Leaders of the Free World

When I started leadersofthefreeworld.org, one of the objectives was that it could act as a forum for everyone to unite against the norm! I’m very pleased to publish the very first guest post on Leaders of the Free World! Oscar Del Ben from freestyle mind was kind enough to contribute his personal experience as to why you don’t need to go to school to be successful.

Why You Don’t Need to Go to School to Be Successful

I always wondered why schools suck the way they do. I left school when I was 18 because I was simply not learning something useful at that time.

This happened over four years ago. Once I left school, I went to work for more than one year doing manual labor tasks for small companies. I didn’t enjoy it and my parents (along with everyone else) were saying to me that without school I was going to be stuck with laboring for my whole life.

Of course I knew it was just bullshit and after one year I established my own company and started doing consulting. Now, four years later, I’m expanding my business on the internet as I want to create (and live) off passive income. It’ll not be easy but that’s not a reason for me to give up just yet.

What does this story have to do with school? Well, in these four years I studied a lot, I devoured hundreds of books and learnt a foreign language (english).

At some point during the past four years, I realized that the reason people are not successful is simply because of what they learnt at school, or better what they didn’t learn at school.

Being successful is primarily a state of mind. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter how much money you have in the bank, you’ll be never be happy. On the other side, having the right mindset makes it straightforward to achieve success.

The problem is that they don’t teach you how to be successful at school, you have to learn it yourself.

School prepares people to join the corporate world, they teach you how to work in a corporate environment, and not how to become a leader.

Here I’m talking about 90% of schools, because I haven’t attended Stanford University, so I don’t know what they do, although most of their courses are available for free online.

And here’s the point – If you want to learn how to be successful and how to develop a successful mindset, you can learn it from books and videos thanks to the Internet.

And you don’t have to buy some secret guide that someone is trying to sell online, you can go just fine with what you can already find for free.

Having said that, schools are not that bad, simply don’t expect them to teach you how to be a leader, because you have to learn it yourself.

Oscar Del Ben is a personal development blogger. He writes about productivity, success and personal growth. You can read his blog at freestylemind.com.

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II always wonder why schools suck the way they do. I left school when I was 18 because I was simply not learning something useful at that time.

This happened over four years ago. Once I left school, I went to work for more than one year doing labor tasks for small companies. I didn't enjoy it and my parents (but basically everyone else) were saying to me that without school I was going to do that work for my whole life.

Of course I knew it was just bullshit, and after one year I opened my own company and started doing consulting. Now, four years later, I'm expanding my business on the internet as I want to create (and live) of passive income. It'll not be easy but that's not a reason for me to give up just yet.

What does this story have to do with school? Well, in these four years I studied a lot, I devoured hundreds of books and learnt a foreign language (english).

At some point during these years, I realized that the reason people are not successful is simply because of what they learnt at school, or better what they don't learn in school.

Being successful is mostly a state of mind. If you don't have it, it doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank, you'll be never be happy. On the other side, having the right mindset makes it straightforward to achieve success.
 always wonder why schools suck the way they do. I left school when I was 18 because I was simply not learning something useful at that time.

This happened over four years ago. Once I left school, I went to work for more than one year doing labor tasks for small companies. I didn't enjoy it and my parents (but basically everyone else) were saying to me that without school I was going to do that work for my whole life.

Of course I knew it was just bullshit, and after one year I opened my own company and started doing consulting. Now, four years later, I'm expanding my business on the internet as I want to create (and live) of passive income. It'll not be easy but that's not a reason for me to give up just yet.

What does this story have to do with school? Well, in these four years I studied a lot, I devoured hundreds of books and learnt a foreign language (english).

At some point during these years, I realized that the reason people are not successful is simply because of what they learnt at school, or better what they don't learn in school.

Being successful is mostly a state of mind. If you don't have it, it doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank, you'll be never be happy. On the other side, having the right mindset makes it straightforward to achieve success.

Hip hip hooray, we’ve survived the worst of the Global Financial Crisis… Wait, what? What crisis? Oh that’s right, consumers in too much debt, over their heads, and banks giving it to them. Or was it the media talking about a ‘looming’ crisis, so we stopped spending our money and guess what happened? – A crisis. Make a prediction, instil fear, sit back and watch it pan out, confirm prediction, rinse, repeat.

How does this help you and me and can we learn from it? So we’ve had the GFC, now I’m in the middle of a QLC – Quarter Life Crisis for those of you wondering. I think we can learn from big business and the state of the working world and embark on our own individual QLC, instead of sitting around and waiting for it to happen.

Are you stuck in a job you don’t particularly like? Your finances a bit out of control? Heading down a road that doesn’t look too appealing? You can stop it all and act now, or wait until you’re 35, overweight, sitting on your couch with your second husband/wife and three ‘miracles of life’ running around the house screaming their heads off.

Your own personal business (you) has assets, an income stream, has a research & development department (potentially) and you could (should) also have a business plan, your future goals.

Numbers Game

Let’s say you’re successful, worked hard, took time out to travel in between and managed to retire at 55. Now at 55, you can start enjoying yourself…

Sorry to spoil the party, but you;

• Worked for about 70,000 hours
• Enjoyed getting out of bed 1,700 times on a Monday morning
• Spent almost 15,000 hours commuting in peak hour traffic

And you know those annoying co-workers who gave you the shits? You’ve had to say hello to them every morning – about 8,000 times.

You must have REALLY enjoyed your job.

Hopefully, you’re a few years away from your own personal QLC, so you can ready yourself and be prepared.

The Alternative?

Let’s say you don’t mind a nice holiday, you could spend the next 6 months saving your butt off for your one month holiday, but why not spend the next 6 months setting up a location independent job/income stream and travel indefinitely? Sure it’s nice to go to Bali for a week because everything is SO cheap, but what if you could live wherever you wanted, spend rupiah/pesos/thai baht and continue to earn dollars or pounds?

You don’t know what you don’t know…

If you spent 20 minutes of your lunch break researching, everyday for the next year, that’s the equivalent of 80 hours full time study, two whole weeks! Imagine what you could learn about in two weeks? Here’s the kicker, and you might have to read this slowly for it to hit you, you don’t know what you don’t know. The ultimate chicken/egg conundrum.

Here’s a shortlist of what you could learn in two weeks;

• How to profit unbelievably from a company’s shares that plummet downwards!
• How to make money from a website/blog
• How to reduce your tax rate to around 12-16%
• How to make some pocket money easily using Google
• How to develop a website from scratch in an afternoon!
• How to control $27,000 worth of stock for $1,500.
• How to live a location independent lifestyle, turning your current employment situation into one of no fixed address…

The list could go on for a long while yet, but the idea is to inspire you to take some action! You really ‘don’t’ know what you don’t know, you should have been taught along the way, maybe at a… ‘school’? But hey, if you were taught how to make money without working, then you wouldn’t go to work, follow the ‘normal’ path or be under some sort of …. ‘control’? There’s something to think about! (And too much of an issue to delve into here!)

28 Days in the Free World

If and when you decide to ‘have a go’ and step out of employment, take a chance on yourself and see what it’s all about, you don’t have to tell the world! Or launch a website and tell everyone what you think of the working world! Unfortunately, or fortunately, I did?…

I could tell you that the free world outside of employment is all sunshine and lollipops, it will be soon, but establishing things does take some initial time & effort and in spite of everything I’ve read that clearly says “don’t quit your job first”, I chose to ignore that!

You know that feeling you get when you resign from one job, and are yet to accept another? Complete freedom, like a childhood summer holiday from school, 3 months off, sunshine, sleeping in… Well that’s never going to happen again! Once you make a commitment to pay yourself for a few months, now who are you ripping off if you sit around and waste time during the day, no more paid facebook unfortunately…

The first 28 days in the free world has been an eye opener, but very productive. There’s no longer a 5 day working week. Life, work, play, socialising and exercise, everything rolls into one….

Here are the highlights of the first month;

• ‘Finally’ figured out how to get free $ transfers to the US (options trading)
• Made $3,280 from a $1,200 investment (Very excited about the prospects of this!)
• Took some cool photos of my rather annoying nieces¹
• ‘Found’ Locationindependent.com (thanks Wayde!)
• Have had A LOT more time to work on the software development side project (coming soon)
• Got asked to write a guest post for website-in-a-weekend.net (about being a complete beginner but learning how to develop websites)
• Setup a small business for some summer pocket money
• Made my first ‘premium’ website!

All of the above was MUCH better than being stuck at work. This next month will be more of the same, possibly setup a photography side project¹, toy around with a few other websites, write a few more articles for the free world, who knows? But I do know that I won’t dread getting up on a Monday or have to commute in peak hour traffic.

If you’ve got a spare minute, head to Location Independent, they’ve got a truck load of resources and articles to read through. Read the last paragraph of ‘one idea’ and take a look at any of the free resources there.

I’d like to hear from you. What are you working on? What do you want to work on? Is work killing all of your motivation? Want anymore information or have you got any suggestions for article topics? Feel free to leave a comment, share this with your friends or send me an email. I’ve read more than my share of books & start-up guides, there’s a fair chance I’ll be able to help if you’ve got an idea you want to launch!

What else can you do? I’m going to focus my upcoming articles on a bit more in-depth ‘how to’ get involved in some of the things i’ve mentioned previously in this article, subscribe to the site (below) and you’ll receive the latest articles in your email.

And keep in mind, if you don’t initiate your own Quarter Life Crisis, you’ve got 1,700 Monday mornings ahead of you!

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This article is a call to action, delving into your current situation, being ‘stuck’ with your job, an idea to free yourself and some great resources to get you started in making the leap into the free world…

Gloomy

You’ve worked, saved your money, and are looking to the future. A bit of world travel, an investment property or two later, and you’ll be staring down the barrel of 30 years of work, career progression, climbing the ladder and moving into management positions. Which you’ll soon discover means more responsibility, longer hours and an enforced ‘passion’ for the job.

A couple of years of panic, job swapping, research, trialling alternate income streams and saving those pay checks and that brings us to the present day. It’s time to focus our efforts on ‘You’ Pty. Ltd. Not someone else’s company.

Good Friends or Work Colleagues?

I found myself struggling with the concept of ‘being employed’. You’re not in control, your employer controls your life essentially; overtime, family time, waking time, vacation time – you’re not in control.

You could be working so much that the only people you socialise with are work mates? That’s not your fault; you spend all of your time there! I’ve been lucky enough to make some good friends for life in a couple of my jobs, some of them I’ve had lengthy discussions about the state of the working world and even convinced a couple of them to look at investment properties, re-arrange their finances, start freelancing for themselves and say goodbye to the working world. (Personally this is my driver for writing these articles, the feedback & encouragement I’ve had from my converts!)

Stuck

“Get a degree behind you; it’ll open so many doors”. And so after completing my university studies, I found that it also closed plenty of doors. I’d done four years of full-time study, there’s an expectation that surely you wouldn’t waste four years of study and ‘not’ play along with the working world? You’re throwing your career away!

Taking the leap, jumping off the cliff and landing in the free world doesn’t have to mean quitting your job or throwing the towel in, it’s a change of attitude and focus, an adjustment.

Just One Idea…

All you need is an idea, but to get to this stage you’ll need to free up your time. Clear your mind and be able to switch off from ‘work’ and ‘your’ looming deadlines. Your current situation could well be full and too busy, how on earth will you find the time to work on a side project?

I’m a firm believer in de-cluttering your life and this includes your day-to-day schedule. How often do you check your email, read the news online, post blog comments etc? You can batch repetitive tasks that you do throughout the day to once a day; the aim is to become effective. Soon you’ll realise that if you can do your job in half the time, your boss will ask you to do twice as much! This alone should make the light bulb go off and hopefully you’ll realise something’s not right?

Internet freelancers are available at the click of a button to do practically anything you need. Virtual assistants, shelf companies, freelancers, designers – the possibilities of out-sourcing are endless.

All you need is an idea. Now it’s probably best to not try and re-invent the wheel, or grab the old wheel and put an alarm clock in it. What do you do at work? Ever think you could do things a better way? If you’re a nurse do you spend your whole day hauling fat people off to the toilet or lifting them out of bed for a sponging? What would make your day easier? What about getting a cradle or sling designed, taking out a patent, getting it manufactured overseas and selling it online? Anything! If you think there’s a market for something have a go! Like everything else, if you try and fail you’re only going to end up right back here.

If you still don’t believe me, I want you to think about this;

The Ped-Egg;

For those of you not familiar, the ped-egg is a small hand-held container/fine grater that is used to remove dead skin off your feet, yummo. It’s just an Ikea cheese grater scaled down, used in a different application and with a bit of marketing spin! I use the ped-egg analogy because it’s the perfect product.

• Priced at around $20
• Appeals to general public/consumers
• No moving parts (nothing to break)
• Cheap to manufacture ($$)
• Small (easy to distribute/ship)

And so there you have it, an example of an idea that isn’t rocket science. You don’t have to be quitting work or jumping into the free world just yet, but could you be more effective at what you do? Potentially freeing your time up to investigate other streams of income or just enjoying yourself a bit more?

You

You work hard (probably) and surely there’s a thing or two you could change around the workplace, or you’ve had one of those “I wish someone would invent such and such” moments. What are you waiting for?

There are some great free resources online, here are a mix of some great FREE eBooks and blogs to check out; The Middle Finger Project – a website from an alternate leader of the free world, Rejecting the Status Quo & Rebelling Against Mediocrity; Rules Optional – Andrew from RulesOptional explores on a sail boat, runs, kayaks, swims, manages his own ad agency and is an excellent writer; The Art of Non-Conformity – prepared to be jealous, a blog and travel journal of Chris Guillebeau, grab his brief guide to world domination; Through the Illusion – A very well written blog, in particular this article is a must read. And lastly the article that gave me the kick in the arse I needed, Steve Pavlina’s ’10 Reasons you shouldn’t get a job’, the king of the free world who has managed to decouple his time from his income and is a wealth of knowledge. I challenge you to read Steve’s article and not be pissed off at your current situation.

Is working for someone else, being employed and trading your time for money really the most effective way?

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