I don’t watch much TV and when I do I usually just turn on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, or I am watching a game.  There are very few shows that I watch but, my wife and I like to watch America’s Got Talent.  We don’t even watch it on the night that it is shown but we watch it on Hulu a day or two later.

Last night we watched the results show for this year.  The winner was Landau Eugene Murphy Jr. a throwback crooner who had a great voice and a great story.  He is a great talent, he has a great background story, he is a very likable person, but he is not the best talent.  So why did America vote for him?  Because we are nice.  We love a good story.

I make this short post because I don’t see what others are saying about us as a country.  We may come across as arrogant.  We may have an air of superiority of the rest of the world.  We may even look like bullies to others.  But as a people we are not.

We love the underdog.  We love the rags to riches story.  We want to see people succeed on their own terms, through their own hard work, and with perseverance.  We showed that with our voting for America’s Got Talent.  The big winner with the show is America; we finally showed that we are a nice and caring nation.

Congratulations USA, you did not vote for the best talent, but you got it right.

It is amazing how things have been sneaking up on me. I have twice now realized my dreams and have been completely unprepared when I got there. In this case being unprepared has been a wonderful and exciting surprise and is currently opening up massive possibilities.

Let me catch you up a little bit on what has been going on and where I now stand. I know that I have not been blogging much and most of my posts have been substandard for me. I apologize but I have been having a lot of fun living. Here is a little list of what has been going on:

• I spent 8 months living in Taipei Taiwan teaching English to 5-6 year olds. Total easy job but I was deported after having discovered that I started working before my paperwork had been processed, a big no no. I am serving the 3^rd year of a 5 year ban from the country.
• I spent 6 months living on the beach in Miami Beach and working like a dog (with some really outstanding results) as a Business Development Manager for ActionCOACH Team Sage. All of a sudden I woke up one day (while driving) and realized that I was living on the beach, commuting to work through palm trees every day. Exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately was was not being paid enough to enjoy things and my wife could not find work. The result? I quit before I got divorced or had a mental melt down. Location was spectacular but the JOB was still just a JOB. 50% on my way to my designed life but not quite there.
• I came back to Nashville and sulked my way back to teaching, only to have 96% success rate for my students on the Algebra I test, and double the success rate on the new “standards” (or trick questions as I like to call them – totally unfair for the students but I digress), then I promptly quit after 18 months because I can no longer justify working in an industry where the employees believe that it is OK for a teacher who did less than I did (I was the Math Chair, DASH Chair, presented the the entire middle school principles, led a technology seminar, tutored every morning, sponsored a web design class) and had worse results was paid more than me just because they were older, and there was no chance at changing this. JOB acceptable, time off and benefits acceptable, PAY no where near acceptable.
• Started a career as a football official. I know it doesn’t sound nearly as glamorous as a coach but I really enjoy it. It also runs in the family as my Grandfather and father were officials. Plus it is more pay with way way way less time. And I get to be involved in one of the sports that I love. Looks like a win for me.

So what has happened now? We spent the month of July traveling with our baby daughter. I was sitting in a log cabin in the Smoky Mountains when it yet again hit me. I have created the perfect scenario. To borrow a bit from Edgar Allen Poe, I am on the edge of a precipice.

Before I think that I just was not ready mentally to take on the challenge of true lifestyle design. Now I am. I realized after picking up and beginning to reread the 4 Hour Work Week book by Timothy Ferris that I had finally accepted and developed all the tools necessary to get exactly what I want out of life. It is all there for me, time to react. Previously I would have been scared and overwhelmed. What do I do? How is it all going to work? How am I going to live without a full time JOB? What the hell am I doing? Not now. Somehow I have developed all these great skills that all give me a portable income.

A Portable Income is my number one goal. I love to work, I feel so accomplished, so alive, so young. I have no problem with authority. I actually quite respect people who have earned their way to the top and always take time to consider their suggestions. What I despise is being told that I have to be somewhere when there is nothing for me to do. I just can’t stand it.

I have developed skills as a Web Designer, and a Social Media Marketing and SEO Guru. Wow where did that come from? I don’t know but I got right to where I want to be. I now have the time to create what I want how I want it, and I have the abilities to do so. It was a bit of a rocky road, it was not easy, but now I have it. It is so exciting.

As a quick wrap up to get us all back on the same page. Life has surprised me but only looking back. I was living in the tropics (Taiwan and Miami Beach), I was living on the beach (Miami Beach and I still can’t believe I moved), I regained a significant amount of my time (teaching) but there was always something that was not quite right. Now I have the tools and the options to make it all happen. Stay tuned for the excitement.

Oh and thanks Tim. If you have not read the 4 Hour Work Week read it! Re read it! And read it until it all sinks in!

I think that most of this stems from the Bible and other great books.  I am no scholar of the Bible but I can’t imagine that God or anyone else would want us to not have the best life that we could possibly lead.  With all the great things that are on this planet why should we be forced to do without?

I think that we have gotten this bad image of rich people from the media and movies.  The villain is always the rich person who will squash everyone and everything in their way to become richer.  They live posh lives and never share their money.  There may be one or two of these people around but they are certainly not prevalent.  If you work hard for what you want and you get it you should enjoy it.  I do think that we should all share, but how you do that is up to you.

I actually think that it is worse to be a person of without and expect a hand out from someone who has.  There is no reason that anyone should be in this position.  There is no reason that anyone should expect to have a handout.  Sure we have all landed on bad times.  We have all had our setbacks.  That is life and that is what makes life great, but we should all be willing to work our way back to prosperity.  There just is no reason that I can think of to give anyone who just sits around and waits for a handout anything.

But it is these people who think that they deserve something that are the loudest when it comes to the evils of money and wealth.  It is the people who have little and thinks that everyone should be in the same position that moan and complain about those who are successful.  I could go on but I would rather stay positive.

So on the positive side I say this to you.  Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t deserve something.  You deserve to have your hard work pay off.  You deserve to create your own prosperity.  You deserve to set high goals, and have high standards, and get them.  You deserve to be able to have enough to share with those who you feel are truly deserving.  God knows there are a lot of people out there who are deserving of charity.  It feels very good to be able to share some of your prosperity with those in need.  It feels very good to share some of your prosperity with yourself.  Go ahead and splurge on yourself you deserve it.

There are two types of schedules that you can adhere to.  Time dependent, and Time Independent, either one will give you more productivity.  Both should give you more time for yourself.

I dealt with two completely different head coaches in two years.  They both had a different way of doing things.

The first said “The kids can’t get on the field on time so what we are going to do is wait until they are all there and then start practice. If it is 2:30 or 3:30 I don’t care we need everyone there for the entire practice.  Whenever we start we will practice for 2 and a half hours on this schedule”.  Then he preceded to hand us a schedule that looked like this:

20 min stretch
15 min individual specialty
10 min Offensive Individual
15 min Offensive Group
20 min Offensive Team
5 min Water
10 min Defensive Individual
15 min Defensive Group
20 min Defensive Team
5 min Water
10 min Team Special Teams
10 min Conditioning

Total time was 165 minutes or 2 hours and 45 minutes.  Close enough and we got done what we needed to.

The second came into the office and the first thing he said is “The kids need to learn how to get on the field at the right time.  We will start practice 10 minutes after school gets out and we will practice for two and a half hours.  If they can’t make it your job will be to stay after practice and run them for as long as it takes until they learn to be there on time.”  Then he proceeded to give us this schedule:

2:25 stretch
2:45 individual specialty
3:00 Offensive Individual
3:10 Offensive Group
3:30 Offensive Team
3:50 Water
3:55 Defensive Individual
4:05 Defensive Group
4:20 Defensive Team
4:45 water
4:50 Team Special Teams
5:00 Conditioning

I am not going to say what is better.  What I will say is that both were exactly the same schedule just gone about in different ways.  OK Personally I think that it is very important to teach the boys how to get on the field on time with consequences if they did not do so.

Time Dependent

Some of us work well within a Time Dependent schedule.  By that I mean get up at 6am, get to work by 7:30, check email, and so on.  We use the clock as our schedule and then we probably have a routine set up around it.  This is great for people who do well within time constraints.  It is also great because it forces us to take a break, or stop working.

The Time Dependent people get stuck when they schedule too much and they get behind.  They then try to make it up and before long they are working all the time and their schedule is all messed up.  This of course leads to stress and non-productivity.

If you use a Time Dependent schedule stick to the times.  If you don’t get something done don’t over run to the next time.  Stop what you are doing and go on to the next scheduled time.  This will cause you to be more productive not less.  This will cause you to get a little self discipline, it will help you stay focused while you work, and in the end you will be able to get more done in the time frame that you give yourself.

When you are so productive that you are getting things done before the time runs out don’t go on to the next thing early.  Reward yourself with a break, a little cat nap, a cup of fine coffee, or a smoke break (I used to take smoke breaks all the time even though I never actually smoked).

Time Independent

I work much better on the Time Independent but only due to my current lifestyle.  If you work in an office or job you may be forced to be Time Dependent.  But, if you have your own business and you are finding that your productivity is not where you want it or that your schedule never works out for you then a Time Independent schedule may be better.

Don’t base the schedule on time, but base it on tasks.  This is a little more difficult to pull off only because we generally grow up with a Time Dependent schedule.  I have heard it said many times that there are three places that run on bells or whistles; Schools, Factories, and Prisons.  All three can seem the same at times.

Instead schedule blocks of productivity.  For example here was my schedule on Friday

1 hour max Coffee, News and Blog Reading
30 min Walk
Breakfast and Journal time
3 hours  Trade Forex (until 11:00 max) and work on website flipping.
Lunch no later than 11:30 to get ready for meeting
1pm Meeting with **** (for privacy reasons)
2 hour break after meeting is over
1 ½ hours workout
2 hour writing or reading

My productivity: sold two websites, trading was down but I learned a lot on the day.  Had a successful meeting, wrote for an hour, read for another hour, got outside for 45 minutes and did 45 minutes of light lifting, went out to dinner and finished the evening with watching a movie.  To me it was a highly successful day and I got a lot accomplished.  I made money, had time for myself, enjoyed time outdoors on a nice day, and felt satisfied and fulfilled at the end of the day.

You may also notice that I had to put times in there.  It is inevitable due to coordinating with other people.  Time is needed.  But when you schedule in blocks instead of being Time Dependent it is very flexible.  I get more time to myself to do what I want to do, which is what life really is all about.

If you get nothing else from this article I want to give you this.  A schedule not only will give you more opportunities to be more productive, but a schedule should give you more time for you.  If it does not give more time for you there is something wrong.  Be productive, but take time for you.  We love life, when we are able to live it.

Basically stated lifestyle design is living your life in a way that you want to.  Typically you are free from a job and you are able to enjoy things in life that most people are not able to do before retirement.  Timothy Ferris uses a technique he calls “mini retirements”.  So this brings up the tricky part of the lifestyle design

“Work is a must, it is good, healthy, and it provides me with income to do the things that I want to do.  Jobs only take my time away and cause me to miss out on opportunities that I would otherwise be able to take.”

I may not be describing it very well but the  The 4-Hour work Week does an excellent job so go get a copy.

Chang Hong Kung-Fu Exhibition

Being deported from Taiwan was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.  As my wife keeps telling me it was my karma.  Just before we took teaching jobs over there I was ready to pull the trigger and break away from the traditional job setting.  But I was not quite there with my independent income so I took the job over there.  Karma would just not let me stay, I had a different destiny.  That destiny is not just to live a lifestyle that I control but to teach and coach others how to live a lifestyle that they want and can control also.

While learning Kung-Fu from a true Kung-Fu (or more accurately Wu-Su) Grand Master it really made me realize that life is all about real experiences.  It is my time to do this now.  I hope that you can make the journey with me.

http://siteflipu.com/30-days-of-site-flipping-contest/

The contest is to get an original site up and running and attracting visitors within 30 days.  It does seem like a long time, but to get some good visitors it is no time at all.

So here is my entry Professor Prosperity (http://www.professorprosperity.com)

How can you help?  Sign up for my feed, and visit often.  This may be against contest rules, but if you are not cheating (or maybe just bending the rules a little bit) you are not trying .

Here is my competition:

http://blogfluff.com

http://acthighbrow.com

http://traveltipsdigest.com

http://gogreenlifestyle.net/

http://reggae-artists.com

http://bloggerssearch.com

http://frugalzeitgeist.com/

Again vote for me by subscribing to my RSS feed and my soon to be email list.  Also don’t forget my competitors.  Visit them also there are a lot of very talented people out there.

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It

Coach Kip

“Poor people have jobs, Rich and Successful people have careers.” – Colin Cowherd ESPN Radio

I heard this over the radio one day and it took me a while to figure out what he meant. It was one of those days where I just had a few minutes to tune into the radio. As soon as I turned it on I heard this. I don’t know what lead up to this statement but it struck me and stuck with me.

I brought up this statement with my students, most of whom fall into the poor or poverty social class, and they all understood exactly what I was saying.

I explained it like this:

Poor people have jobs. They work for money and nothing else. So what happens? Is a person who makes $250,000 a year poor? Maybe not by money standards but what is their life like? How much do they work? How much do they enjoy themselves?

If they just have a job that pays well they are probably not completely happy. Actually if they are like most of us they have a job that they just don’t like. It is nice to make a lot of money but are they happy?

What is the sense of making a lot of money when all they do is work? Then what happens? When people work in a job that they are not happy in they need to supplement this unhappiness with something. Some buy toys, a bigger house, new cars, and more. Then what happens? They have to keep working to pay it off. Some are more destructive and turn to alcohol or drugs. Still others take their frustrations out on others.

Rich and successful people have careers. What do they work for? They typically don’t work for money, they get money as a result of their effort and their hard work. Instead of working for money they work to learn. They learn what it takes to get to the next step. That next step may be the next rung up the corporate ladder (something I have no interest in). For some the next step is to open their own business. For others it simply is a case of lifelong learning.

These people may not be rich with money, but they are rich and successful with their life. They are happy because they are doing things that they love to do. They are successful not because they work hard, but because they enjoy their work. Since they enjoy their work they tend to spend more time with it, and they tend to do a better job.

So what are you doing? Are you happy with your job? If you are maybe you should begin to learn and turn it into a career. What is the next step? Where will it take you in the future? If you are just starting out don’t worry about the money right now. If you work for money you will rarely get ahead. If you work for your career then you will find the opportunities will come to you and you will get paid soon. The money comes as a secondary result of how well you develop your career.

Be patient, I know it is hard, I fell into those same traps, but there is a payoff in the end.

I remember going into the guidance office and they said “Coach Kip, what would you like to do with your life?”

Heck I didn’t know, at that time I still wanted to be a professional football player. I had no idea what my career was going to be. I stammered “A teacher I guess?”

And so it was, from that point on I was defined by what I wanted to do. I was put in classes that helped me get into college. I was advised on the best colleges for teaching. I went to one of the best Universities in Michigan for teaching, Northern Michigan University. I then promptly dropped out of the teaching program.

Why?

I was beginning to see how that would define me. As I got into my teaching classes I found that students were already getting cynical. I found that I was not getting support for math and sciences in our open discussions in class. I was finding it difficult to write papers on philosophies and issues that I did not agree on. I would not let it define me.

I got a degree in physics instead. Why? I thought physics was cool. I had no idea why. I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I just liked science and physics. So I graduated.

I got a good job but it did not satisfy me. Heck I lived in Russia for four months, I lived in Argentina for a month, and in Dubai for three months (I stayed in the original buildings that are shown with the arrow). Besides that I traveled all over the United States. Still not very fulfilling to me. It was not me. It was not the definition of who I wanted to be. So I went back to school.

I got a teaching degree along with a mathematics degree. I became a teacher. I was lucky. I did not get a teaching degree because I wanted a job, I got one because that is who I am.

So what does that mean to you?

Define – Learn – Do.

The better question that the guidance counselor could have asked is “what do you want to be?” I may have answered a professional football player, but hopefully she would have steered this 145 pound weakling in a different direction. I could have decided who I wanted to be. What I wanted to be. How I wanted to live. What I wanted to have. I could have formed a decision on that

Define

Instead of finding something that you want to do, define who you want to be. Once you define who it is that you want to be the steps are more simple. The steps are also in reverse order that we usually take them in.

Learn

Once you have defined yourself you learn how to become that person. For some it is education, and schooling. For some it may be an internship. For others it may simply be setting a stricked budget to get what they want.

Do

Once you have learned how to get what you have defined for yourself it is a matter of doing it. This can be very difficult because you are bound to make mistakes. Guess what, making mistakes is part of living. It tells you that you are alive. So make mistakes.

Let me give you a little secret. Instead of doing what it is that you think you need to do to get to your definition of life…that sentence and the process is very difficult to understand, I know I have done it that way for a long time…FIND SOMEONE WHO HAS DONE IT BEFORE AND DO WHAT THEY DO.

I am not yelling, just using it for emphasis. Don’t reinvent what has already been done. Just find someone who has the life that you want and copy what they do. Will that make you successful alone? No. But it will get you started. It will then be your task to make it your own. Making it your own, and living the way you want to live will be your success.

My favorite question is where are you going to live? Duh on a boat. We will not really have a harbor to call home. We plan on traveling much of the time, meet new people, and expand our knowledge. (Check us out at TrekkingAround.com).

In doing this it has really made me keep things in prospective. There really is no need to have all this extra junk. It made me realize that I was working for possessions, for junk. Why did I need all that stuff? I have a nice little townhouse that is now for sale. That was good for me. I would have liked to have been in a nicer part of town but I was living on a golf course. The problem was that I was spending all my time working and spending money on possessions that I did not need. Half of the time I would get a bill for something that I did not even know I had. I had no idea why I bought it and I had no idea where I put it. It was terrible. I was working to pay off credit card debt, house debt, student loans, car loans, and trying to keep up with all the bills. Bills are not hard but they tend to change from time to time. Sometimes they change the due date on them, and if you are not paying close attention then you miss that change. Not a very good thing.

So we had a fire sale. Everything must go and what does not go is given away. Yes my wife gave away a little too much but that is OK.

Without all these distractions I have been able to focus. To really focus. With out all these distractions I have become refamiliar with what I really want.

That may be a good practice for you to. Get away from the things that are distracting you. If you are not happy go somewhere so that your distractions are gone. Go to a quiet park, go to the beach, take a drive into the country and stop on the side of a little used road.

Then think. Take a pad of paper and think. Think of what it is that you really want. Think of what you can do without. How bad do you want it? What are you willing to do to make the change? Are you willing to change?

Einstein “Doing the same thing over and over expecting something different is the definition of insanity.”

What is it that I want? I will post more at another time but basically it boils down to this. I want enough money to be able to travel with my wife, play golf, play on a boat, and enjoy life before I have to retire and I am too old to really enjoy life.

Who owns your life? You do. Actually the only thing you truly own is your life. I got that from a Los Lobos song called A Matter of Time. It is a great song.

It struck me that too many people go through life thinking that they are a part of life, that life owns them, they can only react to what life gives them. It is completely the opposite.

In the path of discovery we must first go through this step. We must, as Dr. Phil says, ‘get control of ourselves before we can ever begin to grow’. Of course I am paraphrasing but it seems that the messages are almost all the same.

It does not matter who you talk to, or listen to, or watch, they have a similar message. Life does not take you where you want to go as the popular saying goes, you take life where you want it to go. You own it.

Take control.

Take charge.

Live life and have fun.

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It

Coach Kip