Serve No Master: How to Escape the 9-5, Start up an Online Business, Fire Your Boss and Become a Lifestyle Entrepreneur or Digital Nomad
Page 5
My uncle was a big union guy. He worked on the loading docks. He unloaded and loaded trucks all day long for decades. I understand his union. It’s about protecting the workers from dangerous working conditions and being underpaid. That makes sense to me. What do teachers need to unionize about? I used to be a teacher, so I know what I’m talking about. The goal of teachers individually or collectively should be to provide the best education possible to ensure that children have a chance for financial success. But the union doesn’t care about that. You can’t reward good teachers or punish bad ones. It’s a garbage system that I have no intention of subjecting my children to.
18
Medicating Away Creativity
The worst thing educators have come up with recently is drugging children with powerful psychoactive drugs. Somehow a memo went out, and half the kids on the planet are suddenly diagnosed with ADD. Then they wanted to drug the other half of the students, so they invented ADHD. These "diseases" didn’t exist thirty years ago. They were discovered right after big pharmaceutical companies found the cure.
The problem is never that the teacher is boring. That the subject doesn’t interest the kid, or that their minds are already buzzing with a thousand better things to do. The problem is that the child is not acting enough like a drone. That is the only purpose of those drugs. To medically force children to act like drones. It stifles creativity, and it’s an easy solution that does nothing to deal with the core problem. Do you think that ten percent of the population needs to be on mind control drugs? Do you think humanity evolved through all these thousands of years only to spontaneously get this sick?
It’s also interesting that it’s almost exclusively boys that get drugged up at school.
I worked as a tutor with a young boy who had “ADD” once. The school told him that he was a moron (their word) with learning problems, who would have to go to high school somewhere else. The parents brought me in because I’m a trigger puller. I find the problem, and I fix it. It took me less than ten minutes to figure out and solve the problem. The kid was a drummer. A very good drummer. He could only think while he was tapping. At school, they wouldn’t let him tap his pencils because it annoyed the teacher. So he couldn’t learn anything. He needed physical motion to activate his memory. The teachers could have found two rubber soundless sticks and solved the problem in five minutes. But that’s not how education works. They wanted to tell him he was mentally challenged and ship him off to a garbage school because it was easier. They said he would fail their high school entrance exam.
At the time I was living with a drummer for the second time in my life. I’m used to people with this need to tap all day long. I can zone it out. I worked with this student for a few months and let him tap away to his heart’s content. I learned two things. The first is that teachers seek the easy solution for themselves above all else. The second is that this child was brilliant. He was the greatest natural code breaker I’ve ever encountered. There was this activity in the prep courses where they would have a complex mathematical code. You have to do all these little math problems on the way to breaking the code. In the seconds it would take me to flip to the back of my book to look up the answer, he would already have it worked out. He was basically the NSA’s wet dream. I had to talk to his mom about it and explain that the problem wasn’t that he was a moron. He was a genius who couldn’t sit still.
I’ve spent time with people who are great in every field - from Navy SEALs to oil barons. I’ve spent time with mob lords and professional pit fighters. I have spent time with some of the most brilliant people on the planet, and this kid was so smart it scared me. How do you tell someone that their kid might be the best person on the planet at something?
A few months later he took the high school entrance exam and got the highest score on the test. The school had failed him. His teachers had failed him. They told him that he couldn’t pass that test. I told you before that nothing motivates me like being told that I can’t do something. On my first day with him, I gave a little speech similar to the one I gave you at the start of this book. I told him never to think about that test again. It’s not his job to pass it. It’s now mine. His only job was to trust me. Because I’m a trigger puller. That kid went from the worst to the first in a few short months.
I hate the thought of using drugs to crush someone’s energy or creativity. Most geniuses are weird. Have you ever met a scientist who wasn’t strange or a great doctor who wasn’t arrogant? Exactly. That’s what you want. Who wants the quiet, nervous doctor? I want the jerk with the terrible personality who always finds the cure. When the teachers want to drug your children, you need to ask yourself if this is good for the child, or just easy for the teacher. I fought for that child. I will fight for my children. And right now I’m fighting for you and your children.
III
The Mindset of the Masterless
There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.
- Miyamoto Musashi
19
Mindset
Before we move into our action plan, it’s important to find the right frame of mind. Even when you decide to start your side project, fear can cause you to make some bad decisions. The first mistake that many people make is treating it like a hobby or a game. Some people spend tens of thousands of dollars on courses they will never finish, let alone implement. They spend from their entertainment budget, and that is a strategy that guarantees online failure. Most people who try to make money online fail and this is one of the biggest causes. You need to track every single penny you spend. That is a business expense. You cannot consider your business profitable until you have earned back what you spend.
Any money you spend on courses, software, training or coaching - it all needs to be tracked. You can use a spreadsheet or any financial software you choose. I don’t care how you track; I just care that you track your money. You have to treat this as a business from day one. If you treat it like a hobby that will be a business when it starts making money, you will fail. I see it over and over again.
The more serious you are about this project, the higher your odds of success. Please don’t spend money without being very serious about it. You should start by writing down the cost of this book unless you stole it.
(And if you stole it, please do me the courtesy of buying it once you’ve made some money using my techniques.)
You also need to keep track of your time. If you spend two hours a night and at the end of the month make an extra $100, you might be really excited. You made money online. But then you will realize that comes out to less than $1.70 an hour. Unless you are living deep in the third world, that is not a great wage. It’s wonderful to make that first dollar online. Just remember that you need to improve that ratio so that you are making real money for every hour you invest in your new project. Most new businesses take two or three years to turn a profit. It’s not going to take us nearly that long, but you need proper accounting to actually know when you are making enough money.
You need to break free of the fear that you can’t go it alone. It’s very tempting to jump into bed with a partner simply because you are nervous about all of the responsibility. A great partnership can be very profitable, but most partnerships fail. Until you succeed on your own, don’t partner up with anyone. I have been ripped off by a lot of partners. You trust people, and eventually, they decide they want all the pie, and you end up with nothing. Unless you enjoy years of litigation, just believe in yourself. I’m going to give you the path to go it alone.
Taking that big step is scary. You’ve been trained to be a drone since birth; so breaking free to be a leader is very scary. It’s supposed to be scary. That is the whole point of all that programming. Just accept that it’s scary and move on.
You are now the CEO of your business. And I’m not going to lie to you; there is a risk o
f failure. But keeping your current job and treating all expenses of time and money as business expenses will dramatically limit that risk of failure. And if you are out of work right now, that’s ok. Just being serious about money and very fastidious will give you a leg up over the majority of people posting on forums about how they can’t make any money. Control what you spend and you don’t need to earn nearly as much to make it back.
20
Story of a Collector
I have a lot of friends, and I’d like to share a story with you about another one. My friend is a collector. He has a phenomenal collection of knowledge in his apartment. He has a spare bedroom with piles of DVDS and books and courses on how to make money online. He spent north of fifty thousand dollars on the stuff. Most of it is still in the original plastic wrappers. He just has huge disorganized piles. He has all of this knowledge, but the cost is horrifying to me.
Imagine starting your business with fifty thousand dollars of debt. That’s like graduating college. It will take my friend a LONG time to break even. The more money you spend at the beginning, the longer it takes you to make a profit. You can spend months or even years trying to fill in that initial financial hole.
Let me be clear for a moment. I’m totally fine with you investing in courses. I even have a few courses that I sell on my website. But the last thing I want you to do is buy ALL of them. Because even though I’ll make some money, I know that you will end up failing. When we have too many options in front of us, we lose focus. I wrote the outline for this book a few months ago. I didn’t start writing until yesterday. This week I finished three other projects, so now I have the mental bandwidth available to focus on this book until I complete it. I believe in multiple revenue streams, but most people do it all wrong.
I do not mean starting ten businesses online at once. Focus on one project until it’s making money and then go on to the next thing. The problem with my friend is that he looks at that room and just sees a bunch of stuff he bought. He doesn’t see red ink on a ledger. It’s unfortunate because he’s very smart, but his flawed mindset has limited him significantly.
21
This is a Job
I am not unemployed. I am not between jobs. I do think that I’m unhirable. I am unable to take directions or listen to other people anymore. I have been in charge of my destiny for too long. I do not have the ability to bend my neck before another master. I have a job, and that job is sitting in my office and working on different projects.
I have a little office on the beach where I do all my work, including writing this book. I actually have two spots. One is outside on my balcony where I work; inside I have a soundproofed corner of my bedroom where I record my audio. Depending on what I am doing and the position of the sun, those are my two work locations. I never sit there to watch a movie or play games.
You want to have a particular location that you use for work. It’s hard to focus when you’re in the living room. Sometimes you work in there, and sometimes you watch movies there. That’ll mess up your focus. Isolating your body will help you to isolate your minds. Even if you use a laptop, you can play with it somewhere else, but in your office, it’s work time.
The more you think of your project as a job, the easier it will be for you to maintain a professional mindset. I have a simple rule for my employees. Having hired and fired a lot of people in the last five years; I finally dialed into the formula that works for me. My employees are not allowed to see me during the day. I don’t want to know how many hours a day they work, and I don’t want them checking on how many hours a day I work. I give each person on my staff an assignment and tell them how long it should take. Every day they submit their work to me digitally. If they got the job done, I don’t care if it took one hour or eight. That is irrelevant to me.
Most companies reward complacency. They pay you and expect you to sit in your job for a certain amount of hours. That trains people to make it look like they are working all day. Excellence and efficiency are punished rather than rewarded. If you finish your assignment in two hours and then go chill in the break room, your boss will yell at you. That’s a foolish way to motivate staff.
I want you to focus on efficiency. It’s about getting the most amount of work done in the least amount of time. What do you care about more? How long it takes me to write this book or whether it works and helps you open up new revenue streams?
It doesn’t matter how many hours you spend in front of the computer. It only matters if your work leads to your financial goals. That’s the measurement of success. We want to escape the drone mindset that hours worked is a measure of value. I’m going to write this book once – but guess what? I’m going to sell hundreds of thousands of copies over the next ten years. There is no financial or emotional correlation between hours worked and income received. When you are the boss, that math simply doesn’t work.
Your job is to work lean and mean.
22
Decision
Right now, you’ve got a decision to make. Are you really serious about changing your life, or are you reading this book to feel good? You can choose either one. After all, you already bought this book, I already got paid, and ultimately, I’m going to be fine no matter what you do. But I’m not here to make you feel good. I don’t measure my success in feelings. I measure my success in your income.
You have to decide that you want to start this new job. That you will dedicate time to it and treat it with respect. You have to treat all the money you spend like business expenses. Those are serious decisions. It’s fun to play the game “make money online.” When you treat it like a game, you are not as emotionally invested in succeeding. That is the same mindset as people who play the lottery. You might win and if you do it’s great, but you honestly don’t think you will.
People with that mindset spin their wheels for decades trying to make a buck. It stinks because if they lose their job, or there is a medical emergency that will cost a bunch of money, they don’t have it. This is not a game.
If I don’t work, my children won’t eat. I’m not here to shovel a bunch of garbage that I only work ten minutes a day. The people preaching that stuff all work more than they’re saying.
I have total control over my schedule and a huge amount of freedom. I work fewer hours than most people. But I always work enough hours to hit my financial goals. That’s the mindset your decision creates. If you are willing to take the plunge and you are tired of leaving your financial destiny in someone else’s hands then we can move forward together.
This book is called Serve No Master for a reason. I want you to be in a financial position to never have to take crap from anyone else ever again.
23
Setting 3 Financial Goals
We need to get into some real numbers here. You might stink at personal accounting. I know that I do. That’s something that you have to work on a lot. You need to start by figuring out your cost of living. How much money do you need to make every month to maintain your current lifestyle? It might be 100% of your paycheck. But it might also be 110% of that paycheck. If you don’t know what you spend, you’ll never know what your financial goal is.
Before you go any further in this book, you need to work on this chapter and get your answers written down. Your first target is simple; how much money do you need to make to supplement your lifestyle? If you’re living like many Americans, you spend about ten percent more than you make. So your first goal is ten percent of your current income. If you generated that in profit every month, you could stop hemorrhaging so much debt. This number is your first goal. This is a specific number that you want to earn from a second revenue stream on top of your current paycheck.
Your second goal is even more exciting: How much money do you need to make to quit your job? That number might not be the same as your paycheck. You need to look at some other numbers before you write this one down. When you quit your job, you’re going to lose access to retirement benefits and medical insurance and
a bunch of other side benefits. How much will it cost to get insurance separate from your company? Add that expense needs to your projections. You might want to add in anything that is going to stock options right now as well. I know this all sounds intense, but I already told you that this is serious business. If you do these numbers correctly right now, hitting these goals will become easy.
Your third goal is based on your dream lifestyle. How much money do you need to make to live your dreams? Later on, I will talk a lot about travel and ways to control your spending. I live on a tropical island for less than people pay to live in a dangerous neighborhood in New York City. This book is about much more than making money. It’s also about how to be smarter with your costs.
For right now, just write down a number that you could make every month and retire while living the life you’ve always dreamed of. How much money do you need if you are living on a tropical beach and no longer paying off a mortgage or car bills? I don’t own a car anymore. Where I live, all I need is a scooter. I only use it about once a week. By removing that car, I got rid of car payments, gasoline costs, car insurance and maintenance costs. A car is many things, but it is NOT a financial asset.