What the heck does "Build My Life By Design" mean?

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As part of my year end routine, I fill out a “OneSheet” with my upcoming goals across a variety of categories and there is a spot for my theme of the year. Last year was “Adventure - Live life with Urgency”. If you read my first edition, you’ll see I crushed it. I don’t want to lose that motto in my life moving forward but its time for a different focus. For 2024 I decided on “Build My Life By Design”. Today, I’m going to explain what that means to me.

Sticking to your guns

We were sitting at a dinky little dive bar called the Redcliff Cafe (known for one of the best New Years Eve parties on the entire South Island) a couple days before Christmas in Te Anu, New Zealand. Te Anu had that small summer vacation town vibe, the kind of place generations of families would take their annual summer vacation. Rent the same house near the lake, go to the same local restaurants, and let the kids run around in the 18 hours of summer daylight.

It was right in the middle of my 14 day tour around NZ and our group of 12 travelers from the other side of the world were starting to bond. So when we finished dinner early one night, my buddy Marko suggested we all play mini golf at the makeshift course we passed earlier that day. After an hour of some playful competition and teaching our 60 year old Italian friend Carla how to putt, we were sipping on beers around a big table at the Redcliff Cafe. That’s when someone from the group said “who has a theme for 2024?”

A few moments passed. I looked around the table and nobody was saying anything. So I decided to speak up. I said “Yeah, I have one. My theme is to build my life by design”. Everyone at the table kind of looked around at each other and was like what the heck is this guy talking about. David turned and said to me “sounds like one of your consulting slogans”. I immediately felt uncomfortable. Am I weird? Did I overthink this? Its December 23rd and I already have this thoughtfully crafted slogan for my upcoming year.

I went on to briefly explain that I want to take advantage of recently quitting my corporate job and taking time off to figure out what I want to do next. I want to start doing what I enjoy and then figure out how work and making money will play into that picture vs planning my life around a job.

The discussion around my theme pretty much ended there but it led to us going around the table and other people putting some quick thoughts into what their theme for 2024 should be. I initially felt embarrassed. I was different. I overanalyzed. I was trying too hard.

Reflecting back on this encounter about a month later, that’s not the case at all. I was just being intentional. I was putting time and effort into planning my year because that works for me. And goal setting, picking a theme, planning ahead, etc. isn’t for everyone and that’s totally okay. But it is for me and there’s no reason to be ashamed of that.

I’m proud that I not only kept that as my theme for the year but I am now actively living it. Lets dig into what this looks like and how I went about getting here.

The Ikigai

First of all, shoutout to my Business Coach Patrick. This life by design thing is not easy. I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress, but still have a long way to go. And its a really difficult mindset shift to grasp. Over the past few months, there’s been several times where I’m like “this sounds crazy dude”, “there is no way this would work”, “I need to be reasonable”. He kept pushing me to think differently, ignore the voice in my head saying “this is how it should be done” and “you can’t do that” and “you need to do X this first, then you can go Y”.

Alright so where did I start? Nowhere other than the Japanese concept of the Ikigai “Your reason for being”. Check out the diagram below.

They believe that if you want to find your meaning in life and what excites you to wake up every morning then you should find the combination of these 4 things:

1. What you love

2. What you are good at

3. What you can be paid for

4. What the world needs

So after a coaching session with Patrick where he introduced this concept, I took a few hours to make a running list for each category. He encouraged me to write down everything that comes to mind. No judgment. No limits. Just if you think it, write it down. Another good tip if you are struggling with what you are good at or love is to ask friends and family what they think you are good at and when they see you have the most fun.

You can check out my initial list here if interested.

Then, after I made the initial list, I discussed it with Patrick to identify patterns and overlap. This was not a one and done exercise. I started to become more observant in my daily life about the things that brought me energy and what I was doing well. Were there specific industries or solutions that I was more interested in than others? I also applied one category to another one. For example, I like trying different whiskey. Would someone pay me to try whiskey? Maybe, but I don’t think I’m very good at it and not sure the world needs me telling them what good whiskey tastes like.

After a few weeks, we narrowed in on this idea of travel and adventure as something I enjoyed. I’m good at working with people, building out processes, managing complex projects, and I gained an overall business savvy from my consulting experience. The world needs community and human connection, it needs efficiencies and operational improvements.

For some context, I was having these discussions just before leaving on a 7 week backpacking trip across Australia and New Zealand. In addition, I had recently signed up for that all inclusive 2 week tour around NZ with Marko (which we paid $7,500 for). So clearly people were willing to pay for travel and adventure.

Taking all of that into account…maybe I could buy a travel and adventure tour company?

That’s a cool hypothesis but what would that look like? How do I go about finding a company to buy? Am I qualified? Are travel tour companies profitable? Those were all the questions going through my head. It was me being “logical”. But Patrick slowed me down. I don’t have to figure all that out right away. He said you are going on this trip, you are going to be a customer of one of these businesses. Go do some due diligence. Talk to the tour guides and ask what do they like about their job, what are the challenges. Talk to the other people on my tour. Why did they book this tour vs others. Why did they do a tour vs travel on their own. Then he said, put yourself in the shoes of owning the company. Do you think you’d enjoy it? What would your day to day look like? Could you see yourself managing those problems?

That is exactly what I did throughout my entire backpacking trip. I was talking to everyone about everything related to these tours and was able to gather a ton of insight! My main takeaways:

• I loved the idea of being able to create authentic, memorable experiences for people

• I’d want to create a community of like minded adventurous, curious travelers who enjoy trying new things, meeting interesting people, and pushing themselves outside of their daily comfort zone

• I wouldn’t want to be the one giving tours or dealing with daily customer interactions

• I would love to provide strategic direction on how to grow and operate an adventure travel company

• I would enjoy building a team and finding the right operators to manage logistics, run tours, perform marketing, etc.

Okay, sweet! I have this vision of something that I think would hit all of the Ikigai buckets. I’m pumped up about it, but now what? Am I supposed to just go start this company?

Not so fast…

I’m a very logical and rational person at heart. I gave Patrick some leeway with the Ikigai exercise to stretch my thinking, but I’m not about to spend my life savings on starting this travel company (nor did Patrick tell me I should). But what this exercise did do was help me think about what is possible and give me something to work towards that I’m excited about. If I want to pursue buying a business, it doesn’t have to be something random like a car wash or lawn care company.

The other side of building this life by design is the tactical part. One of my lessons learned from 2023 was around being intentional about happiness now and not fall victim to the “I’ll be happy when” thinking. That concept applies here too. I shouldn’t have to wait until I’m a millionaire to do the things I enjoy doing. So I asked myself a very important question: What does my ideal life look like? Here are some of the big items I came up with:

Health/Fitness

• Exercise daily (train for 2-3 races per year around the world)

• 2 walks outside per day

• Personal trainer 2x per week

• Recovery plan (sauna, massage, mobility, float tank)

• No limit on organic healthy groceries

Self Development

• Miracle morning every day

• Read / listen to 24+ books a year

• Listen to 100+ podcasts per year

• Meet with Business Coach and Accountability pod weekly

• Attend at least 4 in person mastermind events per year

• Be able to book a flight anywhere in the world whenever I want to meet someone in person

Adventure/Lifestyle

• Golf 3x per week

• Hiking, golf, or adventure trip once per quarter

• One extended epic international trip per year

• Live summers up north and winters in the south 

• Spend time with family (wife and kids) - Details TBD but dinners, sports, etc.

Business / Investing

• Work from anywhere in the world

• Research and publish 2 newsletter articles per week

• Be an owner/advisor/investor in businesses and real estate

• Meet with my team and partners in person at least one week per month

• Work 40-45 hour weeks on my own schedule

Sadly, I don’t have the funds to book a flight anywhere in the world at any time, get weekly massages, or have a full time personal trainer. But a lot of it actually seems pretty feasible to do right now. Training for races and walking outside, sure thing. Reading books and listening to podcasts, no problem. Maybe 18 holes 3x a week is pushing it, but going to the driving range once a week and playing 18 holes on the weekend is definitely doable. Working remote, check.

So I put this into action. Take my first full week back in Austin as an example:

• I completed my Ironman training every day (1-2 hours a day)

• I took 10 networking calls with at least 8 of them walking outside

• spent $100 at trader joes on healthy food then meal prepped

• played 2 hours of pickup basketball with friends

• journaled, meditated, and read every morning

• went on a first date

• went to an entrepreneurship networking event

• listened to at least 10 podcasts

• had weekly meetings with biz coach and mastermind group

• spent 10-15 hours researching and analyzing small businesses to buy (working from coffee shops, the public library, the YMCA, or my house)

• Spent ~10 hours writing , researching, and preparing my newsletter

• Went drinking with my friends on Saturday (started at 3 pm watching the Ravens and ended at midnight singing karaoke in a dive bar)

Now that was one hell of a week and it beats sitting at a desk on zoom calls from 8 - 6 every day. And one of the best parts was I made meaningful progress towards my vision. Those networking calls spurred at least 3 different income opportunities for me, which I am working through. I can go into detail another time on how I’m working on bridging the gap between where I am now (currently minimal income) to where I am trying to get (bringing in enough income to live my ideal life while pursuing my mission of creating memorable experiences for people).

This week only happened like this because I was super intentional about all aspects of it. It started with my decision to move back to Austin. The weather is nice enough for me to train and walk outside. I have a network of friends both fellow entrepreneurs and people I enjoy hanging with on the weekends. I chose to pay a little more to sublet a house close to downtown so I had easy access to the library, the bars, the lake trail.

I also started a new routine I got from Sahil Bloom that helps me prioritize what I need to do the next day. I bought a bunch of note cards and every night for the past 2 weeks I write down 3 things I’m grateful for that day and my top 3 priorities for the next day. My priorities range from publishing a newsletter, analyzing a deal, grocery shopping, laundry, or completing a really tough workout. All it takes is spending 15 minutes each night to really think about what the most important tasks are to get done the next day. It simplifies things, I carry the notecard with me all day to remind myself what I need to do, and results start to show up when you consistently complete 3 critical things day in and day out.

Final Thoughts

I will be the first to admit that I’m still in the very early stages of this process.

A lot can change and will change. I initially thought I wanted to buy a small business and after a week of analyzing deals, I realized that doesn’t fit what I’m trying to accomplish. I’m keeping an open mind as I continue to network with folks, but at least I have an understanding of who I am, what I want, and what I’m interested in. That is what I use to help guide me in the types of people I set up phone calls with, the questions I ask, and the opportunities that I’m interested in pursuing.

I know I haven’t proved this is sustainable and that I can fund my ideal life with this mindset. However, there are many examples of people out there who are living their Ikigai and ideal life so why not me? I truly believe when I revisit this in 1 year I’ll be well on my way and in 5 years I’ll be laughing I ever doubted it.

For now, I’m going to keep writing, keep pursuing my curiosity, and keep trying things. I’m excited to see where it takes me.

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated with you, what you disagree with, or what this made you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew