As a Freedom Maker, there are 10 things I must do to know I’m successful. These are:

If you’d like to pick my brain on any one of these statements, be sure to go back to episodes 4-13 and dive deeper into each and every one of these statements. If you’d like a PDF document of these 10 manifesto statements, drop me an email with subject line Episode 14 to admin@theecomstandard.com

So, what are some income streams to strive for, and what income streams should you avoid? As a general rule, avoid anything that has an hourly rate to it, no matter how high. Why? Because it places a cap on how much you can earn per day, per month, per year. Let’s say you have an hourly rate of $10k. It will take you 10 years, working 24/7, 365 days a year, to pay for a $365 mil mega mansion. Even if you don’t want to live in a mega mansion, you’re effectively tied to your job: if you work, you get paid 10 grand. If you take the day off, your opportunity cost is 60-100 grand. How will you feel when you’re on vacation with your family? My guess - it’s terrible.

If you’re still not convinced, there are many things in the world that are infinite, for example, money. There are a couple of things in this world that are finite, like time. Any person who knows how to do a deal will know that you never trade finite resources for infinite resources. You want to reach a point when you never have to trade money for time.

How? Here are some examples:

The 4 categories above all have 1 thing in common: you can make money while you sleep. If you know how to manage and limit your risk, you can trade limited risk, limited time, for relatively unlimited income. This is why I transitioned from Piano Teacher to E-commerce. In the next episode, I will talk about the breakdown and anatomy of every e-commerce business.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to share, download or follow this podcast on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts from. If you’d like a PDF document of the 10 Freedom Maker manifesto statements, drop me an email with subject line Episode 14 to admin@theecomstandard.com

Quitting is not difficult. Quitting while feeling a sense of closure and contentment is hard. In other words, how can we quit without having feelings of regret? How can we live so that we can truly quit?

I think Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, described the three phases of life:

The first phase is where we are dependent, when we are young. We need our parents and society to nurture and feed us for us to grow.

The second phase is where we are interdependent, when we are in our adult phase. We contribute to society and enjoy its benefits.

The third phase is where we give back to society. This is when we put all of our excess wealth to growing our legacy.

These phases are not necessarily dependent on age, though they correlate. Meaning, while only a small minority of people past 50 years old get to the third phase, some are stuck in the first phase, depending on government aid and allowance from children and relatives.

I personally think, if we get to the third phase, we can quit anytime. Any day can be the last day of our lives and we would have lived a good life. We could have looked at ourselves in the mirror and said “you lived to your fullest and you gave back more to your society than society provided you with.”

So today’s episode will be based on getting to the third phase. I will take a page (literally) off Alex Charfen’s program The Billionaire Code. This page contains a table that describes the 9 stages of wealth, and how to get to one stage to the next.

[insert page]

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to share, download or follow this podcast on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts from. If you’d like my PDF copy of the table from The Billionaire Code by Alex Charfen, drop me an email with subject line Episode 13 to admin@theecomstandard.com

Isn’t it amazing if your work doesn’t have deadlines? It almost sounds fake. Honestly, there aren’t many jobs or positions people can take where there are completely no time obligations or deadlines at all. Every CEO has some form of deadline where he has to make company level decisions. Even Presidents of countries around the world have time obligations and deadlines.

Of course, the easy argument is retirement, or financial freedom. Both of which are still realistic goals to have. Most people get to retire but not many reach financial freedom. Even less reach financial freedom before retirement age.

In this episode we will examine how to progressively move away from time obligations and deadlines. I actually want to define time obligations and deadlines as restrictions imposed on by others, not by yourself. I think it’s actually good to give yourself personal obligations and deadlines - it keeps your brain and psychological health in a good place, and makes you move towards a goal with self-chosen levels of constraints. That usually activates creativity, and it guarantees growth.

So, if you’re working a job where you get paid by the hour, you have some obligation to spend a specified amount of time on a certain task, maybe at a certain place, all decided by your employer. Here are some ways to get out of the arrangement:

Of course, the end goal is to reach financial freedom. Again, legal disclaimer: this podcast is not financial advice in any way. The statements expressed are purely my opinions and is for entertainment purposes only. To reach financial freedom, we need to make sure our passive income exceeds our lifestyle expenditure. Go back to episode 5 if you’d like to go deeper into the 4 types of income to truly understand what’s passive income.

What happens when you don’t have any time constraints? If you go back to episode 3, where we visualised the “perfect day”, you’ll know that being on the beach the whole day is miserable. I would go crazy by the third day. Go back to your passion. Relive it. For me my passion is playing the piano, which you can find about more about in episode 7.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to share, download or follow this podcast on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts from. If you’d like the script I use to hire all my VAs and full-time staff overseas for free, drop me an email with subject line Episode 11 to admin@theecomstandard.com

In this episode I will explain why this is the most underrated statement of the mindset of a person who is truly free.

To start off, let’s be inclusive, and imaginative here. Don’t take this statement too literally. What this reflects is an attitude.

What is a luxury item? According to Investopedia, a luxury item is not necessary to live, but it is deemed highly desirable within a culture or society. Luxury items tend to be sensitive to a person's income or wealth, meaning that as wealth rises, so do purchases of luxury items.

You may be familiar with AP watches, Burberry scarfs, Cartier diamond necklaces, … there’s a luxury brand for every letter of the alphabet, you can find it on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Luxury_brands

Luxury items are a way for us to signal to the people around us that we’ve made it. In a later podcast, I will be doing weekly book reviews, and one book goes deep into modern biological theory - which basically says all of life have just 2 goals: survive and propagate. Nothing else matters, if you’re not going to survive or propagate. Everything people do is to achieve either or both of these goals. Even when people do crazy things to be remembered. Because being remembered is a way to “survive” in that your memory or identity survives the passage of time.

Why do people buy luxury items? Even though it’s overpriced, and you don’t need it intrinsically to live? It’s just to signal that if I can afford this, I have enough resources and capabilities to survive and propagate. The more extreme my wealth, the more I’m proving this. This is why Apple can charge such steep prices for their products. Because they have solidified themselves as a luxury brand. If I wear an Apple Watch, I’m signalling to all the ladies in the room that If you mate with me, the chances that our offspring will survive is much higher than the dude who uses a Pixel phone. No hate on Google, but if you don’t get my point, notice what happens at high school gatherings when people pull out their phones.

Let’s go back to the statement and examine the other part: Wear … for curiosity only - not trying to extract any value or function out of it.

This is essentially the mindset equivalent of “luxury”, or the other way round, you get it. Just like how you don’t actually extract any value or function out of luxury items, wearing your watch for curiosity only is the same: you’re not trying to use it in any way to survive. You’re just curious.

This is such a mindset to strive for: “mindset goals” anyone? This is when you’re not bound by society’s expectations. You’ve made it, but you’re so over your friends pressuring you into joining them with their next big purchase.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to share, download or follow this podcast on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts from. If you’re stuck in a day job, and want to win a free 30-minute call on how to start your own e-commerce business, email me with the subject line Episode 10 to admin@theecomstandard.com

I’m going to give you 3 quotes. If you’ve heard of them, this episode is for you. If you haven’t, you need this episode even more than those who have.

Whiny is interpreted as negative.

A circle of people that supports you not only makes the path to freedom enjoyable, it makes it more possible. How did I find out? I learnt it the hard way.

The strategy here, is to become the person who is on the path to freedom, and is in the company of those who are on the same path.

The tactics are in 3 steps: work on the self, let go of people not on the path, and join those on the path.

Work on self:

Letting go:

Joining:

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to share, download or follow this podcast on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts from. If you want a copy of the calendar, email me with the subject line Episode 9 to admin@theecomstandard.com

In episode 3, we went on an exercise to clarify what success means. Because, the clearer the vision, the more likely it would become reality. I had a list of 10 criteria, that I know if I’m doing those, the closer I am to success. Here’s what we covered so far:

I know I’m being successful when:

If I had to pick my favourite out of the 10, which 5 more are coming soon, this is my favourite because it oozes freedom.

Freedom is why I started my journey. It’s why we do what we do. We work really hard, get an MBA so that we can get a better job, get promoted, get a raise, invest here, buy a house there, and so on. So that we can one day be free. Free to do whatever we want, free do say yes to anything, and free to say no to anything.

Find out how you can disappear for several months and have no effect on your income in this episode.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, share, subscribe and follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from. If you want to find out how you can start your own e-commerce business without any product or coding skills, drop me an email with subject line Episode 8 to admin@theecomstandard.com

Notice how this statement does not talk about “following your passion”, or reach goals like “win an olympic medal” or “become a millionaire”. This statement instead specifies excitement as a condition, and double-checks that with a self-actualising term, “do my best work”.

Why shouldn’t we follow our passion? Why is “excitement” more important than “happiness”? And, how much does it matter to us that we are doing our “best work”?

I went through a couple of drafts, and thought that the best way to answer the above questions is with the my actual life story.

“If you could live anywhere, where would that be?” Sounds like an ice-breaking question. But most of us, especially our parents’ generation, are rooted to where we live now. The number one thing that limits a person’s mobility, is his job. As adults we spend most of our lives working, even more time is spent on work than with family. The more attractive, competitive, or crowded your city, the more hardworking you are, the more this tends to be true. In this episode, we will dive deep and see how it’s possible to uproot ourselves and embrace the digital nomad lifestyle.

Passive income … who wouldn’t want that right? Exactly what counts as passive income, and, is it really possible? In this episode we will discuss the different types of income, I’ll give you some ideas to increase your passive income, and how to cut your living expenses without compromising on your lifestyle.

In the previous episode, we looked at clarifying what success actually means when you make the transition from a postcard concept to a movie concept. I have a list of 10 criteria of achieving success, the first of which is this: If I can wake up and ask myself “what would I like to do today?”, I know I’m being successful.

Let’s go through each of them

Top 3 skills

So if you enjoyed this episode, and you’d like me to send you the book title and the exact page number, drop an email with subject Episode 4 to admin@theecomstandard.com