The digital nomad lifestyle has been the holy grail of the internet business set for years now. To be truly location independent is, for many, the absolute epitome of entrepreneurial success.

On a level, I’ve been a digital nomad for years. I read The 4-Hour Workweek, fell in love with the lifestyle, and got my butt on that train as fast as I could. But my digital nomad adventures have only been true as far as they’ve been true. I’ve been cheating. I haven’t really done much working on the road. I worked at home… and then spend a bunch of time traveling.

Don’t get me wrong – that’s a lot of fun. I still do it as often as I can. But for the last ten years, while I’ve fancied myself a digital nomad, I haven’t really been able to identify with the reality of the lifestyle.

Six months ago, that all changed. For a variety of reasons, I gave up my Art Deco love-nest of an apartment, put my money where my mouth was, and got on the road. I packed up my clients, I packed up my unschooling, and went on walkabout. I’m still away and on many levels, I still don’t have a clue what I’m doing. But enough dust has settled that I’ve started to learn some lessons.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

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What’s a gateway product?

A gateway product is the first product that somebody buys from you, the one that turns them from a prospect into a customer.

It’s the gateway from one place (Prospect City) into another place (Customer Land).

It’s a handy rule of thumb to assume that a buyers’ list (the list of people who have bought something from you, however small) is about 1000 times more valuable than a prospect list (people who haven’t bought anything, no matter how much they love you).

I don’t care how many people live in Prospect City. Customer Land is the only population that really matters.

Give me a list of 100 buyers over a list of 10,000 highly interested parties any day of the week. Transitioning someone from Prospect City to Customer Land is about the most valuable and important thing you can do as a business owner.

So today, here are some rules of thumb for making your gateway product as appealing as it can be…

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Productivity tips are generally things that make me want to poke my eye out with a spoon. “Start early!” “Have all your notes in one place!” “Set SMART goals!” Thank you, productivity gurus, the world is slapping their foreheads saying “Oh gosh! How could I have missed that one!”

Obvious advice, like “Eat less and exercise”, does not help the majority of us who are frazzled, ADD, and not looking forward to major life or habit change. If we know what we should be doing and we’re not doing it, there’s a reason. One that a therapist, rather than a productivity coach, is more qualified to help with.

Therefore, for your reading pleasure, I submit to you a baker’s dozen of truly useful productivity tips that don’t require major lifestyle/personality transformations. Do the ones that look easiest to you, and I promise you that good things will happen…

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So you think your marketing idea might be silly.

I had a delightful conversation with a woman from Zurich today. She had an idea for the launch of her business – just a little idea, one small tactic for a fun promotional opportunity.

She asked me, “Is that a good idea? Or do you think it’s silly?”

That’s a good question.

One of the most difficult parts of running a business – and in particular starting a business – is having no idea if you’re out of your mind. This applies to everything from domain names to product lines to stationery to the t-shirt you wear to the trade show.

On every conceivable front, you could be totally insane, and you wouldn’t even know it. It’s nice to have somebody to ask the simplest of questions – is this silly?

So I asked her what I always ask in response to this question…

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You want ways to celebrate? We’ve got ways to celebrate.

Whatever it is that you’re celebrating probably took a lot out of you and might have been a long time coming. Even if all you did was decide on a domain name, that decision was birthed after a long labor.

Here are fifty ways to celebrate success…

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