People want to be free & happy, yet in the free world so many people still find themselves working for the man, selling their life away (~50% of one’s waking hours), day by day, in exchange for a paycheck, to then be able to go spend the remaining portion of their life doing what they really want.

See: Pie Chart of Quality Free Time

This scenario is basically a nonviolent, voluntary form of societal slavery. Virtually everyone working as an employee for the man, who would rather not be, desires the financial freedom & time freedom to live more of their life doing what makes them happy. This is one of the most fundamental games/constraints/opportunities of human life.

So how does one go from dreaming about this to actually achieving it?

Let me layout a general framework of perspective to help provide a concrete path…

First off, it is highly unlikely for most people that they will achieve this level of freedom through employment. We want to put the odds in our favor, not pursue an unlikely possibility. So, while a very slim few have the real opportunity to make enough money within say 3-10 years of traditional employment to be set for life, it is certainly not a predictable path for most all of us. So it is largely a waste of time to pursue.

Okay, so without employment, how does one predictably pursue making meaningful amounts of money?

How about working for yourself? Yes & No. You definitely don’t want to perpetually work for someone else. But you also don’t want to end up “working” for yourself, either. It isn’t called self-employment for nothing. You may think you’re the man when self-employed, but you’re personal time is still governed by the forces & demands of commerce that you continuously work under the thumb of. The whole point is to be in a position of NOT having to keep working to get what you want out of life. Instead, wouldn’t you just like to freely “be” for the rest of your life, and choose exactly what you do based on fun, purpose, & happiness?

Okay, fuck, so if employment & self-employment are largely futile paths, then what else is there?

What makes the traditionally employed & self-employed losers of this game is that they are implementing on the wrong side of the divide. There is a special elite club of people throughout the world who are predictably pursuing or already enjoying meaningful financial wealth, without having to continuously work for their money, with no end in sight. Let’s call this elite group of people the “Capital Club”.

Most insiders of this exclusive club did not get there or do not stay there by the approval of others. Most insiders of the club maintain their membership independently by their own will. This means that there are no gatekeepers of the Capital Club other than your own performance in life. But there is a club and there is a divide throughout the world. You can enter the club & retain membership simply by developing yourself within one of a few special disciplines and then performing on it effectively out in the global world of commerce. This is how you predictably pursue the achievement of being truly free in the physical world of today’s modern society.

I’m going to describe the few specific paths in modern commerce that most people can predictably produce meaningful financial freedom & time freedom with, if they professionally develop themselves & then execute well.

But, I first want to quote a couple scenes from my favorite movie Wall Street (1987) that give a bit of social context for this perspective…

Bud Fox: What about hard work?

Gordon Gekko: What about it? You work hard? Bet you stayed up all night analyzing that dog shit stock you gave me, huh? Where’d it get you? My father, he worked like an elephant pushing electrical supplies until he dropped dead at 49 with a heart attack and tax bills. Wake up, will you pal? If you’re not inside, you are outside, okay?

Gordon Gekko: You got 90% of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price of a paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of a hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you Buddy? It’s the free market, and you’re part of it. Yeah, you got that killer instinct. Stick around pal. I still got a lot to teach you.

Bud Fox: Obviously.

Those are a couple awesome scenes where the wall street mogul Gordon Gekko schools young stockbroker Bud Fox on the facts of how money is made within the context of the movie. Checkout the movie if you haven’t seen it lately. It is awesome.

Now, allow me the pleasure to school you on the facts of how real money is made by those who don’t continuously work for it as traditional employees or as small self-employed business owners.

First off, the unifying paradigm is that of capital working on your behalf. The economist & investor Louis Kelso pegged this concept with the terms “capital worker” versus “labor worker”. You see, most of the world participates in commerce through the contribution of their labor. They either sell their labor (time & effort) to other business operations as employees or the ongoing successful operation of their own self-employed business is perpetually dependent upon their personal labor. A small percentage of human beings choose to become a part of the elite few percent of humanity who will predictably participate in commerce via their capital, not their labor.

Here is a recent note that I posted for you to consider, which helps simply demonstrate the difference in leverage between capital workers & labor workers…

So, if you don’t want to work a long ass time for your money, then you need to shift from being a labor worker to being a capital worker. However, what is a capital worker? Is it people who have money & invest it for financial gains? Well, that is one form of a capital worker. There are several types of capital workers outside of working with financial capital, but it basically means that you are leveraging sources of value beyond your personal labor to produce an income stream. For example, a website owner who is able to make money from her website in a largely hands-off way could be considered a capital worker. In principle, something has to earn the money, and it has to be earned on your behalf, so you want various forms of capital out there providing value to others and profitably earning revenue, without you having to continuously contribute your own personal labor.

Now, here are the specific principle paths for predictably achieving this type of success and being free to just simply be and do whatever you wish, from then on out, for the rest of your life, without worrying about “schlepping yourself to work” or “earning a living” anymore.

Here are the predictable paths to financial freedom…

Professional Sales/Networking/Dealmaking

This is where you develop a professional expertise & skill for personally persuading people to buy into an opportunity of some sort. You as a human being are a primary factor for going out and strategically causing other people to say yes to what you are pitching, which causes a flow of economic value back to you. Professionals focus on managing factors such as value, rapport, reputation, presentation, communication, relationships, social events, negotiation, overcoming objections, etc. If you are or become a true pro, then with the right offering, you can have a predictable shot at making enough money in a relatively short length of time to fund the rest of your life, without having to continue working. Although not many people have what it takes to become a pro here, largely due to the psychological force of fear of rejection, myself included.

Passion Fueled Sales/Networking/Dealmaking

This is the same as “Professional Sales/Networking/Dealmaking”, except minus the “professional” part. It is generally true that with enough passion or motivational drive and a decent offering of value, a person can still predictably succeed through their own sheer brute force. Professionals operate & succeed at higher rates based on technical strategies that effectively influence others. However, by demonstrating real passion and pounding the pavement much much harder, an everyday person can succeed through sales/networking/dealmaking. But it usually takes more energy, enthusiasm, & motivation over multiple years than most people have for this type of activity. Also, it takes just as much or more balls than professional sales to face the rejection involved. Passion fueled sales/networking/dealmaking is a natural lead in for becoming a professional here too. Usually the passionate mindset has to be genuine because this is quite hard to fake & force for years.

Professional Marketing

This path is about selling & influencing from a distance. Sales is a part of marketing, but professional marketers don’t necessarily have a personal focus on selling, themselves. Instead, professional marketers usually sit back and act as architects of value & influence, often selling through pre-established communication, media, & distribution channels. Marketers use data, feedback, & creative works to strategically engineer campaigns that offer people what they want & convince them to buy it through their campaign. Of course, professional marketers work in fields other than commercial business, but that is usually the only primary outlet for one’s predictable financial success. Now days, because of its affordability, speed, & targeting, the internet is generally the best overall platform for professional marketers to invest in, especially towards the beginning of their careers. Psychology is a key tool for truly expert marketers, as well. Having played the game of entrepreneurship, pro marketing is now where I’ve decided to primarily build my success. I’ve personally spent several years studying & practicing in the fields of marketing & psychology to prepare myself with professional expertise & real world chops as a pro psychological marketer.

Professional Entrepreneurship

When I talk about entrepreneurship here, I’m not talking about the general definition of simply owning one’s own business. That would create too much overlap with self-employment as well as some of the other paths listed here. So what I mean by professional entrepreneurship here is one who builds companies or other meaningful economic assets in a way that is strategically designed to scale. Pro entrepreneurship is a multi-disciplinary expertise, often involving knowledge & skills in project management, people management, money management, sales & marketing, etc. Professional entrepreneurship is not about being an expert tradesman. It is about being an expertly capable developer of companies or other economic assets, such as real estate. Entrepreneurship can be a capital intensive game, so raising investment capital often comes with the territory, unless bootstrapping is smart & feasible. Beyond the skills I mentioned, entrepreneurship often takes juggling many different things at once, shrewd judgment & decision making, and the social confidence to openly go network with & influence others. And of course there has to be real market demand for the exact product or service that one is building an economic asset around.

Professional Trading

This is a highly specialized form of commerce because it usually takes no real effort to implement on. Today, if you want to trade something (stocks, bonds, commodities, derivatives, etc) in an established trading market, it usually only takes a few keystrokes on a computer. However, the major challenge & expertise comes with the strategic & technical analysis of the market one is trading in. Putting real significant money on the line based on short-term buy & sell positions, and being predictably right, consistently enough to make meaningful gains takes extreme chops. In fact, with so much competitive trading going on in markets these days, at faster speeds, we are seeing many more teams & houses of traders, backed by rocket scientist designed systems & algorithms. I once started to seriously delve into learning professional trading as a teenager, but ultimately found it way too tedious & technically competitive for my personal tastes. Traders must constantly be analyzing charts, statistics, reports, & news, or take a heavy rocket science algorithm approach, in order to ensure that their positions are consistently profitable. Without going to extremely tedious & technical lengths, one could easily turn this path into one of unpredictable gambling. However, if you have real analytical & mathematical chops, a lot of mental stamina, and can operate very cold & calculated with risking large sums of money on short-term trade positions, then it might be a viable path for you.

Capital Investment

This is kind of like the slow version of being a professional trader, which often can help reduce the extremely tedious & technical aspects consistently involved. The primary value & activity here is the placement of capital into economic assets or opportunities over time. People who hit the really big time here, like a Donald Trump or Warren Buffett, are often referred to as “capitalists” and go around doing things like buying assets such as whole companies and tall buildings. While in the really small time, one might not personally have the capital to buy anything that meaningful to make the financial gains worthwhile, so it is common for capitalists to start with a completely different path to building up wealth or at least combining another path into their capital investment path. For example, dealmaking & entrepreneurship are often utilized in conjunction with this path to raise & pool capital to invest from other investors. This path, at minimum, takes strategic, analytical, & project management chops, along with a healthy appetite to deal with financial & legal professionals and such technical topics. Unless you are already wealthy, then this path will consistently require the roles dealmaking and/or entrepreneurship along with it. So you just don’t get to take on the sexy role of a capitalist without also being willing to do what it takes to get your hands on capital, produce a solid deal flow, and manage investments. Ultimately, I personally plan on being a capitalist after I build up a seven figure war chest from professional marketing.

Niche Talent/Creation

I have to throw this one in because a huge amount of economic value is continuously produced by people & organizations that does not fit within a general category. Sure, you might have entertainment value that will make you a star, or you might have an idea for an invention that could change the world. The problem is that it is often extremely hard to know that any single individual’s financial success will actually be predictable within a reasonably efficient timeframe. However, with enough technical & market knowledge (A TON), a very small percentage of people with sound judgment will be able predictably succeed here. Most all others who attempt will fail miserably. That is why you won’t see me pursuing this super tough path anytime soon and I’m quite good with innovative ideas & inventions. It’s just too unreliable to bet on for myself. But you may be the 1 in 1,000,000 who is in a predictably predictable position for efficient success with your niche talent or idea?

Unless I’m blatantly missing something, I do not know of any other generally predictable path to the type of financial success that can fund a lifetime of not working, within a relatively short amount of time once one’s expert capability is established. And who wants to wait several decades to be free?

There really aren’t that many options, if you want large & efficient results with solid predictability. There are only these seven, of which you should not tamper with the one’s that don’t naturally suit you or that you aren’t willing to dedicate a real solid chunk of your life to mastering…

- Professional Sales/Networking/Dealmaking
- Passion Fueled Sales/Networking/Dealmaking
- Professional Marketing
- Professional Entrepreneurship
- Professional Trading
- Capital Investment
- Niche Talent/Creation

Notice how virtually all professions on the planet are not represented here, such as being a lawyer, doctor, accountant, professor, architect, scientist, builder, etc. The vague reason is that they are roles of employment & self-employment. But, there are certainly many financially successful people throughout the world who gained their success through such professions. However, the key distinction is that what made them financially successful was usually not the trade of their profession. Rather, it was likely the sales, marketing, or entrepreneurship done on top of their profession, which made them financially successful. And what’s more is that they likely could have been much more successful in much less time by solely concentrating on one of these predictable paths, compared to playing professional doctor & amateur marketer at the same time and still needing to rely on some luck.

Carefully consider your own unique talents, psychology, & positioning in life and strategically choose the path that you can develop yourself into a true pro within. It will take hard work & diligence over years to develop & pursue, but over time you can have a real predictable shot at true success & freedom, which is a lot better than relying on luck or working to earn a living for several more decades into the future. Just make sure you can predictably follow through, or else it won’t work.

Escape the perpetual rat race of common life and join the Capital Club.

Brian Watkins