It's All My Fault Part 3

"Eh, it goes fast."

It goes fast? That's all he had for me? I was shocked. I was hoping to hear a story about how he discovered what he truly enjoyed, with a bunch of tips and tricks for me to be able to use to find my own path. But that was it. Life goes fast. If life is going to go fast, I thought, that seems like even more of a reason to not settle for something that keeps me miserable.

The bus was in stop-and-go mode that day, as it progressed through heavy rush hour traffic in lower Manhattan. I spent some time looking out the bus window, and observed what was going on in the area. I saw that the sidewalk was jam-packed with hundreds of people in suits, moving in a slow pattern that looked similar to the vehicular traffic in the streets. As I paid closer attention, I noticed that I could not pinpoint even a single person who looked remotely pleased to be there. They were all moving in the same pattern -- two steps at a time -- to fill in the gaps that would appear in front of them. Practically everyone was wearing the same exact uniform; consisting of the same dark suits, white s.h.i.+rts, and black dress shoes. It looked completely lifeless; with heads drooped down, staring at the floor. As I sat back and took it all in, I realized that this snapshot drew numerous striking similarities to film renditions that portray the endless lines of slaves in ancient Egypt. I thought: "Along with Tokyo and London, this is one of the three financial capitals of the world. These are supposed to be some of the most prosperous, successful, and wealthy people in the world. This is supposed to represent the upper echelon of everything I've ever been taught to strive for in Western culture. And not a single person looks happy to be here."

This really got me to start questioning everything that I thought I knew about the world. I had previously witnessed the hards.h.i.+ps and stress that came with the lack of money and resources, and I was led to believe that pursuing the American Dream was the solution to this problem. Practically every adult I had ever come across had given me the same advice throughout my life: "Stay in school. My life is so hard and unhappy because I fooled around and didn't try hard enough in school. If I would have just stayed in school, worked harder, and maybe gotten into a good college, everything would have been different. Learn from my mistakes."

Was it possible that every adult I'd ever met was misinformed? Could they all be wrong? I'd only been alive for a little over two decades, and many of the people I sought advice from had been on this planet for two or three times as long as I had. Why hadn't anyone else figured this happiness thing out yet? What had they been doing for all of those years? Why was it that no matter where I looked, it seemed that not a soul had the practical answers I was looking for?

One day at the office, I heard a retirement speech that would begin to give me nightmares, and essentially confirmed the fact that I was completely at a loss for answers to life's biggest philosophical questions. An elderly guy at the office was finally calling it quits, and so the company held a retirement party for him. By party, what I mean is that people took a 15--minute break to go into the hallway area between the cubicles to have a slice of cake each. When a slice of cake was pa.s.sed to me, and I politely declined, a co-worker said: "This guy. I remember when I was in shape years ago too. Don't worry, just eat the cake. Soon you'll be plump just like the rest of us anyway!" Needless to say, not a single bite of cake was eaten by me that day. More than anything, it was a symbolic gesture of nonconformity to the typical snarky atmosphere that existed there. It doesn't matter to me whether someone is the CEO or the janitor; I strive to treat everyone with the same level of respect. On the other hand, if someone believes that their hierarchal corporate status gives them a license to disrespect others, it doesn't matter to me whether they are the CEO or the janitor; I have no problem with telling them directly that I know they're capable of treating people better. In most of traditional corporate America, this is virtually a death sentence for your career. I sometimes heard whispers that my frequent refusals to conform and tolerate disrespectful behavior were making me appear to be an outcast and a maverick in the eyes of management, but I didn't care.

Next up at the retirement party was the speech. The man who was retiring was given a farewell watch, and he said: "I've come to this office every single day for more years than I can remember, minus Sundays and a few holidays. Now it's off to Florida for me. Thanks everyone." The poor guy could barely even walk or move around anymore, and his ultimate reward for investing all of the years of his entire adult life into this company was a watch. When I went back into my cubicle, the only thought running vividly through my mind was: "There's not a s...o...b..ll's chance in h.e.l.l that I can allow this to happen to me. I'd rather die than be surrounded by miserable people and do things I hate every day for the rest of my adult life." I looked far, far down the tunnel of the road I'd been going down, and at that moment, I could see that there was no light s.h.i.+ning through the other side. It was a dead end.

In bed that night, I began tossing and turning, and wondered if this was my destiny. I wondered if everything I'd done in my life up until that point was a mistake. I knew that dealing with the constant turmoil that arose from spending most of my waking hours within a psychologically oppressive environment was a major distraction to finding clarity. Though it was hard to gain a clear picture of exactly what I needed to do instead, I knew that no matter what I was meant to do in life, this was absolutely not it -- and staying there was not going to help me find it. I'd asked around, and it seemed as if none of the recommendations I was getting from anyone about what to do next were resonating with me. This frustrating feeling of not knowing where to turn for advice forced me to take a major step in my personal growth. For the first time in my life, I realized that if others could not guide me in the right direction, I would have to begin to trust my own intuition, and guide myself. This is when I made the decision that I would have to say farewell to my civil engineering career, and instead face my fears of stepping into uncharted territory. I wanted to systematically break down and remove myself from all of the predetermined belief systems and social patterns I'd inherited that had such a major influence on all of my most crucial life decisions up until that point. I wanted to start over with a blank canvas, in order to figure out -- at the deepest and most fundamental levels -- who I was, and what I was really made of. And so, after some unexpected twists and turns, this winding journey led me to a new place where I practically didn't know anyone -- the city of angels; Los Angeles, California.

The culture of southern California seemed to feel more natural to me than any place I'd been to before. Though it had its positive and negative aspects just like anywhere else, it really felt as if there was a lot less pressure to conform into being something I was not; and I really appreciated the prevailing "anything goes" mentality. It finally felt as if I was in a position to begin building a rock solid foundational core of values and way of living that would truly be aligned with my highest aspirations. I began to focus on doing work that involved different methods of personal transformation; the type of work that I knew would actually make a difference in the world. There was much work to be done.

One of these areas of focus was using my math background to tutor students who were in danger of failing out of school. In some of the city's highest crime neighborhoods, I would hear stories from students of brutal gang violence. As I sat at the kitchen table with a pupil who was only in the 6th grade, she pointed out the window of her apartment, and showed me the spot where a homeless man had been beaten to death the night before. She'd been woken up in the middle of the night (on the night before an exam) by sirens, and yet still wasn't rattled. A few hours later, she walked to school as if nothing had happened. She handled herself more maturely than most adults who've never been immersed into that type of environment. Through the process of dealing with these types of childhood experiences, she had developed a tough outer sh.e.l.l as a means of basic survival, having been forced to grow up a lot faster than our society should ever have allowed. Like most of my students, her mother spoke Spanish as her primary language, and so helping out with homework or communicating with teachers directly became virtually nonexistent. The studio apartment they lived in contained a bunk bed. The mother and youngest sibling slept on the bottom, while the older two shared the top. The apartment building itself had many issues, including structural issues such as leaks, and human issues as well (since some gang members lived within the building). There was no safe haven; there was no place to hide. For her and her family, this was survival.

These are the types of details that can easily be overlooked when we judge a student's grades and conduct from a distance without understanding what they've been through. For children from an upper cla.s.s neighborhood, in a two-parent family, who speak English at home, who have access to the best schools, the best teachers, internet access, and have relatives on the school board, it still takes a lot of effort and diligence to become top performers. Now, just imagine how much harder it is to get a student up to speed when all of these advantages don't exist. In a subject like math, skills are built on top of one another. If a student falls far behind, it can take years for them to recover -- and that's not even the worst case scenario. Often, they can become so discouraged that they lose the desire to attend school altogether.

Yet despite all of this, with the right systems in place, ma.s.sive progress can be made. For a student of mine in the 5th grade, she went from failing her math exams and struggling with her multiplication tables to receiving the first "A" she'd ever gotten in her life. I observed that a major factor in making progress involved getting to know each student's personality, interests, motivations, and most importantly -- finding a way for them to want to interact and learn from you. Each kid has a pa.s.sion for something. For some, it's baseball; for others, it's cartoons; for others, it's food. For one student who hated math, but loved baseball, all of his math problems became baseball problems. He had very little interest in learning math, but he had a major interest in adding up the runs on the scoreboard to figure out if the Dodgers beat the Yankees. He was very interested in learning about which player had the longest homeruns, and how fast you would have to be to steal second base before the catcher threw you out. When a student is intrinsically motivated to learn something, they can become curious and inspired enough to want to learn concepts that are beyond their grade level. Math was no longer just some boring subject that he was forced to learn, but instead was a vehicle through which he could become better at understanding something he loved --the sport of baseball. I learned that by sparking that flame, I could unlock the raw potential for students to be able to transform their own views towards learning.

Some students are shy, and need to be in a quiet and judgment free atmosphere so that they feel more comfortable and confident to speak up. Some students excel in areas outside of academics, and those talents should be nurtured to give them a sense of pride and ident.i.ty, in order to give them the confidence and discipline necessary to improve their grades. Another major concept that I utilized is that I would often let the students decide when they were ready to take a break, and never set a limit on how many breaks they could have. I found that it was much more productive to have students be fully immersed into learning for as long as they could last rather than force them to study for too long against their will. When I was in school, I actually became conditioned to hate forced writing a.s.signments so much that I preferred to take a major full of math and science cla.s.ses; mostly so that I wouldn't have to write papers. And ironically, now that I have the freedom to choose my own path, I'm choosing to write this book. Go figure. It's human nature for us to dislike things that feel as if they are forced upon us in an uninspiring way. Many times, I would give students the option to either take a break or keep going, and they would choose to keep going. Students can learn much more effectively when they are the ones choosing to learn.

I envision the optimal form of learning as a type of guided recess. First, I let the students operate in the habitat that is most natural to who they are, in a state of freedom. I observe their tendencies, and see what they're truly like. Then, I join the game, and initially play by their rules. I allow them to accept me into their world, as this will make it more likely that they want to learn about mine. Then, I teach them the skills and concepts that I believe will be most beneficial for them within the framework of the paradigm they live in, and show them direct examples of how this knowledge will make their lives better. For example, if a student loves to play with racecars, it's possible to use that as the central focus for nearly everything they do. Help them write a story about the car. Help them learn about the parts that make the car run. Let them figure out the acceleration and top speed. In this manner, every skill the student learns builds directly upon the interests they already have, in an area that they enjoy playing in when no one is forcing them to learn.

In addition to utilizing this empathy-centered methodology for helping students improve their performance in school, similar philosophies flourished when I worked with adults as well. Through one-on-one coaching, personal development groups, and retreats, I'd worked with young entrepreneurs and leaders, people interested in overcoming fears and social anxieties, homeless individuals, people with drug addictions, and people stuck in abusive relations.h.i.+ps. Each situation and individual called for a slightly different approach, and I was not always able to help everyone make the changes they desired; but I have seen miraculous changes occur with my own eyes. I've seen people overcome lifelong fears, quit addictions, gain the strength to leave abusive marriages, start businesses, graduate school after having previously dropped out, and positively transform their lives in numerous different ways. Though it certainly isn't always easy, I can say with complete confidence that with the right training, leaders and resources, it is absolutely possible to empower people to change their ways of living for the better.

While living in southern California, far away from my old life in New York City, I finally began to feel as if the work I was doing was in total alignment with the best attributes I had to offer to the world. I truly loved the work I was doing on a daily basis, and knew how vital it was for society as a whole for these types of issues to be properly addressed. But all was not well. What became evident to me was that this line of work contained a major paradox within it. In essence, the people in society who have the strongest need for these types of services are least able to afford them. The poorest, most vulnerable, and most disenfranchised people are the ones that need help the most, and yet they often do not have any means to be able to compensate those who have the ability to a.s.sist them in overcoming their biggest life challenges. In this manner, the cycle of poverty could span many generations.

This did not sit well with me. There were tens of thousands of people all around Los Angeles -- some of whom were only kids and teenagers -- who did not even have a place to call home. I decided that I would focus on working with people no matter if they had an ability to pay or not. I'd already cut my expenses down to the bare bones level to make this feasible. In a short period of time, I thought, I would eventually bring in enough paying clients to make this financially sustainable enough to cover all of my living expenses and college loans. At the same time, I began thinking about the issue of poverty on more of a macro scale. Was working individually and in small groups the most effective way to address this issue, in terms of reaching the ma.s.ses? What were humanitarian organizations with large budgets doing? With over a billion people worldwide living in dire conditions, was there a more efficient way of addressing these problems?

One day, a seemingly obvious insight hit me over the head like a ton of bricks. I was growing a small avocado plant in my kitchen, and watered it right before I walked out the door. As I crossed paths with so many people on the street who needed money for food, I thought: "I've been thinking about poverty alleviation in terms of scarcity -- there aren't enough jobs, there isn't enough effective job training, food prices are increasing, and so on. If I were to plant one seed -- whether it was from an avocado, an apple, a pepper, or any other type of fruit or vegetable -- over time, it would grow into a plant that produces a bunch of food, with many more seeds. These seeds could each be replanted, and replicate the process. All it takes is some fertile soil, sunlight, and some water. Technically, given the right conditions and enough time, even one single seed has the potential to produce an unlimited number of fruits or vegetables. Almost anyone, no matter how much or how little formal education they've received, could be capable of executing this."

This really was a game changer for me in terms of my philosophical approach towards thinking about poverty alleviation on a much larger scale, as this concept was something very simple, concrete and tangible. Stated simply, if a person has a place to grow their own food, they would not need to be as reliant on money for their basic survival. Regardless of whether the economy is up or down, if a person can grow most or all of their own food, at the very least, they will not go hungry. Rather than spending all of their free time trying to obtain money for food, they would be able to devote time towards developing other skills, or sell their surplus to begin earning money independently. While this overall idea still had many missing pieces that I knew I would have to do more research to address, this was the first time that I truly understood deep down at a conceptual level that it really is possible for everyone in the world to have enough to eat. Though hunger is the number one cause of death worldwide, I realized that with the right amount of effort and resources, we absolutely could eliminate this problem. Figuring out the logistics of how to realistically execute something of this magnitude became my top priority.

For awhile, it seemed like everything was progressing just fine. My income was running on a varied feast and famine type of cycle, but I was finding a way to get by. I believed that it would eventually pick up. However, my research, my vision, and my overall life plan would soon be put on hold, followed by a rapid decline. When both my car and computer broke down at the same time, I was forced to dip into my credit cards for relief, which added bigger payments to my minimum monthly expenses. When the summer months arrived, tutoring came to a halt, and that further stretched the gap between my income and expenses. Before I knew it, I was in trouble. Credit cards became my primary lifeline for groceries, car insurance, phone, gas and electric bills. At the same time, there were some major conflicts occurring that involved relatives back on the east coast, and so I began to realize that this really was do or die time. I was on my own, and would either have to sink or swim. I began to look into other jobs to be able to make ends meet. The bottom had fallen out, and I was spiraling; just struggling to tread water. It all happened so quickly.

At that moment in time, in terms of me getting my finances back on track, economic conditions looked bleak. To add to all of the above, the economy was reeling from a global financial collapse, and was in the heart of a severe recession. Los Angeles was considered to be one of the top three worst cities for job seekers in America at the time. Companies were hosting big group interviews to weed out candidates; and these were for jobs that paid $8 per hour. With the real estate market dropping significantly, and the total halt in construction, the only value my civil engineering degree had was as a placemat. I'd even met a recent law school grad from Yale who couldn't find work. Most importantly, since my network was not very big in this relatively new city, I did not have any connections that could swoop in and save me. Things began to look more and more dire. I began working part-time for a trial period as an a.s.sistant for a prosperous individual in the personal development realm, but his $5 per hour offer was too low for me to sustain myself. When my car had broken down yet again, and I was unable to afford to get it fixed, it further limited my ability to get around to potential interviews on the other side of the city. I'd sent out countless resumes, but it was of no use. On more than one occasion, I'd received an email response, and was ecstatic; only to realize that it was a scammer attempting to get me to fill out a fake application in order to steal my social security number.

Though I'd spent the vast majority of my life without very much money, it never really bothered me before; as it always seemed like a temporary stage that was sure to end. This was the first time that I had felt that I was stuck in a life of poverty. I understood the horrible sensation of what it felt like to feel truly poor, powerless, and trapped; as if no one in the world cared about helping me. It feels like you have no value and no self-worth. People forget that you exist. The slope becomes dangerously steep. You feel desperate; and the more desperate you get, the more you need help -- the less people want to help you. In a society that wors.h.i.+ps money, when you don't have any, you become invisible. It didn't matter that my objective was originally to try to help end poverty for others; at this moment, I had to get myself out of poverty, and was having trouble finding any viable options. I began trying all sorts of outside the box ideas -- handing out flyers to people explaining my situation, posting them on telephone poles, offering a cash referral to anyone who could help me find a job, offering 10% of my first year's income for a job, writing professional flyers, heartfelt flyers, comedic flyers, sneaking into buildings to post flyers, standing on the street with a sign -- and nothing worked. I literally could not find a job with a livable wage to save my life.

Once again, I began to question everything I thought I knew about the world. I had a steady career path, I abandoned it, and now I was begging for another one -- and it was no longer there. What a humbling experience. My debt was growing larger each day that I couldn't find work; and pretty soon, I'd no longer be able to pay my rent. It felt like every day I was just digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole of debt, worthlessness, and isolation. Even if I wanted to have a conversation with someone, what would we talk about? What positive things would I even have to say? I was ashamed to even speak about how fast I had fallen. All of my dreams had crumbled, and now my life had become a daily nightmare. And the worst part was: It was all my fault.

9.

My Awakening Transformation Hitting rock bottom is one of the most humbling experiences a person can have. When every person you know knows that you made a risky move to pursue a life that's off the beaten path, and it doesn't work out the way you expected it to, it feels like the entire world is laughing behind your back. For me, the hardest part was when I would question if my beliefs were too idealistic. What if making a major difference in the world was beyond my capabilities? Should I have just been happy to have any job, even if it entailed legally extracting money out of the system without truly providing value to others?

When the final month came during which I was not going to be able to pay my rent any longer, I became apathetic to all of these philosophical questions. I did not see any way out. Being buried in debt and not having any real career options sucks; but what made it truly unbearable was the feeling that it would never get better, and would only keep getting worse. It felt as if I would never get out of debt, or get another chance to work on something truly meaningful again, or feel proud of myself, or be able to maintain a serious relations.h.i.+p. There was a chance that I would not even have anywhere to live. I didn't believe that any woman would want to be with a guy who was a broke deadbeat. Friends of mine were having bachelor parties and weddings, and I'd have to tell them that I could not afford to go. What a bad friend and a buzz kill I'd become. It had me feeling like I had nothing left to live for. All I could see was misery for the foreseeable future.

After the fateful night I described in chapter one, I regained a little glimmer of hope. I stopped worrying about meeting any of the expectations I had for my life, and stopped worrying about outside judgments as well. All I could do was just be, and so that's what I did. I realized that living in the same homeless shelter where I applied for a job several months earlier was an actual possibility, and accepted that if it happened, life could continue to go on. Luckily for me, I received a few invitations to crash on people's couches while I got back on my feet. I sold or gave away nearly all of my belongings other than my laptop, phone, and two suitcases full of clothing, and said farewell to southern California.

When I returned to New York City, the job market seemed to be a bit better than it had been on the west coast. I received several part-time gigs that allowed me to regain somewhat of a sense of normalcy. After previously hitting rock bottom, this is something that cannot be underestimated. Though poverty is primarily considered to entail possessing a lack of tangible material goods, I discovered that it is just as much a state of mind, and that this psychological barrier is extremely difficult to break through. When it pulls you down and becomes part of your ident.i.ty -- when everything you do on a day-to-day basis reminds you of it -- it's unbelievably hard to envision yourself ever rising above it again.

Slowly but surely, I began to overcome the feeling that I was hopeless. Life started to feel meaningful again. I actually began to feel truly fortunate, because even though I had been through many tough life experiences in the past, and nothing had even come close to this crash and burn -- I was somehow still digging my way out of it. The experience of having your business fail for the first time is similar in some ways to the first time you get your heart broken. You never believe in a million years that it will happen to you, and when it does, it leaves you in a period of extreme shock; feeling as if you no longer have an ident.i.ty. You wonder if you'll ever be able to get yourself to become vulnerable and optimistic enough to try again, considering how blindly you believed in it the last time -- and how much harder that made your fall. If you had put all of your chips into this venture, add in the instability of losing your basic survival necessities such as food, shelter, and the ability to partake in any type of social activities with friends, and it can become harsh. Add this to a lack of other job opportunities during a recession, being in a city without any strong connections, and throw in some major issues with relatives for good measure -- and it can feel as if your entire world has fallen apart. But the great thing is that as human beings, when we heal from a trauma, the scar tissue that seals the wound becomes even tougher than what was there before it. Though this scar tissue will forever remain as a reminder of a deep pain that shook us to our core, it also represents a symbol of the strength and resilience we showed in not allowing it to break us. Deep down, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I would try to bring my vision to life again. Except now, I was cut out of steel. Not many things could ever be much more challenging than what I'd already gone through, and so I was no longer afraid of failure. Even though it felt as if I'd lost practically everything, I was still alive; and --I was still in good health. Next time, I'd do it right.

After some time went by, as chance would have it, I happened to stumble upon the social entrepreneurs.h.i.+p industry. I had previously not even known that it existed. I began discovering organizations that were using business principles to address large-scale social issues such as poverty, human rights, the environment, and many other causes as well -- in a financially sustainable way. Right away, I felt that this was the long lost field that I had been searching for all along. For awhile, I'd kept the big idea I had regarding global poverty alleviation on the back burner, because I was scared that people would think I was crazy for even believing it was possible. At the time, I thought perhaps I was not ready for it.

A turning point occurred when I met Kanika Gupta, the Founder of The Social Journal (SoJo). I learned about how her previous initiative, Nukoko, was able to provide educational opportunities and school supplies for hundreds of girls in the villages of Togo. Despite the fact that she was chronologically younger than I was, I knew that she was one of the brightest and most accomplished people I'd ever met (among many other awards, she would go on to be named one of Canada's Top 100 Most Powerful Women by the Women's Executive Network a year later). After reading a few of my writings, she asked if I'd be interested in writing for The Social Journal. Looking back on it now, this was such a major morale boost that it helped bring me back to life. She is one of the rare people who believed in me at a time when I did not believe in myself, and for that I will be forever grateful. A little hope is a powerful thing; and this led me to begin voraciously consuming any information I could find related to social entrepreneurs.h.i.+p like it was oxygen. Through this process, I stumbled upon the work One Acre Fund had been doing in Kenya, helping thousands upon thousands of farmers rise out of poverty. I knew that it was time to unleash my idea out into the world. It was time to take flight once again.

The idea needed a name, and so I called it Project Free World. The word "free" in Project Free World is an acronym that stands for food, rights, education and environment. Without access to any one of these four, a person is not truly free. These four main elements -- food, rights, education, and a healthy, clean, safe, peaceful environment -- represent the basic foundation upon which human beings can create a dignified life. Though there are many other sub-elements that can fall within one of these categories, I chose to focus on these four in an effort to unify the ma.s.ses, and minimize the philosophical polarization that prevents meaningful action from taking place. Obviously, different people will have different beliefs about which particular sub-areas of development are necessities versus luxuries. However, there is a large enough critical ma.s.s of people that believe in these four that it was determined that this would make for a great starting point.

Project Free World's ultimate mission is to facilitate the creation of collaborative gra.s.sroots projects to provide the proper food, rights, education and environment to every person on the planet. It aims to leverage the power of the internet and other technologies to crowdsolve these issues, by bringing together the people who want to empower others, the people who want to be empowered, and the ideas and organizations that have already been proven effective on a small scale in various regions. For example, there is an organization called LivelyHoods that operates in Nairobi, Kenya, which has created a financially sustainable way of creating jobs for youth that live in an urban slum environment. I've presented Project Free World numerous times, in rooms full of people; and every time, I ask: "By a show of hands, who here has heard of LivelyHoods before?" Since they are a small organization operating on the other side of the globe from the United States, rarely has a hand ever gone up. If so many of the people involved in the realms of social entrepreneurs.h.i.+p, tech, and startup investing have never heard of LivelyHoods, chances are, the people most in need of information like this haven't heard of it either. The problem is: This is the type of organization that billions of people should know about. If their model works for alleviating poverty in Nairobi, chances are, there are people who should know about this idea in Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro, and Cairo, and Manila, and every other city around the world where an urban slum exists.

Through the years, I've discovered lots of organizations like LivelyHoods that are doing great work on a small scale in one particular region of the world or another. While they are changing many lives through their efforts, it can become a major challenge for a small social enterprise to scale up or expand at the level necessary to serve all of the people worldwide who could use their services. This is an extremely tall order for any single organization to meet. The larger an organization gets, the less innovative it often becomes, and the more resources get stuck in the bureaucratic wasteland. As such, a primary goal of Project Free World is to make it easy for people to utilize an online platform to search for others in their local area with similar pa.s.sions and complementary skill sets, in order to be able to discover and replicate the most effective models in their own regions. Rather than waiting for one organization to become large enough to address a need on a global scale (which s.h.i.+fts constantly and is slightly different in each region), a much more effective method would be to doc.u.ment all of the best practices online, in order to allow gra.s.sroots movements to form in a decentralized fas.h.i.+on.

We often think about attempting to solve global problems in terms of having a limited budget or resources; and I believe this has severely limited our thinking. An alternate approach is to identify potential solutions first, without allowing perceived resource constraints to limit our creative problem solving abilities -- and then find a way to bring together the necessary resources second. When united as a whole, humanity has no limits on time, money, resources, or workforce potential. It's not a lack of money or resources that are truly the problem. The only limits we have are our fears, our apathy, our hatred, our breakdowns in communication, and most importantly -- our reluctance to collaborate on a scale larger than we've ever seen before.

Along with a group of volunteers, I began building the Project Free World platform online. The initial momentum was moving fast, and we made some great headway. Though it was only the beginning, the website showed a map of the world with metric scores ranging from 0--100 (unstable to stable) for different issues, highlighting which regions were in the most critical conditions. On the Act page, the site displayed some of the most innovative organizations and tools for users to access; in order to give them the ability to get involved in social good at any level of engagement they were interested in. Users would be able to donate to nonprofits, learn new skills, volunteer, discover new organizations to research and replicate, start a gra.s.sroots movement, and more.

After the initial wave of interest, as time pa.s.sed, it became a major challenge to continue building out all of the necessary features to make the site interactive and take it to the next level, while utilizing a minimal budget and 100% volunteer staff. I'm certainly not a world-cla.s.s web developer, and the volunteers on board who were experts had full-time jobs that consumed much of their time. As I spoke about earlier in chapter five, I discovered that unproven early stage ventures are the toughest to get funding for, and I was. .h.i.tting dead ends in every direction. If I were to try to build it up all by myself, with my minimal knowledge of coding, I estimated that it would likely take an additional five years or longer -- and determined that there had to be a more efficient option than this. Price quotes from freelancers to build out the next set of features ranged in the neighborhood of $40,000, which was way out of my price range. I then had the misfortune of tearing two ligaments in my ankle, and I didn't have health insurance. For several weeks, I found myself hopping around on one leg anytime I needed to get something to eat or go to the bathroom. It'd been a rough few years.

Though things had once again hit a relative low point, I was determined to try another route. Two options that came to mind were: Finding a technical co-founder who was as pa.s.sionate about this idea as I was to bring on board, or merging with a larger organization with a similar mission that had the budget and team necessary to get this idea off the ground. After discussing the idea with numerous likeminded organizations, it seemed as if none were willing or able to take it on. The only option I had left for making this website happen was finding a technical co-founder. I'd met hundreds of people at different hackathons, meetups, and other tech events, but I'd had no luck. Coding was not my area of expertise, but I'd picked up a bizarre amount of knowledge through the years about social change, organizational psychology, personal development, creativity and innovation management, leaders.h.i.+p, marketing, branding, and storytelling. I decided that I would focus on what I was good at -- writing about what I knew -- and utilizing social media channels to cast as wide a net as possible. Blogging was something I did not need any money or anyone's permission to do, and I could do it even on days where my ankle pain was too strong to go anywhere. My blog was named: Uncommon Sense for 21st Century Living (www.uncommonsense.is).

Then, something unexpected happened. I joined a site called Quora (a forum for questions, answers, and blogging) -- and the very first answer I wrote went viral. It ama.s.sed over 200,000 views and 5,000 upvotes, which ranked it among the top 100 most popular answers in the site's history. Since Quora was ranked in the top 500 most visited sites on the internet, it seemed that I was on to something. I started reposting my blog articles from Uncommon Sense onto the site, and it became the #2 most followed blog on the site. My views exploded, eclipsing the 1.5 million mark, and I was awarded with the designation as a Top Writer on the site. My writings started getting distributed in different publications, my social media following jumped significantly, and I began to get paid writing gigs. I started to realize that if I really wanted to get the Project Free World website concept built as fast as possible, the best thing I could do would be to release it for free to the general public, and get as many eyeb.a.l.l.s on it as possible. As such, at the time of the publis.h.i.+ng of this book, I have released all of the wireframes and sketches for all to have access to on my blog (www.uncommonsense.is/projectfreeworld). Note that the original version can still be viewed at the Project Free World main site (www.projectfreeworld.org).

Releasing control of this project that I care so much about was not easy to do, but I realize that it is necessary for several reasons. Though I may have been able to advance this website and concept to a certain point thus far, this vision is much bigger than me. Reducing the suffering for the people of the world is much more important to me than being able to profit and purchase luxury items from my ideas. If there is someone reading this right now who is a more skilled web developer than I am, with more resources, who can do a better job of implementing the next steps, I want to give them the option to take these ideas and build upon them. When we collectively create so much compet.i.tive waste in the social good realm, ultimately, it is the most vulnerable people who suffer as a result.

If we are to move into a new paradigm where collaboration takes precedence over compet.i.tion, I'd like to take this important first step, and lead by example. If someone else is able to execute this idea, I do not expect to earn a dime off of it. In fact, I want you to contact me if you've taken this idea and run with it, and I will do everything in my power to direct people towards it. Even if I don't end up spearheading the next phases of the web development, my personal mission remains unchanged. I will continue to focus on serving this mission using the methods that produce the greatest impact at any given time. If that means creating an idea, and sharing it through my writing, then so be it. If that means focusing on launching community projects on the ground while someone else handles the website, so be it. If we truly want to create a better world, and fix the problems that oppress our entire species as a whole, the best thing we can do is to begin to recognize societal needs, and start filling them, even if there is no financial gain involved for ourselves personally. Instead, the personal gains will arise in the form of being part of the rebuilding of a much needed sense of community -- which is something that money can't buy. By working towards the continued development of these types of initiatives, and laying the groundwork for groups to form around these ideas, it is my intention to enable others to be able to get involved in making a difference at their own level of comfort, without having to face many of the challenges I had to go through along the way.

10.

Crowdfunding for Cities It's time for us to collectively begin the transition into a paradigm of true abundance. Over the past few decades, we've begun a.s.sociating the word "abundance" with images of money falling out of the sky. The type of abundance I'm talking about doesn't involve all of us making it rain dollar bills everywhere we go. It's not about luxury items; it's not about putting on a show displaying how much better we are than everyone else; and it's not about making excessive purchases that no longer excite us a week later. It's not about us all becoming flashy millionaires and billionaires. In fact, a 2010 study by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton showed that once a person's income level goes beyond a certain threshold ($75,000 annually in the U.S.), additional increases in income do not correlate with higher levels of happiness and satisfaction with life.

The form of abundance that will set us free is one in which we understand that there is enough for everyone, and act accordingly. We have been programmed to do anything and everything we can to maximize profits at all cost, when what we really want is to maximize happiness. It's important to acknowledge that these two goals are not the same, and can contradict one another. Consider these words from Robert F. Kennedy: "Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere acc.u.mulation of material things. Our Gross National Product... counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate, or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning... it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."

You see, our cravings for excessive consumption are really just a restless chase in pursuit of something much deeper. What we're really seeking is a stronger connection with others, and a more powerful connection with life itself. What we're really seeking is the sensation that the limited time we have on this earth is being spent in the most meaningful way; deeply immersed in rich, liberating experiences that remind us of what it really feels like to be fully alive. Becoming the creators of meaningful experiences that benefit others and ourselves has the potential to bring us much more joy and satisfaction with life than plain old consumption. When we seek to acquire and h.o.a.rd vain material goods, it's often a very showy, individualized endeavor that's disconnected from others. Alternatively, when we create meaningful experiences that involve other people, we create a dynamic whereby our success and joy becomes intertwined with other living beings. This creates the long-lost sense of connection that we are looking for, and this is something that we all have the potential to be a part of.

It's time to move into a paradigm of collaboration on a global scale that goes beyond anything we've ever seen before. Through the process of building upon and properly executing the ideas contained within this chapter, it is possible for us to end homelessness in the United States. Through the process of building upon and properly executing the ideas in this chapter, it is possible for us to dramatically reduce poverty, career dissatisfaction, and overall displeasure with life for billions of people worldwide. This plan is called Crowdfunding for Cities. Ideally, a fully developed version of the Project Free World site features that were discussed in chapter nine (and whose detailed visual wireframes are available for viewing online) would ma.s.sively enhance and accelerate the ability to collaborate and execute this plan, but it can technically be done without it as well.

Right now in the United States, there are millions upon millions of people that are either unemployed or underemployed, searching for better jobs that simply don't exist anymore. Millions of people have lost their homes to foreclosure since the real estate market crashed in 2007. According to a Census Bureau report from 2013, there are over 14.2 million vacant houses across the country. Cities such as Cleveland, Las Vegas, St. Louis, New Orleans, Detroit, Atlanta, Indianapolis, and many others contain thousands (or tens of thousands) of vacant properties and lots. When there are boarded up houses, empty neighborhoods, and ghost towns, urban decay and rising crime rates are often not too far behind; which encourages even more people to leave the area. When I look at all of these factors from a bird's eye view perspective, the main thing that I observe is that we seem to be suffering from a system that has become extremely inefficient at resource allocation. We have open land, we have open houses, and we have people who need them. We have people who want to work, but can't find work to do. For some reason, we just haven't been able to figure out how to organize things in a way that creates a win-win scenario for everyone. There is one main ingredient missing from this equation that is so vital that it has the ability to create a domino effect; in essence revolutionizing the way we approach poverty alleviation.

You see, the reason why this system slows to a halt and stagnates is because we are judging the people and elements involved as they are in their current state right now; treating them as if they're all static and unchangeable. We see an empty lot in an empty neighborhood as having minimal value, and we also see an unemployed or homeless person as someone with minimal value to offer to the world. But this is a very limited perspective. Speaking as a person who nearly became homeless myself once upon a time, I know that this couldn't be further from the truth. The most underrated and underutilized resource that we have on this entire planet is human potential. People who are unemployed have a ma.s.sive amount of potential that is going to waste right now. It's not because they're incapable of using it, but rather because they simply don't have access to the resources that will help them unlock it, in order to rise above their current conditions. Like I had mentioned in chapter eight, the people who are most in need of empowerment are least able to afford it. But here's the other side of the coin: If we can give people access to the services they need to unlock their potential and learn how to create new jobs and value for society, they will then be able to contribute back into the system afterward, making the whole process financially sustainable. The way we can make this possible is by unleas.h.i.+ng the secret weapon: Equity crowdfunding.

In 2012, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act was officially signed into law. What this signified is that it was time for the SEC to begin studying more efficient ways to give companies access to capital, in order to create new rules that can both accelerate progress and protect consumers without regulations that are overly burdensome. Two years later, the results of this process are very close to being signed into law. The CEO and Founder of Return on Change, Sang Lee, predicts that these new laws are expected to become official in mid-2014. He has been working in conjunction with Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA) in Was.h.i.+ngton D.C. to take part in the revision process, and a major change involves the legalization of equity crowdfunding. Already underway in Europe, equity crowdfunding enables individuals to invest in an idea and become partial owners of a venture. If said idea or venture grows into a thriving enterprise, the investor gains financial rewards as a result of their decision to put funds into an early stage business concept. In the past, this type of investing was mainly limited to accredited investors that had achieved specific benchmarks for income or net worth, but this will allow a much larger number of people to get involved. With crowdfunding already firmly entrenched as a multi-billion dollar industry internationally, this new incentive prepares to help it expand its reach even further; potentially opening up the flood gates.

To utilize equity crowdfunding in the most effective and optimal way, the first order of business should be to apply it towards revitalizing downtrodden and vacant cities. In order to execute the Crowdfunding for Cities plan, leaders from different cities can utilize a community incubator model to begin rebuilding their respective regions. Over the past few years, business startup incubators such as TechStars and Y-Combinator have emerged to a.s.sist entrepreneurs in taking concepts from the idea phase into full-fledged businesses; providing them with access to mentors.h.i.+p and capital in order to do so. The community incubator model that I'm proposing takes this idea a step further, and would potentially open the doors for many more people to gain access to the resources they need to prosper. To create a rock solid foundation upon which to re-establish these neighborhoods, it is essential that we place a strong focus upon building up local economies, with an added emphasis on self-sufficiency and environmental factors. We can develop new types of communities that combine the best elements of environmentally friendly eco-villages with 21st century training programs focused on personal development, technology, and social entrepreneurs.h.i.+p.

As far as the systems of formal education that we currently have in place go, one of the biggest problems is that they are not evolving nearly as fast as the world around them. It's as if we're essentially spending the first two decades of our lives in a training program designed for the year 1950, and then we come out surprised that the skills we developed did not prepare us for life in 2010, 2020, and beyond. We're so focused on multiple choice exams, regurgitating information, certifications, test scores, degrees, and prestige that we've forgotten to check up on the most important aspect of education --whether or not it provides us with the skills to better navigate and solve problems within the world in its current condition. At that, we are failing miserably. We overemphasize intelligence, and underemphasize wisdom. We've been trained to become experts at learning how to game the system and maximize our scores on tests, but we've neglected to develop our critical thinking abilities in order to identify which tests are even worth taking. We learn about how to negotiate and exploit opportunities, but we are not trained to care about how attempting to gain a small advantage for ourselves can have widespread negative impacts on many other people's lives; which ends up coming back to affect us all. This is why we've learned how to develop so many amazing technologies and maximize profits, but we've yet to figure out how to prevent these things from leading us down a path to self-destruction.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the price of higher education in the United States has skyrocketed, and so taking out loans to pay for it locks us into irreversible debt that makes this situation even worse. We're now in an era where, sadly, many hopeful parents who are encouraging their kids to go expensive colleges are unknowingly decimating their longterm quality of life; pressuring them into taking on a ma.s.sive financial burden that they may not get out of for decades. It's the equivalent of a musician paying $100,000 to get their alb.u.ms recorded onto CDs and ca.s.sette tapes, putting them up for sale, and then realizing that tablets, smartphones and laptops have rendered them useless. Since the universities are paid in full regardless of whether or not their students can go on to find careers that earn enough to cover the steep costs of tuition, there has not been enough of an incentive for them to change with the times.

But what if we tweaked this model a bit to make it so that the success and financial stability of the community incubator programs were tied directly to the success of the fellows who go through the program? A system like this would ensure that the highest leverage skills were being taught, because otherwise, the system would cease to exist. To give this idea a frame of reference, imagine this for a moment: What if the salaries for a university's president and governing board were not fixed, but rather were earned based upon a percentage of the income of the students in the last ten graduating cla.s.ses? This type of system would essentially create a built in failsafe mechanism against exorbitant tuition costs, since the only way the governing board could command higher salaries would be by ensuring that the students earned larger salaries. They would be invested in the success of the students long after they graduate, and would be much more likely to even begin making personal introductions and providing ongoing mentors.h.i.+p as well.

What has become glaringly obvious in the 21st century is that the rate at which we're collectively making technological advances shows no signs of slowing down, and is only accelerating even faster. It is possible for a student to spend four years of college learning how to use a specific computer program for a particular trade, and by the time they graduate, that program has become obsolete. We live in a world where we are trained to learn one particular skill to earn money, and we use the money we earn from that skill to pay for all of the other things we need to survive. However, when you combine the speed at which technology can eliminate entire industries with the realization that the global financial markets are p.r.o.ne to volatility, we end up with epidemics of structural unemployment that have devastating consequences on society. As a result, the foundational core of the Crowdfunding for Cities plan is based first and foremost upon a community's ability to provide for their own basic survival necessities. If the market goes into a recession, an industry disappears, or a business fails, we could ease the burden on people's lives significantly by setting up systems in a way that ensures that they can still continue to provide their own basic needs to survive. In the words of Ron Finley: "Growing your own food is like printing your own money." To describe a clearer picture of how the Crowdfunding for Cities plan could function in its entirety, I will give you a fictional example that depicts how an interested person or group can begin executing this to revitalize their city.

On the east side of Detroit, a 24--year-old woman named Jade looks on as yet another empty building gets demolished. As the city has already declared bankruptcy, many of these demolitions are done primarily as an attempt to limit these barren buildings from becoming trash heaps, or homes to criminal activity. There are tens of thousands of empty homes and plots of land in neighborhoods nearby; some of which have become completely empty ghost towns. The city does not seem to have a plan or the funding to do anything to fix the situation. Jade has recently been laid off, as her company continues to undergo a major downsizing. Ideally, she would love to do some type of work that involves rebuilding the city, but just doesn't know where to start. She can't find any jobs that will pay her a living wage to do it. So, she decides that the best option available to her is to stop searching for jobs that don't exist, and begin creating her own.

She searches around the internet to try to gain some ideas about where to even begin. As fate would have it, she comes across a book called It's All My Fault: How I Messed Up the World, and Why I Need Your Help to Fix It that sounds as if it might lead her in the right direction. Skeptical at first, she checks out the book reviews online, and she finds a few that tear it to shreds. "Hands down the worst book I've ever read, I actually burned it halfway through," says one reviewer. "This guy is a cross between the sp.a.w.n of Satan, Karl Marx, and the guy from the double rainbow video. Way too idealistic. He actually believes it's possible to end global poverty, and needs a reality check."

Being somewhat of an idealist herself, Jade is intrigued by the last sentence, and decides it couldn't hurt to pick up the book anyway. At this point in her life, she is completely fed up with the number of people she knows that spend all of their time and energy arguing and complaining about everything on the internet, but don't ever actually do anything about it. She decides that moving forward, she is only going to focus her time and energy on surrounding herself with people who are looking to take action and create positive social change.

Using some of the ideas from the book, and other resources online, she organizes a group of no-nonsense people who are equally pa.s.sionate about revitalizing the east side of Detroit, and gets everyone in a room together. Since Jade's background is in urban planning, she seeks out others with complementary skill sets in areas she lacks expertise, such as: urban agriculture, construction, teaching, psychology, renewable energy, technology, computer science, finance, real estate, law, and others. She buys additional copies of the book for everyone in the group, and a few dozen extras for all of her friends and acquaintances as well, just for good measure (notice the emergence of my self-preservation instinct). After several discussions, she develops a solid core team of individuals that truly believe in her mission. They seem to have a common set of values, an excellent work ethic, and the attributes necessary to work together cohesively; and so they begin the process of putting the plan into action.

The first order of business is to identify land that they would like to purchase, in order to establish the community they are looking to build. The great news is: in the cities that have the strongest need to rebuild -- the ones with the most vacant lots -- the prices are the least expensive. Huge quant.i.ties of land can be purchased for pennies on the dollar. The group selects a neighborhood that fits as an ideal location for them to purchase, with several dozen acres of s.p.a.ce in total -- most of which are empty lots. Before making the purchase of the land and setting the plan in motion, they begin to accept applications from potential fellows who want to become candidates to take part in this community incubator program. The screening process can vary depending on the group's overall objectives; but the most important areas of focus are placed upon a fellow's determination, their willingness to learn, their willingness to create value, and their willingness to get along with others. Different incubator programs can focus on serving different groups of people, depending on their life circ.u.mstances, abilities, and interests. Some can be geared towards serving recent school graduates; others can serve individuals who are unemployed, underemployed or dissatisfied with their current careers; others can serve the formerly homeless; others can serve victims of domestic violence; others can serve veterans; some groups can be mixed; and so on. Depending on which groups of people will make up the community, the resources and training programs can be designed and tailored accordingly. For example, communities that are comprised of people who were formerly homeless would likely need to bring in additional therapists, social workers, and mental health counselors to ensure that each individual is moving along at the pace that is optimal for them. Though personal development and leaders.h.i.+p training are vital elements of any community incubator program, groups dealing with overcoming major life traumas would likely need to place a major emphasis on therapy and healing before transitioning into learning skills related to survival or career options.

Next, the equity crowdfunding aspect comes into play. An online platform can be utilized to facilitate this process, in order to bring in investment dollars from individuals who want to contribute to the rebuilding movement -- while also gaining the opportunity to receive a financial return as well. There can also be community incubator programs that seek to raise funds in accordance with Muhammad Yunus' philosophy of social business -- meaning that the investors simply aim to empower others and get their money back, without receiving any personal financial dividends from the deal (Kiva -- www.kiva.org -- specializes in this type of model). The investment funds will be used to cover the cost of land, development, materials, program coordinator salaries, and tuition and living expenses for the fellows during the two-year fellows.h.i.+p program. Once the training programs are adequately prepared to suit the needs of the fellows that are selected, and sufficient funds are raised, the fellows.h.i.+p begins.

To begin with, the fellows learn how to rehabilitate houses and build their own shelters, in a minimalist and environmentally friendly fas.h.i.+on. Drawing inspiration from tiny home designs and Earths.h.i.+p Biotecture (www.earths.h.i.+p.com), these structures should ideally be able to be constructed using as many natural and recycled local materials as possible, with an emphasis on safety. There are methodologies accessible right now that allow for the creation of housing structures that harvest their own rainwater, contain and treat their own sewage, and heat