Freedom

Since time is your most precious resource and you have to work to make money to survive, there’s a simple conclusion: money equals freedom. In order to get more time (and therefore more life) you need to make enough money to be able to escape paid employment, which robs you of most of your time. If you want to work, that’s fine—and you likely will choose to work even if you don’t have to—but the key is to make it optional and on your terms, not someone else’s. It’s about control and living the life you want, not a life almost entirely controlled by others.

If something happened, which meant you couldn’t work or you had a huge medical bill, your life could be turned to chaos. Everything you take for granted would be turned upside down. You can’t rely on surviving from pay check to pay check. Your number one priority in life must be to free yourself from your reliance on a job.

Better to be free than to be a slave even to a good master.” ~ Publius Syrus

Your first task toward freedom is to use your best skills to create a product or service that people want and do it so well people will queue up to pay for it. 

Step 1: identify your best skill or the work that you enjoy doing most because you’ll be working a lot so it makes sense to be doing something you’ll enjoy and are always curious to learn more about.

Step 2: identify something valuable the world needs and create a product or service that delivers it using your skill.

Step 3: gradually keep improving it, marketing it, building customers and steadily growing the business while you work.

Don’t worry that no one buys your product. The important thing is that you’ve achieved a very important milestone on your journey to freedom. Now you can adapt. As you progress through life you’ll learn things that you can use to improve your product, get more exposure or expand in other ways. It’s like an investment that you have the power to substantially increase using your skills and knowledge. Not only does it give the potential to make a lot of money, it also helps you learn valuable skills.

Start with ideas that solve real problems. Pay attention to the frustrations, inefficiencies, and desires that you experience. Keep your idea simple. Create something that you really want. If you create something that you really want, selling it will be easy because you’ll understand why someone would want it. 

The most important thing is that you get something made quickly. Don’t spend years thinking about or planning an idea. If you procrastinate too much the chances are you’ll miss an opportunity. It’s critical that you just get it done. You’ll learn significantly more by getting it done than you will by planning.

Ask yourself, what problems do you face in your life that you could use your skills to solve? What things do you care about most? What specialist knowledge or passions do you have? For example, you might love shoes. This is a great place to start. If you love a product like shoes, you’ll enjoy making content about it, you’ll know what’s good and what’s bad and it won’t feel like work. You could create a web page about rare or special shoe designs, which you could sell through your page using a simple, free e-commerce solution. Or you could combine two passions, such as a passion for shoes and the environment. You could sell only carbon negative shoes: shoes that reverse climate change. Your idea doesn’t have to be revolutionary. Start small, get something live and then you can adapt. 

Freedom can be built from almost nothing if you focus on value: solving a real problem for real people in a way they immediately understand. Start with a small offer that genuinely helps people. Launch before you are ready. Learn from the results. Refine. Grow. 

Conclusion: Money equals freedom. The first battle that you must win is the fight for freedom. To do that you need something you can sell. Use your best skill to create something you can sell, get it launched quickly and gradually improve it.