The Voluntary Life

This episode is an interview with Jorja Leavitt, founder of Sharetown.com. Jorja is an entrepreneur and mother of four, living in Las Vegas. In the interview, she shares her experiences of moving to a minimalist lifestyle. She talks about the freedom that she has found from decluttering and selling unnecessary stuff. She highlights the great opportunities to trade at a community level, using social media platforms such as Facebook. Show Notes: Sharetown Facebook App Article on selling all your stuff by Never Ending Voyage  

This episode is an interview of me by Kevin at Freedom Lovin' Podcast. Here’s what we covered: What does freedom mean? Why entrepreneurship is important Living in Mexico Minimalism/going paperless Tips on becoming more free in your life

This episode provides a mind blowing way of thinking about the true cost of your monthly expenses. If you are interested in achieving financial freedom, then it makes sense to look at each monthly recurring expense as really costing you 300 times more. For example, a gym membership that costs £80 per month really costs £24,000 (in dollars, a $120 monthly gym membership really costs $36,000). The episode explains this perspective in more detail. In summary: You have financial freedom when you don't have to work to support yourself. Therefore, if you want to be financially free, you have to think of paying for things from the interest on your passive investments. Although there is a lot of debate about the numbers, the most widely used assumption is that you can live from 4% of your portfolio (the so called 4% rule). This assumes that on average your portfolio will make enough to cover for both inflation and you drawing down 4% (I personally think it's better to use 3% to be on the safe side, but let's use the most commonly used assumption to illustrate the point). The 4% rule implies that you need a net worth that is 25 times your annual expenses to be financially free. To apply that to monthly expenses, simply multiply the 25 by 12 (for 12 months) and you need investments that are 300 times your recurring monthly expenses. So any monthly expense really requires 300 times more in capital to pay for it when financially free. This is why for the £80 per month gym membership, you need £24,000 in capital saved to pay that membership when financially free. That figure (£24,000) is more than the annul expenses of most people in the UK. This is why frugality and saving is so powerful as a way to get more financial freedom. It is more powerful to save expenses than to keep increasing your income because more income won't make you more free unless you control expenses. I'm not a financial advisor and as always, you need to do your own research. I think this perspective is useful and it has been very helpful to me. That's why I won't be getting a gym membership again anytime soon. There are plenty of free ways of getting good exercise! Further Reading: Mr Money Moustache article about the 4% Rule Retiring Sooner: How to Accelerate Your Financial Independence by Darrow Kirkpatrick The 4% Rule and Safe Withdrawal Rates In Retirement  by Todd Tressider

This episode is about how to go paperless and what the benefits are. Topics covered include: How accumulating paper limits your flexibility and freedom  Simple steps to reduce the paper you accumulate such as using e-billing and e-books. Ways to minimise the paper books you own, such as selling them as soon as you have read them Key tools for digitizing your paper and going paperless: a multipage scanner (such as the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i), a shredder and Evernote Keeping labelling and metadata simple: the three key attributes of date, location and person/organisation Options about where to store digital data: secure encrypted drives vs services like Evernote What to scan and what to simply delete. A good site for more tips about going paperless is DocumentSnap

This episode is a recent interview I did on the Nomad Capitalist Report radio show. The interview is by Andrew Henderson and here's his summary: "Live from Mexico, Jake Desyllas of The Voluntary Life podcast talks entrepreneurship and freedom. He shares tips to building a location independent business, being a global entrepreneur, and prospering anywhere in the world. He shares suggestions from his jet-setting life, talks about the best countries in South America, and dispels myths about Mexico “they” don’t want you to know." Podcast Episode

An episode about freedom from stuff. Topics covered include: What I learned living from a backpack for 7+ months Why owning stuff is not wealth The hidden financial and psychological costs of owning stuff How your stuff can control you The goal of purposeful ownership Strategies for minimalism: paperless, zero data and selling all your crap

An episode about finding and clarifying the purpose of your business. Why does your business exist? Topics covered include: The limits of "Mission Statements" The benefits of a really short elevator pitch for your business' purpose: encapsulating it all in just 3 words It can often take a long time to move from intuitive to fully conscious business purpose. Don't worry, you can get going and discover it on the way Three things to think about to clarify your purpose: What will inspire you? What will inspire others? What do you have the capability to deliver? Show Notes: Episode 107 (Part 1 of What Kind of Business Should I Start?) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki Making It All Work by David Allen

An episode about the financial risks and rewards of entrepreneurship and what they mean for your motivation in starting a business. Here's some harsh data about the financial risks and rewards: More than half of startups cease trading within the first five years. Entrepreneurs on average earn significantly less income over 10 years than they would have earned in paid employment. There are debates about the numbers but one study (Hamilton) suggests a 35% earnings differential. Entrepreneurs on average don’t earn a better return on their investment by founding startups than they would have by investing in publicly traded stocks (in fact they earn less from a risk return perspective). Nevertheless, the majority of affluent people are self-made entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs make-up less than 20% of the workforce in America, but account for 66% of the millionaires. Of the millionaire entrepreneurs, 80% of them are self-made: they are first generation wealth holders (Stanley). What are we to make of such statistics? I argue that the high financial risk (and potentially high reward) make it even more important to do entrepreneurship for intrinsic motivations: Purpose: building a business because you want to make a dent on the universe and you believe that what you are doing will make peoples' lives better. Autonomy: being an entrepreneur because it gives you freedom to live and work as you want to (not as someone else thinks you should) Mastery: overcoming the challenges of learning how to build a business is rewarding in itself. The episode ends with a discussion of the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for making money itself. The intrinsic motivation to make money is for the freedom (financial freedom) that it gives you. Show Notes: "Start Up Failure Rates: The Definitive Numbers" By Scott Shane  “What Do Small Businesses Do?”  Erik Hurst and Benjamin Wild Pugsley "Does Entrepreneurship Pay? An Empirical Analysis of the Returns of Self-Employment" by Barton H. Hamilton, 2000 "The Returns to Entrepreneurial Investment: A Private Equity Premium Puzzle?" By Tobias J. Moskowitz and Annette Vissing Jørgense The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley

This episode is about things to consider when choosing co-founders to go into business with. Topics covered include: Do you need co-founders? The advantages of choosing co-founders who are different to yourself (in background, skills, personality, and business networks) The importance of shared core values and purpose for co-founders Research by Noam Wasserman shows that teams made from former co-workers are the most stable. Teams made from former strangers are the second most stable of the three groups Wasserman analysed. Teams made from friends and family are the least stable. Show Notes: The Founder's Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

This episode is about three approaches to delegating work within your business. No business can grow unless the founder is able to delegate work to a wider team of people. It's essential that tasks are properly delegated and that the business owner doesn't abdicate responsibility. However, there are three very different ways to delegate: The Operations Manual Approach is where detailed standards and procedures are defined for how all tasks are to be undertaken. Work is typically undertaken by relatively inexperienced employees, who learn to follow detailed specifications. The Results Only Work Environment is where employees are given clear targets or results to meet and it is up to them how they do so. They create their own work procedures and have maximum freedom on issues like whether to work at home. The Outsourcing Approach is where work is delegated to independent contractors or virtual assistants. Fixed costs are kept low by avoiding hiring employees as much as possible. Work is typically outsourced on a specific fee-for-project basis. The episode explores the advantages and disadvantages of each of these approaches. Show Notes: Anything You Want by Derek Sivers The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber Maverick by Ricardo Semler Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne