| Long before the four hour workweek or all the focus on passive income and lifestyle design, I was a 20 year old kid with a goal. While other entrepreneurs wanted to make millions, that wasn't my primary concern. I was more obsessed with how I could get to sleep-in every day and never need to work a standard 9 to 5 job, without being a broke bum for the rest of my life. As far as I could tell, entrepreneurs worked as hard, if not harder than people with normal jobs. It wasn't that I didn't want to work. I liked making money and working on projects I cared about, but I preferred to put in two hours here, two hours there, with a schedule based entirely on my whims. This also suited me emotionally as my mood and thus energy was a bit all over the place. I needed to be able to work when I felt the drive, but not be forced to work when I wasn't feeling it. The trick was how to make this kind of random lifestyle realistic, and still make money... A Most Important Lesson The big break through moment came for me when I fully grasped the power of one key concept: Leverage. Conceptually I understood what leverage was because whenever I read about how to make passive income people said you needed leverage. In my mind that meant owning assets that worked for you, like having a property portfolio that paid you passive rent income, or a share portfolio that paid passive dividends, or owning a business that other people ran for you. The problem, was that I was 20 years old and very far away from having any of these leveraged assets. Then one day, I experienced a big breakthrough moment -- a literal ah-hah flashed in my mind... Leverage can exist in everything you do. Leverage isn't just about owning big assets, you can tap into its power on a much smaller scale too. In fact, you can focus on leverage as the core concept driving your entire business. I believe this is the key to building what today we call a 'lifestyle business'. Getting More From The Same Effort One of the critical leverage ideas I applied, and still do today, is the concept of getting more from what you already do. I knew that if I wanted to ramp up my income, but not have my working hours ramp up with it, I needed to figure out ways to get more from the same amount of effort I already put in. Thankfully, the internet is built to support ideas like this. You can often get a leveraged outcome, simply by tapping into more platforms. For example, in the past when you produced a podcast, you released it on your blog and you were done. Today, you can tap into platforms like iTunes, Stitcher and Soundcloud using that same podcast and you reach more people. However there is one type of leverage I really like -- Technology that you can switch on and it immediately improves your results without increasing your workload. I came to see writing posts to my blog as a core activity for my business. I started writing ten years ago and I haven't stopped. I wouldn't have the success I have today without this one thing more than anything else. The real power I get from my blog writing, comes from tapping into technology driven leverage to get more from the same effort. One primary example of this is my Smart Slider plugin. I have a blog, which gets traffic. I add the Smart Slider, and I get additional results from that same traffic, without any additional effort. I can grow my social media following, add new subscribers to my email list and even sell my products, without actually doing anything more than setting up the plugin. This is a primary example, one of many in my business, where I increase my results, without increasing my workload. You Too Can Leverage The Smart Slider You can have the benefits of leveraged outcomes from running the Smart Slider on your blog too. We're running a special this week (ends Friday October 30th), where you can save 34% off the Smart Slider. You can see the slider in action and claim your discount here: Tapping into sources of leverage through technology like the Smart Slider (and blogging itself!), and specifically choosing leveraged business models, are why I've lived the kind of lifestyle I have for over a decade. Eventually, with enough sources of leverage in action, you can get significant outcomes, with minimal effort. Talk to you soon, Yaro Starak
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com | 
Hi! I'm Yaro Starak. I've been living the laptop lifestyle thanks to blogging since 2005.
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