This is post 14 on my My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click if you wish to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

Hey folks,

Today we talk about how I created my cash flow muse. I give you some suggestions on outsourcing the creation of the muse and give you lessons from my triumphs and my upsets. Enjoy and any questions, do the web 2.0 thing and leave me a comment or contact me with your thoughts.

Enjoy.

The Video

The Slide Presentation

Further Information and Resources

1) John Jonas’ website ReplaceMyself.com

2) Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind program

This is day 11 (well in truth much longer, probably 2-3 months now but my 10th post) of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

**For English subtitles please select “Danish” from the “Choose Language….” drop down menu**

It took me more than 6 weeks to find a niche and as I type this I have known the niche I wish to target for quite a few weeks.

Nevertheless, for your benefit I would like to walk you through my niche selection process.

Stage in the Process

As those of you who have read, or are reading the book would know, as soon as Tim finishes introducing us to the concept of outsourcing your life, he immediately moves to the area which was to me the most seductive and compelling part of the book: cash flow muse creation.

What is a Cash Flow Muse?

A cash flow muse is a business/organization/system that exists for one purpose and one purpose only: to generate your target monthly income so you can live your ideal lifestyle.

This business isn’t created for the sake of growth, to sell at IPOs, for you to have a job your passionate about. Nope, it’s there so you have enough money to live your ideal lifetsyle: that’s it.

What I Love About the Idea of Cash Flow Muses?

One of the principles I am absolutely enamoured by, especially of late, is what I lovingly call:

The Principle of Specificity

The Principle of Specificity in short is an art or a science of being specific whether that means being clear and concise in thinking, in action, in language or in intention.

In short, someone gets extremely clear and extremely specific on what they want, need, have to get done etc etc go out and do it.

I love the fact that a cash flow muse has a very very very specific purpose as opposed to an abstract or an ambiguous or vague objective like:

To provide quality widgets for all your daily needs or;

To make a living or;

To become the greatest company in the world.

Nope, Tim sat down and basically asked himself what exact dollar amount he would need to live a lifestyle that would make him happy and created a business to fund that. How rare is that level of specificity and clarity of intention?

So now let’s move on to:

How I Found My Niche

So here are the steps I took to find out what demographic I want to attempt to market to:

1) Went to my local Borders book store: We have a number of book stores in Australia but I opted to go to one that is a short while away from my house- Borders -rather than stay close to home for a few reasons:

a) Borders is HUGE: In terms of pure size, Borders has the biggest stores of the bookshops down under and larger size automatically means greater selection and I wanted as large a selection as possible.

b) Borders allows you to read books for free: Ever since the days when I used to run away from school to read books at Borders (yes, I see the irony), they had me at that policy where you could sit in there as long as you want and read as many books and magazines as you want.

They even have a cafe in the store so you can feed and water yourself while doing this. Ever since then, I always take my book or DVD business to borders.

2) Went to the Magazine Rack: Tim recommends you pick a niche that is serviced by 1 or 2 small magazines. Below, I have video of the magazines that I selected.I selected magazines from the following niches:

a) Writing as a profession

b) Vegetarianism

c) Sustainable and environmentally conscious living

3) Disappointed: To be honest with you I was quite disappointed at my selections because:

a) I hardly qualify as a professional writer

b) I am not in touch with the psychological and social aspects of being a vegetarian in the West, except for going for the occasional cooking class, and;

c) I haven’t put in concentrated, consistent effort into sustainable living for quite a while now.

Therefore, while I was in the mall I decided I would:

4) Pay a Visit to the Newsstand: Here I picked up two other magazines, in the area of making money and home based businesses (check out my Youtube video above).I still wasn’t elated because I hardly qualify to be a part of that niche either but I decided I had enough selections and I went home to proceed to the next stage of muse selection.

5) Emailed and Called the Advertising Director’s and Requested Rate Cards: We wanted magazines that had the following characteristics:

Circulation of 5000+ people

Full page advertising cost less than US$5000

The greater the number of people selling to magazine readers direct via ads that had websites and 1800 numbers, the better.

Another tip I got from the legendary, Gary Halbert:

Select magazines that get sold on newsstands and do well on news stand sales in comparison to strictly subscription titles. It is too easy and cheap to get a subscription to a magazine.

You only pick up a magazine of a newsstand if you need something that day that the magazine is offering.

6) The Process of Elimination Went a Little Something Like This:Emailed and called all the magazines over the course of 3 weeks and obtained their rate cards and circulation numbers:

* Vegeterian magazine : Full page ad = approximately US $22,000

* Sustainable living magazine: Great advertising rates, great circulation. Don’t know squat about the lifestyle and not very passionate at the moment about this niche.

* Writing magazine # 1: Not enough readers + Not enough expertise on my part.

* Writing magazine # 2: Not much interest in the topic area. Never got back in touch with me with rates.

7) No Niche! That pretty much meant that I eliminated everything I had done in the previous six steps and was without a niche.

What Did I Do?

Well one of the things I had to do in establishing my target daily income was decide just what I wanted to do with my time.

Because I am a Blogging Geek

I love the world of Internet marketing and the world of commercial blogging. One of the things that I found that I thought would be very cool to attend if I had money at the time is Blog World Expo. So I went to the site and signed up to join their newsletter.

Well Wouldn’t You Know It

Just as I was sitting around in the midst of my “Can’t-find-a-muse-how-will-I-find-one” despair I received one of the Blog World Expo newsletters and wouldn’t you know it:

There is a Magazine…….Wait for It……Wait for It……Drumroll Please…..:

For Bloggers and Podcasters!!!

* I checked out the circulation: Great

* I checked out the price of advertising: Great

* I checked out some of their back issues: Average in terms of the number of people selling to readers directly; about 10 – 20 people selling directly

* Subscription vs Newstand magazine: Subscription only as far as I can tell so again average

* Passion for the topic and willingness to investigate and establish expertise: HIGGHHHH

And so ladies and gentlemen that is how I settled on my niche:

Bloggers and Podcasters

And on the next edition we talk about what I have done (actually am doing) now that I have found a niche I want to operate in.

Be blessed and bless others,

Mwangi

Update: My preliminary testing has shown me that this product is a go….so ladies and gentlemen today on the 26th of August 2008 (you will be reading this after that date) let me announce that I shall be creating my first online information product……:D excitement

]]> http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/08/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-niche-selection-and-cash-flow-muses/feed/ 0 http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/07/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-fear-setting/ http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/07/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-fear-setting/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:02:50 +0000 Mwangi http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/?p=458

This is day 6 of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

As far as psychology is concerned, one of the most powerful tools you will get out of the 4 hour work week, should you choose to use it is: fear setting.

NB: This post is rather long, but I really want to get to the meaty part of the journey, ASAP.

What is Fear Setting?

In a nutshell, fear setting is:

When you are being held back from doing something by fear:

1) Write down the absolute worst case scenario that can take place: This, in and of itself, makes you much more aware of what exactly you fear and more often than not you realize that what you fear isn’t all that bad.

2) Write down things you will do to recover the situation or take advantage of these worst case scenarios should they take place: This changes your focus from Armageddon to thinking about how you can either avoid Armageddon or use it to create a brand new better world.

Therefore, for the second edition of Question and Actions, you watch me perform some fear setting

Question and Actions: Fear Setting Edition

1) Describe the absolute worst, nightmare scenario that would take place if you did what you are considering:

1. I would end up completely destitute and clear out my savings and waste all the money I intended on spending on the blog on keyword research and testing products during my 4 hour work week journey.
2. My product would make me a laughing stock and ostracize me from my readers and community.
3. My self confidence would drop to such a low level that I would spiral in a self-destructive manner and wallow in self pity for many unsuccessful, unfulfilling years long after this 4 hour work week journey fails.
4. I lose faith in all marketing and all gurus and can no longer believe anyone or anything: my faith in humanity and society is shattered and self-destruction continues.
5. I never get married or have a family and lose all my friends and readers because I am self-destructive.
6. I begin to drink again and waste all my money for the next 60 years on alcohol and prostitutes, because my self-destruction and repugnance to members of all sexes completely cuts me off from any human contact or any sense of morality or community or caring.
7. I shut down this blog absolutely distraught and ashamed and still have to pay for hosting and domains and services for the next 7 years.

2) What steps would I take to repair damage or put things back on the upswing (my own addition: or exploit any negative situations?)

1) I would work on one of the many minimum wage jobs that I recommended on the blog and ask all the members of my family to help me get back on my feet. I would sell my car that recently died. I would stop writing heavily for a while to focus on doing some freelance work and getting back on my feet. I would have sausage sizzles where I sell sausage sandwiches for a dollar each until I get back on my feet. I would look for a job on radio or a paper or any form of mass media using my blog as a credibility tool.

2) Make the product something that benefits the African community and other communities (because Africans are pretty tight with the pocket and Internet commerce is quite new to us). Create something that consistently brings three bottom lines: money, environmental improvement and social improvement.

3) I would immediately get to work on creating a membership site using Yaro’s teaching. I would learn from my mistakes how the Internet marketing world works before trying again. I would talk to Yaro and other members of Blog Mastermind about what I did wrong and keep that in mind as I move forward. I would read Jay Abraham’s material and other Internet marketing materials regarding the area I went wrong. Include it in my story once I finally succeed online to increase the drama.

4) Go to the church and stay there for a long time around beautiful people who are the light of the Earth. Completely cut myself off from any cynical sections of Western society and disconnect myself from the capitalist money making machine for a while to focus on re-building my trust in humanity. I will always have Yaro Starak who really had a great product that so far has done exactly as it promised: taught me how to write, how to bring in readers, how to make money and how much to expect: I even have an email list too.

5) I focus on successful relationships (intimate and non-intimate) and make it a focus of the blog for a long time while surrounding myself with wonderful church going people.

6) Refer to 4 and 5.

7) Refer to Number 1

3) What are the outcomes or benefits of more probable scenarios?

1. I would be able to live out my ideal lifestyle (more on this next post).
2. All the reading, thinking and preparing I have done over the past 5 years would be affirmed.
3. I would have something that I can teach my fellow African immigrants that would give some better control of time and mobility and a much greater ability to contribute to Africa.
4. My self-confidence would go higher as I live embody more aspects of my 4 hour work week journey.
5. I would get more readers on account of the journey.
6. I would learn how Internet marketing works.

4) If you were fired today, what would you do to restore financial stability?

Refer to either Question 2s answer or read this article.

5) What are you putting off out of fear?

Nothing, I am already up for it: I am merely fear setting as an example.

6) What is it costing you – financially, emotionally, physically – to not act?

I am eating an excess of junk and my body isn’t where it should be because I can’t afford organic food or personal training as I pursue my body building goal.

I still psychologically feel like a lot of people are ahead of me who shouldn’t be (mean to say, but I feel it).

I am not living my ideal lifestyle.

I have to juggle many things so as to fund the blogging lifestyle.

I am not able to get VAs to do some of the more, unenjoyable tasks.

I am not studying marketing from Jay Abraham, peak state from T. Robbins or exploring the world of PUAS or recording the history of Africa or becoming a public speaker or…..too many things to mention.

7) What are you waiting for?

You sold me already Tim, I am with you on the journey.

Moral of the Story

I think fear setting is an absolutely fantastic tool to use, not only when you are going on a 4 hour work week journey but also when fear is holding you back from doing something that can be of massive positive benefit to you.

So, next time you feel fear creeping in: try fear setting. Takes the fear right out.

To ensure you don’t miss a single moment of my 4 hour work week journey, subscribe to the site via RSS or email.

Have a fear-free day,

Mwangi

This is day 5 of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

Hey everyone, I hope you are having a great day, night, afternoon, siesta-time, no time, everytime, wherever you are.

Quick Thanks…..Again

I am pretty psyced:I did my first ever radio interview with Linda from Capital FM this morning and surprisingly I was super comfortable doing and so public thanks to Linda for making me super comfortable and for creating a fun and informative question list.

The interview had between 4 – 7 false starts and so the way she rolled with the punches even as sleep did battle with her eyes was pretty cool, pretty cool. Asante sana sana sana (Thank you very very very much).

Today’s Video

It will make a lot of sense as I go through the journey.

Questions and Actions

One of the key ideas of the book, the 4 hour work week, which I absoloutely love is quite often in the book he has Q & A: Questions and actions.

This is where he basically makes you look inward and ask yourself particular questions all with the end result being that you take action that takes you closer to your ideal lifestyle. The D for Definition part of the book has three questions and actions so I’ll get right into it

Questions and Actions: Pulling you Out of the Comfort Zone

Tim knows that a lot of what he says will seem counter-intuitive and illogical and so in his first Q & A immediately goes about the task of poking holes in this real world and its rules that we hold so dear to.

To play along with me let’s answer the following three questions which are the first Q&A:

1) How has being “realistic” and “responsible” kept you from living your ideal lifestyle?

2) How has doing what you “should” resulted in sub-par experiences or regret for not having done something else?

3) Look at what you are doing and ask yourself, ” What would happen if I did the opposite of all the people around me?”

4) Finally, ask, “What will I sacrifice if I go down this track for the next 10, 20, 30 or 50 years?”

My Answers (No Copying Though )

1) Hmmm. I think this one goes all the way back to when I was 16 years old. As those of you who have read my story would know, I have had delusions of grandeur for many years.

Though I am a huge supporter of secondary education and love the fact that I have a great high school diploma, I think as I had simply dropped out of school if I had intended and committed myself fully to serving Africa and Africans and/or becoming a performer, projects like the Displaced African would have started a lot sooner.

I was at the peak of my mental clarity when I was 16 and since then my ideas have definitely been clouded and influenced by superficial concerns of the world.

I’ll never really know what I could have achieved or what I could have created or changed had I thrown caution to the wind and gone out into the world with a clear vision and a deep passion. (Hope that answer wasn’t too ambiguous, leave me a comment below and let me know if it was)

2) This answer will probably fly over the heads of a lot of folks, but I don’t know if I shared this, but I am very pedantic and anal about how I interact with people. I analyse it and think about it quite often, what I did wrong or right, what different groups of people respond to and so on and so on.

I think following what other people did and their ways of interacting and not sticking to my guns resulted in my social life not being as it should have been at many stages in life.

I abdicated responsibility for determining my identity within social situations to other people and over time I lost my spark, my fire, became more and more timid and lost my chutzpah. A lot less women were met and I had a lot less fun than I should have. Hmm, dunno if folks will get this answer either, but it felt like the right answer to me.

3) I am already doing this: let’s see what happens at the end of this 4 hour work week journey and over the course of the life of the Displaced African.

4) You know, one of the huge reasons I chose to start this blog was because of looking around and overall not really being impressed by the way African immigrants were conducting life. In the United States for example, we are the best educated ethnic group and here in Oz folks are far from book-illeterate or penny foolish.

And yet, I never heard much about people who were doing great things in the diaspora. No books, no movies, no websites, no “urban legends”, no real legends. Even once I got here, over time I realized that many people here seemed to be living waaayyyy below their potential in terms of intellect and education. Now this could be for two reasons:

a) We Africans in the diaspora are not good at getting the word out there about our successes and/or I am very ignorant about the people who do great things out here.

b) We don’t have that many successes to celebrate. Either way, this blog makes some sense.

Hmm, this post is long enough as is and so I will leave the other two Questions and Actions for the next post.

To ensure you don’t miss a single moment of my 4 hour work week journey, subscribe to the site via RSS or email.

Have a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious day,

Mwangi

This is day 4 of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

Step 1: D is for Definition (Pages 21 – 48)

The D for definition section is chock full of great information. For the sake of expediency we shall only talk about three things:

a) Annecdotes that make one want to begin their own 4 hour work week journey.

b) Laying the psychological ground rules that you must keep in mind when you are going through the process of lifestyle design.

c) Comfort and other exercises meant to help you define the type of lifestyle you want and deal with the discomfort of going on the journey.

Annecdotes

From stories that show how empty the blind pursuit of fortune can be, to stories of families that have gone overseas, to even controversial Olympic gold medalists, Tim uses real life case studies and stories throughout this section to illustrate just how his principles and ideas apply in real life. Seeing as they don’t have direct bearing on my journey, I won’t delve into them and will leave these stories for you to read.

The Ground Rules

For the rest of this 4 hour work week challenge I will paste these ground rules on the mirror in my bathroom so that I read them every evening ( I work at night and sleep during the day) when I wake up. I have attached a video where I talk about this below:

The objectives of the new rich are quite different from those of conventional 9 to 5ers:

1. To have others work for you.

2. To prevent work for work’s sake, and to do the minimum neccesary for the maximum effect.

3. To distribute mini-retirements throughout one’s life as opposed to “saving it all up” for the end of life.

4. Not to be inactive, but to do what is exciting.

5. Not the empty accumulation of possession but to become and do what you want to do, whether that involves material possessions or not.

6. To be neither boss, nor employee but rather owner: Owning the train and allowing others to make sure they run on time.

7. To make money TO achieve dreams. The dream comes first and you make money to achieve a dream and don’t just make money for the sake of making it.

8. To have more quality things in your life and less clutter as opposed to simply more things, information, people etc etc

9. As entrepreneurs, constant cash flow is objective number one; big paydays are a secondary objective.

10. To never have to step away from one’s dream to go back to working for work sake (which Tim actually has an initial for: W4W)

In addition to that, there are some things I will have to keep in mind for the remainder of my journey if I am to be succesful:

1. Retirement and accumulation for retirement is only done as a buffer against worst case scenarios and is not the desired lifestyle.

2. Interest and energy are cyclical and therefore life should alternate between extended periods of enjoyable work and enjoyable rest and leisure.

3. Less is not laziness: The goal is always to do the least work to achieve maximum output instead of constantly being busy especially with meaningless work.

4. Timing is never right: Whenever one chooses to engage in something like a 4 hour work week journey or anything that makes one uncomfortable, there is never a right time. Truth be told, it’s a pretty bad time for me too. But don’t let that stop you. If it can have massive positive consequences, go for it.

5. Ask for forgiveness and not permission: If it isn’t going to devastate people around you, but will make them uncomfortable, try it AND then justify it. Get very good at getting things started without asking for the permission of those around you and apologize when you screw up.

6. Emphasize strengths and don’t fix weaknesses: Leverage your strengths and don’t work in areas of weakness, even though it’s to fix them.

7. Things in excess become their opposite: We don’t want too much of anything – idle time, possessions etc etc. Instead we want a life that is more cyclical and balanced in nature.

8. Money alone is not the solution: Money will never ever solve the deeper, existential questions that haunt us all.

9. Relative income is more important than absolute income: If you can’t move around at will and don’t have time to enjoy the money you make, then someone who earns the same amount working less hours and with the ability to travel at will is many times richer. Relative income factors in time and mobility. Absolute income is just about the cents of dollars.

10. Distress is bad, Eustress is good: For any people who studied psychology, then you all know what eustress is: good stress ( it exists, I hear some ask?). This is stress that makes us grow and expand as people in a healthy way. Distress is stress that simply eats away at us and leaves us no better. The goal isn’t to be inactive or eliminate stress but we want a whole lot of eustress that will make us better people.

Comfort Exercises

I have decided that I won’t do any of the comfort exercises in the book for the simple reason that I am not uncomfortable about going on the journey and so don’t need to slowly come out of my shell to go on it.

So I will concentrate all my energy around going on the journey: see you on Day 5.

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