Building the Dream Business and a Meaningful Life

My Life Plan

Posted on May 16, 2007. Filed under: Business, Empowerment, Entrepreneur, Planning, Self Help, Startup |

I’ve been agonizing on how to express myself in this post and I’ve decided to just do it imperfectly rather than wait until I get it perfect. I wanted to outline in detail the details of the kind of life I want to have but I don’t think I’ll accomplish that in one post. I’ll just point out some of the highlights.

Revenue Automation – Separation of Revenue Generation and Time

In programming I like to use the word “decoupling” when you make two parts of a program independent of each other. Well, I’d like to apply the same principles to revenue generation. I’d like to decouple the generation of revenue from the time it takes to generate that revenue. For instance, we’re all familiar with the regular salaried job – you work for x hours a week to get y dollars. I made the conscious decision to quit my salaried job a couple of years ago and I haven’t looked back since. I’ve been generating revenue as a consultant since then so I got to set my own work schedule and rates. But I’d like to step it up a notch and take the revenue generation to the next level – start automating the generation of revenue so I’m not required to work a certain amount of hours to get a certain revenue. Consultants (like doctors, accountants and other professionals) are still limited with how much we charge times the number of hours in a day or the procedure that we need to perform.

I’d like to put the revenue generation of my business on autopilot.

Financial Intelligence

I’m a decent saver by nature, but I haven’t been as diligent with finding good vehicles to put my money into. Sure, we’re sold the idea of putting your money away into RRSPs (or 401(k) in the U.S.) but I think I need to be more on top of making my money work for me – automatically.

Task Automation

I’m a big believer in automation. One of the reasons I was fascinated by automated testing (and decided to specialize in it) is because I realized the leverage in getting programs to do what would take many manual man hours to do. I think the idea has merit in many areas of our lives – automating domestic duties and administrative tasks, automating revenue generations and automating other areas of our lives that tend to take a lot of time. I’m not saying everything can be automated, but I think I haven’t looked hard enough for how I can automate many of the things in my life that I’m currently doing manually. And by automation I don’t just mean having computers do it for me. Automation can also include outsourcing tasks to other people.

Location Independence

One of the things I’d like to do in my life is live in different parts of the world. And I’m not talking about some 2-week vacation that you get after you spend the rest of the year busting your ass. I’m talking about living like a normal person (not a tourist) in other countries. This could be done if I can automate my revenue generation and be able to do my work from anywhere in the world. I’m a strong proponent of the Internet and I feel that we’re in very early stages of a cultural change that’s taking place. Ideas like “working at a job till you retire at 65″ have already been debunked but there are other ideas that

Making a Difference

I’d like to make a difference in the world. I’m not sure exactly how but I feel like there are many worthy causes that I can get involved in. The problem right now is that I feel I have no time for them – after all, I’m busy building my business. But I feel like I would naturally open up to these possibilities if I didn’t have to worry so much about making a living.

Reconnecting With My Interests

I used to perform in many amateur plays when I was in high school and throughout university. I even seriously considered going to theatre school after graduating from university with an engineering degree. In fact I even went as far as applying to a few of them but only got as far as the waiting list for one. It’s been years since I performed my last show and I’ve always meant to come back to it.

I also think there are other interests I’d like to explore but the problem right now is that I don’t have the time (or is that just an excuse?).

A guy whose ideas have strongly resonated with me is Tim Ferris. He wrote a book called the The 4-Hour Workweek that seems to talk about the same ideas that I’ve been thinking about for a few years now. I haven’t read his book but I have read his blog and a couple of the sample chapters so from the gist of it, he advocates living the kind of life I’ve been thinking about.

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