My blockbuster story since living "unscripted"

[simonstanley]

Hey there guys, hope you're doing awesome.

I've not posted here in years, but just wanted to check in having read UNSCRIPTED to say I've been loving life!

I'm not sure it'd be called "retired", but effectively my internet income outweighed my expenses back in my 20's, and I was then free to truly live life however I desired. In honesty, my online biz expansion could probably be much further ahead than it is now if I'd have hustled my face off, but I'm happy to have sacrificed those early business years of income growth to travel and discover more about myself while still relatively young.

Literally have gone "all in" on personal development, and so glad I did.

7 years now since leaving my full time job in 2010, and now at the age of 32 have traveled most of Europe living the laptop lifestyle.

Learned Spanish, woke up to ocean views, hosted rooftop parties, hosted a 2-day seminar in UK, started a YouTube channel now with near 7k subscribers, walked on fire in LA, a summer riding Jet Skis in PA, camel riding in Morocco, made lifelong friends and embarked on intimate relationships with wonderful people from different cultures, built a digital business that operates all over the world, built the body/physical health of my dreams. Developed near bulletproof resistance to fear/social anxiety. Yet people still look at me sideways when I can't stay put.

However I've noticed that I always seem to "outgrow" my city after a while, and it's time for the next chapter.

Would love to learn Italian, and know I'd be uncomfortable there as outside of my comfort zone / wouldn't know the language. Also my inner voice was saying its time to be located in a more entrepreneurial city, with good sunny weather, in Europe.

Thinking going to try Rome, and fully immerse in it. Will keep you updated with how it goes. Excited to think who I'll meet and what I'll discover by making the next leap.

Has anyone else outgrown their city? Have a perpetual nagging feeling inside its time to move on? Even if the place is beautiful, wonderful weather, sometimes it's just time for the next chapter.

Here's how I did it.

I was working full time as a graphic designer in London, clock watching and realised there had to be a better life than making someone ELSES dreams a reality. I had entrepreneurial dreams of my own.

I decided "enough was enough" as I was desperately unhappy, began to put on weight, was spending everything I was earning every month, so when I got home from my dayjob at 7pm, I would research ways to generate an income online until 2am Monday-Friday.

Proceeded to invest thousands of dollars in "how to" products, learning how to make money on the internet. Trying everything from horse racing "systems", to playing poker tables, anything I thought could potentially set me free. Over the long term only proceeded to waste more money and get into more credit card debt.

I luckily stumbled into a mentor on an online marketing forum, someone who had already built an information publishing business. To this day I'm not sure why, but helped me get started, we're still friends today and I'm eternally grateful for his generosity. He's now generating well over $1mill a month from internet sales alone, so evidently I still have a ton to learn in this space.

The real formula to breaking free from the chains of my day job, was very simple.

Targeted traffic + High Converting Product = Sales.

That's it.

Whether you're selling your own products, or whether you're an affiliate, that's what it comes down to. Having a great relationship with your audience helps a ton, but also so does having a great compelling offer.

I began as an affiliate, building an email list of subscribers interested in a particular niche, then recommending the high converting products of my mentors as the middle man. I knew their stuff worked, as learning their material had helped me so much, so it seemed like a no brainer.

I was staggered as the money started to flow whether I was working or not, really was simple. I'd wake up in the morning, and see sales had poured in overnight.

In fact I started making thousands of dollars every month as an affiliate alone!

As my confidence started to build, I soon realised that I wanted to share my own message, my own voice... I wanted to actually help people with my gift as a communicator, AND make money too.

I studied continuously from guys like Tony Robbins, Bob Proctor, Russell Brunson, attended seminars, workshops, experimented with what worked and what didn't when I applied it to my own life. I watched my self-esteem soar as I overcame failures, which had me hooked to learn even more about myself and how I could generate more success.

So I created and released my first digital product. Which detailed how I overcame my minimum wage mentality, to begin the process of generating income online. I wasn't earning multi-millions, but realised I still had valuable information others could benefit from as I'd made a ton of progress.

I sold a few hundred copies of that eBook, really looking back the product could have been alot better. But it was a start, something to build upon.

I've since gone on to continually create more / better digital products around the topic of self improvement, and there's still a long way to go, but it truly is something I'm passionate about, and document my ideas / life breakthroughs on YouTube. My audience is building slowly but surely, but I won't relent until 100s of thousands are actively engaged there.

Once you've an audience that knows / likes / trusts you, whether it be through books, an active forum, YouTube channel, whatever it is you release - Then really you have something incredible, a legacy to pass on for generations to come. Both extremely fulfilling and potentially rewarding financially.

Hope that helps!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

I'm not sure it'd be called "retired", but effectively my internet income outweighed my expenses back in my 20's, and I was then free to truly live life however I desired. In honesty, my online biz expansion could probably be much further ahead than it is now if I'd have hustled my face off, but I'm happy to have sacrificed those early business years of income growth to travel and discover more about myself while still relatively young.

Do you have any details about HOW you did it?

Otherwise your post is just a celebratory declaration to the forum, which we all enjoy and high-five, but it helps no one get started on their own success story.

Otherwise, congratulations and welcome back. Your story definitely falls into the Unscripted category.

 

[simonstanley]

Do you have any details about HOW you did it?

Otherwise your post is just a celebratory declaration to the forum, which we all enjoy and high-five, but it helps no one get started on their own success story.

Otherwise, congratulations and welcome back. Your story definitely falls into the Unscripted category.

Absolutely! Thanks for your reply. Just edited the post to include the HOW.

I was working full time as a graphic designer in London, clock watching and realised there had to be a better life than making someone ELSES dreams a reality. I had entrepreneurial dreams of my own.

I decided "enough was enough" as I was desperately unhappy, began to put on weight, was spending everything I was earning every month, so when I got home from my dayjob at 7pm, I would research ways to generate an income online until 2am Monday-Friday.

Proceeded to invest thousands of dollars in "how to" products, learning how to make money on the internet. Trying everything from horse racing "systems", to playing poker tables, anything I thought could potentially set me free. Over the long term only proceeded to waste more money and get into more credit card debt.

I luckily stumbled into a mentor on an online marketing forum, someone who had already built an information publishing business. To this day I'm not sure why, but helped me get started, we're still friends today and I'm eternally grateful for his generosity. He's now generating well over $1mill a month from internet sales alone, so evidently I still have a ton to learn in this space.

The real formula to breaking free from the chains of my day job, was very simple.

Targeted traffic + High Converting Product = Sales.

That's it.

Whether you're selling your own products, or whether you're an affiliate, that's what it comes down to. Having a great relationship with your audience helps a ton, but also so does having a compelling offer.

I began as an affiliate, building an email list of subscribers interested in a particular niche, then recommending the high converting products of my mentors as the middle man. I knew their stuff worked as learning their material had helped me so much, so it seemed like a no brainer.

I was staggered as the money started to flow whether I was working or not, really was simple. I'd wake up in the morning, and see sales had poured in overnight.

In fact I started making thousands of dollars every month as an affiliate alone!

As my confidence started to build, I soon realised that I wanted to share my own message, my own voice... I wanted to actually help people with my gift as a communicator, AND make money too.

I studied continuously from guys like Tony Robbins, Bob Proctor, Russell Brunson, attended seminars, workshops, experimented with what worked and what didn't. I watched my self-esteem soar as I overcame failures, which had me hooked to learn even more about myself.

So I created and released my first digital product. Which detailed how I overcame my minimum wage mentality, to begin the process of generating income online. I wasn't earning multi-millions, but realised I still had valuable information others could benefit from as I'd made a ton of progress.

I sold a few hundred copies of that eBook, really looking back, the product could have been alot better. But it was a start, something to build upon.

I've since gone on to continually create more / better digital products around the topic of self improvement, and there's still a long way to go, but it truly is something I'm passionate about, and document my ideas / life breakthroughs on YouTube. My audience is building slowly but surely, but I won't relent until 100s of thousands are actively engaged there.

Once you've an audience that knows / likes / trusts you, whether it be through books, an active forum, YouTube channel, whatever it is you release - Then really you have something incredible, a legacy to pass on for generations to come. Both extremely fulfilling and potentially rewarding financially.

Hope that helps!

 

[MitchM]

Great to hear man. Very happy for you.

As far as city hopping goes - I don't think I will ever do that as a long term mode of existence. I like traveling for a few weeks to a month here and there, but my family is too important to stay gone long.

It also brings a quote from Emerson to mind,

“It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”

This could mean nothing to you (which would probably be good), but be wary - traveling away from yourself is a very real thing. I know because I have done it.

 

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[simonstanley]

Great to hear man. Very happy for you.

Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”

This could mean nothing to you (which would probably be good), but be wary - traveling away from yourself is a very real thing. I know because I have done it.

Extremely thought provoking bud, and thank you for the reply.

I actually agree to some extent, but I would also argue some of my best life experiences and personal development has come from embracing culture other than my own. In fact my YouTube channel spawned from the ideas I've discovered, life philosophy while on the move. Discovering what I liked / didn't like, other values, and my family came to visit often also (here in Europe it's fairly easy to fly country to country in a few hours).

Totally understand though, and definitely within the next year or so will consider grounding myself and going all in on what I perceive to be my strengths, focusing on giving value to the world. It just seems a shame to do that while we're mobile, young, and possibly live to regret wondering "what if", in later years if we didn't travel the oceans.

 

[Nigel B]

Travelling is a fool’s paradise.

Personally I think it depends why you are traveling. There are many things that cannot be learned in your own comfort-zone, especially without experiencing other cultures.

 

[Nigel B]

So I created and released my first digital product

I sold a few hundred copies of that eBook, really looking back, the product could have been alot better. But it was a start, something to build upon.

And there it is, just start -then improve once you hear the echos - very FLM ...

Congrats on the lifestyle.

 

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