OK, gentlemen, today I am going to give it to you straight: if you want to live the playboy bachelor life—the life of the renegade who experiences all the very best that this world has to offer—then you have to start your own business.
In fact, if you want to simply safeguard your future, then you have to start your own business.
This is no longer ‘an option’, or something that would be nice to do ‘in the future’. Increasingly, self-employment is looking like the only sane plan any of us has.
Particularly the guy whose interests include freedom, international travel and beautiful women.
Here’s why.
1. Control Over Your Destiny
There is a lot of talk on men’s websites about being ‘alpha’. All well and good—but if you are working for someone else then you are choosing to put yourself in a situation where you are lower than someone else in the pecking order.
Would any truly ‘alpha’ male willingly do that?
It’s no coincidence that the action heroes we see in films are always renegades who do their own thing. James Bond, for example, reports in to M—but he pretty much ignores everything he is told.
Do that in a corporate job and you’ll be on a performance improvement plan or fired in no time.
All of us, at some point, come to a crux where we realise that if we are serious about self-development—about becoming better men—then there is no option other than to work for ourselves.
It was many years ago that I recognised the conflict between wanting control over my destiny and being a wage slave. In the end I got out.
The good news is that you can too.
2. The Ability To Pivot
When you work for yourself you make all the decisions. And that means that if something isn’t working, you can ditch it and move on to a more profitable route.
For example, my main initial income stream was selling ebooks (you can find all my books here). Now, there are authors who make decent money—high six-figures, anyway—just from writing. These people tend to have multiple books out, and obviously the more you publish, the more sales you can make.
I now have ten books out there (including RELENTLESS PRODUCTIVITY, which you can get for free by joining my daily email list) and they make me decent money every month. But I quickly realised that writing a book per month (which was my work-rate earlier this year) was inefficient. It was hugely demanding (and draining) in return for a low unit cost (each book costs $9.99 max).
On the advice of friends I accepted the fact that I needed to create a higher-priced product, which is why my new course PERSONAL BRAND MASTERY will be with you very soon.
I also now do a lot more affiliate sales for other people, and I have more projects in the pipeline for later in the year.
I will never abandon writing—it is my core skill-set, after all. But to make more money I had to pivot.
The great thing is, being self-employed I have the ability to do so. I can just wake up and decide to create a product on training penguins (if such a thing proved likely to be popular).
When you work for a corporation you have zero say in the direction that company takes. And even if you’re being asked to sell a product which is clearly no good, or isn’t in demand in the market, you’ll have no choice but to keep banging your head against a brick wall.
3. You Will Make More Money
You WILL make more money—for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, there is tax. I won’t get into this in detail because it will vary depending on where in the world you are, local laws etc., but the bottom line is there are normally tax breaks for the self-employed, and there are also a great many loopholes you can (legally) exploit.
The other element is passion. Now, you can’t really put a price tag on this, but let’s face it—if you really love something and you are passionate about it then you are going to work a damn sight harder on it than if you are not.
I know this from my own experience—when I was in corporate work, I would do as little as I could possibly get away with, simply because the work bored me to tears.
Now that I am self-employed I work pretty much all the time because I love it and because—as I have a personal brand business—this is my life. There is no separation between what I do and what I create. I simply live, and then generate content about it (and sell things off the back of it).
4. You Can’t Get Fired
Simple, but sweet. You can’t get fired. Even the UK enters the worst recession of all time next year there is zero chance of me getting fired.
Even if I make a ridiculous mistake that costs my company money, I can’t get fired.
If I sleep in and miss a morning at work, I can’t get fired.
And so on.
Because I work for myself, I control all the levers. I choose where I base myself, I have control over my costs, I decide on the projects I work on. Which means that I get to steer the ship, whatever the weather.
And whereas for an employer one option is always ‘let’s shed staff to cut costs’, in my company, where I am the only employee, that is never on the table.
5. Freedom of Time
This is the big one. You have a finite amount of time on this planet. So do I. Shit, I am in my forties, so I’m halfway through life. Perhaps more, who knows.
The bottom line is, I want to have as much control over my time as possible.
And the way you do that is by creating products and assets that are scalable and can make money for you even when you’re not sitting at the desk.
I said earlier that I am working all the time right now and that’s true—but believe me, that not what I’m going to be doing in a years’ time.
What I’m doing right now is aggressively growing my business by creating assets that I can sell for many, many years to come.
A book is an example of an asset. I sit down to write STILL IN THE GAME. It took me a couple of months in total—not long Now, nearly a year later, it’s still selling well and making me a monthly income.
Because the products that I create are ‘evergreen’ (i.e. they aren’t date-specific) then I can sell them for as long as people want to buy them. And if they do get a little dated then fine—I can rework or repackage them.
It makes much more sense to spend your time building assets that will continue to make you money when you’re not working, rather than going to a job where it is Groundhog Day—you only get paid for the time that you are there. (This, by the way, is called ‘trading time for money’ and it’s generally looked-down upon by entrepreneurs. But I’ll get more into that in another article).
So there you go—five reasons why it is ESSENTIAL you get off your butt and start your business today.
And if you want cutting-edge tips on how YOU too can escape the rat race, live a life of freedom, travel and date beautiful girls then sign up for my DAILY email here.
