products etc until you have that magic number you need to pay for your lifestyle.

 

My Lifestyle Math

So with a little bit of work and thought I already roughly know the cost of most of my ideal lifestyle. This is very important!

If you want to own a luxury car or a nice house dont just think to yourself “maybe someday”. Do some research, put pen to paper and figure out the cost of this life so you know exactly what you need to do to reach that ‘someday’.

The neighborhood I want to live in is called ‘The Burbank Hills’. I already live in Burbank so I know this is an expensive area.

So what you want to do is find a house you want to live in that’s for sale in the neighborhood you want to be.

Here is my example in Burbank

http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Burbank-CA/pmf,pf_pt/20060581_zpid/396054_rid/34.260337,-118.157788,34.103845,-118.492871_rect/11_zm/

 

Now my actual dream home would probably be with an Ocean view but I want to be realistic.

When I say realistic I dont mean what Im capable of affording I mean this isn’t just a fantasy for myself but a place I could realistically live with my family as well.

 

We already know we love Burbank, CA as a place to raise my kid so I wouldn’t force them to move to the Beach just because that is what I want (and could now afford)

 

So it looks like the kind of house I want in the neighborhood I want to live in is between 1.2 and 1.7 million. So lets call it 1.5 million. That is about 3xs the cost of my current place. My mortgage is roughly $3 grand a month so that x’s 3 = $9,000 a month!

 

Now of course Ill be paying a crap load of taxes with this being California and other costs so lets go up to $10,000 grand a month.

Not going to lie this sounds mind blowing to me to pay that much money every month. BUT my average client is $2,500 a month. So that means I only need 4 clients to pay for my dream house.

What if I wanted to buy the house outright? Id hate to be stuck with monthly payments that big.

Well at $2,500 a month and $30,000 a year per client that would be a whopping 50 clients I would need to pay it off in one year.

I already know that is more clients than I want so I would likely save for a year and put a huge down payment down first lowering the monthly payment.

(note: I believe in not overpaying for things even if you have the money so I might consider renting this place and investing the money instead but for the purpose of this exercise we will say I’m buying it)

 

Now with my car I already have a BMW X-1 so I’m familiar with this cost. A BMW X3 is only one model above what I drive now (again not a big car guy) and is roughly $40 grand.

 

So 5,000 x 8= $40,000 which means I could buy the car with 8 months of payment from 2 clients.

 

Or to buy it outright in 2 months I could do (8 clients x $2,500 for 2 months = $40,000.)

I would do this for everything in my ideal lifestyle.

 

For example my ideal lifestyle on vacations is 4 a year.

 

3 locally and 1 international.

The same process of breaking down roughly how much that costs for a 4 a year. Figuring out how many clients/products are needed to pay for it and work towards that.

 

RECAP

Can you see the power in this method? Most people just stagnate once they hit a certain level in their business.

Others do the opposite and keep working hard to grow and make more and more and more without ever thinking about what all the money should be going to!

It should be going to the ideal lifestyle you want. And I assume that includes lots of free time.

So if you do the math on your ideal lifestyle and it includes too much time investment in work you may need to re calibrate.

Either lower the expense of your life or find a way to expand your business and make more money without devoting all your free time to it.

 

 

If you are reading this article Id like to welcome you to my first post and hopefully the start of many more to come.

First let me tell you what this site is about. Its for people who are like me or are in a position I have been in. 

You know why? Because that is what I know about. I will never be giving advice on something I have not actually accomplished myself.

For example I have not personally made a million dollars so I wont be giving advice on that (until I do). I also don’t have a 6 pack like the guy in this picture so wont be giving advice on how to get shredded.

All of my articles will be from personal experience.

 

So is this blog for you?

Well do you have a decent career and make good money but you feel like you are missing out on something bigger or could be doing more in life?

Do you have a career that makes you enough money for a comfortable lifestyle but robs you of all your free time?

We live in exciting times where Technology, along with some research and hard work have created opportunities for people to quit their 9-5 day jobs and start a life where they are in more control of their time and the amount of income they can make.

This opportunity of escaping the 9-11 hour (with commute) daily grind of working for someone else is an intoxicating idea.

You have seen the Internet Marketing gurus living the good life like Tai Lopez or Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income.

And you imagine what if you had more time to do things you want to do?

What if you could pursue the activities in life you actually enjoy?

What more could you do with your time if you didn’t have to work 5 days a week and only have 2 to yourself?

 

My Story

Here is my story. I actually have an amazing job. I’ve been working in IT for almost 15 years and have reached a very Senior level position. I make over 6 figures (not bragging, just giving context), work with great people and a fun company.

My employer is one of the largest and well know Film and Television studios in the world and I work every day right on a real live Hollywood studio lot right here in Los Angeles.

Really sometimes I am walking around the studio lot and have to ask myself ‘How the hell did I get here, this is awesome!”.

Sounds great right? But here is the problem.

Before I started working at this awesome company I already saw the Matrix. I don’t mean seeing the actual movie the Matrix but the modern American work lifestyle that I relate  the Matrix movie to.

 

If you dont remember the infamous blue pill vs red pill scene, here it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4

Morpheus: It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are slave Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.

Unfortunately no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

Morpheus: This is your last chance….After this there is no turning back. You take the BLUE pill, the story ends and you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

You take the RED pill, you stay in Wonderland….and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes…(NEO reaches for the red pill)

Morpheus: Remember..all I’m offering is the truth….

 

So here is how I match this analogy from this amazing scene for my purposes.

 

The Matrix is this default world of work and life that we are all trapped in that says, study hard then go to Corporate America and slowly climb the ladder for 30 years, until you either fall off or reach the top and then retire/die.

 

The Blue Pill is choosing to continue on the path of not exploring anything new or different but just going with the default options. When you see someone having success online or with a new age business you say “they got lucky”, or “they are just better at that”, or “that would never work for me”. So you go back to your daily grind/routine and only allow yourself to daydream of this lifestyle every once in awhile.

 

The Red Pill is choosing to open your eyes to new possibilities. Rejecting that the default plan to work for someone else the rest of your life is the only option for you. To look and listen to the people living this alternative lifestyle and saying, “If they can do it, well so can I!” “they are not necessarily smarter or luckier than me they just kept at it until they reached their goals”. Taking the Red Pill is making the decision to explore this possibility for yourself.

 

Morpheus is that person that has seen and is already living the possibilities you aspire to. Maybe you have a friend who works from coffee shops all day, travels when he wants to and never has to deal with commuting to an office everyday during soul crushing traffic jams. Or maybe you do not know that somebody personally but you follow someone online who is living that life you aspire to.

 

That is what happened to me. First I discovered the book the “4 Hour WorkWeek” by Tim Ferris. This is the first thing I remember coming across that opened my eyes to the possibility of not having to just do the default life and work path that society has laid out for everyone.

 

Next I found online these people who were living these incredible new age entrepreneur  lifestyles. And when I say “incredible lifestyles” I don’t mean driving nice cars and living in nice houses (although that can be awesome to lol).

 

What I mean is they seemed to have complete control of their time and how they choose to spend it. People like Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas, Alex Becker and others had created their own online business in a (relatively) short amount of time.

 

They had control of their business, their income and most importantly their time!

 

You see no matter how high up you get on that Corporate ladder you are still leaning it up against someone else’s wall and they have control of you and how you spend your time.

 

Time is our most valuable commodity. We can make more money but we can’t make more time. And when your are working for a company 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 30 years you are giving away life’s most valuable asset.

 

You are giving away your most valuable asset.

 

How did I get here

I think it was already politically incorrect by the time I graduated High School but if there was a “Most Likely NOT to Succeed” category I for sure would have been on the contenders list.

 

I grew up with very little parental guidance and as a consequence did not care much about school.

Luckily I had always been an avid and voracious reader so with that I was able to (barely) get through High School even though I gave very little effort.

 

After High School I took a few Community College courses (mostly to meet girls) and held just above minimum wage jobs with decisively little room for growth.

 

A few years into that I got extremely tired of having jobs that paid so little and were barely enough to get by. So I decided to start studying computer support on the side.

 

This was amazing timing right before the dot com boom where there was such a demand for IT knowledge that all you had to do was pass a few certifications to get hired somewhere.

 

I talked my way into my first Tech job with no experience and a couple of Microsoft certifications under my belt. Over the next 10 years I completely dedicated myself and made up for all those years of being a screw up.

 

On evenings and weekends after work I would study and work overtime which allowed me to quickly make my way up the IT ladder into more Senior level positions.

 

Fast forward to today and for the past 4 years I have worked at pretty much a dream IT job here on a Studio Lot in Los Angeles for one of the worlds most famous entertainment empires.

 

My boss is cool, the pay is incredible, the work is good and I even just recently got another promotion and another bump up in compensation.

 

So what’s the problem? Well the problem is I have already taken that Red Pill.

 

Like NEO I know there is more out there, that others have seen but I’ve only caught glimpses of. I WANT to go down that rabbit hole and see where it leads!

 

I have seen the dream of working for yourself and controlling your own time for myself and now there is no going back.

 

No matter how great my job is and how much it pays its just not worth the time cost to me to work for a company, not any company.

 

I commute an hour to work and an hour and a half back home. We have a 9 hour day with lunch so that’s over 11 hours a day, 5 days a week my time is controlled by someone else!

 

For that 11 hours a day I have about 5 hours of free time for myself and family (not counting sleeping).

 

For those 5 days a week of work I get just 2 on the weekend to have fun and take care of all my personal business (and sometimes I have to work for my company on the weekends).

 

For those 50 weeks of work a year I get 2 weeks off for vacation where I try to jam all my travel plans into.

 

Besides all that when you are in high level engineering you are expected to participate in an “on-call rotation”. Meaning they can call you anyplace, anytime and you have to drop everything you are doing and work.

 

My friend LJ Young who is also an engineer sums up what a pain in the ass this is in the video below:

 

And that is what my main reason for looking at other alternatives to income is. It comes down to getting my time back.

 

What is my escape plan?

For about the last 3 years I have been making money on the side with online projects and business. I am only able to dedicate about 4-5 hours a week on this since my day job and family keep me so busy.

 

Not going to lie. This has been difficult. Many, many of my attempts have failed and I have wasted countless hours going down rabbit holes that came back with no results.

 

But I did not give up! With a full time income at my job it wasn’t much for me to lose some money and time to try to achieve this on this side.

 

My first substantial success came with helping someone else business out, not my own.

 

I have a family member who owns a successful Law firm in LA along with his law partner. They were doing well but almost NONE of their leads came online or through their website!

 

They were getting all their clients just from word of mouth and offline networking efforts.

 

I made a deal with them that I would generate leads for them using Internet Marketing and they would pay me only per lead.

 

It was a great plan for me because I could put into place all I learned and it was great for them because they were only paying me per actual lead.

 

Want to guess how much my first paycheck with them was after the first month of hard work?

 

It was $88 dollars….needless to say it was less than I expected…BUT I was actually pretty encouraged. (I wish I still had the picture but dropped my Iphone with pic in the Ocean!)

 

If it was even possible to make $88 dollars I reasoned that could turn into more. It showed that what I was doing could produce income.  Now it was just a matter of figuring out how to scale it.

 

Progress was slow. The next month it jumped up to a few hundred dollars. 6-8 months later it was regularly in the thousands. Now as of this writing it averages about $5,000 a month with a few $7,000 and $8,000 dollars months here and there.

 

When it reached a few thousand a month is when I really realized the potential of this. After all this was really only one client (their firm).

 

If I can make $5,000 a month with just one client all I needed was 2 more for $15,000 a month! That would more than match my income from my job and I could quit!

 

But here is the issue I’m having. I barely have time to work on this Internet Marketing stuff between my full time job, my family and friends and living life.

 

Even with my one existing client that is generating the majority of my Internet Marketing income I only spend about 4-5 hours a week working on his stuff.

 

So the answer is obvious… I need to quit my full time career and focus my full time efforts on my own business.

 

And that takes us here and why I wrote this post….

 

The Goal of this Blog

My goals for this blog are mainly 2 fold.

 

The first is to publicly hold myself accountable to quit my current job/career in 6 months. (January of 2017) So I can pursue my dream of owning my business and having control of my time and lifestyle.

 

The second is to give an inside step by step look to others who are interested in pursuing this lifestyle and  hopefully inspire them to do the same.

 

There are tons of great blogs out there like Smart Passive Income and Charles Ngo that talk about how they quit their day jobs, started an online business and took back control of their own time.

 

But most of these guys have a similar story. They typically started in their early twenties and did not make much money in their day jobs or had not established themselves in another career yet. And you dont typically hear about them until after they have already had success online. 

 

My story is a bit different. I did not really “discover” this online lifestyle possibility until I was in my late thirties. I worked for years diligently in my career field to build myself up to that ‘6 figure income’ most middle class Americans aspire to.

 

There really is no financial desperation aspect to my situation. I could just continue on like this for the next 30 years and retire safe and sound in my sixties and wait to die like everyone else.

 

But.. for me it’s not that I am in desperate need for more money or hate my job. Its just that the Internet lifestyle has opened my eyes up to the fact that the default career path I am taking is robbing me of the best years of my life.

 

For example I spend 40 hours a month just commuting to and from work! Let alone the 45-50 hours a week spent at work.

 

I know they are others out there like me and that is who this blog is for.

 

You are in your thirties, forties or even fifties and you already have a good career but you want to try something else. Something that gives you the income you need but more importantly gives you your time back and affords you the opportunity to lead your ideal lifestyle.

 

I will also be documenting this transition to online success as it happens! I have not yet quit my day job and no where close yet to my online goals.

 

I want you to see the steps to the destination not just the final outcome like we see with so many well know people who have had great success online already.

 

 

What you will get out of this blog

This blog is a journey we are going to take together. I will be documenting how I am going to take my side business (with just one real client) and use it to replace my 6 figure income from my job. I will also be quitting that 6 figure job and career in the next 6 months. 

 

My goal is the end of January 2017. Its very scary but I hope writing this blog and sharing my story with you will help me with the courage I need to make this final step.

 

Along the way Ill share my wins,losses, philosophies and lessons. And I really hope to hear from you and others like you.

 

You have worked so hard for the success you have now but you are ready to go out there on your own and really take your work and life to the next level!