Life of Finch | Finch Sells

Retire At 21, Feel Like An Idiot At 22

Aug 17 2011

Dear Trusty Employees,
It is with great sadness that I announce my impending departure from our Company. I have decided to retire from all business so that I can put my feet up in the leafy suburbs, desperately attempting to convince myself that there’s more to life than work.
I’m sure you will have many questions. Why now? Why so young?
Please accept my decision. It shows that I’ve achieved more than you in a shorter space of time.
I am greatly looking forward to tackling the next challenge in my life: puberty.
Yours truly,
Young Retired Dipshit

Many people consider retirement the reward for a lifetime of turmoil. It’s the bucket of gold at the end of the rainbow. The day of reckoning when we can say “I’ve done my bit“, and stop worrying about surviving from one pay cheque to the next.

The Internet age has spawned a generation of online entrepreneurs who are capable of retiring in their 20s. Does Mark Zuckerberg need to worry about his financial future? I suppose he does if he likes to keep track of his billions.

Even though Zuckerberg can retire, I’m positive he won’t. And there’s good reason for that sentiment.

The next step after retirement is death.

Who would want to retire in their 20s? The idea gets bounced around with prestige and glamour. There are websites dedicated to the ambition of retiring young, but I shudder to imagine how somebody capable of assembling the finances so young would react to the transition of pottering around a garden and writing Christmas cards in September.

It’s a paradox if ever I heard one.

When you have nothing left to work for, you have nothing left to live for. Anybody who believes otherwise might as well go hang out with Macaulay Culkin. Smoke some pot, watch Home Alone 2 and revel in your own waste of potential.

Time and time again, I have friends cross-examining me on the nature of my work. In their eyes, I’m retired. I make money online, which is as good as twatting around on Facebook while the dollar bills grow in my fridge, right? They’re wrong.

Even though I work in comfort, there’s rarely a second in the day where work isn’t close to my thoughts. It follows me around like an infection that just won’t shake, so why don’t I learn to forget about work and switch off? It’s simple. I don’t see work as a bad thing.

If you take a human being and strip him of his desire to work towards a goal, what do you have left? An empty shell that’s retired and ready for death. There isn’t much of the person left over.

Work doesn’t have to be employment as you and I know it. It can be charity-based volunteering, or even just a commitment to stay busy. However, the retirement yearned for at unhappy office cubicles is no more than a desire to believe the grass is greener on the other side. It rarely is, and retirement is seldom the experience you crave.

What you really desire is work that you can believe in. You want to spend energy completing tasks where you give half a shit about the end result. Who doesn’t? This is the great illusion of retirement. Giving up a mundane chore isn’t going to fill the void in your life. That void exists because you haven’t felt the passion to get out of bed at 8am out of choice.

If financial independence was all we longed for, millionaires would be happy and averagely paid employees would be jumping from office blocks. Happiness is not a flexible hours agreement, or retirement altogether. It’s the desire to get out of bed. To do something with your plain existence and convince yourself that retirement would only get in the way of all the things you have left to prove.

If that means changing career, go right ahead. We spend a third of our lifetimes at work, or thinking about it, so it makes zero sense to be working for the wrong reasons. The day you wake up and don’t feel an urge to work towards a goal, that’s when you have problems. That’s when retirement will become the death of you.

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Man, Laptop And World: How To Travel Efficiently

Jun 21 2011

Over the last seven months, I feel like I’ve spent more time logging in to hotel Wifi systems than I have in my own office. When you make the decision to travel, whilst working on the move, efficiency becomes a major issue. How can you get the most out of your time, while severing many of those hours in pursuit of greater thrills?

I recommend travelling to anybody who has the chance. If your business is self-managed, it makes little sense to constrain your time and freedom to a single city, especially if you already know that city inside out. Many people cite the influence of outside factors for not being able to travel.

“The wife won’t let me…”
“The kids are too much work…”
“I’m tied in to a rental contract…”

Admittedly, those with less ties than myself have more problems to solve before they can take off around the world, but none of the factors are hammer blows to the idea. They just take a greater leap of faith and/or commitment to overcome.

If you’re stuck between indecision and lack of information, here are a few pointers I’ve picked up along the way:

1. Travel as lightly as possible.

If you are a notorious hoarder of junk, traveling is an excellent excuse to throw out the crap that’s being cluttering your garage for so long. When I moved to Thailand, I completely overestimated how many clothes I would need, and indeed what type of clothes I would need. Sticky heat-trapping shirts barely cool enough for the English winter? Definitely not going to be needed in Bangkok. Did I bring them anyway? Of course I did.

It’s tempting to fit a lifetime’s accumulation of crap in to your suitcase, but ask yourself one question. Is this so important that I can’t buy a replacement while I’m away? The answer to most items will be no. Traveling light makes moving around much easier, not to mention saving you many many pesos in excess baggage charges.

2. Hotel Wifi has a recurring tendency to suck balls.

I’ve learnt that if I don’t do research beforehand, fate will typically conspire to hand me a shitty hotel Internet connection. Working from a laptop instead of a dual screen Mac took some adjusting. Working from a laptop on 56K dial-up speeds merited a full blooded sucker punch to the balls. If you’re staying in a hotel, make sure the Wifi is good and included free of charge. Or risk paying £30 for a few hours of patchy usage at somewhere like Novotel Rim Pae. Screw you, Novotel.

3. Don’t stay in flash, rich, luxurious hotels.

Wifi is worth investing in if you’re running a business from your laptop. But I’ve never understood the craze behind booking hotels for $500/night. Ultimately, a bed is a bed. Unless you plan on doing something other than sleeping in it, why pay through the nose for something that rarely gives you a true taste of the place you’re visiting? Overpaying is considered by many to be a macho display of ballin’. Invariably, traveling with set requirements of the pampered existence you need to get to sleep at night defeats the bloody purpose of traveling at all.

4. Learn the language.

My biggest regret as I move on from Thailand. It’s difficult to truly appreciate a culture if the standard conversation leaves you scratching your head and whipping up Rosetta Stone on the smartphone. Learning a few basic phrases is a must, while learning conversational basics will give you a much better understanding of what’s happening around you. Not to mention, a whole new world of local prices become accessible once you display a better grasp of the native vocab than a regular tourist.

5. Dropbox.

Dropbox is the new rage. Okay, to most people, it’s yesterday’s new rage. I was slow to jump on the bandwagon, but I’m glad that I did. By using Dropbox, you can afford to pull a Tim Ferriss. Sod off the face of the Earth completely, leave your laptop behind and restrict work to bursts of activity in an Internet Cafe just outside the Angolan Jungle. Dropbox gives you access to your important files anywhere, synchronizing them across devices and affording you the title of Digital Nomad.

6. Use time differences to your advantage.

Initially, I was concerned about the time difference when I first moved to Asia. Companies and reps based in the UK, Canada and America would still be asleep while I was busy with work. What if I needed to talk to them? It didn’t take long for me to figure that this was a great blessing in disguise. Zero distractions and zero interruptions. By the time those in America had woken up and replied to my emails, I would be happily relaxing and unwinding in the sun.

7. Have back-up support in place.

When you’re traveling, even with laptop in tow, it brings peace of mind to have somebody ready and waiting to act on any emergencies. I hired a Virtual Assistant from EasyOutsource.com, which is by far my favourite place to recruit cheap but talented labour.

You can have all your mundane tasks handled by a full-time VA for as little as $250/month, although I would recommend you invest a little more for quality’s sake. It’s also better to hire a combined workforce rather than a single employee. An individual is just as prone to “sick days” at inconvenient times as you were back in the day job. Hiring a team removes this worry.

8. Reduce any unwanted papermail before leaving.

In the UK, I use the Royal Mail’s redirection service to have my post sent to family while I’m away. If it’s important, I’ll have them send it on for me. This costs £8/month for domestic redirection and up to £30/month to have mail routed overseas. It’s a good idea to deselect paper statements from your online credit and store card accounts. Who needs to be reminded of yesterday’s vanity purchases, anyway?

For tax purposes, I have any important documents from HRMC sent to my Thai based address. This is easy to do by updating your current profile after receiving the Government Gateway ID. For everything else, I don’t stress. If it’s important, I’m sure the sender will find a better way of contacting me.

9. Tell your bank and credit card issuers where you’re traveling.

Very important and the source of much frustration while I’ve been attempting to use ATMs overseas. Fraud detectors are sent in to a frenzy if you withdraw £500 from a Cambodian street market. Your bank will routinely cancel payments and refuse to process ATM withdrawals if you don’t make it clear over the phone that you will be traveling to a particular region on a certain date.

For this reason alone, I chose to open an HSBC Advance account before moving to Asia. They have a strong presence abroad and it’s reassuring to be able to walk in to a branch that knows your name if you have any problems.

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Make More Money… By Not Being An Unhealthy Bastard

Jun 06 2011

As far as case studies go, this probably isn’t going to win any awards for innovation.

A few weeks ago, I decided to change my life for the better. I knew that it was time to look myself in the mirror, face up to the truth and ask “Finch, you unhealthy bastard, do you want to be a stud muffin or just a slob who ate all the muffins?”

By saying adios to junk food, crappy eating and lack of sleep, I theorized I could create a lifestyle change that would snowball in to something resembling vitality and full health. This, in turn, would allow me to thrive in the workplace with optimal levels of concentration and focus.

The ultimate goal was an improvement in mind, body and spirit. It was time to say “kiss my balls” to the unhealthy bastard in the mirror, Michael Jackson-style, minus the unhealthy interest in kids.

The Challenge

I spent days, literally days, hunched over a laptop in Cambodia researching the best possible diet to give my body a healing rest from it’s regular abuse. Detoxing is a controversial subject. It’s very hard to strike a balance between listening to the raw food psychopaths who’ll give you dirty scowls for even glancing at a cow in the wrong way, and the All-American Americans who believe eating an entire livestock of chickens isn’t just a delicious choice, but what the chickens wanted.

I decided on a 4 day fruit detox, followed by a slightly more lenient diet that would be more sustainable for my non-commital ass in the long run. Minimal processed foods, minimal caffeine, no added salts and sugars.

I haven’t tasted alcohol for over 6 weeks now, so that was never a problem. No doubt my tolerance will be tested when I return to London, however.

Surviving The Detox

For those of you who haven’t tried a fruit detox, the first effects are typically a raging headache and the growing despair that life is not worth living. “How am I to survive if I don’t find a kitten to kill soon?”

Detox symptoms vary from person to person. The heavier the symptoms, the more toxins you’ve accumulated in your body that are struggling to come out.

What follows is a detoxing process known as “retracing”. This is where your body undergoes the strange sensation of re-experiencing recent illnesses and weaknesses. If you didn’t know any better, you’d assume that the detox is adding to your woes rather than working for the greater good. But it’s all part of the recovery so don’t go quitting while the going is tough.

Your body is actually flushing harmful toxins in to your bloodstream at a rapid rate, much faster than the body can dispose of. The toxin-filled blood rushes to the brain and creates a surreal sensation where you experience many different pains and illness symptoms in short bursts.

The symptoms were always there. But it’s only when your body is in “recovery mode” that the organs can actually deal with them. Of course, this triggers the instinctive “I feel worse than when I started. Somebody get me a burger. Cheeseburger. Shit, it’s getting worse. Get me some extra cheese with that…”

This period of headaches, fatigue, volatile stomach reactions and irritability lasted for a couple of days on my detox. Caffeine withdrawals can lead to massive headaches, and if you like your sugar – which I don’t – you’re also going to suffer. My longing for food with meaty texture almost lead to the butchering of a gecko outside my hotel room. It’s not easy to fight your cravings under a barrage of physical aches and pains.

But when the symptoms begin to pass, and here’s the big incentive, you truly do feel a million times better than you did before. Your body begins to accept and use the nutrients of the fruit to your advantage, unleashing enormous swirls of energy and a sense of clarity the likes of which I’m still wondering how I ever did without before.

It probably helped that my detox was aided by an endless supply of fresh coconut and grapefruit juice, two of the most renowned superfruits in the world. I have since re-introduced lean meats in to my diet, but never at the expense of leafy greens and an overcompensation of fruits. I’ve replaced alcohol with smoothies, diet coke with water, and coffee with green tea. The effects are here for me to see, and I’m very happy with them.

33% Diet, 33% Exercise, 33% Rest

No healthy lifestyle can be sustained by simply eating the right foods. It’s just as important to exercise and get a sufficient amount of sleep. Even though I have a gym and swimming pool downstairs, I’ve often found my work “too pressing” to find time to exercise as much as I should have. That is changing by simply forcing a work-out in to my daily schedule, no matter how many servers are crashing and burning around me at the time.

My sleeping habits, ironically, were fixed when I started my detox. The overwhelming fatigue that I felt after a few days of eating only fruit was enough to get my body clock back on track. The sensation of waking up naturally at 8am, fresh, energised and blessed with clarity is a million miles from how I felt just two months ago. Then I would slip out of the bedroom at 1pm, feeling just as lethargic as I had when my body finally passed out the night before.

A good sleeping pattern makes such a huge difference to what I feel capable of achieving in a day, and certainly to my attention span while I’m trying to achieve it.

Many entrepreneurs argue that they’re “not morning people” and work most efficiently at night. While this may be true for some, I would bet that the majority are simply closet insomniacs making the best out of a bad situation.

Finch’s Sickly Generic Final Thoughts

Striving for a healthy lifestyle isn’t something that should be born out of wanting to make more money. There’s no point in stacking towers of dollar bills if you don’t have the health and peace of mind to enjoy them. This is something I have struggled and grappled with for a while.

I see it as a common trait of young entrepreneurs. We have so much money, and such little sense of value. If your work ethic is harming your health, the only future you’re contributing to is your own self-destruction.

While I can say that the changes definitely did improve my focus, concentration and work productivity, these are secondary to the satisfaction that came from looking after myself and actually feeling a sense of working with my body, rather than dragging it kicking and screaming through the night against it’s will.

Western society, particularly America, is riddled with quick fix cures for conditions that can’t possibly heal with the popping of a pill. Papering over cracks is the term that springs to mind. But that doesn’t stop people from trying. Many of us will find any excuse, or quick fix, to continue living unhealthily, until it becomes impossible through the damage we’ve already inflicted to ourselves.

If you’re going to try a detox followed by a change in lifestyle, be prepared for several days of complete and utter Hell. It gets a lot worse before it starts to get better.

Be truthful with yourself, get educated, and find ways to cut out the crap that’s holding you back. Your mind and body will reward you by working at their full potential. And if you’ve been operating “half-arsed” for as long as I had, this can feel like an incredible burden lifted.

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