When I was younger I pulled some ballsy moves, trying to get rich young. My goal was to be rich enough to do whatever I wanted to do by the time I was 25.
Back then I planned to fight my way to the top of the ladder, and sky dive from the ladder’s lofty heights into retirement, riding a golden parachute.
Instead I was left out to dry by the incompetent CEO who hired me then was fired, and I myself was fired shortly after that by the sociopathic founder of the company. It turns out telling your boss he’s full of shit isn’t a smart career move. Who knew?
In the end though, I achieved my goal: I retired at age 25, never having to work again.
The really surprising thing to me is that it was easy.
This is the 80s movie montage segment of today’s entry:
I left Ideal with a few ideas of how to proceed. I knew from my goal map that I needed more time to myself to build a product that had durable value. I found a long term contract (on Craigslist of all places) that allowed me to work from home for less than I made at Ideal, but still more than I had made at Acme. I had several ideas for software products, and kept my ear to the ground for opportunities.
Meanwhile, my lovely wife began writing a blog about a little known ailment called Reactive Hypoglycemia.
She has the illness, which is why she began the research. It was her project, but being the nice hubby that I am, I tweaked the site so it was presentable and accessible, and I typeset a book based on the blog’s content. She released that book onto Amazon last summer.
Her goal for the first month was to make $10. She made $12.77. Eight cents per hour might not sound like a reasonable wage to you, but it was enough. In the months that followed, she grew the number (with a tiny bit of help from me) from lunch, to dinner, and by October 2009, she made enough to pay the utility bill. Something else happened that October too. I’ll get to that in a moment.
The contract I had was cushy. It was a nice job on paper, but I had been hating it for months. It was deadly boring, and going nowhere. Maybe this will seem familiar:
I was staying because I thought I had to. I had followed my own advice to interview with companies regularly, and I could jump ship into a “better” job, but I’d be back at another office, and my goal map had made it clear how dubious that route really was. So I “had” to stay in order to pay the bills. I thought all I needed to do was wait it out, and when the next big, sexy opportunity presented itself, I would jump ship.
That’s that fear trap I’ve talked about. The mud in which we get stuck. The rubber band tethering us in place. But I got lucky.
Great news! You're fired!
Bye bye, excuses. Hello, motivation.
I was significantly happier that day than I had been in recent memory. I felt bad for my client, but it turned out that the stress of figuring out how to make ends meet was better than the stress of a dead end contract sapping my life and creativity away.
At first I was still in my old mindset. Which of my various projects could turn a profit quickly? I was caught in this cycle of being a “software developer”, and thinking primarily in those terms.
Then my wife took me out for a drink and proposed a deal.
She asked me to work with her full time. She had made $246.82 the previous month, and was on track to shatter her goals for October also (the goal was $160, she ended up making $394.01).
She was nearing the threshold she could manage with her organization (or lack thereof), and her technical skills (or lack thereof). She’s a brilliant researcher and writer, and if I could organize, streamline, and optimize the books and blogs, we’d have no trouble meeting the goals for the next few months.
The short version is: We did that. It worked.
The longer version is something I’ll flesh out in future entries. If you’re interested in reading about the details of how my wife and I built a mini media empire you can subscribe via my RSS, Twitter or e-mail.
In the mean time, let me hit the highlights by explaining what I learned in broad strokes:
For all the time and energy I spent trying to get rich as a young person, I find it morbidly amusing that my freedom came from some small niche blogs and self-published books. I imagined innovative products and business models, gulping up huge sales wins, before the windfall of a large exit. I imagined blood, sweat, and tears. The reality turned out to be much different, and in many ways better.
Here are the main things I learned:
I have had Creativitis for as long as I can remember. Creativitis is a disease particular to creative people that prevents them from finishing much of anything because they get stuck tweaking it until it’s “perfect”.
Here’s the ontological argument against Creativitis:
That which exists is better than that which does not exist. Therefore an imperfect product that actually exists must be better than endlessly tweaking hypothetical shit to perfection.
If I could offer only one piece of advice, this would be it: it doesn’t need to be perfect. Save perfection for your aimless hobbies. What you need to succeed is “barely passable“.
Our sites started out with terrible looking, free templates. They were unoptimized. They didn’t encourage people to subscribe. The book covers were terrible.
None of that mattered.
There’s time to go back and fix things. StatisticsHowTo.com used to look downright shameful. Now I think it’s one of the best looking math sites around. That’s not saying much though—it’s certainly not going to win any design awards. I only fixed it after I fixed the content, and only after it began making serious money.
Despite all my admonishments to be bold and take risks, still I was paralyzed by fear. It wasn’t the kind of heart chilling fear you might think of. It was ambient nervousness about an ambiguous future.
My lucky break was a huge lesson to me. Being laid off simulated the courage I should have had to begin with. If I’m ever in a similar situation, it won’t be luck that gets me through, it’ll be the secure knowledge that fear can only hold me back.
For years I was on the look out for the “big thing”. For the right company, poised to make a killing. For the right business venture with one in a million potential to blow the doors off existing markets.
Of course I didn’t notice the goldmine I was sitting on top of, because it wasn’t big enough. It wasn’t sexy enough. It was only a tangent, marginally related to my skills. It made about $10 a month, while I was making over a thousand times that and thinking that was peanuts.
That’s the magic of exponential growth. You make $10 the first month, and $40,000 the twelfth month. That’s a hell of a raise, if you stop long enough to grab it.
But it’s not quite that easy, because…
There’s a long time in there—about 10 months—when you don’t make anything. Each month you make as much or more than what you’d made in all your previous months combined, but if that number is still $30, you’re in trouble without a backup.
If you’re going to survive that period, you have to have a nest egg, or a partner who can support you.
Being as hooked into hacker and startup culture as I am, I assumed that success meant pain. Everyone says getting rich is more difficult than you expect when you start. That it changes you. That only the really talented, and truly dedicated “make it”, and only if they get lucky.
That wasn’t my experience. In fact, nothing I did took exceptional skill. I admit I had an advantage over the average person since I have backgrounds in both software development and graphic design, but the work we did isn’t difficult, honestly. The development company I founded when I was 18 was way more work and less money.
I didn’t work insane hours. My wife and I worked pretty much full time (40 hours a week, each) until December when we took a 10 day vacation. Despite our absence, our business grew and exceeded sales goals. In January we took two full weeks off. Sales were even better. In February we worked more or less full time on a couple new projects, but not at any deliberate pace.
Now I am free. Throughout this whole process, moreso than any other time in my working life, I felt a tremendous sense of balance and well being. I tinker around the edges of the business, but I don’t have to. It’s on autopilot, and if I don’t do anything to it at all, it’ll keep earning. It’s as secure as any investment vehicle, and if I want to, I can make it grow at any time.
I did it with a partner, a little luck, a sprinkle of skill, and some patience. I think anyone can do what we did.
I love this line -
“Being laid off simulated the courage I should have had to begin with.”
I’ve heard similar things from friends – that getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to them, that with the severance, cheap health insurance and time off they were finally able to take a chance on what they really wanted all along.
They would never have done it on their own, they would have stayed comfortable, “secure” and rode their job out as long as they could – but being presented with the opportunity (and well, *requirement*) to make something happen, they suddenly found themselves able to do what they had feared all along
.-= Sid Savara´s last blog ..Conversation Hacking – How To Make Small Talk Work For You =-.
It’s true, and having been through it, I’d encourage anyone who is in a similar situation to bite the bullet and just pretend they were laid off.
Ask yourself: If you lost your job today, what would you do?
Then do that.
Can’t you just piss off the boss?
Hi Sid, I see we read the same blogs :)
Pete > I would love to read a breakdown of how you find a niche market, how you create content for it, and how you market it.
Thank you and congratulations!
.-= Aymeric´s last blog ..Free online finance classes for entrepreneurs =-.
Stay tuned, there are more entries in this category on their way.
Hey Pete, this was a very interesting story. I’ll make sure to come back for more!
.-= Oscar – freestyle mind´s last blog ..30 Days Habit Change – Waking up At 5 am Day 17 =-.
Hi, Pete!
I love your story. I’m 24 and have been on the job for a couple of months, though I enjoy what I do, I want to have the freedom of not worrying about money ever. I wanted to ask, how did you pick your niche topic? I was thinking of picking up the book of Tim Ferris and FINALLY focus on creating my muse.
.-= Caleb´s last blog ..On the Commonness of Writing and Why Facts Are Cheap =-.
Stay tuned, I’m going to get to what worked for me in essays coming in the near future.
[...] keep seeing blog posts with explosive titles like “How I retired at age 25“, “An 18 year old Millionaire“, “I never have to work again“. Most of [...]
Love it! I’m not as far ahead as you, I am at “make life less complicated, so I can concentrate on finding my business” stage. I am sure I will be fine though, I have this great feeling inside me, that I am on the right track, I just have to join the pieces together to make it all work. Plus there’s the funny saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day” ;)
.-= Girl Startup´s last blog ..Using Your Intuition to Find your Passion! =-.
I have a draft in the queue that touches on that, actually. It’s important to create the mental “space” necessary to stay consistently creative.
I envy people who have the energy to work a job they hate and come home to work on a project they love. I certainly don’t.
what do you consider sufficient wealth / passive income to retire on?
Short: Expenses + 20%
Long: Enough to do whatever I feel like given that the world economy doesn’t self destruct.
Thanks for your post. I love reading stories like this!
Your story is very similar to mine, but I have not reached the retiring point yet. I’ve been working on my website for a little over a year, and it’s so much fun to see my sales go up each month.
I really liked your line:
“That which exists is better than that which does not exist.”
It’s so true! Most people have this problem. I call it “Perfection Paralysis,” and as soon as you conquer it and start producing stuff, you’ll be ahead of 90% of the world.
Thanks again,
Elizabeth
.-= Elizabeth´s last blog ..Mar 12, Grammar Course =-.
“80 percent of success is just showing up” — Woody Allen
8)
@Pete –
To be candid, your articles (this one in particular) seem to jump around all over the place and not have a cohesive flow or direction. (Not a personal attack, just a constructive [hopefully] observation.)
Some of the basic things I couldn’t tell from this article were:
– Are you literally retiring or are you just making a point?
– Is the money from your wife’s book or from your statistics site? I couldn’t tell.
Also (in all seriousness) is the eye patch real or are you just wearing it in the photo as part of a schtick?
Regards
I work to get better all the time. Your answers:
1) If I were the type to retire, yes, I could pack up, go to the beach, and stay ensconced in a recliner, margarita in hand, indefinitely. I’m not that type.
2) Both sites and the books associated with them are part of the larger line of books and sites our company has produced. They were just examples.
3) It’s real. I earned the shit out of this schtick.
Pete, you did indeed get lucky. Lots of wealthy people did. Would you be retired if your wife did not have the illness?
Trying to get rich WITHOUT luck is possible, but very difficult. Believe it or not, there are plenty of talented, smart, hard working people out there that are not rich, but want to be.
Stop acting like you got rich because you chose to. Luck/timing and your other attributes are what got you where you are.
What is the biggest evidence for my opinion? There are lots of people that got rich without any plans of doing so. There’s nothing luckier than that.
Justin, you’re not wrong. I think you may be overstating the role of luck here though.
The answer is of course we’d have done roughly the same thing with books and blogs. We set out to write, then decided what to write about. My wife’s illness gave us the idea for the first of many niche sites we created. That one is one of our lowest earners because it’s difficult to monetize. She was well positioned to write about it because it wasn’t documented well online yet, and she as an academic has access through her employer (university) to the academic databases with the primary research. That wasn’t luck, that was years of hard work on her part–years of training to get the degrees, years of writing, years of teaching.
It was possible to market her writing like we did because of all the years of hard work I had put in in software development (specializing in the web) and design.
What I’m saying here is that people create their own luck. You’re right that some people really do just hit the jackpot. But that’s not usually the case–usually the lucky, “overnight” success stories are actually stories about working really hard for years, and failing repeatedly, until finally something clicks.
This reminds me of a post by Mark Cuban, who wrote about working his dick off in the valley for years in order to be in the right place at the right time with the right people. He’ll be the first to admit it was partially luck, just like I am (and did in this post), but it was luck that he was ready to grab, not luck that just fell in his lap.
Let me ask you, Justin, what luck are you ready to capitalize on if falls into your lap?
That’s a pretty inspiring story. I think I will subscribe.
.-= Brad´s last blog ..Exodus to Virtual Worlds =-.
I have to say, yours is the first blog I have ever read that I am truly looking forward to ALL future posts. Keep them coming. I like the way you think.
I’m especially interested in more details about how you set up the books/sites, as I have been considering something similar and am trying to figure out where to start (which is actually why my husband told me to check out your site. He’s the developer; I’m the researcher-writer.).
.-= Laura C´s last blog ..How To Write a Good Plot =-.
Sounds like a good combo Laura, and more details are certainly forthcoming. I’m not sure what format they’ll be in –I haven’t decided between a free “report” e-book, or just an ongoing series of posts, but in any case, I’ll share everything I know.
Hello again, Pete!
I just wanted to come back and say thank you again for inspiring me to kick my Creativitis to the curb and just go for it. In the last year I have written a non-fiction book, self-published it, just sold my first copy, founded a Green parenting/cloth diaper blog as a platform for the book (and a labor of love), written a novel, and started to query publishers and agents. NONE of that would have happened if I were still sitting on my butt wondering when the opportunity would come along for me to be a published author–a lifelong dream. Thanks again! This is only the beginning for me, and I have never been happier. Blessings!
Laura C´s last [type] ..First Book Sale! and it’s not to my mother
Thanks for the note Laura, you made my day, I’m pround of you for going out and making things happen for yourself. That’s what it’s all about!
[...] will never figure “everything” out. You will never be able to make everything perfect before you start. Just make a decision and run with it. Figure it out as you go [...]
Pretty inspiring post, I have to admit. But it left me with the question how you actually did it.
What is your business model? Do you mainly sell eBooks, ad-space on your blog(s), through affiliate links? Can you be a little more specific?
Thanks,
Mark
I’m glad you liked it!
I go into more detail about my business model in my recent interview:
Techzing Interview (Audio)
Techzing Interview (Transcript)
Let me know what you think.
Thanks my friend, that was really inspiring. Let’s see if I can get there before 25 – I have 4 and a half years to go :)
Pete,
You don’t know me, but I had to comment on this.
This article is absolutely fantastic. You’re dead on about fear, and you’re dead on about creating your own opportunities.
Because the truth is that you don’t retire at 25 working a job. The world is not set up to work like that.
You have to find something valuable that you’re passionate about and provide it; give people more than what they’re paying you, and your wealth will come.
To be honest, I think luck has very little to do with it. I think that taking risks, being smart, being persistent and providing more value than what you get in return is far and away the determining factor here.
This was incredibly encouraging to read as I’m at a point in my life that mirrors yours when you were laid off.
It probably sounds strange, but I’m very happy that you have the means to retire at 25. I think everyone deserves that kind of freedom and that the potential is there. It’s nice to see someone achieve it.
Thomas´s last [type] ..For the ladies- Why you should never settle in a relationship
I am also new on this site :)
Responding to both Pete and Thomas, remember “the harder I work, the luckier I get”. Luck comes from being in the game and plodding through the mud, it doesn’t come from being an outsider.
Also, I think putting myself in the middle of successful people and working on my communications skills has dramatically improved my life.
Being someone who always wants to be busy, I have both a regular job and a blog that I am working on to provide a second income. I couldn’t imagine just blogging and doing SEO research, although this might change as I become more successful, but honestly the real job I have is a love/ hate one where one minute is absolutely dead boring and the other is almost too much adrenaline – I’ll leave your imaginations to do the work :)
But right now what I am doing is really designing my universe. Really just pulling in everything I enjoy just for the sake that I enjoy it, and low and behold a blog with growing support from artists is starting to grow. And I’m having a really good time.
Anyways, thanks for the post. What is your writing experience??? Naturally creative?
View Futhark Lifehack and my latest entries
My wife and I write for a living, and I’ve been writing since I was a kid. Also, no need to add a link to your blog manually: my system will find your latest and add a link at the bottom of your comments automatically!
Thanks for the tip – I was a bit confused because the link it suggested was an old post from months ago, but I’ll try it again here.
Just out of curiosity, what has been the number 1 means to your financial success as a writer. Is it content, SEO, networking, accumulation of multiple sources at once, or something else? I don’t consider myself an “expert” though I work everyday on improving those skills.
Mathieu´s last [type] ..Lord of the Vacation
Identifying the correct niches is big, and diversifying has worked really well for me. It’s not the only strategy, but it works.
[...] How I Retired at Age 25 [...]
This post really encouraged me. I think I expected for my site to take off immediately within minutes of it appearing on Google, and it hasn’t happened. Granted, it’s only been one week since it’s been live, but I’ve made two sales, and I really reaaally like that idea of “exponential growth”.
And yes, I always thought that only “the lucky ones” achieved success on their own. But it can’t hurt to at least try, right?
Glad to hear it! Keep plugging away. Set goals that you can achieve everyday, then make them happen. Good luck!
[...] said it before: the gallery that exists is better than the perfect gallery that doesn’t. Good for her for creating something and putting it into the [...]
Hey Pete, this was a very interesting story. I’ll make sure to come back for more!
Great essay. Inspiring. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers!
Jim
[...] partner, and shortly found herself with a hot, 18-year-old boytoy, who would later become her sugar daddy as well, and then her [...]
This is the second time I’ve read this and it’s still inspiring. I so want to get where you are.
Andrew
[...] Roberts: Yes, I guess the essay that caught my attention was “How I retired at age 25”. But after reading it; I realized that I had read almost all of his essays; almost all of them [...]
[...] Essays, Getting your Mind Right, Habits & Discipline | 5 responses Some days I try to inspire you to make you feel like success is within reach (it is). Other days I tell you to just do something, [...]
That is a very interesting and inspiring story. My husband and I are a team as well and everything we do, we do together. It makes it all two times better than if we were to do it all alone. Husband/wife teams are awesome and inspirational.
[...] told a story once on my blog about how I had been laid off from my cushy software development job where I was working from home making about a hundred thousand a year (which is great for a wage [...]