Dateline: Bogota, Colombia
Over the years, my political involvement and beliefs have progressed and changed. Who I was at 13 is similar to who am I now, but I’ve learned a lot throughout the years.
I’ve had opportunities to meet many successful high-net-worth people and travel the world. My perspective now is much more global than it was when I was a kid. Because of this, I’ve made changes in my life and focus.
I’ve stopped wasting my time on petty things like politics. And by doing so, my life has become so much better.
In this article, I’m going to talk about my progression from age 13 to where I am now in regards to my political involvement and explain why not following politics has helped me be a lot more successful and make a lot more money in business.
ANDREW: AGE 13
Let me tell you about myself at 13 years old.
I remember sitting around in the early days of the internet and ordering materials from the libertarian party. Some of you might remember that diamond political scorecard where you answered a bunch of questions and they scored where you are on the political map.
I suppose it’s a very American thing, though there are libertarian parties all over the world now.
The ideas of smaller government, lower taxes, and getting the government out of your life always interested me. I grew up around that. I come from an entrepreneurial family and was surrounded by a lot of successful people who just wanted the government to leave them alone and stop wasting their money.
I remember driving with my father as a teenager and asking him to take me to the next city over to pick up a libertarian lawn sign for our yard. Those were my beginnings in both business and politics.
[embedded content] [embedded content]WORKING IN RADIO: ARE POLITICS NONSENSE?
As the years went on, I watched television and American news. I would watch these debate shows and get fired up. I was really into politics, particularly libertarian politics.
When I was around 20 years old and just getting started in the radio industry, I was doing a gig where I didn’t even ask them to pay me, I just came in at night and produced some radio shows so I could learn about the business and apply it to my own.
One day, a client of the radio station who became a friend of mine told me that he didn’t follow politics.
I said, “How can you not follow politics?” He was a successful guy making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I couldn’t imagine that anyone intelligent or successful wouldn’t follow politics.
He told me that that was his secret to success. It’s all nonsense.
It took me a while to realize that for myself. As much as I was the libertarian guy growing up, a couple of years after I got into business, I started making pretty good money and that was when politics became very real.
Rather than just listening to others complain about how the government takes your money and wastes it, I actually had to write the big check. It was painful. It really hit me the first time.
COMPLAINING TO COMPLAIN
In the years that I ran my first business, I did a lot of work with AM and talk radio stations. Our whole business was to help bring revenue into radio stations on the verge of collapsing. We helped to prop up a lot of radio stations and eventually worked with bigger stations and helped them to make more money.
It was interesting being surrounded by talk radio because I would listen to people who were calling in or go to events and see the people there, and as I listened, I realized that all of these people just wanted to complain.
I also realized that these same people didn’t seem like they were all that successful, though they talked like they were, complaining about high taxes. Mixing business and politics seemed inextricably connected to a vicious victim mentality that led to endless complaining.
I had a client in the radio business who worked as a local financial guide in Phoenix, Arizona. He was making near a million dollars a year, and he also didn’t follow politics. We helped him distribute a talk radio show and he said he got calls from some of these people who would tell him that they were making $50,000 in social security but were tired of high taxes.
At the same time, because he was making a million a year, he was the one who was really paying high taxes. In comparison, these people who were complaining were paying very little and were actually benefiting from the system. There are so many people who are broke and angry who get so into politics.
I realized that if I was going to be successful at a big level, maybe I had to get away from politics.
HOW I SEPARATED BUSINESS AND POLITICS
During this same time, I began traveling the world, expanding my knowledge, and building my global perspective. Not long after I got out of the radio business, I became the Nomad Capitalist. I started the website and started blogging. I had left the United States for good and was traveling nonstop.
Initially, I still had some of that anger towards the US government. Why was it that the government in Vietnam was doing more for its people? Why were taxes so much lower in Serbia? I held on to this angry perspective for some time.
It took me a while to work through it, but I did.
I even hired an editor at one point to go through and tone down some of my angrier articles from the first days of Nomad Capitalist. I had come to realize that anger over politics was not getting me anywhere in business or life.
Over the last eight years of running Nomad Capitalist, I’ve seen a progression where, initially, we got a more political audience of readers who were frustrated but didn’t seem to actually want to do anything about it.
We had our first conference in Las Vegas in 2014 and we had some really nice people come. I’m still friends with some of them. It was a very successful conference. But looking back, one of the reasons I stopped hosting that kind of conference was because people wanted to come just to commiserate.
As a guy who has now started five different businesses, I like to commiserate occasionally, but I mostly like to get stuff done. I’m a heck yes or no guy. I want to go go go and get it done. That’s been the secret to my success. And every year has been better than the last.
There is no place or time for anger in all of that.
YOU CAN GO SOMEWHERE BETTER
Rather than get angry about the way things were in the US, I went where I was treated best and found places like Georgia (pictured) that I once dubbed “the next America”.
We’ve made the progression here at Nomad Capitalist from a more political audience to successful entrepreneurs and high-net-worth individuals.
Every time I’m sitting down somewhere around the world with a guy who sold a business for $50,000,000 or accumulated $200,000,000 over his lifetime, we don’t talk about politics. The secret sauce they discovered is that they didn’t make that money because of the government.
They made it because of themselves.
I have always believed the philosophy, “Don’t stay and fight.” You can fight for a lifetime. People have stayed and fought and even died trying to change things.
My perspective is, whatever you’re looking for, you can find it.
Why stay and fight when you can go where what you want is already a reality? Go where you’re treated best where you have the freedom to create exactly what it is that you want.
Do you think taxes are too high? There are places with lower taxes out there. There are even places with zero taxes!
We help people to design their ideal life, business structure, and investments all the time. We help our clients create legal strategies to keep more of their money. You don’t need to sit and hope that voting for the right guy is going to lower your taxes.
The tide is already against you in most Western countries. These places are currently in favor of higher taxes and wealth taxes. They are coming up with wealth taxes and other new ways to extract money from people.
They’re going to leave those guys making $50,000 alone, the great middle class. But if you’re successful, if you’re the million-dollar earner, there’s a target on your back. You can stay and fight, but you won’t be successful because there are not as many of us as there are of them.
There are other places you can go. I’m not about fighting, I’m about living. I’m about enjoying a life with peace and calm in a place (or places) that reflect my values.
YOU’RE IN CONTROL
At the core of the Nomad Capitalist philosophy is the idea that you’re in control of yourself.
That’s an uncomfortable concept for a lot of folks these days. You see people around the world who are struggling.
Bernie Sanders posted on Twitter about how unfair it is that Jeff Bezos who started Amazon has so much money and that the average middle-class person in the United States would have to work for some ungodly number of years just to make as much money as Jeff Bezos.
But Jeff Bezos changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The person who is the median earner should step up their value creation rather than tear down Jeff Bezos. That’s not a popular opinion to have.
Jeff Bezos did it in the United States. You and I can do it somewhere else. You can run your business from anywhere in the world.
Don’t focus on politics. I had to stop myself. I got really caught up during the first Trump election and inauguration watching the news because it was entertaining. Watching the back and forth, I didn’t agree with either side. I had to step away and ask myself what I was watching it for. This wasn’t even my country since I expatriated from the United States.
It was honestly holding me back. When I stopped, I had my best financial year ever.
STOP MIXING BUSINESS AND POLITICS
From where I’m standing today, it is easy to see that an obsession with politics is often closely connected to thinking that other people control your fate. The more you believe that and bring that mindset into your business, the less successful you’re going to be.
Let the politicians do what they’re going to do. You do what you’re going to do.
Now that you’ve found Nomad Capitalist, you know there are other options besides sitting and just taking what the current President, Congress, Parliament, or whoever throws at you. You know that you can go where you’re treated best.
And if you are ready to start your holistic offshore plan, contact us here.
Andrew Henderson is the world’s most sought-after consultant on international tax planning, investment immigration, and global citizenship. He has personally lived this lifestyle for over a decade, and now works with seven- and eight-figure entrepreneurs and investors who want to “go where they’re treated best”.
Source: https://nomadcapitalist.com/2021/01/15/business-and-politics-stay-fight/