Our greatest untapped natural resource isn’t oil or sunlight.

It’s human potential.

99% of people who should be changing the world as entrepreneurs are trapped in day jobs.

You might be part of that 99%. If so, read on.

The year is 2011.

I’m working through college as a part-time tire lube express technician.

And I HATED it.

I hated having to report to people I didn’t admire.

I hated not having any money…ever.

I hated feeling trapped.

I hated following rules I thought were stupid.

I hated doing work that anybody else could do.

I hated doing work that I didn’t care about.

I hated having to ask another adult for permission to leave.

I hated trading my most valuable resource (time) for a whopping $7.45/hour.

I wanted to be out in the world, learning and growing, coming and going as I pleased, making lots of money.

I wanted to be free.

But I didn’t know how to escape.

One day, a few weeks later, I was walking across campus when it happened.

The solution struck me in the head like a meteor falling from the sky.

The only people who were living like I wanted to live were not employees at all. They were entrepreneurs.

There I was working hard to pass classes just to (hopefully) get a job working for somebody else.

How foolish!

What I really wanted was to be a full-time entrepreneur.

That was the highest resolution version of my dream I could muster at that time, a glimmer of light, a flicker of what was possible.

But I didn’t know anything about running a business.

I didn’t know what kind of business I wanted to run.

And I had no idea where to start.

The Transition Problem

This is when I first stumbled into what I now call the Transition Problem:

The singular reason why I was not already running a business I loved was because I had yet to figure out how to transition out of my day job into becoming my own boss full time.

I just hadn’t figured it out.

It was either that or figuring out how to make the transition was impossible.

But for it to be impossible, it would need to be uniquely impossible for just me, right?

After all, other people across the world were running businesses they loved at that very moment.

Were they smarter than me, more talented than me, or harder working than me?

I refused to believe that.

I had proven to myself over and over in the past that I could accomplish whatever I wanted if I tried my best and didn’t quit.

So if all of them weren’t smarter, more talented, or harder working than me, then the only difference between me and them must be that I had yet to figured it out.

Stated differently, they had done the work, and I had not.

The Gravity of Income Problem

After some time grappling with this problem, I dug one layer deeper to find the Gravity of Income Problem:

I needed to make money to be able to live, so I needed a job.

But it took time to learn how to make money as my own boss, and I didn’t have a lot of time because I had to work my job.

So the necessity of earning a primary income turned my job into a center of gravity pulling me down toward it. A kind of trap.

If I left my job, I was free of the pull and had time to invest, but then I had no money.

If I stayed at the job, I had very little time to invest into figuring out how to solve the Transition Problem.

What did I need to do to achieve escape velocity as an entrepreneur? To exit the downward pull of my day job and release into the freedom of entrepreneurial space?

13 years later, I am proud to say that I have been a full-time entrepreneur (that is, earning my full-time living from business profits) for 10 years.

It took me 3 years of thinking to figure out how to launch my first one.

And 10 more years of work to iterate and optimize that business into my present-day operation.

I have total control over my time.

I spend my days in precisely the way I want.

I don’t report to anyone but myself (and my wife, of course).

I don’t follow any rules I think are stupid, because I make up the rules.

I don’t trade my time for a set hourly rate; instead, I earn the amount I deserve to earn relative to the quality and amount of work I put in.

And more and more I am earning money today from work that I did in the past.

Soon enough I won’t be obliged to work for present revenues at all.

My lifestyle will be funded completely from work done previously.

(at least, that’s the goal)

At this point in my career, after watching many businesses succeed and fail and reading hundreds of books on the subject, I am absolutely convinced that it is impossible to fail as an entrepreneur if you follow 4 simple steps.

I call these steps the Escape Velocity Sequence.

The Escape Velocity Sequence

1. Commit 100% to figuring out how to design, launch, and iterate your business until you solve the transition problem by achieving escape velocity.
2. Write your way to a better center of gravity.
3. Learn your way to better center of gravity.
4. Do your way to a better center of gravity.

The Promise

Here is my promise to you:

if you undergo these four steps, you will leave your day job for a life of full-time, professional entrepreneurship.

This will change your daily experience completely.

You will achieve financial abundance, control over your time (which leads to more time with your family and doing things you want to do), and a feeling of purpose and fulfillment.

Perhaps more exciting than anything else, you will turn your life into an adventure out of the darkness of scarcity, limitation, and quiet desperation that so often comes along with employment into the warm light of abundance, freedom, and fulfillment that can come with entrepreneurship.

If this sounds enticing, be on the lookout for my next newsletter.

I’m going to break down each step in detail and show you how to implement each one immediately.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in getting going today, download this list of the top-100 must-read books I made for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Free Ebook for Entrepreneurs

Our greatest untapped natural resource isn’t oil or sunlight.

It’s human potential.

99% of people who should be changing the world as entrepreneurs are trapped in day jobs.

Read these books to engineer your escape.

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