RPF-0020
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00:00:15.000 | Radical Personal Finance episode 20.
00:00:20.500 | In today's show a conversation with Jake DeSilis, author of Becoming an Entrepreneur,
00:00:27.200 | How to Find Freedom and Fulfillment as a Business Owner and host of the Voluntary Life podcast.
00:00:32.800 | So welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast for today.
00:00:52.000 | Today is Tuesday, July 15, 2014.
00:00:55.600 | And in today's show we're going to be talking about one of my favorite subjects
00:00:58.600 | and a subject that I feel is absolutely valuable to just about every aspect of financial planning,
00:01:04.200 | which is entrepreneurship.
00:01:06.100 | And I'm going to introduce you to one of my favorite podcasts that I enjoy listening to
00:01:11.500 | and the host of that podcast whose name is Jake DeSilis.
00:01:14.400 | Jake lives in the UK and he's with us on the line and we'll just get right into it.
00:01:18.100 | Jake, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast.
00:01:21.000 | Thanks Joshua, great to be chatting to you.
00:01:23.900 | So I don't want to sound too much like an overly adoring fan,
00:01:28.300 | but I do want to just tell you publicly and then tell the audience
00:01:30.800 | that I have thoroughly enjoyed the work that you have done through your podcast,
00:01:34.600 | through your website and then also through the book that you've recently written.
00:01:37.700 | And I am sure that it has not been easy to produce all the content that you have produced,
00:01:43.900 | but I just want to say thank you for that and I've really enjoyed it.
00:01:46.600 | So I appreciate all the work that you've done to produce the great content over the years.
00:01:50.400 | Awesome, that's great to hear. Thank you.
00:01:52.400 | So what I'd like to spend today doing is mainly talking about your book,
00:01:57.200 | which is called Becoming an Entrepreneur, How to Find Freedom and Fulfillment as a Business Owner.
00:02:02.200 | But before we get into that, and I hope to get into some specifics
00:02:05.500 | and talk about some of the ideas contained therein,
00:02:08.100 | could you give us just a quick background on yourself,
00:02:09.800 | a little bit of an introduction and a quick background on your story?
00:02:14.300 | Sure. Well, I'm from the UK and I did many things in my 20s before becoming an entrepreneur.
00:02:21.500 | I did a lot of postgraduate study, wasn't really sure what sort of career path to go into,
00:02:28.300 | didn't really even like the idea of a career path and working for somebody else.
00:02:32.900 | And I started a business using some of the things that I'd learned in postgraduate research about pedestrian flows.
00:02:41.300 | So I started my own consulting company that was advising on pedestrian movement
00:02:46.600 | and we were advising shopping centers and developers and built that company
00:02:52.600 | until it got to the point where I was able to sell it, got its profitability and then was able to sell it.
00:02:58.700 | And at that point, I basically quit the rat race and decided to focus on just doing other things that would bring me fulfillment.
00:03:07.100 | And part of those things has been learning about other ways that other people have quit the rat race.
00:03:12.300 | And that's really what my podcast, Voluntary Life, has covered.
00:03:16.200 | It's been about sort of the key benefits that I can see from entrepreneurship itself,
00:03:22.600 | for finding more freedom and fulfillment in your life.
00:03:25.600 | And also talking to other people who have pursued their own entrepreneurial ventures
00:03:31.100 | and found other ways to find ways to quit the rat race themselves.
00:03:35.600 | So that's what I do now. I'm kind of a perpetual traveler.
00:03:39.400 | We're in the UK again at the moment, but we spent most of the last two years abroad,
00:03:43.800 | mainly in Mexico and South America.
00:03:46.600 | And I'm now focusing on writing.
00:03:49.000 | So I've just published the book that you mentioned and I have another couple of books coming out soon.
00:03:53.900 | And yeah, just really enjoying this new phase in my life.
00:03:58.000 | I wasn't aware that you had new books coming out.
00:03:59.800 | What's the topic of your new books that you're working on going to be?
00:04:03.900 | Sorry, could you say that again?
00:04:04.800 | What's the topic of your new books that you're working on going to be?
00:04:07.400 | So I've got one that's just about to come out on a website called Liberty.me.
00:04:13.000 | And that is a guide for negotiation.
00:04:16.000 | It's a book all about negotiation.
00:04:17.500 | So this is just a short guide.
00:04:19.900 | And I'm also working on a book really about four ways to quit the rat race.
00:04:24.600 | So I think you've seen that presentation that I did and I'm writing that up.
00:04:28.700 | So that will be coming out as a book later this year as well.
00:04:31.700 | I have seen that presentation.
00:04:33.100 | I'll make sure I would encourage if anybody hasn't,
00:04:35.800 | I will link to it on your website or your YouTube video at least of it in the show notes
00:04:41.200 | because it is well worth discussing.
00:04:42.900 | And I like how in that presentation you pull together the different ideas
00:04:46.700 | and you bring together the four ways that you see to get out of the rat race.
00:04:51.400 | And those four ways are off the top of my head, entrepreneurship, extreme savings.
00:04:58.200 | What were your four ways that you categorized it?
00:05:00.700 | Yeah, so basically unjobbing is one of them.
00:05:05.700 | Extreme saving.
00:05:08.000 | Entrepreneurship in terms of getting a passive income business.
00:05:11.300 | And then selling a business.
00:05:12.700 | Those are kind of the four ways that I've seen from people that I've spoken to
00:05:17.400 | to find a way to get out of the nine to five and get more freedom.
00:05:20.500 | Yeah, that's exactly right.
00:05:21.900 | Now I remember the four categories.
00:05:24.000 | So you pursued in your story, it was number four, building a business and selling it.
00:05:28.800 | Yes, yeah, exactly.
00:05:30.800 | And so in my work as a financial planner over the years,
00:05:33.800 | one of the things that I have noticed is that in many ways people have very similar goals.
00:05:38.800 | It seems that most people desire to have more autonomy,
00:05:42.400 | more control over their life, more control over their schedule,
00:05:45.500 | more control over their direction, and also more financial freedom.
00:05:49.500 | And so one of the themes that I've noticed over the years is that in general
00:05:53.200 | the conversation about these topics goes to building financial freedom.
00:05:58.600 | And so the idea is, well, I need to build up enough savings
00:06:01.000 | so that I can quit the rat race and have enough money to live on a passive income source,
00:06:05.000 | with basically having enough savings to sustain my lifestyle.
00:06:09.800 | But I've observed and noticed that it seems to me,
00:06:12.400 | kind of one of the trends that I see,
00:06:13.900 | it seems to me that no one really ever quits the rat race.
00:06:16.500 | So right now, in this sense, no one ever stops working.
00:06:21.000 | And so right now you would consider yourself to be financially independent, right?
00:06:25.600 | And yet you are probably working a good number of hours per week on your writing projects,
00:06:32.600 | on your podcasting projects.
00:06:34.500 | You are being productive for a fairly decent number of hours per week.
00:06:38.400 | Is that a correct assumption?
00:06:40.800 | Yeah, and I mean, I think, you know, what I would say to that is that
00:06:46.100 | productivity itself brings me a huge amount of joy, as I think it does everyone.
00:06:50.900 | You know, we get fulfillment from being effective,
00:06:56.100 | from getting things done and from creating things and producing things.
00:07:01.600 | The problem, as I see it, is not doing stuff and being productive.
00:07:05.900 | It's when you have to work on things that you don't really believe in,
00:07:09.200 | that don't bring you fulfillment or satisfaction,
00:07:12.400 | or having to work with people who you find, you know,
00:07:15.600 | really unenjoyable to be around and so forth.
00:07:18.200 | So, yeah, I do lots and lots of stuff and I definitely see the opportunity
00:07:23.000 | that financial independence gives you.
00:07:24.600 | Not an opportunity to sort of sit on the sofa and watch DVDs,
00:07:30.100 | although I have definitely watched a lot of documentaries about the Roman Empire
00:07:35.500 | and who knows what else since I quit.
00:07:38.600 | But, you know, it's actually the opportunity to do whatever you love.
00:07:42.500 | You know, that's what life's all about,
00:07:44.400 | getting a chance to work on things that you feel truly passionate about.
00:07:48.200 | So, I'm a big fan of getting things done and being productive.
00:07:52.600 | But, you know, the question is having the opportunity to work on whatever's right for you.
00:07:57.200 | Yeah, and to me this seems to be the missing key that not enough people are talking about.
00:08:02.200 | Is that it's not so much that inactivity...
00:08:06.000 | So, the thing that I've shared in previous episodes of the show in my observation
00:08:09.800 | is that motivated, productive people are the ones who accumulate the resources to be able to retire.
00:08:16.000 | To be able to not have to work for money any longer if they want to.
00:08:19.400 | They're motivated, they're productive, they're disciplined, they're savers.
00:08:22.400 | They live on less than they make, they accumulate capital and financial resources
00:08:26.400 | and then they can deploy that capital to the point where they can be financially independent.
00:08:30.000 | But those types of people, it seems like they almost never quit.
00:08:34.000 | I did a show, I talked about Warren Buffet and Bill Gates
00:08:37.200 | and Mr. Marriott and all of these people that are multi-billionaires
00:08:42.400 | and they never quit because they get meaning and enjoyment out of the work that they do.
00:08:47.600 | On the other hand, there are millions of people throughout the world
00:08:52.200 | for whom work is drudgery, for whom work is toil and labor.
00:08:56.200 | And many of them, it seems, desperately want to quit the rat race.
00:09:00.000 | But they can't seem to, many of them, not all of them,
00:09:03.000 | but many of them can't seem to accumulate any resources to be able to do it.
00:09:09.000 | And so what I see is that in financial planning, we should add a whole other step.
00:09:13.000 | And the step that I see is that we should forget about the idea of accumulating capital,
00:09:19.000 | to only be able to live off of capital at the beginning.
00:09:23.000 | And we should first start with the idea of saying,
00:09:26.000 | how could I design a lifestyle that fits me,
00:09:30.000 | that allows me to have autonomy and self-control and do the things that I want to do?
00:09:34.000 | And that's probably the only real way to do that,
00:09:37.000 | is to take control over your destiny and to be an entrepreneur in some way.
00:09:40.000 | And so I feel like it's this rather obvious step that we should all be talking about,
00:09:46.000 | but for whatever reason, entrepreneurship is not valued in our society
00:09:50.000 | and people don't pursue that.
00:09:52.000 | So my question for you, A, do you agree with me?
00:09:55.000 | Has that been your experience?
00:09:56.000 | And B, why is it that we don't talk about entrepreneurship?
00:09:59.000 | Why is this not a business model or a financial planning model
00:10:02.000 | that's presented to people as a viable opportunity?
00:10:06.000 | Well, I definitely agree that entrepreneurship isn't talked about.
00:10:11.000 | I mean, one of the things that I mentioned in my book is that
00:10:13.000 | I didn't learn anything about entrepreneurship at school,
00:10:16.000 | and I don't think many people do.
00:10:19.000 | And in fact, quite the opposite.
00:10:22.000 | I think that part of what happens in terms of the way that we're all socialized,
00:10:27.000 | especially in school, is we are taught for over a decade
00:10:32.000 | by people who are lifelong employees,
00:10:35.000 | and we're given advice by career guidance counselors in schools,
00:10:38.000 | by people who are lifelong employees.
00:10:41.000 | And the whole design of the system of compulsory education is set up to,
00:10:47.000 | you know, basically put people--to create employees, basically.
00:10:52.000 | It's a factory for the production of employees.
00:10:54.000 | And so I think the funny thing about entrepreneurship is that
00:10:57.000 | even though it's the engine of economic growth,
00:10:59.000 | and even though it's absolutely essential to all of the great things that we enjoy
00:11:03.000 | in terms of our standard of living and the innovation that we have,
00:11:07.000 | and certainly it is respected still in our culture as well,
00:11:12.000 | but at the same time, it's actually something that people don't really get
00:11:16.000 | much of an insight into unless they're lucky enough to grow up amongst
00:11:20.000 | entrepreneurs and have contact with entrepreneurs.
00:11:23.000 | And in fact, you know, it's even worse than that because unfortunately
00:11:27.000 | popular culture often shows, insofar as entrepreneurships even get shown,
00:11:31.000 | which they don't very much, but when they are shown,
00:11:34.000 | they're typically like villains.
00:11:36.000 | You know, they're like evil characters who are trying to take over the world
00:11:39.000 | and do something dastardly, and they're often shown as being--
00:11:43.000 | if not evil geniuses, then they're kind of like miserly
00:11:49.000 | and not people with a lot of heart and so forth.
00:11:54.000 | So I think in general there's not a good basis for people to get an insight
00:12:01.000 | into the freedom that entrepreneurship provides,
00:12:03.000 | and people do get what I call employee conditioning.
00:12:07.000 | You know, you kind of get trained to be an employee,
00:12:10.000 | and consequently my experience was--and I think a lot of people have the same experience--
00:12:15.000 | I had to sort of deprogram myself to a certain degree of all of the prejudices
00:12:20.000 | about entrepreneurship and about business in general in order to kind of make the jump
00:12:25.000 | for myself and decide that I was going to start my own business and go for it.
00:12:31.000 | Do you think that the programming--and I'm curious.
00:12:35.000 | So you cite in your bibliography to your book, you cite John Taylor Gatto's book,
00:12:40.000 | The Underground History of American Education.
00:12:42.000 | And I've read that book and would encourage anybody who's interested in some of this history
00:12:47.000 | to go and read it.
00:12:48.000 | That book, it's available free online on his website,
00:12:51.000 | and if you'll just search you can find a PDF which is a little bit easier to read
00:12:54.000 | than how he's released it for sections on his website.
00:12:57.000 | But the book gives you some fascinating history on the American educational system,
00:13:02.000 | and you open one of your chapters--I can't remember which one it was--
00:13:05.000 | but you open one of your chapters with a quote from John Dewey--
00:13:09.000 | something along the lines of, "The primary goal of the education system
00:13:13.000 | is to create well-socialized people that will fit into the social order."
00:13:17.000 | That's my paraphrase of the quote.
00:13:18.000 | Yes.
00:13:19.000 | Have you been able to figure out, do you feel that this is just simply something that happened,
00:13:25.000 | or do you feel it was maybe more designed?
00:13:29.000 | For example, did the facts just develop over time in a natural way,
00:13:34.000 | or was it more conspiracy theory?
00:13:36.000 | That that seems to be the natural result of our education system,
00:13:39.000 | producing willing, obedient factory workers who aren't able to effectively exercise self-autonomy.
00:13:46.000 | What do you think at this point in your research?
00:13:48.000 | Well, I think certainly there are some people who are really explicit about it.
00:13:53.000 | The John Dewey quote that I quoted, he's very explicit.
00:13:57.000 | This is our job as teachers is to mold people to fit in with the social order.
00:14:02.000 | Which is the opposite of individuation.
00:14:06.000 | The idea that the teacher's job is to mold you to fit in with what's existing
00:14:12.000 | is very explicitly said by him, and there are other people who have made similar comments to that,
00:14:19.000 | and sort of educational luminaries have written about their ideology of education
00:14:26.000 | being to kind of create a more stable and passive workforce.
00:14:33.000 | However, I don't personally see it as vast conspiracy,
00:14:37.000 | in the sense that I don't think a lot of people who are involved in education
00:14:41.000 | have any motivation of that kind whatsoever.
00:14:43.000 | I think a lot of people who are in education are as much a product of that system
00:14:49.000 | as they are sort of perpetuating it.
00:14:52.000 | The teachers who are lifelong employees have no experience of entrepreneurship themselves,
00:15:00.000 | and consequently are in no position to provide any kind of grounding in it
00:15:04.000 | because that's an alien world to them.
00:15:06.000 | So I don't think they necessarily have some kind of hidden agenda,
00:15:11.000 | it's just so they're actually products of the same machine.
00:15:14.000 | And so I think it's kind of a mixture of both.
00:15:18.000 | Yeah, so that sounds, I'm glad to hear that,
00:15:22.000 | because it sounds like you've drawn a similar conclusion to what I've drawn,
00:15:25.000 | is that maybe there was some design in the beginning,
00:15:28.000 | but as with many things, maybe it's just simply developed organically on its own.
00:15:33.000 | And most of the people who are participating in the system,
00:15:36.000 | my brother-in-law is a public school teacher,
00:15:39.000 | and he has certainly not set out with this agenda,
00:15:41.000 | but yet you can often see the natural result,
00:15:44.000 | is that if you go through a lifetime of, and you've experienced this,
00:15:47.000 | I think you have a PhD, you've gone all the way through,
00:15:50.000 | and so if you go through a lifetime of schooling,
00:15:54.000 | whether primary education, secondary education, bachelor's degree, master's degree, PhD,
00:15:59.000 | in general, most of your teachers are employees.
00:16:03.000 | And so in general, the employee mindset is going to be what's taught to you.
00:16:07.000 | Yeah, I mean imagine what it would be like if instead of that,
00:16:11.000 | you went through 10 years of doing placements with entrepreneurs in startups.
00:16:19.000 | Imagine that you had like a work placement in a new internet startup,
00:16:24.000 | and then you went to some kind of 3D printing startup,
00:16:27.000 | and then you went and worked with this entrepreneur that was doing, I don't know,
00:16:30.000 | trade to Asia, and then you went to a mining company or something.
00:16:35.000 | Imagine what life experience you'd come out with if that was your experience.
00:16:40.000 | You'd be thinking like an entrepreneur because you'd be taught by entrepreneurs,
00:16:43.000 | and you probably wouldn't be very good at thinking like an employee.
00:16:47.000 | But it's not surprising if you get trained for 10 plus years,
00:16:51.000 | and often even 20 years if you go on to do a lot of further higher education,
00:16:56.000 | then it's not surprising that you're going to think like an employee,
00:16:59.000 | and you're going to see that as the natural order of things,
00:17:01.000 | and you're going to consider your career as being going to get a good job,
00:17:05.000 | the job being out there, your role being to go and find the job
00:17:09.000 | as opposed to the entrepreneur that goes and creates it,
00:17:12.000 | creates value where it doesn't exist before.
00:17:15.000 | In the employee mindset, you think about how am I going to get a good job,
00:17:20.000 | what do I need on my resume, and you go looking for pre-made jobs
00:17:25.000 | because that's what you've been taught basically.
00:17:29.000 | Yeah. I've found this in conversations with friends and clients sometimes
00:17:33.000 | who are looking for jobs. I have found it frustrating
00:17:36.000 | because a lot of times people will say to me,
00:17:39.000 | "Well, I'm thinking about, I'm trying to find a job."
00:17:41.000 | "Well, what do you want to do?"
00:17:42.000 | "Well, I'm not sure. It's just whatever I can find."
00:17:44.000 | And coming from an entrepreneurial background,
00:17:48.000 | largely not necessarily, my parents weren't entrepreneurs,
00:17:50.000 | I wasn't necessarily trained in that way,
00:17:52.000 | but I've spent a lot of time reading biographies of entrepreneurs
00:17:56.000 | and learning from other entrepreneurs' story
00:17:58.000 | and always been fascinated by entrepreneurship.
00:18:01.000 | I've always had a list of 100 or 200 ideas that I think would be fun to pursue.
00:18:07.000 | And it's everything from literally opening a hot dog cart on the side of the road
00:18:11.000 | to some big, grandiose ideas, including this show.
00:18:16.000 | And it's amazing the mindset change,
00:18:21.000 | because it's startling to me when I talk with someone
00:18:24.000 | and they say, "I don't know what I want to do."
00:18:26.000 | And I think, "Haven't you observed something in the marketplace
00:18:29.000 | that's really annoyed you and thought, 'Man, that should be better?'"
00:18:32.000 | "Haven't you thought about how you could do this?"
00:18:34.000 | But it's an entrepreneurial mindset.
00:18:36.000 | And I have a nine-month-old son,
00:18:38.000 | and one thing I think a lot about is,
00:18:40.000 | "How can I effectively train my son both to learn the skills of an employee,
00:18:45.000 | such that he does have the skill to be able to work with others effectively
00:18:50.000 | as part of a team and contribute to an overall purpose
00:18:53.000 | that he may not have originally designed,
00:18:55.000 | but also how do I train him to have the skills of an entrepreneur
00:18:59.000 | so that he can bring that entrepreneurial mindset to any job that he may have
00:19:03.000 | and then also have the experience of hopefully building
00:19:06.000 | various entrepreneurial ventures over his lifetime?"
00:19:09.000 | And it's something that's really important to me
00:19:11.000 | is how to integrate that into his educational system.
00:19:15.000 | Yeah. Well, I think a few thoughts come up from what you said,
00:19:20.000 | and one of them is that I think a key aspect of that mindset
00:19:24.000 | is those ideas you talked about, you know, the hundred ideas,
00:19:28.000 | you know, from everything from a hot dog stand to everything else.
00:19:31.000 | One of the key things I think that's really important
00:19:34.000 | is to also be able to live with the idea that 99 of those ideas are not going to work.
00:19:41.000 | Yeah.
00:19:42.000 | And that that's fine. You know, that's absolutely fine.
00:19:44.000 | There's a huge amount of trial and error and adjustment
00:19:47.000 | and going back to the drawing board and, I think, changing your mind,
00:19:50.000 | finding a different way forward involved in entrepreneurship,
00:19:53.000 | which, you know, is sort of part of the process,
00:19:56.000 | and it can be demoralizing, and it is sort of something--
00:20:00.000 | it's a psychological challenge as well,
00:20:02.000 | but I think that that's part of what's necessary in order to really enjoy the process
00:20:07.000 | is to be at peace with the idea that you can experiment.
00:20:11.000 | It's okay to go and come up with 10 ideas and then scratch 9 of them.
00:20:15.000 | And, you know, at the same time, there is also the perseverance aspects
00:20:20.000 | of when you do find stuff that you're able to get some real traction with,
00:20:24.000 | of just keeping going even though it is exhausting and it does take a long time.
00:20:29.000 | But the other thing that you mentioned is about your son
00:20:32.000 | and, you know, the skills of being able to survive and thrive as an employee as well.
00:20:38.000 | And I think the thing that really crosses over and that we all need for both of those
00:20:45.000 | is win-win negotiation.
00:20:47.000 | I mean, that's actually one of the reasons why I wrote this guide about it
00:20:51.000 | is that I think this is another thing that we don't get really towards in school,
00:20:58.000 | especially because there isn't a negotiation between--
00:21:01.000 | you know, there's a teacher at the front of the room,
00:21:03.000 | and there's a whole bunch of kids sitting there,
00:21:05.000 | and their job is to kind of absorb the knowledge or whatever of the teacher.
00:21:10.000 | It's not a negotiation-type environment.
00:21:13.000 | And, you know, the key for entrepreneurship as well as for any--
00:21:17.000 | working together on any project is just honing your ability to find win-win outcomes
00:21:24.000 | and find ways to negotiate that, you know, benefits you and benefits the other person.
00:21:30.000 | So having the empathy to know what the other person needs
00:21:32.000 | and finding a way of getting your needs met and the other person,
00:21:35.000 | that's so vital in all of our relationships, in our personal relationships.
00:21:39.000 | And if we're working as an employee--and, of course, if we're entrepreneurs as well.
00:21:45.000 | Jake, if you were designing an educational plan--
00:21:49.000 | and you can take this either in two directions or incorporate them together--
00:21:53.000 | if you were designing an educational plan either for somebody who is an adult,
00:21:59.000 | maybe perhaps a young person finished with their formal education, finished with college,
00:22:04.000 | and they're sitting thinking, "How can I develop an--
00:22:07.000 | "how can I realize that the education that I've had so far or that I've been given so far
00:22:12.000 | "has not really served me as well as I would like it to be and I'd like to enhance that?"
00:22:16.000 | Or if you were designing kind of a system of learning for a child
00:22:21.000 | to impart some of the lessons that you wanted them to learn,
00:22:26.000 | that you wanted them to have the opportunity to discover,
00:22:29.000 | and you weren't going to be constrained by the ideas that are in the formalized school system
00:22:36.000 | that they will have in some version or another,
00:22:39.000 | how would you design an educational system that works?
00:22:42.000 | What are some of your ideas in that area of life?
00:22:45.000 | Well, it's actually something that--I mean, we don't have kids yet,
00:22:49.000 | but this is definitely going to be a real practical issue if and when we do have kids.
00:22:54.000 | And what I think the fundamental thing for me, the fundamental question,
00:23:00.000 | is the difference between something that's voluntary and compulsory.
00:23:04.000 | So, you know, my partner and I have spent the last couple of years
00:23:10.000 | traveling around South America, and we have gone to Spanish schools to learn Spanish.
00:23:16.000 | And those have been--you know, they've been like learning centers.
00:23:21.000 | They've been sort of, you know, for adults, but they've been schools, basically,
00:23:24.000 | where you go in classrooms and you learn and so forth.
00:23:26.000 | Now, I voluntarily put myself in that environment.
00:23:30.000 | I want to learn Spanish.
00:23:32.000 | So I have been sitting in classes, and some of them were great.
00:23:35.000 | We went to this awesome one in Buenos Aires,
00:23:38.000 | and we also went to some other ones in--we went to one in Mexico
00:23:41.000 | that we just didn't carry on with because it wasn't very good.
00:23:44.000 | So we stopped that.
00:23:46.000 | But the key thing is we chose to do it, and I think with education,
00:23:52.000 | kids are desperate to learn and fascinated by stuff, but they want to learn stuff.
00:23:58.000 | And the huge difference is if you try and force them to learn stuff
00:24:02.000 | or you basically sell the learning to them in a way that they actually really want to take it in.
00:24:10.000 | And so for me, the key distinction in any education system is is it compulsory or is it voluntary?
00:24:18.000 | The moment that education is voluntary, then the onus goes on to the teacher
00:24:22.000 | to find a way to make the subject interesting and fascinating and exciting enough
00:24:27.000 | that the student is going to want to be part of that.
00:24:31.000 | The student is going to be desperate to say, "I really want to take part in this class or this group," and so forth.
00:24:37.000 | And we live in a world now where there's so much education online.
00:24:40.000 | I mean, you can go and watch any course in MIT online,
00:24:44.000 | and there's all of these paid and free courses for learning any piece of software or anything else,
00:24:50.000 | and all of that stuff is voluntary.
00:24:52.000 | And there are people just consuming massive amounts of education because they love it
00:24:56.000 | and they want to learn.
00:24:58.000 | And for me and for everyone else who's sat, you know, bored to tears in school
00:25:03.000 | where you're forced to sit in a subject and the teacher doesn't really have to make the lesson interesting
00:25:10.000 | because you've got to be there anyway, that's a huge difference.
00:25:14.000 | So for me, there's really only one principle, and everything else follows from that,
00:25:18.000 | and that is the principle that I think education should be voluntary.
00:25:22.000 | And if it is voluntary, then the onus becomes on you as a parent or you as a teacher to think,
00:25:28.000 | "I really want my kid to learn to read.
00:25:31.000 | How am I going to find a way for this to be something they're going to be interested in doing?
00:25:34.000 | I really want them to get basic maths.
00:25:36.000 | How am I going to find a way for this to be something that they're going to really want to get into?"
00:25:40.000 | And that's hard because there are some boring processes in every learning process.
00:25:46.000 | It's uncomfortable sometimes, and if you want to learn a musical instrument,
00:25:50.000 | you've got to sit and practice, and it can be boring,
00:25:53.000 | and that's also something that kids are not necessarily that good at
00:25:56.000 | because they may not have so much of an ability to see long-term consequences.
00:26:01.000 | So that puts, I think, the teacher in a position of thinking,
00:26:05.000 | "How can I make this something that's fun, and how can I make this something that's rewarding
00:26:10.000 | to get through those less interesting or more boring parts
00:26:14.000 | and get on to the stuff that's going to be even more rewarding?"
00:26:17.000 | I think a complementary theme you're drawing between education and entrepreneurship
00:26:23.000 | is the idea of selling, and I agree with you emphatically on everything that you just said.
00:26:28.000 | And what's interesting to me is I think that instead of forcing,
00:26:32.000 | which is essentially what you mean by compulsory,
00:26:35.000 | forcing somebody to do something purely because you can,
00:26:41.000 | that if we focused more on selling people on the ideas of doing something,
00:26:46.000 | then it would be much more effective.
00:26:47.000 | But in our culture in the U.S., and I would imagine it's probably similar there in the U.K.,
00:26:52.000 | that selling is often something that is not respected, it's not admired.
00:26:56.000 | A salesperson is on the lower rung of the societal hierarchy.
00:27:01.000 | And yet, all of us, to be effective in life, we need to be masterful salespeople,
00:27:06.000 | whether that is to sell our ideas in the marketplace,
00:27:09.000 | whether that's to sell people on the political ideas that we have,
00:27:12.000 | whether it's to sell our children on loving learning,
00:27:15.000 | whether it's to sell our students on the value of studying the subject,
00:27:19.000 | or to sell our spouses on why they should be our spouses,
00:27:24.000 | or to sell others on being friends.
00:27:26.000 | Selling is such a valuable skill, and yet we have, in many ways,
00:27:30.000 | because you have a compulsory system, then we don't necessarily,
00:27:35.000 | great teachers, I think, do.
00:27:38.000 | They sell their students on the value of learning the subject.
00:27:42.000 | And some of the developments that I see is that it seems that in the current era,
00:27:46.000 | we need to make a transition from trying to just impart knowledge
00:27:51.000 | to trying to impart wisdom and skills.
00:27:54.000 | In that, what seems very apparent to me is that in an age when you have Google on your hip,
00:27:59.000 | or connected to you literally within a couple of feet at just about all times,
00:28:03.000 | the need to spend a huge amount of time imparting facts and figures
00:28:08.000 | is significantly diminished as compared to the need of having skills
00:28:13.000 | for how to utilize that information.
00:28:16.000 | So whether it's negotiation, I would rather scrap half of, I don't know,
00:28:21.000 | I'd rather scrap half of physical science and institute that with negotiation.
00:28:26.000 | Because what's going to do a better, what's going to be of more value in a student's life
00:28:30.000 | is to learn skills of negotiation that they can apply in every single day,
00:28:34.000 | or to memorize some facts and figures about squid and what the substance of the ink that they produce is.
00:28:40.000 | So I feel, the cool thing is I see it happening across the board.
00:28:44.000 | I see this revolution coming because it can't be stamped out.
00:28:47.000 | And I think a decade or two from now that the educational system
00:28:51.000 | is going to look dramatically different than it does today.
00:28:53.000 | And I'm excited about being part of that, hopefully with a financial education,
00:28:56.000 | providing it all for free that people can access,
00:28:59.000 | if I can succeed in inspiring them and motivating them to absorb the information.
00:29:05.000 | Yeah. Yeah, I mean, in terms of what you said about selling and school and so forth,
00:29:11.000 | I totally agree.
00:29:13.000 | And this is another aspect of, in a sense, the kind of complete insulation
00:29:19.000 | that people have from the entrepreneurial world,
00:29:21.000 | because you don't get any exposure to the absolute vital necessity of selling
00:29:27.000 | as part of win-win negotiation in all relationships in life when you're in school.
00:29:30.000 | You just don't get exposed to that. Teachers don't need to sell.
00:29:33.000 | And I think you're right that intuitively good teachers sell,
00:29:36.000 | just in terms of trying to find ways of persuading students.
00:29:39.000 | They're good at it, but not because of the way that compulsory education is set up,
00:29:43.000 | but just because they're good at it.
00:29:45.000 | But when you look at the way that selling is kind of portrayed in popular culture and so forth,
00:29:52.000 | it is portrayed as if it's immoral and if it's kind of somehow ripping people off
00:29:57.000 | when selling is actually just the active side of win-win negotiation.
00:30:02.000 | Selling is the process of persuading somebody of the benefits of what you have to offer
00:30:07.000 | so that you can also make a trade with them and both of you can benefit.
00:30:12.000 | And that's what selling really means.
00:30:14.000 | Of course, there are people who are shady characters who use selling to try and pursue fraud or so forth,
00:30:19.000 | but that's not inherent in the nature of what selling is.
00:30:22.000 | And the only other thing I wanted to say in terms of thinking about what you said about school
00:30:27.000 | and not learning how to sell, the other thing that's really interesting,
00:30:30.000 | especially in terms of the subject of your podcast, is people get no exposure to finance either,
00:30:35.000 | and certainly no exposure to what it takes to create and fund a venture
00:30:42.000 | and what your options might be for creatively funding a venture
00:30:46.000 | and how you might think about what your capital requirements are,
00:30:49.000 | whether you really need as much money as you think you need and so forth.
00:30:53.000 | These are all questions that you kind of suddenly find yourself facing if you want to become an entrepreneur.
00:30:58.000 | And there's been no analogous learning process in school that gives you training for that.
00:31:04.000 | Jake, I want to close with one last concept,
00:31:08.000 | and I'd like you to talk about this and then just give an opportunity to share any other information
00:31:14.000 | that you want people to have on you and your current projects.
00:31:17.000 | I hope that at some point in the future I can have you back.
00:31:19.000 | I know we can't go on for hours and hours today,
00:31:22.000 | but I feel like you and I could probably talk for a couple dozen hours
00:31:27.000 | and not run out of things to talk about and sharpen each other on.
00:31:30.000 | But you have this idea that somehow that entrepreneurship is inherently moral
00:31:37.000 | and that it somehow is good, that entrepreneurship, that business,
00:31:41.000 | that it's somehow inherently good.
00:31:44.000 | Now, when I look at entrepreneurship,
00:31:47.000 | and playing a little bit of a devil's advocate here to set you up for the question,
00:31:50.000 | but when I look at entrepreneurship, I look and say,
00:31:53.000 | "Well, Walmart's not good. Look, they're defrauding people.
00:31:56.000 | They're treating their workers badly.
00:32:01.000 | They're ripping off people. They're producing bad products.
00:32:04.000 | Insert company here, whatever this company is."
00:32:07.000 | How on earth do you feel that entrepreneurship and this idea of business building
00:32:12.000 | and capitalism is somehow a benefit for society?
00:32:15.000 | Defend that idea.
00:32:17.000 | Well, I think people often look to big corporations like Walmart and so forth
00:32:24.000 | when they think about entrepreneurship.
00:32:26.000 | I think it's easier to think of it in terms of the personal level.
00:32:31.000 | What are you going to do to make money or to survive
00:32:34.000 | or sustain yourself in some way in your own life?
00:32:37.000 | And what are you going to do to make the world better
00:32:41.000 | and provide something that you think is going to be an improvement?
00:32:45.000 | And the way that I see it, the best that anybody can do with their own lives,
00:32:53.000 | for themselves and for others, is to be creative,
00:32:57.000 | to produce things that make other people's lives better.
00:33:00.000 | And that is fundamentally what entrepreneurship is.
00:33:04.000 | That's what I understand entrepreneurship to be.
00:33:07.000 | When you are an entrepreneur, you're part of a peaceful revolution.
00:33:11.000 | Your role is to bring new value into the world by making a new product
00:33:16.000 | or providing a new service.
00:33:18.000 | And it doesn't have to be completely different from everything.
00:33:20.000 | It might just be that you realize that there's a particular service in your town
00:33:24.000 | that everyone who provides that service is really unfriendly,
00:33:27.000 | and you find a way to provide that service in a really friendly way
00:33:31.000 | and give people more joy in their lives.
00:33:34.000 | It can be as simple as that, but that improves the world
00:33:37.000 | and makes the world a better place.
00:33:39.000 | And we know that because the only way that you're going to survive as an entrepreneur
00:33:45.000 | is if you're able to provide so much value that people want to pay you for it.
00:33:49.000 | People are willing to give you value in return,
00:33:51.000 | and in doing so, they benefit and you benefit.
00:33:55.000 | So I see it in a very, very personal terms in terms of what can you as an individual do
00:34:01.000 | to make the world a better place.
00:34:03.000 | And I see it also as vital that in doing so, of course, we all have to stay in touch
00:34:08.000 | with our own ethical values and with our own ethics
00:34:12.000 | and act in alignment with our ethics.
00:34:15.000 | And I think that's key.
00:34:16.000 | And I'm sure there are many entrepreneurs who have gained influence and power
00:34:21.000 | and have been able to exert influence in ways that are unethical,
00:34:25.000 | either by finding ways to influence legislation,
00:34:30.000 | to give them competitive advantage over their competitors
00:34:36.000 | by creating tariff barriers and all these kinds of things.
00:34:40.000 | There's lots of ways that people can do unethical things,
00:34:43.000 | but that's not inherent in entrepreneurship.
00:34:45.000 | Entrepreneurship is the process of providing, bringing new value into the world,
00:34:50.000 | making the world better for other people, and doing so purely through persuasion,
00:34:54.000 | purely through your ability to find out what--empathize with other people,
00:34:58.000 | find out what they need and provide to them in often ways that they never even realized
00:35:04.000 | that they had that need.
00:35:05.000 | And when I look at the world and see all the things that I think are truly astounding,
00:35:11.000 | what we have created as humans, especially since the Industrial Revolution,
00:35:16.000 | what we've been able to do to transform our former universal poverty
00:35:21.000 | into a process of development that, you know, there is still poverty,
00:35:25.000 | but it's so much better than it was 300 years ago.
00:35:28.000 | It's incredible.
00:35:29.000 | And all of those advances that we've had in terms of health, in terms of hygiene,
00:35:34.000 | in terms of longevity, in terms of our quality of life, the buildings that we live in,
00:35:38.000 | the cities that we live in, the transport systems that we use,
00:35:41.000 | these are all the results of entrepreneurs looking at problems that people are facing
00:35:46.000 | and finding a way to create new value and make the world better.
00:35:51.000 | And that's what I see as the real positive power of entrepreneurship.
00:35:56.000 | That's beautifully said.
00:35:58.000 | If you're not sold on the idea of entrepreneurship after that, then I don't know how to help.
00:36:04.000 | But I agree that's an excellent example of doing a good sales job.
00:36:08.000 | If you're interested in more, read Jake's book.
00:36:10.000 | It is highly recommended.
00:36:13.000 | I read it last night and this morning, and I really, really enjoyed it.
00:36:17.000 | Jake, how would you like people to connect with you?
00:36:19.000 | Where can they find you online?
00:36:21.000 | What would be the best place for people to get in touch with you?
00:36:24.000 | People can find me at thevoluntarylife.com, and you can contact me through that site.
00:36:29.000 | There's also social media and so forth there, and the podcast is available there.
00:36:34.000 | You can add it to your podcast catcher, or you can find it on iTunes as well, thevoluntarylife.com.
00:36:42.000 | And you can also find links to the book on the tab marked "Books."
00:36:46.000 | Thanks for being with us, Jake.
00:36:48.000 | Thanks, Joshua. It was a pleasure chatting to you.
00:36:50.000 | So that's my interview with Jake.
00:36:54.000 | I hope that you enjoyed the content.
00:36:56.000 | I really enjoyed talking with him.
00:36:57.000 | I've enjoyed over the years just listening to his podcast,
00:37:00.000 | and I would encourage you to go and listen to it.
00:37:03.000 | I think you'll find some of the ideas and the concepts that he discusses to be unique and interesting.
00:37:08.000 | The neat thing about podcasting is, with Jake being from the UK, I've heard his voice so much.
00:37:14.000 | And the really interesting thing about podcasting is that when I'm reading his book, I hear his voice in my head.
00:37:20.000 | I hear his British pronunciations of entrepreneurship,
00:37:24.000 | and it's kind of a neat thing to be really familiar with somebody's voice.
00:37:30.000 | In a sense, it's weird, but it's really neat to be familiar with somebody's voice to the extent that you can just simply hear them talking to you as you read their book.
00:37:37.000 | So I really heartily recommend it.
00:37:39.000 | I am planning to record a separate weekend book review.
00:37:43.000 | I've had an idea for a series of book reviews on shorter overviews and commentary on some books that I've enjoyed reading.
00:37:52.000 | And so I plan to record that as a separate episode.
00:37:56.000 | And these will be occasional.
00:37:57.000 | The ideas will be weekend book reviews.
00:37:59.000 | These will be occasional, not on any fixed schedule.
00:38:01.000 | But as I read books and I find them interesting and want to recommend them,
00:38:04.000 | I'll record them as a separate audio review that you'll be able to listen to.
00:38:08.000 | And I'll try to share some of the major ideas from the book, not in a summary,
00:38:13.000 | but just some of the major ideas that I think can be helpful so that if you're enjoying the audio podcast and you don't quite have the time to read,
00:38:20.000 | then you can get the gist of the content so that you can have some good ideas.
00:38:24.000 | And if a book sounds interesting, you'll have a good start to go and read it.
00:38:27.000 | But I strongly recommend his book.
00:38:29.000 | I read it completely and highlighted it extensively.
00:38:32.000 | In the show notes, I am going to be listing a link to my highlights.
00:38:37.000 | So check the show notes.
00:38:39.000 | If you're interested in reading my highlights from the Kindle version, then you'll find that in the show notes,
00:38:43.000 | and you can kind of get an idea of some of the content that he shares in the show.
00:38:49.000 | And feel free, please, go and listen to his podcast.
00:38:53.000 | Go and check out some of the work that he's done.
00:38:55.000 | I'm excited and looking forward to some of the additional content that he's creating in the future on entrepreneurship.
00:39:00.000 | And then in the show notes, also, watch the speech that he gave on the four means of achieving financial freedom.
00:39:06.000 | I think he does a good job of synthesizing some of the different ways that can be -- where financial freedom can be achieved.
00:39:13.000 | And then notice the themes in his work.
00:39:16.000 | Is that -- and notice the theme and the value of entrepreneurship.
00:39:20.000 | And I want to read one introduction here from -- one passage from the introduction to this book that is right from chapter one.
00:39:29.000 | And to me, this is, again, kind of the obvious statement that we don't talk about.
00:39:38.000 | Many people, as I've talked with them about financial planning, really what they desire is freedom.
00:39:44.000 | And so for them, the idea of retirement is an idea of freedom.
00:39:48.000 | The freedom to not have to go and work a job that they hate.
00:39:51.000 | The freedom to not have to associate with coworkers they don't enjoy.
00:39:54.000 | The freedom to not have to spend hours on the highway sitting in traffic.
00:39:58.000 | And that can be accomplished through savings and frugality and investing.
00:40:02.000 | It can be.
00:40:03.000 | And I'm working on that because I believe that one of the most ultimate levels of freedom is the ability to be a capitalist.
00:40:10.000 | To be able to sit back and live based upon the production from the capital that you've accumulated, from the financial capital that you've accumulated.
00:40:17.000 | But in the beginning of your life, you're born with a large amount of human capital.
00:40:22.000 | Not quite unlimited, but essentially unlimited.
00:40:25.000 | You have an amazing ability to do almost anything that you want to do.
00:40:29.000 | That's human capital.
00:40:30.000 | Now, you've got to transform that human capital into financial capital.
00:40:34.000 | And then when you have enough financial capital, then you're not required to expend your human capital to support your lifestyle.
00:40:40.000 | But the neat thing about that is that there's not only one form of financial capital called savings.
00:40:46.000 | There's another form of financial capital which is income.
00:40:49.000 | And that income can be earned in any number of interesting ways.
00:40:52.000 | So, I want to read this first section from his book.
00:40:57.000 | It's six paragraphs from chapter one.
00:40:59.000 | And chapter one is entitled "Breaking Free."
00:41:01.000 | It opens with a quote.
00:41:03.000 | "Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work.
00:41:07.000 | And in that work, does what he wants to do."
00:41:11.000 | R.G. Collingwood.
00:41:12.000 | "Entrepreneurship provides the best opportunity for anyone to experience the three most fulfilling intrinsic motivations in life.
00:41:20.000 | Purpose, mastery, and autonomy.
00:41:24.000 | Purpose is the motivation that comes from having an important reason for whatever you do.
00:41:29.000 | It is the conviction that what you're doing matters.
00:41:32.000 | Your work means something significant to you.
00:41:34.000 | You have the satisfaction of knowing that you are doing something useful with your life and that your work has value in the world.
00:41:41.000 | Mastery is the motivation that comes from a desire to achieve a high level of skill, control, and self-expression through what you do.
00:41:48.000 | It is the sense that you're involved in work that enables you to gain a greater sense of effectiveness and consequently greater self-esteem.
00:41:56.000 | Everything you do when starting your own business is a chance at mastery.
00:42:00.000 | The entrepreneurial skills that I found hardest to master were also those that became the most rewarding.
00:42:05.000 | Learning how to sell, learning how to create a working enterprise, and learning how to make a profit.
00:42:10.000 | Autonomy is the motivation that comes from wanting the freedom to do what you think is best with your life, not what anyone else thinks.
00:42:18.000 | Entrepreneurship is the only opportunity to seek financial freedom.
00:42:22.000 | The freedom not to work on anything that you don't enjoy, that is open to anyone.
00:42:28.000 | This is the most genuine sense of freedom that you can experience.
00:42:32.000 | As an entrepreneur, you alone determine your goals.
00:42:35.000 | You have the opportunity to master your own challenges.
00:42:38.000 | You have the maximum freedom possible in what you do.
00:42:41.000 | Your own efforts lead to your own achievements and rewards.
00:42:45.000 | Entrepreneurship is an opportunity to live a purposeful life without regrets.
00:42:50.000 | It is the freest and most self-excu-- and most fulfilling way of life I know.
00:42:56.000 | Hopefully you're inspired to go and read Jake's book.
00:42:59.000 | I highly recommend it.
00:43:00.000 | He talks a lot about fear.
00:43:02.000 | He talks a lot about conditioning, about the things where we're scared to fail and where that comes from and how to overcome those fears.
00:43:08.000 | And he talks a lot about his practical experience in entrepreneurship.
00:43:15.000 | And he is certainly, in many ways, an inspiration.
00:43:19.000 | He worked hard.
00:43:20.000 | He took risk in business, built a business, sold it, kind of achieved his number.
00:43:25.000 | And now he's working on projects that are important to him, and he's doing them of his own volition.
00:43:32.000 | But yet that's what the original entrepreneurial venture was in the beginning.
00:43:37.000 | So notice also again that he is continuing to be productive.
00:43:40.000 | This myth that we play for the rest of our life once we reach a certain financial freedom, I believe it's just that.
00:43:49.000 | It's that as humans, I really feel we're driven to be productive.
00:43:53.000 | That's our show for today.
00:43:55.000 | Again, today being July 15, 2014.
00:43:57.000 | I hope you enjoyed it.
00:43:58.000 | Thank you for listening.
00:43:59.000 | Thank you for being a part of this show.
00:44:01.000 | I trust that you've enjoyed the content.
00:44:03.000 | If you have any feedback for me, I'd love to hear it.
00:44:05.000 | I'm learning to be a better interviewer, and that's only going to come with more practice as I continue working at it.
00:44:12.000 | But I really enjoy doing these things, and I hope that you enjoy listening.
00:44:15.000 | I would be thrilled if you have any feedback for me.
00:44:17.000 | Send me an email at joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.
00:44:21.000 | Today's show notes are all found at radicalpersonalfinance.com/20.
00:44:27.000 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/20 for today for episode 20.
00:44:31.000 | So any show notes that you're interested in are all going to be found there.
00:44:36.000 | If you've enjoyed the content, may I ask a favor?
00:44:38.000 | Take a moment.
00:44:39.000 | Hit pause on your player.
00:44:41.000 | Hit pause on your computer.
00:44:43.000 | And would you please leave me a review in iTunes?
00:44:45.000 | It could be good, bad, indifferent.
00:44:47.000 | You can say that the content was great.
00:44:48.000 | You can say that it was terrible.
00:44:49.000 | I don't mind.
00:44:50.000 | I'll read that information.
00:44:51.000 | I'll take it back in.
00:44:52.000 | But that would really help us.
00:44:53.000 | The way that the iTunes rankings and all of the podcatching rankings work is based upon reviews.
00:44:57.000 | So the more reviews, the more exposure, the more exposure, the more great guests I can bring on.
00:45:02.000 | And so it's all kind of a virtuous cycle.
00:45:04.000 | If you would do that and then send me an email letting me know that you have done that, I would thoroughly appreciate it.
00:45:09.000 | And I will thank you personally with a gift of some kind to thank you personally for doing that.
00:45:13.000 | It would just mean the world to me.
00:45:15.000 | So email me at joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com and consider leaving a review.
00:45:19.000 | I would thoroughly appreciate it.
00:45:20.000 | In the meantime, have an excellent Tuesday.
00:45:23.000 | [Music]
00:45:52.000 | [Music]
00:46:06.000 | Go out and live free as you define it.
00:46:09.000 | The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new.
00:46:14.000 | Whether you're making a traditional roasted turkey or spicy turkey tacos, your go-to shrimp cocktail, or your first Cajun risotto,
00:46:22.000 | Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace your traditions.
00:46:26.000 | Ralph's. Fresh for Everyone.
00:46:28.000 | Choose from a great selection of digital coupons and use them up to five times in one transaction.
00:46:33.000 | Check our app for details.
00:46:35.000 | Ralph's. Fresh for Everyone.
00:46:37.000 | everyone.
00:46:37.920 | you