Guest Post by Darren L Carter: Building an Entrepreneur, Designing a Lifestyle
Today I have a guest post by Darren L Carter from Darrenlcarter.com: Entrepreneur, Designing a Lifestyle. One of the things that caught my attention when I was reading through Darren’s blog was the fact that he is blogging from Rural Japan at the moment, and has the goal of earning a full-time living from the internet. Achieving this goal will allow him to escape the regular 9-5 job and become location independent and travel the world at his convience with just his laptop.
The following guest post featured today on Baker’s World Blog, highlights the early stages of Darren’s location independent lifestyle and journey as a successful internet entrepreneur.
Experiments in Lifestyle Design
By Darren L Carter
So I recently heard about something called Lifestyle Design. I take that back, I recently discovered lifestyle design. I first heard about it in Tim Ferris’ book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
less than a year ago but I never focused on all the stuff about lifestyle design (his blog is even named Experiments in Lifestyle Design). For me lifestyle design was something I was already doing. I was living in a tiny farming village, I had traveled far and wide to different places I wanted to go, and the world looked like an easy place to try out. I didn’t really see anything that could stop me (still don’t).
I ended up listening to parts of the audio version of Tim’s book over 100 times on my long drives to a city or my daily drives through the countryside to go teach kids English (my Friday elementary school has 16 kids). Despite hearing the word lifestyle design over and over on my long drives it never registered as anything other than common sense… Until I found out last week that there is a whole culture devoted to lifestyle design and other peoples experiments in lifestyle design.
Last week I read an article over at Kathy Dobson’s blog with the question “Crave Adventure?” in the title. Of course I answered yes in my head. The article was about something called Tropical MBA and the first post I saw was called Live on a Tropical Island For Free. The offer was for someone to live for free on a tropical resort in the Philippines with full access to mentoring and advice in exchange for working with him on his own business and blog projects.
I didn’t get accepted, but it was through this find that I discovered a whole movement around Lifestyle Design, full of people who are turning their lives into a wild experiment with the minimum acceptable goal being the fulfillment of their absolute dream lifestyle. And many of them are becoming internet entrepreneurs (like me) in order to design their ideal lifestyle with full freedom.
My Experiment in Lifestyle Design
For the last few years my life has been an experiment in lifestyle design. My only plan was to find a cool place to go, get an interesting job to support myself, learn from everyone I meet, and take in every piece of life there is to be lived (not necessarily in that order).
If you’ve watched the video’s on my blog you know that I’m in rural Japan. It’s been an awesome experience. But it’s coming to an end That’s why I’ve committed myself to building an online business despite having no prior experience or knowledge (until my business mentor Alex Jeffrey’s came along). That’s why I have been putting every ounce of passion and motivation towards becoming a successful entrepreneur and learning everything I can along the way. So that I can go somewhere new in the world and experience a new adventure and use my creativity to build something valuable that is mine (not a boss) to give to people.
Because I know that no matter what happens I’ll keep continuing my adventure. Whether I go to a tropical island, sail around the world for 3 months on a boat (yes that’s also a possibility), move to the mega-city of Tokyo for a bit, or choose anywhere else in the world, I have already decided that my life is an adventure.
Your Experiment in Lifestyle Design
I was asked this question once by a friend and mentor. He told me to take it seriously and write down the answer to give to him. I followed his advice and it helped me tremendously for such a simple exercise. So now I’m going to ask you the question. And I want you to take it seriously and write down your answer (paper, notepad, napkin, computer). Write down everything. And remember, there are no rules and no boundaries and nothing is set in stone.
What is your 100 percent perfect lifestyle?
Now I’m gonna go take a bath in a hot spring (my reward for writing this post!)
-Darren L Carter
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Wow…I must say those are very cool commenting features!
This was an excellent post on Lifestyle design. I like Darren first heard the term in the book “4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferris. It wasn’t long after that that I discovered a whole movement online by adventurers and entrepreneurs who want freedom more than anything else in their lives and are using the Internet to achieve their dreams…living in exotic places all the while developing and nurturing their business online.
It’s a good thing!
Thanks for my morning read…great stuff!
Kathy
[Baker]´s last [Awesome] ..A Filipino Freelancer’s Thoughts on Outsourcing
Hey Kathy,
Yes. The lifestyle is very real and doable, if one is ready to take the leap of faith into the world of possiblities. I am glad that you enjoyed this morning read and recieved a dose of inspiration from this guest post on lifesstyle design by Darren. Best wishes to you !