how to make money from your passion

Money can arrive, like Manna, directly from the clouds above.

Mostly however, it chooses these four channels.

It arrives through:

Employment

Self-employment

Passive Income Stream- You are the Employer

Passive Income Stream- Automated ie. From book royalties, internet advertising, referral sales, rent.

You can lifeshift into anyone of these financial styles, though the more radical the lifeshift the more you will tend towards self-employment and generating passive income streams.

Follow the dream or follow the money

Your dream work, the work that is most meaningful to you, might come with a wage attached. If you want to be a commercial diver, bush pilot, tour guide- you will find work that is reasonably, sometimes very well,paid.

But many people have dreams that at first sight seem deeply unremunerative.

Richard Noble was salesman for the steel company GKN. His dream was enormous- become the fastest man on earth. This was a dream that would cost millions, you would think, and certainly not earn him anything.

Noble pursued his lifeshift relentlessly. He knew that if he looked like a contender others would back him. So he spent $2000 on an old jet engine, bolted it to a homemade chassis, got permission to use an airfield for a day, crashed- but in the process established himself as being in the business of record breaking.

He then set about finding sponsors. Finally he built and drove the car that beat the world record.

After that he was assured of making money from books, talks, and consulting. Instead he went on to break his own record and be the first to smash the sound barrier on land- for a budget of 10% of the £25 Million budgeted by race car team Maclaren.

He used the experience gained in these high risk ventures to develop a new light aircraft and to lecture to companies on his methods and experiences.

Noble’s book ‘Thrust’ is a great inspirational read and full of great ideas for potential lifeshift money makers. Noble’s talent is to build a team of lifeshifters- who see the project as the meaningful  work in their lives. By harnessing the incredible power of lifeshifting he achieves wonders.

He is a great example of how money follows the dream.

Peter Canning is a paramedic who lifeshifted from being a speech writer on health matters. He went from talking to acting. But he is employed by a company- one that he doesn’t always see eye to eye with. However the rewards of saving people’s lives out there on the street outweighs the straitjacket of conventional employment.

Frank Nasre started his carpet business as a self-employed salesman and shop manager. He was good- and innovative- the first to realize that under appreciated Afghan carpets suited the wood floors many Australians have. His breakthrough was when he realized “There are better salesmen out there than me.” He employed them and was able to devote his time to searching out locations for a new shop. He had gone from self-employed to employer.

Pablo lifeshifted from being a hedgefund manager to being an artist living in Ibiza. His art makes very little money- right now- so he lives by doing translation of business documents for one company. The work is easy and he can do it when he wants. His primetime is occupied by painting and employment serves this.

Peter Nelson does what he did as a child- build treehouses. He lifeshifted into his dream profession twenty years ago and now is both self-employed, is an employer as well as enjoying passive income streams from books and videos. Nelson has commandeered the niche (invented it you might say) of master treehouse builder. It sounds crazy- but last year Alnwick Castle- where the Harry Potter films are shot- paid $7million to build a huge treehouse that is also a 120 person restaurant. With lifeshifting anything can happen!

There are several basic principles involved with solving the money question. One is: what you may hate, others may pay to do.

Mike Treibold lifeshifted from an office worker to professional dinosaur hunter. Much of fossil preparation involves meticulous work chipping away the substrate of residual stone. He nearly exhausted himself doing this alone until he realized people were only too keen to volunteer just to be near anything to do with dinosaurs and to learn the trade. And then he found some were better at preparing dinosaur bones than he was.

No Money on the Horizon

At first your lifeshift may look like a non-starter when it comes to making money. Top aikido teacher Robert Mustard spent years in Japan learning his skills. He had no idea that he would one day do it for a living- for him it was just what he loved to do. He returned to Canada with a 6^th Dan and a towering reputation. Over time he built a good living  from teaching at his own dojo and at seminars.

One of my favourite lifeshifters is Peter Vido, the obsessive scythe enthusiast and co-author of “The Scythe Book” that has run to several editions and is still very much in print twenty years after being published. It would be hard to find a more obscure lifeshift  niche than scything (for those in the dark it’s a long handled sickle for cutting grass and corn) but Vido’s fascination comes over both in his book, website and instructional videos. He also runs seminars to teach scything (it’s all in the sharpness of the blade).

Long Tail Lifeshifters

The scythe man illustrates the so called Long Tail phenomenon where obscure subjects can be remunerative through the internet’s ability to link up enthusiasts from all over the world. The long tail can be put to work by lifeshifters worldwide.

There may be nobody in your town interested in finding new rock art in the Libyan desert. But Hungarian Lifeshifter Andras Zboray has built a business, FJ expeditions that links everyone in the world interested in Saharan rock art. Through his extensive website, CDs and translations Zboray attracts clients for his expeditions to search for new art- mining the long tail to make a good living in his chosen work.

By harnessing the power of the long tail almost any lifeshift can be made remunerative.

The stages of making money from an interest are:

1)Build your competence in your chosen lifeshift- not difficult because it’s your dream work, what you find most meaningful.

2) Establish a website with an information heavy content. Providing real value with updates in the form of news, reviews and useful blog material.

3) Publish a book on lulu.com publicized through the website. Produce dvds, courses, talks etc.

4) organize events that combine travel with teaching people your lifeshift skill.

5)Combine travel or tourism with your interest- courses in exotic locations that trade on the value added of being a holiday as well as a course.

I have followed this method with the successful Explorer School where my Lifeshift interest in exploration has been built into a business providing courses where people can learn exploration skills.

Enjoy MINTS- Money Is Not The Solution

Except it’s hard to because it very often is. You want to do a course, it costs money. If you had money you could lifeshift couldn’t you? You want to write a book, if you had a nest egg you could take time off and concentrate and write that book. But you don’t have money. So you can’t lifeshift.

Don’t get me wrong. Money is the ultimate supertool, one of the best combination spanners in the workchest. With money you achieve so much, so quickly. Everyone needs money.

But a solution is never universal. First you need to define the problem. When you know the problem you can address it. Perhaps you will need money, but perhaps not.

You want to go rock climbing- you could pay a lot of money for an adventure holiday or you could join a club and pay virtually nothing to learn.

You want to get the spare time to write- if you only you could afford a two week break at a special hotel you know you could do it. Quit the demanding job and get all the spare time you need working evenings to support yourself. Clive Cussler quit his high power advertising job to work in a divestore while he wrote Raise the Titanic.

You need a top camera to be a professional- if only you had the money to buy it you could make that lifeshift. Again you can always find a group, club or institution that owns such equipment, you can also meet people who can loan you their gear through such an institution, you can even offer to review such equipment and then use it while you have the chance. When I worked as a professional photographer I identified the cheapest pro-camera and borrowed it from a friend. The solution wasn’t money- it was people.

Money can be a snake, a motivator. The story goes: a man was dying of thirst in the desert. He collapsed and was about to expire when he saw a snake. full of fear he ran and ran...until he reached a well and his life was saved. After he had drunk his fill he saw the snake again and began to curse it. But the snake reminded him that he had saved his life...Money is needed to do certain things like travel and live. But it can get you to some interesting places and doing interesting things. Alright, get a job, earn that money, quit the job, use it for what you need it for. It’s that easy.

No question crops up more often than “so how do you pay the bills?” When you are doing, full time, what you want to do you have no status riding on your job. You couldn’t care less if you’re a dustbin man or a doctor. Ranulph Fiennes, the world famous explorer, was once seriously considering becoming a waiter at Claridges Hotel- the tips were so big he’d be able to take enough time off to make expeditions for half the year.

So the short answer to the money question is that you make a bare living in the time left over from doing your passionate interest. You can save money and live off that, or you can work odd hours- any hours as long as they do not infringe on your primetime.

The longer answer has to address how you make your lifeshift into your breadwinner. There are many ways to do this and we've examined some here. But first its important to think about money in a different way.

What usually happens is that people don’t really know how to make money from their passion so they restrain themselves from going full blown obsess ional which is sometimes all that you need to do before you start making money from it.

There are also transferable jobs which prey on any interest and make it a commercial viability. These are writing, video making both entertainment and instructional, sponsorship, equipment sales, photography, courses and seminars, lectures, tourism and hospitality.

When people want to change their lives they are usually looking for a way to also make a living. This is, in 90% of cases, what derails a lifeshift. In the beginning you cannot hope, expect or need to make your living from what you love. It’s the first commandment of lifeshifting. If you try to make money too soon from what you love then you run the risk of poisoning your interest. Yet at the same time, I believe it is possible to make money out of any interest given enough time and energy spent really mastering that interest. With Lifeshifting to make money you have to locate your interest in as high an earning a market as possible. For example, I once tried to make money selling a homebrew product I had invented. But the homebrew market as a whole, in the UK, is only worth about £2 million. The chance of making a good living is limited. You can therefore relocate your interest to either the teaching and educational market or the entertainment market. Remember if you can’t sell candles, sell candle making kits. Once you have a business that sells information and learning you can then piggyback product sales onto that. Ray Mears, as well as making TV shows, runs survival courses. After the course is over you have the chance to buy some of the excellent gear you have used. The sales of equipment naturally complement the courses.

positive thinking v. retaining the critical faculties of a smart person

I came out of my building the other day and I suddenly realised how hot and wonderful the sun was. It hit me, despite the smog and the cars, this country Egypt is a marvellous place to live because it’s sunny 320 days a year- and the sun really cheers me up.

But then I thought: what if I could make my own weather wherever I was? In wet cold Scotland, or foggy Maine, or monsoon Bombay?

Our mood, positive or negative, is affected by the weather. Setting aside light deficiencies, can we change our mood irrespective of the weather and other factors? Can we make ourselves feel positive? Can we make our own internal weather?

Is thinking positive all it’s cracked up to be?

Positive thinking has come in for a bit of beating recently. Probably because it is almost the second religion of American sales and personal development circles and also because it is very easy to mouth the words but somewhat trickier to know what they mean. I speak from personal experience. For many years, though I have always been drawn to positive people, and ALWAYS on expeditions favoured taking positive enthusiastic types over negative ‘intelligent’ folk, I have also been secretly cheered, in the nastiest schadenfraude kind of way, when someone who is ‘being positive’ finally cracks and gives way to a slew of negative thinking. Apart from proving they are human after all what else does it tell us?

First, the notion that positive thinking is delusional is itself inaccurate. Positive thinking simply means choosing to focus on the positive aspects of a thing rather than its negative ones. It’s that simple. There is no ‘objective’ perception of something when it is at the mental ‘chewing it over’ level. I think you can get flashes of objective perception when for example an art expert sees an object he just instantly knows is a fake, or, in my own case, facing a set of river rapids and knowing, sometimes, instantly, and correctly, which way to go (or risk losing the boat), but there are long periods in life when we kind of drop down a gear and get into ruminating about our past life and the future and whether we are ‘successes’ or not. I have met a millionaire inventor with a fabulous home, a thriving business and high achieving kids and he thought he was failure. He was a war hero too! I mean, come on! But you know- he probably had too much ruminating time courtesy of his wealth- and had started comparing himself to Einstein and Benjamin Franklin – usually it is comparisons that get the old negative self-perception going. ‘That bastard, I was at school with him and now he’s on TV calling himself an expert…’ etc.

Comparisons between people are a slippery slope best avoided, completely sidestepped. What someone ‘has done’ is secondary to what they have learned by doing it and what permanent benefit it has brought them, developmentally speaking.

This notion of permanence is worth pondering. Sometimes we make an advance, or feel it to be one, only to lose it a day or two later. Ranulph Fiennes, the English polar explorer, writes “a motivating mantra will last three days maximum”. In other words, there is a difference between lucking onto a slogan or even a snatch of a poem or song and endlessly repeating it to spur yourself on and making a qualitative and permanent shift. This is different from just acquiring a new habit. Habits can be acquired and lost. One of the most interesting, and successful polymaths of the 20^th century was the philosopher J.G.Bennet who was also a linguist, mathematician, chemist, businessman, and first chairman of the National Coal Board. He claimed that whenever he found he had a habit- good or bad- he would try and break it. He disliked anything mechanical being applied to human beings. His successes in the public arena show that ‘good habits’ aren’t quite the essential they have been made out to be. What is required is what lies behind the decision to successfully start a ‘good habit’- or what I prefer to call it: a momentum operation.

A momentum operation is some task, project, job or venture that will need a huge amount of effort to succeed. You’ll need start-up energy as well as momentum energy to keep it going. Instead of thinking of ‘habits’, which to me smack of boring rules handed down by people who are out of touch, I think of creating ‘an environment where failure is impossible’. This means an environment where momentum is maintained by the situation itself. I have heard writers complain of how hard it is to get any peace and quiet to write in. They are setting themselves up for failure before they have started. In order to write successfully you need a distraction free environment, an environment where momentum is maintained. For me this meant, aged thirty, the small ignominy going back to live with my parents, using the bedroom as a writing room, putting off all plans and writing 3-4 hours a day five days a week until the book was finished. Everything that could get in the way I removed BEFORE I started- in other words- a ‘momentum operation’.

On another occasion I had to attend an Arabic language learning course across Cairo. I am fairly bad early in the morning and to get up early, especially after a late night is not my idea of fun. But in Cairo a driver and car is cheap to hire. I had one call for me every morning- and I did my homework in the car. Usually I was the first there too- gaining a reputation for early rising that was unwarranted!

Are you going to achieve something or are you going to try and turn yourself into a fantasy humanoid, rather as body builders eschew strength in favour of looking good? I know what I would rather do- work within my limitations but achieve real things. I get up early during expeditions- usually  because I go to bed early, and I’ve had lots of fresh air. But when I’m in the city I rise right now about 7am because that’s when my kids get up. I’d get up at 8am if it was just me.

One day I may choose to change forever my getting up time- but that isn’t right now. If I want to write a book it’s crazy to add to the stress by forcing myself to get up earlier than I usually do. My point is: a good habit is all very well. More useful is identifying what stops momentum energy from building. With momentum almost anything can be achieved. Without it you’ll conk out like a the bunny without the duracells.

Create a momentum operation rather than a set of good habits. If you have a momentum operation that works for you then good habits are a luxury you can acquire and show off later like a six pack.

Bad habits are no different- you can lose them too. If you are less wedded to the notion of habits being the be all and end all then bad habits should be easier to shift. The way to do it is schedule other things to happen when the bad habit was previously going on. To combat smoking I stopped going anywhere where smoking happened, and if it did I always had something to eat.

We got into this by talking about permanent change versus acquiring a good habit. Permanent change is a permanent extension of how wide a perspective you bring to bear on anything. It comes from experience being digested. The experience of feeling that you can switch your inner focus onto the positive, together with the experience of realising how energising feeling positive is gives rise to a permanent change in how important we feel ‘being positive’ is.

Let me be more specific. Throughout my teens and early twenties I started out to walk a number of long distance paths but always failed or gave up. This track record of failure bugged me. When I was 25 I decided to walk the Pyrenees mountains from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. The route I had planned this was about 700km. Over serious hilly country. I had mishaps and foot problems a plenty but I completed it. I then had a feeling that something permanent had been acquired that was an admixture not just of this success but all the failures that had gone before.

Then I grew cocky and had to give up on a simple summer 100km walk in the UK because of poor planning and inadequate preparation. So how can I talk of a permanent levelling up in competence in this area?

What is true is this: I knew I was being cocky. If I had taken it as seriously as the previous walk I would have succeeded. I guess the point is: once you have reached a permanent increase in competence you can still fail, but if you do you’ll know it’s your own fault rather than before, when it was always blamed on some outside agency such as poor boots or poor weather. The main point is that it isn’t aardvarkproof, but at least it works most of the time.

So can acquiring a positive mental outlook be a permanent acquisition?

First off I think everyone prefers to be in a positive frame of mind, 95% of the time. You may like a little ‘recreational negativity’ from time to time but it’s a bummer to be in that zone for too long. And it’s very contagious. Naturally there are certain activities that are more likely to make you feel positive and help maintain a positive frame of mind than others. For me it’s the ocean and the desert- in either of these places I can’t help waking up with a big smile on my face whatever the weather. So hanging out in such places makes sense if I want to boost my positive frame of mind.

But you can’t be on holiday all the time. And there are other people in my life besides me, who don’t like the desert and the ocean. Of course I could just get rid of them, but that’s plain nuts- these are people I love.

So I need a second level of mental operation whereby I can CHOOSE what frame of mind I am in. I think this is the whole key behind positive thinking. It’s not about being positive per se, it’s about being able to CHOOSE to be positive.

Do you see the difference? The ‘easy’ version of positive thinking pedalled in sales seminars is little more than brainwashing yourself to ‘think positive’- whatever that means. The real challenge, however, is to be able to CHOOSE to be positive- or even negative, though strangely, given the choice between the two most people opt for the positive- just as most people opt for holidays in the sun rather than the hail and rain…

So how do you CHOOSE that positive mental state? First you have to shed the culturally acceptable nonsense that ‘outthere’ has some kind of objective reality. Stuff that. ‘Outthere’ is whatever you choose to focus on and emphasise. Just now I walked with my wife through our neighborhood at night to pick up a basket she had bought. The lights shining through a half built block were fascinating and I got to thinking that if this walk was depicted as a series of photos interspersed with prose it would be a better story than prose alone. That set me off looking for interesting shots and the walk was almost like some kind of alternative reality rather than the usual stroll watching out for the incredible numbers of cars and cursing the invention of the internal combustion engine in general.

I just focussed on a different thing. And we all have the ability to do that. It takes no willpower. All it takes is the desire to do it. Curiousity, too, maybe. You have to get used to choosing what to focus on when your mind becomes ‘occupied’. If you start thinking about the past, choose to focus in such a way that what happened takes on a positive slant. One obvious way is to alter the timeframe. When you have a longer perspective events change in significance. If this makes something more positive adopt this perspective.

When you see a film or play that doesn’t draw you in focus on what you like about it, even if it’s the scenery. It really doesn’t matter how clever you are if you are negative and did not CHOOSE to be negative but simply REACTED to what was in front of you. By exercising the muscle of choosing to change what you focus on and give importance to, you are accessing what is the real energy of positive thinking.

Remember you aren’t doing this when you are trying to work out why something didn’t work. But how often are you doing that? Besides, we usually know why something didn’t work. As failure unfolds we get the picture. Analysis after the event is often another variant of procrastination. Mostly we host a mental chatshow in our brains. But the mood we are in affects everything. If the tone is positive we give off a positive energy that affects everything.

This energy controls ‘what you choose to see as important’. I’ve written before about judgement acquisition and how it resides in those who know what to pay attention to and what to ignore. Let’s circle back to that earlier set of remarks about habits. Habits are nothing compared to knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore. Habits are a tool that help to get a certain job done. But you won’t even know how to use that tool or even what the job should be, unless you know what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

In a way the current era is really helpful because it has forced this requirement right onto the agenda of everyday life. I was just watching Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 with my kids (weirder than 1 but worth seeing if you have 8-10 year olds, I digress) and in it there’s a character who was a dork at highschool and now spends his time playing Wii, Nintendo and other games. Whatever your view of computer games, watching this makes you realise how utterly limiting they are. We have this amazing REAL world out there and grown men are sitting indoors fiddling with an Xbox. Yet you only have to play a little to get hooked. In other words, like most vices, you know they’re bad but keep right on. We live in an era where the distractions are unprecedented. Now it’s possible to live your entire life virtually. Instead of it being a theoretical question it’s in our face all the time: pay attention to all the kack out there and your brain will begin to resemble it.

What we pay attention to is either chosen for us: by the advertising and other distractions that get to us first, or what we choose to pay attention to. If you choose to pay attention to writing a book rather than reading books then you’ll have a different result at the end of your exercise.

The fact is, as anyone with kids knows, either you’re attention is being kidnapped by others (the child screaming for attention) or else you have planned ahead and found an activity for them to enjoy while you get some downtime. So planning ahead comes into choosing what you pay attention to.

And what you feed into your plans comes from your experience and the experiences of others. As the saying goes: the ordinary man learns from his own experiences, the wise man learns from the experiences of others. For an unusual example of this read Rebuilding the Indian by Fred Haefele, which I reviewed a few days ago. One way to discover more about from the experiences of others is to talk to old people, people who haven’t given up the ghost, who still have their marbles. All the ones I know have the ability to chose what they pay attention to and there is a strange correlation between the longer lived ones choosing to focus on the positive....

One of your own experiences may have been that it is possible to find a positive area to focus on in almost any setting. The advantage of this is not that ‘you feel better’. Rather it is the slow reclamation of your birthright.

Which is: the ability to make your own weather.

aardvark information

I love aardvarks. Here’s what wikipedia has to say:

The Aardvark (Orycteropus afer) is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal native to Africa. It is the only living species of all Tubulidentata, but there are known other prehistoric species and genera of Tubulidentata.

It is sometimes called "antbear", "anteater", "Cape anteater", "earth hog" or "earth pig". The word "aardvark" is famous for being one of the first entries to appear in many encyclopaedias and even abridged dictionaries. The name comes from the Africaans for "earth pig" or "ground pig" (aarde earth/ground, varken pig), because early settlers from Holland thought it resembled a domesticated. However, the aardvark is not that closely related to the pig; rather, it is the sole recent representative of the obscure mammalian order Tubulidentata. The aardvark is not closely related to south American anteater, despite sharing some characteristics and a superficial resemblance. The closest living relatives of the aardvark are the elephant shrews followed by hyraxes and elephants.

Aarvarks are rare, ancient, exotic, not as endangered as one might imagine, first in line, lurking in burrows but ready to take over the world. Aardvarks of the world unite!

what's your A level?

What’s your A level? How Alienated are you? The more alienated you are from the surroundings you live in the harder it will be to make a living in those surroundings. One solution is to move, or find a subculture to thrive in. Another is to just try and see the glass as half full rather than half empty.

If you want to make money it has been observed that the more alienated you are the harder it is to make money. This follows commonsense rules: the more you accept society and the world as it is, the bigger your potential market. If you refuse to deal with people who work for multinationals then your market is smaller. Which isn’t to say it is impossible to succeed- there are ‘cool’ subcultures that influence the mainstream- the thing is, you’ll feel like a sell out when you do make that cross-over. Or maybe you’ll be less alienated by then.

I know what I’m talking about because I’ve gone from a rather abiding alienation and rejection of most activity on this planet to a growing wonder and awe at the sheer diversity and energy of life manifested everywhere by human beings. That sheer abundance of activity and ingenuity I try to now make my reference point. It has, in the main, replaced my earlier dismay at all the ‘blunders’ mankind makes.

Rose tinted spectacles- not really. We all perceive reality through some kind of framework or lens if you prefer. You chose what kind of framework that is. Since life is dynamic and ongoing it is a matter of time frame for many judgements. A building site looks a mess if you have a time frame of a few weeks- it is simply part of a beautiful building if that time frame expands to a few years.

We don’t make the world with our thoughts. Rather we interpret what is there and base our action on that interpretation. And people react to us depending on how we see them and think about them.

By changing the way you see the world you can change how the world impacts on you and your influence on others- even if its just by being more cheerful and upbeat.

This is what happens when your A level is reduced. People want to spend more time with you, they trust you better and that makes doing business much much easier. Also you like them rather than resent them.

Of course having a high A level you'll feel a whole lot cooler hanging out with all the existentialists and grunge musicians etc. It wears off after a while though.

not zen and the art of rebuilding a motorcycle

One of my favourite books is Fred Haefele’s Rebuilding the Indian. You can get it on Amazon.

It’s a book about a guy who sees himself as a bit behind in the race of life, who works as a tree surgeon and has a younger wife and a child on the way and decides to spend 5000 USD he’s lucked into on a WRECK of an Indian Chief motorcycle. People think he’s crazy but he goes ahead and rebuilds the bike, almost as if he is rebuilding his life. And he succeeds- in both ventures really.

I am not sure he didn’t intend it but the book is actually a nice parable. In it, the Fred figure, who probably bears a strong resemblance to the real thing, goes around kind of at a loss being both helped and dumped on by all the Indian owning experts he meets. But in the end his is the only running Indian in town and everyone marvels at how it’s also the best looking. All Fred did was take the best advice he could find on each section of the rebuild and follow it through and keep going. He comes over as an honourable guy, a bit of a soft touch, resorting to bribing people with money and gifts to help him out. But he does it, he does a better job than the experts who are always getting distracted away from finishing their Indian rebuilds. The moral is: get the best help you can and follow it when it makes sense, follow your own instinct, have just enough money ready, and just keep on going. I love this book but I’m not even sure why, I’m not that into motorbikes and haven’t ridden one since I was twenty or so. I think it’s because of the way he evokes this life in Missoula Montana that hovers between desperation (he and a pal are on Zoloft anti-depressants one Autumn) and an idyllic lifestyle of canoe trips, arty friends and wild motorbike buddies. It’s such an honest read you feel you can diagnose the problems of modern life, to some extent, from reading it- we have too much stuff, we think we need more, we’re always trying to do things to make ourselves happy instead of just being happy. The book is transparent, or seems so, just presenting things, vignettes, that give you a lot to think about, even if you may disagree with the very few tentative explanations of his own situation Fred offers. I like the dissatisfied air that Fred often has, which is always brought back with a good coffee or the help of a friend. I think you get a feeling of the loneliness of the US that lurks so close beneath the friendliness. That may sound like a downer, but it isn’t- it's actually strangely uplifting, especially when the engine fires for the first time. It’s definitely worth reading.

the terrible truth about boredom and money

This is one of the ultimate secrets of making money, a secret so blindlingly obvious, so common it has never, to my knowledge ever been given the importance it deserves.

I learnt this in Japan from Sato Sensei, a 6^th Dan part time teacher of Aikido who was also the owner of a furniture company started by his family. He was a millionaire, the first I’d ever met. Sato Sensei was about fifty, very fit, and always laughing, having fun while every one else was grim faced and slogging away. This cheerful and lighthearted demeanor made it even more surprising when he told me, “the secret of making money is enduring boredom.” He saw me about to smile and for once did not grin back. He was serious. “In martial arts you learn how to deal with boredom without being bored. You do many many times the same throw, the same lock. But if you get bored you get hurt so you learn how to stay focused and interested. In business I hate it very much for years. For years! Then I finally learn: making money is boring! That made it easy. I ust made the boredom as interesting as I could!

Of course I forgot this except in its relation to my immediate concerns- which was doing martial arts. I did not relate it to money making activity until several years later when I actually had to make money rather than get paid a salary. I also started to observe the rich people I met. Sure enough they often made their fortune from something incredibly boring- the second millionaire I met had made his fortune from chicken drinkers, devices for allocating water to intensively reared chickens, but cast in plastic not metal. This cost, and weight, saving he passed on to the grateful farmers who bought them eagerly. But how boring! Or the next millionaire- who I actually attended college with- Roland- who was known as the least academicly gifted undergraduate around and ultimately sold his company for $70 million dollars. The product? Financial PR. Ie bullshit. Hotair. A spun story about widgets and loans and deals. Call me a philistine but what could be more tedious week in week out than meeting fat (or even thin) executives who tell you are boring story about their company which you then have to pretend is interesting to a bunch of journalists who have heard it all before.

But therein lies part of the key. Roland had found a challenge he could meet in making the boring stuff interesting- to himself and therefore to others. And he got paid very handsomely for it.

In brief, the terrible truth about making money is that you get paid in proportion to how much boredom you can stomach without getting bored yourself.

Take poker, often cited as a great school for money making training. Lots of businessmen in the world claim everything you need to learn about cutting a deal is in poker. For years I thought this meant reading faces, memorising details, calculating odds. Bull, I’m afraid. The main thing about playing poker to win is being able to endure the boredom of hours of bad hands that you must fold even though you’re dying to play just for something to do. Winning at poker is not about great hands, it’s about increasing your chip pile- and you do that by careful boring play with medium hands and chucking away bad hands. A good poker player shouldn’t have to rely on more than an average share of luck.

All jobs involve boredom, or rather, combating potential boredom. Take writing. Sitting for hours on your backside staring at a blank screen or page is boring. But a bored writer will only turn his reader off. So the writer must struggle to interest him or herself. By making the boring task interesting (and this isn’t just done through subject matter, it’s also done by counting words (to a writer a 1000 words HE’S WRITTEN is VERY interesting believe me), writing with a fancy inkpen (I have a Sailor collector’s pen for that very purpose) or a nice notebook (Hemingway and Bruce Chatwin preferred a moleskine one made in Paris) or sitting at a special desk or reading first a favourite inspiring fellow author- all ways of beating the intrinsic boredom of it.

Just recently I met another Japanese millionaire. He was travelling around the world with his young wife staying in the weirdest and funnest hotels they could find. They’d just come from an ice hotel in Finland and were on their way to an underwater hotel in Florida. Silly, maybe, but not boring, at least not compared to how he made his fortune. How had he done it? From a single car part he sold in millions, a device that contained the central processing unit of the car and prevented better its destruction in an accident. A box to put it bluntly. And he’d stuck to one product. “I did want to do more,” he told me, “But I thought it better to keep to the one thing I did best.” He’d weathered the boredom, bitten the bullet, and now he was taking his reward.

It’s boring to sit in a shop day after day waiting for customers. Or it can be.

It’s boring to make call after call trying to get the chance to make a sales pitch. Or it can be.

It’s boring having to make budgets and plans and talk to bankers and buy advertising and get people to do things they’d rather not do. Or it can be.

The terrible truth is: you have to be able to find a way to make boring things interesting if you want to make money out of your lifeshift. This is where you have to get inventive. Wear clothes that ‘express yourself’ rather than a dull suit. Drive a car that gives you a laugh or a thrill. Have that business meeting in a trendy restaurant rather than your usual place. Now you see why business folks tend to do these things that seemed a tad silly before- they’re trying to beat the boredom just as you will.

Luckily, a lifeshift activity is by its very nature, not boring. But turning it into money you run the risk of infecting it with boredom. But knowing this in advance is more than half the battle. Other tips include dividing up boring tasks into bitesized chunks, injecting silliness and fun wherever you can (one reason why Richard Branson is such an inveterate practical joker and party giver maybe) sticking to a ritual and making a challenge out of defeating boredom. But the main thing is facing up to it: if you want unalloyed fun you’re going to be poor.

how to make money and have fun

People always tell me: if only I had the money I’d lifeshift straightaway, dump the career and do what I love- be it photography, tango dancing or growing carnivorous plants.

Money is always the biggest excuse for not changing.

I even coined my own pnemonic to deal with that negative thought when it occurred, which it does fairly regularly: MINTS- Money Is Not The Solution.

When I think MINTS I force myself to think of all the ways I can solve a problem without money. For added emphasis it might work to have a bag of mints ready to suck on sitting on your desk.

The thing is there is a paradox or two here. 1)Rich people often don't worry about money- really- they just act rich and even more comes to them and 2) to make money you need money but instead of focussing on money too much focus on people, work, production and things you can get for free.

MINTS means attracting people to a project before money. If you have believers the money will follow. Instead of thinking I need X amount think of the kind of person who has whatever good or service you need. Think how you could attract or persuade them rather than simply forking over a ton of cash.

MINTS means you should think about earning or working sincerely to achieve a lifestyle, rather than trying to buy it immediately off the shelf. If you want a farm you can start by renting a field rather than looking for the money to buy land.

MINTS means that having lots of money won’t help you find something worthwhile to spend it on. Neither does the presence of money reduce your problems- it just changes their nature. If you are a worrier by nature, more money will probably just make you worry more unless you deal with it first.

But surely we need money to start anything?

Of course- but you need the right perspective on money, you need to realize that being creative can cut massive costs right at the beginning.

My friend Frank was a penniless immigrant from Iran to Australia in the 1990s. His family trade had been weaving and selling carpets- so he looked for a place to start a shop in Melbourne. The minimum  rent he was looking at paying up front was $26,000. He didn’t have that. Instead he went looking for an empty place in a busy street that had been overlooked for whatever reason. Eventually he found a promising site -in a red light district. It was a disused pub. The owner was eager to let the place to a reputable business and Frank told him he would take the place if he was given three months free rent just to get started. The owner agreed. So right at the beginning he had saved thousands of dollars.

Generally speaking- the more meaningful a task is to you, the less money you need to accomplish it. When I set out to cross Western Canada by birchbark canoe I was told I would have to pay guides to go with me. Instead, because of my complete dedication to making the journey I found enthusiasts who helped pay for the trip and help me as well.

Money may be the goal, the way you keep score- but it is not the right way to start thinking about starting something new. It's a tool that takes second place behind people, ideas, energy, enthusiasm and a correctly structured effort.

Top aikido teacher Robert Mustard spent years in Japan learning his skills. He had no idea that he would one day do it for a living- for him it was just what he loved to do. He returned to Canada with a 6^th Dan and a towering reputation. Over time he built a good living  from teaching at his own dojo and at seminars.

One of my favourite lifeshifters is Peter Vido, the obsessive scythe enthusiast and co-author of “The Scythe Book” that has run to several editions and is still very much in print twenty years after being published. It would be hard to find a more obscure lifeshift  niche than scything (for those in the dark it’s a long handled sickle for cutting grass and corn) but Vido’s fascination comes over both in his book, website and instructional videos. He also runs seminars to teach scything (it’s all in the sharpness of the blade).

Long Tail Lifeshifters

The scythe man illustrates the so called Long Tail phenomenon where obscure subjects can be remunerative through the internet’s ability to link up enthusiasts from all over the world. The long tail can be put to work by lifeshifters worldwide.

There may be nobody in your town interested in finding new rock art in the Libyan desert. But Hungarian Lifeshifter Andras Zboray has built a business, FJ expeditions that links everyone in the world interested in Saharan rock art. Through his extensive website, CDs and translations Zboray attracts clients for his expeditions to search for new art- mining the long tail to make a good living in his chosen work.

By harnessing the power of the long tail almost any lifeshift can be made remunerative.

The stages of making money from an interest are:

1)Build your competence in your chosen lifeshift- not difficult because it’s your dream work, what you find most meaningful.

2) Establish a website with an information heavy content. Providing real value with updates in the form of news, reviews and useful blog material.

3) Publish a book on lulu.com publicized through the website. Produce dvds, courses, talks etc.

4) organize events that combine travel with teaching people your lifeshift skill.

5)Combine travel or tourism with your interest- courses in exotic locations that trade on the value added of being a holiday as well as a course.

I have followed this method with the successful Explorer School where my Lifeshift interest in exploration has been built into a business providing courses where people can learn exploration skills.