I’ve Netflixed my life, maybe you can Netflix yours.

I’m a movie nut.

Aside from reading or listening to books-on-tape, I like nothing better than to settle down in the evening with a bowl of popcorn and watch a great movie.

I’m mostly into foreign and independent films, as I’ve grown tired over the years of the typical Hollywood blockbuster.

And, like most movie lovers, when the whole movie-rental business took off 15 or so years ago, I’d found a real way to feed my movie cravings.

But, not much after Blockbuster had gotten a firm foothold on the rental market (at least in North America), it seems that a new type of movie-rental business popped up to supplant the brick-and-mortar rental store businesses.

Think about the movie rental stores for a second, and list out what you like and don’t like about them.

The biggest benefit of a store for the movie lover is that you can watch a movie in your home at the time of your choosing; you don’t have to wait for a re-release in a movie theater nor do you have to comb TV listings trying to find a film that may or may not be running this week on, say, Thursday morning at 4:15 a.m.

So, rental stores offered a huge benefit to those of us who love movies.

But, over time, if you’re like I am, you came to dislike most rental stores for a variety of reasons, including these:

• It is nearly impossible to find a new release.
• You have to physically go to the store.
• You have to deal with return deadlines and overdue payments.
• You have very limited or non-existent choices in specialty genres, such as mine — international, documentary, and independent.

So, it’s not surprising that some enterprising folks came up with a different — and better — way to rent movies.

I’m referring specifically to an outfit called Netflix whereby you purchase a “membership” and receive, via mail, an unlimited supply of movies each month.  You can only have so many DVDs at home at one time (Netflix offers different subscription levels — I go for the three-at-a-time level), but if you view and return your DVDs promptly, you can get your average movie cost down to around $2 or less.  So, a good deal, and the movies come to you in the mail.

Netflix figured all this out, and is creating one heckuva business.

So, how does this apply to your life and your dream job?

Eazy-peezy.  The fit between what Netflix did to the movie-rental business and what you can do for your life is perfect, and it’s this:

If you’re unhappy with your career or your work or even your life in general, you don’t have to run off and create a whole new you.  A lot of us think (including myself, a decade or so ago) we have to remake ourselves in some incredibly different way to be content or to pursue our passions.  And, yup, sometimes you do.

But, that’s not what Netflix did, and that’s not what I’m talking about here.

To Netflix your life, take where you are right now, today, and tweak it.

Netflix it.

Make a few minor, very subtle, changes to that life.

Let me give you an example from my own life, and let’s see if you can relate.

I’d built a software training company (InfoSource, Inc.) in the 1980s and 1990s — and sold it, eventually, to a joint-venture comprised of CompUSA (the big American retail store chain) and Blackwell Publishers (the leading independent book publisher in the United Kingdom).

During those built-it-and-sell-it years, I ate, slept, dreamed, and loved InfoSource inside and out.  I was passionate about the company, it grew, and we prospered . . . and, along the way, we built an organization we were proud of and which employed some really interesting, offbeat, and just plain-old-fun people.  Going to work was a hoot; shoot, it wasn’t work, it was simply a blast — most days I didn’t want to go home!

After the final pieces of the acquisition fell into place, I left InfoSource in 1998 to, as they so often say, pursue some other opportunities.  The departure was my choice and the split was incredibly amicable (the Managing Director of Blackwells, and our Chairman back then is still one of my best pals).  But, the company (per the new owners) was taking a different direction, it was becoming more corporate, and it was simply time for me to move on.

Unfortunately for Blackwell/CompUSA (but, fortunately, for me later, as you’ll see), the whole tech industry and the dot.com world took a real dive in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  So, as big outfits are often apt to do, Blackwell/CompUSA wanted to dump the company when times got lean.

They found a few buyer prospects but, for one reason or another, each deal seemed to fall by the wayside; and, when 9/11 struck, the whole mergers and acquisition scene dried up like a New Mexican desert in June.

And, that’s when I got involved with the company again, in early 2002.

I’d been off having a blast for the prior three years — including starting up the sister company to this blog, Dream Jobs To Go – and was spending loads of time with my wife and daughters, traveling, reading, walking, and just really enjoying life.

But, when Blackwell came knocking on my door and offered me a chance to take back my baby, after a wee bit of haggling and hemming and hawing, I really couldn’t turn it down.

So, after three semi-retired but really active years, I jumped back into the saddle at InfoSource, in 2002.

And . . . within six months, absolutely hated it!

Every minute of it, almost.

Just couldn’t deal with it.

You see, I’d left the comforts of a great portfolio life — part work, a couple of different work ventures, part play, lots of travel, being with my kids — for a company that was deeper in trouble than I’d realized . . . incredibly bad employee morale, cash flowing out the door like a flash flood on a hot day in West Texas, a staff of really good people but which was at least twice the size it needed to be, and products that didn’t fit the market as they once did.

Over time (and I mean some serious time, as in years), my business partner, Thomas W. Warrner, and I plunged ahead and swatted away issues as best we could.  And, although that old love-for-the-business-that-I’d-once-had attitude was no longer there, we began to grow a little and to return to profitability, mostly by refocusing our efforts and energies in new markets and with new products, and by growing an incredibly talented and dedicated senior management team.

As time drifted by, though, I just wasn’t happy in an office setting any longer and I certainly wasn’t enjoying the day-to-day operational side of the business.

In short, I didn’t have my dream job any longer.

Now, here’s where the Netflixing came in, so thanks for hanging with me during the twists and turns.  Over time, Tom had taken on more and more of the daily operational issues as President, which left me to focus on new product ideas, strategic decisions and partnerships, international, and a few select larger customers.

And, as that job role began to gain more focus, it occurred to me — and to Tom — that I could pretty much serve my role and the company from anywhere . . . in the country, or the world for that matter.

So, in the Fall of 2004, I Netflixed my life.  I kept my exact same job and role in InfoSource, but I moved, with my family, from the company’s HQ location (Winter Park [Orlando], Florida) to one of the places Pamela and I had fallen in love with many years earlier, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

So, I scheme (my official title at InfoSource is Chief Schemer), deal with larger customers, work on long-term stuff, and set up new businesses for InfoSource, from my home office that overlooks the Sangre de Cristo mountains about three miles outside of Santa Fe.

Since then, both Tom and I have each figured out how to do our “jobs” in 2-3 days per week, leaving us time to set up our own separate portfolios — Tom spends his time away from ISI in mostly physical pursuits (the guy’s a former marathoner, for cryin’ out loud) and I run other businesses, including Dream Jobs To Go and this blog.

The passion is back, the dream job (for me, and for the way I define success) is here, again.

I’m livin’ large.

You see, it was really just a tweak, a Netflix to my life.

So, how would you Netflix your life?

And, is there something I can do to help?

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