Finding Freedom: A Chat with David and Seth

Seth Hosko, Sam Carpenter, David Walsh

In January, David Walsh and Seth Hosko visited for a couple of days in our home in Bend, Oregon. We taped some informal videos that are now posted on their website, Muselife (While there, be sure to subscribe. The site already has a large subscriber base and you might as well climb on board.)

Follow the directions at the bottom of their Muselife post to receive a free pdf of my book Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less. Note: The offer is good only through the last day of March.

Real-life practitioners of the  ”lifestyle design” concept of living anywhere while still making a living, David is now in Bangkok and Seth is in Whistler, BC, Canada.

Watch the first half of Part One of the three part series and I think you’ll want to finish all three parts.

I don’t give a lot of interviews because they don’t often seem to get to the points I want to get to. But here I am pleased with the results and think it’s probably due to these two brainy and personable 24 year-old guys, and the informality of it. We are in the living room, in T-shirts and it’s Sunday afternoon (Linda was visiting family, out of town). With our 14 year-old dog Max prowling around, things just clicked in the relaxed atmosphere. Part One of the three part series is about the Systems Mindset and the rest builds on that.

It’s important to understand that the Systems Mindset must happen before one can perceive the world as a logical collection of systems rather than an “unruly and amorphous mass of sights, sounds and events.” Then, it’s easy to accept the boring-but-true reality that to make an organic (changable)  business system perfect and then keep it that way, it must be made mechanical, and on this planet the most logical way to do that is through written documentation. Once processes are described via documented  systems,  the task is to spend one’s time perfecting those documented processes. The results will take care of themselves. Life then becomes fluid and free.

I hear this too often: “Sam, I understand you regarding the documentation but I can’t get my people to pay attention to it.” The answer to that problem is, you guessed it, simple: Have your staff create the documentation! But, there is sometimes a problem with this because  staff refuses to do it.  Hmmmm. Is head-rolling and re-staffing a deal-breaker for you? If it is, that’s fine. Just keep on with your fire-killing protocol and 60 hour work-weeks and console yourself in knowing this is what most other small business owners and managers do. At least you won’t be alone in your misery. Work on!

In the second segment of this video series, I point out that one doesn’t have to do what one loves in order to have personal freedom. In my case, I happen to enjoy my weekly staff meetings and paying the bills, but I suppose someone else might hate those tasks. Well, wouldn’t that be a small price to pay if those chores equated to less than two hours a week and the business put you in the top 1% of income earners? Two hours a week of unfullfilling work leaves 166 hours to to find fulfillment…doing whatever it is you enjoy. So lose the idea that if you are not doing the work you love you are somehow missing out on the joy of life. Once you accept these concepts, a world of opportunity opens up because of the simple reality that there are a ton of  mismanaged, ordinary, unsexy businesses out there that can be acquired for a song and a dance. Once managed properly, these unfullfilling businesses can be turned into money machines. Yeah man!

So, thanks Seth and David for your good visit and the fun videos. Come visit anytime.

-sam

Tagged as: david walsh, documentation, freedom, Getting It, set hosko, systems, systems mindset, the simple mechanics, Work the System