Before I’m a carpenter or licensed builder…

I’m a business owner.

In fact, my first business involved frolicking through the woods barefoot with my friends while harvesting wild foraged goodies and selling them to local restaurants in the area.

For me, running my own business is one of the ultimate forms of personal development.

I’m taking control and responsibility for my present day livelihood and the direction of my future.  No longer must I dread the nine-to-five mundanity of building someone else’s dream.

My first successful business was in construction though.

It’s a profitable skill I have…

But when I began hiring employees I realized that I was creating the very same nine-to-five for them that I was looking to escape.

So I placed a lot of emphasis on creating likable jobs for my employees…

And in my effort to create likable jobs for my employees…

I created a very unlikable job for myself…

Instead of nine-to-five, I often worked eight-to-six-thirty.  And many times I found myself working six or seven days a week just to keep up.

Knowing what I know now, I could have done a better job streamlining, specializing, and systematizing in order to create jobs that were more robotic, mindless, and repetitive in order to boost profits and free up my time.

But I’m not a robot…

And neither are you…

And I imagine that’s why you’re reading this.

Personally, I’m looking for more freedom to pursue my self-directed education because I never had that opportunity growing up.

I was diagnosed, medicated, and occupied with TV sets to keep me quiet, constrained, and complacent.

Luckily, thanks to my rebellious nature I broke free from many of these psychological prisons at the early age of 15.

But at the time that meant smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and listening to punk music…

I had a softer side though too…

Yoga, meditation, and organic backyard gardening to name a few…

Long story short though, I had to overcome a number of physical health challenges as well as psychological confidence and self-esteem issues.

And now, I’m committed to teaching others to do the same.

So that’s why five years ago…

I decided to pivot from carpentry and construction over to online education.

I still build things…

But in a different way…

And if you know me closely, you probably know that I’ve been on this new path for quite a few years already…

Truth is, I haven’t been an overnight success at it…

But not because these transitions can’t be made quickly…

There are some things I wish I knew when I got started.

More on that to come though.

Lots of love,
Kevin

If you’ve ever thought about teaching what you know online…

This one’s for you.

The internet is a noisy place, but when you’re being yourself it’s a lot easier to shine through.

Allow me to demonstrate.

I’m passionate about building an online education business because I struggled deeply with school in my youth.

I excelled in some classes and flailed in others…

But it wasn’t the subject matter or coursework that bothered me.  My challenges stemmed from struggling socially and emotionally in my youth. And the fact that social belonging and emotional competence are at the very core of an effective learning environment is regrettably overlooked.

The child who struggles to fit in and regulate his emotional state cannot focus because he’s overwhelmed with anxiety.

Girls tend to keep it quietly to themselves while the boys tend to fidget and squirm with hyperactivity.

Oftentimes this is diagnosed as “ADHD”, and in my case it was…

Nevertheless, during the past twenty years in my commitment to personal development, I’ve become an avid and precocious learner.

And since then I’ve learned that the school system didn’t have the resources to facilitate my academic success because the school system wasn’t designed with the development of the individual in mind.

The school system is largely designed to teach compliance and obedience in order to maintain the status quo of our industrial framework.

The school system doesn’t teach us “the soft skills”, the skills that truly matter…

The skills that won’t be replaced by Artificial Intelligence…

And the school system doesn’t teach us how to be self-reliant, self-employed, or innovative problem solvers…

And our society as a whole has a lot to learn as far as being healthy bodies in healthy relationship to our environment.

And so I teach…

I teach from the heart…

I teach what I know about the problems I’ve solved for myself in my own life in the hopes that it will help someone else on a similar path get a leg up on their journey.

The internet today is far more expensive than when I was using it to solve mysterious health problems that eluded my life-long physician.  And now the creator economy has disrupted the traditional career paradigm as we know it.

Anyone who has a knack for solving problems and the passion to pursue it can build a career that feels less like work and more like play.

As it should be.

According to Dr. Peter Gray, American psychology researcher:

When children engage in self-directed education, exploring their own interests, deciding for themselves what they would most like to learn, work, play and learning become largely indistinguishable.

In following our natural curiosities, we’re free to create something purposeful that will be of great benefit to our fellow man.

While performing mindless, repetitive tasks in exchange for prizes onlys serves to line the pockets of wealthy industrialists.

And I won’t go into all the details, but many of our modern work environments are toxic on multiple levels: mind, body and soul.

I refuse to participate.

I’ve chosen to blaze my own trail.

So that’s why over the past 5 years I’ve been facilitating group and private sessions on effective leadership, healing adhd, preventing burnout, exploring entrepreneurship and more.

And whatever idiosyncratic intersections you’re into, you can do the same.

What challenges have you overcome that you could help another work through?

What comes so easily to you that you can’t understand why others can’t do it too?

What, despite your best efforts, is something that you can’t not do?

Among the 7 billion people on the planet, I’m certain there’s a few that would love to learn more about it from you.

Lots of love,
Kevin

People treat you the way you teach them to.

And contrary to popular belief…

You don’t need to be overly accommodating to everyone else in order to be loved…

Your presence is not an inconvenience…
But your preferences are guaranteed to inconvenience at least some other people…

Resist the temptation to subordinate your needs to others’…

You don’t need to be flimsy or powerless in order to make friends, find the love of your life, get paid, or climb the mountain top.

In fact, you’re far less likely to get what you want when you’re trying to make everyone else happy all the time.

For example, an in-depth intergenerational study revealed that people who are too agreeable earn, on average, $11,300 less per year than their more disagreeable counterparts.

So get out there and piss someone off today…

In that kind, creative, and empathic way of course : )

Until next time,
Kevin