How do they do it? And plan to keep on doing it: living their dream life - part 3/3
What if you could live your most preferred lifestyle and make your dreams become a reality? Wouldn’t you just do it? What ever that dream lifestyle is? For us it is sailing around the world and searching for our home somewhere on this amazing planet while inspiring and enabling others to live their most preferred lifestyle & follow their dreams too.
And what if we told you, almost anyone can do it? Would you believe us?
Well we are here to tell you how we do it now (see part 1 of this series) and how we plan to keep on doing it for the rest of our lives (read further). And let’s be honest if we can do it, why shouldn’t you be able to do it?
We hope that we ignite your creativity to find ways to live more in line with what you really want from life as being an employee, stay at home dad or mom, an entrepreneur, a cancer survivor, a bankruptcy thriver or……whatever it maybe.
This is part 3 of our blog series ‘How do they do it? And plan to keep doing it?’
Read part 1 here and part 2 here.
Money & personal growth
If we make it very clear and straight forward, we see two main drivers behind making sure we can keep on living our most preferred lifestyle and realizing our dreams:
personal growth and
financial independence - money.
We believe life is all about duality, without light there is no darkness, without grief there is no happiness, without the bad there is no good, without setback there is no success. And with writing this blog we even realized that we unconsciously probably even took this believe into our plan to keep on living our dream life. Because if we look at our first driver it is all about spending money and the other is about earning money. And the first one - maybe you will not believe it, - spending money was an enormous challenge for us at the beginning of this year.
As you know if you read part 1 - the biggest part of this year 2020 we were living from the earnings from the sale of my (Rianne) apartment in Amsterdam. I roughly made a EUR 180.000,- profit in 4 years - not a bad investment if I may say so myself :) And from part 2 you know that we had some financial struggles and stress before we sold the apartment. This made that we actually were afraid of spending the money to end up with nothing again. We had it with everything, it didn’t matter if it was just € 10,— or € 5.000,-. As long as it didn’t concern our primary needs it was an expense we hadn’t made for a long time and we unconsciously programmed ourselves to not make them. I remember that it took me 4 weeks to make an appointment with the hairdresser and 2 months to buy new clothes (all second hand in a marvelous vintage shop in ‘de Pijp’ in Amsterdam with a total amount € 40,- and then to think of the time when I was a lawyer I spend easily € 200/300 per month on brand new clothes).
So you could say we had to invest in our money mindset ;) Especially since we are strong believers of the law of attraction and therefor if we want to make money, we have to have a good relationship with money - and there we have it: personal growth.
Investing big time in personal growth
A majority of the people doesn’t have personal growth high on their agenda, but for us it is. We believe and know by experience that by investing in personal growth by developing new skills and transforming ourselves we can create more, bring more value and live in abundance and have a more fulfilling and happy life.
For that reason after we paid off some debts 25% of the profit of the sell of the apartment I reserved for investing in our personal growth for 2020 & 2021. This was one of the expenses I did not have any trouble with making.
I actually consider personal growth one of my primary living needs, even when we did not have any money I bought books about personal growth like ‘Rich dad, Poor dad’, ‘The power of vital force’, ‘The richest man of Babylon’, ‘The miracle morning’ etc. (see for more info our favorites pages here) and invested in, for that moment, a very expensive course. Amen for credit cards and amen for making it possible to earn money online. I invested € 1.970,- in an in-depth personal branding course in 2018, with no money left on the bank to pay the mortgage, I used my credit card, followed the course and shortly after I launched my first online course which payed the credit card bill - I couldn’t believe it.
Now with not having a money issue we invest big time in personal growth from online courses about vlogging, youtube SEO, in-depth pricing course, stock trading and photography & filming masterclasses to all the events of Tony Robbins, a 7 week intense coaching program about your Cosmic team & cosmic energy, meditation retreats, couples love therapy and a Ayahuasca ceremony (last one is on the agenda but postponed because of Corona unfortunately).
These books, courses and programs costs thousands of euro’s but in each of them we gain at least three really valuable insights or skills which we can directly implement in our lives and make a huge difference. Next to that all the things we learn, we share in our online content (see also the next part) to bring more value to others.
And if you are wondering how we select our courses, we always choose to invest in and be coached by people who have learned by experience rather than the ones who primarily learned it from the books. If a coach doesn’t invest in coaching for him- or herself we don’t believe in their approach and their ability to teach and inspire us. But this is just our opinion.
We strongly believe that we all have the ability to live an extraordinary life, the real and raw potential of every human being is almost unlimited, we just need to believe in what we do, create that unbounded certainty with every breath and in every cell of our bodies and take massive action - even when things look like they aren’t working out, never give up just find another way to reach your goals. It is the natural flow of life - duality. This is what we have done for years and what investing in personal development does to our mindset, without it we wouldn’t be where we are today and wouldn’t get where we want to be tomorrow.
Creative ways of income - More than one
Everything we do, we create around our most preferred lifestyle, this goes for our income streams as well. And if we peel it all down its all connected with our core and specialty: making dreams become a reality NO MATTER what - we call it Feel the Breeze.
The last 1,5 years we put a lot of effort and thought in building our Feel the Breeze brand: our family and personal ones. Creating a personal brand offline and online is actually the first step we would recommend to take, even if you are not interested in creating different sources of income, it can accelerate your carrier and business can definitely be an amazing marketing and sales tool.
This is also why we feel so privileged to live with all the technological possibilities of these times and are so excited and grateful for them. It makes that almost everyone can create an income next to her or his job or company and start being more financially independent…and for example travel or sail or whatever you would like to do more in life. There are so many ways to earn money remotely and (passively) online nowadays, even with Corona and lock downs.
Here are our current different income streams and the ones we plan to develop the coming years.
Feel the Breeze brand
from dream to reality | your most preferred lifestyle
What we love most about what we do is creating content to inspire and enable people to live their most preferred lifestyle and make their dreams become a reality. We do this for free via YouTube (Feel the Breeze family & Feel the Breeze mindset), Instagram, blog posts and Podcast and paid through our online courses, masterclasses, inspirational sessions & coaching programs (FtB mindset).
All our content is made by ourselves and based on our own experiences combined with a lot of knowledge we gained from hundreds of books, courses/masterclasses and coaching programs & events. We focus on a niche which we actually not only are experienced in but even live by every but really every day. We like to consider ourselves expert.
Building our brand is the first step and catalyzer for our income streams.
FtB mindset
We already mentioned it, but one of our main sources of income comes from our Feel the Breeze | mindset. These are our online courses, masterclasses, inspirational sessions and coaching programs.
Nice insider tip: we have early bird discounts and very exclusive events which you never want to miss out on and can bring you in proximity of very interesting and successful people, people you could model and learn from. Subscribe to our mailing list to be the first to know.
And maybe you think, this isn’t for you, but we strongly believe that everyone has a unique story to tell and has a beautiful experience or lesson to share and teach to others. Just take that fist step of building your personal brand, sharing your knowledge for free and maybe start designing your first online course or e-book and start creating some extra income.
FtB shop
This is our online shop where we sell all sorts of products from e-books to keychains and fashion. They are all connected to enabling and inspiring you to pursue dreams. We even take this to a next level that we support small local business owners we meet during our travels and create a platform for them to sell their amazing products and making their dreams come true.
YouTube & Patreon
Youtube has a lot of possibilities of monetizing content and is a great way of building and expanding a community and your brand. Why we started a Youtube channel you can read here.
We combine YouTube with Patreon. This is a platform were you can pay for the creations of your favorite creators. This already has made a steady income for us in the first 6 months of launching our Feel the Breeze Family YouTube channel and first 3 months of launching our Patreon page (with at the moment of writing a little less than 600 subscribers on YouTube).
We use Patreon as a community and membership page. Patreon members get early access to our video’s, discount on our products, free giveaways and a lot more extra’s.
Become a member here or read more about Patreon here.
Influencer deals
With creating our free content we are making it possible to work with different brands that fit our niche - think about sponsor deals and brand ambassador programs: from free products to paid cooperations, from just one post with a review to working together for a year with showing their products in your daily life and attending their events.
With creating content, engaging with your following and choosing to focus on a niche, you can be relevant for brands to work with even starting from just 1.000 followers on Instagram or 400 subscribers on YouTube. In 2020 we had 5.000 followers on Instagram and went from 0 to over 600 subscribers on YouTube and made deals with big brands like: SuperB, RayMarine (and even B&G, we had the luxury of choice between two amazing brands), Ancora Health and TuiBlue, but also small brands we just love to work with like: Pater et Filius.
For example if you are a micro influencer like us (1.000-10.000 followers) you can ask between € 100-500,- per Instagram post. We actually haven’t done deals like this. Primarily because in 2020 we had no focus on these kind of deals, but on long term cooperations.
Our influencer deals in 2020 represented a value between EUR 60.000/65.000,-
We are very picky and careful with these deals. We have to believe in their products (a lot of the times we already invested in buying one of their products or even making a review for free, this is actually a great way to make them want to cooperate with you), they have to fit our values & brand imagine and the most important one we need to be able to give transparency and to be totally free with creating our content and our review about the products. We only create content in a way that fits naturally in our ‘normal’ day to day content and we are brutally honest about how we experience the products,
Being clear about our conditions is also an easy and quick way to see which brands actually believe in their own products.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate is the concept of getting a commission on a third party sale via your lead.
We use affiliate links in our blogs, podcasts, YouTube episode and in our favorite category on our shop. It is an easy and passive way to create extra income. If you have a really good blog website, you can earn a lot of money (especially combined with Google ads, we choose to not do this because it doesn’t fit our business plans for now).
We are currently focussing on increasing our possibilities on this point.
And NO it isn’t weird or stupid to get paid if someone buys a product because you talk and are genuinely enthusiastic about it. It is a win/win situation, the person who buys the product gets what she or he is looking for at the same price if they bought it without your link , the third party gets an extra sale and you get a commission for bringing in the lead.
We actually prefer buying based on someone others experience, and love to give them credits for making the time to create content about the product and helping us make a decision, then just buying a product based on an advertisement.
Affiliate marketing is a really big deal in the US and commissions vary between 15-30% and it is getting more popular in Europe.
Stocks & crypto currency
We are just starting to get into stocks and crypto currency. We are no traders and prefer to invest based on long term profits in combination with dividend payment strategies.
How we start? With watching YouTube video’s, reading books and following online courses and to be honest just try…… I (Rianne) actually just bought my first bitcoin ever - maybe a little bit late for some, but for me with no experience or family members who invest, a big step.
I use BitcoinMeester & Bitvavo to safely buy my digital currencies - see also here.
We do have some shares in a couple of start-ups - these we gained by giving advice, sharing our network, coaching and helping out with projects in exchange for shares rather then cash. This is actually a very creative and great alternative for invoicing with an exponential ROI possibility, as long as you choose wisely, and as we know from experience every start-up has its risks.
For the future we would love to invest more in start ups that drive innovation and have a positive impact on the world and one of our passion is to start investing in real estate - and who knows what we will do in a couple of years….we are very flexible and stay true to ourselves and what we love doing - and if one approach doesn’t work, we just find another.
We actually experience everything as building our family start-up. And as you can imagine all these things are quite some projects to manage….this is also why we hired not one but two virtual assistants way before they were really necessary.
We choose to spend most of our time on creating content and investing in our customer rather than in administration and all the other side activities.
Making sure this is still our dream lifestyle
This is the last thing that is really important to keep living our most preferred lifestyle and realizing dreams. This sounds maybe a little bit weird and maybe you think why, you already know what you want right? Yes and no!
We focus on staying flexible and always making sure that it is ok to change our minds. And this is so important. We believe in and embrace our changing and transforming state of being.
The questions we and you can ask yourself are: what is our most preferred way of living… how would our day look like if anything is possible and what if it is a week, a month or a year? These are the basic questions and the answers are the pillars of how we design and keep on designing our dream lifestyle - which is just our most preferred way of living.
We check in with ourselves on the big questions at least 2 times a year. Because we all change and transform and so do our dreams, preferences and the things that we enjoy & appreciate in life.
And if you keep doing what you love and at the same time work towards what you want from life, you will see that you find this tremendous amount of energy and will to live life everyday.
And this is just it!
HOW WE PLAN TO KEEP DOING IT - LIVING OUR DREAM LIFE
These are our scribbles about how we plan to keep on living our most preferred lifestyle. The last part of our three series blog post about ‘How do they do it?’.
Hope we inspired you to start with your own Feel the Breeze adventure and start pursuing your dreams today and not tomorrow or some other moment that might not ever come!
There are two certainties in life: change and death!
Have an amazing day!
love
Rianne & Gerben
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