I’m great at telling jokes, and it’s how I made friends when I was younger. It’s a very valuable skill, but that’s an important distinction. It’s a skill, not a talent. There isn’t a stand-up comedian out there who has never bombed.
They master the craft by putting in sweat equity. They start out writing jokes at home and practicing on their friends. They hit open mic nights all over town. It’s a real struggle to turn the ability to make your friends laugh into something that strangers will pay to see.
Most people had that moment in childhood where they decided that being funny is for other people, and they just let go of the desire to try and tell jokes. They stop putting effort into learning this skill because they mistakenly believe it is a talent. I have told hundreds of thousands of jokes in my life. Along the way, I’ve told an uncountable number of bombs. I have offended hundreds and possibly thousands of people. To master the art of humor you have to master the art of calibration. You have to say something that is unexpected enough to be funny but not so far as to be offensive. It’s a fine art that you only learn through experience.
Whether you are funny or not comes down to how much time you invested in telling jokes and learning comedic timing. Many people spent that time in high school running track or learning an instrument. We can’t be everything to everyone. But humor is a skill. You can learn it, no matter how old you are when you start.
122
Born This Way
People have a tendency to think that I was born already successful at online marketing. They see where I am right now and assume that there was no struggle to the top. That I just walked into this life. I wish that were true, but it’s not. My struggles are what shaped me into the man I am today. I hit some painful roadblocks along the way.
Shortly after being fired from my university position I lost my apartment. I had to move into my mom’s basement right before my 30th birthday. I was living my ultimate nightmare. I had tried and failed, and now I was back living with mommy like a child. It was horrible. But it was a necessary sacrifice. I determined to do whatever I had to. I was not going to "celebrate" my 30th birthday down in that basement. So I fought my way out.
When I started succeeding just a little bit, it was still really hard. I moved in with a friend. I moved into his studio apartment and slept on the couch about a meter from his dirty feet. He snored so loud every night that I was always tired. It was brutal, but it was a step forward; at least there was a window. After a year of that, we upgraded to a two-bedroom apartment. For eighteen months I struggled to break free, and my reward was a bedroom of my own - something that most people take for granted.
Most people ignore that sacrifice, and that’s a problem. If you blame my success on luck, then your only hope of escaping the tyranny of your boss is for luck to intervene in your life as well. You were born with all the skills you need!
I wasn’t born a great writer. I didn’t even learn how to write well in university. I taught myself by blogging for a long time. I put in a lot of slog. I am a very fast writer now, but developing and honing my craft took effort. I just keep working harder to get faster and faster.
The effort you put into your business, into your life, has real value. There is nothing that I use to make money that I was born with. My skills in networking and making friends are entirely artificial. At seventeen, I was alone and suffering. Unlike most kids in that situation I simply took action.
I found someone who was popular and likable. And I studied him like you wouldn’t believe. Everything from his hair to his clothing got absorbed into my personality. I studied how he started and ended conversations. I paid attention to how he treated people. I watched how people reacted to different things he said. I was a nerdy apprentice for a very long time.
When you make a decision to change and accomplish something, all that’s left is staying the course. I put in the effort. I created and built a remarkable life all by following one guy. And he has no idea. I just watched and replicated someone who was doing it right. Honestly, he just taught me how to be a better person. Now those lessons are ingrained in my personality, but they were learned.
People used to tell me that you were either popular or not. That’s just a lie the popular kids tell to maintain their power. You can become anything you want once you realize that it’s just about putting in the effort. I didn’t want to be lonely anymore, so I learned how to be the kind of person that other people wanted to be around. I shared those crucial skills with you earlier in the networking section so that you don’t have to travel the same difficult road as me.
Don't get caught up in the thought that some people are born knowing how to make money, and some aren’t because that is a lie too. That little thought is a real business killer. As soon as that thought enters your brain, quitting becomes a larger and larger option for you. Don’t let a single falsehood destroy your destiny.
123
The Uncontrollable 3rd Party
When a guy wins the Olympics, many people watch and talk about luck. They say that he was born a natural athlete. He comes from athletic parents. He has good genes. He’s lucky. We look for any cause of his success other than his effort. Do you know how much training goes into making the Olympic team? It’s brutal, it’s lonely, it’s painful, and they don’t get paid squat. We look at that moment of glory and fail to give him proper credit; it’s a real shame.
A common dream for guys these days is to play video games professionally. They think it’s all fun and games and getting paid to hang out with your friends. I watched a documentary about one of the first pro-gaming champions. This guy put in hours doing the most boring drills you could ever imagine. He spent eight hours a day minimum, seven days a week training. For him, it wasn’t a game. He took his job seriously and applied military training methods. Anyone who claimed he had natural ability or blamed his fast-twitch muscle fibers was just looking for an excuse to ignore the sixty-plus hours of training a week in this champion's training regimen.
I recently found out that one of my neighbors on the island is a former professional video game player. He played for his nation at several international competitions. He leveraged that into building a massive video game site in Europe. I have a fantastic podcast interview where he shares that journey, so if you want to be a professional or if your kids want to get into that business, you don't want to miss that episode.
I have tried to be as open as possible about my journey so that you won’t make the mistake of thinking that my success is anyone’s fault but my own. Every mistake I’ve made is my own. I get credit for the failures and also the successes. That’s the way it should be. If you look at someone successful and blame it on luck, God, fate, Mother Nature, Gaia, or the universe you are doing yourself a disservice. You are taking all of your power in the universe and flushing it down the toilet.
Blaming someone else’s success on an uncontrollable third party is a way of ducking responsibility for your life. Luck made him rich, luck made you poor, and nothing is your fault.
But look at what you’re trading to quiet the voice in your head urging you to be more. If it’s not your fault that you are poor, then you are powerless over your destiny. Those are the words of the willing slave who refuses to be responsible for his freedom. Admitting that the bad job you hate is your fault is the first step to real power. If your bad results are because of your actions, then you have the ability to change them. Good actions on your part can give you good results.
Don’t pass the buck because it’s easy. There are a lot of people wealthier than me. I don’t blame their success on their wealthy parents. That’s silly. A lot of people inherit great sums of money and burn it all to the ground very quickly. Having rich parents does not ensure that someone will be good at business or make smart decisions.
You have the power to change your destiny, no matter where you are right now. You have the knowledge now to rip off those shackles. You can break free and grab your destiny by the horns. You
are the one who decides if you will succeed or fail. At the end of the day, only you get to decide if you will serve no master.
124
Grab Your Destiny
Take control of your life right now. There are only two things in this universe that you currently have power over - how you feel and what you do. You might be feeling a little depressed because I said you’re lack of success is your fault. Why are you giving me power over your emotions? I don’t know you. I’m not judging you as a human being. I’m making a statement that applies to every person on our planet. How can you take a statement that applies to over seven billion people personally?
Take control of your emotions and stop giving other people authority over them. I get hate mail sometimes. People email me to tell me I’m fat for some reason. I don’t have a course teaching weight loss, so it’s weird, but doesn’t hurt my feelings. I see someone who was so affected by my teachings that they took the time to email me. The negativity is irrelevant. These people see my success as a critique of their life, and they choose to lash out. Why would I give a stranger control over my emotions? That only leads down the path to madness.
I also used to receive a very large amount of hate mail for being a vegan. People use to talk about how vegans are cowards and weak. It was some pretty heavy stuff, especially because I’m not even a vegetarian. People who try to hurt you online are often shockingly misinformed. Why would I let the same people who hate on my “veganism” hurt my feelings when they call me fat? What people say doesn’t matter. It’s how you react to their actions that matters.
I have handed you a great deal of knowledge in this book. You paid just a few bucks for it. I paid for the same knowledge in blood, sweat, and struggle over the course of years. What a discount you got! You have the ability now to grow and develop into something amazing. You are the only one who decides from this day forward if your life changes.
You should never again let someone else determine how you feel. That’s the first step on the path to success. As you follow the lessons of this book and begin to build your online empire, you will get to the point where nobody else can ever tell you what to do again. That is true freedom.
You have complete and total power over your destiny. Before, you were trapped and had no idea how to escape. I have provided you with a plan. Now it’s your job to go forth and do great things. You have the knowledge and the ability to be free.
125
Serve No Master
Freedom in life isn’t something we are given or born with. The circumstances of your birth greatly affect the odds. There are horrible countries out there where it’s hard to break free, but if you are reading this book, then you don’t live in one of them. In our society, it’s the institutions that we trusted that made us complacent, that made us afraid, that kept us from exploring.
You can do better; you can break the chains that bind you to an unhappy life. The technology is there, and more importantly, the talent is inside of you. It doesn’t come from me; it doesn’t even come from this book – but I’m proud to show you the path.
The action is up to you. And if you take those steps, then your success stops being a possibility. It transforms into an inevitability. That is how you achieve your destiny. That is how you can finally -
Serve. No. Master.
XIX
Minimalism
The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.
- Chuck Palahniuk
126
Does Your Stuff Own You
We are constantly flooded with information about the things we “need” to make us happy. The average adult in America faces over five thousand advertising and brand exposures per day. There’s so much noise in everything that we consume that you can’t even hear your thoughts.
Most people I know have a series of goals, but it’s all external, stuff they saw on TV since they were kids. They want to own a house. They want to have two children. They want two cars. Then there is one more thing they want as a cherry on top - a boat, or a vacation home.
The problem is that people who “own” these things aren’t any happier than people who don’t. I know people who have a nice house and two expensive cars and put their kids in nice schools. They are paying a brutal mortgage on that nice house, and those expensive cars will take four more years to pay off.
By the time you pay off a car, it’s worth about half what you paid for it. By the time you pay off that house after thirty years, it is worth half what you paid as well. While you are making those payments, you can tell everybody you meet that you’re a homeowner. Your parents, your Facebook friends, that girl at Starbucks that has better things to do. It sounds great and feels even better. But rest assured you don’t own that house. Miss a few mortgage payments and the bank won’t bat an eye before putting you out on the street.
Most of these things, we think we want, will make our lives worse. I rent where I live right now. My landlord owns the place, and he works so much harder than I do. If the water boiler bursts, if there’s a leak, if the Internet gets knocked out - it’s now his problem. When you “own” a house, you spend all your time and money fixing a house that a bank owns. It’s a modern form of slavery. Instead of using chains and whips, they use empty promises and debt.
When I told my friends I was hitting the road, they couldn’t believe it. They told me how great America is and how traveling full time is insanity. A few months before I decided to become a minimalist, I almost bought a car for a hundred thousand dollars. That would have been the stupidest mistake of my life. A year later the car would be worth like forty percent of that!
I’m not into full blown minimalism. That’s where you try to live out of a backpack or in a tiny house made of twelve crates and a little duct tape.
Instead, I like to own very little. The less you own, the more freedom you have. If I had to move off of my island today, we would leave a bunch of stuff behind. But we’d get over it. It wouldn’t be the first time we changed islands.
I have no problem if your dream is that white picket fence and 2.5 kids. I just want you to go into that life with your eyes open. It takes thirty years to own that house, and it’s going to take a lot of work. Every year the government will charge you land taxes for the right to live in your home. Personally, I think taxing land is the evilest thing that a government can do. It’s the main way to remove freedom from your people. You never own your home; you’re always renting it from the government.
Many people consider shopping a hobby or even a type of therapy. There is a rush that moment after you buy something great. That feeling only lasts a few weeks at best. Chasing that "purchase high" leads more people into debt every single day. Every time you think about making a purchase, you should have a logical discussion with your partner. If you are single, then just write this down - “Why do I want to buy this? How will this improve my life, save me money or help me achieve my goals?”
Let me give you an example. A few years ago my girlfriend and I decided to buy a PlayStation. Because I live in the middle of nowhere, the price was around $700. That’s a lot of money. But we compared playing video games to some of the other ways to relax and entertain ourselves. Going to a bar or something costs way more money over time. I’ve been playing that machine for three years now, so the overall price of entertainment is under $1 a day. Then you have to factor in the price of each game. A brand new game can cost from $70-$200. But if you wait a year or two you can get the game with all of the bonuses and extra levels for $20-$30. Right now I’m playing a game from three years ago, and I paid about 10% of what other people did. I get the same experience for way less.
Replacing desire with logic allows me to spend more efficiently. Every dollar you don’t spend is another dollar you don’t have to go out and make. If you spend one hundred dollars less next month, it’s the same result as if you made one hundred more.
Thinking about why you want things an
d how it will affect your life is important. I approach most financial decisions this way, even if it’s not a life-altering purchase. It’s about the principle, not the price.
When you are buying a new car, sit down and think about why you are buying this particular model. I had a friend when I was in my early twenties. We both worked in the same call center, selling computers. We made almost the same amount of money. He lived on a couch in the hallway of his parents’ house and drove an extremely flashy car. He didn’t care about how he lived, only about how he appeared to other people. He was willing to sleep on a couch in a hall just to have a more expensive car.
That might seem silly to you, but he was able to explain his purchase decision clearly to me. He knew that his purchase was all about perception, and he was willing to sacrifice his living situation to fund it. I would never make that decision, but at least he had some internal logic.
Many people buy the most expensive car that they can afford. At a certain point, the increase in cost does not correlate with an increase in speed or safety. Then the price of that car turns into a burden. Even after the car is a few years old and you are bored, you still have to keep making payments.
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 23