Vancouver Forum: BTSOMT - Viewing Profile

I have been "self employed" for most of my life. This is partly a result of my somewhat "unusual" world view and opinionated personality. I have been called narcissistic. I think I just have a bad attitude.

It all started when I was a kid traveling all over the world on my father's coattails. I noticed that there was a clear pattern of many, many people on vacation - not wanting to go back to work. My father - seemingly on an endless vacation - was the subject of endless questions and sometimes even undeserved praise. Even at age 8 - natural born salesman that I am - I saw a lot of demand and very little supply for ways to make money doing something fun. The years ticked by and I started traveling by myself but the idea that there were so very many people that wanted to make a living - living, rather than working was never far from my mind for long. I made the same assumptions that everyone else made:

• If so many people obviously want this then it can't be easy.
• Even if I managed to do it, my skill set is so different from everyone else's that my success would be unrepeatable.
• There must be a million people doing it already.
• How could things get done if everyone was just doing what they wanted.

I never stopped wishing though that someday my business card would just have my name and contact information. The implied job description being "me".

And I tried. I tried to tweak my businesses to require less BS from me. And I failed.

Eventually I started to realize that yes, almost everyone wanted this and that many of them must have tried - with obviously very few successes. So we must all be missing something vitally important. I now believe that I know what that vitally important thing is: a network. I believe that we can all do pretty much what we want and yes, things will get done. Look at Burning Man as a case in point. So I have a little group of people that are "in" and dedicated to making a living - living and we support each other which sometimes still does mean doing things we don't want to.