In the first, I chat to my old coach James O’Halloran about ‘Founding not CEO-ing‘ and what it means to try to find product market fit with a huge vision versus finding balance in life. There’s a long version coming soon with a delve into Ayahuasca and more:

In the second, I hear a pitch from a travel company and struggle to get a grip on the problem they’re trying to solve:

Elon Musk, claims entrepreneurship is like, “eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.” Not exactly the way I’d choose to spend my weekdays. 

So much of the prevailing narrative focuses on ‘how to get rich’ and/or ‘how to build the next unicorn’ (aka how to get rich) – not about what entrepreneurship means for ‘normal’ entrepreneurs and why do it if you’re not building the next world-dominating business. It’s a story of superheroes: Gates, Jobs, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg are extraordinarily intelligent, privileged white-males who attended the best schools, who also have superhuman work ethics and got supremely lucky. They are the extreme exception, creating idols which, much like in sports, most people cannot emulate.

For first-time founders, the motivation to begin is often misattributed – entrepreneurship has become wrongly glamourised. Many believe entrepreneurship is a way to be in control of one’s own destiny, to become rich, and to ‘make the world a better place’. Each of these are potentially possible, but sometimes the opposite is true. In a WhatsApp group recently, a couple of successful entrepreneurs joked that they were founders because of ‘the glamour’, precisely because those in the know understand that this sentiment is so laughable.

So why become one? Why continue?

I could talk about all the things being a founder is not – a good way to become wealthy, freeing, glamorous and so on. Or what it is in reality – lonely, tough, stressful etc. Yet instead of disappearing down these rabbit holes, I want to focus on the ‘why’ – why be an entrepreneur? As much so I can pin the answers over my own door or computer screen, so that when I don’t build the next Facebook, I know why I did it.

1. Creation

This morning, under coronavirus lockdown, without leaving home – I woke up in a bed in a warm house, between comfortable cotton sheets, ran, meditated using an app, showered, drank a coffee, read a book, listened to some music, ate porridge. Now I sit here, at my computer. Almost everything that I’ve interacted with is the product of a someone else’s effort and creation, and a business. The running shoes, the asphalt I pounded upon… even the ingested porridge involved suppliers, farmers, transport, different countries, retailers and hundreds of invisible hands. 

I’ve probably interacted with thousands of different businesses and their products already today, from toilet roll to the news (perhaps these aren’t that far apart). I’m privy to thousands of peoples’ efforts and creations everywhere I look. 

The reason why entrepreneurship is magical, to me, is because every one of these products started with someone having a ‘what if’ moment. The paint on my walls are a product of thousands of different peoples’ thought, dedication, innovation and so on. Yet I’ve never even really considered the evolution of paint before, even when watching it dry. Sure, I’d rather look at a tree and wonder at the majesty of nature’s creation, but I can’t create one myself – so entrepreneurship is my own canvas or kiln. 

These ‘what if’ moments people have had, have then been executed and actualised. Someone has acted on an impulse to solve a problem and dedicate themselves to that. The tastes, comforts, heat, smells and sensations that we take for granted have been brought to us by the industry and bravery of another, usually wanting to solve something in the world that doesn’t quite work, or isn’t good enough. The world becomes better through these invisible hands.  

Like writing, painting, music – entrepreneurship is about creation. Of taking something that doesn’t exist and making it alive. To start a business is to give birth to something that in some way ‘lives’ independent of its founders. Some founders like their businesses to be in their likeness, others recognise that starting a business is to create something much bigger than themselves.

2. Change

In the excellent film, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ the protagonist is shown the impact of his life by seeing his town and community as if he had never existed. He sees the tendrils of his own life’s impact, and how different the world would be without him. Therapists often prescribe the film to people who suffer depression. 

Starting a business changes things forever. Let’s take the first business I started – Blue Ventures. Whilst I was only there at the beginning – for the first ~3 years of its creation and have been one of perhaps 500 people who’ve made it what it is – it wouldn’t exist without me. I was the person who took the idea and gave birth to it. Therefore my involvement was a catalyst for change. A number of babies have been born, relationships started, people have died and hundreds of thousands of peoples’ lives in Africa and beyond have changed a little or a lot indirectly as a result of that initiation. 

Whilst I don’t claim credit for the organisation’s success, it’s humbling to think of those ~3 years and the ripples of change that have occurred from that founding. Through the businesses and initiatives I’ve been involved with – like Tenner for example – the ability to impact people’s lives and create change is palpable. The world has changed because of me. Whilst it’s not unique to businesses – a piece of music, politician, therapist, friendship all create change – a business is often a significant creative act that changes the world in some small way. There is some ego in here, but that can be healthy or unhealthy depending on its actualisation. There is a lot that is broken in the world which could do with being changed. Many businesses do not do good, but a business is one of the most effective tools for change that we have.

3. Learning

I never learned much by being told I had to learn something because it might be useful, or being taught theory. I wish I could, but it’s the way I’m wired. I learn when confronted with something, preferably tangibly so. I joke that I learned more about business in the first year of running one than I did in 5 years of undergraduate and graduate studies – but it’s true. It is why studying entrepreneurship is mostly a less effective learning mechanism than doing it.

Starting a business requires quick and constant learning – it creates a rolling syllabus that, whilst daunting, forces the entrepreneur to learn at high speed and then practice that learning in real life, embedding it quicker than via any other methodology I’ve come across.

Whilst compound interest is one of the wonders of the world, starting businesses in different sectors does enable broad learning and problem solving. My own ventures – in marine conservation, social enterprise, environmental recruitment, big data and tech, travel and so on have resulted in an excuse to sate my curiosity and learn about a wide range of issues and skills in many different countries and cultures. I’ve learned fastest and with the most hunger and joy through entrepreneurship, regardless of the outcome of the businesses.

4. Alive

Entrepreneurship gets you close to the action. It makes you feel alive. It involves actually doing things with immediacy, rather than working on something remotely related or theoretical. In Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly she quotes Roosevelt: 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” 

In being an entrepreneur, there’s a palpable sense of being in the arena, of being part of the action. The rollercoaster is great – the highs and lows extreme, but once you’ve tasted that action and risk of failure, it’s hard to go back. Said another way – through these extremes, you feel more alive.

5. Connection

Although related to the feeling of aliveness, entrepreneurship is also about connection. When you create a business it brings people together – as employees, customers, stakeholders and so on. Like any relationship, a co-founding team or team-mates draw people together in ways that test those individuals. Co-founders, myself included, sometimes fall out with their partners, or teams. Yet like any romantic relationship, we are usually richer for having had those intense, deep and challenging relationships with others. It is through these relationships that I have learned about myself. Whilst I choose to be a ‘Founder not CEO’, and I enjoy working on things as an individual, you cannot avoid working closely with people. I find working on things together with people a great way to connect. 

Being a CEO or founder is lonely – the connection is often not reciprocated, or maintained. Yet because of the extremes, the connective tissue that is formed seems stronger than in many other areas and fosters deep camaraderie. 

—

I’ve not mentioned, or even come close to mentioning, many of the usual explicit or tacit reasons for becoming an entrepreneur: to make money, achieve, gain status or power. To those that believe starting a business is about those – good luck. I’ve known and seen the hollowness of chasing those ‘whys’. For me, the above 5 whys are the reason why I keep working to help others build businesses when I don’t have to.

In my last article I discussed why I think portfolio entrepreneurship should be more prevalent. Below I have included some of the theory behind portfolio entrepreneurship and my views, or unanswered questions for those who expressed interest.

Embracing portfolio entrepreneurship: 

• Regardless of intention and the prevailing narrative, over 50% of founders are replaced as CEOs when their companies grow to any kind of size. Given a statistically disproportionate number of founders believe they will be successful, I’d also posit that ~90% of founders don’t believe they will be the ones replaced. (Read the excellent Founder’s Dilemma for more info on founder misbeliefs). What you are founding and why you are founding has a huge impact on whether you’re still the founder even a few years down the line. What if those entrepreneurs starting businesses recognised and planned for their natural life-cycle? How would that change the way startups work? I think many founders would actually be relieved. The relentlessness of entrepreneurship is one of the most daunting aspects for existing entrepreneurs. 

• Most startups fail and many projects within a startup get canned. Corona has wiped startups out in two weeks. Therefore most startups involve a HUGE amount of wasted time, effort and resource. If we can couple experienced entrepreneurs with those starting for the first time – which the literature claims results in a much higher probability of success – this could have a gargantuan knock-on effect within society. Anecdotally, most successful entrepreneurs I know have benefited significantly from the input of more experienced entrepreneurs. It is one of the reasons why I’m creating a fund, called Ventures Together, which uses scouts (experienced operators) as investors here in the EU. 

• The most successful entrepreneurs in the world have all been portfolio and/or serial entrepreneurs – Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Stelios Haji-ioannou, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Oprah Winfrey. However, resources and brand go a long way to help create new, so perhaps everyone would be a multiple-time entrepreneur if they had access to the brand or money? 

• Even entrepreneurs who’ve stuck to one company tend to become portfolio entrepreneurs if that company becomes hugely successful – by producing multiple companies within their company – Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, James Dyson, the Google founders. Again this might be due to resources and opportunity. 

• Therefore entrepreneurs tend to continue to be entrepreneurs throughout their career. Entrepreneurship is addictive, noted a few of the academic journals. Perhaps the biggest constraint to portfolio entrepreneurship is not desire, but the resources to do so and once you become successful then your entrepreneurial ambitions are easier to fund? 

• Where do portfolio entrepreneurs ‘get off’? If a business starts to work, do they step back or remain as an NED? If a business ends up in crisis, does it drag them in so that they can only focus on a single thing? It’s unclear where the journey starts or stops and how best to get the most out of a founder.

• As I talk about portfolio entrepreneurship with people, more founders come out of the woodwork as having started a business on the side, or been involved in the creation of, but not the running of, a business. As a friend noted recently – it’s part of just ‘being in business, hustle and opportunity’ that means that most people are portfolio entrepreneurs if they’re interested in business. Often this happened quietly, without others necessarily knowing about it. 

Why Portfolio Entrepreneurship is good:

• The academic literature claims there are significant advantages of portfolio entrepreneurship. On an individual level, these include: risk diversification, profit maximisation, not being beholden to a single outcome, seizing opportunity beyond the bounds of existing entities (lateral development), better mental health and satisfaction to name a few. On a macro level, businesses part-owned by portfolio entrepreneurs have: higher sales and employment growth rates & likelihood of success. This contradicts the standard narrative in the ecosystem. Could the economy and societal problems be helped by encouraging portfolio entrepreneurship? 

• I believe that much of the mental health crisis amongst founders is caused, and a huge amount of value and potential innovation in our society isn’t realised, because people aren’t doing what they’re best at. With operators trying to start businesses and entrepreneurs trying to operate them. I wonder how many new amazing businesses would be created if entrepreneurs focused on starting things and then handed them over to those best equipped to run them? The ‘build and run yourself’ narrative is one that is a) significantly skewed by survivorship bias and b) one that has likely been reinforced by venture capitalists and the media. 

What is Portfolio Entrepreneurship? 

• From my perspective, the 12-33% of entrepreneurs being ‘portfolio entrepreneurs’ – as claimed amongst academic papers is way, way off. I’ve found very few examples in the wild. Therefore are the conclusions of the benefits or drawbacks also misaligned?

• Portfolio entrepreneurship is not ‘doing the fun bit and then leaving the hard work to someone else’, as some believe. It’s not even necessarily easier than being a one-time founder that sticks with a business. It is harnessing the skills, drivers and desires that take an idea from concept into reality. It is focusing on the ‘cold start’ part of a business, creating something from nothing and giving it early momentum, and then moving to start something else. A select few people are good at it and often find it more fun and easier than later stages. Others find growing a business easier and more fun. Entrepreneurs often believe – because of the prevailing narrative that startups are hard – that the founding part it isn’t as valuable if they find it easier and more enjoyable and therefore assume they have only founded if they’ve gone through hardship at a later stage. 

• There are many incubators, startups studios and venture builders who are beginning to ’standardise’ the process of portfolio entrepreneurship – becoming institutional portfolio entrepreneurs, rather than ‘individual’ ones. Some of the best are here Entrepreneur First, Antler, Founders Factory, Blenheim Chalcot, Rocket Internet, eFounders, Zinc, Prehype, Betaworks, Atomic. They call themselves venture builders, startup studios or incubators. There’s a whole raft of exploration to be done looking at their learnings as a whole, although I imagine much of it is considered proprietary so won’t be revealed. 

How ‘to be’ a portfolio entrepreneur:

• There are many different ways a portfolio entrepreneur could help get things started – with capital, time, their network, advice and so on. It’s hard to know where founding begins and advising or mentorship stops. 

• Every business takes a HUGE amount of effort to get off the ground and get working. The narrative – that you have to be singularly dedicated to a startup – is useful and important because of the force that needs to get lift-off. It requires singular focus from someone. As such, I believe each business MUST have a full-time founder (or more) who are willing to commit fully to the project for a number of years. You need someone that is relentlessly resourceful within a company to make it work. A portfolio entrepreneur is like a part-time founder, who works with the company, but does not replace the need for a founding team. 

• It’s hard as a portfolio entrepreneur not to become too attached or over-exposed to your business. As such, if (or perhaps invariably when) the business struggles, it will need more capital or time. Therefore the portfolio entrepreneur must set limits. ‘Becoming’ a portfolio entrepreneur is hard because it’s likely that of the first few businesses started, one or more will require more time and effort that will suck an entrepreneur into that single entity. When coupled with a failure rate of say 66%, if you start 3, you’ll be left with one, meaning that you become a sole entrepreneur quite quickly. It takes discipline and/or significant capital to ride through the harder times and continue to start things if you become over exposed to a singular entity in terms, or if one really begins to work well and it draws the portfolio entrepreneur in. 

• As such, I see portfolio entrepreneurship as something that someone could do only after having worked singularly as a first-time founder. Perhaps there’s a lifecycle piece to this puzzle? Each person starts as a first-time founder and then can move to become a serial or portfolio entrepreneur once they’ve learned the ropes from within. Certainly, it’s impossible to be a serial founder first time round. Similarly it’d be hard to become a portfolio entrepreneur from the get-go as the value that a portfolio entrepreneur provides is helping increase the likelihood of success and experience helps significantly. As resources play a big role in the formation, those with experience and resources seem to become better portfolio entrepreneurs. 

Founder risk, reward and portfolio entrepreneurship:

• Portfolio entrepreneurship would be significantly more popular and many more founders would start more businesses if the founding stake was representative of the effort to risk ratio and the time it takes to achieve an outcome. The compensation packages for executives of successful companies is far less risky than those at the beginning and far, far higher. Join a successful company and your total remuneration to risk ratio is likely to be way more attractive than that of an average of founders. 

• A Founder’s stake should be representative of the risks, lack of remuneration and the irregularity of a successful outcome or exit at the time of founding. Subsequent managers, investors and shareholders often forget or overlook the uncertainty, effort, skills and resources it took to create a company – especially given founding may have occurred a significant time ago. As a result, later stakeholders often question, remove or undervalue that early founding contribution. 

• It is unusual that an entrepreneur is paid for their work at the ‘founding stage’. It normally requires an investment of their time, money and/or expenses. As such, the stake founders’ retain if a business goes on to be successful is their principal reward. Salary usually only compensates for the ongoing work. Currently, founders often stick with a company, merely to recoup early losses as things start to work in the form of salary, as their stakes are worthless at that stage. 

• In the case of a successful exit, it is easy to feel that a founder gets too much, especially if they have not been active for some time. However, if the risk to reward ratio was calculated accurately, including the probability of success and opportunity costs of founding a business, those large winner-takes-all outcomes would seem far less extreme. 

• Public policy has traditionally focused on creating new entrepreneurs as a way of stimulating startup growth. However, if all the above is true, perhaps giving more resources to existing entrepreneurs and encouraging them to be portfolio entrepreneurs is a quicker and more efficient method of stimulating startup growth than creating new ones. This has many practical consequences. 

• A lot of research is conducted on a company basis e.g. the startup is the unit of measurement. If the entrepreneur was the unit of measurement, would we see a very different business landscape? Would the statistics and resulting policy differ?

• Many (read most) books about entrepreneurship are about growing a business, rather than starting one. 

• The definition of entrepreneur in the literature, let alone portfolio entrepreneur isn’t consistent, making it very difficult to compare studies. I believe that an entrepreneur is someone who founds a business and would be called a founder by the founding team. This doesn’t mean they have to be full time, but does mean they played an integral part in the early years. Much of the academic literature suggests that people with a stake in multiple businesses are portfolio entrepreneurs – but that would include investors, some of who have never started a business or exhibited entrepreneurial tendencies. 

Conclusion

Whilst there are more questions than answers at this stage, I’ve enjoyed exploring and unearthing these issues. In addition to research, I have begun the process of becoming a portfolio entrepreneur myself. Working with other entrepreneurs, I’ve started 3 separate entities in the last 2 years and am working with talented individuals to found some more – a bit like a one-man incubator. 

Whereas in the past my focus on a single business at a time prevented me from getting involved elsewhere – the research has vindicated my drive to work across multiple startups simultaneously. As such, over the last couple of years I’ve been lucky enough to be able to advise, invest in and start entities with other talented founders. The more I see the patterns and the more startups I am involved with, the more I am able to provide symbiotic value. It’s a great joy to simply be able to help others. 
Any comments, thoughts, or further ideas about portfolio entrepreneurship, or your own experiences. Please don’t hesitate to comment, or get in touch. Thank you.

You’ll find a number of academic articles suggesting it’s a wonderful form of entrepreneurship – that results in greater success, less stress and better outcomes for both society and the entrepreneurs involved. It should be much encouraged, it seems. 

Yet there are few mentions beyond academia. The prevailing narrative within the startup ecosystem is that entrepreneurship requires singular focus. Doing multiple things in parallel, is foolish, distracting and likely to result in failure, or at very least worse outcomes. Ask a dozen entrepreneurs ‘in real life’ what a portfolio entrepreneur is, who they know that fits the mould, or how to become one, and you’ll be met by blank stares. 

In the last few weeks, I’ve watched coronavirus destroy startups, or reinforce them – regardless of the smarts, effort or strategic brilliance of their founders. No investor would invest in a single stock – but that’s what all entrepreneurs do. Plus listed companies are far, far less risky than startups. 

Two years ago, I wrote an article called ‘A Founder, Not a CEO’, which struck a chord amongst the entrepreneurs I shared it with. Its premise was that entrepreneurs are often not managers, or leaders but are usually forced to become them. I wondered if a lot of the issues – mental health, frustration and failure rates amongst startups – might be caused by shoehorning people into an unhelpful and inaccurate narrative that has been borne out of the survivorship bias of a few edge cases.

In my case, I’d burned out after 15 years of being the kind of entrepreneur people had told me to be, rather than the one I wanted to be, and collected enough savings and enough residual sleeplessness and stress to not want to do much for a while.

Two years provides plenty of perspective and recovery time to be able to double check whether an idea holds true.  For me, I’m doubly committed to becoming a ‘Founder, not a CEO’ – or, as I’ve since discovered it’s called – a portfolio entrepreneur. I have found my calling within a calling and am ready to begin (again). Yet despite my excitement, identifying my new tribe and wandering hand-in-hand off into the sunset hasn’t happened. The route ahead is hazy and less well-trodden than I’d hoped. 

According to that academic literature, 12-33% of entrepreneurs are ‘portfolio entrepreneurs’. So why the disconnect between the studies and reality? Where are they all? Why is it that there is a pent up desire for people to become portfolio entrepreneurs amongst both entrepreneurs,  governments and society, yet no one knows that it is an option, and it’s mostly discouraged? Why is it that the UK’s leading (or perhaps I should say highest profile) entrepreneur, Richard Branson, is a portfolio entrepreneur, (and in the US – the same is true of Elon Musk) yet entrepreneurs are taught to focus on single projects or at best serial projects, but encouraged to never get distracted by multiple things at the same time? Why are so many entrepreneurs forced into becoming CEOs, managers and leading their companies, when their skills are in creation and it’s painfully obvious they’ll make terrible leaders? 

Being an entrepreneur is hard enough without realising you’ve been doing it wrong and having to invent new bits. It’s been frustrating to unearth more questions than answers, but with the benefit of the harnessed mojo that comes from taking significant time off, I’ve enjoyed the process of digging in both practically and theoretically. 

In the next post, I’ll share some of the thoughts and theory of portfolio entrepreneurship. First up, I need your help – by sending me a tweet telling me about the portfolio entrepreneurs you know, so I can delve further into this research with better real-world examples.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop working, but now I’m able to work on what I want, regardless of the income or outcome. I’ve become free. 

I’ve thought about money a lot over the years, I think it’s because I’ve always associated wealth with freedom. This is more of a story of reduction of wants and needs than of gilded-silver-spoons or get-rich-quick. Simplicity over getting rich. It sounds smug, perhaps first-world-privilege, but that’s not my intention.

I’ve delayed or almost didn’t write this post because talking about money seems vulgar, or self-congratulatory, as does ‘thinking about it’ so much. But I so wish I’d known some of this earlier… and so, with my future children in mind, I wanted to condense what I’ve learned from others much wiser than me along the way – so that others can have a quicker, simpler ride. Like sex, not talking about it creates many more problems. Each birthday, I also write a letter to each of my godchildren (as well as giving them a book and a record), so this post can be the ‘all I’ve learned about money’ for them too.

The reason it’s important to talk about it is that the way most people treat, spend and think about money is – mostly – insane. Many peoples’ lives are dedicated to the pursuit of it, only to let it go on useless things that do not fulfil the expectation the moment they have it.

Retiring Early

I’ve managed to reach financial independence without any big exit, 6-figure paying job, windfall, trust fund or 100x-returning investment, as well as a number years along the way not earning, or earning very little indeed. I know many people who’ve earned 5x+ more than I have over the years, but have nowhere near enough to ‘retire’.

I did grow up in a middle-class family with enough money, so I didn’t go into debt and had generous parents who acted as guarantors when I bought property, and offered a room in the family home as office space for a fledgling business, which certainly helped – but I make no apologies. I’ve been lucky, but I believe that it’s possible for most people to become financially independent earlier in life without these advantages. It shouldn’t be your only mission, but it’s doable. I made many mistakes along the way, which could have easily been avoided and could have got here far, far quicker if I’d known what I was doing, not spent money on building a house in the middle of nowhere, or been more focused. I wish someone had taught me all this at school instead of Latin or trigonometry. Instead I’ve had to learn from the great blogs and the FIRE movement, commentators and books.

So, without further ado… here’s my simple guide to financial independence: 

How Much You Need

• Financial independence means you have 25x your yearly expenditure in savings, where a 4% interest rate provides enough for you to live. 
• Financial independence is about freedom, much more than it is about money. 
• Seek wealth, not money or status.
• Financial independence doesn’t mean not working, it means having the freedom to work on what you want, when you want, which means you enjoy work far more. 
• You’ll get there quicker if you need less – it’s far, far easier (and rewarding) to reduce your expenditure, therefore needs, than to earn more. 
• I can’t afford to be retired and buy large rounds of drinks, eat in expensive restaurants, fly business class or generally be extravagant. I am only retired if I’m frugal and sometimes less generous than I’d like to be… but it’s worth it.
• The above assumes I will never earn money ever again (or have the kids that might read this article)… but I should earn again unless I’m very unlucky. I could also inherit a bit, so perhaps I don’t need the wealth I have to cover me for ever, but it feels more reassuring that way. 

Compound Interest

• The secret to wealth is the beauty of compound interest, or as Einstein said “the 8th wonder of the world”. 
• If your grandparents had invested $1k in the S&P in 1941 and left it, it would be worth $2.4m today. Seems that even regular people could have trust funds, if their forebears had been wise. 
• Simply put, I wish I had invested more in the markets earlier and kept it there. In addition to sharing this post, I will put money aside for my kids in a tracker when they are born, with some yet-to-be-figured-out way of preventing them taking out too much, too soon.

What & When to Invest 

• Over the last 80 years, the (US) market has returned about ~9% per year if you reinvested everything. 
• Don’t bother trying to beat the market, just put your money into a low-fee tracker (e.g. Vanguard) – 80% of individuals and professionals never beat the market. Yup, all of those stock tips, financial journalists, companies, fund managers and city-types are mostly spending their lives making things worse than if they didn’t go into work each day. That is a mind-boggling thing to get your head around and speaks to the madness of modern approaches to money.
• Don’t bother using wealth managers, they rarely beat the market and charge fees which erode the compound interest – unless you’re like me, with no self-control and therefore you need to keep your portfolio away from trading in and out of foolish bets. 
• The time taken to try to beat the market also doesn’t get factored in – think of all that opportunity cost of time and effort. For me I’ve spent thousands of hours loosing thousands of pounds as well as additional thousands of hours reading about the markets when I could have been walking in the countryside, or spending time with friends. I can’t ever get that time back – a reminder that time is way, way more valuable than money.
• The only exception is that occasionally you’ll notice a trend which might be worth a small punt. I noticed the iPhone 1 when I lived in San Francisco, but ignored it, Tesla when I moved there a second time, ignored that and Amazon for thirds, which I also ignored. A tracker WILL still catch these, so perhaps continue to ignore them… the time and energy it takes to try to catch these as well as getting them right, perhaps isn’t worth it. 
• That being said, a small punt in something that can 10x increase or more or 1x decrease (e.g. going to 0) could be worth it, but never for more than 10% of your net worth. I bought £5k in bitcoin in 2014, which resulted in a small 6-figure exit. I’ve lost a few other similar punts. 
• Generally, however, you’d be better just investing in a tracker, topping up when you can, then leaving it and going and doing something else. Ignore big market swings, hold your nerve, they have ALWAYS come back (so far). 

How to Live

• Seek wealth, not Money or status. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep. It’s not about renting your time. Thanks as ever to Naval for his excellent tweetstorm on getting ‘rich’.
• It is EXTRAORDINARY what people choose to spend their money on, given their financial situation. Perhaps they love going out to work each day, but many people are stuck in this crazy loop of earning to afford what they need to earn.
• When I stopped working so much, I realised many, perhaps even most of my expenditures were to try to mitigate the stress and lack of time I had: Deliveroo, Uber, restaurant meals, sandwiches, coffees, amazon prime etc. 
• I applied the same frugality to my businesses – businesses don’t fail, they run out of money. My investors of my last business left us the founders with some money after they withdrew their cash, because we’d been so frugal. 
• I always put business expenses on the business, but I never bought something I wouldn’t have bought personally just because it was a business expense. 
• Regardless of all this, I’ve had amazing holidays, learned skills, adventured and so on. I don’t feel that I’ve hampered my fun and exploration by being miserly. 
• I bought a cheap sports car last year. So far it’s cost me thousands in repairs and is currently sitting in a wet garage gathering rust. I love it, I can afford it without needing to work again, and probably needed to get it out of my system… it’s fun… but it’s probably a mistake and hasn’t brought me the pleasure that it has cost.
• I still have WAY too much stuff that is unnecessary. Now, whenever I need to buy anything, I try to leave it for a month and see if I still need it at the end. About 80% of things fall away. 
• I’ve never bought ‘luxury’ items – clothes, watches etc. These seem to have the largest gulf between ‘value’ and ‘cost’. 
• The last two cars I owned, I spent months looking for a good deal – both I sold for more than I bought them for – both with more than 15k extra miles on the clock. 
• Subscriptions are a quiet destroyer of savings: Amazon Prime, Netflix, Spotify, phone contracts and so on. I do not leave ANY on monthly renewal. Always be optimising.
• I try to buy everything second hand: a phone for £150, not £1k, a tablet for £130 not £900 and so on. Not only that, it’s more environmentally friendly. 
• Even now I have reached my ’number’ I still take the Megabus to London (£20 cheaper for an extra hour spent) and so on. My peers laugh at me or think I’m weird, but they’ve all got to have jobs. As the most quoted blogger in this blog Mr Money Moustache says, ‘Pizza Delivery is for Millionaires‘.
• It’s a lot of FUN to be frugal… build, cook, make things yourself.

Property

• Many Financial independence advisors suggest you don’t buy property. That’s wise for a simple life… however… property has a few advantages: it can be leveraged, so if prices go up, you get leveraged increases. Borrow 100% of a properties value (as I have done twice – with thanks to family guarantors) and you get the raise in appreciation which has helped me reach my 25x number. This could go seriously wrong if property prices went down, so I recognise that I have done this at a ‘lucky time’. If we’d known property would keep appreciating, everyone would have done this, but it’s helped.
• Through Airbnb and House Swaps, I’ve managed to live for free, create a small passive income and take my friends on extravagant holidays, as well as gift my Kenya house to charity auctions and so on. When I’ve moved house, I’ve used Gumtree to find second hand, cheap, furniture. £3k mattresses for £100, £2k sofas for £50. I don’t have the furniture that I’d buy if money were no object, but it’s great. I bought a kitchen someone was throwing out for £100 – a whole kitchen – and a Rangemaster £3.5k cooker for £350. You can equip your life with whatever you need for a fraction of the cost, if you’re willing to dig around. Let other peoples’ madness enable your sanity.
• I’ve never remodelled a kitchen, or spent thousands renovating other than to bring things up to a liveable standard. I’d rather have the extra money for freedom, regardless of the shabby feel… 
• I’ve always ’sweated’ any assets I’ve had – through Airbnb etc. It’s a hassle and I’ve suffered mocking from friends – I’ve had to clean houses, respond to guests, stay with people, go camping or book a place because people have booked my home, but it enabled me to save and have adventures. I’ve never owned anywhere that didn’t pay for itself, at least. I rented a camper van I had for a couple of summers, meaning it paid for itself. When staying at home for a night costs you £150/night, it somewhat puts things into perspective and is a gentle reminder how much our houses often cost us just to remain in. I think I appreciate mine a lot more as a result of understanding the opportunity cost.
• Anything big – a house, wardrobe and so on, takes more to fill, heat, clean, more to upkeep and so on. More money and stress and need to earn and so on. I would probably go smaller next time.

What to Work On Now You’re Free: 

• Naval’s tweet storm again, this time expanded in a podcast.
• I try, as hard as I can, not to book things into my diary. Days with nothing in are – by far – the most productive and rewarding. 
• I’m fascinated by building businesses and becoming a ‘Founder not a CEO’ so that’s my aim. Whilst these do take investments, which could mean that I slip below my 25x/4%, they should also produce an income, which will bring me back up again… unless they all go under, in which case I’ll need to delete this post and earn again. 
• Giving money away – I’ve not quite got here yet, but I could definitely reduce expenditure further and give more away.
• Tim Ferriss’s ‘The 4 Hour Work Week’ has a section on what to do with your free time. An excellent book who’s title often misleads people into thinking that the aim is laziness, or avoidance. It could be called ‘How to Be Free’.

Some SimpleTom Takeaways

• I’ve only recently discovered ‘portfolio entrepreneurship’ and feel that I’ve ‘found myself’ 20 years after starting the entrepreneurial journey. Most entrepreneurs I know would love to know more about this, yet currently its benefits are hidden amongst the academic literature. There’s more posts to come here on how to use time and money to set things up, not to run things and is why most entrepreneurs are ‘trapped’ doing things they hate and aren’t good at (e.g. being a manager when they would rather be creating).
• Set up businesses and they should become sources of income too. If I can do 10x businesses over the next 10 years, some should survive to produce an income – especially as the growth rate of a small business should be bigger than the growth rate of a tracker fund, even with business failures.
• There’s a direct correlation between financial freedom and healthiness (both physical and emotional) in those that I know who’ve got there. Given people spend huge quantities of money buying time and health, that’s another price to factor in to working for money. Factor in the cost of stress, diet, sleeplessness and so on, that ‘cost of working’ ratchets up dramatically.
• I’d be fascinated to know about the correlation between people who work very hard for their income and their relationship status. Certainly, my ability to engage in a romantic relationship has changed dramatically without the pressures of work. Perhaps this is just me, but I never felt I had room to properly invest in dating or a relationship during my working years.
• Spending money on important things: a great accountant, who understands your needs. I treated this like a hire, going out and interviewing 20 people and so on. I spend 5x more on this than I could, but recently he saved me £60k on a property transaction, which 3 other accountants were claiming (falsely) that I needed to pay. Let me know if you want an intro… (in the UK). 
• The opportunity cost of buying things is often HUGE. It would be interesting to ‘add up’ the emotional anxiety that comes with earning money to buy expensive things that you then worry about losing. Imagine if we could factor the true cost into the price of a good. That £50k BMW is probably going to cost you more like £150k in ‘freedom’ if all of the non-financial elements (time, distraction, the need to try to appreciate etc) are added in.
• Here’s an old post about still having luxuries in your life.
• Here’s what I do like to spend money on.
• There comes a point where the increase in your net wealth from compound interest is larger than the after-tax salary you earn each year. Yet most people spend <5% of their time managing this and 95% on their salaried job. That’s fine if you love it, foolish if you don’t.
• As freedom is such a joy, I go against some of the FIRE commentators suggestions to be as frugal as possible, in that I have a part time PA to deal with certain Airbnb issues and parts of my life that would mean I had to do more admin. My PA tends to pay for herself by helping me find cheaper vehicles, finding deals for my bills, cleaning issues and so on.
• I believe a balance between Tim Ferriss’s extreme optimisation and Naval (who values his time at $1k/hour) Vs Mr Money Moustache who does absolutely everything himself is my own personal sweet spot. I don’t get pleasure from some things (DIY) that he does… and would rather have the time to learn an instrument, read and spend time with others and so I spend small amounts of money to gain time away from things that I see as a hassle.

Getting to Financial Independence is the Beginning, not the End…

So, you get to freedom. Congratulations. What then?

All of your problems certainly don’t go away. Freedom too can be confusing to those that have stood on the treadmill for so long. You won’t get much sympathy, but the transition isn’t always simple. Nonetheless, there are wonders to be had. Community, time in nature, friends, with family, reading for fun, afternoon naps, seeking out beauty, learning new skills, spending time with partners (new or old), going on trips, embarking upon new relationships and so on. There’s many a challenge within these to keep you occupied, engaged and fully alive. It’s not easy, but then it would be a great shame if it was.

With financial freedom, my friends, life begins anew. I feel like I’m 40, but only just getting started…

So why are we both staring into a screen? Why am I still taking flights to my beloved Africa, running a travel business (http://brilliant-uganda.com and (www.brilliant-ethiopia.com) and indulging in other activities that contribute? Surely we should do something about it? Now. 

Sacrifice. Stop. Crisis. Extinction. Rebel. Change. Critical. 

Unfortunately, I don’t believe much will change, except for the climate, unless we change the way we look at the problem and the solutions we propose. 

I’m no marketeer, or psychologist. Yet even old Simpletom knows that the way we’re going about trying to get people to change their behaviour is way, way off.

The narrative is entrenched. The believers – climate change campaigners – perhaps rightly shrill that we must change dramatically and immediately. The naysayers poo-poo these activists, simply tuning them out and doing nothing, often becoming more entrenched. The louder the shouts, the more the desperation is belittled. Particularly as life around us doesn’t seem that different. What’s all that noise about? Please do not block my way to work, thanks very much, for something I can’t see, taste or feel just because you believe it. 

Typecasting is easy. Hippies, piercings, dreadlocked, Swampy-types, home-brew, tie dye, hemp – even though many of those bashing the table are entirely respectable – this is how they’re described. All of these words were used in a single Times article this week, claiming to be balanced. The Prime Minister, writing off the movement in one fell swoop as “uncooperative crusties… in heaving hemp-smelling bivouacs”.

Dinner tables are divided. Much like ‘the other big debate in the UK’ at the moment beliefs have polarised. There’s the boy/girl who cried wolf in every family, at every dinner and in every newspaper… Or Father. The Prime Minister’s own Dad, speaking at an Extinction Rebellion (XR) debate, said he was proud to call himself an “uncooperative crusty”. Wow, take that right in the Borises.

In the other corner, there are SUV-driving, stuck-in-their-ways, Jeremy-clarkson-esque, Daily-Mail-Reading, meat-eating, conservative, keep-buggering-on, privileged, ignorant, port-swilling, out-of-touch, Middle-England folks who selfishly watch whilst Rome, and all the the other countries too while they’re at it, burn. There’s some organic mud slung right back at you, deniers.

For all of the stereotyping, these people share the same DNA, houses and social classes. The slurs polarise, disrespect and calcify.

In a previous article I supported XR, in the absence of a better way to make a difference. It’s raising awareness for sure. People are talking, the conversation has started. You can’t wait for ‘someone to do something’ – when that someone is someone else. The dinner debates are growing. Extremes are needed to get those unchanged to change. Long may they continue. I hope there are more protests.

But it feels to me that we’re light years away from changing climate change, despite the increasing awareness. Don’t fly or eat meat for environmental reasons is totally the wrong message and could even result in greater inaction, not action.

Frankly, there’s part of me… a largish part of me… the thinks that we deserve what we’ll get. We humans, in the last 100 or so years have egotistically and selfishly paved, felled and polluted our world in order to create comforts for ourselves which, once we’d improved our own health and situation (regardless of whoever is mining our smartphone innards), has quickly made us manic, obsessed and depressed. We’ve overdeveloped and demanded more and more, way beyond our marginal happiness and fulfilment, to a point where we’re all less connected. We have too much stuff, we’re obese, depressed, lonely and inward-looking (as I discussed in my TEDx Talk). We need less, not more and we’d be happier – which is selfish, but also helps the environment too.

What to do? 

I live near a hospital’s main entrance. Whenever I go past, there are a multitude of overweight people clutching UV drips in hospital gowns smoking cigarettes. 

If you can’t encourage a sick person to stop smoking or eat healthily – when the actualisation of their actions directly effect them – how is it possible to make a difference to climate change, if the collective actions are so disconnected from the uncertain outcomes? Asking someone to do a gruelling bout of physio because of a looming illness when they feel fine, will most likely result in no action. And probably guilt, anger, upset and rejection, which means that they’re less likely to listen next time, when it’s even worse. That’s how psychology works people.

Why stop flying if there will be a 300-700% rise in the number of flying miles by 2050? I’ve discovered that I emitted about 20 tonnes of carbon last year. What do I do with that information? What does it even mean? Calculating it is useful if embedded in the cost, but elevating it into my consciousness? Not useful, because I don’t know what to do with that fact, except feel guilty about something or try to do less of something that I want to do. Maybe the social benefit of putting money into poor communities is more important than climate change? Welcome to pandora’s box where we can have a heated discussion for a few hours and leave feeling dammed whatever we choose.

Just knowing how much carbon that I produced is such a lame, almost-statistic that feeds into the apathy. Sure, it feeds into the problem, but asking single people not to fly results in guilt or willing ignorance. I’m not saying people shouldn’t fly less, or that flights shouldn’t include their full polluting cost, but there has to be a better message and method. 

Does the Israeli/Palestinian disagreement improve when both sides insult each other? What does individual action do? If we’re doomed, why don’t we just enjoy ourselves? Why give up eating meat if you never hear the piglets scream? 

Please understand that I’m absolutely not suggesting no action. Far from it. We need to start with the basics. Individual action DOES make a difference, as William MacAskill argues. But instead find something that will appeal… or at least be easier for both sides to accept. For sure, those that think we face a crisis will want more faster. But we need to BEGIN with messages for the 80% who are unmoved, not the 20% who are. We need messages for the people of Tennessee, not Bristol.

Here’s my solution, which I think could actually begin to change climate change:

I want you to imagine an advertisement that went out to Boris Johnson AND an ‘uncooperative crusty’ and appealed to them BOTH. Find that, and I think we’re on to something. It may be too little too late, but then it’s not really worth campaigning at all, is it? Change can compound, for good and bad. So let’s get started with the easier stuff, the things that will be constructive to the debate rather than inflammatory. A journey begins with a single step, n’all. 

I have many suggestions, which I’ll add in a subsequent post. Think electric cars, taxing polluters properly, more efficient aircraft, cycling and walking, eating so you feel better and live longer (plant-based), complementing people on what they are doing, rather than what they’re not, living more simply, using consumer pressure effectively, greening the home – purely for cost-saving reasons at first (think insulating, light bulbs etc), encouraging your employer to be more responsible because they’ll become better businesses (financially and ethically), buying less stuff simply because it’s making you unhappier, not happier… and so on. Positive messages. These are just common sense. I don’t need to leap onto an organic-naturally-constructed-soap-box to sell these to you, yet they will all have a significant effect on climate change too.

If you’ve got more suggestions which fit, please add them in the comments. 

Let’s START by making the easy but meaningful, positive changes that we all want and make sense regardless of what may or may not be happening elsewhere, in order to start to make the difficult change we all need.  Once these start to work, we’ll be able to move to the next level.

You sit on public transport with other people and witness someone abusing someone else without saying anything – you’re complict

A friend says something homophobic, or misogynistic but you don’t challenge them because you don’t want to have an argument – you’re complicit 

Your company doesn’t recycle, or really care about the environment but you don’t say anything, even though you care – you’re complicit

You buy someone a drink or dessert when they have a drinking or eating issue – you’re complicit

You overlook a company’s track record and invest anyway, because it’ll make you money – you’re complicit.

There are so many ways of being complicit, we all do it. There are so many grades of complicit-ness. A Nazi who committed war crimes may well have simply been forced to be complicit, because of fear. Someone who overlooks corruption in Africa to protect their family, because if you aren’t complicit, things could end very badly.

Silence can be very loud indeed. Governments don’t say things about other governments, just because they don’t want to create issues. We tolerate Trump, the Queen sees him and Boris sucks up to him. That’s complicit. By association, you condone.

What are your values? Do you want to be remembered as staying true to them? What lengths would you be willing to go to to defend your beliefs? Some take the ultimate stand (warning, these pictures are shocking).

It’s so easy just to go along with things that don’t feel right. To be complicit. We all do it.

We’re complicit… and it’s not good enough.

Yet our perspective represents a tiny sliver of they way things can be viewed. An elephant in the known universe is always miniscule. Sub-atomically, an ant represents mind-bogglingly large tracts of space.

If we could magnify a hydrogen atom so that its nucleus (a proton) were the size of a basketball, then its single electron would be found about 2 miles away.

There’s endless tracts of space above us, but also within us. 

It’s very easy to think that the way you see things are the way they are, but change your perspective just slightly and they are very different. 

It’s humbling to remember that all of humankind’s ecstasy and agony, as well as everything between has existed not only in this narrow sliver of physical space, but also in a tiny fraction the history of time too. If the history of planet earth was equivalent 24 hours, then the whole of humankind – Genghis Khan, Boudicia the Buddha and Trump included, have existed within the last 1min and 15 seconds.

Spend some time relocating yourself in time and space and it’s hard to feel too self-important. 

Most new things become old. It’s rare that something makes a significant difference. An entrepreneur’s optimism is to believe that something’s about to happen just around the corner. It rarely does, but occasionally you are rewarded for trying again.

Profound experiences rarely last without nurture and focus. A Vipassana, as hard and profound as it was – creates lasting change mostly in the memory and knowledge that something is possible, rather than the actual day-in-day-out impact, later in life. An ultra marathon is a high-water mark of achievement, rather than a constant help.

There are no shortcuts, it seems.

Ayahuasca was different.

I arrived at my ’retreat’ an atheist and emerged, 4 days later, an agnostic. Not about Ayahuasca – I mean spiritually, holistically, completely.

There’s no point explaining what happened because the experience is entirely ineffable. Much of the 4 days was tolerable and challenging – a short window of a few hours were perhaps the most horrible and terrifying of my life. They say it’s like 10 years therapy in one night. I wondered whether I might need 10 years therapy to get over it. It’s like trying to explain what a rainforest looks like to a blind person who’s been living in a cave.

Yet I emerged afterwards emotionally scrubbed clean, feeling vulnerable and yet powerful in my openness. The impact is still with me, continually, almost a year on. Feelings of anxiety pertaining to abandonment, social awkwardness and confidence have gone from a palpable constant to a distant voice. The impact of just four days has been extraordinary… and lasting.

It’s not a ‘short cut’ as one of the nights was the longest of my life and yet the change was profound and, somewhat instant. As if pathways in my mind had been re-written. Neurologically, I’m told, it’s possible they were.

I will go again, probably, but am not ready yet to do so. It’s worth it, but I’m terrified. I don’t want to encourage you to do it, because you should when it calls to you.

Between 2006 and 2014, a study showed that climate protests haven’t led to a single debate in British Parliament. Direct action mostly results in wasted breath and inaction. I believe that increasing alarmism can often have an effect opposite than intended – guilt, powerlessness and resulting apathy. Many people feel guilty about climate change, few people enact change that makes a difference. As this ratio increases and the guilt rises, frustration grows and it rarely turns into positive action. 

Additionally, as was summed up in a letter to the Economist, “Rather than motivating readers to take action, a doomsday scenario can also paralyse them with a sense of hopelessness”. If anything, it’s old news, and the public frankly isn’t interested, as is indicated by media ratings on climate change.

As such, I assumed that the rebellion would result in a further extinction of interest. Instead, happily, XR has had an effect. Perhaps we’d hit a zeitgeist moment, compounded by David Attenborough’s BBC documentary and Greta Thunberg’s visit. We still don’t know if the previous protests have had a long term effect. But, they did increase awareness, receive much more coverage than usual, and result in political debate. Things happened. Action was direct.

I have been thinking for a while about how we can turn our awareness of the climate change issue into action. There’s little innovation, or listening to both sides. It feels as if we’ve been banging our heads against the same methods and messages, which have had the same (lack of) results, for a long time. Perhaps a post will follow on how we might change the conversation.

In the meantime I, for one, will be heading down to join in and support the protests, in the hope that we can tip the balance – individual actions do matter and ensure direct action lives up to its name.