imagine i approach you right now and say i want 40 hours of your life every week for 47 years. during that time you have to do exactly as i say.

as a kindness, i’ll give you 4 weeks to yourself each year. so that’s 90,240 hours in total.

here’s what you get in return: if you make it to the end of those 47 years i’ll set you free. any wear and tear on your body, mind and spirit is forfeit—you’ll just have to deal with that. also, i won’t guarantee you’ll make it to the finish line, nor will i guarantee how long you’ll live into your freedom.

sound like a good deal?

this is the typical societal model of retirement. though you may have identified one important part of the deal that i missed out: i didn’t offer to pay you for your time.

but getting paid isn’t a good enough reason to stay in a job you hate. in 2023 there’s a much easier and better way to support yourself financially (by which you can earn way more than employers or clients are paying anyway.)

in his bestseller The 4 Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss encouraged readers to take several ​“mini retirements”​ throughout life. but this book was published 16 years ago.

these days you can do even better: you can retire yourself within just 12 months (i did it in 8 and i’m surrounded by peers who’ve done it too.) i’m going to tell you exactly how in 11 steps. but first i’m going to tell you why…

old-age retirement is the ultimate scam

when i was little i knew in my gut that society’s model for life was f¥cked.

it was clear as day to me that everything i was being forced to do was contrived (made up; fabricated).

but worse, when i asked why i had to follow all those rules no-one could tell me!

dozens of time each day i asked “why?”

“why can’t i play with that?”

“why do i have to share my toys with my annoying little sister?”

“why do i have to go to bed while you get to stay up?”

and then the big one…

“why do i have to go to school?”

before i even landed there i felt like my whole life was a series of “shoulds”, “oughts” and “musts”. boy was i in for a rude awakening…

perhaps it was unusual for a child to seek reasoning. i doubt i was able to articulate my requests well. but my parents do report that i would ask them “why?” to the limit of their patience.

nonetheless, without reason i was thrown into that hell realm where i was forced to line up, shut up and suppress all curiosity and wonder about the world.

and so i was sacrificed to the social machine that was tuned for millennia to optimize my productivity at the expense of my wellbeing.

the older i got, the tighter the rules got. and the more the prescribed path through life was presented as the only path through life.

every day i was bullied into narrowing down my dreams. i tried to resist, but i was outnumbered and outgunned. so i learned it was easier to keep my questions to myself. i can’t express to you how helpless and numb that made me feel.

“he who controls the past controls the future. he who controls the present controls the past.”

you may be familiar with this quote from the legendary novel 1984 by George Orwell.

the book, published in 1949, describes a fictional dystopia that’s shockingly similar to our real world today.

the above quote is central to the evil political group known as “the party”, which alters records and revises history to maintain control over its citizens.

in school, at a time before the internet, i was fed a controlled narrative about the past:

🔹 everyone had to struggle through life
🔹 everyone who did unusual things was a special exception, not to be followed as an example
🔹 everyone was born unworthy and had to beat themselves into a person of value
🔹 everyone got a chance at freedom 60 years in the future, but only if they worked hard paid into a pension

then i was told that narrative determined my future:

🔹 i too would have to struggle if i wanted to make it through life
🔹 i wasn’t allowed to do anything unusual
🔹 i had to deny my nature and do as i was told if i wanted to survive (doubly so if i wanted to thrive)
🔹 i had to sacrifice my best years of life for a chance at freedom in my worst

man, if i’d had the internet as it exists today back then. i’d have been fact-checking everything those motherf¥ckers told me and telling them exactly where they were wrong.

but i didn’t.

all i had was my intuition, and i held onto it for dear life.

that 4th point always seemed the most ridiculous to me. “why are you all doing this?” i’d think to myself, watching my miserable teachers show up to scream and shout at us all day. “you hate this. you don’t want to be here. why are you here?

of course, there was still a whole lot i didn’t understand.

the ol’ bait and switch

no-one demonstrated the brokenness of the retirement model better than old Mr. Bending (RIP).

Mr. Bending was my “business studies” teacher. (i place business studies in quotes because i left his class after 2 years with no idea how business worked.)

Mr. Bending arrived at school before anyone else and he left after everyone else. we legitimately wondered if he lived on-site.

he’d been at that one school his entire career. he lived and breathed that sh!thole. and he loved nothing better than rules. i remember him parking his massive body in front of a glass door one time just before some friends and i reached it.

“OFF-LIMITS!” Mr. Bending bellowed as if trying to alert the whole f¥cking county. his face transitioned to a deep shade of red—and back to normal again—inside that one short announcement.

“why?” we asked, trying to get a peek around his fat belly at what was going on in the corridor behind him. it was deserted. nothing out-of-the-ordinary in sight.

“OFF-LIMITS!” Mr. Bending repeated. he was the perfect schoolteacher.

2 months after retirement old Mr. Bending died of a heart attack.

here’s the crazy thing: whilst he was alive and bellowing he really believed he was setting an example for us to follow.

the “hedonic treadmill”

i knew it was a bad idea to follow Mr. Bending’s example because he was f¥cked.

🔹red in the face screaming at kids all day
🔹constantly tired
🔹never smiling

and intuitively it’s the most obvious thing in the world that if you follow someone’s advice you’ll end up like them.

of course i couldn’t have articulated that at the time… but i knew.

i’d learn later that my teachers were trapped in the same twisted societal machine they were trying to kick me into. as average earners at the turn of the millennium they weren’t just running but sprinting on that “hedonic treadmill”:

🔹 they hated their job but were desperate to keep up with expectations
🔹 they used coping mechanisms to get through the day (food, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, entertainment)
🔹 they fell into that other trap of having kids before they’d figured out how to be happy themselves

i figured all this out going back into schools as a visiting music teacher through my 20’s. i spoke with schoolteachers just like mine (except these were my own age). they didn’t try to hide the fact they were overworked, underpaid and desperate for alternatives.

and the treadmill analogy is fitting for one more reason: it has no finish line. these people were all in: they’d been to university and qualified as teachers. the only alternative they could see was to find another school and hope things were better there. (i didn’t enjoy telling them that every school i visited was exactly the same.)

having seen the schoolteacher’s reality from the other side i was able to look back and confirm my suspicions that the ones i encountered in childhood were all deeply troubled.

how sick it was that they advised youngsters on how to live life when they themselves were barely hanging on.

Icarus’ flight up the corporate ladder

so the schoolteachers’ cases were pretty sad, but what about people who get paid better? that makes it all worthwhile right?

in 2018, Deloitte surveyed 1000 full-time U.S. professionals and found that “77 percent of respondents say they have experienced employee burnout at their current job, with more than half citing more than one occurrence.”​¹​

and we all know the higher someone climbs in their profession, the more responsibilities are placed on them. sooner or later they end up just like Icarus, flying too close to the sun, burning out and crashing to the ground.

my schoolteachers never said a word about this. they just kept telling me altitude was a good thing.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”- Jiddu Krishnamurti

still, somehow it didn’t matter how much water they tried to pour on my creative fire, the embers stayed faintly glowing…

when your best efforts only get you disrespect

when i was 8 my little sister took up ballroom dance. i wanted nothing to do with it, but my mum made me go and collect my sister from the studio from time to time.

eventually one of the teachers spotted the opportunity. she was desperately short of boys in her classes and she wanted more.

that teacher gave me something i didn’t know i was longing for: an opportunity to develop skill in something.

cut to: 8 years later i’m 7-time British champion.

but this was an evenings-and-weekends thing. none of the effort i put in counted anywhere else. in fact, all i got for it at school was bullying. i even received thinly veiled insults from teachers.

and so again culture swung its misguided axe.

why was football (soccer) cool but ballroom dance lame?

why did studying religious superstitions from foreign cultures earn me credit while studying a real dance form with deep roots in my nation’s history not?

still, somehow, the embers of my creative fire kept glowing.

halfway through my time as a dancer i took up drums. this earned me more respect among my peers but made me an enemy of the teachers.

at least music was a certified subject, right? yes, but my hours and hours and hours of drumming practice meant almost nothing in my exams. i was even teaching casually already because the teacher the school hired refused to teach myself and other students real tunes. i was picking up his slack but i earned nothing.

on my final day of secondary (high) school my music teacher, a highly capable concert pianist, was feeling friendly. he asked if i’d teach him something on the drums.

i showed him a basic pattern called a paradiddle (beginner stuff). he gave it a shot and remarked, “oh, that’s actually quite difficult… er, sorry i gave you such a hard time all these years!”

glad you figured it out Mr. Smith. hopefully you weren’t quite so ignorant for the remainder of your sad career.

still, somehow, the embers of my creative fire kept glowing…

when your best efforts hurt you

following school i struggled through a career as a musician. this was the best idea i had on how to live on my own terms. yes, i’d avoided employment, but only to find a different set of chains around my ankles.

i was working twice as hard as my peers for half the money. and it seemed for a while the trade was worth it: i was getting to do something creative, right?

but after over a decade of professional work i realized that the more high-profile the gigs were, the less creative freedom i had.

more and more i was just playing what other people wanted me to play. and they were specific.

and all the while my travel schedule, the unsociable hours, the bad habits i’d formed on the kit were taking their toll. ​(i wrote last week on how i dealt with all this.)​

the short version is my pain led me to two life-saving disciplines…

2 disciplines that saved my life

the first i encountered was Alexander Technique, specifically as taught by a brilliant organization called the Interactive Teaching Method.

Alexander Technique is a deep rabbit hole, but its big benefit is to stop you doing things in harmful ways.

i signed up to train as a teacher. this included a lot of educational theory. finally i got confirmation from renowned experts on what i’d felt about my experiences with my schoolteachers. they really were going about things in completely the wrong way.

i was fascinated by this work. i poured my heart and soul into it. but guess what? this didn’t count either.

society had no idea what Alexander Technique even was, let alone how much it could help them. this meant most of the teachers in the organization had other jobs. they were still in the trap.

this organization also had some archaic rules around social media. and if i couldn’t share about what i was learning online i had no idea how i’d make it work as a career.

so i’d fixed my pain and leveled up my personal development ten-fold, but i was no better off in terms of livelihood.

a year into that training i’d met my first mindfulness teacher. later, he guided me through my first experience of teaching mindfulness and encouraged me to take on more students. this was the most valuable thing i’d ever learned and the most valuable thing i’d ever shared. but it was also, as that teacher framed it, the single worst prospect in terms of making a living.

that teacher forbade that any money should change hands between teacher and student. he was an old school Buddhist who thought somehow we’d be able to establish ancient Indian economic practices in the modern West.

i tried to teach for donations. but as i’ve written about elsewhere—and as you can probably guess—it didn’t work at all.

so to recap, i’d seen that the typical way of living presented by my schoolteachers was a terrible idea. i’d learned dance, music, Alexander Technique and now mindfulness to a very high level and found that for all the value in these disciplines, none of them counted. none of it them were given the respect they deserved. and this was all based on arbitrary cultural values which, as far as i could tell, had never been thoroughly examined by anyone.

i was done.

i realized that if all this rich experience i’d gained was ever going to count, i was going to have to make it count.

how i freetired myself in 8 months

i remember looking at the blue circle on the map in my Google Ads account. i was advertising my local music tuition business to around 100,000 people.

“this is nothing compared to the numbers i could reach online” i thought.

i considered teaching drums online, but why would i want to do that when i’d been literally saving people’s lives with mindfulness?

there was only one path before me: i was going to go online, share the synthesis of all i’d learned throughout my life and forget anyone who had a problem with that.

but how?

i learned of a consensus among business publications that serving a narrow niche was more profitable than ever.​²​

i’d started an X (Twitter) account and was slowly figuring out how it all worked. then i came across ​Dan Koe.​

Dan was disrupting the whole game. instead of encouraging his audience to serve a narrow niche, he takes things one step further. he says you are the niche. but what the hell does that mean?

the digital frontier

the scale of the internet enables a totally new way of doing business.

all i had to do was learn how to package my existing knowledge for social media, then deliver it to people in the position i was 1 year, 2 years, 5 years prior. and because of the sheer numbers of people on the internet, this would bring me an endless stream of people to help.

next, i’d learn exactly how to help them by creating massively valuable products and services at no-brainer price points. and voila: i’d be making an ethical living helping people in the most impactful way i could.

it sounded too good to be true. but after i joined Dan’s cohort course i started seeing more and more ordinary people like me making it happen.

in his now-legendary web 1.0 article, Kevin Kelly wrote—

“To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.”

this was written in the infancy of the creator economy. it was true then, but it’s so much easier now.

20 years ago you’d have had to find your 1000 people in a local area. but now you only need 1 in Madrid, 5 in Tennessee, 12 in Sydney, etc.

this was it. i’d found the platform on which to build what i’d been looking for my whole life. i was finally able to recognize that now-popular Japanese concept of ikigai:

self-investment, self-investment, self-investment

i was still recovering from the $20,000 i’d dropped on my Alexander Technique training, but i scraped together another $800 for Dan’s cohort and dove in.

i woke at 4am to study before work.

i wrote content in scraps of time between appointments.

i made new connections online when i got home.

for months at a time my wife was patient and supportive. (love you baby.)

i learned how to write for social media, optimized my profile, set up this newsletter, built a website for it, made dozens of new friends, developed systems and much more.

eventually i started to get signals from my growing audience about how i might be able to help them on a deeper level. that signal led me to develop a ​mindfulness cohort course​.

the next learning curve was on how to let people know about this thing. i followed Dan’s process to the letter and in April 2023 twelve students signed up and got incredible results. through the outreach i did at that time i also connected with 3 long-term one-to-one students who i still work with today.

i couldn’t believe it but i’d effectively retired myself at age 36.

don’t you have to be old to retire?

if i had a billion dollars in the bank i’d still do exactly what i’m doing every day.

getting paid for it just means i don’t have to wait till i’m 65.

​Dr. Riley Moynes gave a popular TED talk​ teaching his “4 phases of retirement”:

1. honeymoon: initially, retirees relish freedom, pursuing hobbies or travel.
2. big decision: reality sets in. people confront issues like finances, health, or relocating.
3. contentment: adjustment leads to a new equilibrium where retirees find satisfaction in a quieter life.
4. reflection: the last phase is introspective, contemplating life’s meaning and legacy.

when i saw this i realized i’d destroyed the whole model:

1. i didn’t need a honeymoon because i’d not sold my soul to the corporate devil.
2. i don’t need a reality check because a) what i’m doing is my financial security, b) i’m young enough to still be healthy and c) i can work from anywhere in the world.
3. because my work is aligned with my core values i’m in perfect equilibrium and satisfaction
4. for the same reason i know exactly what my life’s meaning and legacy is (and i get to fulfill it every day)

what’s more, i’m on a way faster track to actual financial freedom here than i ever was in my previous career. (i’m about to buy my first home and finally get my wife a dog.)

one last word about those schoolteachers of mine: they could never have seen this coming. but looking back it’s as if i knew something better than they were offering lay in my future. the disservice they did me was in trying to close me down to the possibility of a better future. if old Mr. Bending could see me now…

what am i saying—he wouldn’t get it.

anyway, it’s time to finally stop trading your hours for dollars. instead i want you to start trading value for freedom. i want you to tear down the house of cards society built for you and rebuild it—this time in your own design.

but where does meditation fit into all this?

your 1-year retirement plan (in 11 steps)

step 1: get quiet

TIMEFRAME: 1 WEEK

don’t worry: you don’t need to reach some profound state of deep meditative concentration. you just need to create a little space and quiet so you can hear what’s going on in your heart.

here’s how:

run this practice daily for 1 week to get comfortable. then keep it going the whole year and bring it into every moment of life as soon as you can. the clarity and effectiveness that comes of this is what enabled me to retire myself so quickly.

if you need more guidance on the mindfulness part specifically, good news: i’m not going anywhere.

step 2: identify your core values

TIMEFRAME: 1 WEEK

now you’re going to make your meditation more contemplative and include some journaling.

you should be familiar enough with the meditation practice in step 1 by now to include a gentle inquiry.

once you’re feeling quiet and calm, ask yourself “what do i most care about?”

resist the temptation to search for definitive answers. just sit with the question and see what comes.

once you come out of your meditation, grab a pen and paper or your preferred writing device (avoid distractions) and consider these prompts for journaling:

1. what do i care most about? (be prepared for this answer to change throughout the week.)
2. what do i tend to do when i’m well-rested and have a lot of time on my hands?
3. what do i hate?
4. what patterns can i detect in my behaviour over the past weeks, months, years? what do these tell me about what i care about?
5. what would i happily do every day for the rest of my life?

step 3: design your contribution

TIMEFRAME: 1 WEEK

by now you should have a reasonable idea of what you care most about.

important note: this can change.

i’m not asking you to predict the future. i’m just asking you to put down your best answers to these big questions right now.

the beauty of a personal brand—which is what you’re about to start building—is that it’s about you. and as a human being, you change. you can pivot at any time.

from here on your meditation practice will be as it was in week 1.

but this week your journaling prompts are going to change:

1. what’s the one way i’d most like to change someone else’s life?
2. what would be the simplest way to do that?
3. what would be the easiest way to lead them from where i was 1/5/10 years ago to where i am now?

for me this was all about mindfulness. when i let go of the limiting belief that i couldn’t create a win/win business around mindfulness, the floodgates opened and ideas started pouring out.

literally anything you know can have value to someone else. there are people making a living online selling virtual real estate, summarizing other people’s social media profiles and giving digital hugs. it really is wild out here.

this whole thing only gets easier if you have expertise in something that can be coached, consulted on or produced for clients. (e.g. music production, marketing, graphic design.)

steps 4 & 5: set up shop and attract your first 1000 followers

TIMEFRAME: 13 WEEKS

unless you already have an audience elsewhere, i strongly recommend starting on X (Twitter). here’s why:

🔹 text-based means it’s quick to produce content and the success of your content is based on your ideas rather than something more superficial🔹 you can put out as much content as you like (not the case on other platforms)🔹 the community is amazing (as long as you’re not there to talk about celebrities or politics)

here’s a massive guide from my friend Clint on how to get started (you may need to sign up for an account before you can see the full guide):

as you’ll see, this guide contains valuable info for later in your journey too. bookmark it for reference.

your climb from 0 to 1000 followers is the slowest growth you’ll experience. people are just more likely to follow someone the more followers they have (it’s called “social proof”).

you’ll feel like you’re shouting into the void at first. my number one tip for this phase is to make friends. not only will you be able to boost one another’s morale but you’ll actually help one another grow.

step 6: share your deeper insights

TIMEFRAME: 3 MONTHS

social media algorithms are not the place to share your unedited philosophical thoughts. i’m choosing my words carefully here: you definitely can share philosophical thoughts, but they need to be easily digestible and they need to be immediately beneficial to your reader.

of the hundreds of lessons i’ve taken from my mentor Dan, there’s one i adhere to above all. i have it on a post-it note that’s in my line of sight every time i sit at my desk. it reads:

PAINS. AND. F¥CKING. BENEFITS!

every piece of content you create—on or off social media—should speak to a pain your reader is experiencing or a benefit they want (or both).

i learned this the hard way.

when i signed up for Twitter i already knew very well how powerful mindfulness is. i’d seen it saves dozens of lives already. but some of my readers had never even heard the word “mindfulness”.

it’s my job to educate them. to do that, i first need to get their attention. to do that, i need to speak about pains and benefits. and when i’m on social media, i need to do so in ways that don’t demand too much thinking from them.

but in this format, my newsletter, i get to enjoy going deeper with you. a lot of what i’m saying here would bomb on social media because it requires context and features nuance.

your newsletter has another super important function: it collects email addresses.

if Elon goes to Mars tomorrow and shuts down X i lose my audience there. but if you’ve subscribed to my newsletter, i can still stay in touch with you.

this is why every established creator strongly advises to build your email list ASAP.

that said, the 0-1000 follower journey on X is enough of a learning curve by itself. and you won’t gain many email subs during this stretch anyway.

there’s no single correct order in which to do all this, but i recommend beginning your newsletter at the 1000 follower mark if not before.

regarding platform, i chose ConvertKit for a number of reasons but there are plenty of articles out there on the pros and cons of each.

regarding what to write in your newsletter, here’s Dan himself outlining his process (which is what i’m following as i write this issue to you now):

again, you may need to be signed up in order to see the whole thread.

step 7: create your “minimum viable offer”

TIMEFRAME: 1 MONTH

a huge limiting belief among creators is that they need to have 100,000 followers before they can start earning a living online.

not the case.

here’s a ​newsletter from Justin Welsh​ that outlines the process of creating your first offering.

it covers some of the profile setup stuff from a different angle—a good opportunity to revise what you did earlier.

if all this feels overwhelming, lean on your mindfulness practice. what we call “overwhelm” is really just a bunch of sensations. accept those sensations as they are. let them come; let them go. then take your next step.

step 8: prove you can help

TIMEFRAME: 1 MONTH

one thing Justin didn’t touch on in his newsletter above is the possibility of serving people for free at first.

this is a powerful step, especially if you’re someone who’s never done something like this before. you will absolutely be able to find people who will take your service for free, then give you feedback and maybe even testimonials. (testimonials are a massive jackpot, by the way. you saying you can help people is one thing. someone else saying you already helped them is another.)

these people might just be fellow creators: peers who are on the same journey. you can scratch each other’s backs with this (which is a strong example of the kinds of win/win arrangements that are part of the fabric of the X/Twitter community).

use feedback to improve your offer and use testimonials to make it attractive to the people who are about to pay you what it’s worth…

step 9: find your first customers

TIMEFRAME: 1 MONTH

it’s finally time to get paid. decide on a price that reflects the value you’ve given people, then follow this process to make your first sales:

(note: sales is not sleazy. sometimes sleazy people do sales but we’re way past old stereotypes of used car dealers in 2023. if you have preconceptions about sales, throw them out. you’re here to help people, but you won’t be able to do so unless you can communicate to them that you can. that’s all sales is.)

1. DM people who comment on your posts, follow you, or like something you wrote (in that order). look out especially for people who seem like they could use some assistance.
2. continue the conversation. first confirm that they are indeed struggling with something you can help with and then dig deeper to find out exactly how you can help. don’t be shy about telling them you’ve already worked with other people on the same issue/s.
3. if it looks like you can be of service, suggest meeting on a video call. for this part of the process i recommend reading ​this article​ by Justin Scott.

i’ve greatly simplified the process here but it’s enough to get you started. the rabbit hole always goes deeper so, of course, go ahead and broaden out your research on all 11 steps of this guide.

some people you meet will be good fits for your service, others simply won’t need it. don’t force anything, and always recommend someone else’s service if they’d be able to help your prospect better than you can.

step 10: scale

TIMEFRAME: 1 MONTH

once you’ve got 1 client you have a proven process you can repeat, improve and repeat again.

now’s the time to consider: how many clients would you need to be able to quit your current job?

do the reps to make it happen. expect setbacks. bust right through them with your mindfulness practice to make this step work.

step 11: retire yourself

TIMEFRAME: 1 MONTH

as soon as you feel secure (maybe a little sooner than that) it’s time to make your transition and join the creator economy full time.

never again will you have to do anything that's not aligned with your core values.

what a victory.

i was fortunate in that i was self-employed in my previous career, so i was able to gradually scale things back before cutting ties completely. your situation may well be different. only you can decide when the time is right.

but i’ll give you the same advice Dan gave me: be bold. the number and size of opportunities out here on the digital frontier is greater than any of us can conceive.

if you need help through this process—or you just want to move through it as quickly as possible—reply to this email and i’ll get right back to you.

and never forget: the world needs your specific cocktail of knowledge, expertise and wisdom. your experience of life is entirely unique, and that alone makes it valuable.

this newsletter represents a different way of thinking. certainly none of our schoolteachers or parents could’ve predicted this amazing new way of life. but if i can do it talking about something as niche as mindfulness, you can do it too.

and you deserve it. we all do.

win/win FTW,
dg 💙