I’m Going To Travel, Work A Couple Hours Per Week, Get Rich, Get Loads Of Followers, Change The World & Make An Impact

Right I’ve bit my tongue long enough on this one and I’m sick to death of seeing this shit pushed at you, usually the young people – millennials – because companies and worms selling you their snake oil, know that this type of messaging really appeals to a large percentage of the younger generation.

Equally what pisses me off is these beliefs of many millennials and young people that they are special enough and entitled to do what they love, travel the world, only work a couple hours per week, but at the same time make a ton of money – how many times have you heard the words “lifestyle business” – get internet famous by building loads of followers AND change the world or make an impact.

Regular jobs and/or long hard work for years is beneath them, especially when they don’t earn a ton of money from the get go or soon after.

Just look at this advert. Yes it’s a bit tongue in cheek but it’s exactly the problem I’m talking about.

Time for a reality check so let’s break down each one of these goals.

Before we do that I’m not bashing all of you guys by the way. Running a digital marketing agency means I mainly employ millennials and every one of our team at the time of this writing, are all super focused and hard working.

But I have to say that a lot of this generation does seem entitled, impatient, lazy, easily offended and carry a lack of ownership (blame everything except themselves for the lack of success or the cause of problems).

Oh and mentally live in a very romantic ideal version of the world; how they think the world ‘should be’ compared to the reality of how it really is.

Now when I first started hearing these things I actually didn’t believe it and thought people were just people despite some generational differences. Unfortunately, experience has taught me that there is a lot of truth to these statements and a significant percentage of this generation actually live up to this.

It’s not your fault though in the main.

This is the first generation brought up with social media and if your first and main exposure to the world is what you see on social media, and this is projected at you day in day out for years, usually before you experience the ‘actual’ real world, then naturally you are going to have a warped misconception of how you ‘think’ the world is (based on the fake, pretentious social media world) compared to how it actually is.

To further add to this, you’ve experienced a seemingly endless supply of media, society, marketing and even parental messages projected at you all through your life telling you how special you are, everyone is a winner no matter if you lose or win, trophies for 17th place and that if you really really want something bad enough you will get it…. and if you didn’t get something and cried and stamped and whined about it you usually got it anyway.

You’re also used to getting what you want immediately when you want it and this has fueled impatience which is a success killer.

That’s why when you get out in the world and get stomped on and smacked around by life and things don’t go your way and you learn that people win and people lose, you whine and stomp your feet and cry all over social media when you lose (how’s that working out? Life doesn’t reward this behaviour, life only rewards hard work, resilience and results), instead of taking the hit, taking ownership and looking at yourself and moving on, getting back out there working your ass off to get better and improve.

Here’s Rocky Balboa telling it like it is:

Athletes train for YEARS just to show the fuck up at the Olympics. Train for years just to get to the starting line.

Let that sink in and then think back to trophies for 17th place and everyone wins (this actually removes the value from the ones who do work hard and win at the same time).

The world isn’t and never will be ‘fair’ and you ‘deserve’ fuck all.

Some people have it much easier than you and some people have it a hell of a lot harder and it is consistent hard work over a prolonged period of time, aimed at specific objectives that gets results.

You’ve probably not been dealt the best hand in terms of mindset or your experience of the world during your upbringing but on the flip side, you’ve been dealt an awesome hand in terms of opportunity with the digital age we live in.

The important thing is to learn to recognise your negative traits if you have them and actively work on self development over time.

Important to note is there’s also a lot of young people who are the complete opposite of these things (like the young people I work with) and guess what? I’m not talking to you with this post because you’re already out there kicking ass!

If you’re offended so far by any of this then you’re probably exactly who needs to hear it and be receptive rather than closed minded and defensive.

Right, let’s break down each one of these goals

Travel and work a couple hours per week.

Absolutely!

Think about this one.. when you are travelling, you are likely going to do it on a budget and aim as low as possible with the cost of your daily life. Let’s be honest, the sweaty, flea pit hostels inhabited by some colourful characters are all part of the fun.

You’re young, wild and free and you ‘know’ you’ll be sitting in your villa in 5* luxury by the time you’re 35 anyway right? 😉

Combine aiming as low as possible in terms of living costs, with the fact that in many popular traveler destinations such as South East Asia, the cost of living is a LOT lower than the western world.

This means you can probably live and travel quite comfortably for anywhere between $500 – $1500 per month.

Can you earn that by working a few hours per week? Yes!

How?

Lot’s of ways… but some of the most popular ones people seem to gravitate to and think are easy (due to slimy worms peddling their get rich quick schemes at you) are:

• Freelancing
  • Check out sites like Upwork, Guru, PeoplePerHour and Fiverr

• Blogging
  • Make money selling your own products or the most common one and easiest to execute (therefore usually the lowest revenue) would be from Adsense, affiliate links or charging people to guest post on the site where they can include a link to their site for SEO purposes.

• Social media
  • The media go nuts for this and always report on the top 1% of social media influencers and the ridiculous amounts of money they make. The reality is that even social media folks with 50k, 100k, 500k followers rarely make a ton of money. Often this is because they lack the entrepreneurial skills to develop and launch products, although there are some good opportunities to make money with joint ventures and affiliate promotions. If you do have an audience this size though, making $500 – $1500 per month from selling your soul to endorse products is definitely achievable.

• Create and sell a course
  • Sites like Udemy act as a platform to sell your course to an audience who are looking for courses, without the need of you having a website.

 .

Now for the reality check

Freelancing is competitive and if you have no ratings and are new to the platform, you will likely have to compete on price to get the work, the experience and reviews and establish yourself as a reputable freelancer before raising prices.

Also there are a lot of people who you will be bidding against, some of whom often reside in the places you plan to travel to, like South East Asia and India. Due to currency differences, they can also charge a much lower amount and it will be worthwhile to them.

Furthermore if you are quite young with not much life experience then you might be stuck with the more mind numbing tasks such as data entry where experience isn’t technically required and being a native English speaker will help you.

Lastly you will need access to a reliable computer and internet. Are you taking your laptop or macbook? Are you planning to do all the work from an internet cafe?

Blogging. Start a blog and blog about your travels! What do you know about SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, Adsense, affiliate marketing, WordPress, branding, audience growth?… and the list goes on.

Do you think it’s just a case of throw up a blog, post occasionally about your travels with some nice images, share it on social media and ‘tadaa‘ .. you get tons of traffic to your website who are all hanging on your next post and clicking your ads making you money?

No. You don’t wake up one morning and become a good blogger. It’s a skill that, much the same as any skill, takes time to master your craft and develop.

It also takes time and a ton of effort to create consistent, high quality content that generates traffic and engagement and builds your audience.

I guess it’s the same as anything in that when you know how to do it then making $500 – $1000 per month is not hard. It’s the learning how and mastering your craft that is hard and takes consistent effort.

I’ve been in digital marketing for about 10 years at the time of this post and it took about 3 – 5 years before I reached the level where I could confidently say that I had the ability to launch a blog to $500 – $1500 per month.

Blogging is also competitive and if you are just another generic travel blogger then it will be harder. Find an angle that makes you unique and you’ll do much better as long as what you put out is good and you do it consistently.

Social media. The same can be said for social media as can be said for blogging although mastering a platform and grinding out good content consistently on that platform takes a lot less time and effort that launching and running a blog. You will have less money making opportunity but on the flip side it is a good place to start and if you build an audience, you have a ready made platform to launch your blog later.

Consistency is key again and so is the quality of your content and if you can find an angle to make you somewhat unique rather than ‘just another generic travel account’ then you will grow an audience faster. It can take time to build an audience though so start wayyyy in advance of you going travelling if you can.

Course. What are you an expert at that others will trust you enough to pay you to teach them? To be an expert at something means you will have to have been working at it for a prolonged period of time. You then need to put the effort in to create your course, video being a popular choice (what kit do you need to shoot and edit the footage) and then to promote your course and get people to buy it. How do you plan to promote it?

“So can you travel and work a few hours per week and make enough money to fund your travels (assuming you don’t want to find work locally)? Dam right you can, but you need to start working your way up to that point well in advance of actually setting off.”

What if we add ‘get rich’ to the equation…

You’ve just seen above how much hard work it takes to reach the point of earning $500 – $1500 per month… but you’ve heard tales of people working a couple hours per week and earning 6 figures in less than 12 months and you’ve seen people pop up on your feed doing videos about it and how you can earn a ton of money really easy and they are stood in front of super cars and mansions in a hot, sunny climate by the beach and their websites look professional and it must be true and….

Yea I fell for all that bullshit too when I was just starting out. I’m doing quite well after 10 years of solid, consistent hard work and have emigrated to Australia where I live over the road from many amazing beaches and there are some mansions right on the beach that sell for $10M – $50M+.

I’m not a millionaire though and neither are most of these fuckers selling you their course on how to make money and get rich while working a few hours per week.

Can I go out and shoot some video in front of one of these mansions at the beach? Can I HIRE one of these mansions on Air BnB for a reasonable price and shoot some footage in it? You bet I can…. in fact I might even make a spoof video soon to show you 😉

Point being that yes you can work a few hours per week and make a shit ton of money and get rich but the people who have achieved that, have worked their f*****g arse off for years to get to that point.

There is no getting round the consistent hard work.

So can you travel, work a few hours per week AND get rich all at the same time? VERY unlikely.

Can you travel, work like mad every day for years and make a ton of money? Possibly and much more likely than working a couple hours per week.

Change the world and make an impact

This is such a broad, sweeping, pie in the sky statement it’s not even a goal. I bet half of you throwing this statement around are just saying it because it’s the ‘in thing’ and don’t actually know what it means or more importantly, what it means to you.

Change the world…. wow that’s a big one! Setting the bar so high probably means a ton of work for years to ‘change the world’. How exactly do you want to change the world? Change it in what way?

I can almost hear the answer now… “I don’t know, just like make it better and do good”… make what better and how? What world problem are you planning to solve? You need to be specific if you have any chance of moving the needle with this one.

Make an impact… this could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Again, be specific in defining ‘how’ you want to make an impact and impact what, who or where?

Making an impact could be something as simple as helping out at a homeless shelter or animal rescue center. You are making an impact in the lives of the people and animals for sure. It could be make an impact at work so you get noticed, promoted, valued and remembered or it could be making an impact in your community, your state or your country or in specific industries, sports or niches.

If you want to achieve these things you need to get specific and then work out what needs to be done to achieve it. That includes what skills you need to constantly develop, what work you need to do, what you need to earn, who you need to connect with etc etc.

This can be said for all the other things mentioned in this post too.

“If you want to travel the world, only have to work a few hours per week, be financially free, make an impact or change the world… it all starts with being very specific when defining your end goals before figuring out exactly what you need to do to achieve it”

A few of you probably will achieve these types of goals. Most of your probably won’t because I can’t even begin to tell you the amount of consistent hard work and dedication it takes to keep pushing forward constantly towards them and that’s why most people drop out of pursuing them or never achieve them then tell themselves some bullshit excuse as to why it never happened.

It’s the way it’s always been.

You do have more opportunity than ever before to achieve success though. Think about it…

• A significant percentage of your generation feel they are too good or are too lazy to do the work.
• A lot of people that start doing the work, are too impatient to see it through as success takes a lot of time.
• This means there are a lot less people competing against you
• The age of the internet and social media today, means you have a platform to go out and reach your audience and your customers while you are sat in your underwear holding your phone. That’s mind blowing opportunity if you lived in an age before social media and the internet.

So what are you waiting for? Go get specific about your end game, put your plan together for exactly what you need to do to achieve it and then just start getting at it.

Your plan will likely fall apart and require completely changing at some point once you get doing the work and life will start kicking you everywhere but that’s normal.

Just start moving and keep pushing forward and don’t stop and you’ll be soooo glad you did in 10 years time when you look back. Even if you’ve only achieved 70% of your goal or hell even 50% in 10 years, you will still be in a much better position and much further forward than if you sat on your arse playing video games and came home and sat in front of the TV every night.

Start. Now. Not tomorrow. Not Monday. Not next month… NOW. Then don’t stop no matter what.

To your success. See you on the other side.