— The Three Essential Things You Must Be … Not Think … BE!

Greetings from the 15th Floor of the luxury Sky Residences on Pratumnak Hill, overlooking Pattaya Bay, Thailand. Now home. There’s a video tour of the place if you missed it (plus a bonus discussion of side effects and fixes on HGH).

The stories of my personal rise to millions—twice—are well documented in this blog’s 20 years of archives, now undergoing rapid curation—along with other topical collections to create, out of a library of 5,500 posts. Coming soon. Briefly for now, then, I blew $50K failing in two businesses in 1992 and when down to my last 200 bucks, risked 89 of it on a business plan, and that was the spark that led to 30 employees and $3+ million per year revenue. Years later, I took a $60K trading account to over $1 million day-trading options.

The losses of those fortunes are of the same lesson-learning caliber and character as the lessons that gained them.

Every experience is a lesson, and every lesson is a tool. It always comes back to how you use them and, sometimes, whether you use them, or not.

I’ve gone for a long time not particularly caring about money; that is, from a scorecard standpoint. And as far as spending it, who cares on what? That’s a remarkably good attitude when you’re spending thousands of it annually on booze. It’s also a good frame for if you sell everything and move to a place where you can practice “geoarbitrage.”

Geoarbitrage refers to the practice of taking advantage of the differences in living costs between different geographic locations. It involves strategically relocating to a place with a lower cost of living while maintaining the same level of income or increasing it. By earning income in a strong economy and living in a low-cost area, individuals can save money and potentially increase their purchasing power. Geoarbitrage can be beneficial for individuals looking to stretch their income, achieve financial independence, semi-retire, or even travel the world. It is a concept commonly associated with the idea of lifestyle design and can provide opportunities for saving money and living a more fulfilling life.

Chatbot Zon

And I’m good at it. Again, it’s something well documented here as I’ve shown you my various homes, rentals, and travel costs that are astounding when viewed in the context of the US dollar cost (remember the $100/mo large studio with kitchen in Phuket?).

Long story short, Covidiocy (another upcoming series of curated posts) happened, I lost a primary source of income entirely, and what was a fun and challenging thing to do became a necessity.

Dumping booze entirely 15 months ago was the spark and impetus for where I sit now, framed as I am. There was never a second of doubt that I would kick alcohol finally and forever.

That’s why I called it “My Easy Way” (another curated series) within days of commencement. Over the course of the subsequent 15 months, I have dedicated an interminable amount of time to the consideration of “what now?” Ironically, when one drinks too much too often, a common question to pose when considering stopping is, “what will I do?” Because, everything in that life centers around drinking. Take it away, what do you do? As it turns out, for me at least, the problem has become not having enough time to do all the [better] things to do.

The answer was eventually clear: I’ll make a million bucks again. Make money count on a scorecard, again. And this time, I’ll sell ringside seats to full transparency and accounting for the whole process.

To begin with that, it’s critical to understand that making outlier money is a grueling process rooted not at all in habits, organization, effectiveness, talent, tools, apps, information, or any of the other stuff you’re taught—for the hidden purpose of keeping you as a working cog in a machine that requires your money-for-time labor.

The machine has enough rich people and capital. They need you to stay time and cash poor, motivated by a dream that, for the vast majority, remains forever elusive (though it was only America that kindled such dreams. In the rest of the world, you were taught about status and that you didn’t have it.).

Now, the internet and international trade and finance have opened up the possibility of wealth to very nearly everyone. One day, maybe that reality will catch up with all the “migrators” I digress.

… I’m excluding the kind of wealth that’s inherited or otherwise easily at your disposal. I’m also excluding profession-based wealth, where you go out and invest, not in actual business capital, but in schooling, licenses, degrees, certifications, and all manner of stuff that amounts to a synthetic means of limiting your competition and the overall number of service providers so that you can charge cartel-like prices for them.

I’m talking exclusively about so-called self-made wealth; or, escaping the zoo human, freeing your inner animal, making your way, and getting it done on your own terms.

There’s no seven, or any number of habits that will account for that, or do the trick. Why? Think of all the exceptions to every habit, where there exists lots of highly effective people who don’t have that habit. Falsified.

But all, or nearly all, self-made rich folk share three core characteristics. Someone else identified these, and I’m passing them along, with my thoughts as to how they’re dead on…and adding a couple of my own that, while not essential, go hand-in-hand for those with a mindset to handle it.

You’ll be surprised and enlightened. I’ve never written or spoken about this anywhere before now.

Here are the three traits you must possess or develop:

1. You possess a superiority complex. You believe you’re better than everyone else, that you deserve more than everyone else, and that you can accomplish the big stuff. You have a bigger vision; thus, you deserve its fulfillment.
2. Paradoxically, you have crippling insecurity. You’ll never be enough, do enough, accomplish enough, and you’ll always be measured against that…and it’s not enough. You believe you’re better than everyone else, and that you suck, all at the same time.
3. You have impulse control. You’re able to control your actions and focus on a single thing for an extended period of time.

I suspect that there’s great synergy here, and it’s probably that all super-successful self-made people possess all three qualities in some measure.

For me, an honest self-assessment?

I’m hands down good to go on #1. I even take it a step further with the audacity to judge people against me, myself and I have to see them measuring up to me or even surpass me in some ways until I’m the slightest bit interested in them or impressed. I never have the slightest concern about what they think about anything until they’ve reached that threshold, and am just as likely to mock them until they do.

I never do small talk.

Another thing is that this has been turned up in me hugely since Covid (and other shit that has gone down). What I witnessed there and since has tuned me into an unabashed and unrepentant misanthropist, and I’m dead serious. I detest most fucking humadroids and wouldn’t give a care in the world if billions were just swept away. Turns out there’s a damn good, righteous reason for that biblical allegory, and I’m far from the first one to feel the utter disgust.

But what’s quite good is it has increased the value of others who measure up to my standards immensely. I perhaps have more friends now than in a very long time, all solid as fuck. I’m surrounded by really smart people who work hard and forge their own paths, a characteristic of expats…especially ones who don’t give much of a fuck for their home country, anymore.

#2 for me is a forever process and creed, very akin to my edict that I love being wrong because it’s the only time I’m right, etc. Plus, it’s perhaps not quite as ironic or paradoxical as it might seem on the surface, vis-à-vis #1.

If you’re so much better than everyone else, then you’ve got a lot of headroom to just admit you suck, and that’s pure and unadulterated motivation in combo with #1. Think about that.

For me, the bottom line with #2 and how it plays out is the bitter realization that you will never be good enough, nor have enough time to do and experience everything you want in life. I take some, though little comfort in having already experienced far more than 99.9% of the 110 billion people who have ever existed on this planet. Most people lead fucking dull-as-hell lives, yet they’re satisfied because it’s the same dull-as-fuck everyone else lives.

#3 is much about phases, stages, and project-oriented for me. I’ve got to not only love the expected end result (money on the scorecard) but I’ve got to love the thing itself. One of the problems with the multi-million bucks business I did build from nothing was that I hated the business itself. But I was able to do it because I loved creating the systems from absolutely nothing, to run a complex, consumer-facing financial services business with employees that’s at its core adversarial (debt collections, recoveries, settlements, etc.). It was a challenge, so I dove in to building systems and could go head-down for days, thinking of nothing else.

It’s very difficult to achieve that state. It’s not as much about the denial of impulses as it is having a genuine enjoyment over what I’m doing.

This blog fills that purpose well enough, so here I am.

… But it was the gym that really brought it all together for me. Hardest thing I’ve ever done. Four and a half months in and to refresh your memory, that was 30 straight tough days in July, then August and September were harder still, 4 days per week, and then the last six weeks, it’s five days in the gym, hardest workouts yet.

It’s fucking brutal, man. And at my age, it’s just sad I didn’t figure out this hack in my 20s, making that kind of painful effort a no-excuses must. In retrospect, it becomes so obvious that you’re going to succeed at a lot of things you’ll try if you’re smart about them and employ the same level of dedication, patience, and delayed gratification while ignoring impulses to knock off early this time, or skip that last set, etc.

I have completed all exercises, all sets, and have missed only one single gym day, and that was moving day last week.

… A couple of other things I think can help with that above framework. They kinda go hand-in-hand.

1. True courage in the face of anything and everything that’s said or written about you. You do not give a fuck. Genuinely and truly. You have zero interest in defending yourself or changing anyone’s mind. You act, realizing that words are lies, actions are the truth.
2. Take pleasure and relish in offending and triggering people in general.

In regards to #2, my motto is: if they can be triggered and offended, good. Quick, Let’s do it.

It’s similar to what my Covid motto was: if Covid can kill you, good. I guess that makes me a Darwinian misanthropist.

Let me know what you think of the above over on the Discord server (connection instructions here). Give us an accounting of yourself in terms of 1, 2, and 3.