Last Sunday I pulled off what I call the “Durango Double”… I went skiing in the morning, and then in the afternoon I drove down from the mountain, traded my skis for my mountain bike… and I got in my first mountain bike ride of the year.

It was a big day with lots of calories spent… it left me exhausted but elated. And it left me totally energized for a big week for my business. It also got me thinking…

There’s this phrase that gets thrown around a lot – “the Internet Lifestyle”…

I think the typical way it’s portrayed is you spend an hour or maybe two working on your business while you’re in a lounge chair at the beach. Then the cabana boy brings you your second umbrella drink… so you close up your computer and call it a day.

Well, I hate to disappoint, but that’s not how it works. (And really…beaches and computers are a bad combination.)

The reality is that most of the Internet marketers and online entrepreneurs I know are actually working their butts off for long hours at a time. And most of them haven’t gotten enough sun in a long time.

At the beginning of a business, that’s understandable. Most of us end up “bootstrapping” our businesses, which means we end up wearing many different hats when we start our business. And with the connected nature of our businesses, we feel like we always need to be connected.

So what the Internet Lifestyle usually ends up meaning is that the last thing you do before bed is check your email… and the first thing you do when you wake up is check your email. Not good.

And that’s not the way I do it.

My business is lifestyle-driven. I mean, I’m in business to help people, to change the world… and yes, to create an abundant lifestyle for my family.

But I refuse to do that at the expense of my life.

My business allows me to live anywhere I want. So I choose a beautiful place to live… Durango, Colorado. It’s got great small-town living, incredible weather, it’s a wonderful place to raise my kids… and it just happens to one of the best places in the world to pursue many of my passions such as mountain biking, skiing, and whitewater kayaking (in fact, people literally come here from around the world to do those things in and around Durango.)

I also take vacations. And I know this is shocking, but lots of times I am 100% offline when I’m on vacation (when you’re on a two-week river trip in Grand Canyon… there is no electricity, much less a connection.)

That’s why it was important for me to get in the Durango Double this year – it’s now the second year in a row that I’ve done it, and it makes me happy and proud to hit that goal.

And if you could see my list of goals, you would see a lot more goals about how I spend my time (things I want to do, people I want to be with, experiences I want to have) than you would about money and possessions.

My point in telling you this is this… YOU can do the same thing. You can live where you want and do what you want. You can take vacations, you can have adventures. Just because you have an online business doesn’t mean you have to work 24/7/365.

The “Internet Lifestyle” that you see in the get-rich-quick BS stuff is complete fiction.

But the Internet lifestyle that allows you to design exactly how and where you want to live your life… and then gives you the opportunity to put in the work to get to that life… well, that Internet lifestyle is alive and well.

You just have to do the work and make the choices on how you want to live. Choose wisely.

P.S. Another big benefit of the Internet lifestyle is being able to pick who you want to work with and who you’re not willing to work with. But that’s another post for another time.

JeffWalker.com

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