The concept of living a nomad lifestyle has pretty much been around since there were human beings. Until farming was invented they pretty much had to in order to survive (no citation, but that seems to make sense). Stay with me.
Over the last few hundred years or so, nomadic people have taken all kinds of names and connotations. From the classic ‘gypsy’ of Europe to the Jack Kerouac beatnik wanderer, hippies of the 70s, and on and on.
All of these people have two major things in common. The first is that they live their lives with a very high level of freedom. They’re unplugged, off the great, out of the ‘system’.
The second is that they were all pretty much dirt poor.
You want to travel the world and it’s 1950? Your only real choice is live humbly and find odd jobs or manual labor along your path to sustain yourself. You want a house, a family? Better cut that hair and get a real job son.
This is why the current generation of the world has the biggest opportunity in human history in front of them.
They can be truly free, AND live at the highest standards of modern society (should they wish to).
To me this is the most exciting possibility in existence. If you want to sit around the campfire and fire up the ole horse drawn wagon in the morning, go do it. But if the next week you feel like a luxurious penthouse in Hong Kong might be nice, you can do that too.
Before you had to trade your wealth in exchange for pure freedom. And a valid trade it was. Now you don’t have to gain your freedom by forfeiting the game of economics. You can gain your freedom in reasonable time/toil by beating the game.
So what’s changed?
The internet you say, and it would be the obvious choice. But it’s not enough to stop there, we aren’t just talking about being able to get your boss to agree to working remotely 3 days a week. We’re talking about totally unbridled, wandering, limitless freedom to do and see as you please.
So global connectivity is part of it. The other part is leverage.
Software gives us the gift of virtually unlimited leverage. 250 years ago if you wanted to do a million dollars worth of ‘work’ or ‘value’. It would take months, and the wrangling of hundreds or thousands of workers. You needed a big factory to ‘leverage’ those people’s labor.
Now you can stack up the same amount of value from a laptop with crumbs in all of the keyboards. You can Marshall limitless amounts of servers online to get your virtual tools in front of millions of people, or just 10. That is leverage, and that is the primary tool in the digital gypsy’s toolbox now.
By using large amounts of leverage, some strategic thinking, and a few years of pure work, we can build digital assets (companies that pay us without us having to run them) that can last for generations.
Imagine building a legitimate, software company that was so good that no one could really compete. You hired a CEO to replace yourself who not only ran the show, but grew the company for you, adapted to changing markets and on and on.
This is how we can build ‘passive’ income for decades. Not just a few months of bliss before our drop-shipping Shopify store falls apart due to Facebook ad prices, or Chinese copycat sites.
So what’s the difference between a legitimate asset and a ‘quick hustle’ for cash?
Assets:
-Have a unique advantage (your brand, your audience, your product) that competitors can’t easily replicate.
-Have a list of raving and satisfied customers (you can’t build a company on ripping people off).
-Have a team in place to push and grow the company without the founder always being the one on the gas pedal.
-Fully remote team and product/service delivery (not tied to a single country, or location to make sales).
-Something you actually enjoy working on (this is essential to get through the rough and boring patches during the growth phase).
If you can build something with the above, you’ve likely earned yourself years and years of income in a more ‘passive’ and sustainable way. I put passive in quotes because nothing truly is passive, but the above kind of company can grant you the ability to wander the world in style on your own terms. That’s the game with lifestyle business building, can we have complete freedom without opting out and being broke? I think yes, and thousands of other successful lifestyle entrepreneurs doing this already agree.
Sound good? Let’s get to it then.
