Hey friends,
Just wrapped up a whole month living in France. Between all the cheese I learned that French food is pretty much like British food but done really well. But between the food we ended our time with a weekend in Paris. Between the croissants and the cobblestone streets, something kept playing in my mind.
It was this niggling idea around - freedom. Yeah, I know. Big word, right? But what does it even mean? So it got me thinking.
In a way, one man's freedom is another's prison. An example could be living in the city might be one person's dream, while another loves the rolling hills of the countryside. So, what's the deal here?
Freedom's not really a certain thing. Nope, it's how we feel about a thing.
It's all pretty subjective and my ideas of what freedom feels like might sound awful to you.
A close friend of mine said to me that he doesn't know how I travel so much. In fact - it sounds pretty awful. Why? For him travelling is tiring - he likes going on holidays for sure. But being on the road all the time is not something he would be interested in doing.
So after a bit of reflection here's what freedom looks like for me:
- Entrepreneurship: I love working for myself. The creativity of solution issues and trying to figure out things every day.
- Digital Nomad Life: I love the feeling of being able to live wherever I want.
- Renting not Owning: I love the flexibility of renting. I'd lose sleep over having a mortgage
- Minimalism: The less things I have the less cluttered I feel in life
- Solopreneurship: I've managed a team of up to 8 people at a stage. I spent so much time managing I lost the fun of building and creating.
- Time: The ultimate freedom currency. I love owning my own schedule.
Freedom is up there as one of my higheset values. I just kinda figured this out as well. But now I know this about myself I can start to shape my life around this core value.
Take work, for example. Big teams, physical locations? Nope. Give me online businesses like e-commerce any day. Or I'd rather invest in index funds than real estate or rent than buy. Maybe it’s a trade-off, but hey, it makes me happy.
And that's what it's all about, right?
Freedom’s less about me and more about you. What's your freedom look like?
Oh, and before I sign off, here's a glimpse into my geeky world this week:
1. Scoreapp
Diving into lead generation atm. Daniel Priestley has product that focuses on acquiring leads through scored quizzes called ScoreApp. I signed up to a 30 day free trial to test it out. I created a quiz called "Amplify Your Online Reach" where it scores businesses online potential based on Website, Social Media & SEO. You can try it out for free here to see how your business stacks up. https://onlinereach.scoreapp.com
2. Google Apps
Maybe I'm a bit behind the times but I saw that Google just released a scheduling tool. So instead of using Calendly or alternatives, you can just directly use Google and even Google Meet to host the calls. I already have a Google One account so I set it up and will migrate my calls over there. It's free/included in my plan and knowing that Google is behind means that it is going to be a rock solid software.
3. Image alt text
As part of my efforts to improve the SEO of metalabs I came across this from a blog post. If you don't put in image alt text you can miss out on 20% global web searches. I found an Ai tool which will hopefully help me out with this as there is around 800+ images on metalabs website that need to be done!
4. BunnyCDN
I've been using this CDN to host videos on metalabs website for the past year or more. It's super cheap and fast. I just stumbled back on it as I needed to add more funds to credit it. I use Cloudflare as a CDN normally for sites but may look to migrate to BunnyCDN. I'd love to use it with this website - but linking it up with Ghost sites is less straight forward than Wordpress from what I've read.
But that's it for now I'll chat with you next week :)
Matt
xx