New! Selfish School is now OPEN 💥 🏔️ 🥾 🧥 🍷 📸

My best-selling money course for nomadic professionals + families is *here*. ͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­ Forwarded this email? [Subscribe here]() for more [New! Selfish School is now OPEN 💥 🏔️ 🥾 🧥 🍷 📸]( My best-selling money course for nomadic professionals + families is *here*. [Ash Ambirge]( Mar 8   [READ IN APP](   Sometimes people are like “Ash, how can you afford to buy old farmhouses and fix ‘em up and work from anywhere and write about [where to put your dead parents?!]( Sometimes they are also like “Ash, why are you such a delicious slunt?” and “Ash, how have you been traveling for fifteen years straight while staying in super cute Airbnbs and frolicking around Ireland and not accidentally breaking a knee?” Sometimes I also get “Ash, how did you live in Chile for so long? And in Central America for all those years? And how do you jaunt off to Europe and spend months at a time and WHERE IS THE MONEY COMING FROM?????????” First of all, I am in the mafia. That is not even a little bit true, but I do like the combination of cheese + tomato sauce a liiiiittle bit more than I should. Second, we know that I have no business doing ANY of these things. I grew up curling my bangs in a trailer park, using food stamps to buy popsicles, dating boys who milked cows, bringing boom boxes to stone quarries, and thinking tinted car windows were the ultimate sign of prestige. (Read more about my backstory in the trailer park [here]( However, there is one superpower I do have: I am selfish. I want it all. So I’ve designed my life + business accordingly. I want to have a [two-story farmhouse in the countryside]( and [a cool-kid condo in the city]( and pretty things adorning my nightstand, and health insurance, and retirement savings, and emergency savings, and ALL THE SAVINGS. I want to have bougie candles underneath little glass domes, and thick emerald green velvet curtains hanging from the windows, and gorgeous pecan-colored dining tables I drool over (I own [this one]( because it reminds me of the one my mom and I had growing up—her one prized possession), and little desk drawers where I can store tiny thank-you cards with inspirational quotes, and pencils that say “please shut the fuck up,” and endless numbers of journals where I will brainstorm each and every day, and probably also a pin that reads “condoms prevent minivans.” (Definitely own.) I want to spend spring mornings [power washing the side of the house](. I want to [rip out a kitchen]( with my bare hands. I want to be able to spend [$7,200 in property taxes]( a year. I want to [gain twenty pounds]( eating hot wings and pizza. I want to [fight with my toilet seat]( and hang out with [old men named Roger]( and have to figure out how to [write someone a check](. These are all the tiny little joys of home. Of quiet. Of being in a place, rather than moving through it. But I also want the world. I want to rent glorious apartments in Florence, surrounded by incredible wine bars, ateliers, & art galleries. 🎨 🍷 🧥 I want to head to Scandinavia in the summer to write, photograph, or draw from the hazy shores of a little red summer house. ✍️ 📸 ⛵️ I want to marvel at the architecture of Portugal, Greece, or Scotland. 🏡 🏛️ 🧱 I want to be delighted by human language. I want to eat [tiny little sea terrorists]( in France. I want to [carry hams over 435 bridges in Venice](. I want to drive across the midwest [searching for nice people]( (and discover the joys of the Kum & Go, instead). I want adventure, and bewilderment, and wide eyes, and the lost art of feeling naive. I want to get lost. Want to get stuck in a storm. Want to not know my way around. Want to see things through a dewey, unassuming set of eyes. And, I am very fortunate to say that I have created this life for myself—this hybrid, unconventional life of travel and home. Adventure and rest. Being and going. With no expense spared in either. However, because I have insisted on having it all, I have also had to make different decisions about the way I operate my life, my career, and my finances. Here Are 12 Different Decisions I Have Made, In Order to Create & Sustain This Delightful International Lifestyle (Including Financial Decisions That Most People Do Not Make) - Working for myself is a non-negotiable. I don’t adhere to predictable schedules, and I don’t want to ever have to be on Zoom at 7 o’clock in the morning, and I don’t want some woman named Cindy making sure I am at my computer for eight hours a day. But moreover is the career satisfaction that comes with working for yourself: you are able to be creative, and imaginative, and free. You can start little fires. Burn down old ideas. Create all sorts of new and interesting things. You can dream, you can create, you can be an original. And, you can do it all from anywhere in the world. - Working online is a non-negotiable. My work must be portable. I cannot run a bookshop, or start selling paintings, or need to store $50,000 worth of inventory. This means that, while there are plenty of fun ideas I could run with, I won’t…unless they meet my parameters. Life is too short to be in one place all of the time. - Howevah! That is not to say I cannot sell products: in fact, products are the lifeblood of my business. But, they are digital products—in other words, products that can be sold and delivered entirely online. This is a BIG missing piece of most freelancer’s financial picture: they have their days consumed with working in the business, rather than working on the business. I prioritize working on the business. - I don’t treat my digital products as cute little whatevers: I treat them as legitimate intellectual property assets. Because, that’s precisely what they are. Every time you create something, whether it’s a book, a downloadable, a guide, an audio class, a workshop, a course, or a program, that is your intellectual property. And, intellectual property is valuable. It’s protected by law. You can copyright your work and trademark your brands. No one else can sell it in that same expression, only you. No one else can have your sales page. No one else can have your logo. No one else can have your name. No one else can say the things that you do, in the same exact way that you did. That’s all proprietary. That’s all yours. Whatever you create is 100% wholly yours. CONSIDER THAT. That is VALUE. And, learning to view your work as an intellectual property asset will change the way you think about everything, forever. (And, as a bonus, can help get rid of some of that pesky imposter syndrome you may be dealing with.) - Because I view my products as intellectual property assets, I am hyper strategic on the way those products are branded. A strong brand = strong sales. A weak brand = weak sales. It’s a very simple equation, actually. That means that you need a magnetic brand name, a to-die-for promise, a modern logo, and copy that kills. These things are non-negotiables as well. This is how you signal to the world that you mean business. Because the world will take you seriously if you take yourself seriously. - I bake my marketing directly into my products. When you create something with a strong enough promise, a big enough wow-factor, a fun enough idea, people will do the marketing for you. Most circles call this “word of mouth.” I call this strategy. If you have a mediocre product that looks the same as everyone else’s, you’ve got to overcompensate with endless marketing, endless content, endless effort, endless yelling. On the other hand, if you can create an exciting idea, and make that part of your product, your work will sell itself considerably more easily. - I use technology to automate my sales as much as I can. Why wouldn’t you? Don’t let yourself be the liability in your own business. Use the tools we have! That means email. This always means email. Email is THE key. - I let my products be exactly that: products. Products can be sold independently of your time. They’re a way of divorcing your value from your time. You could take on 1:1 clients for the rest of eternity, but eventually you will be burnt out and your income capped off—and you certainly won’t have the time or resources to spend your Friday afternoon taking care of your sick baby, or traveling to Slovenia to wade in the salty sea. That is not to say 1:1 services are not a great starting place—they are!—but you must also think bigger over the long-term, in service to your bigger goals. By taking your knowledge and packaging it into a digital product that can (a) Help people; (b) At a lower price point; (c) Without you needing to replicate the work with each client; (d) And provide you with an intellectual property asset that can be exchanged for monetary value in the marketplace…well, it’s a smart financial decision. You might be scared, you might feel like you’re not an “expert enough.” You might not know how to do this (yet), but that doesn’t negate its utility. You need to do what’s best for your lifestyle goals, not your ego. - In line with the above idea, I am also strategic about the way I allocate the available time I do have. I typically do not run large, year-round membership groups, for example, because the time commitment to do it properly is consistently underestimated by well-meaning entrepreneurs. Running a team is also underestimated. So is managing hundreds of people and hundreds of conversations all happening simultaneously. The idea here is to maximize your impact while minimizing your stress levels, so you can actually enjoy your life—not feel imprisoned by it. (This is especially important if you have ambitions to travel. Your # of viable workable hours is going to be dramatically decreased, so that needs to be accounted for—and planned for.) - I happily invest time in marketing. Writing is marketing. Thinking is marketing. Reading is marketing. Talking is marketing. Sharing ideas is marketing. It doesn’t have to be all social media—in fact, I don’t do much social media, by design. I do what works, and I do it well. I double down on my strengths. I write like a fucker. And I get on podcasts. And I let that be enough. - I make every decision through two filters: is this a good financial decision? And is this a good time decision? A lot of people get caught up in the money—because, sure, you can make a lot of money doing a lot of different things. But, do you want to? Will it inspire you? Give you joy? Fill your cup? Will it allow you the time that you need to also create a balanced and happy life? Because if you would rather be refinishing an old bureau in the backyard, then you must choose the bureau in the backyard. There are ways to meet your financial needs without profound torture. - On that note—$250,000 is the sweet spot number I’ve discovered that most people need in order to maximize your earnings and impact, keep your home AND be able to travel, and offer you the most uncommitted free time in your day to enjoy your life. This number accounts for your expenses to keep your home—because, contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be a 20-something minimalist who sells all their things—and also accounts for your expenses to travel well and create meaningful experiences and do so in a way that remains in integrity with your preferred lifestyle. This is critical for the modern professional and family: you don’t have to rough it. You can create a hybrid lifestyle that gives you everything you want. You can be selfish. You can live well. Because, isn’t living well what it’s really about? The way you arrange your life is a choice: gone are the days when your only option was a traditional 9-5 job, in a traditional office setting, with a traditionally stressful commute, with a traditional salary and a traditional boss. I have been writing about this for almost two decades now (check out my [rebel child of a book]( and today it’s more true than ever. Working for yourself online is the future. BUT—there is a difference between earning $50K a year online…and earning $250,000+ a year online. One will cover your basic living expenses, while the other will cover your dream life. If you want to go deeper on how I’ve done this for myself financially, my best-selling money course for nomadic businesses, [Selfish School]( is now open for limited-time enrollment! 💥 [Selfish School]( teaches you how to live & work from anywhere while working toward an income goal of $250,000 remotely, and working 50% less…so you can enjoy your life more. It goes into extreme step-by-step detail on how to create your own intellectual property assets that you can sell online from anywhere in the world—and how to leverage these to hit an income goal of $250,000+. You can do this. 99% of success is closing your eyes and following the steps and ignoring your excuses and not letting yourself get in your own way. [This system]( is the exact system that I’ve been using for 15 years now, having earned many multiple millions of dollars online with my writing and my work. It is unconventional. It is fresh. It is controversial. It ignores most of the typical online business advice, and instead, offers a better roadmap for doing what feels good for you—and making a damn good living doing it. I’m living proof that it works. And, I hope this helps you, too, have everything you want. [Try Selfish School Today]( XOXO with all my guts, Ash P.S. Already own Selfish School, but want to give it as a gift to someone who wants to travel + start an online business (that you really really love)? That’s now an option at checkout using the full pay option, whoo hoo! 💥 You’re currently a free subscriber to The Middle Finger Project with Ash Ambirge. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. 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