Be A Free Range Human

Escape the 9-5, Create a Life You Love and Still Pay the Bills

Marianne Cantwell

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780749497101
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Emprendimiento

DISTINGUISHED FAVORITE: NYC Big Book Award 2020 - Career Trapped in a job or business that's "just not you"? Always dreaming of your next vacation or living for the weekend? Marianne Cantwell 's straight-talking bestseller will help you break out of that career cage and Be A Free Range Human. It's about much more than just quitting your job and becoming your own boss. It's about life on your terms, working when, where and how you want - so you don't have to fit yourself into someone else's box to make a great income. This second edition won't just inspire you, it will give you unconventional and practical steps to:
- Discover what you really want to do with your life (even if no answer has ever fully fit)
- Get started in 90 days, with what you have
- Create a free range career, tailor-made for you and the life you want (be it travelling the world or hanging out in your favourite café)
- Stand out from the crowd and get paid well to be you Be A Free Range Human was one of the first and most popular guides to creating a custom career (without an office or a boss). Updated with new advice on how to make free range work for your personality (you don't need to be a constantly-networking extrovert. have an MBA, or get funding), this smart, energizing guide will help you cut through the noise, see your options in a new way, and get the freedom and fulfilment you crave.

Part One

Get ready for the ride

01

What your school career adviser never told you

The ‘safe job’ myth

I need to pay the bills therefore I need to keep my job. It’s fine to dream but you have to get back to reality.

As one stuck career cager said: ‘When I start thinking about making the change, what goes through my head is a whole heap of reasons not to jump. We need a steady income; what happens if it goes wrong and I can’t pay the bills?’

If you want to provide for your family (or your cat), and not end up homeless in a cardboard box, then reality says to stay put.

Myth buster

Up until recently, most people made a deal: ‘I’ll work (in a job I don’t necessarily love) in return for a salary I can rely on.’ The aim was a job for life: work all day and then play on weekends and in retirement.

But then, work hours started getting longer and jobs stopped being safe. Look at your employment contract right now: what’s your notice period? One month? Three months? That’s exactly how much security you have. Don’t kid yourself that you have permanence.

Of course, the job-for-life generation also told us that if we worked hard we’d end up with a great retirement. If we stuck at that soul-sapping job, when we were 60 we could live fabulously, travel and have a whale of a time (assuming we made it that far).

But wait a minute… didn’t those same retirement plans go down the tube in the last big financial crash? Where thousands upon thousands of people who had worked their whole life for the dream at the end were left stranded?

More to the point, analysts are now predicting that a large percentage of the population won’t be able to retire until their seventies or eighties.1 A long time to wait. That career-cage deal isn’t looking so hot now. This is the new reality of the workplace. The question is: are you still playing by the old rules?

The old rules

Jobs have not always been the default way to make a living. Prior to the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s, working for yourself was seen as a normal and laudable pursuit. However, when factories emerged, priorities changed. Factories needed compliant workers to follow the rules. Soon, innovation, individuality and creative thinking were no longer seen as valuable skills for the majority of the population.

That’s how we created our career-cage workers all those years ago: cogs in a factory, and then the factory became an office. Do your job, don’t ask questions. Work isn’t something you’re meant to enjoy. We were taught to be competent, comply and you’ll have a good career.

Then, all of a sudden, the old rules stopped working.

Jobs started to become automated. Today, a computer can do the work of a dozen people in roles as varied as data entry, engineering and even law. As that change shook the world, the internet came along and globalization took off. Jobs across previously untouchable industries were being farmed out to India, China and whoever would do it the cheapest. Then, as uncertainty around the world grew, many of the jobs left were consolidated. I bet you know at least one person who is now covering the workload previously shouldered by two people.

(And that’s even before we talk about what’s ahead with AI (artificial intelligence)).2 Suddenly, the game changed. And the myth of the safe job changed with it.

Jobs are a not always the smartest idea in this economy

Here’s why:

1. Jobs are risky. With job security out the window for most people, employment is the equivalent to being self-employed with only one client (your employer). And as any business expert will tell you, being 100 per cent dependent on one client, in a turbulent market, is a very risky business. If they get into trouble, there goes your income.
2. Someone else is in control of your life. As an employee, the reality is that you have little control over the source of your income. Call me crazy, but I don’t want someone else to determine whether I get my next pay cheque or end up on the streets.
3. I notice that many of my friends in jobs are afraid of the economy and nervous about what ‘the board’ is going to decide next. In contrast, my free range friends see any change as an opportunity (indeed many of the greatest companies in the world were created by entrepreneurs who seized the moment in downturns).3
4. You see, this is not about escaping a job once. It’s about the freedom that comes when you know how to make money on your own terms. True freedom is being able to dance with the changes rather than being a victim to your circumstances.
5. Jobs can suck. When you work a job, odds are someone else has control of what you do, when you work, what you earn, what you work on, and when you are allowed to take a day off. You abdicate choice over what you do every day for most of your life in exchange for a pay cheque. This is the ‘employment compromise’.
6. With jobs less secure than ever and free range incomes easier to create than at any other time in history, does this compromise really make sense?

While everyone around you simultaneously complains about their job and is terrified of losing it, here’s how to get free and get happy.

What a free range business looks like:

• no funding or debt needed;
• you can start now for the price of a few dinners out;
• based on your personality, what you love and the life you want;
• playful, flexible and able to change as you do.

Perfect for right now: affordable to start, super profitable and you can mould it around you. The truth is that there’s no reason why you have to work for someone else if you don’t want to. Fabulous adventures and a lifetime of discovery await outside that door.

Wait, don’t the majority of small businesses fail?

This is the showstopper. You get all excited about the possibilities... and then you hear this. Splat. With that one line, any dreams of breaking free are dashed. Problem is, that ‘fact’ simply is not true. Duncan Bannatyne, serial entrepreneur and star of the UK’s Dragons’ Den, points out:

A lot of people don’t want to have to face family and friends who were always sceptical of their chances of success. They’ve probably heard the statistic that 50 per cent of businesses fail in their first two years, but this statistic is usually based on the closure of business bank accounts, NOT the close of businesses.

If you remove the number of businesses that change bank accounts when introductory deals run out, or the number of businesses that are wound up because the founder took up a lucrative job offer, or started another business, the so-called failure rate drops dramatically.

Barclays’ New Business Division estimates that the number of businesses that close because of ‘external financial stress’, ie owing money, is just 12 per cent in the first year.4

Saying that a business failed because someone moved on is like saying anyone who quit their job and moved on to another one ‘failed’ at that job (even if they left to take a promotion). Ridiculous right?

Yes, of course some businesses do ‘fail’ in the conventional sense – but between you and me, one look at their website and approaches usually makes it pretty clear why. This is not about random luck. There are specific things to do to ensure this works. We are going to explore those in the second half of the book; and remember, with a free range business you’re not sinking in loads of money and putting your house on the line! You’re starting small – you can even get going while still in your job (or existing business) – and playing it out to create a tailor-made career that you love, that more than pays the bills. For now, consider this:

Free range third way

The question is, do you want to feel secure, or be secure?

The reality is that neither option, job or free range, is ever going to be 100 per cent secure. No option ever is. What matters is that when change happens (and it will) are you positioned as a potential victim or a potential winner?

There is an irony here. A job feels secure while a business does not. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise For Be A Free Range Human
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the second edition
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Part One: Get ready for the ride
• 01 What your school career adviser never told you
• 02 Why this matters now
• Part Two: Creating your free range life
• 03 Why doing what you love is not negotiable
• 04 Dream big – then get off your butt and do it
• 05 Defrosting – your secret weapon in figuring out what you want
• 06 How to create your perfect ‘career’ when you want to do everything
• 07 Spot your superpowers
• FREE RANGE PROFILE: Benny’s story
• 08 Taking free range action
• Part Three: Think like a Free Range Human
• FREE RANGE PROFILE: Peter’s story
• 09 Why you don’t need an original idea
• 10 Think beyond your job title
• 11 What a free range business looks like
• 12 How to free range-ify your idea
• 13 How to start with what you have
• 14 How to know if your idea will work
• FREE RANGE PROFILE: Susan’s story
• Interlude: Free range reality check
• 15 Meet the people who don’t want you to escape the career cage
• 16 What to do with those Reasons Why Not
• 17 Wait, but what if I’m not a shiny-haired, always-confident entrepreneur?
• FREE RANGE PROFILE: Jon’s story
• Part Four: Build your free range escape hatch
• 18 Making a living without an office (or a boss)
• 19 Why you don’t need a business plan (or an MBA)
• 20 Why you don’t need to appeal to everyone
• 21 How to decide who gets to give you money
• 22 How to brand like a rock star
• 23 How to stand out from the crowd
• 24 The three Free Range Styles (or: how to get clients without paying for advertising… and without having to become someone you’re not)
• 25 The Free Range Faststart
• FREE RANGE PROFILE: Connie’s story
• 26 Instant status
• 27 How to communicate in an unsucky way
• 28 Why you don’t have to be an all-rounder
• 29 How to sell without selling your soul
• 30 Get comfortable with setting your salary
• 31 Overcoming information overwhelm
• 32 What to do when you get stuck
• 33 Living and working anywhere (or: creating your own lifestyle)
• 34 How to quit your job
• Epilogue
• Index
• Copyright