If You Want To Be Happy And Free, Don’t Get A Job!

By Emmanuel Okon

Everyday billions of people around the world trade away their freedom and happiness for a misplaced social conditioning in the name of a job. Chances are you have been a victim of this con either directly or indirectly without realising it.
It is possible to escape this misguided conditioning by being jobless while still enjoying all the financial security and financial freedom that could be gotten from getting a job
People go to work 40 hours a week because it provides them with some misguided form of security, and even perhaps with some prestige. To step out of this comforting world, they will need to learn how to get those things from their jobless lifestyle as well.
This book explores how to craft an ultimate lifestyle and financial security for one’s self without getting a job by becoming less dependent on the organisation for which they works and more dependent on their own resources and creativity. It is written in a plain, easy to understand, jargon free format suitable for anyone serious about turning their life or career around irrespective of age, sex, nationality or creed.
One of the greatest discoveries of humanity is the fact that we all have the power to change our future and our circumstances by changing the way we think and act. This book is written for those who want to take control of their life, their future and happiness by exploring the exciting world of joblessness: one that comes with an entrepreneurial spirit, which turns one into a self-employed business owner or free agent and gives them the power to be in control of their life, doing what they love to do.
It also explores how to successfully replace ones income by creating a steady stream of passive income to support one’s self with so that they don’t have to spend a lot of time at a deskeven though a desk at home is always more pleasant than a desk in an office cubicle. It is a must have for every library and I strongly believe that every living human being should have the opportunity to read it at least once in their lifetime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Aug 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781742844008

Book preview

PART 1

EXPLORING THE WORLD OF THE JOBLESS

What you are about to learn will go against every bit of conventional wisdom that you’ve been taught in the past. Yet being jobless, if it is right for you, will open up a whole new world that you’ve never had the opportunity to explore before. Furthermore, it is possible to be jobless while enjoying all of the financial security and financial freedom that you could possibly hope for. This book will show you exactly how to enter this exciting world.

By jobless, of course, I don’t mean becoming a vagabond, being on the dole or having no use for the society or for yourself whatsoever. I am talking about a specific type of joblessness: one that comes with an entrepreneurial spirit, which turns you into a self-employed business owner or free agent and gives you the opportunity to be in control of your life, doing what you love to do. I even mean people who have successfully created a steady stream of passive income to support themselves with so that they don’t have to spend a lot of time at a desk—even though a desk at home is always more pleasant than a desk in an office cubicle.

Yet this is not a typical book on being your own boss or working from home. The true focus of joblessness needs to step beyond those common clichés. It’s true: you may indeed find yourself working from home or being your own boss. However, this book will also teach you how to secure your future.

After all, you go to work 40 hours a week right now because it provides you with some form of security, whatever that means to you, and even perhaps with some prestige. If you’re going to step out of this comforting world, you’re going to need to learn how to get those things from your jobless lifestyle as well!

Fortunately, with the abundance of technology at our disposal, it has never been easier to live without a job. The opportunities are wide open if you are ready to take them. It’s an adventure though, and a journey. This book is ready to act as your roadmap. Ready? Let’s get started.

Chapter 1

Is This Book For Everyone?

Joblessness isn’t for everyone. That needs to be said up front, because so many books about joblessness make it seem as though it is the only option for everyone on this earth. That’s actually not true.

Some very real vocations and callings will necessitate that you work for someone else. If these vocations are truly where your authentic self belongs, then you won’t be happy pursuing a jobless life.

Police officers, teachers, fire fighters, doctors, nurses and rescue workers will generally have to work for someone else—and generally won’t mind, because these jobs come with both the autonomy and fulfilment that many conventional jobs lack.

People who work for non-profit organisations because they believe in the cause that the non-profit organisation advances won’t benefit from this book either. Neither will those who wish to pursue a career in politics. There are also a few people who are extremely satisfied in their current careers and who really value the workplace socialisation that takes place. A bank executive who is extremely happy being a bank executive is doing what he or she is supposed to be doing right now. Those people should probably stay where they are: they’ve found their way to the right place for them.

The world needs all kinds of people. The groups I’ve mentioned account for perhaps 20% of the population, and I wish them well. They do good and important work, and we don’t want to disparage that work by indicating that they aren’t happy or free in what they do. They make some trade-offs to do what they love, but in general these types of people receive many of the benefits of the jobless life: the chance to pursue a passion and to do something that they find important for them.

There’s another group that won’t get much benefit out of this book. You see, while the word jobless conjures up images of lazy days at home, I am not talking about sitting around, collecting government cheques. Nor am I going to be talking about any kind of get rich quick scheme where you sit around the beach all day near your red sports car while money rolls in effortlessly, all because you unlocked the super-secret formula to wealth.

A get-rich-quick scheme isn’t going to get you where you need to go. In fact, a get-rich-quick scheme will probably only put you more deeply into debt, forcing you back to your cubicle that much faster.

So if you are a person who doesn’t have a lot of initiative or ambition, this book is not for you. If you’re not willing to work hard in order to reach your dreams, then this book isn’t for you. Jobless people can work much, much harder than their job-holding counterparts, at least at first. However, they can work wherever they want, whenever they want, and however they want, so they are generally happier. Eventually they may even get a few of those coveted beach days, but they will get those days because they earned those days, and for no other reason.

In fact, if you like working just 40 hours a week so that you can leave work at the office, then you might not like joblessness. If your ultimate goal is to make sure that you never have to bring work out of the office so that you can flop in front of the television at home for four hours at night, then joblessness may not be right for you. Some people don’t genuinely have an interest in bettering themselves or their lives. Some people don’t want to make their lives any better, and if they are happy with that, that is okay. Some people will always wind up filling those kinds of jobs. These people may even be happy in their own way. It’s a matter of priorities, needs, and desires. If your desire to build wealth and freedom exceeds your desire to watch television or to avoid challenges, then joblessness will be perfect for you. If it doesn’t, then there’s probably a sports game you could be watching right now instead of reading this book!

This book is also not a good book for you if you aren’t passionate about learning new things, or if you are afraid to do so. Joblessness requires a near-continuous process of self-education. If you don’t know something, you have to be willing to go find out. You have to be willing to admit what you don’t know, too, so that you can get busy with the process of learning it. You have to be willing to use every tool at your disposal to learn every skill that you’ll need to meet every challenge ahead.

You might have to get over some fears and work on some things that have always been frightening for you. For example, if you are shy and introverted, you might need to develop the social skills that you need to network, make phone calls, and make presentations with confidence. You will need to learn how to ask for what you want in a clear, confident way.

You’ll need to develop yourself, too. You’ll need to learn how to change deep-seated negative attitudes that have been holding you back. You need to cultivate an attitude of gratitude that keeps you moving when the going gets tough. You’ll need to identify and internalise certain principles of success.

You’ll need to have conviction, too. You’ll get a lot of questions and criticisms when you set out to become jobless. Most people don’t understand the path at all. They’ve been taught the same lie that you’ve been taught: that the path to prosperity and responsible adulthood is to go to school, get good grades, get a job, work a job for 30 years, save money, and hopefully retire someday. Though joblessness is getting more respected and better understood than ever, there are still those who are going to ask the question, When are you going to get a real job?

In fact, the people who don’t understand what you’re doing will often assume that you have loads and loads of free time! They might figure that since you’re not working or not busy that you have all the time in the world to carry out a bunch of domestic errands for them, or to keep them company, or to babysit. Therefore, you’ll need to learn how to guard your time jealously too.

In fact, one year of joblessness will help you grow as a person more than any other thing you could possibly set out to do. You will have to grow, or you’ll find yourself back at your old employer’s doorstep, hat in hand, begging to get your old job back.

For all that you can achieve, financial security, and even vast wealth, through joblessness, the road is still long. You might have to do without some safety nets at first. This book will teach you how to survive and even thrive without these safety nets, but you’ll have to change your thinking. You’ll have to stop assuming that you have to have them.

Which brings me to another point: Joblessness does carry an element of risk. It’s a type of investment: an investment into yourself and into your future. Like all investments, it carries great risks because it carries such great rewards. Not all jobless people succeed. Some fail miserably! Some fail miserably multiple times. Some take off and soar the moment they leave the office behind. Others will fail several times before finally finding the model that brings them the wealth and prosperity they were looking for. Persistence, perseverance, and a real commitment to the jobless lifestyle are real plusses when it comes to making this lifestyle happen for you.

Still reading? Still with me? Great! Then you haven’t been scared off by some of the darker sides of joblessness, or what it will require from you. You suspect—rightly—that these are small prices to pay for the rewards that you will receive by refusing to follow conventional wisdom about how you generate your income.

How People Go Jobless

Before we get into those benefits let’s take a look at what I mean when I start talking to you about the jobless lifestyle. What would you be doing instead of working a conventional 9-5 job?

There are actually several different jobless models. We will cover them further in Chapter 4, but here is a sneak preview:

Business owners count as jobless. They employ others, but nobody employs them.

Self-employed people count as jobless. These people perform a service for multiple clients but they determine which clients they will work for, how they will perform their work, and the extent, when and how, they will perform the work.

People who use the internet or other strategies to build a passive income are also jobless. These people have one of the most powerful jobless strategies as they free up their time while creating money.

Sometimes the jobless are referred to as free agents because they do many of the same things that employed people do, but they do it for clients of their own choosing and on their own time.

The Benefits of Joblessness

The jobless get quite a few benefits from their ventures. Here are a few of these very real benefits.

The jobless get to keep a much greater percentage of the income generated from their work, even if you take self-employment taxes into account. How can this be? Consider a typical sales job. If you generate $16,000 worth of income for a company, you will typically receive only $2,000 in income for that $16,000—if you’re lucky. A jobless individual will typically, after taxes and after re-investing in their jobless existence, keep 70% of the same income: $11,120, if the same income is generated. In fact, keeping a greater percentage of what you produce is one of the biggest advantages of the jobless lifestyle. For once, you will actually be paid exactly what you are worth, relative to the results that you produce for yourself.

Jobless people have a much smaller lifestyle cost. While their income sometimes looks smaller on paper, you need to consider what they’re not spending on. Jobless people spend less money on gas, less money on nice business clothes, and less money on expensive business lunches. If you have kids, you can also eliminate an $800-per-month day-care expense, too.

Jobless people are far less stressed out than their employed counterparts. They aren’t dealing with the boss’s personality and expectations. They can decide how to do their own work, enjoying autonomy that their job-holding counterparts never will enjoy. They pursue what they care about and actually enjoy the work that they do.

Jobless people don’t have to beg to take vacations. The jobless are often location-independent, too, which means they can go anywhere they want to while getting work done. Technology allows the jobless to communicate with clients all over the world.

Jobless people are healthier. They have time to go to the doctor and they don’t have to beg for time to rest when they get sick. They just go take the rest that they need so long as they are still able to meet their deadlines and obligations. If you’ve ever struggled to get yourself or a child to the doctor because your job isn’t happy to let you do this, then you’ll immediately understand this benefit for yourself.

Work can often take less time than it does at work. That’s because you eliminate distractions: the co-worker who interrupts, office politics, endless meetings, and water cooler chit-chat. You also cut through red tape and meaningless policies.

In Chapter 2, I’ll explain that these benefits are more than a handful of little perks that make joblessness attractive. They are actually hints to all of the reasons why getting a job can kill happiness and prosperity!

Do You Have the Right Personality for Joblessness?

Let’s assume that you at least have the drive and motivation to become successful in a jobless environment. You might be wondering: What other qualities are necessary for jobless success? Do you need a certain personality to succeed?

The traditional image of the jobless person, or free agent, is of a very extroverted, aggressive go-getter with a ton of charisma. You might have the image of a born salesman. Recently another image has grown, spurred by the tech boom: young, geeky innovators who come up with new technologies, web apps, and social networking sites. These twin images might give you a false impression of the type of person that you need to be in order to be successful.

Here’s the truth: all sorts of people are making joblessness work. Introverts are doing it. Detail-oriented planners are doing it. Artists, writers, and actors are doing it. Technicians are doing it. There are even people taking to joblessness who work with their hands, creating their own products while stepping off of the assembly line. There is room for the born salesman and the quiet secretary, so long as both of these people are willing to learn the skills to wear all of the hats that they are going to have to wear in order to build their business.

That’s not to say that certain personality traits aren’t helpful. That would be a lie. Fortunately, some personality traits are really just expressions of personality skills. These traits can be taught.

Personality Skills that Help with Joblessness

Here are some internal qualities that you might want to develop if you want to be jobless. Don’t avoid starting if you don’t feel like you have all of these qualities yet. They can be developed and learned. You will develop many of these qualities during the course of your jobless journey. Some of these qualities can even be helped by a variety of tools and tricks designed to help those who don’t have these qualities naturally.

1.     A Good Risk Tolerance

You actually risk a lot when you set out to become jobless. You take a risk that you won’t be able to make enough income to meet your bills. You risk rejection from potential clients or customers when you approach them in the hopes of making a sale. You risk your time, too, since you can put hours and hours into a venture without ever seeing it succeed.

Note that the desired quality is risk tolerance and not risk taking. You need to be able to calculate the right level of risk. You need to be able to evaluate potential returns before deciding a risk is right for you. This capability will help you choose the right jobless model for you. It will also help you direct your attention in a way that is going to be productive for you. Not all risks are good risks. As a wise man once said Courage is facing your fears. Stupidity is fearing nothing.

2.     A Good Work Ethic

I’ve already mentioned how necessary it is to work hard in order to make it in the world of the jobless, at least at first. Yet working hard is one of those over-used terms that typically loses its meaning as a result.

Work ethic is a question of whether you’re willing to do what it takes. Some jobless people might get a four-hour work week right out of the gate, but most will put in plenty of 18-hour days when they first get started. These people simply know that this is what it takes.

However, if you follow my methods, the 18 hours might well be pleasurable for you. That’s because I would never suggest that you become jobless without suggesting that you make a living doing something you enjoy in return. If you’re not enjoying yourself then to a certain extent, you might as well be back in your cubicle!

3.     Dependability

When you develop a list of clients, customers, readers, or subscribers—all part of the jobless experience—you make certain promises to them. You might promise to deliver something by a certain deadline. You might make an implicit promise for example that your blog or website is going to be updated every single week. Whatever the promise, you’re going to sink fast if you can’t keep that promise.

Oddly, people who keep their promises aren’t as common in the business world as you might think. People who keep their promises and deliver every single time are incredibly successful. They stand out.

You might not need to be punctual anymore, but you need to call when you say you’ll call, deliver when you say you’ll deliver, and do what you say you’re going to do. You have to do all of this without a boss looking over your shoulder, telling you what to do. For some people, this can be an incredible adjustment.

4.     Good Follow-up

Sometimes good projects or business deals will come up. However, the other person involved will get busy and go silent. If you actually want the sale or business deal to happen, you’re going to have to master the art of gently following up on the issue or project.

It really helps if you’re good at putting together systems that will give you call-back and e-mail reminders. Some software, such as Microsoft Outlook, does a good job of helping you with this. However, you still have to maintain the mindset that follow-up has to be a priority for you.

5.     A good attitude towards sales and promotion

Sales skills can be taught to anyone—yes, even to introverts. Yet a good attitude about sales and promotion is harder to teach.

Lots of people have had bad experiences with getting sold on something. Perhaps a salesperson has lied to you in the past, or pressured you into buying something you didn’t really want or need. Let it go. Those salespeople were doing sales wrong.

True salespeople take a consultative approach. They look into the source of someone’s problems and needs. Then they offer a solution that’s a good fit for that person’s problems. Good salespeople are good listeners who prescribe the right remedy for the right problem. They don’t need to lie or make false claims or use high-pressure techniques to make a sale.

If you have the solution to someone else’s problem, why wouldn’t you tell them? Why would you hurt them that way? Adopting this mindset will make it much easier for you to handle situations where you have to pick up the phone, run an advertisement, or do any of these other uncomfortable tasks which can be so vital for building your business.

6.      Being a good goal-setter

When you’re jobless, you create your own work. That’s part of the fun! If you’re not careful, however, you can wind up spinning your wheels and doing a lot of work that sets you adrift.

You need the discipline to plot your own course while you’re jobless. That means you have to know what you’re trying to accomplish. You also need to be able to pick apart that broader goal so that you understand how to create smaller goals and projects that will move you in the direction that you want to go. Finally, you need the stamina that it takes to actually get to work on those goals.

7.      Curiosity

There will be many, many times during your jobless journey that you have absolutely no idea how to do things. When this happens, you will have three choices.

Choice #1 will be to stop dead in your tracks, assuming that you simply don’t have the expertise that you need to move forward. This is, of course, the game-ending choice. If you can’t move past not knowing how to do something, you’re not going to get very far as a jobless free agent.

Choice #2 will be to become arrogant about the problem. Assuming that you know is almost as deadly as stopping because you don’t know. It can lead you to make many costly, unnecessary mistakes.

Choice #3 will be to research the problem, learning everything you can about it. When you embrace this choice, you become a much stronger jobless free agent. You open more options and doors for yourself, too, as you’re essentially training yourself in an entirely new group of skills. Every new skill that you learn increases your security as a jobless free agent (see Chapter 13).

It’s easier to take Choice #3 (the right choice) when you are a naturally curious person to begin with. If you love to learn, and can cultivate a love of learning, then you will find the jobless journey that much more enjoyable.

8.     Creativity

Creativity helps you come up with solutions to any problem that comes your way. In truth, prosperity as a jobless free agent is all about solving someone’s problems. You’re always either going to be solving your own problems or someone else’s.

Creativity is especially useful when it comes to developing products and services, if that is the route that you choose to take. It also helps when it comes to finding new ways to get the word out about who you are and what you do.

9.     Positive Mindset

Negativity is a killer in the workplace. It’s even worse when you’re taking on a jobless lifestyle. Negativity will drive away all of the benefits of becoming jobless, replacing them with hopelessness and inertia.

You need to be able to maintain a big-picture, positive outlook when things aren’t going the way you’d like them to go. You need to be able to maintain confidence in yourself and what you are doing. You need to be able to bolster yourself with helpful self-talk when you mess up. These are basic survival skills for the jobless free agent.

You also need to be your own best cheerleader. In a job you do get some people who can offer you external validation by giving you promotions, raises, or even positive feedback. Clients and customers give you positive feedback, usually, by coming back and continuing to spend money with you. You do not necessarily get a clear-cut ladder to climb. You have to come up with your own metrics and measurements for success. In fact, you have to decide what success means for you.

10.     A great time manager

Time management is one of the most important personality