Ten-Ten-Ten: Part 1 of 3

Last week I mentioned Ten-Ten-Ten, which has been simmering in my mind for a while now.

Two, maybe three years.

Until last fall, it didn't have a name. Since then, I've not said anything about it because it still feels a little crazy to me.

Silly, even.

Audacious, for sure.

Still, I've been working towards it for about two years now.

Towards, being the operative word.

Because I'm not there.

Yet.

Working on this alone, in the safety of my office, is one thing. Putting it out there like, "Hey, this is a thing, and I'm going to do it," is another level.

It's like, I'm so sure I can do this, but I'm also very unsure, and so maybe I shouldn't even talk about it.

But I'm going to talk about it, so here we go.

Ten-Ten-Ten is a goal.

A goal to escape the Matrix.

You don't need to have seen the Keanu Reeves movie to know what I'm talking about. Unlike the "Movie Matrix," we don't live on a post-apocalyptic earth where the machines feed us an alternate reality.

That's fantasy.

The real Matrix is a pattern of behavior that we adopt via assimilation during the standard K-12 + secondary education model.

It's the Matrix that convinces us that we need to get a degree, get a job, get a spouse, get a house, raise some kids, take two weeks of vacation each year with our kids, and grind toward that place in the future where we get to retire and finally enjoy the good life.

That's not for me.

I don't want that.

I want something very different.

I want to enjoy the good life while I'm living it.

I want to enjoy it in what's left of my 40s. And I want to keep enjoying it in my 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond.

I lived a normal life in the Matrix for the first 40 years.

Of course, during those first 40 years, there were always people doing life differently than the Matrix had taught me to do it.

Hippies, vagabonds, bohemians, and other alternative-type folks were undoubtedly doing it differently. But they didn't have the lifestyle that I wanted.

Writers, artists, rock stars, movie stars, and the natural-born elites were doing it differently, but absent those talents or bloodlines, all I could see for myself was the path the Matrix put me on.

Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, retire and then die.

And it's not as though I hated my life or wasn't having a good time. I was having a fine time, but like Neo, I sensed that there was more to it.

Then, sometime around my 40th birthday, I began to notice how some people were doing life very differently.

People I knew, like my friend Ken who wanted to ride his bike in the mountains every day. He called me one day and said, "I'm moving to the mountains." And then he just did it.

Like, "Poof!" and he was gone.

Or my friend Keith who discovered that the dream business he started in his 20s was more akin to a nightmare. So, pushing 50, he started a whole different business.

And it was like, "Poof!" his nightmare was over.

People like Ken and Keith did more than inspire me.

They opened my eyes.

And with them opened, I started seeing other people differently.

People like Whistlin' Diesel - a kid on YouTube who's become a millionaire by filming himself destroying trucks.

Or Laura Dekker, who overcame the Dutch courts to become the youngest solo circumnavigator in history. She was 16 when she sailed around the world by herself.

Or my friend Ryan, who left a cushy six-figure job at a publishing company to teach copywriting to real estate agents and then pivoted that business into a seven-figure company.

Compared to me, these people were doing what they wanted to do in real-time, all while I was only dreaming about what I wanted to do in future-time.

Like most parents, mine told me I could do anything I wanted to do, but I was nearly 45 before what they'd said resonated.

"Holy shit! I really can do whatever I want to do! The only thing stopping me IS ME!"

To that end, I've decided to get out of my own way.

To that end, I closed R.W. Price & Associates.

To that end, I started House Partners.

To that end, I started F-ER.

To that end, Julia and I started Optivīv.

To that end, I'm doing everything I discussed when I first mentioned Ten-Ten-Ten.

So at the risk of having built this up too much, I'll tell you what Ten-Ten-Ten means:

TEN thousand dollars per week in income while traveling TEN days per month and creating the option to retire in TEN years.

That's the goal.

The clock started ticking in January of this year.

By January 2033, I will have either achieved it or died trying.

If you're still with me, hang tight. Tomorrow I'll break down the three Tens.

At a glance, you might think it's all about the money.

But it's not about the money at all.